Good evening y’all. Today we are studying Acts 17.

Be blessed 🙂

Here are a few points I picked up from the chapter:

1) Wherever God’s message is being preached, there is bound to be opposition. The devil is never happy when we are doing God’s will. That’s why we were told in the book of John that his (the devil’s) mission is to steal, kill and destroy. He wants to leave people in bondage and not let them experience the life that Jesus has come to give them. The apostles didn’t allow the opposition deter them. They didn’t use it as an excuse to stop preaching. Some of us would have stopped because of the opposition. Paul and Silas continued to preach the word of God wherever they found themselves. I was amazed to see that after they escaped from Thessalonica and made it to Berea, the first thing they did was to find the synagogue and preach there! Verse 10 says :
“That very night the believers sent Paul and Silas to Berea. When they arrived there, they went to the Jewish synagogue”(NLT)

2) Berean Christians didn’t just take Paul’s words for it. They went back to the scriptures to confirm what he is preaching is correct and based on Gods word.  Verse 11 says:

“And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth” (NLT).

How many of us go back to check the validity of the messages we hear preached? The Bereans were keen on God and wanted to be sure they were taught right and not led astray from the truth of God’s word. Nowadays we are too lazy to read the bible for ourselves. We rely on pastors and prophets to read the bible on our behalf and then dump what they have read on us in a message or sermon on Sunday. We won’t grow that way! This is one reason why Peter urged us in 1 Peter 2: 2-3  to desire the sincere milk of the word of God.
“As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (NKJV).

We need to let God’s word be our delight. The Psalmist was very good at making God’s word his delight. He constantly wrote about the joys and pleasures he found in God’s word. Perhaps this was the reason God said of him that “he was a man after his own heart”. I pray we learn to make God’s word priority in our lives.

“I will delight in your decrees and not forget your word” (Ps 119:16 NLT).

“Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions” (Ps 119:18 NLT)

“Your laws are my greatest joy! I follow their advice” (Ps 119:24 CEV)

I love the way Paul enlightened the Greeks about God; I love his description of God… just had to include this in the blog 🙂

“He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. From one man[f] he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us.  For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your[g] own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone” (Acts 17: 24 -29 NLT).

“The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn’t live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn’t take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don’t make him. Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually findhim. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near. We live and move in him, can’t get away from him! One of your poets said it well: ‘We’re the God-created.’ Well, if we are the God-created, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to think we could hire a sculptor to chisel a god out of stone for us, does it?” (Acts 17: 24 -29 MSG)

God is real. He is not a god created by human hands. He is not a God dependent on any mortal man. He is not a God in need of anything we can give, He is God all by himself!!! Hallelujah

Have a blessed evening basking in God’s goodness and greatness

Stay blessed,
Jumbug

***With God all things are possible***