…he reasoned with them from the Scriptures… (Acts 17:2, NIV)
Sometimes my brain goes to mush. I’m guessing yours does, too.
You’re having a perfectly balanced conversation with a new acquaintance and they suddenly start talking about something secure in their knowledge, but a topic with unfamiliar terminology and no personal context for you. Their speech seems to quicken and your thinking hits a wall. Your head is nodding just as it was before, but inside that head you have moved to a distant land.
You have the Scriptures in their complete form, the Old Testament prophesying and the New Testament testifying.Honestly, I can go to this muddled place when a golf teacher starts getting into mechanics. Really, after all these years I should understand. I don’t. Just hand me my nine-iron and let me keep swinging. Sorry, pro.
This of course can be the same thing that happens to someone when we start going on about Jesus. We’re passionate (and we should be!), but our eagerness is being met by nothing more than kind head nods.
Actually, the kindness comes if we’re meeting up with mercy. If not, we may experience some quick brush-offs or even adamant countering. That is, we may get “the apostle Paul treatment.”
Paul knew the Scriptures long before he encountered Jesus. He was “a Jew of Jews,” learned down to the Mosaic Law’s jots and tittles. But the Law came to life for Paul when he met the Lawgiver on the road to Damascus. Jesus knocked him off his self-righteous high horse. When Paul next came to the Scriptures, he started seeing Jesus in them. This carpenter from Nazareth was no average man; he was the promised Messiah.
Through the years, Paul began to establish a modus operandi. He would enter a city and find the synagogue. Then when the Jews were gathering there on the Sabbath, he would show them key Scriptures, point them to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, then establish the connection between the prophecies and the prophesied one.
You may be a bit jealous of Paul at this stage. Indeed, this may be the right kind of jealousy, where you desire the excellence you see in another with a willingness to pursue the same if given the opportunity.
The great news is that you have been given that opportunity. You have the Scriptures in their complete form, the Old Testament prophesying and the New Testament testifying. You can study and learn them as Paul did. And you can, with good reason, share with others, not only in reckless passion but in sound understanding, who Jesus is and how our lives are changed by his love.
Good reason does not always mean you’ll be received with graciousness. Paul had his resisters and his enemies. But he kept learning and kept reasoning, and in God’s sovereignty “some of the Jews were persuaded… [along with] a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women” (Acts 17:4). This beautiful result is why we let our voice be heard.
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Jeff Hopper
November 14, 2017
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.