The Women of Berea
Passage: Acts 17:10-15
As we read through the book of Acts we must remind ourselves of what is going on, why this is recorded for us some 2000 years later.
This is not just a travel log. My sister and her family just got home this week from a 9,000-mile road trip to Orlando and back via San Diego. Every day she posted a few pictures on Facebook and Instagram. It was nice to travel with them and see their progress.
That is not the purpose of Acts. We are not reading Luke’s diary or journal entries. We are not reading about the endeavors of some men in the first century to spread the Gospel. This is God’s writing, inspired by the Holy Spirit for the intentional edification of us all. This is the unfolding of God’s redemptive plan. This is the revealing of the fulfillment of what God had promised from the foundation of the earth.
This is God’s mission to defeat and bring down the kingdom of Satan and to reclaim His creation from the grip of sin and death. This is the power of the Holy Spirit spreading out in ripples or waves from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. And it is still moving, nothing has hindered or stopped it.
These stories are God’s gifts to us all and I want us to hear what God is saying to us through them.
We don’t celebrate the men and women of Acts; we celebrate the all-powerful sovereign God who is at work in our fallen world redeeming all things for His glory and He delights to call men and women out of the world into His purposes.
We are all living in God’s story. God gives us each a part to play, a role to fulfill.
We all need God’s grace and perhaps we could say no one knows this more clearly than mothers. So let’s take a good look at God’s grace and how He pours it out into our hearts and homes.
When I saw the mention of not a few women of high standing believing in the Gospel preached by Paul and Silas I decided to take this text as an opportunity to encourage and challenge mothers and all women, and actually all believers male and female, young and old. So while I may focus on one slice of our flock, please know everything I say applies to us all.
I want to begin by backing up for a moment to consider again the woman Lydia in Acts 16.