Sight is victorious over blindness. I think that’s an easy thought. No one seems to be lobbying for blindness being better than sight, do they? Navigating life blind poses a plethora of challenges that the sighted do not face. This is why Scripture often uses the concept of blindness as a metaphor for how hard it is to navigate life without a correct understanding of Christ. Spiritual sight gives us the ability to see who holds our future in his hands and who is worth our eternal worship.
Our text from Acts 9 confronts us with a cultural norm that is… terrible. Saul going door to door, not selling vacuums or solar panels. He’s interrogating them at the front door and then, depending on their answer, he’s throwing them in jail! Civil liberties? They lived in a theocracy. I wonder if we glaze over some of those dramatic differences?
This is the picture of a crowd of Bangladeshi women participating in a protest. The culture in Bangladesh is radically different from ours. Last fall there was Baul singer – we would call him a folk singer – whose house was broken into by five radicals who assaulted him and forcibly shaved his head. This culture is a mix of Buddhist, Islam, and local faiths. I can’t begin to understand the complexities of that culture. I share this with you because I think if you’ve been a Christian your whole life you can become accustom, maybe too comfortable with the stories from Scripture because we see them through the lens of our life and culture.
The local government WAS the church. This was good – for most of Israel’s history. When Jesus comes around, instead of being embraced by God’s people, he was crucified. The book of Acts – and event that focus on the start of the New Testament church will be the focus of our new after-worship Bible class starting next week.
What about us? Examine your culture. Take a step back and look around thinking what do I see that I’m very comfortable with that is no where near God pleasing. How do I react to it? Recoiling in revulsion doesn’t necessarily help. Marking it and avoiding some of the bad might be good advice if you have small kids, but at some point our God would have us interact with the people around us and share Jesus. He gives us the freedom to love everyone! We are also charged with pointing out where their lives stray from God’s plan, but we can always love them in Jesus.
Want to hear more? Watch this weeks message taken from Acts 9: Sight is VICTORIOUS Over Blindness.
Book(s): Acts
Series: Victorious
Tag(s): Easter
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg