Acts 11: Looking at Agabus Again

I would read the Nov. 17 entry, What about Agabus? first.

If we focus on the title, prophet, we emphasize the wrong side of what happened with Agabus in Antioch. Folks today are afraid of “prophets” (with many, good reasons quite frankly), and wrap that fear up into high-minded, theological terms such as cessationism. But that reaction exposes the problem. The issue is not: prophet or no prophet for today. A prophet isn’t anything. And, I mean that. A prophet isn’t anything. A man can call himself that; others around him and impose that title. But a man is a just man after all. Simon Peter said that much to Cornelius.: Get up. I am a man just like you. And I hope you can see where placing the emphasis on a man, in this instance, Peter, has led to two millennia of institutional confusion and strife. We are horrible about looking to man, rather than looking to God, without our natural emphasis.

But negating the employment of men by God for specific functions is the other side of the same coin. It is still a human reaction with its origin in us, and a wrong emphasis with equal error. It must be impossible for us to not be man-centered.—impossible for us to forsake seeing everything from our perspective as opposed to His.

The issue is with Agabus is not Agabus the man. Nor is it Agabus the prophet. God knew a famine was on the horizon, which would force great hardships on His people. He wanted to warn them of the danger to His people impacted by no food and no water, when the Romans and the rich and the politically well-connected would take for themselves, leaving His people who were not those things without.

God is at the center of this story, not Agabus. God’s compassion is moving out—flowing from His throne, through the mouth of Agabus of course. to His people so that they will have enough and not die. That is the point; Agabus or prophet is not the point. Perhaps there was a larger purpose as in Joseph’s time when the famine brought Israel into Egypt. But the point of the prophet Agabus is a profound underscoring of this fact—God is full of compassion. Just as He stated in the Law and the Prophets over and over again—His lovingkindness is better than life. He is affirming that He remains the same. His eternal love, expressed here temporally, does not cease whether you want to recognize prophets or not, whether you want to limit offices to pastors and teachers or not. But positions misplace the focus.

I don’t care which position one might hold. These are false distinctions that miss the forest for the trees. A name, a title, a stated role, a position means nothing. The “high priests,” the Pharisees and Sadduccees established that once and for all. What matters is whether God is speaking through that vessel. One way we will know that is in what Luke presents here—extraordinary evidence of the Fatherhood of God. He is a father, the Father in fact, and He cares very much for His children. It is the expression of that care that matters, the evidence of that care that matters, not the vessel God has chosen to make that compassion known to us,

But this “speaking forth” His compassion also affirms or re-affirms recent events: Christ has ascended, and is seated on the throne of God; and He has poured our His Holy Spirit as He said He would. This is affirmation that these new People, made a people through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as peculiar people, a set-apart people, a royal priesthood. Through this simple act of telling them in advance a famine is coming He is shouting: You are mine; I am yours.

But He is also building His case that Jesus Christ did in fact rise again from the dead, did in fact ascend into the heavens, and did take His place on the throne—meaning the Risen Christ has been given dominion and authority—here expressing it in the caution to prepare for the famine. And, He is showing He still speaks—directly through an angel of the Lord (to Cornelius) or through a vision on a roof (to Simon) or directly, but perhaps indirectly, through Agabus.

All of this speaking evidences His love and compassion for His people, His elevated position on the Throne of God, His sovereignty too. But the central them of Luke’s Good News is that God has decided to dwell with Man, through Jesus Christ, through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Luke rebuke through Volume 1 and Volume 2 of his Good News any suggestion that God is afar off, or that we are afar off. These two books represent a categorical rejection of both propositions. Instead, Luke plainly teaches that Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. He has drawn intimately near, and through Him, we have been brought intimately near.

Consistent with this drawing near is speaking. God is someone who speaks, a Father speaks to His children. He has good news, and a heart to give it, even if we do not have a heart to hear it because we stumble over a method He has chosen.

I am not advocating looking under bush and stone for “prophets.” Rather, we should look to our Father and expect His Fatherly concern over us to be expressed as He sees fit, according the various ways Luke describes God’s manner of speaking to us in Acts.