SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/5/2017 8:09 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Preaching”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 8:4-7
Message of the verses: “4 Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the Word. 5 Philip went down to the city of Samaria and began proclaiming Christ to them. 6 The crowds with one accord were giving attention to what was said by Philip, as they heard and saw the signs which he was performing. 7 For in the case of many who had unclean spirits, they were coming out of them shouting with a loud voice; and many who had been paralyzed and lame were healed.”
I have to say that history was one of my favorite
subjects in school and as I study the Bible I also enjoy the history that is
found in it, after all history is His story.
Now as we look at where Philip went we find he went to “the city of
Samaria,” and as we studied the Old Testament we found that Samaria was North
of Jerusalem and was the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Bible tells us that the Assyrians
captured the Northern Kingdom in 722 B. C. and this was because of their
idolatrous worship. Now sometime after
their defeat some of the Israelites were brought back into the country and in 2
Kings 17:33 we read “They feared the Lord and served their own gods according
to the custom of the nations from among whom they had been carried away into
exile.” What we had was a people who
were not totally Israelites and this caused a big problem with the people of
Judah.
Now after Judah was taken capture in 586 B. C. they went
into Babylon and 70 years later some of them were able to come back to
Jerusalem in order to rebuild the city and the temple there. Ezra 4:1-3 tells
us the following: “1 Now when the
enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the people of the exile were building
a temple to the LORD God of Israel, 2
they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ households, and
said to them, "Let us build with you, for we, like you, seek your God; and
we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria,
who brought us up here." 3 But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the
heads of fathers’ households of Israel said to them, "You have nothing in
common with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves will together
build to the LORD God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia has
commanded us.’” The people that wanted
to help Zerubbabel build the temple of God were the Samarians and they were not
allowed to help because of who they were.
This caused a great deal of problems between the Jews and those in
Samaria and it went on throughout the period between the Old and New
Testaments.
We know from the 4th chapter of John that the
first person that our Lord told that He was the Messiah was a woman from
Samaria and so this gave an example to those in the church to do the same thing
and this is where we come to Philip as seen in our verses we are looking at
from Acts. Acts 1:8 says “but you will
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My
witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the
remotest part of the earth.’” Philip was
fulfilling what the Lord commanded to do.
I believe that because he was doing what the Lord commanded that his
ministry was successful as we read in our verses for today. The Spirit of God was opening the hearts of
the people living in Samaria as Philip began to preach to them and to do
miracles there in Samaria. Luke tells us
that those who were possessed by “unclean spirits,” or we could say demons,
were freed from their bondage. I have to
believe that Philip had heard of what Jesus did when He came in contact with
people who were possessed with demons and was able by the power of the Spirit
to do what Jesus did in casting them out of those who had them.
Now besides casting out demons Philip also healed “many who had been paralyzed and lame.”
Demon worship goes on in the world today, even in our own
country. In our last Presidential election
I read where one of the candidates was involved in seeking help from the world
of demons in order to help her win, but God had other plans. Third world countries are involved in demon
worship too. I had a friend who is now
with the Lord who told me the story of seeing stones fall onto a tin roofed
home. He went on to say that in order
for this to stop that the person living in that home had to take a chicken out
into the sea and cut off his head as he sacrificed it to the one controlling
the stones to fall on his home. After
doing this they stopped following on the man’s home. We have one more rather short section to look
at in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: In our Sunday
school class we have been reading devotionals about prayer and now that we have
finished that subject we move onto Spiritual Warfare, and my prayer is that God
would use this in the lives of us who will be reading them to help us better
understand more about what we as believers are to do in these cases.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to allow me to have no
problems as I have to take my wife’s father to the doctor today as his face is
swelled up once again probably from shingles.
Memory verses: Philippians 4:1 and 8 “Therefore, my beloved
brethren whom I long to see, my joy and crown, in this way stand firm in the
Lord, my beloved.” “Finally, brethren,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and
if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Love” (Romans 13:10).
Today’s Bible
question: “Where is the record of the
resurrected Christ appearing to the 500 brethren?”
Answer in our next SD.
12/5/2017 9:14 AM
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