What’s on Your Checklist?

Acts 8:1-40

(Use the link below to read the verses.)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+8%3A1-40&version=NIV;MSG

 

 

There are a few small advantages to being slightly OCD. For instance, every morning before going to work, I go through a checklist. Wallet? Got it! Phone? Got it! Nook? Got it! Keys? Got it!

 

Each of these items are very important for my day, but none more important than my keys. That’s why when I get to work, before locking my car door, I do an abbreviated checklist. Keys? Got it! Then I know that I can get back into my car at the end of the day, as well as get into the office. Like I said, a few small advantages.

 

Keys are important. They unlock many things in our lives. The Word of God is key in unlocking hearts and opening people to God’s Spirit. Nobody knew that better than Phillip.

 

The setting of Acts 8 was a chaotic time of persecution for the followers of Christ. But little did Saul realize that he was actually playing right into God’s plan of redemption to take the Gospel to “Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth”.

 

And Saul just went wild, devastating the church, entering house after house after

house, dragging men and women off to jail. Forced to leave home base, the followers of Jesus all became missionaries. Wherever they were scattered, they preached the Message about Jesus. Going down to a Samaritan city, Philip proclaimed the Message of the Messiah.            Acts 8:3-5 MSG

 

Phillip went from one outcast people group (the Samaritans) to another (an Ethiopian gentile) sharing the Word to the “ends of the earth”.

 

Billy Graham in his sermons, was well known for the phrase, “the Bible says”. For him, the Word of God was the key to opening the hearts of people searching for purpose in their lives. Not a magical key, like Simon the sorcerer was looking for, but a key that was “alive and active; sharper than any double edged sword”.

 

Maybe I should change my morning checklist. Wallet? Got it! Phone? Got it! Nook? Got it! Keys? Got it! Word of God? Got it!

 

What’s on your checklist?

 

 

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The Speed of Change

Hebrews 10:1-25

 

When I was in college the campus computer that was used for class took up most of one room and required using stacks of punched cards to run it. Today, some 45 years later, we carry computers around like a wallet.

 

In the mid 90’s it was uncommon for people to have a cell phone. If they did have one, it was bulky and inconvenient to use. Today, it seems like everyone has a pocket size cell phone, and many of those are smart phones with a computer chip in them. So much for the college computer I used. The speed of change is staggering.

 

Some people embrace change, but my impression is that most people resist change.

Historically, change has come on the heels of great violence. You need look only at our American history with the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Even the decade of the 60’s had a lot of violence with race riots and the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

 

People resisted change in Jesus’ day too which also resulted in much violence. Jesus was truly a revolutionary of his day. He systematically changed the focus from law to

grace; from ritual sacrifices to the sacrifice of one for once and all; from following the religious rules to following Jesus; from excluding everyone but Jews to including all. He literally changed the world.

 

From Hebrews 10 we learn three things:  

• First that the old system of Jewish laws and ritual sacrifices didn’t work.

“The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.”            Verse 1

 

• Secondly, that through Jesus’ dying we have been forgiven and made clean.

“And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”                       Verse 10

 

• Finally, we can go into the throne of grace with hearts fully trusting him to receive us because Christ has taken our sins away.

… ^“let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”  Verse 22

 

The speed of change today is amazing, but what Christ did 2000 years ago forever stays the same. It cannot be changed. But it can change us. The result is that no matter how fast the world around us is changing, our faith in Christ remains the same but changes how we relate to our friends, family, work and the daily grind of living. It gives us an eternal perspective, not pie in the sky, but for here and now.

 

Geared to the times, anchored to the rock. Let us follow the Revolutionary Jesus!