In this episode, Lay Leader and Certified Lay Servant of First United Methodist Church of Newton, Kathleen Meredith, delivers a powerful and timely message on Christian service.
First UMC of Newton, NJ streams online on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Join us for worship on YouTube.
If you worship with us online and/or you would like to give to First UMC of Newton, your generosity will help us sustain with our mission and ministries during this COVID-19 pandemic. We are still paying our staff and we are still ministering to people in our community and beyond. Your support is vital to us being able to do so. Thank you for considering giving at https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc.
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” (Matthew 5:43-44, NRSV)
When we think of God’s people, we tend to think one of two things. We might think of the Israelites who were God’s “chosen people”, or we might think of specific characters in the Bible. Either way, we tend to idealize the people we are thinking about. For instance, we may think that God’s people are super faithful, holy, perform miracles and live wholly devout and righteous lives. Unfortunately, this idealism enables us to distance ourselves from being God’s people, because we feel that we fall short of those ideals. As such, I have decided to write a devotion series on specific characters in the Bible in order to show you how much these Biblical people are truly like us, and how much we are truly called to be God’s people.
James Faulkner stars as Paul in a scene from in the film “Paul, Apostle of Christ.” The Catholic News Service classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. (CNS photo/Sony Pictures) See MOVIE-REVIEW-PAUL-APOSTLE-OF-CHRIST March 22, 2018.
Part 261: Jailer. We live in such a polemical time where we often being strongly encouraged to take one side or the other. For instance, in America, one is either a Republican or a Democrat. One is either for Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter. One is either antiracist or racist. The list goes on and on and on. It would be easy for me to say that we are about as divided as I have ever seen in my lifetime; however, these are not the only, nor the most, divisive times in world history.
Paul lived in a very divisive time himself. The Roman Empire eventually crumbled because of political divisiveness and, truth be told, the there was much divisiveness in the church as well. Read 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, 1 & 2 Timothy, 1, 2, & 3 John and other writings in the New Testament. In those epistles (aka letters) you will see that Paul, John and others were dealing with the polemics in the church as well.
Before I move forward with the jailer, I want to be clear that I am not making a moral judgment about any particular stance above. I am merely mentioning them because they have been the sharpest sides drawn as of the writing of this devotion. Nor am I saying that people should not stand up for what they truly believe in and are passionate about. The point of this piece is to show how the Gospel can and DOES change hearts and minds.
In our Scripture today, Paul and Silas find themselves in prison in Philippi, where they had spent time bringing the Good News to the gentiles in that city, nurturing and growing a nascent gentile church that they planted. What happened was that Paul had cast out a demon out of a local slave girl who was being used by profiteers to make money. Due to her deliverance, she was not longer profitable for them and this caused them to grow enraged. They made legal complaints against both Paul and Silas, who were then locked up in prison.
While in prison, under the watch of a jailer, there was a great earthquake and the doors and bars were knocked a part and opened, leaving plenty of opportunitiy for Paul and Silas to escape. Instead, Paul and Silas urged all of the prisoners to stay put and not escape. This, action, may have you scratching your heads. Why not take the opportunity and get out of dodge? Well, it had the jailer scratching his head to and he was beyond thrilled that everyone was accounted for because, had they not been, he would have certainly been executed for a dereliction of duty.
We don’t know much about the jailer at all. He was most likely a local Philippian beholden to the local government there. More than likely he was a Greek gentile. No doubt, he could have cared less (initially) that Paul and Silas were in jail. They were rabble-rousing troublemakers and, besides, he had a single job to do: make sure they did not escape. Failure to do that job would have costed him his life.
By staying instead of fleeing, that caused Paul and Silas to penetrate the man’s heart. Who would do such a thing given such an opportunity. Who wouldn’t think of theselves first over a stranger, let alone an enemy. Clearly, these gentlemen thought of the jailer, valued the jailer’s life and were not the “lawless” men they had been accused of being.
Because of that, the jailer opened his heart up to the Good News of Jesus Christ that Paul and Silas shared with him. What GREAT news! They witnessed to this man and he and his whole family converted to being Christ-followers as a result! This man went from being a jailer to being a brother! This is the power of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Now, back to my preface above, this does not mean that people should not be standing up for what they believe in. I have marched and will continue to march for Black Lives, for equity, and for justice as long as I have legs and life to do so. I will stand up for the Good News of Jesus Christ, for the fact that we are all image bearers of God, and that for people to be treated equally with dignity, compassion, justice, mercy and respect. Paul and Silas were in jail for standing up for what they believe in despite the risks in doing so. That is what our Lord calls us to do as his followers.
With that said, we should also be careful that we are truly representing the Gospel when we do so. It is so easy to get sucked into the polemics, to get sucked into viewing the other as “evil” or “less than” and dehumanizing them. God is the judge of who is evil and who is not. We, on the other hand, are called to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and hold each other accountable to it out of love.
While there are many people who are jailers out there who may be on the wrong side of things, God still loves them and calls us to invite them into a relationship with Jesus Christ. Not all will accept that and we must stand our ground for Jesus regardless; however, we also might find discover Jesus Christ ACTUALLY has the power to transform hearts and minds and our faithfulness to HIM leads others such a place of transformation. In other words, while we stand against the oppressers of the world, let us still find room in our hearts to LOVE them like Christ does.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY Hating an evil person is still hate and will lead us to evil; however, LOVE would have us oppose the evil of people and protect people from evil.
PRAYER Lord, help me a bold and loving warrior for justice without losing myself to blind hate. Increase your love in my heart. Amen.
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE “Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples.” (Luke 1:1-2, NLT)
When we think of God’s people, we tend to think one of two things. We might think of the Israelites who were God’s “chosen people”, or we might think of specific characters in the Bible. Either way, we tend to idealize the people we are thinking about. For instance, we may think that God’s people are super faithful, holy, perform miracles and live wholly devout and righteous lives. Unfortunately, this idealism enables us to distance ourselves from being God’s people, because we feel that we fall short of those ideals. As such, I have decided to write a devotion series on specific characters in the Bible in order to show you how much these Biblical people are truly like us, and how much we are truly called to be God’s people.
Part 60: We. The people in the Bible we have been discussing as of late have been in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, which is the second volume of a two volume account on the life, teachings, death and resurrection of the Christ and the workings of his earliest followers following his ascension into heaven. Up until this point, it was written in the third person, meaning that Luke telling of these acts of the apostles as though he was not there at the time that they happened.
With that said, something very intriguing and unique happens very subtly, and one could easily glaze right over it without even paying it any attention. But this detail is actually a rather important one and lends apostolic authority to Acts. Let’s take a look at what I am writing about. In Acts 16:6-9, let us look at how the author wrote:
“Next Paul and Silas traveled through the area of Phrygia and Galatia, because the Holy Spirit had prevented them from preaching the word in the province of Asia at that time. Then coming to the borders of Mysia, they headed north for the province of Bithynia, but again the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go there. So instead, they went on through Mysia to the seaport of Troas. That night Paul had a vision: A man from Macedonia in northern Greece was standing there, pleading with him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!”” (Acts 16:6-9, NLT)
Yet, in verse 10 Luke switches to the first person:
“So we decided to leave for Macedonia at once, having concluded that God was calling us to preach the Good News there.” (Acts 16:10, NLT, emphasis added)
What this indicates is that at this point in the journey Luke, the author of Acts, is with Paul as one of his fellow companions and missionaries. That makes Acts, from chapter 16 onward, a first-hand account of the travels of Paul. This, combined with Paul’s letters, gives us a real insight into Paul and his missionary journeys. Anti-theists and others will often question the reliability of Scriptures; however, here in Acts we have a first-hand account written down 2,000 years ago about the last two remaining missionary journeys of Paul.
If the reliability of sources like Plato’s writings on Socrates don’t get questioned, there is no reason why we should question the reliability of Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul, or any of New Testament. Why? Because most of these writings were penned within 40 to 60 years after Christ died. Paul’s letters were written by him in real time, and Luke/Acts came out a mere 15 years or so after Paul’s death.
That is incredibly close to the time of the events described in terms of ancient manuscripts. For instance, Homer’s Iliad took place 400 years before Homer penned his poem recounting the Trojan War. 400 years! The earliest manuscripts we have of Homer’s Iliad are dated to the 10th century AD, while homer wrote it in the late 8th or early 7th centuries BC!!! Yet, no one spends much time questioning Homer’s existence or authorship.
On the other hand, the earliest fragment we have of a text in the New Testament is from the Gospel of John, dated to the early 2nd century AD. A mere 10 – 30 years after John wrote his Gospel. The earliest completed copies of a New Testament book dates to 200 AD, a mere 160 or so years after Christ, and the earliest completed copy of the New Testament dates to the 4th century (300s). So, the reliability of the New Testament is far greater than that of Homer’s Iliad. All of this, to say that we can trust what the Bible conveys because it contains eye-witness accounts from Luke, Paul and others and where there are accounts written second-hand, the events were so close to the people writing that it is more unreasonable to doubt their veracity than it is to not.
Let this be a challenge for us then. As Christians we need to take the Bible seriously. It is authoritative in conveying to us the way of Salvation and Christian living. Surely, there are somethings in it that no longer apply to us (e.g. laws on diet, clothing, tattoos, piercings, etc.); however, the core of the Bible is our authority and points us to Christ who died that we might have abundant and everlasting life. Let be a people of THE BOOK so that we might grow even closer to the TRUE WORD OF GOD: JESUS CHRIST. Amen.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY The WORD of God is our Lord Jesus Christ.
PRAYER Lord, make us thirsty for your word so that we may grow even closer and connected to your LIVING WORD, Jesus Christ.
In this episode, fellow POJCasters, Sal and Todd discuss the end times and the flaws with modern day end times interpretations.
Party On Patrons: You can totally support us by subscribing to us on Patreon and, by doing so, you will be signing up for exclusive, bonus content, such as episode wrap-ups, extra segments and the like. We have three tiers of support and each level bears more rewards. Lots of great reasons to join. Click here for more information.
Other ways to Support: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify. The more we get rated and reviewed, the higher up on the giganto totem pole we get on those respective platforms.
Also, interact with us on our social media, on our Facebook Page,Twitter, and Instagram. You can also reach out to us via email partyonjohncast@gmail.com, though, please keep in mind we are more active on our social media accounts and do not check our email as often. On Twitter you can also follow Todd and Sal on Twitter at @trlattig and @SalvatoreSeirm1 respectively.
