I don't know if you've ever seen news clippings or videos of the religious mobs of Hindus or Muslims that form regularly and riot and protest in places like Pakistan and Malaysia, where even an accusation of blasphemy can lead to someone being dragged from their home and lynched, beaten, burned to death, or worse.
A group of people come together and a psychological mob mentality is formed in their collective outrage, and they just amplify each other's rage into this animalistic state where they would literally tear a person limb from limb. That's the kind of intensity that was in play in Jerusalem at this time, and that kind of thing could happen at any moment if witnesses suddenly began claiming that somebody had blasphemed Yahweh or the Temple or the Law or the patriarchs. That's what happened with Jesus, and it's what's happening here with Stephen, who now finds himself before the very same council of religious leaders who judged Jesus just a few months earlier and falsely condemned him. Verse 13, they also presented false witnesses who said, this man never stops speaking against this holy place and the Law. We heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth would destroy this place, the temple, and change the customs that Moses handed down to us.
The second charge in verse 14 was because Stephen was teaching that the Law had been fulfilled by Jesus the Messiah, and therefore followers of Yahweh were no longer under the Law. But they were misrepresenting Stephen's argument and presenting it as though Stephen despised and dismissed the Law. Stephen's coming response will show that, on the contrary, he deeply venerated the Law. He simply understood the Law's correct place and role in light of the sinless life of Jesus. But the first charge is interesting.
They claim we heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place. Speaking of the Temple, does that remind anybody of anything? In Matthew 26, we're told that at the trial of Jesus, two false witnesses who came forward stated this man said, I can destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days. Like Jesus, Stephen was accused by false witnesses. And like Jesus, he was charged with the claim that Jesus had said he would destroy the temple.
And Jesus did indeed claim that the temple of God would be destroyed and rebuilt in three days. But these false witnesses left out a crucial detail. John 2/21 tells us that Jesus was speaking of his body, not the temple building in Jerusalem. For indeed Jesus would be destroyed. He would die and then rise in glory three days later.
When we get to Acts 21, we will hear similar charges brought against the apostle Paul. In verse 28, we'll read about some Jews who stir up a crowd by shouting, this is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people, our Law, and this place. Speaking of the temple, the reason that Jews in Jerusalem attempted to condemn Jesus, Stephen, and Paul with the same charges is likely because the Romans had given the Sanhedrin the authority to try and execute punishments for one specific type of offense profaning the Temple in word or deed. If this was the charge, the Sanhedrin could deal with the offender at their own discretion. The temple police could get involved.
No Romans needed to be consulted. Had they been able to make those charges stick against Jesus, they could have stoned him to death. That was their first plan. Because they couldn't, they had to change tactics and get Jesus sentenced to death via their Roman overlords, which they did by misrepresenting Jesus' claims to be God and king as an affront to the authority of the Roman Emperor. Verse 15.
Socrates, a classic Socratic argument presents premises, a series of arguments or facts that, if proven true and reasonable, lead to and provide support for a conclusion. If your premises are found to be false or logically unsound, then they will not support your conclusion and your argument will therefore collapse. Stevens's premises would have consisted entirely of scriptures from the Old Testament.
None of the freedoms could argue with any of his premises because they accepted and recognized the authority of those scriptures. However, they simply could not accept any of Steven's conclusions because they sounded so radical and so scandalous. They couldn't argue against his arguments, they couldn't prove him wrong, but they refused to accept what Stephen was able to prove. So just as people do today, they switch to an ad hominem attack. Ad hominem is Latin for to the person.
It's a fallacious strategy employed by those who do not possess a winnable argument. And so instead of addressing the substance of the other person's argument, they attack the person's character or motive or some other attribute. For example, I might say, I think that printing money and giving it to people in the name of coveting inflation is foolish because printing more money is what causes inflation. And a person might respond by saying, That's exactly the kind of compassionless and uncaring response I would expect from someone who clearly doesn't care about people, who can't afford food right now. Did you notice that they don't actually address the substance of my argument at all?
Instead, they attack my character, they attack my motives. That's an ad hominem argument, and it's used all the time in the public arena. Verse eleven then they secretly persuaded some men to say, we heard him speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God. They stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes. So they came, seized him, and took him to the Sanhedrin.
In his fantastic message last week, BJ reminded us of how fickle the crowds that gathered around Jesus during his earthly ministry. They flocked by the thousands to the man who healed the sick and fed the hungry but disappeared just as quickly when his teaching became challenging. Up to this point, the crowds in Jerusalem had been passionately in favor of the church. In Acts 4/21, remember, the Sanhedrin felt they couldn't do anything to Peter and John because as a result of their ministry, it says the people were all giving glory to God. In Acts chapter five, the apostles were jailed and then supernaturally freed by God.
They immediately went back out in public and started preaching again. And when the temple guard went to arrest them in verse 26, told us, that the commander went with the servants and brought them in without force because they were afraid the people might stone them. The temple guards were afraid that the crowd might stone them because the apostles had so much favor in Jerusalem at that time. But here already in Acts chapter six, just a few weeks later, something has changed. In verse twelve, the same crowds that adored the apostles in chapters four and five are able to be stirred up into a religious frenzy in which they see Stephen and drag him by force before the Sanhedrin.
The dynamic is reminiscent of the crowd that was stirred up against Jesus following his arrest. The crowd that turned into a mob and cried out repeatedly, crucify him. Crucify him with such intensity that the cowardly Pontious Pilot felt it necessary to acquiesce to their demands in the name of political and possibly physical self-preservation. I think we generally fail to grasp just how much religious fervor was in play in the city of Jerusalem in the first century Ad.
But Stephen's speech will make it clear that he already understood theological concepts like Jesus having fulfilled the Law on our behalf, justification by faith, and the giving of the Holy Spirit, meaning that God's presence was no longer confined to the holy of holies in the Temple. Jesus had said of himself, I tell you that something greater than the Temple is here. Stephen was likely arguing that the Law and Temple rituals were done with because their purpose had been fulfilled in and by Jesus of Nazareth.
The people of God were now the priesthood, and every individual was now a Temple of the Holy Spirit, the presence of God. Therefore, many scholars view Stephen as the theological forerunner of the Apostle Paul, who will actually cross paths with Stephen shortly under tragic circumstances. To the freedmen, Stephen would have sounded as though he were attacking everything Judaism held sacred, like the Temple and the Law. As was the case with Jesus. Nobody had a problem with the miracles that Stephen was performing.
Nobody had a problem with the signs and wonders. Nobody had a problem with him overseeing food distribution to widows. They had a problem with the message he was teaching. Just as nobody had a problem with Jesus performing miracles, healing the sick, turning water into wine, or providing free food. They didn't kill Jesus for any of that.
They killed him because of the message he was teaching. Just as nobody today has a problem when the Church feeds the hungry or houses the homeless. But they do have a problem when the Church teaches the Bible faithfully. Would you write this down? The world is offended by the message of the Gospel and the Word of God.
The world is offended by the message of the Gospel and the Word of God. If you're looking for a Church that he going to love, all you have to do is look for one that doesn't preach the Gospel and doesn't teach the Word of God. And the sad thing is they're out there. How did Friedman's debate or debates with Stephen go? Well, we read but they were unable to stand up against his wisdom, underlying wisdom, and then underline the rest of the sentence and the Spirit by whom he was speaking.
So how did Steven become so incredibly wise? The same way you and I can. Psalm 19, verse 7 tells us the instruction of the Lord is perfect, renewing one's life. The testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, making the inexperienced, wise whoever you are, if you will become a man or woman, of the Word. If you will submit to the Word, if you will allow the Word to shape you and have authority over your life, you will become wise.
You will. Stephen was a man of the Scriptures. He knew them. He had been shaped by them, as we shall see shortly in his speech to the Sanhedrin. We were told twice in chapter six that Stephen was a man full of the Holy Spirit.
And so when the moment demanded it, the Holy Spirit flowed out of Stephen's life. God can do great things with the man or woman who is full of His Word and full of His Spirit. That person is ready to be used by the Lord, ready to be called upon for service. And in this instance, God revealed that these freedmen were not full of the Word or full of the Spirit. They were simply full of it.
That was pretty good. Much better than that reaction, by the way. Come on now, man. You see, their reasoning came from human understanding, but Steven's reasoning came from the Spirit of God. His thinking and argumentation had a supernatural and divine source.
Stephen was one of the first fulfillment of Jesus promise in Luke 21, where he told his disciples, make up your mind not to prepare your defense ahead of time, for I will give you such words and the wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict classical debates to this day. Generally revolve, would he? Socratic method, named after the famous Greek philosopher of antiquity,
Stephen was one of the greatest men who ever lived. In Part 1, we’ll study his rise to prominence in the Early Church, the adversity he encountered, how he answered charges of blasphemy brought against him, and what his message means for us today.
Last week in Acts chapter six, we were introduced to Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit. He was one of the seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom chosen to verses the distribution of food to the Hellenistic widows in the Jerusalem church. Today's text will continue Steven's story as God works mighty things through this amazing man. In just a few weeks, or at most months, we're going to see several parallels between Stephen and Jesus. The Lord wants us to recognize that Stephen was Christ-like and the Lord wants us to recognize where that led Steven's earthly life.
In Luke chapter two, we are told that as a boy Jesus grew up and became strong, and filled with wisdom, and God's grace was on him. And a few verses later we read and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and favor with God and with people. Now, compare that with verse three and verse five and what we read about Stephen's development in verse eight. It says now Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people. The original Greek tells us that Stephen was doing this consistently on an ongoing basis.
In other words, Stephen was working wonders, performing miracles, healing the sick on the level of the apostles, the Lord anointed Stephen with incredible power in these early days of the Church. Like the Lord Jesus, Stephen was admired by the people for the great wonders and signs he performed among them. And like the Lord Jesus, he remained a humble servant, waiting tables 1 minute and performing wondrous miracles the next, it says opposition arose, however, from some members of the freedman synagogue composed of both Sirenians and Alexandrians and some from Cilicia and Asia. And they began to argue with Stephen.
Friedmen were Jewish slaves or the children of Jewish slaves who had been set free by their Roman masters. They often formed their synagogues. At this time, synagogues were centers of Jewish communal and academic life. That's why, even though the temple was located in Jerusalem, there were also many, possibly even hundreds of synagogues located around the city. The freedmen in view here belonged to one or more of those synagogues.
Steven was himself a Hellenistic Jew, a Greek-speaking Jew who had been raised in Greek culture rather than Hebrew culture. You'll recall that all of the seven men who were chosen to verses the distribution of food to the Hellenistic widows were themselves Hellenistic Jews. It's possible that Stephen belonged to one of these freed men's synagogues. When it says that they begin to argue with Steve. And the original Greek tells us they were having formal debates or at least a formal debate.
Subsequent events will make it clear that their debate centered on the death and resurrection and Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth and the inability of the Mosaic law and temple rituals to provide salvation it seems that as a Hellenistic Jew, Stephen's theological understanding of these areas may have been significantly more advanced than even that of the disciples and the apostles. We don't have any indication in Scripture that the apostles were yet wrestling with how Jesus' life, death, and resurrection affected the role of the Law and the Temple in the life of the believer.
Forgiving is not easy. Believe me it is not always easy to forgive. My sister had hurt me pretty bad again, and I had a hard time forgiving her. I heard a scripture in my head that said; "Vengeance is mine, sayest the Lord.” I thought this was just great! “Okay Lord, I forgive my sister, You go get her!”
When I told this at the Bible study, one wise sister said; "Jenny, that was not forgiving what you did, it was passing the buck you must forgive her without you thinking of revenge. The Lord may not punish her at all, and you surely may never wish that He did."
“What do you mean? He may let her get away with it. That is not fair, she deserves to be punished!” To forgive my sister now was not easy, but I finally managed to do so.
* I read about a woman, who had seen her sister and father, die in a concentration camp. This family had been hiding Jews during the war, and were betrayed by someone. This lady was the only one of her family that came out of the war alive. She became an evangelist as she had promised God she would. She had been preaching in Germany when a man came to her, she recognized him as the one who had been cruel to her sister when he had been a camp guard. He now came to her with his hands outstretched and said; “It is true what you just said, God does forgive everybody that asked Him and He has forgiven me.”
This lady fought the battle of her life, when after what seemed like a long spell, she took his hands in hers and welcomed him into the family of God.
I was in “Melody Land,” when a visiting minister asked those who needed to forgive someone, to come up on the platform. He told us to close our eyes, and to ask the Lord to reveal to us, whom and what we needed to forgive. I was shocked to find that there were so many people and things that had been done to me, that I thought I had long forgotten. It all came back to me now. Wow!
As a new Christian, there is so much to learn. Like how do I get more patience and how do I get more love to give to others? Pray, right? Right! You better mean what you ask for, because He does not answer you in the way you will expect. At least I did not expect it to work that way.
I thought that when I needed patience, I would cry out to the Lord; “Please give me more patience,” the next thing you know, there it would be, all the patience I needed. I was so wrong!
I had to drive about 15 kilometers to get to work. Through farm country. What was that on the road ahead of me? They were farm tractors. Everyday they were there and I could not pass them! I said; "Lord! Please get those things moving!" “Did you not ask for patience? Well, this is how you learn!”
Some people don't learn quickly, or just forget a lesson learned, but I had now asked the Lord for more love, so I could love others more, than the love I felt at times for my brothers and sisters in the church.
You pray this or that way at times and then sort of forget about it. Not to worry, the Lord has a way of reminding you. I was at a Bible study when a woman that was not so lovable to me, came over to talk.
She gave me a hug and I had to give her a hug, the Lord said; “See if you can love this person, the next one will be easier.” And so it was!
And so, Lord, we want to forgive because we've been forgiven, where we don't know how to do that, where the flesh is just so loud and so stubborn. We just say, in the name of Jesus, the blood of Jesus is stronger. The power that is in us is greater than the power that is in the world. The Spirit is greater than the flesh. The cross is greater than the grave.
Mercy, triumphs, covet, judgment, let it be so in our lives. And so we forgive, Lord, anything, anyone that has wronged us, lord, if there's anything that needs to come to mind, would you bring it to mind right now so that we can be obedient and forgive? And we do that in Jesus name, in faith. And then, Lord, I pray for anyone who loves you in this room who has an emotional need, maybe one that's so deep they don't even think they can pray it out loud and ask for it. But you know, lord, you know.
You see. And so collectively, Lord, we lift up those among us, our brothers and sisters who we love, who are wrestling with deep hurts, with discouragement, with depression or anxiety or pain or hurt or shame, whatever it is, you know? And so we ask our heavenly Father, who we know loves us, father, would you provide what is needed? We release joy in the name of Jesus. Peace.
In the name of Jesus. Faith and hope in the name of Jesus. Strength in the name of Jesus. The energy of the Holy Spirit who works so powerfully in us. In the name of Jesus.
Lord, there are needs in this room that none of us can meet, but you can. And so we ask that you would do it, and we thank you for it. In faith. We love you, Lord. You're just so good.
And we bless you that you care about all these little things in our life. You're sovereign over galaxies, over the most distant regions of the universe, and yet you are concerned with our good here and now, with our relationships, with our state of mind, with the condition of our hearts. Who can fathom a God like that? And yet you are. So we just love you.
And we declare Your wonderful praise worthy above anything else else. We ask that you would inhabit our praises in this time, as we thank you just for who you are and for what You've done for us. We love you, Lord. In your name we pray. Amen.
And so, Lord, we want to forgive because we've been forgiven, where we don't know how to do that, where the flesh is just so loud and so stubborn. We just say, in the name of Jesus, the blood of Jesus is stronger. The power that is in us is greater than the power that is in the world. The Spirit is greater than the flesh. The cross is greater than the grave.
Mercy, triumphs, covet, judgment, let it be so in our lives. And so we forgive, Lord, anything, anyone that has wronged us, lord, if there's anything that needs to come to mind, would you bring it to mind right now so that we can be obedient and forgive? And we do that in Jesus's name, in faith. And then, Lord, I pray for anyone who loves you in this room who has an emotional need, maybe one that's so deep they don't even think they can pray it out loud and ask for it. But you know, lord, you know.
You see. And so collectively, Lord, we lift up those among us, our brothers and sisters who we love, who are wrestling with deep hurts, with discouragement, with depression or anxiety or pain or hurt or shame, whatever it is, you know? And so we ask our heavenly Father, who we know loves us, Father, would you provide what is needed? We release joy in the name of Jesus. Peace.
In the name of Jesus. Faith and hope in the name of Jesus. Strength in the name of Jesus. The energy of the Holy Spirit who works so powerfully in us. In the name of Jesus.
Lord, there are needs in this room that none of us can meet, but you can. And so we ask that you do it, and we thank you for it. In faith. We love you, Lord. You're just so good.
And we bless you that you care about all these little things in our life. You're sovereign over galaxies, over the most distant regions of the universe, and yet you are concerned with our good here and now, with our relationships, with our state of mind, with the condition of our hearts. Who can fathom a God like that? And yet you are. So we just love you.
And we declare Your wonderful praiseworthy above anything else else. We ask that You would inhabit our praises in this time, as we thank You just for who You are and for what You've done for us. We love you, Lord. In Your name, we pray. Amen.
Ask for peace if you need it. Ask for comfort if you need it. Ask for joy if you need it. Trust that you have a Heavenly Father who loves you. If you don't have that kind of relationship with God yet, and you want to, you can.
You can. He would love you to be part of his family. He would love you to have a life oriented around Him so that he can bless you that way. And if you want that, come and talk to me or BJ after the service. We'll talk and pray with you and we'll take that next step together.
And lastly, forgiveness. Man, if there's someone you need to forgive, do it. And if it seems impossible and you don't know how, bring that need to your Heavenly Father. Say, lord, I don't know how to forgive this person, but I want to, because I know you've forgiven me. I want to forgive as You've forgiven me.
Help me to do it, Lord, and then just in faith in your own heart. Just pray, lord, I forgive them. In Jesus's name, by the power of the Spirit, I forgive them and let it go. And I believe he'll empower you to do that. You may need to do it again tomorrow, but then do it tomorrow.
You may need to do it again the next day, then do it again the next day. But we must forgive. This is not a recommendation from the Lord Jesus. This is a command from the One who has forgiven us of the unforgivable. So we must obey.
And if we understand the Gospel, we will feel compelled to obey. Let's pray together. Would you bow your head and close your eyes? Jesus, thank you so much for Your word. And thank You for the truth of Your word.
And thank you that every single one of us has a reason to praise you this evening, a reason to be thankful, a reason to call ourselves blessed because we have been forgiven an unforgivable debt. The slate has been wiped clean with Your blood. And You've brought us into Your family, adopted us as sons and daughters. And when you look at us, you see us the way you see your Son Jesus spotless and blameless robed in his righteousness, not with a righteousness of our own, but a righteousness given to us by the generosity of Jesus. And so we thank you for that.
And we confess. We are blessed. We are blessed beyond measure. Lord, we could sing a thousand songs for 100 days, and I'll put a dent in how much we owe you for what You've done for us. We owe you an unpayable debt for what You've done for us, but you don't even ask us to repay it. All you ever say is, just be mine. Just be mine. Belong to me. Be my son. Be my daughter. And so, we thank you that we have no burden, no burden of shame, no burden of guilt. We're just forgiven. We're just clean.
So, Lord, I just pray for anyone here who doesn't experience emotionally that reality. Father, I pray that You would do it by Your spirit even now, that You would lift shame where there are people who know and comprehend the gospel, but the shame is just never lifted, for whatever reason. Would you do that? In Jesus' name?
Would you bring freedom, Lord, and a reminder of the power of Your blood and the power of Your forgiveness that you didn't make us good and then challenge us to hold on to it? You robed us in the righteousness of Jesus, and we stand on that. We find our identity in that. And we cannot lose that, much as we may try sometimes in our stubbornness and our foolishness and our rebelliousness. And yet Your righteousness stands unshakable, unchanged.
So, thank you for doing that for us, God. And I pray that the weight of that would fall upon us, Lord, so that all the petty quarrels we have in our minds of why we shouldn't have to forgive him, why we shouldn't have to forgive her, would fade away in the glorious light of what you have done for us. And we would feel the weight of understanding. There's just no comparison. It's such foolishness to compare what anyone has done to us to what we have done to you
Are you living in the fear of the Lord? In one of my favorite passages in the Bible, jJsus tells his disciples in Matthew six, and I put it on your outlines. I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing? Consider the birds of the sky.
They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than they? Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying? Why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow.
They don't labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you? You of little faith, so don't worry saying, what will we eat? Or what will we drink?
Or what will we wear? For the Gentiles, the nonbelievers eagerly seek all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be provided for you. Jesus was giving his disciples the promise that the Church was experiencing in Acts, chapter nine.
It's the promise that if we make our lives all about living for Jesus, our Heavenly Father will provide everything we need. In Matthew 6, Jesus talks about practical, material needs. But the rest of the New Testament will make it clear that God's promise and provision include all of our emotional needs as well. If we live our lives in the fear of the Lord, God will provide the encouragement, the comfort, the strength, the joy, the peace, the boldness that we need. The early Church found it to be true, and I promise it's true for you and me today as well.
So, if you are living for Jesus as your highest priority and you have any emotional need, ask your Heavenly Father to meet it. Ask him, and by the Holy Spirit, the comforter. He will, he will. Make a note of this. Those who live in the fear of the Lord will be encouraged by the Holy Spirit.
Those who live in the fear of the Lord will be encouraged by the Holy Spirit. Lynn asked the worship team to come up and get ready to lead us in just a minute. But I want to wrap up by just asking you a couple of these questions again. Are you living in the fear of the Lord? Is your life oriented around Jesus, or is he a supplement to everything else in your life?
Are you more concerned with pleasing Him than anyone or anything else? If not, repent, change, and do things differently. Do the things you know he's calling you to do. Stop doing the things you know he's calling you to stop doing. If Jesus is not the center of your life, then what I'm about to say is not for you, because he doesn't make this offer to you.
But if Jesus is the center of your life, I want to remind you that he promises to meet your needs, materially and emotionally. And so if there's anything you need, I want to encourage you to stand on that promise tonight. Say, Lord, Lord, I'm experiencing a need in this area, practical or emotional, and just say, Lord, I just need this. Would you please meet that need? He will.
He will. But the thing that just breaks my heart is the thought that anyone would walk in here this evening with a burden, having a deep emotional need. Never ask the Heavenly Father that loves you to meet it and walk out of here with that same need, because you don't need to. You don't need to. Your Heavenly Father loves you so much, man, does he love you.
And he loves to meet the deep needs of our heart. So if you choose to leave tonight without getting that need met. It's not because you don't have a Heavenly Father who loves you. You do it's because you won't ask. And so I urge you to ask.
And he will do what the Lord had told him to do take the Gospel to the Gentiles and plant churches with Saul. The lightning rod for controversy out of the picture, we read in verses 31 so the church throughout all Judea, Galilee and Samaria had peace and was strengthened. The church was strengthened by hearing what the Lord had done in Saul and seeing it firsthand. And while the persecution hadn't stopped, the intensity of it had stopped without Paul Zeal to spearhead it. The church also benefited from some political reshuffling.
With Pilot being ousted as governor and Herod Agrippa's authority expanding, he restricted and dramatically lessened the power of the Sanhedrin, meaning they didn't have the authority to persecute the church to the same degree as before. This is the first time in the Bible that the church is referred to in the singular, despite it being geographically dispersed across multiple congregations. The teaching of Scripture is there is that there's one church and it's made up of all those who belong to Jesus and follow him as Lord. We'll often refer to this as the "Big C" or "Uppercase C" Church because within the "Big C" Church there are many Little Sea or Lowercase Sea churches. Like Gospel City.
We are a little Sea church that is part of the "Big C" church. And that concludes today's episode of Sesame Street. Then we read Living in the Fear of the Lord. Would you underline this in your Bibles? Living in the fear of the Lord and - also underline- encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.
The original Greek tells us that the believers in the church were choosing to live in fear of the Lord, and because of that, the Holy Spirit was encouraging and comforting them. The idea is that when believers submit themselves to the lordship of Jesus and live their lives honoring Him, rightly. The Holy Spirit provides comfort, encouragement, boldness, whatever is needed. God's Word tells us that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom because the fear of the Lord puts everything in life in its rightful place. It causes you to see things as they truly are and prioritize things as they should be.
A fear of the Lord gives us an understanding that he is God and we are not afraid of the Lord. Frees one from the fear of man because you are more concerned about offending God than you are about offending man or the culture or the people around you. You're more concerned with God's approval than the approval of the culture. You're more concerned with honoring Jesus than you are with honoring the government. Fear of the Lord causes you to honor Jesus in His Word as the truth, allowing you to see through the lies and deceptions of the day and think clearly.
The fear of the Lord allows you to view your life from the perspective of eternity, emboldening you to serve the Lord, suffer for the Lord, and even, if necessary, die for the Lord. A fear of the Lord helps you to prioritize your life with wisdom, making decisions that will be eternally profitable, rather than just doing whatever brings satisfaction in the moment. And when you have individual believers who are living in the fear of the Lord that form churches, that live in the fear of the Lord, that is led by elders who walk in the fear of the Lord given, god can begin to do some amazing things. But we must ask ourselves the question am I living in the fear of the Lord? Please hear me on this.
I'm not asking you if you love the Lord and think he's great. I'm asking you if you're living in the fear of the Lord. Is what he wants you to do, is how he wants you to spend your life tomorrow and the day after. The single biggest factor in how you make decisions in your life are you more concerned with his approval than anything else's, including your own flesh? Are you more concerned with pleasing Him than yourself?
He was an encourager. And in this moment he goes to meet and speak with Saul and encourages him in the Lord and vouches for him to Peter and James, the two apostles. Saul tells us in Galatians that he met him in Jerusalem. Apparently, Barnabas had heard from people he knew and trusted that Saul had been preaching the Gospel in Syria and was for real. Saul was coming and going with them in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord.
The brethren in Jerusalem met with Saul and fellowshiped with him. And what I wouldn't have given to listen in on some of those theological conversations. Inevitably, Saul began preaching publicly and debating in synagogues around the city of Jerusalem. We read, he conversed and debated with the Hellenistic Jews, but they tried to kill him. The same thing happened again.
Saul preached the Gospel. The stubborn Hellenistic Jews couldn't refute him, so they went to their standard Plan B of trying to murder him. This was the original cancel culture, it seems. In this, we see another beautiful connection between Saul and the ministry of Stephen, the man who spearheaded the persecution of the Church. Saul was now preaching the Gospel to the same men who had brought Stephen before the Sanhedrin on charges of blasphemy.
It's an astonishing turn of events. The ministry of Stephen to the Hellenistic Jews is taken up, at least temporarily, by the man who contributed to his martyrdom. I think it's more than possible that Saul felt a burden to continue that specific evangelistic work precisely because Stephen had been engaged in it up till the day of his death. If the Hellenistic Jews hated Stephen for preaching the Gospel to them, how much more must they have hated Saul, who preached the same Gospel but was also guilty of betraying them by switching sides? He had once worked with them against believers like Stephen, but now here he was preaching the same Jesus that Stephen had preached now because they had seen this movie before, we read when the brothers found out, they took him down to Caesaria and sent him off to Tarsus.
According to Galatians 11/8, Paul stay in Jerusalem lasted just 15 days. And I suspect it was a bit of a mixed bag because on the one hand, the Church would have been thrilled by what the Lord had done in Saul's life. On the other hand, he begins stirring up trouble for them almost the second that he rolls into town. He had made trouble for the Church in Jerusalem by persecuting them, and now, three years later, he was back to make trouble for the Church by preaching the Gospel. You're going to find this is a pattern with Paul.
He's generally either starting revivals or starting riots. Most of the time, it's one of the two or both. In Acts 22, Paul tells us that the Lord Jesus came to him in a vision and warned him about the plot to assassinate him. Paul wanted to stay and try and lead the Hellenistic Jews to salvation, but the Lord told him specifically they would reject his message. Instead, he was to take the Gospel to the Gentiles.
When Saul shared his vision with the brothers, they told him, you need to obey the Lord and get out of Jerusalem. So the brothers took Saul to the Mediterranean Seaport of Caesarea and sent them off to Tarsus, his hometown in the province of Kilikha, which is located on the southern coast of present-day Turkey. It took persecution by Saul to get the church to take the Gospel beyond Jerusalem, and it took the persecution of Saul to get him out of Jerusalem and back on track with his calling to take the Gospel to the Gentiles. Saul will disappear from the narrative for a few years and the next few chapters of the Book of Acts. During those years, he traveled around the province of Cilicia and the neighboring country of Syria, where he spent three years following his conversion.
Look at all the people that I've passed that I've swam farther than them why are they a fool? Because it doesn't matter how many people you can swim further. There's no way in the world you're swimming to Hawaii. It's just not going to happen. Congratulations.
You're going to die a little bit further out to zee than them. Way to go. It's still an impossible standard. Not only do we all fall short of God's standard, but we fall short by sinning against Him in egregious blasphemous. Ways.
This is what I mean when I say that he created us and we disowned Him. He made us to know and love Him and be loved by Him, and we rejected Him. He is the God of the universe. And we looked at Him and said, I would be a better God of my life than you, so I will be God over my life rather than you. What possible words could I find to express the gravity of such cosmic treason?
In most countries where the death penalty still exists, treason carries the death penalty. You get that for betraying your country. What should you get for betraying God?
There's no crime that a human being can commit against another human being. That is worse than what each of us has done to God. Quite simply, we cannot compare sinning against another person to sinning against the God who created us. Those sins cannot be compared on any scale. They cannot compare.
But it gets worse, because not only did God forgive us our sins, our impossible debt, but he did so at the cost of the life of Jesus. Jesus received the punishment that we should have received in our place. And what Jesus tells his disciples in this parable is, how do you think my Father in heaven who watched me, his only begotten son, suffer and die so that you could be forgiven? How do you think he feels when you want to accept that forgiveness that I paid for with my body and my blood, but you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters? How do you think my Father feels about that?
And Jesus'point is you don't want to find out. You don't want to find out. You see, the reality is this when we refuse to forgive, it begs the question, do we really understand the gospel? Do we really understand what Jesus has done for us? Do we really understand that we rejected Him after he had done all that for us?
That he would say, hey, I died for you so that you could be forgiven and brought into my family? And we still said in many different ways, yeah, I'd still rather be my own God. I love myself more.
Amen. Because if we do understand the gospel, we will understand why we must forgive it's. Because whatever they've done to me cannot compare to what I have done to God. And whatever I need to forgive them for cannot compare to the debt that I owed God, that he forgave me through the body and blood of Jesus. We don't get to accept the forgiveness of God and withhold forgiveness from others.
Would you write this down? We are commanded to forgive without limits because God has forgiven us without limits. We are commanded to forgive without limits because God has forgiven us without limits. This radical concept flowed from the heart of Stephen, who, as he was being stoned to death, cried out in prayer, lord, do not hold the sin against them. Stephen had already forgiven them for murdering him, even as they were murdering him.
That's the effect the gospel can have on our hearts if we'll embrace the implications of the forgiveness we've received through Jesus. I always feel obligated to say this when we talk about forgiveness. Please know that forgiveness and restoration are two very different things. Forgiveness is how you view them in your mind and in your soul. When you forgive them, you no longer view them as owing you a debt.
You no longer wish ill on them. You pray for their good. You understand that justice was done to Jesus. Restoration is how the relationship is repaired. If it can be, it should be.
And that's act one of the Parable Jesus continues now into Act Two. That servant went out and found one of his fellow servants, who owed him 100 Daenerys. Soon after being released from his unsurmountable debt, the servant tracks down one of his coworkers, who owes him the equivalent of about $12,200. Suffice it to say, that's a whole lot less than seven or $78 billion. I hope you're tracking with me.
He grabbed him, started choking him, and said, pay what you owe. At this, his fellow servant fell down and began begging him, be patient with me and I will pay you back. We're supposed to go, oh. The same situation is playing itself out again, but there are two big differences. The first servant's debt was impossibly large.
The second servant's debt is not. It's a reasonable amount that he could pay off in less than a year. The other difference is that the first servant has been forgiven his impossibly large debt. Everyone hearing Jesus teach this would have been thinking the same thing that we're thinking when we hear the story. We all know what's supposed to happen next, because the word choice of the second servant is almost identical to the word choice of the first servant, and it should trigger in the mind of the first servant, oh, my goodness, he's me.
Everyone understands this, which is why it's so shocking when Jesus continues. But he wasn't willing. Instead, he went and threw him into prison until he could pay what was owed. Everyone hearing the story would have been appalled, appalled by the actions of the first servant, because he did not extend his coworker even the smallest measure of the scandalous mercy the King had shown him. When the other servants saw what had taken place, they were deeply distressed and went and reported to their Master everything that had happened.
Those who were aware of the size of both debts and the generous forgiveness of the King were appalled by the first servant's lack of grace. And so they told the King about it, and he demanded to speak with the first servant again. Then, after he had summoned him, his Master said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn't you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? And because he was angry, his Master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed, which he never could.
So also, my Heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart. Jesus was telling his disciples that those who belong to his kingdom must forgive others. And he explains why. Through this parable, you see, that God has forgiven our impossibly large debt. He's a perfect God, and his standard is perfection.
And here's the thing about perfection. When the standard is a perfect life, you can't fix things after you sin even once. Because the standard is perfection. You've fallen short of God's standard in a way you could never repay or repair because you can't go back to the start of your life and try again. And even if you could, in every possible lifetime, you sin again.
Here's the thing about perfection, we want to look at one another and validate ourselves by saying, well, I'm better than him. I'm better than her. I've shared it before. Most people think, if there is a heaven, when I get there, all I have to be able to do is point out ten people who are worse than me, and I'll get in, oh, I know ten jerks I can easily name that get my way into heaven. But the standard is not jerks.
The standard is Jesus. And that's the problem. I love the analogy. It's like the standard is swimming in Hawaii. How foolish is the man or woman who swims a mile offshore, treads water for a minute, turns around, looks at all the other people giving up and drowning, and goes, oh man, I am doing so good.
Three years after his astonishing conversion, Saul travels to Jerusalem seeking fellowship with the Apostles and the Church. His initial attempts are rejected, as the brothers wrestle with fear and the prospect of walking through some very difficult forgiveness.
Transcription (automatically-generated):
Acts, chapter nine. Today, in our previous study, we witnessed one of the most astonishing transformations the world has ever seen, as Saul, the man leading the persecution of the early Church and possessed by the singular goal of destroying it, encountered the resurrected and glorified Jesus on the road to Damascus. Three days later, Saul had moved from hating the name of Jesus to loving the name of Jesus. And the man who had sought to eradicate the Gospel began publicly proclaiming it. Saul would spend the next three years in the region around Damascus, in modern day Syria, growing in his faith and in his knowledge of the Lord Jesus, fellowshiping with him in prayer, preaching the gospel and making disciples.
At the end of those three years, the local religious and political officials conspired to murder Saul, but he learned of the plot and was aided in his escape by his disciples. He then headed for Jerusalem and his first encounter with the apostles and the Church located there. Let's pick things up. In verses 26 we read, when he arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him since they did not believe he was a disciple. Can you blame them?
While they had no doubt heard the rumors of Saul's conversion, they weren't yet willing to bet their lives on those rumors being true. They were not aware of the miracle that had taken place in the life of Saul. And I think there might have been another dynamic in play as well. Not only was there this question of do we believe that Saul is actually changed, but there's the dynamic that says, even if he has, do I want a fellowship with him? Do I want to be his brother?
Do I want that? There's this issue of forgiveness that I suspect the brethren in Jerusalem would have been wrestling with. And I say that because it's so easy for us to read things in the Bible and read things in the book of Acts and forget that the names in this book are people. They were real people, just like you and me, flesh and blood, like us. And Saul's return to Jerusalem after three years must have stirred up some deep, deep pain in the brothers and sisters there.
How many of you know it's a lot easier to forgive someone when they leave and never come back?
The bliss the early Church had enjoyed had been shattered by Saul. He was the reason everyone had to flee, reducing the Jerusalem Church from tens of thousands to just the apostles and their families. They had lost friends and family members to prison and even death because of Saul. They had watched him drag people they loved away in chains. They knew the families that he had destroyed and torn apart.
They had to navigate what to do with the children whose parents had been killed for blasphemy under Saul's persecution, which is why it's not surprising to learn that the imperfect tense of the original Greek word translated tried suggests there were repeated attempts made by Saul to meet with the apostles that were rebuffed. As the apostles wrestled with Saul's attempts to meet with them. I wonder which of Jesus' teachings played in their hearts and minds much as they do ours today. Matthew 18 tells us about a time when Jesus was teaching his disciples about how believers are to work through conflicts and offenses. And I put the whole passage on your outlines for you in Matthew 18/21.
Three years after his astonishing conversion, Saul travels to Jerusalem seeking fellowship with the Apostles and the Church. His initial attempts are rejected, as the brothers wrestle with fear and the prospect of walking through some very difficult forgiveness.
Acts, chapter nine. Today, in our previous study, we witnessed one of the most astonishing transformations the world has ever seen, as Saul, the man leading the persecution of the early Church and possessed by the singular goal of destroying it, encountered the resurrected and glorified Jesus on the road to Damascus. Three days later, Saul had moved from hating the name of Jesus to loving the name of Jesus. And the man who had sought to eradicate the Gospel began publicly proclaiming it. Saul would spend the next three years in the region around Damascus, in modern-day Syria, growing in his faith and in his knowledge of the Lord Jesus, fellowshiping with him in prayer, preaching the gospel, and making disciples.
At the end of those three years, the local religious and political officials conspired to murder Saul, but he learned of the plot and was aided in his escape by his disciples. He then headed for Jerusalem and his first encounter with the apostles and the Church located there. Let's pick things up. In verses 26 we read, when he arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him since they did not believe he was a disciple. Can you blame them?
While they had no doubt heard the rumors of Saul's conversion, they weren't yet willing to bet their lives on those rumors being true. They were not aware of the miracle that had taken place in the life of Saul. And I think there might have been another dynamic in play as well. Not only was there this question of do we believe that Saul is actually changed, but there's the dynamic that says, even if he has, do I want a fellowship with him? Do I want to be his brother?
Do I want that? There's this issue of forgiveness that I suspect the brethren in Jerusalem would have been wrestling with. And I say that because it's so easy for us to read things in the Bible and read things in the book of Acts and forget that the names in this book are people. They were real people, just like you and me, flesh and blood, like us. And Saul's return to Jerusalem after three years must have stirred up some deep, deep pain in the brothers and sisters there.
How many of you know it's a lot easier to forgive someone when they leave and never come back?
The bliss the early Church had enjoyed had been shattered by Saul. He was the reason everyone had to flee, reducing the Jerusalem Church from tens of thousands to just the apostles and their families. They had lost friends and family members to prison and even death because of Saul. They had watched him drag people they loved away in chains. They knew the families that he had destroyed and torn apart.
They had to navigate what to do with the children whose parents had been killed for blasphemy under Saul's persecution, which is why it's not surprising to learn that the imperfect tense of the original Greek word translated tried suggests there were repeated attempts made by Saul to meet with the apostles that were rebuffed. As the apostles wrestled with Saul's attempts to meet with them. I wonder which of Jesus teachings played in their hearts and minds much as they do ours today. Matthew 18 tells us about a time when Jesus was teaching his disciples about how believers are to work through conflicts and offenses. And I put the whole passage on your outlines for you in Matthew 18/21.
Assigning four groups of four soldiers who each would have taken a six-hour shift on a rotating basis to make sure they were alert at all times. I don't think Herod was concerned that Christians would storm the jail and try and free Peter. I think he was more concerned about another supernatural jailbreak of the sort we read about in Acts, chapter five. The apostles, unquestionably, would have had a reputation of being supernaturally empowered and protected by God, and Herod didn't want to take any chances. And that's where we're going to need to end today on that cliffhanger.
If you can't put two and two together, this is a serious situation that Peter is in. James has already been beheaded and now Peter's there. They're going after the leaders of the church and the church is obviously very concerned and we'll see what happens next week. Two reminders in closing. Firstly, everything that manifests in the outer man flows from the inner man.
Trying to change the outer man without addressing the inner man is pointless. You can fake it for a while, but it will not last. It will not last. So, I just want to invite you in this coming time of communion and worship and prayer, if there's something in your life that you just don't like about who you are, about how you think, about how you act, talk to the Lord about it. Say, Lord, just change my heart.
Can I tell you; the Lord loves that prayer. He loves that prayer when we stop blaming everybody else for what's coming out of us, he loves that prayer. When we stop saying, I'll fix myself, and we go to Him and we say, lord, I can't fix this. I need you to do a work in my heart. If you're doing that for the first time or for the millionth time, your heavenly Father is available to you.
He's available and he loves a prayer that is essentially saying, please make me more like Jesus, please do it. Lord. If your life is not currently marked by gracious generosity, ask the Lord to change your heart and then obey Jesus. And if you want to grow in spiritual maturity, be active in the faith family of the church, ask the Lord to fill you with His Spirit every day, and get in His Word. Get in His Word, make a plan and then do it.
So, let's pray. Would you bow your head and close your eyes? Lord Jesus, thank you so much for your Word. Thank you for the truth of Your Word, that it speaks to us where we need to hear it most. Lord and Lord, we do just confess that our default condition doesn't lead us to become more like you.
But you've done a miracle by putting Your Spirit in us. And we know that the work of your Spirit is always to try and make us more like Jesus. You're always inviting us to accept that invitation. You're always working through all things to make us more like Jesus for our good. Do a work within us what we really need is some heart surgery by Your spirit. So we invite you to come and do that, Lord.
And Lord, we also ask that you would grow us in spiritual maturity, grow us in our understanding and knowledge of you. Grow us in our love for one another, grow us in our understanding of the work that you're doing in our lives and what it means to follow you. We're proud to be called Christians, not because of anything we've done, but because we bear Your name. And so help us to be people who talk about you all the time. Help us to be people who are just obsessed with you and with Your goodness Your kindness and Your grace. Give us that reputation, Lord. We love you. We're thankful for you. In your name, we pray. Amen.
Would he miraculously survive? They sent him off to exile on the island of Patmos. The martyrdom of the apostles is one of the great evidence of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus because all those apostles were given the opportunity to recant, to take back, and to withdraw their testimony that Jesus had risen from the dead and was God. In other words, all they had to do was say, okay, this has gone far enough, I admit it, we made it up. Jesus didn't really die, didn't really rise from the dead, their life would have been spared.
They didn't die surrounded by the other apostles or by brothers and sisters in the faith supporting them. They died alone. And to a man they died saying, Jesus is alive and he's God. And you might think, well, people believe all kinds of things, and people are willing to die for all kinds of things. That doesn't mean they're true.
Jeff, you're right. People are willing to die for all kinds of things they believe are true. But people aren't willing to die for things they know aren't true. And the claim of the apostles was not that they simply believed the resurrection was true. Their claim was that they had seen the resurrected Jesus, they had touched him and shared meals with him.
This is the difference. They were in a position to know whether or not Jesus had risen from the dead. They knew whether they had made the whole thing up or they had really seen him. They knew. And people don't die for lies.
And what did holding those beliefs gain them before their deaths? Power? Wealth, prestige, political influence, fame? None of the above. The Bible didn't become the bestselling book of all time until they were all dead.
Their beliefs got them thrown out of their synagogues, banned from the temple, excommunicated from Jewish society, family members and even spouses disowned them. They lost their jobs, they lost their income, they lost personal property, they were thrown in jail, they had to flee for their lives, and they were even killed for speaking the name of Jesus. Not only did they have no motive to lie, but they had every reason to come clean if they were lying. Every reason because it would have brought an end to their suffering and the threat of death. And yet, to a man, when facing death alone, they all died with the same testimony Jesus is alive and he's got I can't say otherwise because I know the truth.
And there's only one logical explanation for their behavior. They were telling the truth. They were telling the truth. Verse three it says Herod saw that the execution of James pleased the Jews, so he proceeded to arrest Peter too during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The Festival of Unleavened Bread is the weeklong time of celebration that immediately follows the day of Passover.
I'll ask the worship team to come up after the arrest. He put him in prison and assigned four squads of four soldiers each to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover. Seeing the positive reaction from the people to the execution of James, Herod Agrippa imprisons Peter, and his plan is to execute him before the people at the end of the weeklong festivities. Because the law forbade executions during the week of celebrations, he chooses this time because Jerusalem is going to be packed with pilgrims, thereby ensuring maximum viewership of Peter's execution. He takes guarding Peter extremely seriously.
Well, in his late 20s, though, things get a little bit better because Caligula, his old buddy, ends up succeeding Tiberius.
And when Caligula rises to power in Rome and 37 Ad, he calls up his buddy Agrippa and puts him in charge of southern Syria. He even allows Agrippa to use the term king in those parts. Two years later, he expanded Agrippa's territory south to include Galilee and Perez. And then when Claudius, Agrippa's other childhood friend, succeeds Caligula, he expands Agrippa's territory further south to include Samaria and Judea. And it is this Herod Agrippa that we read of here in Acts Chapter Twelve, a man tenuously holding on to power, desperate to keep his station among the elite.
And in order to do so, there were two non-negotiables. If you were a territorial leader for the Romans, if you were a governor or a prefect, and if you oversaw any geographical region, there were two things you had to do. You've got to keep the peace and you've got to collect the taxes. You failed to do one of those two things you're done. The problem was that the Jews were the hardest people to rule in the Empire because they were fanatical about their religion, strictly devoted to their laws, and literally all willing to die rather than worship Caesar.
And the Romans realized this, but they had this egotistical dream of ruling over all peoples, and they realized, listen, we're going to have to kill all the Jews before they'll actually submit to us. So everyone else in the empire had to make the pinch, offering once a year to Caesar and speaking the words Caesar is God. The Jews were the only ones who had an exception because they would all die rather than do that. And these are the people that Herod Agrippa had to rule over. But he had an in.
He had an in. He had strategically married Miriam, a Jewish woman from a legendary Hebrew family line. And he was always looking for ways to ingratiate himself with the people he was ruling over the Jews and maintain their loyalty. So he even tried to live like a Jew, pretty half-heartedly. I mean, it's hard to say that and then has ten wives and kill your sons and stuff like that.
But this is why we read is that he violently attacked some who belong to the Church. You see, he picked up the vibe that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem were opposed to the Christians. The religious Jews hated this sect of Christianity. And so to try and ingratiate himself with them, Herod Agrippa decides, I'm going to start taking out the leadership of the Jerusalem Church to score points with the Jews that I'm ruling over to buy their loyalty. And that's why we read that he executed James, John's brother, with the sword.
The first thing he does is order the beheading of the apostle James, brother of the apostle John, and one of Jesus' three closest friends among the disciples. In Mark 10/39, Jesus told James and John, you will drink the cup I drink and you will be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with. At the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples that the cup represented his blood. And we know that the baptism Jesus was speaking of was his death. And those words of Jesus were partly fulfilled in the martyrdom of James.
For the sake of clarity, I must mention that the James who wrote the New Testament Book of James is not this James, not James the Apostle. That James who wrote the book is not the brother of John, but the brother of Jesus, and was not one of the twelve disciples, though he was a pillar of the Jerusalem Church. This James is the first of the apostles to be martyred before the end of the first century AD. All of them will die martyrs' deaths except for John. And they tried to kill John by boiling him in oil.
As we keep going into there, verse 1 says about that time. This is somewhere between 41 and 44 Ad, about ten years after the founding of the church. In Acts chapter two, King Herod violently attacked some who belonged to the church. And if you've read the Gospels, it can be a bit confusing when you see the name King Herod pop up here in Acts, because you might think, isn't he the one who tried to kill Jesus when Jesus was an infant? Didn't he die back in Matthew chapter two?
And I'll do my best to bring some clarity to this, but I have to warn you, this is soap opera stuff. This is juicy history and would make a great TV show that believers would probably have no business watching. The Herods were a political family. Herod. The Great ruled Judea from 47 BC.
In 39 BC. He was dubbed King of the Jews by Anthony, Octavius, and the Roman Senate and given authority over all of Palestine because he had done such a good job in Judea. His nickname is likely part of the reason why he was so offended when wise men Magi showed up one day from Babylon looking for a child who fulfilled an ancient prophecy that he would become, King of the Jews. Herod's like, well, this is a little awkward seeing as I'm the King of the Jews and if you're familiar with the Nativity, then you know how Herod the Great responded. He ordered the slaughter of all the male infants in and around Bethlehem.
Jesus was, of course, at that time safely in hiding with his parents in Egypt. Herod the Great died a few years after the birth of Jesus, and he could see his death coming. Concerned there wouldn't be sufficient grieving in Israel at his passing, he arrested a group of the most beloved civil and religious leaders in Israel and imprisoned them with a command to execute them upon his own death, because he figured at least that way there would be sadness across the whole land at the time when I die. Unfortunately, the men in charge didn't go through with his plans. When he died, Herod the Great married at least ten women, including one named Miriamny.
She was a Hazmat, which means she was a Jew who descended from a famed line of Hebrews connected to a family known as the Maccabees. The Hazmanians and the Maccabees were legendary among the Jewish people because both families had led rebellions against empires and freed Israel for a time from foreign influence. Miriamney gave birth to a son named Aristobulus. Aristobulus was one of at least nine sons that Herod the Great had between all the wives, and he was one of at least three that he had executed. Before his death, though, Aristobulus grew and fathered a son named Agrippa.
So Agrippa is the grandson of Herod, the Great. Agrippa's mother could see the writing on the wall. She was like, this family is messed up. And she didn't want her son to end up being murdered by her own family. So when he was just four years old, she shipped him off to be raised in Rome, where he grew up among the elites and became friends with future leaders like Gaius, better known as Caligula and Claudius.
Into his 20s, Agrippa seems to basically have been the life of the party. A lot of friends in high places, very charismatic. But he eventually burned through all the family money. But he loved living the high life. He didn't own a business, didn't hold a political office, and so this was a problem.
And so he was constantly involved in scams and things like borrowing money from politicians in Rome and then hightailing it off to Palestine. When he couldn't pay his debts, he got word that Emperor Tiberius was looking for him because so many people in Rome were complaining about him being delinquent on his loans. And when he heard Tiberius was looking for him, he started talking trash about Tiberius, who's the Emperor at the time. So Tiberius has him thrown in jail. Well, in his late 20s, though, things get a little bit better because Caligula, his old buddy,
It was a big deal that gentile believers were helping Jewish believers. It seems pretty clear to me that God was working through this famine to do a couple of things to humble the Jewish believers in Jerusalem who had to receive help from their gentile brethren.
And God was working through this famine to grow the love of those in Jerusalem for their brethren in Antioch. It was providential by God's grace. And I'm struck not only by the gracious generosity of the believers in Antioch but also by their faith. When they heard Agabus's prophecy of the coming famine, they responded like people who actually believe they have a loving heavenly father who will care for their practical needs. They responded like people who actually believed what Jesus told his disciples if they sought first his kingdom and his righteousness, their heavenly father would take care of all their practical needs.
And I can't help wondering what the response of the church today would be like in a similar scenario if someone stood up and said, there's a famine coming to Canada, and we could all sense by the spirit that this was true, how would you respond? Would you panic? Would you think every man for himself? Buy gold, buy silver, find a gun, I love you all. It's been a good life. I'm going to build a cabin in the woods and ride this thing out, godspeed.
Or would you think, man, we better figure out how to get organized and make sure that all the brothers and sisters among us have their needs met, make sure they're taken care of. We've got to figure out how to really take care of each other and check on each other and share whatever needs to be shared to make sure that every need is met among us. I pray it's the latter. And because I love you, I always want to be truthful for you, truthful with you. If that's not your mentality now, if you don't practice gracious generosity now, you're not going to magically transform into someone who does when it's exponentially more difficult to do.
It's just not going to happen. Oh, I don't do it now, but maybe when it's harder to do, then I'll start doing it. Like, what? Really? That's just not how it works.
If your life isn't marked by gracious generosity now, ask the Lord to change your heart. Ask Him to change your heart. Look within yourself and say, I'm not characterized by gracious generosity, but I want to be, and I recognize I should be. Ask the Lord to change your heart, and then do your best to obey Him when you know what he's commanded you to do.
Verse 30. They did this. They took up an offering for the Jerusalem Church, sending it to the elders by means of Barnabas and Saul. Barnabas returns to Jerusalem, once again accompanying Saul as he meets with the elders of the Jerusalem church. This is the first time elders are mentioned in the context of a church in Scripture.
Jewish synagogues were originally led by elders, and that's likely where the model finds its roots. It bears repeating almost every time it comes up that eldership is the only model of church leadership in the New Testament. The only model. And when I say eldership, I am referring to a church being led by multiple elders who share authority and make important decisions together. That's the only church leadership model in the New Testament.
The New Testament does record one man, Paul, sometimes planting churches as the lone leader, but he always treats the task of appointing multiple elders with the highest urgency. That's always, like, a top priority for him. We got to get some elders, multiple elders appointed in this church. Following Saul's conversion and some shuffling among regional political leaders. The church in Jerusalem had enjoyed a time of relative peace for a few years, but that soon changed, as we shall see in chapter twelve.
To every question he replied in Latin, I am a Christian. This he proclaimed over and over again, instead of name, birthplace, nationality, and everything else, and not another word did the heathen hear from him. Consequently, the governor and his torturer strained every nerve against him so that when they could think of nothing else to do to him, they ended by pressing red-hot copper plates against the most sensitive parts of his body. These were burning. But Sanctus remained unbending and unyielding firm in his confession of faith, bedded and fortified by the heavenly fountain of the water of life that flows from the depths of Christ's being.
But his poor body was witnessed to what he had suffered. It was all one wound and bruised, bent up, and robbed of outward human shape. But suffering in that body, Christ accomplished the most glorious things, utterly defeating the adversary and proving as an example to the rest that where the Father's love is, nothing can frighten us. Where Christ's glory is, nothing can hurt us. I am a Christian.
In verses 27, it says in those days, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antiochus. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine throughout the Roman world. This took place during the reign of Claudius. These prophets were men gifted by God to speak on his behalf, sometimes regarding future events. In this instance, God gave a prophet named Agabus a message of warning that a severe famine was coming.
So he stood up and shared this message with the Church in one of their services. At this time, Egypt was the breadbasket of the region, but she had a poor harvest. History tells us in 45 Ad. That led to a severe grain shortage and sky. High prices.
This lines up with a historical famine that disproportionately affected Judea by 47 Ad. But I want you to notice how the church in Antioch responded to this news, and then we'll talk about why they responded this way. In verse 29, it says each of the disciples underline according to his ability and then underline the word determined, determined to send relief to the brothers and sisters who lived in Judea. The prophecy specified that this famine would affect all the Roman Empire, which would have included Antioch. However, their first thought and concern was for the believers in Jerusalem.
Why? Because that's how grateful they were for the gospel that had come to them from members of the Jerusalem church. They felt eternally indebted to them, and they were grateful for the opportunity to express their gratitude in a practical way. We talked earlier about the importance of being in the Word to help one grow into spiritual maturity. And last week we talked about how a hunger for Christian fellowship and a desire to know more about Jesus are evidences of true conversion.
I suggest we see another evidence here of genuine conversion and spiritual growth in Christ's gracious generosity. Here's a message a lot of people don't want to hear. When a person is genuinely saved, the whole person is saved, and Jesus becomes Lord of the whole person, including the wallet. That's just the truth. I'm not really concerned if it offends you.
When it comes to our money, the question is simply the same as every other area of life what do you want me to do, Lord? What do you want me to do? So write this down and we'll talk more about it. The Spirit works to produce gracious generosity in believers. Gracious generosity in believers.
We saw the Jerusalem church display gracious generosity toward their own congregation meeting needs among them from people who had come into the city planning to stay for just a week for Pentecost. We saw gracious generosity as the Jerusalem church gave to meet the needs of widows and orphans among them. And here we see that same gracious generosity at work in Antiochus now extending from one church to another church.
We've got all these people here, we got to do something really big. This is the number one priority, we have to build a building. But his first response, that there's nothing wrong with buildings, but it's not the most important thing. His first response was, we need more mature teachers, we need to get these people discipled as soon as possible. We need to teach them to obey Jesus.
That is the most important thing. The most pressing need from Barnabas' perspective and the solution provided by the Lord, was the Apostle Paul, who partnered with Barnabas and together they taught as many people as they could, as often as they could for a year. If you are a new or young believer, this is one of the things you most desperately need. You need to be in the Word, you need to be taught the Word, you need to be growing in your knowledge and understanding of Jesus. So that you can grow in spiritual maturity as quickly as possible.
Let me encourage you with this. I have seen believers grow into more mature Christians in three years than people who have been in church for three decades for one reason. Those people spent three decades in a church that did not prioritize the Word and did not encourage them to be in the Word in a deep, regular way themselves. I've seen it happen many, many times. I've seen a three-year-old believer know far more about the Lord than a 30-year-old believer, because they were in the Word, just being saturated by the teaching of God's Word.
So if you're a new or young believer, listen. You can go to our website; and find a series I taught through all four of the Gospels. Get to know Jesus. Priority number one. There are 129 messages. It'll keep you busy for a while.
Do that. Start it, go through it. Listen to a message a day. On the way to work, on the way home, you'll be astounded by how much you will grow in your faith and in your understanding of Jesus. The three essential ingredients for growing Christians into maturity were all functioning in Antioch during this time.
The first essential ingredient is active membership in a local church, being part of regular fellowship, being around your brothers and sisters, sharing life with them, serving them, and loving one another. The second ingredient is filled with the Spirit. They were praying regularly and faithfully and being filled with the Holy Spirit. And then thirdly, they were being taught the Word. If you're a new believer or a young believer, and you commit to being actively involved with a church family in a biblical way, if you commit to pray, seek the Lord regularly, be filled with the Spirit, and you're being taught the Word regularly, you're going to grow guaranteed.
I guarantee it. Barnabas is such a great example of how God uses different people to play different roles. He was a great man. But in terms of history, Paul's ministry goes down as unquestionably more significant in the eyes of historians. And yet there would have been no Apostle Paul apart from brothers like Barnabas, for without him, Paul would not have been accepted by the apostles in Jerusalem.
And without him, he would not have been brought to Antioch into the very center of God's move among the Gentiles. God's work is accomplished wherever obedient men and women care more about advancing the kingdom of God than they do about their own ego, comfort, and desires. The Jew-Gentile mix in the Antioch Church was seemingly not an issue at this stage. And again, this was likely because they were just used to living together in the same city and sharing the same streets. From the very beginning, the ethos of the Church in Antioch was completely different from the Church in Jerusalem.
Continuing in verse 26, we read the disciples were first called Christians, underlying Christians at Antioch. It's a term that basically means you're all about Christ, just as those who were all about King Herod were called Herodians in Matthew and Mark's Gospels.
When you become a Christian, you have to confront your sin. You can't become a Christian without recognizing that you are a sinner and you have wronged God. You and then when you're young in the faith, you notice the wrong thoughts that you have. You notice the wrong things that you do, and you think, I've got to stop thinking those thoughts, and I've got to stop doing those things, and I'm going to work really hard to not think those things and to not do those things. And then as you begin to grow in the faith and you begin to grow in spiritual maturity, that changes.
And what happens is when you have wrong thoughts, when you do wrong things, you now begin thinking, where did that thought come from? Where did that behavior come from? What's going on in my heart? And you begin to say, man, I need to spend some time with Jesus. Where is this coming from?
You know, it's coming from inside you, but you're concerned with what's going on in your heart because you understand that everything happening on the outside is flowing from the inside. That's where the issue is. The thoughts and behaviors of the outer man are driven by the inner man. That's why I say Barnabas wasn't full of the Holy Spirit and faith because he was a good man. No, Barnabas was a good man because he was full of the Holy Spirit and faith.
So would you write this down? Everything that manifests in the outer man flows from the inner man. Everything that manifests in the outer man flows from the inner man. When the Jerusalem Church did not believe Saul's conversion, it was Barnabas who sensed that God was working. He reached out to Saul and then vouched for him to the apostles, paving the way for fellowship between the former persecutor of the Church and the saints in Jerusalem.
And in just a moment, we'll see Barnabas display his generous and encouraging spirit once again. It says, that large numbers of people were added to the Lord as happened in Jerusalem. A large number were saved, then another large number were saved because God was doing something. Verse 25 then he, that's Barnabas, went to Tarsus to search for Saul and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year, they met with the Church and taught would you underline taught large numbers?
Barnabas recognized that what the new believers in Antiochus needed most was to be aggressively taught and disciples in the faith so that they could grow into mature believers ASAP. And as he looked around, he realized there were not enough mature teachers in Antiochus. And the Holy Spirit brought to mind his old friend Saul. If you recall, the last time we encountered Saul, he was visiting the Brethren in Jerusalem and managed to stir up in just a few days trouble by getting into debates with the same Hellenistic Jews who had orchestrated the execution of Stephen. Seeing the writing on the wall, the leaders of the Jerusalem Church rushed him out of the city to the port of Caesaria, where they stuck him on a ship and sent him off to his hometown of Tarsus for his own safety.
Let's put up our final map for today. And if you take a look, it's pretty interesting because you will see that Tarsus is actually really close to Antioch. So we would have gotten on a boat in Caesaria, which is just northwest of Jerusalem, down there, sailed up the coast, he actually would have gone past Antioch on his way to Tarsus. And so Barnabas goes there. There's no Internet or anything like that, he just goes to Tarsus.
It's the last place he heard Saul was, and he's able to track Saul down. And Saul has been ministering and sending people to Jesus and making disciples on his own in Tarsus, likely starting a church there. And I'll point it out one more time because I think it's so important. Barnabas' response to the growth of the Church was not first and foremost, you know what we really need to do? We need to start a building project.
Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the elders in Jerusalem sent Barnabas, who was himself a Hellenistic Jew who was born in Cyprus. He would naturally be more open-minded than his brethren who had spent their whole lives in Judea. And it may be that he volunteered for the assignment and they eagerly said yes, absolutely. Please go. Verses 23 when he arrived and underline this the grace of God.
When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain underlying. Remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts. Luke reminds us again that what was happening, this revival unfolding in Antioch was due to one reason the grace of God. God was doing something profound, as he had in Jerusalem, Samaria, Luda, Joppa, Caesaria, and elsewhere. How does one exactly remain true to the Lord?
With a devoted heart. How do you do that? Practically, I put these verses on your outline. John's Gospel tells us Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if you continue in My word, you really are my disciples. And the apostle John wrote in his first Epistle what you have heard from the beginning is to remain in you what you have heard.
If what you have heard from the beginning remains in you, then you will remain in the son and in the Father. The Word of God, the teachings of Jesus, and the Scriptures are the keys to keeping your mind on God and on the things of God. We must grow in our knowledge and understanding of the Lord so that our faith does not rest on our emotional state. Hear me on this. We must grow in our knowledge and understanding of the Lord, so that our faith does not rest on our emotional state, but rather on our grasp of the unchanging truths of who God is, what he has done for us, and who we are in Him.
Write this down and we'll talk about it more. Believers must remain in God's word to maintain a devoted heart. You must remain in God's word to maintain a devoted heart. We'll soon see that Barnabas understood this truth, and it's why he wanted to see the believers in Antioch grow in their knowledge of the truth as soon and as much as possible. Verse 24 tells us that Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith.
Now hear me on this Barnabas wasn't full of the Holy Spirit and faith because he was a good man. Barnabas was a good man because he was full of the Holy Spirit and faith. In Proverbs 4/23, Solomon wrote this timeless counsel guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life. And Jesus said a good tree doesn't produce bad fruit. On the other hand, a bad tree doesn't produce good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit.
Figs aren't gathered from thorn bushes or grapes picked from a bramble bush. A good person produces good out of the goods stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. Hear me on this. You cannot truly change the outer man apart from changing the inner man, for everything that manifests in the outer man flows from the inner man.
That's why we need Jesus to create in us a new heart by giving us his spirit. It's why we need to be filled with his spirit every day in a fresh way. If you want to get on the path to becoming a better man or a better woman, you need Jesus to give you a new heart, and then you need to be filled with his spirit daily. You know, when we're young in the faith, when we're young in our thinking, let's go back even before that, before we become Christians, our general thinking tends to be man. All the things that are negative about me are because of other people, things done to me, and things coming from the outside.
You had a large Jewish community; you had a political center of the empire where the East really did meet the West. There were staunch religious conservatives sharing the streets with wild hedonists. Cicero described it as a place of learned men and liberal studies. And so, you kind of have to love the fact that God said, I will begin reaching the Gentile world here because he does what he wants. In verse 20, it says "...but there were some of them, some of those who were scattered from Jerusalem, "...men from Cyprus and Siren, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks."
And in this instance, that's referring to Greek-speaking, gentiles also proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus underline this phrase the Lord's hand was with them, the Lord's hand was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. Now, Siren was a Mediterranean port city located in present-day northeastern Libya. Let's put up that next map there again. And you can see it is a long, long way away. It's all the way over there on the left.
And so, my best guess is how these men from Syren end up in Antioch is that when the Jerusalem Church scatters, pretty much everyone heads north. That's what happens. They go up into Samaria, up toward Galilee, up into the Phoenician area, and then some, all the way to Antioch. And so that's just where everyone is going. They might not have had any food, and the only other people who had food were going in that direction.
And so, I would imagine that some of those who were scattering back to their homes in Phoenicia said, come and stay with us for a while and we'll make sure that you're safe because that is a long journey from Jerusalem to Siren. And so, what most likely happened is these men from Syria began new lives in Antioch, whatever the case may be. They would have been Hellenistic Jews again, meaning they were ethnically Jewish but raised in Greek culture. Syrene was a Greek settlement. It was a Greek port.
And as we saw with Philip and the Samaritans, these Hellenistic Jews, as we said, were more open to ministering to Gentiles because they shared everyday life. They lived among Gentiles, whereas the Jews in places like Jerusalem did not live among the Gentiles and kept their distance from them. The Holy Spirit stirred the hearts of these men to share the Gospel with Gentiles and Antioch. And God moved. God moved. He did supernatural work, and a large number placed their faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. This was something new in the history of the Church. Never before had there been a move of God that resulted in a large number of Gentiles becoming believers and joining the Church. As the narrator Luke is intentionally choosing verbiage, that highlights the similarity between what God is doing in Antioch among the Gentiles, and what he did in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost among the Jews. In both instances, there was a move of God that was not the result of man's planning or strategies.
The good news about the Lord Jesus was proclaimed, and the Lord's hand was with them. Therefore, incredible things happened, and churches were born where none had existed before. Verse 22. News about them, about all these Gentile covets, reached the Church in Jerusalem and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antiochus. The Jerusalem Church, you'll recall, was led by the apostles, who felt a duty to care for all of the churches.
That would soon prove an impossible task as the Church exploded in size. But at this point, they were still trying to be a mother church, so to speak. This is why they sent Peter and John to investigate what was going on among the Samaritans when Philip was ministering there. It's why they questioned Peter when he returned from ministering to the household of Cornelius. And it's why they felt an obligation to investigate the apparent mass conversion of Gentiles in Antiochus.
And Israel is sort of over there on the right hand side, bottom right corner. Jerusalem down there in the bottom is in southern Israel. It's the territory known as Judea. Now, as you go up the coast, the coast of sort of northern Israel, Lebanon, and southern Syria is a region known as Phoenicia. Back at that time in history, off the coast of Syria, you can see the island of Cyprus.
And then above Phoenicia to the north is the city of Antioch. And as the Jerusalem Church scattered, returning to their homes across Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Cyprus, they shared the Gospel with only Jews, because it was still their paradigm that the Gospel was a continuation of Judaism. And so, in their minds, Jesus was a Jewish messiah. And so those who wanted to follow him had to become Jewish. They believed that the good news of the Gospel was that the Jewish Messiah had come.
And so in their minds, they're thinking, why would a Gentile be excited about a Jewish Messiah coming? This is only good news for Jews. And so you have to become a Jew to be able to even understand the significance of the Gospel. Philip's ministry to the Samaritans and the Ethiopian Eunuch, as well as Peter's ministry to the household of Cornelius, happened quite a while after the Jerusalem Church was scattered. And as it was being scattered, most of them hadn't heard about any of these developments.
They didn't know that the Gospel had gone to the Gentiles and that Gentiles were being saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. As I shared a moment ago, our focus is going to be on the city of Antioch. It was located about 18 miles, or 29 km inland from the Mediterranean on the Orontes River. According to the ancient historian Josephus, it was the third most important and populous city in the Roman Empire, only behind Rome and Alexandria in Egypt. It was home to the Roman governor of the province of Syria.
And it had a population of this is massive. At that time it had a population of around half a million people and a large Jewish community that had been there practically since the city's founding in 300 BC. In Acts chapter Six, we read about the selection of seven men of good reputations full of spirit and wisdom who were chosen to oversee the distribution of food to the Hellenistic widows in the Jerusalem Church. You might recall Stephen and Philip were two of those seven, and another was Nikolaus, who was described as a convert from Antiochus. Antioch was an advanced city built from scratch around the Hippodamian grid system that was invented by the Romans.
The pattern that cities are laid out in of having a grid, in many cases with streets and avenues, that was invented and implemented by the Romans. It was enlarged and adorned by Caesar Augustus and Tiberius. Herod the Great added colonnades all the way along the main street and actually paved the street with polished stone. It was a political and commercial hub with the goods and produce of the East passing through on their way to the West. The city was deeply pagan and full of s*xual immorality, closely tied to the Roman goddess Daphne, who in mythology was the s*xual obsession of the god Apollo.
There was a shrine dedicated to her about five miles outside of the city, which was home to rampant religious prostitution. With the possible exception of Corinth, Antioch was the most carnal and depraved city in the Empire. When the Roman satirist Juvenil wanted to insult the depravity of Rome, he commented that the Orontes River emptied its sewerage into the Tiber, which is the river that flows past Rome. In other words, Rome is bathing in the immorality of Antiochus, is what he was saying. As you can tell, it was a cosmopolitan city in the truest sense.
The Gospel Goes to the Gentiles (Part 3 Date:12/4/23
Passage: Acts 11:19-12:4 ...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
The Gospel explodes in the city of Antioch, as the first Jew/Gentile mixed church is bor
The Church was born on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem in Acts chapter Two and was made up almost entirely of ethnic Jews. It would be at least seven years before a similarly Gentile Church would be planted. That Church would be in Antioch, and we'll learn more about it in today's study. There were several reasons for that gap in time and why it took a while for the Gospel to make its way in earnest to the Gentiles. And when I say gentiles, I mean nonJews.
Firstly, a doctrinal foundation had to be established. The Church needed to be taught by the apostles and grow in their knowledge of Jesus, and the Jews needed to understand how Jesus connected to historical Judaism, how he was, the fulfillment of the Law, the end of the old covenant, and the ushering in of a new covenant. That all needed to be sorted first before you add Gentiles to the mix. Sort of like if you're starting a home renovation project. It's always nice when you can do one project at a time rather than starting four different projects at the same time, and it's absolute chaos and nothing gets done as efficiently.
The second reason for that gap in time is that mature leaders needed to be identified and developed. Immature believers do not make effective missionaries and do not plant healthy churches. It would have been a disaster if, during the first year, people who didn't even really understand Christianity went out and started planting churches. It would be a recipe for all kinds of heresy and errant beliefs, and it would be a total disaster.
And then third, as we've seen over our two previous studies, the long-established prejudices of the Jews toward the Gentiles needed to be eliminated. This was beginning to happen through the Apostle Peter and some of the Hellenistic Jews who had less of a hard time with the concept of associating with Gentiles. If you recall, a Hellenistic Jew is someone who was ethnically Jewish but was raised in Greek culture rather than Hebrew culture. In other words, they were raised outside of Israeli territory in Greek culture, which was the predominant culture in the Roman Empire at the time. As we shall see, what God does in Antiochus will not be organized by the Church in Jerusalem.
It will not even be inspired by Peter's interaction with the Gentile household of Cornelius, which we studied last week. But it will be the first Church to be made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers. So we'll pick things up in Acts chapter 11/19, where we read now those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. Speaking the word to no one except Jews serving as the narrator, Luke zooms out and flashes back in time to the moment when Saul began zealously persecuting the Church in Jerusalem, the time that we read about in Acts chapter One, where it says all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land of Judea and Samaria. And it turns out that they went even further than Judea and Samaria.
So let's throw this map up because it's probably about time in our study for me to just walk us through where these places are. Geographically. All the blue part is the Mediterranean Sea. And so if you're looking at the Mediterranean, we are at the far eastern side of the Mediterranean. You've got Turkey to the north and Greece is up in the top left corner over there.
That's what I really want to know. And I'm sorry if this is news to you, but it doesn't matter what you think. It does not matter what you think. Jesus is not interested in your input in the decision-making process any more than a heart surgeon would be before he operated on you. That surgeon is not going to give you a bunch of scans and charts and say, here's what I see. I mean, here's how I'm going to approach the surgery. But what I really want to know is what you think we should do. Where should we cut first? That scenario is ridiculous because you know nothing about heart surgery. I don't either.
The gap in medical knowledge between you and me and the heart surgeon is about the size of the Grand Canyon. We get that. But we don't get this. How immeasurable, then, is the gap in knowledge understanding, and wisdom between you and God in every subject? How great is that gap?
We are not God. We are not at the table to offer our input. He's our commanding officer. He gives orders and we obey. But, my goodness, we are blessed beyond measure for this reason.
Our commanding officer loves us. In fact, our commanding officer loved us so much that he died for us. He took every bullet, every shot, every hit for us. And every command that he gives us is for our good. Every command. Therefore we gladly submit. Therefore we gladly obey. Therefore we gladly say that Jesus is King. Jesus is king. Let's pray.
Would you bow your head and close your eyes? Jesus, thank you for Your word. Thank you that you are the commanding officer of our lives. Thank you that we need not flounder in life directionless. We need only turn our focus and our attention to the One who has authority over us, who only commands us to do that which is good for us, who loves us and gave Himself for us.
And so, Jesus, I pray, first of all, would you forgive us where we have resisted and been rebellious against Your authority over our lives? Forgive us, Lord. You have never been anything but good. We have no reason to doubt and no reason to question. And so forgive us where we have ignored the ocean of evidence of Your kindness and instead listen to the lies of our flesh.
Forgive us, Lord, and wherever we need to turn and repent. Would you illuminate that right now in each of our individual lives by the power of Your Spirit, that we might repent and begin to follow our orders? Because you're the king. You're the king. And then, Jesus, thank you that we're robed in Your righteousness.
Thank you that you didn't just give us a second chance because we know we would have messed that up too. But You gave us Your righteousness that is more kind and good than we could ever put into words than we could ever express with a million songs. You're just so good to give us, you. And so I pray again this week for anyone who is living for you, following you as Lord, but is haunted by any shame from sins that you have forgiven. In Jesus's name, we speak the righteousness of Jesus over that life.
In Jesus name, we speak the truth of God's Word over that mind and we command every contradictory thought to leave in the name of Jesus and be replaced with the peace and the assurance that comes from the inalterable, unchangeable righteousness of Jesus that is ours through him. Thank you for that. Lord Jesus, we bless you and we love you. And just as we take this time to worship you, we just want you to be blessed. We don't want anything from you other than for you to just be blessed and to hear from the depths of our hearts.
Thank you. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for caring about us. Thank you for lighting the way that leads to life. Thank you for calling us. Walk on it. Help us to do it. Lord, we want to be a blessing to you. We love you so much. Jesus. In your name, we pray. Amen.
As Western men and women, we don't generally like the concept of submission. If asked the question, do you submit to your boss? You'd likely say no. Or at a minimum, you'd fight me covet the terminology. You'd be like, use a different word, Jeff.
I mean, in reality, you do submit to your boss, right? Because if you didn't, you wouldn't be working there very long. You just don't like the word submit, do you? Something in the natural flesh of a woman shafts at the biblical command to submit to one's husband, just as something in the natural flesh of a man chafes at the biblical command to submit to governmental authorities must be a typo. Hear me on this, because it's deeper than you think.
Our flesh values deeply the illusion that we are independent of all authorities. I'll say it again. Our flesh values deeply the illusion that we are entirely independent of all authorities. That's why when churches talk about the Great Commission that Jesus gave to his disciples, it's usually quoted as, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and the rest gets left out.
Do you know what the rest of the Great Commission is? Teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples by doing what? Preaching the gospel? Baptizing new believers and teaching them to observe.
That means to obey everything he had taught the disciples. The terms Christian and disciple of Jesus are synonyms. You cannot be a Christian without also being a disciple of Jesus. You cannot accept the forgiveness of Jesus but refuse to obey Jesus, as we often put it. You cannot accept Jesus as Savior, but reject him as Lord.
It's not an offer Jesus makes. Jesus is our Lord. He's our commanding officer. He gives orders, and we obey. Because to be a Christian means willingly placing your life under the authority of Jesus.
That's what it means to be a Christian. I'll ask the worship team to come up and get ready. I was struck by this theme of authority that comes up around Cornelius and the other centurion's interactions with Jesus in Capernaum. Cornelius tells Peter, God commanded me to get ready to receive a message that he had commanded you to bring to me. So here I am with my entire household, ready to receive our orders.
The centurion in Capernaum told Jesus, I recognize that you have authority over sickness and death, therefore, don't inconvenience yourself by coming to my house. Just speak the word. I know it'll be done. And Jesus told his disciples to make more disciples by this standard, teaching men and women to obey his commands.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives serves as inarguable evidence that God has approved of us because we are robed in the righteousness of Jesus. God has marked us as clean in his sight. But they hear me on this. The presence of the Holy Spirit, we love the thing I'm clean. We love it.
I'm approved by God, we love it. But understand this. Paul writes about the synthesis one as well. The presence of the Holy Spirit in us also marks us as God's property.
Paul said it like this in his second letter to the Corinthians, don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body. The Christian life gets a lot simpler when we begin to understand this. It doesn't get easier when we begin to understand this, but it does get simpler.
Jesus is my commanding officer. He gives the orders and I obey. Many Christians are confused and engaged in all kinds of foolish living because in their minds, they're at the table as equals with Jesus making decisions together. And Jesus in their mind is looking at them and saying, but what do you think? What do you think?
Members of the Circumcision Party are also referred to by scholars as Judaizers, which means to become a Judean or to live like the Jews. As we shall see in later chapters of the Book of Acts and later books in the New Testament, some members of the Circumcision Party were genuine believers who would change their wrong beliefs over time, but others were not genuine believers, and they would eventually oppose the early Church. It says in verse four that Peter began to explain to them step by step I was in the town of Joppa praying, and I saw in a trance an object that resembled a large sheet coming down, being lowered by its four corners from heaven, and it came to me. When I looked closely and considered it, I saw the fourfooted animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky. I also heard a voice telling me, get up, Peter.
Kill and eat. No, Lord, I said, for nothing impure or richly unclean has ever entered my mouth. But a voice from heaven answered a second time. What God has made clean, you must not call impure. Now, this happened three times, and everything was drawn up again into heaven.
At that very moment, three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to accompany them with no doubts at all. These six brothers he's obviously gesturing to the brothers from Joppa, also accompanied me, and we went into the man's house. He reported to us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, send to Joppa and call for Simon, who is also named Peter. He will speak a message to you by which you and all your household will be saved.
Peter expands on the account we read in chapter ten by telling us that a Divine visitor specifically told him that Peter's message would save him and his household. As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came down on them just as on us. In the beginning, I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If then God gave them the same gift that he also gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, how could I possibly hinder God? Peter tells him it wasn't my call.
God does what he wants, and it's clear that God has given the Gentiles the same Holy Spirit he's given us. This was a seismic theological shift. If God considered these gentiles worthy of being temples of his spirit, then it meant that ceremonial laws and food laws no longer had the ability to make a man clean or unclean. Before God says in verses 18 when they heard this, they became silent and they glorified God, saying so then God has given repentance resulting in life even to the Gentiles. When we look at the actions of the circumcision party over the rest of the New Testament, I think it's likely that in this moment the sincere believers glorified God, while the insincere members probably just got angry eyebrows and held their tongues because they knew there was nothing they could say.
They couldn't argue with Peter's logic because it was arguing with God. Unquestionably, the apostles and the other believers definitely glorified God in this moment. And again, this marked a seismic shift in the Church, because if this had not happened, the Church would never have begun to evangelize Gentiles like us in earnest. It took years, but the Church finally realized that because Jesus had lived a perfect life on our behalf and fulfilled the law on our behalf, all Jewish ceremonial laws had passed away with the old covet. Write this down.
This is what it meant in the New Covenant were made clean and righteous by faith in Jesus. We're made clean and righteous by faith in Jesus.
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What Makes Jesus Unique? No one else made the claims that He did, He is alive...............
I don't know if you've ever seen news clippings or videos of the religious mobs of Hindus or Muslims that form regularly and riot and protest in places like Pakistan and Malaysia, where even an accusation of blasphemy can lead to someone being dragged from their home and lynched, beaten, burned to death, or worse.A group of people come together and a psychological mob mentality is formed in their collective outrage, and they just amplify each other's rage into this animalistic state where they would literally tear a person limb from limb. That's the kind of intensity that was in play in Jerusalem at this time, and that kind of thing could happen at any moment if witnesses suddenly began claiming that somebody had blasphemed Yahweh or the Temple or the Law or the patriarchs. That's what happened with Jesus, and it's what's happening here with Stephen, who now finds himself before the very same council of religious leaders who judged Jesus just a few months earlier and falsely condemned him. Verse 13, they also presented false witnesses who said, this man never stops speaking against this holy place and the Law. We heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth would destroy this place, the temple, and change the customs that Moses handed down to us.
The second charge in verse 14 was because Stephen was teaching that the Law had been fulfilled by Jesus the Messiah, and therefore followers of Yahweh were no longer under the Law. But they were misrepresenting Stephen's argument and presenting it as though Stephen despised and dismissed the Law. Stephen's coming response will show that, on the contrary, he deeply venerated the Law. He simply understood the Law's correct place and role in light of the sinless life of Jesus. But the first charge is interesting.
They claim we heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place. Speaking of the Temple, does that remind anybody of anything? In Matthew 26, we're told that at the trial of Jesus, two false witnesses who came forward stated this man said, I can destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days. Like Jesus, Stephen was accused by false witnesses. And like Jesus, he was charged with the claim that Jesus had said he would destroy the temple.
And Jesus did indeed claim that the temple of God would be destroyed and rebuilt in three days. But these false witnesses left out a crucial detail. John 2/21 tells us that Jesus was speaking of his body, not the temple building in Jerusalem. For indeed Jesus would be destroyed. He would die and then rise in glory three days later.
When we get to Acts 21, we will hear similar charges brought against the apostle Paul. In verse 28, we'll read about some Jews who stir up a crowd by shouting, this is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people, our Law, and this place. Speaking of the temple, the reason that Jews in Jerusalem attempted to condemn Jesus, Stephen, and Paul with the same charges is likely because the Romans had given the Sanhedrin the authority to try and execute punishments for one specific type of offense profaning the Temple in word or deed. If this was the charge, the Sanhedrin could deal with the offender at their own discretion. The temple police could get involved.
No Romans needed to be consulted. Had they been able to make those charges stick against Jesus, they could have stoned him to death. That was their first plan. Because they couldn't, they had to change tactics and get Jesus sentenced to death via their Roman overlords, which they did by misrepresenting Jesus' claims to be God and king as an affront to the authority of the Roman Emperor. Verse 15.