On This Day: How the ‘Unknown God’ Makes Himself Known

   So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. (Acts 17:22-23)

   As I was waking up this morning, it hit me: the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has not been the central interest in the churches I have been part of. The impact on me was that I must know how to attach to these realities with all my heart and, hopefully, to help others do the same!

   The reason this is standing out right now is that I have arrived in the chapter in Acts I was waiting for more than any other. In this present journey through Luke’s historical narrative, I wanted a fresh encounter, so to speak, in how Paul shared the good news of the kingdom with a thoroughly Gentile audience. And the Greeks of Athens were about as Gentile and disconnected from the Jews and the Scriptures as we could find.

   What I noticed yesterday was that, in Paul’s mingling with the Greeks in the marketplace, his side of the conversations revolved around “preaching Jesus and the resurrection.” In one way, this was nothing new. In another way, it was exactly what I needed settled in me: that it doesn’t matter who we are talking with, church-familiar, scripture-ignorant, evolutionist, atheist, agnostic, skeptic, religious, irreligious, it simply doesn’t matter. The “good news of great joy” is that God has given us “a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” That Savior is Jesus, and the way he saves is through his death and resurrection.

   The very personal part of this is in the mirror. What do I see in the guy looking back at me? Do I see a longing that Paul described as “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10)?

   Do my prayers for myself and Jesus’ church exemplify knowing “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19-20)?

   Do I long to hear,

   ...around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:11-12)

   My point is simply this: that if telling people about the person of Jesus Christ and what he did for us through his death and resurrection is the way Paul would begin sharing the good news with the worldlings of Athens, then we can’t imagine we have a better way of doing things in our time.

   In Philippians 2, after detailing how Jesus died for us on the cross, Paul continued:

   Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

   Knowing the person, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the “It is finished” realities of his death and resurrection, ought to be everything to us so we cannot help but make Jesus and his resurrection everything in how we relate to everyone.

   Today, I am going to begin introspectively. I want to know Jesus in person, and I want to know his resurrection in power, more than ever before. In fact, the measure I often present to God applies very well here, that I may know Jesus and his resurrection as much as is possible to know these realities this side of heaven. If there’s more I can experience of this (and there is), I want it!

   And then, after whatever God wants to do with me about this, I will weave this into my conversations with people and see how God uses it to find his lost sheep.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: A New Way of Living the Word of the Lord

 

   And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.  For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,

“‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,

    that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”

And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region. (Acts 13:46-49)

   Spending time with God in his word and prayer has two components. The first is the settled and unchanging word of God as we have it in the Scriptures. The second is the “new every morning” way that God’s word ministers to our hearts and leads us through whatever we are facing.

   Today, this stood out in two very significant ways.
   First, the expression “the word of the Lord” really stood out to me last year when I was reading Brad Jersak’s book of false teachings, “A More Christlike Word”[1]. At the same time as I was reading his book (that Peter described as, “which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures”[2]), I also came to the book of Acts in my audio-Bible sessions during my exercise times.  

   As I listened my way through Acts in two or three sessions, something stood out that I had never noticed before. It was the way the references to the “good news of the kingdom” seemed to change in a rhyming-thoughts kind of way. I am sharing all the references (even though most are repeated) just to show how much variation there is and how interchangeable the expressions are.

   The good news the early church preached was a mixture of “the good news of the kingdom” they received from Jesus, along with all the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament) that spoke of him. This was called:

·         “the word” (4:4),

·         “your word” (4:29),

·         “the word of God” (4:31),

·         “the words of this Life” (5:20),

·         “the word of God” (6:2),

·         “the word” (6:4),

·         “the word of God” (6:7),

·         “the word” (8:4),

·         “the word of God” (8:14),

·         “the word of the Lord” (8:25),

·         “the word” (10:44),

·         “the word of God” (11:1),

·         “the word of the Lord” (11:16),

·         “the word” (11:19),

·         “the word of God” (12:24),

·         “the word of God” (13:5),

·         “the word of God” (13:7),

·         “the word of the Lord” (13:44),

·         “the word of God” (13:46),

·         “the word of the Lord” (13:48),

·         “the word of the Lord” (13:49),

·         “the word of his grace” (14:3),

·         “the word” (14:25),

·         “the word of the gospel” (15:7),

·         “the word of the Lord” (15:35),

·         “the word of the Lord” (15:36),

·         “the word” (16:6),

·         “the word of the Lord” (16:32),

·         “the word” (17:11),

·         “the word of God” (17:13),

·         “the word” (18:5),

·         “the word of God” (18:11),

·         “the word of the Lord” (19:10),

·         “the word of the Lord” (19:20),

·         “the word of his grace” (20:32).

   The reason this stood out to me so much was that Brad Jersak claimed “the word” we find in the Scriptures was not Christlike enough, but Dr. Luke used every expression he could think of to show that the early church used “the whole counsel of God” from the Old Testament (the Hebrew Scriptures of the day) along with the whole teaching of Christ as we have it now recorded in the gospels, the book of Acts, and the letters to the churches. It was such a glaring contrast to what Brad Jersak claimed that I began to hear on almost every page of his book what Satan first uttered to Eve in the Garden of Eden, “Did God actually say…?” (Genesis 3:1).

   Coming to these references again today was simply another affirmation of the glory of God’s word, and the delight we Gentiles can have that we are included in the good news this word proclaims. I would rather fellowship in the Spirit with Gentile believers of almost 2000 years ago who celebrated “the word of the Lord” than any of the Scripture-twisters of today who “steal, kill, and destroy” the joy people once had in Jesus’ word.

   The second thing that stood out in a very glaring and comforting way was the realization of what it was like for the Gentiles to rejoice and glorify this word. They had known very well that the only way to have anything to do with the God of Israel, the God the Jews believed in, was by becoming a convert to Judaism, abiding by the covenant God gave Israel through Moses, including the (ouchy) requirement of circumcision.

   I let myself imagine the feelings of those Gentiles that, when the Jews rejected the good news Paul and Barnabas were preaching, the men said, “behold, we are turning to the Gentiles” with the message of “eternal life” (Acts 13:46). That meant that the Gentiles could have what Paul was talking about without converting to Judaism. Paul and Barnabas were showing that the Gentiles could have the gift of God through faith in Christ, which is why “as many who were appointed to eternal life believed” (vs 48).

   The amazing thing for me (what gives me my unique journey in God’s universal and unchanging word)[3], was that I have had my own experience of discovering that I could have everything God is offering us in the good news of the kingdom without submitting to what I now call “Institutional Church” in established congregations run by power-brokers (the people who have been there the longest and control everything the church does). To me personally, there is a clear parallel to what Luke described of the religious Jews in Pisidian Antioch!

   When I considered the rejoicing and glorifying of the word of the Lord by the Gentiles, I could remember the joy that was felt first by a prayer group that formed to pray for the institutional church we were in, and then when we discovered we could meet in someone’s home as Jesus’ church without being bound to an institution, or the power-brokers who kept it under their control.

   This isn’t about what you think of the overly brief summary of our home church story. I’m simply pointing out that we all need to admit that the first two centuries of Jesus’ church growing was through home churches, so they clearly are an acceptable, if not preferable, way of meeting.

   My point is that we should be able to rejoice in and glorify “the word of the Lord” for giving us “such a great salvation” that can be lived by faith in Jesus Christ with any “two or three in my name” gathering of believers who have truly come to faith by “hearing… the word of Christ”, and are truly seeking to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16).

   The point for you?

   That the Scriptures we have in the Bible are “the word of the Lord” in all its rhyming, synonymous expressions, and our daily walk with God in his word and prayer ought to lead us to rejoice in this word with all our hearts and glorify it as the word of God it is.

   Jesus said that we are to “live by every word that comes from the mouth of God”. That clearly includes “the gospel of the kingdom” taught by the apostles and recorded in the New Testament Scriptures. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (II Timothy 3:16-17), so let us walk in “the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (Hebrews 10:20), and see what the unchanging way gives us of our “new every morning” experiences of the word and the faithfulness of God.

 

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

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[1] Because I have mentioned the book, I must give the copyright info. However, I do NOT recommend the book as a guide to Christian living! You can find my 100+ “journal journey” entries as I went “down the garden path” with the author and concluded he was as much a false teacher as I had originally discerned. A More Christlike Word, © 2021 by Bradley Jersak, Whitaker House, 1030 Hunt Valley Circle, New Kensington, PA 15068.

[2] II Peter 3:16

[3] Just a note to clarify that I do NOT mean “universal salvation”, as in the false belief that everyone will be saved in the end whether they have believed in Christ or not. By “universal” I mean that the same unchanging word to “the Jews first” is the word for us Gentiles. As Paul said in Ephesians 4:4-6, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” God “so loved the world,” not just Israel (John 3:16).

On This Day: The Gift of What Was Written and Fulfilled

   “Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation. For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him. And though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. (Acts 13:26-31)

   In the "God works all things together for good" category, my traumatic childhood trained me to listen carefully to why people believe what they believe. I can see why this is still helping me grow in my faith in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.

   It’s crazy to think that six decades have passed since I was first aware of God. However, during that whole time, I have never heard anyone present arguments against God's word that hold a candle to the intricate and complex weaving together of divine revelation. What was revealed over the centuries (as “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”) had to be carried out by God’s enemies to fulfill what was written about Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection. Only God could write the script and orchestrate its fulfillment!

   Not only that, but today's gift just happened to come after God helped me accept that I must let go of people and things he is not working in (at least in relation to me), and prepare to fully join him in anything he gives our church to do, while trusting him to provide everything we need to do his will.

   What do we do with such a gift as this? When God shows in the Scriptures how only he could have coordinated 40 different men, over a period of fifteen centuries, to write their puzzle pieces of revelation into God’s word, it calls us to RSVP to his invitation.

   “What invitation?” you ask.

   The invitation to know the Creator through his word.

   The invitation to be raised from death to life in the salvation provided by Jesus Christ.

   The invitation to feel the “faith” that “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). That “assurance” is not speaking of the feeling of assurance, or the feeling of confidence about something.

   Rather, the word in the Greek means, “title (deed) n. — a legal document to effect a transfer of property and to show the legal right to possess it” (Bible Sense Lexicon). In other words, faith is our “document” of assurance, the certificate of authenticity, so to speak. If we have faith, that faith is our deed to eternal life and all it entails.

   After examining the claims of professional skeptics like Bart Ehrman, the priests of the evolutionary religion like Darwin, Dawkins and DeGrasse Tyson, and false teachers like Brad Jersak, I now see in all of them the first words of the serpent in the Scriptures, “Did God actually say…?” (Genesis 3:1). They never give evidence against the evidence of Scripture. They only parrot the devil’s own thoughts, to make people question the authority of what God said, so they become pawns in the game of the evil one instead of children of God on assignment from their Father.

   Even though my faith has been growing since childhood, and I believe I am putting into practice Paul’s exhortation to Timothy to “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (I Timothy 4:15), what I am getting out of my campout in Acts 13 makes me feel like I am “building yourselves up in your most holy faith” as Jude encouraged (Jude 1:20).

   If you do not yet know that your faith in Jesus Christ stands up to every claim of skeptics and enemies of the cross, read God’s word and take it as the Holy Spirit teaches it to you. Faith DOES come from hearing, and our hearing DOES come from the “word of Christ”, so listen for Jesus’ voice in his word, the Bible, and follow him where he leads, no matter how many wolves are howling in the distance, or roaring lions are prowling around seeking someone to devour. 

   As our big brother John wrote,

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
(I John 5:4)

  

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)