Returning to the Scene to Strengthen Souls

Wade Webster

One of the most amazing scenes in the book of Acts is recorded in the fourteenth chapter. We read, “Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there; and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city. And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe. And when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.” So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed” (Acts 14:19-23).

Jewish zealots pursued Paul everywhere he went. They had almost stoned him at Iconium (Acts 14:1-7). Somehow, he had escaped their grasp. At Lystra, they would catch up to him again. This time, they would succeed. (well, almost). Believing that Paul was dead, they left his mangled body in a bloody heap. These Jewish zealots must have strode away satisfied that they had finally silenced Paul. However, when the brethren gathered around Paul to collect his body for burial, he rose up. Battered and bruised physically, Paul departed from Lystra, and preached at Derbe. One can only imagine how sore and stiff that he was in the days following his stoning. There must have been deep bruises, painful abrasions, and broken bones. He must have looked like he had been run over by a dump truck.

Just as soon as Paul was well enough to travel, he was back on the road to Lystra. Why would he go back to the scene of the crime? Why would he go back to where he was stoned and left for dead? It wasn’t about him. It wasn’t a matter of getting back on the horse. It was about them. It was a matter of getting them to heaven. Having regained his physical strength, Paul was going back to strengthen their souls. After all, they lived among the rock throwers. Paul was going back to exhort them to be faithful, explaining that through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of God. It must have been encouraging for them to see Paul again. No doubt, when Paul limped out of Lystra after being stoned and left for dead, they must have thought that they would never see him again. Yet, here he was. He had not given up. He had not gone into hiding. It would take more than a few rocks to stop him. If Paul had not quit, how could they?

When we are tempted to quit (and we will be), let us remember Paul. Let us see him rising from that pile of rocks. Let us see him returning to that very spot to encourage others to remain faithful.

Twenty-Three Things To Do In 2023

Wade Webster

1. Pray - “Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart” (Lk. 18:1).
2. Read - “Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine” (1 Tim.4:13).
3. Search - “These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).
4. Meditate - “I will meditate on Your precepts, And contemplate Your ways. I will delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word” (Psa. 119:15-16).
5. Abstain - “Abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thess. 5:22).
6. Cast - “Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:7).
7. Seek - “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Heb. 11:6).
8. Forgive - “And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors” (Mt.  6:12).
9. Invite - “Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’” (Mt. 22:9).
10. Grow - “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen” (2 Pet. 3:18).
11. Love - “Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Mt.22:37).
12. Follow - “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps:” (1 Pet. 2:21).
13. Listen - “Come, you children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD” (Psa. 34:11).
14. Trust - “Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass” (Psa. 37:5).
15. Forget - “Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead” (Phil. 3:13).
16. Visit - “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world” (Jam. 1:27).
17. Encourage - “Therefore, when we could no longer endure it, we thought it good to be left in Athens alone, and sent Timothy, our brother and minister of God, and our fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you and encourage you concerning your faith” (1 Thess. 3:1-2).
18. Serve - “For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Gal. 5:13).
19. Purify - “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (Jam. 4:8).
20. Thank - “On that day David first delivered this psalm into the hand of Asaph and his brethren, to thank the LORD: Oh, give thanks to the LORD! Call upon His name; Make known His deeds among the peoples! (1 Chron. 16:7-8).
21. Add - “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:5-8).
22. Obey - “He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him” (Heb. 5:8-9).
23. Abide - “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4).

A Lesson From Latin America

Wade Webster

 One of the things that has always impressed me about Latin America is a distinctive feature of its architecture. Many of the roofs are flat and made of concrete. I suppose that there is nothing all that distinctive about either of those things. The distinctive feature that I have in mind is the steel rebar that usually sticks out of the roofs at each corner and at intervals in between. The rebar detracts a little (okay, a lot) from the beauty of the structure. Why then do they leave it exposed? They leave it exposed because they hope to one day add on to the structure. The exposed rebar will give them a place to tie the new part to the old part. Perhaps, they don’t need the space at the moment, but anticipate needing it in the future. More likely, they are out of money at the moment and must put off additional construction until they have it.

Personally, I love to see the rebar; especially, on church buildings. It means that the brethren aren’t finished yet. It means that they have hopes and dreams of bigger and better things. Of course, these hopes and dreams must be combined with asking and seeking. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Mt. 7:7-11). As you know, we serve a God who can do more than we can ask or think. Paul wrote, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Eph. 3:20). Often, we don’t have what we need or what we want because we do not ask. James wrote, “You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask” (Jam. 4:2). To receive, we must ask. To find, we must seek.

Not only must brethren add asking and seeking to hoping and dreaming, they must add planting and watering. Paul wrote, “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it” (1 Cor. 3:5-10). To reap, we must plant and water.

Let’s learn a lesson from our brethren in Latin America. Let’s leave a little rebar sticking out to let everyone know that we aren’t finished yet. Then, let’s combine our hopes and dreams with asking, seeking, planting, and watering, that God might give the increase.

“Six Days” Is Not Complicated

David Sproule

 In a variety of ways, certain skeptics of the Bible attempt to take some of the simplest teachings of the Bible and complicate them to mean something they do not, and they seek to use their so-called “scholarship” to convince individuals that their conclusions are sound.  This is true of a variety of Bible teachings, but consider for a moment the days of creation.

On the very first page of the Bible, readers learn about the creation of the universe and everything in it.  The Bible plainly teaches that all of this transpired over a period of six days.  Unfortunately, those who consider themselves “to be something” take the simple and argue that it is not so simple.  Attempts have been made to identify the “days” in Genesis 1 as long eons of time and not actual 24-hour, literal days.  But read the text for what it says.

In verse 5, God defines what a day is.  “So the evening and the morning were the first day.”  The Bible uses these words numerous times in a literal way just as we use them today.  A “day” is made up of two parts: evening (a time of “darkness”) and morning (a time of “light”).  A simple, unbiased Bible reader will understand this to be a 24-hour day.

Verse 5 also begins to number the days—“the first day,” “the second day” (1:8), “the third day” (1:13), etc.  Except in areas of figurative, prophetic language, when “day” is preceded by a numeral in the Old Testament, it is always a 24-hour period.  God was numbering the days for us.

In verse 14, God distinguished the word “days” from the word “years.”  If the “days” of creation were actually “years” (as some suggest), then what does the word “years” mean?  These words are used in the very same way that we use them today.  If not, the passage is nonsensical.

If there was eons of time after the creation of the grass, herbs and trees on the third day, how did those plants and vegetation survive the years upon years of darkness (with no light) and the eons of time before insects were created to pollinate them?  They could not have survived.

The text in Exodus 20:8-11 is God’s clear commentary on the creation.  It is so easy to understand.  “Remember the Sabbath day” (a 24-hour period).  “Six days you shall labor,” for six 24-hour periods.  “The seventh day is the Sabbath,” which is a 24-hour period.  Having used the word “day” three times with a literal, 24-hour meaning, God then says, “For in six days the Lord made” everything.  Those were six, literal, 24-hour days.  The Bible makes that very plain!  Only man could try to make that complicated!

There are no eons of time in the literal, 24-hour days of creation!  The Bible makes that so simple to understand!

Will You Enter The Promised Land?

David Sproule

 From the time that Israel arrived at Mount Sinai, God started making promises to them that He repeated for the next 40 years.  Many of those promises centered around the land that was promised to Abraham and how God was going to give it to Israel.  Regarding the vile, sinful inhabitants of the land, God time after time promised Israel, “I will…drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you…I will drive them out from before you…For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you” (Ex. 23:27-31).  A year later, God promised, “I will drive out the Canaanite and the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite” (Ex. 33:2).  Forty years later, the Lord still promised, “The Lord your God will drive out those nations before you…He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites” (Deut. 7:22; Josh. 3:10).

So, why is it, when we turn to read about the conquest of the land that we repeatedly read statements like the following?  “The children of Israel did not drive out the Geshurites or the Maachathites…the children of Judah could not drive them out…they did not drive out the Canaanites…they could not drive out the inhabitants of the lowland…Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites…Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants…Nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites…Nor did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants…Nor did Asher drive out the inhabitants…Nor did Naphtali drive out the inhabitants…” (Josh. 13:13; 15:63; 16:10; Judg. 1:19-36).

What happened?  Why didn’t God keep His promise and drive out all of these inhabitants as He said He would?  God specifically said, “I will never break My covenant with you” (Judg. 2:1).  Read that again.  Throughout the forty years leading up to the conquest of Canaan, God had repeatedly warned Israel, “You shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land” (Judg. 2:2; cf. Ex. 23:32; 34:12-17; Deut. 7:2).  Keep reading Judges 2:2 where God says, “But you have not obeyed My voice.  Why have you done this?”

God’s promises are always conditional.  He promised over and over to drive out the evil inhabitants of the land, but those promises were conditioned upon Israel completely driving those inhabitants out and not being led astray from the Lord by them (Ex. 23:32-33; 34:12-17; Deut. 4:23-31).  When Israel violated the covenant, God was not obligated to fulfill His promises.  Think about that for us today.  God has promised salvation and eternal life to us repeatedly, yet those promises are conditioned upon our obedience (Heb. 5:8-9; Matt. 7:21-23).  May God help us to learn from Israel and obey our God, so that we can possess our Promised Land in heaven.