Faithless Opposition (06/13/22)

I will touch but briefly on the matter of the tempter and his tempting.  To be honest, I was drawn to look at this primarily due to syntax, and to the way my interlinear happened to have assigned its English words to the Greek.  On that point, I shall simply say that they got it backwards.  But it is still striking to the English reader that the noun in this case is in fact a verb.  The tempter is ho peirazon, and that last is a verbal participle, an adjectival form serving, in this case, a nominative purpose.  It describes the ongoing, contemporaneous activity of this opponent of ours.  He is constantly seeking to prove something.  Now, the term itself is capable of indicating either a good or a bad intent in this proving, but in the New Testament, I think we shall find it is almost exclusively the attempt to prove one’s lack of worth.

So, what does this tempter do?  He encourages us toward sin.  He seeks to prove us evil, as he himself is evil.  That exercise of his is quite clearly seen in the book of Job, where he comes before God seeking permit to test this one God has singled out as being so evidently righteous.  It’s evident, as well, when Satan comes to accost Jesus in the wilderness, as we find him doing in Matthew 4, and the parallel accounts of that event.  He is sent to try Jesus, and his intent is to so entice Him in His fast-weakened state, that He will try to take a short-cut to what is, really, His by right anyway.  You don’t need to wait for God to provide sustenance, you could just turn some rocks into bread and eat …  If you are who you think you are.  You don’t need to put up with the humiliation of being human … You can have it all now.  Just bow down to me, and I’ll give it to you straight up.  You don’t need to face death.  I mean, you’re the Son of God, right?  It’s absurd to allow this to happen.  Take the easy path, Jesus.  But all of these were not attempts to make Jesus’ life easier, but rather to prove Him false, to prove Him evil, to prove Him a failure, just like Adam.

And this is his intent with you.  But observe!  As with Job, as with Jesus, the tempter’s intentions are not the determining factor.  There remains the Father, and He has His own reasons.  In His perspective, what this tempter seeks to do will in fact prove to be dokimazo.  In His intentions, the end result is that the one being thus tested shall in fact prove good.  So, then, what the tempter means for evil, means for our downfall, is in fact permitted by our loving Father as a form of discipline.  Satan is attempting to see if this thing can be done, if he can in fact entice away one of the elect, and in spite of his power, his intellect, his insight as to God’s purposes and Person, it seems he’s still convinced this could succeed in some cases.

So, too, we tend to blind ourselves to the obvious result of our sins.  We, too, think somehow we can still get away with it, even knowing God, even knowing that He is all-knowing, and will by no means leave sin unpunished.  Somehow, in the midst of caving in to our trials, we convince ourselves that this doesn’t apply to us.  What child with hand in cookie jar considers that the missing cookies are pretty obvious, and he, the child, is pretty obviously the culprit?  How foolish are the attempted excuses when such a one is caught out?  But in the moment, he feels invisible, invincible, and successful in having gamed the system.

This is our opposition, and it is nothing to sneer at.  We are constantly faced by temptations because the tempter is constantly putting them before us.  He is forever seeking ways to prove us false to God.  And part of that assault is seeking to convince us that our track record to date has put us beyond hope of grace.  How many have you met who put forth just that argument when presented with the Gospel?  Oh, no.  Not me.  My ways have been too sinful.  He wouldn’t save such as me, so I may as well go on as I am, and enjoy it while I can.  But it’s a lie, and a lie of the worst sort.  It is of the worst sort not so much because it serves to keep such a one from salvation freely offered (for frankly, if God has determined to save, this sort of game isn’t likely to stop Him, is it?) but in that it so maligns the good name of our God and Lord.  It suggests He is weak, too weak to see His intentions realized.  It suggests He has limits, but He is limitless.  It suggests He has not mercy, but some sort of minimum measure of righteousness that must be met before He will act in your favor.  And this is hardly the case.  If it were, Peter and Paul would be unlikely to have met the mark.  You and I would be more unlikely still to have done so.

No, it’s not our residual value that has attracted God’s attention, but simply His determination from His own essential nature, that He shall save this one, have mercy on that one.  You didn’t earn it, nor could you.  You haven’t lost hope of it, nor could you.  Whom He has saved, He has saved for His own reasons, and He has, per His declaration, done so since before the beginning.  That kingdom into which you have gained entrance has been ‘prepared for you from the foundation of the world’ (Mt 25:34).  Now, surely, if that place has been so long prepared, it can hardly have been due to your proving yourself, or managing to be good enough, can it?  You weren’t even there!  And already, it was determined.  So, get over yourself.  You can no more earn your way in as you can fail your way out.  It is only the great deceit of this adversary of ours, and our gullibility, which make us suppose it is otherwise.  So, stand fast, knowing to the deepest depths of your soul that you stand because He Who has begun the good work in you strengthens you and empowers you to stand.

Let not these temptations beguile you, and let them not dismay you.  He Who has you in His hands knows your limits.  He knows them better than you do yourself.  He will not allow the test to pass beyond your ability.  Whatever the tempter’s goal in the matter, God above has every intention of seeing your faith proved true, seeing your trust in Him validated.  And He intends that you shall see it thus validated, and know better than before just how great a progress He has in fact made in the work of transformation that is you.

Destined for Affliction(06/13/22-06/14/22)

Now, with all that having been said in regard to our faithless opposition, we must yet face this reality, that we might approach the future – even the most immediate future of this particular day – with open eyes.  We are destined for affliction.  As has been pointed out often enough, this is perhaps the least effective sales pitch one could imagine.  Come and taste the salvation of our God, and you, too, can know a lifetime of affliction!  Sign up now, while there’s still time to get in on this deal.  Guaranteed to win all sorts of seekers over, don’t you think?

We have not been invited onto an easy path, promised an easy life.  Far from it!  We are blessed beyond all measure, but that is not some assurance that we shall have fine cars and fancy clothes all the days of our lives.  It is not a promise that we shall never suffer severe illness, even debilitating disease in this life.  It is not, by any stretch, a promise that all whom we meet shall accept us with rejoicing, and happily accept the great good news we bear.  No, we can expect rejection, wholesale rejection.  We can expect to be disowned or dismissed by many, if not most.  We can expect that unwarranted difficulties may arise in the workplace or the marketplace due to our beliefs.  It is not because our beliefs are offensive in and of themselves, and it certainly ought not to be because we have chosen to be offensive or annoying in our presentation of the Gospel.  But the darkness is not keen on being exposed to the light.  It’s a rare criminal indeed who seeks to see his crimes exposed.

See, whatever we convince ourselves of in pursuit of our sins, in fact we know them to be sins, and we know them to be deserving of justice.  It may seem, in our day and age, that such knowledge is gone from most people, as this do what you want, laws don’t apply to us mindset prevails.  But the appearance of such delusional thinking does not, cannot alter the conscience, where Truth will speak whether we would hear it willingly or not.  Oh, sure, there may be some form of mental malady that prevents recognizing the validity of conscience, and to be sure, we can temporarily tamp down the noise of our conscience and allow lust to reign for a season.  But it’s for a season.  Truth has this annoying habit of outlasting our self-delusions.

And Christianity does not come with some promise of making this easier.  In point of fact, it makes it harder, for the conscience is now better informed than it was.  We see sin for what it is, and we now know the goodness of our God.  We recognize full well that our sins are not without cost.  They have cost to ourselves, although, being redeemed by Christ, that cost is not the full penalty of death that our sins have deserved.  No.  The penalty has been paid by that very Christ, and this reality, if indeed we are saved, ought to make our every failure in righteousness to be that much deeper cause for sorrow.  We have increased our Lord’s suffering that much more.  How could we, when He has given all to see us redeemed?  But even here, there is not cause to lose hope.  By no means!  Jesus already paid it all!  But neither is His willing payment of our due penalty reason to suppose that we can henceforth sin with impunity.  There is a distinction between penalty and consequence.  He may ameliorate the consequence as well, but I think it must be a very rare thing indeed that He eliminates consequence entirely.  How would we grow should He do so?

So, Paul tells us we are destined for affliction.  But before we can make that statement stick, we shall have need of answering a question that arises in reading this passage, and that is the question of just how expansive, ‘we’ is to be taken.  Certainly, as he makes out the reason for sending Timothy back up to Thessalonica, ‘we’ does not include the Thessalonian church.  They quite simply aren’t present to enter into any such deliberations as are discussed.  Paul could have no knowledge of what they thought best, nor could they have conveyed word of their opinion, had it been sought.  In point of fact, it’s pretty unclear if ‘we’ in this case goes beyond Paul and Timothy alone.  Who else was there?  We don’t know.  Apart from the fact that Timothy was sent back up, we really don’t have knowledge of even him having come to meet Paul in Athens.  Last we saw, he was already there alone.  Yes, he sent word back to have Timothy and Silas join him soonest possible, but no news of their arrival comes until Paul is in Corinth.  Yet, it becomes apparent, doesn’t it, that Timothy, at least has rejoined him however briefly.  Silas may have done so as well.  And there may still have been those who escorted him from Berea and Thessalonica as well.  It would be strange indeed if any man were traveling solo in that period, and Timothy, young man that he was, would be that much less likely to have done so, I should think.  But we can accept that ‘we’, at least in the first two verses here, applies solely to that group of individuals who were there with Paul when this decision was made.

And then we have that momentary shift to first person.  I could endure no longer.  I had to know how you were faring up there.  But before we get there, we have this observation of what should have been clearly known to his readers already:  “We have been destined for this.  We told you when we were with you that we would suffer affliction, and so it has happened, as you know.”  But is this the same ‘we’ that contemplated whether Paul should return or stay in Athens?  Or does ‘we’ now expand to include ‘you’? 

I think we find answer to this with the presence of the initial ‘therefore’ of our passage.  In typical fashion, Paul is building on what has already been said.  That leads to this.  Well, what was that?  You became like the churches in Jerusalem, suffering at the hands of your own countrymen (1Th 2:14).  Of course, we also have the notice of Satan cutting Paul off as to his desire to return (1Th 2:18).  Or perhaps his therefore connects simply with his note of them being his glory and joy.  Things were going so well before we left, therefore we felt it necessary to see how things are going with you.  Satan stopped us from coming, therefore we sent Timothy alone.  You were afflicted by your own countrymen, therefore we sent him to strengthen your faith, lest said afflictions disturb you.

It could, I suppose, be any of these, or all of these together.  And I see that I am not alone in wondering which way to take verse 3.  When Paul says that “we have been destined for this,” who does he mean?  The NIrV hints at the more expansive scope, saying, “We sent him so that no one would be upset by times of testing. You know very well that we have to go through them.”  That certainly suggests their testing rather more than his own.  Phillips makes it explicitly about them.  “We did not want any of you to lose heart at the troubles you were going through, but to realise that we Christians must expect such things.”  Whether he is right to do so is an open question, of course, but I am at least not alone in thinking the scope expands here.

The other hint we have can be found in the traces we have of Paul’s teaching.  In particular, Luke records an aspect of his teaching as he and Barnabas were on the return course from their first mission journey.  Already, they had faced issues with Jewish opposition, as well as with pagan misapprehensions.  In Antioch and Iconium, opposition had grown so fierce as to see Paul stoned and left for dead.  But dead he was not, and the two went on to Derbe, before returning to those same cities to encourage the faithful.  Pause.  Do you see the pattern?  It would have been in keeping with Paul’s prior practice to have turned right around and gone back to Thessalonica.  This treatment was nothing new to him, and there was no reason to expect anything different from him on this occasion.  But a different course was chosen for him, and so, he has to improvise somewhat, sending Timothy along in his stead.  The return to encourage, you see, was more important than his desire.

But more to our point is the message of comfort he spoke upon his return to those places.  He was telling them, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Ac 14:22).  Isn’t that encouraging?  Here’s your blessed assurance:  You will inevitably suffer many tribulations.  You must.  It is the only path by which entrance into that kingdom is gained.  Jesus was just as blunt about this, as I have pointed out many times.  And therein lies the encouragement.  “Take courage; I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).  Take courage, says Paul, these trials only prove you are on course for heaven.  Stand firm, your entrance is assured.

Indeed, here he has put it in terms that might bother us just a little bit.  “We have been destined for this.”  Oh dear.  He said destined.  It’s like we’re pawns of fate, stuck in situations we can neither change nor avoid.  Well, yes and no.  And I might note that here is Paul giving clear evidence of his background, using the language of Greek thinkers to set forward his point in a fashion understandable to Greek readers.  You can be offended by this, I suppose, but to me it is more an evidence of the genius of God’s choice of the man.  Here was one imbued with all the skill and understanding of the culture into which he is being sent as well as the culture out of which arises Messiah.  And we must insist that he is thus imbued not by cunning, and not by happenstance.  He is thus imbued by the plan and purpose of God whose instrument he was all along, though he did not understand his function for many years.  We can sense he knew himself an instrument well enough.  But he had not known the tune he was designed to play.  And now, here he is; as destined, as “set by God’s intent” as Thayer’s offers the phrase.

This is all we need know of the Scriptural sense of being destined.  Is it unavoidable, that to which God has destined us?  Oh, I should think so, for God is perfect in knowledge and plan.  This course has been, if I take Zhodiates’ sense of the thing, laid as a foundation for our lives.  It is appointed.  But not in the same sense as that passage from Hebrews 9:27, wherein we are reminded that it is appointed to every man once to die, after which comes judgment.  That’s a different term with a different sense of reservation.  It’s waiting for you, and don’t think you can skate past.  Death does not admit of such things.  Even Jesus died once.  It just didn’t stick.  Here, it’s more the present state of things that is in view, rather than the future.  In fairness, both are presented as Present Indicatives, and both in the Middle voice.  If this is deponent, as it would appear to be, then we should be effectively seeing an Active voice sense of the thing.  We have been destined.  But it is not we who have done the destining.  So, I incline to keep the Middle voice as Middle.  The action is relative to we, but not so much as our own doing, as noting the personal involvement of Him who destines.  God has taken personal interest in our case, and paid personal attention to shaping this foundation, making this appointment for us. 

In short, the afflictions we face come not as unexpected opposition from a fierce foe, although we can be certain his instigation is behind those afflictions, and his purpose in stirring them up is to tempt us with giving up on God.  No, these afflictions come from that very God as the very thing appointed to us.  These are occasions set in our path by God’s intent.  That may seem rather obtuse on His part.  If You love us so, why would You see this done to us?  Well, the answer is simple enough:  Because it is a discipline necessary to your full and proper maturation.  You cannot grow in righteousness if righteousness is never tested.  A muscle that goes unused becomes flabby and worthless, and when the time comes that said muscle is needed, perhaps needed for the very purpose of preserving life, it is quite simply not up to the task.  Legs that never run are not suddenly going to prove sufficient to outrun the charging lion or bear.  Adrenaline can do a lot, but it has limits.  Training, though painful, will serve far better.  And that is what has been provided by these trials, these afflictions.

Now, I have to admit that looking at Paul’s story, that’s not the sort of training I would wish to undergo.  Being stoned repeatedly, beaten and imprisoned for no greater crime than proffering hope of salvation, being broken in body, weakened physically, constantly humiliated:  These are not things to which we find it natural to look forward.  But they are the way.  And here’s the comforting bit:  He who has appointed such things as our foundation and path knows full well the state of our growth and strength of faith.  He does not permit us to be tempted beyond our ability.  Our failures, I should note here, are not due to God’s overloading our capacity.  They remain our failures, our choice not to stand firm.  And observe this as well:  This is Present Indicative.  It is ongoing, and it is certain enough to be stated as fact.  This is not some one-shot proof of manhood, some trial we must face once and then we can get on with life.  No.  It is ongoing.  It is steady-state.  And it is appointed.

Fact:  We are going to face afflictions.  We are going to face temptations.  This is the unchanging reality of life on earth for the Christian.  So long as we remain this side of the grave, this will hold true.  The ferocity of those afflictions, the nature of them, the particulars of our temptations; these may vary.  But I suppose we should expect that they will increase as we grow.  After all, if we are indeed growing, our strength of faith must be growing, right?  Our knowledge and understanding of God Who disciplines, and Who strengthens by His own power, must be growing.  He would see us grow further still, and for that, the old tests, those which we have faced so often they have become commonplace events we can triumph over without batting an eye, won’t serve any longer.  The strength trainer can’t improve by lifting the same weight the same number of reps week after week and year after year.  He will plateau and make no further advance.  If he would improve, the effort must increase.  To borrow the common adage of exercise, “no pain, no gain.”  The musculature of faith is no different in this regard, and God, as our personal trainer in this exercising of faith’s muscle, knows it full well.  He has tuned our appointed trials perfectly to our ability.

And so, we are given to recognize that our faith is not in our strength or accomplishments.  Our faith is assuredly not in the comfortable nature of our surroundings, although we may well know periods of comfort.  When we do, it is well that we keep mindful of the fact that these periods of comfort in themselves can become temptations to us.  Israel was warned of that very thing, going into the Promised Land.  You will have this abundance all about you, houses and vineyards and general plenty in all regards.  And you will be tempted to think you’ve arrived, you’ve done it, you’ve got it from here.  And you will forget about Me.  Beware! 

Isn’t that life in the West, as we have known it these last several decades?  I would say throughout my lifetime that has largely been the story.  We have had it easy.  There have been wars, but they are elsewhere.  There have been shortages on occasion, but they have passed quickly enough.  There have been downturns, but they last months, not years.  And we have, one suspects, grown soft and flabby in our faith.  But God remains faithful.  Trials will still come our way, and with that same, eternal purpose.  They come that we might grow, that we might be more fully transformed of character, demonstrating more fully His image formed in us.  God takes pains to see us grow, and in His perfect wisdom, He knows full well that it will take pains for us to do so.  But grow, we shall, for His superintending wisdom and planning is, as I have said, perfect and personal.

Paul was no stranger to this.  No sooner had Jesus revealed Himself to this chosen instrument, then said instrument was informed of the tune that would be played thereupon.  “I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Ac 9:16).  That, I think we shall have to recognize, was baked into his training, that period of personal tutelage that transpired while he was pretty fully apart from society, off alone with Jesus being taught what would be his lifelong trade:  That of evangelist and Apostle to the Gentiles.  This was to be no prestige position, but one fraught with trials and pains both physical and spiritual.  If you thought the abuses he suffered at the hands of the Jews and Gentiles who opposed him were bad, the anguish of heart he knew at every trial faced, of every testing failed by the people of the churches he had planted, or even simply come to be aware of, was severe on him.  You hear it in this passage, don’t you?  I couldn’t stand it any longer!  Were you standing firm or were these afflictions wearing you down, causing you to falter or even fall away?  Was that faith real, or had our work in fact been a waste of time?

This is not, I must note, doubt as to God’s power to save.  It is recognition of human nature.  It is laboring in the vineyard with open eyes, and a clear understanding that not everyone who makes a response in the moment is really there for the long haul.  Not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord!” is truly committed to Him as Lord.  It is those who stand fast, who hold firm in faith when these trials come, knowing that He who as set them as the foundation for their path will surely see them through; knowing that even should we die, yet shall we live:  These are the proven elect.  And we, who are the elect, are in this together.

That, I think, is the purpose behind Paul’s choice of saying, “We have been destined for this.”  It’s not just me.  It’s not just you.  It’s we together.  These trials are not evidence that your faith is weak.  Far from it!  If your faith were weak, such trials would be too much, and God would not yet allow them.  They are not proof that faith is false.  No.  We told you from the outset that this is what happens.  This is how darkness responds to being exposed to the light.  If in fact we believe in Christ, trust in Christ, commit ourselves to Christ, we can and must expect this.  As I wrote elsewhere in preparing for these notes:  If suffering is taking you by surprise, you haven’t been listening.  God has been clear enough on the subject.

And so, Paul thought it good that, if his participation was preventing a return mission, then that mission should proceed without him.  Better he remains behind by himself to continue the work here, in order that somebody can go back and bolster this young church.  Yes, it is expressed as concern that they might have already fallen to temptations, but then news of their faith was reaching him there, it seems to me, even before Timothy came with the full report.  They speak of you everywhere!  That’s not about one pastor’s review of conditions.  That’s general news coming in from abroad.  That’s the scuttlebutt around the docks, the news we’re hearing from travelers coming in from your area.  Yes, they are suffering, but such joy!  Such hospitality they showed us in spite of that.

So, one or the other of the translations tried to make this a matter of Paul consenting to be left behind.  That makes it sound like acceding to an unwanted necessity.  And certainly, as we have read, Paul wanted to go personally, but found himself blocked.  We saw this attributed to Satan, but as I noted in the previous study, with full recognition that this enemy of God’s people can oppose only as granted leave by our own Lord and Master.  If he was being thus prevented, there was good reason to it, whatever Satan’s intentions may have been.  God had other ideas for Paul, and best he shift course to what God had in mind.  And in that light, no, I don’t think it’s a case of grudging consent, or merely acceding to necessity.  The word used is clear enough.  He, or we, thought it good.  It isn’t, ‘we thought it necessary’.  It isn’t, ‘we found it unavoidable’.  It is far more positive.  We thought it good.  Here is what God wants to see happening, and let’s be about it.

So, Paul was left behind.  It is presented as an infinitive, suggesting that here was the result or the means.  The result of that opposition, that cutting off of his intended course, was that he stopped and asked for directions.  And God supplied direction through the mutual counsel of those with him in Athens.  We thought it good.  Indeed, as the NASB supplies it, we thought it best.  Clearly, I’m not to go up, so I’ll remain.  Yet, the church needs encouragement.  Somebody must go.  And Timothy was handed the mission, and gladly undertook to serve in that capacity.  He, too, had been well trained, well prepared for just that sort of service.  And we see him entrusted with it over and over again.  And what was the encouragement he would offer when he got there?  I rather like the BBE rendering of verse 3 in that regard.  “So that no man might be moved by these troubles; because you see that these things are part of God’s purpose for us.”  These aren’t punishment.  These aren’t evidences of some error in your judgment, or that you have misplaced your faith in believing on Jesus.  They are part of God’s purpose, and His purpose is ever and always for your good.  So, stand fast, knowing that He who began this good work in you is indeed faithful to complete it, to complete it perfectly.

Faithful Son (06/15/22)

So, then, we find Paul entrusting Timothy with the assignment to go and encourage those in Thessalonica, and then to bring back news as to how they fared as to their faith.  This was no small thing.  We know, from the brief record we have of his first associating with Paul, that he had been prepared for just this sort of duty, for he had been serving as messenger between the churches in his home area.  These were somewhat shorter journeys, but not without risk.  Opposition to the Gospel had arisen around Lystra just as much as in Thessalonica.  But Timothy was young, and as I have noted, may have been able to move about with less notice being taken of him.

Whatever the case, Paul trusted him.  He knew him as his own son, not that he was the young man’s father, but he was certainly spiritual mentor to the man.  And Timothy, in response to that mentoring, was a true son of Paul’s ministry.  As the article in Hasting’s Dictionary says, “he understands fully the Apostle’s mind and purpose, and is an example to the brethren of what Paul would have them become.”  He would not invent his own doctrines, nor misrepresent those which Paul taught.  He would serve as if it were Paul himself who was with them.

So, yes, Paul knew he would serve truly and serve well.  He would, as he encourages Timothy later in Ephesus, ‘guard what has been entrusted’ to him (1Ti 6:20).  This trust would prove well-placed, and would prove so repeatedly over the years.  In this case, as we are hearing news at the end of his mission, we know he was faithful in the task given him, as he had been in Berea before, as we must surmise, he joined Paul briefly in Athens.  Later, he would be entrusted with a mission to Corinth, similar in its fashion, but addressing a much graver situation as to the state of the church.  There, it would be no question of seeing how they were doing and encouraging them in the face of opposition.  No, it would be a corrective mission, facing a church gone distressingly astray, and becoming alienated to the Gospel.  And there, too, he would prove a faithful son, a true minister of the Gospel, fully capable in spite of his youth, as God empowered him.

Just how young Timothy was at this juncture is unknown.  It’s possible, I think, that he was younger than thirty, that critical age, at least in Jewish thought, at which one was finally sufficiently mature as to enter into ministry proper.  We see it with both John the Baptist, and with Jesus, that while they may have been declared an adult much earlier than that, entry into ministry proper must wait for that more fully adult stage of growth.  If this was the case with Timothy, it might explain why he could return to Thessalonica without issue, whereas Paul would have been recognized on sight.  His youth would render him in some ways invisible.  It may have rendered him so when the three men were there earlier.  Paul and Silas, it seems, got some attention, but Timothy was almost dismissed out of hand.  In Philippi, we find those two arrested and put in prison due to the machinations of the opposition.  But Timothy, so far as we know, is untouched by those events, left at liberty without any much notice given him.

This is in its own way a wonderful thing, is it not?  God will use whom He will, just as He will have compassion upon whom He will.  He has little concern for the opinions or prejudices of man as concerns such things.  They may think an individual of no consequence.  They may suppose him too young, too ill-informed in the ways of life and religion.  They may think him foolish and powerless.  But where God thinks otherwise, guess what?  God is right.  The authorities in Jerusalem thought that gaggle of men who followed Jesus about were of such minimal value.  They are but Galileans.  I mean really, find even one of them who had seen any proper rabbinical training.  Why, even their use of Hebrew marked them out as inferior.  And they lived amongst Gentiles!  Honestly, who was going to look to the likes of them to be teachers of Torah, ministers of righteousness?  And yet, when Peter preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, people did listen.  Lives were changed.  When these few, rather scared men began to function as empowered by the Holy Spirit, much like their leader Jesus, the sick were healed, the lame walked, demons were expelled, and men set free.  And they believed!  Oh yes, they believed.

You see, it wasn’t about the man.  It wasn’t about training as we think of training.  It wasn’t the seminary education or its equivalent.  It was God’s choice of them, and God’s preparation of them.  Oh, there had been training, just not of the sort society tended to recognize.  They hadn’t gone through official channels.  They had been trained almost guerilla fashion.  But they had been taught by the best.  They had learned at the feet of Jesus.  Even Paul could make such a claim, albeit in a manner more mysterious than those other Apostles.  And through them, this first generation of ministers likewise learned at the feet of Jesus, taught by trustworthy stewards of the good news which is the Gospel.  Paul was one, who by the mercy of the Lord was trustworthy (1Co 7:25).  And even in that verse we see his worth.  He is careful to delineate that which is opinion from that which is revelation.  He doesn’t embellish his teaching.  He doesn’t burnish his credentials.  He speaks truly.

Let this be our own testimony, Lord willing, that we set aside all thought of boasting.  Let us indeed be those who think of themselves as they ought, neither playing games of false humility and denouncing our abilities where God has in fact supplied them, nor overstating the case, not even in our most private opinions.  Let us, as per our guide book, think more highly of others, be more concerned about their spiritual development than our comfort and convenience.  Let us put this work of the Gospel first in all we do, and what do you suppose will come of it?  These men, these few men, by their faithful commitment to the work of Christ, turned the world upside down.  Can we expect any less would come of a true and burning commitment to proclaim and live this Gospel before men?

Father, it’s easy enough to type those words.  It’s far harder to be established in them, to live out what is clearly desired of us.  Yes, there is a place for quiet persistence in such endeavors of life as You have set before us.  But it’s not enough to labor for comfort, or labor to leave a legacy for our children.  It’s not enough to find material success.  Indeed, material success is nothing.  And yet, it so entraps and entwines us.  Help us, help me, to truly shift my perspective, to set these material things to Your use, Your good purpose.  I do not, by any stretch, eschew the blessings with which You have chosen to bless me.  But let me, as Paul elsewhere writes, be a good steward of that rich treasure with which You have entrusted me.  Let me be, as Paul, as Timothy, a faithful ambassador of the Gospel, willing and able, by Your power and by Your Spirit indwelling, to proclaim Your truth without thought as to any personal consequence.  I know this does not describe my present, but as fully as I may, I set myself before You as Your true servant.  Use me as You will, and may I be found faithful to Your call.