All that He Began

Have you ever had a lyric with a catchy lilt stick in your brain and play over and over? You just can't get it out of your head? Sometimes that happens to me with phrases in the Bible. The most recent one is: 'all that Jesus began both to do and teach'. Actually that phrase has a rather melodious ring to it.  I've read right over it  many times when reading the book of Acts. Last night however, the phrase popped into my head and stuck.  After looking it up and checking the context of those beginning verses of Acts, it really struck me that these are very pregnant words. The word 'began' stands out in big letters.

Acts 1:1- 2 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus BEGAN both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:

Jesus Christ was a beginning! The book of Acts is a continuing. On the day of Pentecost those people who, by their own free-will choice decided to believe all that God was doing, became a part of that continuing.

It is interesting to note that Jesus Christ had given his parting words through the holy spirit to the apostles. Holy spirit is a communication life-line. God is spirit and they that love him must love him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). In order to do that people need to receive the gift of holy spirit. Jesus Christ had the spirit. The apostles received the spirit in their hearts on the day of Pentecost. You and I can obtain holy spirit by accepting the Lordship of Jesus Christ and believing that God brought him back from death to life. Then we become part of the continuation.

Moses made 6 trips up and down the mountain of God to receive instructions during the Exodus stopover at the foot of Mt Sinai. Moses could talk and listen to God because he had spirit upon him. The Israelites couldn't. Things had to be written in stone for them and sometimes they still forgot. Today God doesn't need stone tablets when God can impress the fleshy table of our heart.

2 Corinthians 3:2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: 3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.