THE LORD SPOKE (April 22)

Daily Reflections from Scripture:

Old Testament: I Samuel 9-10

I Samuel 9:6 - "...In this town there is a man of God; he is highly respected and everything he says comes true."

• Do people in your town know you as a man of God?
• How could they know?
• They might know you, but do they know your God because of you?
• Do people coming from elsewhere find out about you because you are a recognized man of God?
• Do the people near you even talk about you?
• Of course they do, but is it because you are recognized as a man of God?
• Are you highly respected?
• When people think of you is their first thought, "Thank God for Him"?
• Are your words the very word of God to them because they come from the Word of God?
• Do all your words point others to God?
• Has the Lord spoken to you? through you? today?

New Testament: Acts 23

What an epitaph! Paul was able to say, “I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” Can you say that?

It sure made someone else squirm! Ananias, the High Priest was known for his violence and cruelty. He’s not to be confused with Annas, the High Priest mentioned in the Gospels (see Lk. 3:2). Ananias was High Priest from AD 47 to 59 so he was already in office for several years before Paul’s defense on this occasion. The NIV Study Bible offers these suggestions for why Paul “did not realize that he was the high priest” (Acts 23:5):

1. Paul had poor eyesight (suggested by such passages as Gal. 4:15; 6:11) and failed to see that the one who presided was the high priest.
2. He failed to discern that the one who presided was the high priest because on some occasions others had sat in his place.
3. He was using pure irony: A true high priest would not give such an order.
4. He refused to acknowledge that Ananias was the high priest under these circumstances.

The entire farcical nature of this examination led Paul to take a tactic which he did not normally employ. Knowing that God had a higher design for him, Paul launched a bomb calculated to explode in those religious waters. Within minutes the Pharisees and Sadducees were in such a violent dispute that the Roman soldiers had to extract Paul and escort him to the barracks.

That wasn’t the end of it though. The chief priests and elders hatched a plot to murder Paul in prison (Acts 23:12-16) and Paul had to be secreted away. Secret? It took 470 soldiers to pull it off under cover of darkness (Acts 23:23). Claudius Lysias must have breathed a sigh of relief when Paul was finally delivered intact to the guards in Caesarea.

And now Paul was several steps closer to the fulfillment of another detail of his original calling. At his conversion experience in Acts 9, he’d been told that God would use him “to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings”. At the end of Acts 23, he’s inside Herod’s palace, soon to meet King Agrippa, and on his way to testify before Caesar at Rome.