28 September 2010
Psalm 97, 99; Hosea 4:1-10; Acts 21:1-14; Luke 5:12-26

The priests are held out for special blame in the apostasy of the land. The priests have forgotten their duties and when the priests fail to uphold the law and the Word, the people will wander from it as well. We live in a time in the west when the Word of God is frequently not preached or taught in many churches or it is treated as a piece of literature rather than the inspired Word of God. It is presented as somehow a cultural artifact of a bygone era and its teaching neglected because they do not comport with modern mores and sensibilities. The reality is that much of the law did not match up with the morality and ethical sensibilities of its own time because it is a timeless Word. We can seek out the knowledge of good and evil somewhere else or we can get it from God. Choosing to reject His word is choosing to reject the one who spoke the word and here we see that those who are given to teach God’s word come in, as James wrote, for special judgment.

Jesus knew the danger of popular acclaim and that is why He regularly retreated to “deserted places” to pray. The most important thing we can do as leaders is to get apart from the crowd and spend time alone in prayer so that He can set the agenda for our lives and our ministry rather than the crowd. There is always a great temptation to follow and do the will of the crowd because it appeals to our vanity to see people coming to the ministry, but it is the way to make many mistakes to be led by the appeal to vanity. This was one of the original temptations of satan to Jesus and he wasn’t done tempting Him by a long shot. With the paralytic I believe that the most important thing was to forgive his sins, whatever they were, and that somehow sin was connected with the condition or Jesus would not have begun there. It was easy to see the infirmity but more difficult to see the real need. Jesus didn’t proclaim forgiveness simply to be provocative, but because it was necessary and the result was provocation but only if you don’t realize who He is.

What was Paul supposed to do? Prophetic words concerning what would happen to him if he went to Jerusalem were given to him on two occasions here, once in Tyre and then in Caesarea. Was God sending him a message not to go to Jerusalem or was the Lord only telling them what would happen next? We have to be careful with prophecy given to us. We have to make sure that even if someone interprets it to us that we submit both the word and the interpretation to the Lord in order to know what we are to do. Paul’s final answer on the issue is that the Lord’s will be done. We can only surmise that in all this Paul was submitted to the will of God as we have seen him time and again prevented from going one place or another by the Spirit of God and then pulled in a direction he had not intended by that same Spirit.

The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble!
He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!
Let them praise your great and awesome name.
Holy is he!
Extol the Lord our God;
worship at his footstool.
Holy is he!