The word “scattered” is used only four times in the book of Acts, but its significance is much greater than that number would suggest. By the time Luke wrote his gospel, “scattered” had a well-established meaning. It went back to the days of Babel when the people rebelled against God’s purpose for them to spread throughout the world (Genesis 9:1, 11:4). Later, the word was used to refer to the judgment God would bring upon Israel if they were unfaithful to His covenant (Deuteronomy 4:27,28:64,30:3,30:26). In these accounts, scattering was something God did for the good of humanity (filling the earth as part of His redemptive plan) and the ultimate good of His people (purging their idolatry). It was severe (especially in the case of Israel), but salvific.
Though Luke doesn’t use the word in Acts 2, it’s clear what happened at Pentecost was a reversal of Babel. At Babel languages came into being and the people were scattered. On Pentecost, the tongue speaking of the apostles overcame the language barrier and people who had been scattered all over the world became one through Jesus. If Hollywood were telling the story this might be where the credits would roll, but God had greater things in mind, so the story wasn’t over.
Instead, we are introduced to a firebrand of man named Saul who was present when Stephen was stoned and in hearty agreement with him being put to death. Stephen’s murder further inflamed Saul and other opponents of the faith. Luke tells us, “On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria . . . Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison” (8:3). The next verse provides us with one of the summations Luke is known for as he tells us, “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.”
If this was your first time through Acts, you probably didn’t see that coming. Even if you’ve been through Acts several times, it’s still amazing, isn’t it? But it’s consistent with the powerful picture God wants us to set before us. He wants us to see what can be done when we allow Him to work in our lives—no matter what the situation looks like. Let’s take a closer look.
The apostles stayed and stood. We’ve all seen a fire burn off everything that was combustible. That seems to be what happened here. Everyone was gone except for the apostles. It’s a stark contrast from what they had done when Jesus was arrested when they had cut and run. Now they stayed and stood.
There might be something to the suggestion that the opponents of Christianity were heeding Gamaliel’s counsel to “Leave these men alone” (5:38). However, even if that was the case, it had to be discouraging to see everyone else leave. Their solution? They went right on teaching. There may have been no disciples at all left in Jerusalem (if that’s the way we’re to understand Luke), but the feasts and Jerusalem’s centrality to Jewish life meant there was a steady stream of people coming to the city and they would hear about Jesus! In the next chapter when Saul is baptized and becomes Paul, he will try to associate with the church at Jerusalem—and it’s clear it consists of more than the apostles—so they did their job.
The church fled and flourished. For everyone but the apostles, the solution to the situation was to get out of town. We’re not to judge this harshly because Jesus told His disciples something similar when He sent them out on a preaching mission, “When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another” (Matthew 10:23). That’s all the disciples were doing here. They didn’t deny Jesus—they just moved on to live another day.
But they took Jesus with them.
So much so that Luke says they “preached the word wherever they went” (v. 4). That’s what it means to be a disciple. When you live for Jesus in hard times as well as easy times—your faith is flourishing.
Scattering was an opportunity. Luke has already revealed to us the trajectory of the kingdom from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth (1:8). Now we get some insight into how this happened—it was adversity that moved the disciples out of Jerusalem!
That probably wouldn’t be our plan, but it was God’s. And to their credit, our brothers and sisters didn’t lapse into victim mode or become fixated with restoring normality—they treated their circumstances as an opportunity and used it to reach out to people who didn’t know Jesus. When we learn to look at our circumstances and instead of asking, “Why me?” we ask, “How can this be used for God?”—that’s when kingdom things start to happen.
Milton Jones is the president of Christian Relief Fund. In their most recent newsletter, he tells about a man named Barnaba who was ministering in a difficult part of Kenya (a place where Jones is no longer allowed to go). It was in a desert region that and there was a war going on. Nonetheless, this man went there. He took on some cattle to breed and give away to people in poverty, but then the cattle were stolen. Not one to quit, he took off in search of the cattle. He ended up in a region where he was warmly welcomed by the people living there. He found out they had no water and no knowledge of God. Because drilling wells is a big part of what CRF does, now they have water and know the Lord—and all because someone stole Barnaba’s cattle!
God still uses scattering. Whether we have our cattle stolen, get relocated, or get “scattered” in some other way, we need to ask, “What is God’s purpose in this? How can this be used for Him?” Luke updates us on the scattering in 11:19ff when he says:
Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.
God was still using the scattered!
We should learn from it. Sometimes we get in trouble because we have the wrong goals. For example, it’s easy to have as our goal the idea that we want to live an unscattered life. We want everything in its place, and we want it to go smoothly. We want everyone in their place, and we want our relationships to go smoothly. We want our children to grow up and live three blocks from us and everyone go the same church, and sit on the same row of seats.
You kind of wonder if some of that was going on at Jerusalem. Had the church become too comfortable and their goals too narrow? Although its true the Jerusalem church was composed of people from all over the world, they were all Jewish people and God had much bigger plans, so He allowed His people to be scattered—but not just scattered—scattered in the direction He had purposed!
We should lean into it. And those who were scattered proclaimed Jesus wherever they went it! I doubt if being scattered was on anyone’s list of things to do, but the responded in a Christ-like way and fulfilled their mission.
And that’s what we need for ourselves and also to practice as we raise and release our children. Samantha Krieger wrote this:
Learning to release our children to the Lord is yes, learned. God takes us through situations and trials to remind us that our children are His, from the moment of their first cry until the appointed time that Jesus calls them home. And as much as we try to control . . . ultimately it is God who is in sovereign over their life.
. . . He knows the plans He has for my children and where they will be ten years from now. He knows their needs better than I do. Whatever challenges come our way – and they are sure to come – the Lord will go before us and be our help.
Well, all this is challenging, isn’t it? That’s why Paul’s reminder to Timothy that
“The Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” The challenge before us is never as great as the power within us!
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 