Resources For "Devoted" Series From Each Harderwyk Preacher
I. New For This Week
"I Forgive you." Relatives of Charleston church shooting vitcims address Dylann Roof - CLICK HERE for the Washington Post article from that day. If you would be willing to gather in a small group to watch and discuss the documentary Emanuel that tells the story of Nadine Collier and other family of the Charleston Church shootings, please contact Pastor Bill by calling the Harderwyk office or emailing him at Bill@Harderwyk.com.
Five Features That Made the Early Church Unique - CLICK HERE for a brief book review by Tim Keller on the recent books of Larry Hurtado, including the one I mentioned, Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World. CLICK HERE for Amazon link.
II. From The Commentaries On This Passage
NT Wright on Herod Agrippa from Acts For Everyone
“This latter feature of the period—Rome relying on the local aristocracy (such as it was: nobody actually thought Herod the Great was anything but a jumped-up half-breed warlord) to keep the peace—may explain a bit further why sudden or sporadic violence might be expected. Agrippa I was thought of by the Jewish population as ‘their man’, trusted (more or less) by the Romans but also popular with his people. It was strongly in his interests both to show his Roman overlords that he would not tolerate dangerous movements developing under his nose and to show his own people that he was standing up, as they would have seen it, for their ancestral traditions. To kill someone with the sword, as opposed to having them stoned as Stephen had been, strongly indicates that Herod either saw, or wanted people to think he saw, the Christian movement as a political threat. Certainly a movement whose very name, by this stage, stakes out a claim for Jesus as the true, anointed ‘king of the Jews’ cannot have been anything other than threatening to the person who bore that title as the gift of the Roman superpower. We recall how, in Matthew 11 and elsewhere, we see a kind of shadow-boxing between Jesus and Herod Antipas, with Jesus only claiming cryptically to be the true king, but at the same time offering an equally cryptic but devastating critique of Antipas. However much the Christian movement had developed by this stage, there is no sign that it was fomenting anything that could actually be classified as rebellion. But someone with the name of Herod was unlikely to tolerate for long a movement whose name had royal connotations.“
NT Wright on what Luke has been leading us to as we reach the “mid-point” of Acts from Acts For Everyone
“Whether or not Luke was aware of the comic value of the previous interlude, he was certainly aware of the powerful impact of the story with which he now closes the first half of his book. The official king of the Jews plays at being a pagan princeling, and comes to a bad end; meanwhile, the word of God grows and multiplies. You couldn’t say it much clearer than that. Herod Agrippa I died in ad 44, as we know from various sources; so Luke’s story so far has covered about a dozen years (depending on when precisely we date the crucifixion of Jesus), and the second half will cover a slightly longer period.
But there is more than chronology going on in Luke’s mind as he brings his book to its midpoint with the death of Herod. As we have already seen, the first half of the book is predominantly concerned with the mission of the young church to Jerusalem and Judaea, with forays into Samaria and to various Gentiles but nothing too ambitious as yet. In other words, Jesus has been announced as the true Messiah, the God-given and God-anointed King of Israel, the one who would bring redemption to Israel and to the world. The official Jewish leaders, starting with the high priests, continuing with the hard-line Pharisees, and now including the reigning king of the Jews himself, have all tried to squash this ridiculous nonsense and prevent it spreading; but they have failed. The chief priests have been left spluttering angrily into their beards in Jerusalem; Saul of Tarsus, the most prominent and violent of the Pharisaic persecutors, has been converted; and now Herod Agrippa, having had an unsuccessful attempt at killing off the church’s main leadership, is himself suddenly cut down with a swift and fatal disease.
All this is of course part of the theme which Luke never tires of telling from one angle or another. Things appear to go badly for the church, this way or that. There may be real reverses, tragedies and disasters. And yet the God who has revealed himself in and through Jesus remains sovereign, and his purpose is going ahead whatever the authorities from without, or various controversies from within, may do to try to stop it.”
III. Ongoing Resources (Subheading)
1) Spiritual Formation Resources Page - CLICK HERE - This is still a work in progress, but be a part as we look to build
2) Scotty Smith’s Heavenward Daily Prayers - CLICK HERE to see the daily prayer blog of Scotty Smith. You will see an option to have them delivered to your email inbox each day as well.
3) Simple Lectio Divina Overview - CLICK HERE for a simple introduction of the spiritual practice of a more personal way of experience the Word through contemplation and reflection.
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