Holy Spirit Fire Which Destroys Prejudice

Acts 8:14-17 ~ When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

As we learned in John 4. The Jews and the Samaritans had no dealings with each other [John 4:9]. The Jews would even avoid traveling through Samaria. This hatred went back to the days of exile. When the northern kingdom was exiled to Assyria, King Sargon repopulated the area with captives from other lands. The intermarriage of these foreigners and the Jews who had been left in the land complicated the ancestry of the Samaritans. The Jews hated the Samaritans and considered them to be no longer "pure" Jews. Jesus, however, had no such bias. [NKJV Nelson Study Bible]

Jesus commissioned His disciples at His ascension to preach the Gospel in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth. I bet the disciples eyes bugged out of their heads when He said Samaria. Even though the disciples were Christians, they still had prejudice against a group of people. The prejudice worked both ways. The Samaritans didn't welcome the disciples. James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven on them. They wanted to destroy them.

From the reading today, we see that the Samaritans received the Gospel message and that the apostles prayed for them to receive the Holy Spirit. Before it was the fire of destruction that John wanted to call down from heaven. Now the Fire of the Spirit fell on the Samaritans. God is an all consuming fire [Hebrews 12:29]. He consumed John's hatred, meanness and prejudice. John and Peter went on to preach the Gospel in many other Samaritan villages. God turned John's prejudice into passion.

Take the man who was blind. When Jesus first touched him, he saw men walking like trees. When Jesus touched the man a second time he could see clearly [Mark 8:22-26]. May I see those around me with the eyes of Jesus. I want to see how He sees. I want to see clearly. I want to see people as they really are. May God change my mind and adjust my sight. I no longer want to regard people from a worldly point of view [ 2 Corinthians 5:16-17].