Brothers, listen! In this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins. Everyone who believes in him is freed from all guilt and declared right with God—something the Jewish law could never do. Be careful! Don’t let the prophets’ words apply to you. For they said,

‘Look, you mockers,
be amazed and die!
For I am doing something in your own day,
something you wouldn’t believe
even if someone told you about it!

Acts 13:38-41 (NLT)

Obviously the Jewish leaders didn’t take kindly to the fact that they’d been called mockers. It only added to the proof that they were, in fact, the fulfillment of that particular prophecy. They chose to ignore all the signs that pointed to Jesus. They loved the law so much that they failed to see the fulfillment of it.

We’ve already accepted Jesus as Lord, how does this apply to us at all?

I think the prophecy from Habakkuk 1:5 still applies to a lot of people today. Like the Jewish leaders, there are a great many Christians stuck to their traditions rather than to God Himself. Like the leaders in the synagogue, they scoff at change. If everything has been working for the last hundred years, why should it change now? God never changes! 

No, God doesn’t change, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t see things we’ve never seen before. The world had never seen God in the way of Jesus. That was new. The miracles that Jesus performed had never been seen before. Those were new. The men Jesus selected to follow him weren’t great men or local leaders. That was new, too. Yet everything Jesus did still lined up with what God had been saying all along.

There’s that old phrase that says, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Church is often more guilty of this than any other group around. Oh, that’s new. Can’t be from God! And then we go along our merry way the same way we’ve gone along our entire lives. Like the temple leaders in Jesus’ time, we miss out on all God has for us. They missed out on the greatest miracle in the history of the world because they were content with the status quo. They were content with their status, period. To admit that Jesus was the Messiah and that anyone could be forgiven at any time would put them out of a job.

See, I will do a new thing. It will begin happening now. Will you not know about it? I will even make a road in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43:19 (NLT)

So when you hear about God doing something that you’ve never heard of before, check it out. Compare it against His Word. Just because you’ve never seen or experienced it before doesn’t mean it’s not God. Don’t get so stuck in tradition that you miss out on an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

In the end, the priests went back to the temple and their mundane lives demanding perfect adherence to the Law.

And the believers were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

Acts 13:52 (NLT)

Daily Bible reading: Job 33-34, Acts 13:24-52