Collected or prepared by Pastor Wilfred Chung

 November 1 - November 7, 2009

November 1, 2009 - Witness For Jesus Everywhere

Meditation on Acts 1

Dear Dr. Luke, the physicians (Colossians 4:14) had written a document of the life of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Now he wrote the second document of the planting of the early churches in Acts. In chapter one, he recorded Jesus' promise of the Holy Spirit for witnessing, the prayers of the early disciples in waiting for the Spirit and the election of Matthias to fill the vacancy left by Judas to be the witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus.

Let us concentrate on Acts 1:8, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you: and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." (NASB) The Holy Spirit was given primary for the purpose of giving Christians power to witness for Jesus. The where seemed to give an outline of the Book of Acts: in Jerusalem (Acts 1-7), in all Judea and Samaria (Acts 8 - 11:18), and even to other parts of the world (Acts 11:19 - 28:31).

Sometimes in our application of this verse, we have neglected one important word, "both". This word in Greek is "te" and is right before the word, Jerusalem. In many translations, it is not there. But I am glad that the New American Stand Bible retains it. The original King James translation has it too. When the word, "both" is included, the application of the procedures in witnessing will be different. Yes, we should begin witnessing in where we are and gradually spread to other parts of the world. But we should not restrict ourselves in witnessing to our locality and neglect our neighboring towns. Our churches do give money to support missionaries but we do not witness to people in the next town where there may be great spiritual need.

I am talking about planting churches. Many churches refuse to engage in this greatest method of witnessing- planting churches. They think that we have so many needs ourselves, we have so many people who need Jesus in our town, so we should do well to build our church first before we plant another church. They think they are applying the strategy of Acts 1:8. But the word "both" indicates that we should do all witnessing simultaneously. We should witness in our town, we should witness to the people next town as well as supporting missionaries and engaging in short term missions. Doing one does not exclude the others.

Besides, when we plan a church in another town, more of our old saints and lazy and unchallenged saints will be involved and revived. Many more people will come to know the Lord. It is not easy. But we have been given the power of the Holy Spirit to do it.

Meditation on Acts 5

God protected the growth of His church. In verses one to twelve of Acts 5, there was a couple who pretended to give all their property to the church like some others. In order to expose hypocrisy in the first church, Peter said to each of them publicly that they had not lied to men but to the Holy Spirit. Both husband and wife died instantly at separate time.

Jesus the head of the church certainly would take step to prevent corruption of His church. As a result, God's presence and power continued to be with the church. (v. 12-16)

When the religious leaders used the governmental power to arrest the apostles and put them in jail. God's angels went to rescue them and let them out of jail to allow them to preach the Gospel. God's protection confounded the authority. (v. 17-33)

The religious authority wanted to kill the apostles after their public trial; however God used a well respected scholar to speak up for them. Gamaliel was the most revered Rabbi at that time according to history. He cautioned the leaders not to attack those who may be doing the work of God but to let them go. (v. 34-42)

Jesus would protect His own church as long as we remain true to Him.

According to Galatians 3, all Christians, whether Jew or Gentile, are one in Christ and we can all receive the blessings of Abraham. Therefore we can safely say that God's protection upon Israel should also be upon all Christians as a whole who are the church. (Psalm 121)

November 3, 2009 – The Power Of A Layman

Meditation on Acts 8

Philip had to leave his home town due to the great persecution in Jerusalem. In this tough time, he was more dedicated to God than ever. He went to a city with different culture, Samaria to proclaim the Christ. This Spirit filled layman, a table server for the church had led many people to Christ. God used him to cast out demons as well as bring healing to many. As a result, a church was planted in Samaria and there was great joy in the city. Peter and John had to come down to confirm this church and strengthen them because this layman took the lead to bring the Gospel to the next town.

Philip obeyed the leading of the Lord wherever he went. He left the wonderful church he planted to go to the Gaza desert. On the road, he led an important Ethiopian official to the Lord.  That probably became the first link to bring the Gospel to the continent of Africa.

Later we found Philip continuing in his preaching and settled down in a beach city, Caesarea, raising four daughters who were also preachers. There he had entertained Paul, Luke and company. What a Christian man.

We can find great numbers of laymen and laywomen today who are the instruments of God to build great churches and ministries everywhere. No pastor can be successful without them. Sometimes, the lay evangelists are more efficient and effective than the professionals because of the environment or political situation. We praise and thank God for them.

Meditation on Acts 11

Dr. Luke has used the entire chapter ten and eighteen verses of chapter eleven to record the conversion of Cornelius. It showed the significance of a major development of the history of salvation. Through Peter's vision and outreach experience, the whole church in Jerusalem now began to understand that God has granted to Gentiles repentance to life. (v. 18)

Then the focus moved to Antioch, a city of about half a million population. When the saints who fled from persecution landed there, they led a great numbers of the people to Christ. This cosmopolitan city had people of various cultures and ethnic backgrounds including people from Persia, India, and even China. Therefore many people there would have heard the Gospel and in turn these people of diverse culture would likely bring the message of Jesus to their home land. Luke mentioned that the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. (v. 26)

The first pastor of this great church that began to reach the whole world was Barnabas, the son of encouragement. This pastor took special effort to find an associate to help him. His name was Saul, who later on became Paul the first missionary of Christian church. (v. 22-25)

Meditation on Acts 14

God protected His own workers before their job were finished. In this first missionary journey of Paul, he had escaped from mistreatment and stoning of the crowd. (v. 5) But when he and Barnabas got to Lystra, he really got stoned and was dragged out of the city supposing he was dead.

What happened was that he had healed a lame man in that city. The heathen there thought that he and Barnabas were gods coming to visit them. They were led by their priests to come to worship Paul and Barnabas who barely stopped them from doing so. But later the Jews from the surrounding cities came over to persuade the crowd and spoke evil about them. It was such an irony that the crowd would turn around to stone Paul instead. A popular opinion could easily change indeed.

But praise God, Paul did not die. Dr. Luke said, "But while the disciples stood around him, he arose and entered the city. And the next day he went away with Barnabas to Derbe." (v. 20 NASB) Indeed God's word indicated that He had protected His servant and restored his health.

I believe God has continued to do that for missionaries throughout the centuries. We have known stories of God's protection upon David Livingstone, Hudson Taylor and others. My maternal grandfather, Tai-Cho Tse was the first in his village to become a Christian after he heard a similar message to the one in this chapter by Paul from a missionary in the city of Zengcheng (增城), Guangdong (廣東), China. He went back to his village to share his new found faith. But he was spit upon and stoned by some. But praise the Lord, later he was able to help the villagers in some great project and gained the trust of the elders. He got to preach in their temple of ancestors. Eventually he was able to lead the whole village to the Lord. He built the first church there. Today there is a public building at the village in honor of him with his name on the post at the top of the front door even though there is no worship under the government rule. Please pray that there will be a worship there restored one day.

Meditation on Acts 17

Once I had to take an advance examination for English language in order to qualify for a doctoral program. I was amazed at the great amount of questions relating to the Greek culture and Greek gods. One may draw the conclusion that if you don't know much about the Greek gods you would not be qualified to get a post graduate degree in literature, religion or humanity. The influence of Greek concept of gods and philosophies on Western civilization is tremendous.

The Apostle Paul was able to win a lot of Greeks to the Lord in all the cities in chapter 17 of Acts. Let us see how he preached to the Greeks in Athens at the famous court of Areopagus. First, he complimented them for their religiosity. Then he taught them about God. He emphasized to them that God was not what man thought and made what He should be. Rather, God was the creator of everything including man. God was all sufficient. He did not need man. But man's existence depended on Him. He gave man his breath and He determined the boundaries of all the nations. He was near to man and we could come to Him through repentance. God has ordained the resurrected Jesus to judge all men.

Let us be aware of the implication and application of Paul's message in our lives and share it with our relatives and friends.

November 7, 2009 - Commitment To God's Word

Meditation on Acts 20

We can learn so much from Paul's farewell address to the elders of Ephesians Church. I like to just concentrate on verse 32, "Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified." (NIV)

Not only Paul committed the elders to God but also to the word of God. For the Word of God could benefit them in several aspects as the following which would benefit us also:

Number one, we can take note that God's word is the word of his grace. God is gracious and generous to instruct us, comfort us and meet our needs in whatever circumstances.

Then we are told that the word of God can build us up. Believers want to grow and churches need to grow. The word of God is the key. Some experts may come along to give us a lot of insight about current cultural thoughts or trends with a verse or two to prove their points. But their books or seminars can never substitute the solid teaching and spiritual understanding from God's word to facilitate church growth. If they think they can, they are surely growing just an organization but not a church!

The third benefit of studying God's word mentioned by Paul here is for Christian to receive a spiritual inheritance. We should study this subject a lot more. One thing is for sure; our receiving of this spiritual inheritance has to do with the word of God.