Day Thirty-Eight

If you have 5 minutes!

Read Acts 8:9-13 & Exodus 12:1-13

9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, 10 and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” 11 They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. 12 But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13 Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.

1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover. 12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

In Acts, lots of things happen that – in merely human terms – you really would not expect! Galileans speak in languages that people from lots of different places can all understand; many people are healed; leaders in Jerusalem are amazed by the courage and eloquence of “unschooled, ordinary men;” two people drop dead after attempting to deliberately deceive their community; and here – in Acts 8 – a renown sorcerer is amongst those who believe the good news of Jesus and decide to get baptized! Now this particular sorcerer did keep a lot of baggage from the past, as we’ll look at in a bit. However, it is of note that he – along with what appears to be his whole community – believed Philip’s message, and why? The clear implication is that it he came across a power far greater than his.

This kind of power encounter is perhaps quite unfamiliar to us in the West – certainly I’ve never experienced anything like it. I was therefore struck by the helpful cultural insight of the wonderful Louise Jarvis who, when we looked at the Exodus in BOC last year, added greater clarity to this story by pointing out the following: in the West we’re primarily concerned with “truth” and “reason,” therefore Christians’ attempts to defend and advance their faith tend to focus in on these. In many parts of the world, however, the focus is not “truth” but “power.” The big question is not: “Is it true?” so much as: “Does it work?” Thus in the Exodus story, for example, it is most definitely not just a coincidence that each plague seems targeted at one of the Egyptians’ so-called “gods.” Rather, God is asserting that it is he who has the power!

So too here! And to great effect as many – including someone powerful enough to have been called “the Great Power of God” – are convinced.

• If I’m honest, I don’t particularly expect God’s power to burst in and through my life as dramatically as it does here and elsewhere in Acts. In my head I do believe this is the kind of thing God does and so do pray for people to be healed and seek such prayer for myself – for example. However if I’m honest, my expectation isn’t that high (although I think this is something God’s working on!). I am therefore challenged by the faith of those like the HOTS team who not only give intellectual assent to God’s desire and ability to heal but act boldly on this as well. Equally, however, I am not aware of friends who believe in supernatural power but just don’t know that, on this front as well as any other, nothing tops God (although this may well not mean that they don’t just that I’m not aware of it!). So, I guess my question is this: is the relative dearth of this kind of power-encounter in the West due entirely to the reticence of Christians, like myself, to step out more boldly in this area or is it also due to the fact that God meets people where they’re at and, for Western culture at large, belief in supernatural power is still far less common than in many other cultures? (Although, importantly, belief in the supernatural is definitely growing.)

If you have a bit longer :-)

Whilst reading about Simon’s conversion, it struck me how often I subconsciously write people off when it comes to matters of faith. In other words, I struggle massively to believe that they might ever be interested in hearing about God and responding to his love. Maybe they appear to be completely happy as they are. Maybe they’ve expressed strong negative views about belief in God. Maybe they just don’t seem to like me very much! For a whole heap of reasons there are a number of people I would be utterly amazed by if they ever expressed an interest in finding out more about Jesus. Simon would definitely have been one of these people – and yet when he hears, he believes! Now, as we’ll soon see, Simon didn’t totally get it; but he does make a response and – I will argue – the collective evidence suggests he was sincere.

• Are there people you know of who you can’t imagine ever being interested in God? Does Acts challenge you at all in this (i.e. it challenges me!)? Spend some time praying for these people!
• As Luke Smith reminded us on our recent weekend away, people are all at different places in terms of what they currently believe and how interested they are in matters of faith. How, therefore, can we walk that balance between being sensitive to where people are at – thus not trying to steamroller them into the Kingdom of God! – without writing people off simply because we don’t think they’d ever be interested?