The “Acts of the Apostles” is a book of transition. There are things in Acts not necessarily meant to be “normal” for the Church. In my view, the miraculous signs (including speaking in tongues) are part of that transition. Maybe that makes me a “cessationist,” although I’m not sure what that entails. You can agree or disagree, but for now, I’m interested in the idea of “transition.”
Did you know that there was a “transition” into the Old Covenant (the Mosaic Law) from the way God was worshiped prior to that time? What we call “religion” began in Gen. 4 with Cain and Abel. By “religion” we mean the way a person approaches God. By “God” we mean: 1) the Creator of all, including people; and 2) the One who provides an adequate Savior to make atonement from our sins against the Creator. That was “God” for Cain and Abel, who were seeking to atone for their sins. They came to God, the Creator, because He had promised to provide an adequate Savior (Gen. 3:15). And they were doing what made sense: when you come to God don’t come emptyhanded; come with gifts so as to give Him thanks.
It turned out that God required the worshiper to come with a blood sacrifice, something which Abel had done and Cain refused to do. Thus, as we said, religion had it’s beginning. From that time on, religion involved building altars, bringing live animals, killing the animals and thereby, worshiping God. Not only did Abel do this. Noah did it (Gen. 8:20), Abraham (12:7,8 and several other times), Jacob (Gen. 35:1) and Job (Job 1:5) did it. And finally, Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, also called “the priest of Midian” (Ex. 18:1), offered burnt offerings to the LORD (Ex. 18:11-12). Be sure you note as well: in all these situations the men who built the altars also acted as priests. A man was priest for his family and household.
Meanwhile, and the Bible doesn’t say much about this, people all over the earth were doing the same thing: building altars and offering blood sacrifices. They were not necessarily worshiping YAHWEH. Egypt had a religion, and it involved blood sacrifices. But it also revolved around the Pharaoh. And there was a class of priests who oversaw the religion (Gen. 47:22). There was something similar in all religions because they all had their start in Gen. 4 (Cain and Abel) when both religion and religious persecution had its start.
Did you pay attention to Jethro’s words today? “Now I know that the LORD (YAHWEH) is greater than all the gods” (18:11). Each of the Ten Plagues in Egypt were an attack on gods of Egypt. Moses had just told Jethro all that YAHWEH had done in delivering them, and Jethro, being a priest, sees the “theology” in it all. Surely, Jethro had offered sacrifices to other gods, for himself and for others. Remember: Abraham (at least while he was in his father’s house) had worshiped false gods before he came to know the true God (Josh 24:2). What today’s passage reveals is the “coming to Christ” of Jethro. More on this in the next post.
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