Immanuel Sermon Audio
Acts (44:66)
Open your Bible to Acts. If you need an outline, there's a bunch at the front, maybe some in the back still. Book of Acts. We've made it to the New Testament, we made it through the four Gospels, and tonight we're going to look at Acts. I'll be honest with you, it's hard in a series like this to figure out not so much what you're going to say, but what you're not going to say, especially when you're looking at Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts. When we come back and we talk about Romans, you just can't talk about everything that you want to talk about, and so we're going to talk about a lot, but have to leave some things out. Acts is an interesting book to me. In high school, I took my senior year, the first class of my morning, my senior year of high school was Advanced Calculus, and I was in there for about two weeks, and somehow a light bulb went off and I realized, "I don't need this class to graduate. Why am I taking Advanced Calculus if I don't need it to graduate?" I dropped it, and I got put into New Testament. One of the things we had to do in the New Testament class, the teacher was Gene Shelburne. He is pastor of a church of Christ church in Amarillo, I can't remember the name of it, it's downtown Amarillo, but one of the things he had us do is we had to memorize all of the major events in the book of Acts and what chapter they happened in. It came down to test time, he just put Acts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and you had to fill in, okay, this is where Paul got sent off on a mission trip, or this is when Paul got bit by a snake, or this is when Ananias and Sephira died in the church. You had to just list all those things out, and I memorized them and did fine on it. Some things you memorize stick with you, usually it's things you really don't care about, it sticks with you, and that was in my brain and gone, and it didn't stay, and that was unfortunate. I was in seminary, I took New Testament, and my professor, Bill Cook, was my New Testament professor, he made us do the exact same thing, and I had to learn it all over again, and I really wish I could tell you that today I could just go through, and I could get a lot of things, and I could get close to a chapter on some things, but that's just one of those things in my brain that just, it won't stick, and anyway, that's really neither here nor there, but that's what I think about first, when I think about Acts. Here's what I want you to think about as we start tonight. I want you to think about, you go to church. What is it supposed to look like, feel like, sound like, smell like? What are your senses supposed to encounter when you go to church? And I want you to be nice, but I want you to shout out an answer. What are you supposed to see? What are you supposed to hear? What are you supposed to experience? Neitherness, worship, smiles, supposed to, yes, hugs, food, both important, lots of food. You should hear about Jesus, hear the truth, love, usually smells like coffee. Okay, fellowship, those are all things you experience, those are all good. What should you see? Friends, people, hopefully there's people there, joy, love, what did you say? The Bibles are open, it's a good thing, encouragement, okay, and put some pictures for you up on the screen because when a lot of people think about church, some people think about something that looks like this. This is the Catholic Cathedral in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, and Brooke and I did an attend worship here, but we did go one time, it was for a class project at seminary, and we went and went to Mass, and I promise you there was not that many people there, this is a wedding, that's why there's so many people in that picture, and that's kind of funny, but it's honest truth, there's not that many people there if you go for Mass at the Cathedral. I'll tell you, it is an amazingly beautiful building, amazingly beautiful, and some people would disagree with me on this, but I have a lot of Catholic family members, and the one thing that I appreciate when I go to a Catholic service is I go in the building, and there's a lot of things I don't like about Catholic church buildings, okay, plenty of things that make my toes curl, but at the same time I go in and I think these people know how to build a church building, this is amazing, and you could say, "Oh, they waste a lot of money on it, it shouldn't be like this," and I get all that, but it's an amazingly beautiful building, you can't really see it, but the ceiling is, you can see that it's blue, it has stars painted on it, constellations up in the sky painted on it, and the only Catholic church I've ever been to that has a baptistry, you can't see it in this picture, it's right in the middle aisle in the back, so it's like back there where our exit sign is, they have a baptistry, and it's actually like a pool, it's like a big sort of imagine those things you put in your backyard, you blow it up for your kids and fill it up with water, imagine that made of really pretty concrete ornate, it's about that size and it has a fountain in it, that's where they do their baptisms. When we went to this church, just a fun fact for you, the homily that day was about why homosexuality was a good thing, that was the homily at the cathedral, it's the second oldest cathedral in the United States of America, so when some people think about church, you guys gave pretty good answers, but when some people think about church, in their mind they get a picture of something like this, okay, put the next picture up, some people get a picture of something like this, this is right down the highway in Louisville, right down highway 64, and this is southeast Christian church, it's the largest church in Louisville, it's one of the largest churches in the country, they run, I don't know what they run now, when we lived in Louisville they averaged about 16,000 on a Sunday, and it's a humongous church and that's their sanctuary, it's 365 degrees all the way around, and they have seven jumbo trons in the sanctuary, and we went, same seminary project, we went and we visited here and we sat up on the third level, we took two escalators to get up to the third level, and there you go, they celebrate the Lord's Supper every week and we're in there with a lot of people, and I thought, I wonder how they're going to do this, there's a lot of people to serve the Lord's Supper too, and when it was time to do the Lord's Supper, I'm telling you deacons came up out of the floor, they were everywhere, and it was like we were done with the Lord's Supper in about 30 seconds, it was like here's the bread, here's the juice, you're done, and we just went on with the service, and it was really quick, so a lot of people think about something like this, this southeast would be for good or for bad, just sort of a typical mega church, definition of mega church now is you average over 2,000, it used to be 1,000, now it's 2,000, over 2,000 people in worship attendance a week, and they have multiple services and they run them in and out of here, and there's some really good things about southeast Christian, I'll be honest with you, some really good things and there's some things that I don't think are very good, but one thing you can't deny in the United States of America, when people think about church, a lot of people think about something like this, and you can look at the numbers, and what the numbers say in the United States of America is small churches, and the definition of a small church is about 200 and under, small churches are getting smaller, mega churches are getting bigger, that's the trend and you can say it's a migration of people, you can say it's people getting saved and joining these churches, however you want to slice that, but this is what a lot, a lot, a lot of people in the United States think of what they expect when they think about church, put the next one up, this is in Frankfurt, Kentucky, this is the first church I've pastored, North Benson Baptist Church, and it's about five miles outside of town, and it's just a little white sanctuary, there's a door right there on the right picture, that was my office on the far right side, and it's in a beautiful setting, over on the left of the church, you can't really see it there, but there's a cemetery, and I have some good stories about that cemetery, but I won't tell them to you tonight, and so that's the church, that was our sanctuary, we had our traditional service in that room right there, we also had a contemporary service in the, well, is our gym out back behind, but a lot of people think about something like that, and a lot of people think, no, no, church is not supposed to be this big thing, it's just supposed to be small, it's supposed to be traditional, it's supposed to be simple, that's what church is, and they have that in their mind, and that's their expectation. Here's another one, this is the largest church in the United States today, and it's called Life Church, and it started in Oklahoma City, and these are the guys, I don't know that you would say they invented the multi-campus approach to doing church, but they're the ones that went absolutely insane with it, and so these are just four of their campuses, pictures of four different campuses, and they have them all over the place, and what they do is kind of interesting, they have campuses, and they all sort of, you can see, they all sort of look similar, so when you pull up, you kind of know, this is, it feels like I'm at Life Church, but they also say, we not only beam our preacher on video, you understand their preacher can't be at all these locations, so they beam him on big screen, but they say, we won't just send him to our campuses, we'll send it to anybody that wants it, in fact if we wanted to, if you get sick of me one of these days, you can say, hey, will you start sending us Craig's stuff, and they'll send it to you on Saturday, and then you can show it on Sunday, and you can be not an official campus, but sort of what they call a satellite campus, and so this is what a lot of people think of today when they think about church, is this multi-campus where you come in, and there's a live band performing music, and when you go to a life church campus, you know what they have sitting out next to the bulletins and the lobby, earplugs, no, that's serious, they have earplugs out there, and you go in, and it is as loud as you would expect it to be when they hand out earplugs at the front door, and it's this big thing, and some people look at that and say, oh, it's disgusting, and other people look at that, a lot of people, this is the largest church, if you count all the people who go to all their campuses, it's by far the largest church in the United States, and so a lot of people, that's church for them, and I know that that's foreign to some of us to think, well, I'm going to go to church and watch somebody on TV, I can sit in my recliner in my underwear and watch somebody on TV, but that's what a lot of people think about when they think about church, I'm going to go, there's going to be a band, and then we're going to watch the guy on the screen, maybe you think about this, put the next picture up, maybe that's what you think about church, every once in a while, it's supposed to look like that, it's supposed to sound like that, it's supposed to feel like that, here's why I put all these up here, okay, when you open the Bible, and you go to the book of Acts, you have the story of the church, right, in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 16, Jesus says to the disciples, who do you say that I am, well, some say you're this, no, no, no, who do you say, Peter says you're the Christ, you're the son of the living God, and Jesus says that's exactly right, and he goes on to say, Peter, you're the rock, and I'm going to build the church upon you, and in the book of Acts, he does that, he starts to build the church, and it's the story of the first church, and here's what's fascinating about the book of Acts, there's not a lot of talk about style, there's not a lot of talk about what things were supposed to look like, or what the schedule was supposed to be during the week, there's not a lot of talk, people would argue this, but it's just a fact, there's not even a lot of talk about how the church was structured leadership-wise, okay, the reason, one of the reasons you look around and you see, well, how did they across the street structure their church and their leadership differently than we do, it's because when you go to the book of Acts, it's just not super clear about how they did it and who was in charge and who was making decisions, and the emphasis in Acts is not so much on style or appearance or buildings or any of those things, the emphasis on Acts is on the stuff that you guys mentioned when I said, what do you expect when you go to church, preaching, the truth, to hear about Jesus, to have the Bible opened, to have friends there, for somebody to give me a hug, to have relationships, to have fellowship, all of those things are the things that's emphasized in the book of Acts, and so we're going to jump in, we're going to talk about this book. The first sort of group of things we're going to talk about, most of this is on your outline is just sort of history, facts, detail, and then at the end, we're going to talk pretty heavily about application, what do we learn from the church in the book of Acts, so here we go. First of all, we're going to talk about Luke and Acts. These two books go together and they are both written to, or you could say for, somebody named Theophilus, and Theophilus is a Greek word. Some people argue if it's an actual person, or if it's sort of a code name for somebody, it means lover of God, literally, and I just want you to look first at Luke chapter 1, and we're going to read the first few verses, and then we're going to read the first few verses of Acts, just so you see these two books go together. Luke 1, 1, "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to complete a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, meaning some other people have written stories about Jesus. Just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, meaning people have passed down this tradition, verse 3, "It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, why, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught." Now flip over to Acts 1-1. It begins like this, "In the first book," that's the Gospel of Luke, O Theophilus, "I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God." So both of them begin with this same introduction, this same address to somebody named Theophilus, and Acts says, in the first book, so there's this connection saying, "Here's part one," it's called, "We call it Luke, here's part two, we call it Acts," and when you look at the two books, they have similar writing style, they have similar vocabulary, they have similar themes, all that sort of stuff, and so ancient tradition tells us that both of these books were written by Luke and we know Luke as a missionary and a physician. We know him as a missionary from the book of Acts and we know him as a physician from a comment Paul makes in the book of Colossians. When you read these two introductions, there seems to be the suggestion that whoever wrote these books was not one of the original twelve disciples, was not an apostle because he says, "There's some people who have written things, they were there, they were eyewitnesses, that was them," and he says, "I've just sort of followed things for some time and I've studied and I've done my research and he wants to write this account of things." One thing that's interesting in the book of Acts is there's something that scholars call, "This is a very technical term, are you ready for this?" The "we" sections in Acts, meaning sometimes whoever wrote the book of Acts says they did this, they did this, he went here, he went there, and then all of a sudden he says, "We, we did this, we went here, we did this, we went there," and then he goes back and he says, "They did this, they did this," he went here, he said this, and then he jumps back to "we" again, and so it points in the story, you know that the author is involved. Here's what's interesting. If you take Luke and Acts, we talked about this a few weeks ago, and Cory might have mentioned this when he talked about Luke, if you take Luke and Acts, they both on their own fill up an ancient scroll, and in my mind I sort of think, well you just make a scroll as long as it needs to be in the ancient world, but that's just not how they did it, they just sort of had a standard length, and it was so many feet long, and that's just how big they made them, and so if you take Luke and you write it out as the scribe would have written it on this scroll, it fills up one scroll, and if you take Acts and you write it out on a scroll, it fills up one scroll, and so the reason that whoever wrote this book didn't just write one monstrous book is that he ran out of scroll space, so he filled up a scroll and he said, "Okay, that's about good, let's start on part two on the second scroll," and so he separated it, here's just a fact for you, if you add Luke and Acts together, that's 30% of the New Testament, so you've probably heard all the time, Paul wrote most of the New Testament, Paul wrote most of the New Testament, he wrote most of the books in the New Testament, well he wrote a lot of letters in the New Testament, but some of those letters are really short, if you want to know who wrote most of the Old Testament, then Luke wrote most of the Old Testament, so 30% is a pretty good chunk, so you may be wondering, this is just worth sort of saying out loud, if the same person wrote these books, and it's clear from the introductions in both of them that one is part one and one is part two, then when we put them in the Bible, why didn't we mash them together, why didn't you put them together, and the reason is not really impressive, but when you look at the Gospels, you want to put the story of Jesus first, and the Gospel of Matthew, with its genealogy, we talked about this, it's the most natural bridge from the Old Testament, to say this is the same story, the same people, we're talking about Abraham's family, we're talking about David's family, so Matthew comes first, but we also talked about that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the synoptic Gospels, they see things together, and so those three sort of belong together, so you put Matthew first and then Mark and Luke, and then you put John because you want the Gospels to be together, and then Acts comes next, and so it sort of gets separated from its first volume, look with me real quick at the end of Acts, the very last verse, it's sort of a strange ending, the last about eight chapters in the book of Acts all talk about Paul, and he's under arrest, and he's being shipped to Rome, and it's a long story, and there's more to it than that, but that's the gist of it, he gets arrested and they're shipping him off to Rome, and look at Acts 28 verse 30, it says he lived there, that's Paul lived in Rome two whole years at his own expense, and he welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance, a lot of scholars, it's interesting when you study Acts, they say that's a weird way to end a book, you just sort of leave it hanging, you've read this whole long story about how Paul, he's in shipwrecks, and he's in chains, and he's a prisoner, and he sits in prison for months and months and months in Caesarea, and then he finally gets to Rome, and the whole point of the story is leading up to what's going to happen when he gets to Rome, and what you really want to know is, is he going to get to stand before Caesar and make his appeal to Caesar, and is Caesar going to let him go, or is he going to get in trouble? And he finally gets to Rome, and you're ready to hear what happens, and then Luke says, so he was there for a while, and he preached the gospel, and you're like, eight chapters for that? We don't know what happened, and so some people say, some scholars say, Luke intended to write a third volume, he wrote one about Jesus, and then he wrote this one, and he got Paul where he wanted to get him, and then he's going to write this third volume, and maybe he never wrote it, or maybe we don't have it, I think more likely is that's exactly where Luke wanted to end it, and it's exactly where the Holy Spirit wanted him to end it, and if you go back all the way to the beginning, Acts chapter 1 verse 8, this is a verse you're familiar with. Acts 1, 8 says, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." And what Luke does in the book of Acts is he shows how that happens, how the disciples, the apostles, and the early church were witnesses to the truth about Jesus, and it begins in Jerusalem, it goes out to Judea, and it goes to Samaria, and it ends up in the very ends of the earth, and that's the point of how Luke ends the book. He says, "Look, Paul made it all the way to Rome." Yes, he was a prisoner, but he got there, and what happened when he got there? What we want to know is, did he have his trial, how did the court date go? That's not the point. The point is he got there, he was exactly where God wanted him to be, and what did he do when he was there? He preached the gospel, just like he said it was going to happen in Acts 1, 8, so I think Luke ended it exactly where he wanted to end it. Here's some fun facts about the book of Acts, in case you ever need these for Bible jeopardy. 30 countries are mentioned in the book of Acts, 50 towns are mentioned and 100 people, and 60 of those people mentioned in the book of Acts are not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, so Luke just has a lot of details in it, and when you read through there, you're like, "This is a guy who's done a lot of research. He's looked up his places, he's checked his sources." And here's what's funny about the gospel of Luke in Acts. If you go back, say, 100 years, there was a group of liberal scholars who looked at the gospel of Luke in the book of Acts, and they said, "The guy who wrote these books was an idiot. He keeps talking about places that we've never heard of. He keeps using titles for people that we don't know anything about." Like sometimes Luke will talk about somebody we know from history, and he uses a different title for them, and the historians looked at that and they said, "This guy, Luke, he's an idiot. He doesn't have all his facts together. Then you fast forward through about 100 years of archaeology, of archaeologists digging around in this part of the world, and you listen to him today and you know what they say? This guy's pretty sharp. He tells us a lot of things that we didn't know a long time ago, and he tells us about cities that we have discovered, and he tells us titles for people that we didn't even know existed, and then we found them in other places. There's just sort of been this shift of people sort of recognizing Luke actually did know what he was talking about. Surprise, surprise. 8% of the book is the story of Paul's conversion, and it's in there three times. Kind of strange. When you know you're running out of scroll, right? You wrote one book, and you filled the whole scroll up, and you're writing another book, and you know you're going to fill the thing up, and almost 10% of the book is one story, and it's not just told once. It's told three different times. Like you would think, at some point, could you just say, you know, Paul got saved. It was awesome. But no, he goes through it. Step by step, this is what I was doing. This is where I was. This is what happened. This is what I heard. This is what I saw, and the whole thing's told over and over and over again. And when you look at that, most scholars say whoever wrote this book, Luke, was probably friends with Paul, and we know that those two guys were buddies, and they traveled around together. And so this is a story he heard a lot from Paul. 20% of the book is made up of speeches in sermons, and 5% of that is Stephen's speech. That should have an apostrophe of possessive, whatever it's called, but it doesn't have one on there. My fault. But there's a lot of talking in the book, and scholars debate, and you have one group of people, very conservative scholars, like some guys who would be King James-only churches, that kind of guy, and they say, the things in this book, that is the actual speech word for word. Like that's what would be up on the teleprompter. They said nothing more and nothing less. That's exactly it. Which is kind of weird because those are really short speeches. Like Peter stood up to preach on Pentecost, and you can read it if that's word for word, and Peter only talked for about 40 seconds. Peter liked to talk more than 40 seconds. And so what Luke has done is he's listened to that, or he's gotten a report about that, or he's talked to the person who preached that sermon, and he's just sort of summarized it. Like you would do if you come to church on a Sunday morning, you listen to a sermon, then you get on Facebook, and you say, "Hey, at church we talked about this today." That's not necessarily saying this is what the preacher said, word for word, nothing more, nothing less. You're just sort of reporting the summary of what it was. So there's a lot of speeches in there. Here's the outline, or not the outline, but I'm going to give you three ways to outline the book of Acts. You can outline it by personalities. This is the easiest way to outline the book because it just chops it in half. Chapters 1 to 12 are about Peter, and chapters 13 to 28 are about Paul. And yes, there's other personalities in those sections, but that's a pretty good description of what happens in those two sections. So you can do it by personalities. You can also do it by geography, and you can break it down into those three sections. Chapters 1 to 7, 8 to 12, and 13 to 28. And when you look at that first section, you remember we read Acts 1, 8. You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. You look at that first section, and you say chapters 1 to 7 is the gospel going to Jerusalem and to Judea. Then you go to chapters 8 and 12, and you say this is the gospel going from Judea to Samaria. And then you go to chapter 13 to the end of the book, and you say this is the gospel going to the end of the world. So you can divide it up, chop it up like that if you want to do it that way. Or some scholars say, no, you should do it in a literary fashion, and they give you these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 verses, and they say these are the hinges of the book where Luke moves on and sort of changes the subject a little bit. And for the sake of time, we're not going to read those. You can look them up on your own. But in each of those verses, and in only those verses, as Luke is telling the story of the church, he just sort of stops, and he says something to the effect of the word of God continued to spread. So he's telling story, story, story, and then he just sort of stops in chapter 6 verse 7. He says the word of God increased the number of disciples multiplied, and many priests became obedient to the faith. He tells some more story. He gets to chapter 9. He says, then the church had peace. It was built up. They were fearing God. They were comforted by the Spirit, and they multiplied. And there's just these sort of hinges in the story where Luke pauses and says, the church grew. The disciples multiplied. The word of God continued to spread. So some people divide it like that. What's the purpose of the book of Acts? This is not on your handout, and I apologize. I just had to take it off for space. And so if you want to jot it down over on the side, you can do that. At least three reasons that Luke wrote this book. One would be historical, and this goes all the way back to the first words we read in the Gospel of Luke. Do you remember that? Luke 1, 1 to 4. He says, Theophilus, I'm writing this book to you. It's an orderly account. I've talked to the eyewitnesses. I've done my research, and I'm writing it so that you can have certainty about the things that have happened. And that sort of statement covers Luke, and it covers part 2, the book of Acts. And so one of the reasons Luke wrote, and this is straight from Luke's own mouth, is to say, I want you to know what happened. I want you to know what happened with Jesus. I want you to know what happened with the cross and the resurrection and all of that. I want you to know what happened with the apostles, and they go out and preach. I just want you to know the historical facts here. Another reason is scholars would say there's an apologetic motivation. And here's what they mean by that. As much as you can, take yourself out of 21st century United States and go back into 1st century Rome with an emperor. Okay? And you read the story about Jesus and the crucifixion, and there's a lot of concern by everybody involved about, we don't want the emperor to hear that there's some sort of revolt here, because he's going to come and crack skulls, and everybody just wants to sort of tampon everything down and be calm. So you're the apostles, you're Luke, and the guy that you're preaching about, the one that you're telling everybody in the world about Jesus, is a guy who was killed as an insurrectionist, as a criminal. And you and I know and they knew he wasn't guilty of that, but that was the word on the street. Jesus, they killed him as a common criminal. He was trying to lead this revolt of people. He claimed to be some sort of king. And you know how gossip spreads? The world has not changed that much in 2000 years, and word starts to spread, and people say, "Oh, these Christians, they follow some guy who was killed as a criminal." It's sort of be like today if we stood up in Odessa and said, "Our hero is some anarchist crazy man who wants to overthrow the government," and people would look at us and say, "Yeah, that's kind of weird." And when you read through the Gospel of Luke, one of the things that you see in Luke and especially in Acts is that the Christians have respect for government. This is a lesson we probably need to learn, because think about the government that they had respect for. It was the emperor in Rome. You think your president is bad. Try having an emperor, a Roman emperor. They were really bad. They did whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it, and there was no repercussions. They had guys like Herod, Agrippa, who just lets Paul rot in prison in a total travesty of justice for month after month after month after month. And when Paul finally gets to come before him, does he come and say, "Man, this isn't fair. You're a jerk. You're corrupt." He says, "Honorable Agrippa, thank you for the chance to talk to you. They're respectful, and they submit to the government." And they say things to the leaders like, "Look, you can decide about what you're going to let us do or not do. We're going to preach about Jesus, and if there's consequences, we're willing to bear the consequences." They don't say, "Well, that's not fair. I have rights. You can't do that. I'm a human being." And that's not fair. They just say, "Look, you're the leader. Do what you need to do, and we're going to do what we need to do, but we respect you." And you see that consistently. So there's this apologetic in it. It's also conciliatory. And this is on a couple of levels. On the one hand, you see in the book of Acts, racial barriers falling. And we're going to talk about that in just a minute. And Luke's describing people of all different backgrounds, nationalities, races coming together into the same church. And as they go around, they don't say, "Okay, we're going to start a Jewish church here, and we're going to start a Gentile church here, and we're going to start a Samaritan church here." They just have church, and they're all in there together. And another thing you see is that their leaders are united. There's a point in about Acts 13, 14, 15 where there's some division among the leadership, and it's potentially a big faction or a big crack down the middle of the church. And what do they do? They come together, and they pray about it, and they talk about it, and they read the Bible, and they come up with a solution together. So he's also describing here the unity and the church. Okay, let's move on and talk about application. First of all, I want you to see the demonic attacks in the book of Acts. There's at least four major ones. Some of them are described as demonic. Others we know are demonic, even though Luke doesn't spell that out. The first attack is persecution. And it doesn't just happen in chapters four to five, but that's where it begins. Okay, there's this attack of persecution, and it's first Peter and John who are arrested, and they're threatened. And you just got to remember, when you read chapters four and five, it's the very same guys. Luke lists them all out. It's the exact same guys that murdered Jesus, who are doing the persecuting in chapters four and five. And we know that these guys didn't die in chapters four and five, they made it through. But in the middle of that, they didn't know. All they knew is the guys threatening them were bad enough dudes to kill Jesus, and there's no reason they wouldn't kill them also. So that's the first attack. Second attack is moral failure in the church, and Luke spells this one out, and he says, look, there's a couple in the church and a nice and Sephira, and Satan filled their heart to lie in church about how much they were giving, and to do it publicly, and to try to get praise for that. And so, you can read about that in chapter five. Next division, or next attack is division in distraction. Chapter six. The division is, you've got the Greek-speaking widows in the church, and you've got the Hebrew-speaking widows in the church, and they don't feel like it's fair in the distribution and the help that's being given to widows. And there's this division between people who speak one language and people who speak another in the church, and there's this big fight. And the distraction comes in because when the apostles describe it, they don't only see it as division, but they also say, we don't have time to fix this. Our job is not fixing the problems in a church like this, and they call these men to serve as deacons, and they say, you guys need to fix this, and we're going to focus on the main thing that the church is supposed to be doing. That's preaching the gospel. And then the last attack is doctrinal error. You have a group of people who basically want to add to Jesus. They don't want to get rid of Jesus. They want to say, Jesus is great, but you need to do some other stuff for Jesus, for the church, for God, so that Jesus will accept you and love you. And they solved that in Acts 15. Here's the reason I put these on here. There is nothing new under the sun. If you want to know how Satan is going to try and attack a church today, that's the blueprint. You don't have to guess and wonder, what is Satan going to try to do to our church? That's it, right there. Now, we're fortunate enough to live in a place in a time where the first one has not been much of a reality. You know, if you watch the news at all, that could change on a dime. It could change real quick. Somebody could walk in one day and say, you know what? If you say X, Y, and Z about these people, you lose your tax exempt status. People can still give you money, but they're just not going to get a deduction for it. That would be the first step. It's not uncommon in other Western nations, places like Canada. It's not very far away. It plays like the United Kingdom. It's a lot like us, where if you say X, Y, and Z about what you believe and you direct that towards other people, we're going to call it hate speech. And if you refuse to shut up, we're going to throw you in prison. It could happen. Moral failure. That's probably one of the biggest ones in the United States. Satan knows, if he can get somebody in the church, it doesn't have to be the pastor. It doesn't have to be a Sunday school teacher. If you can get somebody in the church to fall into moral failure, what happens in the community? People say, so-and-so goes to that church. Did you hear what they did? We talked about this in staff meeting on a related note. And I just asked the staff. I said, you think people in the community, when they hear something about one of our members, do you think they distinguish that person from the rest of us? No. You know how I know that? Because I don't do it to other churches. Neither do you. You hear about something going on in someone's life, and they're a member of such and such church. And if you're like me, you say, some church that is. That's what they put up with. That's what's going on over there. That sounds like a mess. In the community, here's that. People hear that. Moral failure. It's an attack. Division. Plain enough. Doesn't need explanation. Distraction. That's a big one in the United States. Especially in the Bible Belt, where you look at churches and you say, man, churches in the Bible Belt do a lot of different things. They're just busy. They have programs. They have events. They have this. They have that. And sometimes you just want to step back and say, how much of that actually goes to the mission that we're supposed to be finishing? You're really busy. You're having a lot of fun. You have a lot of people in the building. Fantastic. Are you actually doing the one thing that Jesus told you to do? Be my witnesses here, there, and everywhere. That's the mission. And in Acts 6, there's this temptation to be distracted, and we face the same thing. Doctoral error. No explanation needed. We're tempted in the same area. All you have to do is watch somebody on TV to figure that out. Here's the interpretive challenge in Acts. Try to move through this as quick as we can here. This is where Acts gets tricky, all right? The major interpretive question in Acts is deciding what is normative and what is descriptive. Acts is a story. Acts is kind of like reading Genesis, Exodus, Chronicles, Job. Those books in the Bible are just stories. They tell you what happened. And along the way, they don't always give you commentary about this is a good thing or this is a bad thing. They just tell the story. You have to use your brain, and you have to look at the context, and you have to look at the rest of the Bible, and you have to use a little bit of common sense to figure out. Is this just something that Luke is describing to us, just saying this is what happened? Or is this something that Luke is telling us, this is something that should happen? And this can be really tricky, and it sounds silly, but churches split and argue and divide over this, and denominations are formed. And so you have things like, you remember the story where the kid Euduchus, the young man, fell out of the window, Paul's preaching, and he's preaching late at night, and the room was hot, and the kid falls out of the window, and he dies, and Paul goes down and brings him back to life, okay? You remember that story? You have some people, Christians, who would look at that and say, okay, they were meeting at night. We're supposed to meet at night. You shouldn't meet Sunday mornings. It says right here, they met in the evening. You shouldn't meet in the evening. And you would have some people who would say, look, it sounds like they didn't have air conditioning in that room. If they didn't do it, we shouldn't do it, okay? Those are kind of silly examples, but you can see how that can get out of hand. It would be the same as if you went back to Genesis and said, wait a minute, you telling me Jacob married more than one woman? I guess that means I can marry more than one woman. He did it. That means I should do it, right? You look at that and with a little bit of common sense, you say, ah, come on. It didn't really work out that well for Jacob. The story doesn't say don't do it, but there was really bad consequences, and you probably shouldn't do that. And you would say, there's some other verses that are pretty clear about what you should do and shouldn't do in regards to marriage. And so this is the tricky part in Acts. And I put these four chapters up here, okay? Chapter two, chapter eight, 10 to 11, and 19. Here's one example that's not so funny, and this is a big deal. And I tell you this is a big deal because you go back 100 years and you count up all the charismatic slash Pentecostal Christians on planet earth. You could put them all in this room, okay? You count them up today, charismatic Pentecostal Christians. There are hundreds of millions of them. They are not going to fit in the room. And they would say to you and to me, will you see it in the book of Acts? We're just doing what they did in the book of Acts. I've been in services where someone from the pulpit has said that. We just want to be a church like the book of Acts, and their thinking is they did this in Acts. We should do it today. What they're saying is everything in Acts is normative. He should be normal. He should be what happens. And I'm looking at it and saying, no, it's descriptive. Luke is just telling us that is what happened. He's not telling us it should happen today every single time. So, Acts chapter two, Peter preaches on Pentecost. The amazing part of that story is that is Peter and the apostles are speaking what happens? They speak in tongues. And people from all over the world, Jewish pilgrims from all over the world, ethnically Jewish, but their nationality is from some other place in the world. They speak a different language. They hear the gospel and they're able to hear it in their own language. And all these guys are speaking in tongues. And it happens when the Holy Spirit falls on the apostles on these Jewish people for the very first time. The Spirit comes, falls on these Jewish people. And the fruit of that is they speak in tongues. And Luke mentions that. Chapter eight, a guy named Philip starts preaching to people in Samaria. Remember, Acts 1 8, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria. Philip starts preaching to the Samaritans. And some people get saved. And then the apostles come to check that out to sort of verify what's going on. And when they get there, it says, after they were saved, the Samaritans. They got saved over here, then over here, they received the Holy Spirit. It came later. First they got saved, a period of time passes, and then they received the Holy Spirit. No mention of speaking in tongues, but our charismatic friends would say, look, first you get saved, and then later you get the Holy Spirit. And we would say, it's not normative, it's just telling us that's how it happened here. And they say, no, it should happen that way. Chapter 10 to 11, Peter starts preaching to Cornelius. This guy's a Gentile. They received the Holy Spirit for the very first time. And guess what Luke says? They speak in tongues. Chapter 19. This one is really kind of strange. Paul goes to Ephesus and he meets a group of guys who are followers of John the Baptist. And apparently they've been living in a cave because they don't know anything really about Jesus. And Paul says, well, let me tell you the rest of the story. We believed in John. Here's what happened next. And they say, fantastic. We believed that. And they got saved, and they were baptized, and they spoke in tongues. Four times in the book of Acts. Listen to me. Lots of people get saved in Acts. Only four times, actually only three times does Luke say they spoke in tongues. And then you got this extra one in chapter eight where the Holy Spirit comes later after salvation. And my argument to my charismatic friends, and they don't believe it, but I think they're crazy. So that's okay, is that Luke is describing what actually happened. He is not saying this is how you should expect it to happen every time. And the first clue that I'm writing there wrong is that even in the book of Acts, it doesn't happen every time. How can you say it's supposed to happen every time, today, when those are the only three times that Luke says it happens? If it's that important that you receive the Holy Spirit in a special way later, that you speak in tongues, that you just, why doesn't Luke say every time somebody gets saved? Why doesn't he just spell it out for us and tell us that it happens? It's only in these four unique situations. So that's the first clue. The second clue is that it is a sign, and you can't deny this, especially in Acts eight, and then again in you see it in chapter ten and eleven. It's a sign, you're listening, a sign to the apostles that people are being saved. So the Holy Spirit comes in chapter two, and it's a sign that they have received this salvation. You get to chapter eight, and the Spirit comes later, and apparently they knew the Spirit comes later, so we presume that they're speaking in tongues, and it's a sign to the apostles. Remember, Philip, the evangelist is not an apostle. They don't receive this till the apostles show up, and they see this, and it's a sign to the apostles to say, "Hey, God is saving these people, just like He saved you, just like it happened in Pentecost, it's no different." And then you get to chapter ten, and Cornelius gets saved, and it's a sign to the apostles to say, "The Gentiles are saved just like you are. They get the Spirit just the same way. They receive the Spirit, tongues, it's a big thing, it's no different than you. It happens the first time it goes to the Gentiles." Chapter nineteen, you have these old covenant believers, right, people who are sort of late to the game, and it's the same thing, a sign to Paul into the apostles. And here's how I know that that's part of what's going on. When they get together and they argue in Acts 15 about who can join the church or who can't, they're arguing about Jews, Samaritans, and especially Gentiles. And the question is, how Jewish do you have to be to join the church? Do you have to do all the Jewish stuff, or can you just come in by faith in Jesus? And do you know what they say? They say, "Hey, think about it." When Cornelius and all those guys got saved, Gentile guys in chapter ten, we know that they received the Holy Spirit just like we did. It was a sign to them, "God is saying loud and clear. You bring these people in, just like you were brought in." Now, turn that sign around. It's also a sign to the Jews and the Samaritans and the Gentiles and these old covenant guys in chapter nineteen that the apostles are the authority, right? Because if you're Samaritan and you say, "Well, I want to follow Jesus," you still sort of have in the back of your mind, "I don't like Jewish people." And you still have this thing, "Okay, maybe I'm going to follow Jesus, but I don't want to submit to Peter the Jew." But when do they receive the Holy Spirit? Only when the apostles show up. You see the same thing with Cornelius. When do they receive the Holy Spirit? Only when the apostles show up. Same thing in chapter nineteen. And it's a sign to all these other people saying, "The apostles are the foundation. You need to listen to this. God is building His church on the rock of Peter. And Paul is a real apostle. And this is the foundation on which the whole thing is going to be laid. So you can just argue with your friends and say, "No, it's not normative. It's descriptive. And this is the sign that's going on. We're not going to get into tongues in 1 Corinthians 14. That's a couple of weeks away. So we'll sort that out later. Here's a few lessons for American Christians and we'll end with this. And I couldn't get all of these on your outline. So you can add some of this if you want to. These lessons for us straight out of the book of Acts. In our age of self-absorption, Acts shows us a church that was willing to suffer and die for Jesus. And we're going to read some of these, some verses about this as we go. Look at Acts chapter four, verse 19. We talked about this earlier. This is Peter and John talking to the guys who murdered Jesus. And they've been threatened and told to shut up, Acts 4, 19. Peter and John answered them, "Whether is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard." And it's an awesome story in the verses that follows. They go back, they meet up with their friends at church and nobody complains about how much of a raw deal they're getting. They have a prayer meeting and nobody prays that God would give them new leaders. Can you believe that? They have corrupt wicked leaders and have this prayer meeting when they've been persecuted and not one time do they say, "God, would you give us new godly leaders?" Do you know what they say? They say, "God, we need you to give us courage. We need you to make us bold." They believe that God can change the leaders if he wants to do that. And what they say is, "We just need you to give us courage to do the one thing you told us to do." And if that means we're going to die like Jesus died, so be it. Give us courage to do that. And it says that God answered that prayer. Look at chapter 12, Acts 12. Acts 12 1 says, "About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed, this is the first Christian to die in the history of the church. He killed James the brother of John with a sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. So there's persecution and these guys die and Peter could have backed out. He could have weaseled out. He could have recanted. He could have changed his position. He could have said one thing to get out of a difficult situation. He didn't do that. It just says down in verse 5 that the church prayed for Peter and God came through and did something amazing there. So in our age of self-focus, you see a church that was willing to suffer and die for Jesus. Second lesson for us. In our age of consumerism, Acts shows us a church that gave top priority to preaching and prayer and purity. And I got a ton of verses here and we're just going to look at a couple of them. Look at Acts chapter 2. This is a pretty neat thing. They just received the Holy Spirit, the apostles did for the very first time. And here's the first thing that happens after they receive the Holy Spirit and they've been talking and all these people are amazed. Acts 2.14. This is the same guy who a few verses earlier is hiding because he's afraid that somebody's going to find out he was a follower of Jesus. The same guy who in the last story lied and cursed the heavens that he didn't know Jesus because he was so scared to identify with Jesus. Now he has the Holy Spirit and here's the first thing he does. Acts 2.14. Peter standing with the 11 lifted up his voice and addressed them and said, "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. These people are not drunk as you suppose is only the third hour of the day but this is what was uttered through the Prophet Joel and he preaches a sermon." Very first thing he does, preaches a sermon. Look at chapter 2 verse 42. It says, "The church devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and the prayers, apostles teaching. They loved the preaching of the word." Look at chapter 13. Chapter 13 verse 1. It says, "There were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manian, a member of the court of Herod the Tetrarch and Saul and while they were worshiping the Lord in fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart from me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them and after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and they sent them off and they sent them off to preach the gospel." Look at chapter 18 verse 24. It says, "There was a Jew named Apollos. He was a native of Alexandria. He came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the scriptures. He'd been instructed in the way of the Lord and being fervent in spirit. He spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only of the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Priscilla heard him, they took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately and when he wished across to Achaeid, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus. All through that description of Apollos you see the importance of preaching. He's a good preacher. He's a good speaker. He knows the scriptures. He was off-base on one thing. So some of the people in the church corrected him and then he was an even better preacher and he went on to the next town and he corrected people. We already read the very last verse in Acts where Paul gets to Rome and what does he do? He preaches the gospel. So these are the things that they prioritized. Number three, in our age of pluralism, Acts presents a church that based its life on the objective truth of the gospel. Acts chapter 4 verse 12. There is salvation and no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. That's pretty black and white. Not a lot of pluralism in that statement. There is only one name by which we can be saved. Look at Acts chapter 17. If ever there was a time for pluralism, the idea that all roads lead to the top of the mountain, it's Paul and Athens and they have this idol and this statue and this God and that got us. Acts chapter 17 verse 22. Paul standing in the midst of the Ariapagos said, "Men of Athens I perceive that in every way you're very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What you worship is unknown I'm going to tell you about. The God who made the world and everything in it being Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man. He is not served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives to all mankind life, breath and everything. Goes on to describe him as the creator and the sovereign one in Paul is saying, "This is the way it is. This is the truth." Number four, in our age of materialism, Acts presents a church that cared for the physical needs of people. Look at Acts chapter 6. Acts 6 1. In those days when the disciples were increasing in number a complaint by the Hellenist arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. You can look at this and say, "Well, you guys shouldn't have been fighting." But you can also look at it and say, "Kudos to you for taking care of those who needed to be taken care of." There was a daily distribution for the most needy, most vulnerable people in the church and they took care of each other. And yes, there was a conflict about it but they dealt it and they continued to meet needs. Number five, in our age of luke warmness, Acts presents a church with a reckless commitment to Jesus. Look at Acts 14-19. Says Jews came from Antioch and Iconium having persuaded the crowds. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples gathered around him he rose up and what did he do? He went back in the city and on the next day he went with Barnabas to Derby. An amazing thing that the guy who just got stoned in one city for preaching gets up and goes straight back into that city. These people were recklessly committed to Jesus. And the last one is this. This one is a big one. We live in an age of spectator Christianity meaning common, let us put on a show for you and you can enjoy it. And we'll make you laugh and we'll make you cry and we'll have the best this and the best that. And the book of Acts is the story of a church that spread through the work of lay people, meaning ordinary, non-clergy Christians. Look at Acts chapter 8. This is one of the greatest verses in the whole book of Acts. Acts 8-1 says, "Saul approved of his execution." That's when Stephen was martyred. He approved of Stephen's execution and there arose on that they had great persecution against the church in Jerusalem and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and they made a great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church entering house after house. He dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Verse 4, this is the good verse. Those who were scattered went about preaching the word. It's not the apostles, because it says right up there in verse 1, at the end of verse 1, the apostles were not scattered at this point. They stay right there in Jerusalem. This is just church members. Saul is dragging them off and he's sending them to prison and they're killing guys like Stephen and it's really, really bad. And some of these people are refugees. They have to leave their home and flee somewhere else for safety. And Luke says the great part of it is that as they were scattered, they went about preaching the word. And you can look at the rest of the book and you can say, well, you know, you can say lay people are important, but Paul's the hero of the book. All things of first parts about Peter and then the whole second parts about Paul and these big important apostle guys and everybody recognized them as these great preachers. But think about what Paul did and think about how the gospel actually spread. Paul went to a town like Philippi and he preached the gospel and he got about three or four or five people together and he said, you guys are a church. God bless. I'm going to the next town. Now, it's your job. I'm not going to do it for you. I preached the gospel in this town. Now, it's your job to go out and to tell everybody else in the town about Jesus. And he goes to the next town and he gets a group of people together and maybe he stays for a week or maybe he stays for eight at times. He stays in Corinth for about 18 months. But eventually he says, all right, I'm leaving. I'm not going to do it for you forever. I'm going on to the next town where they don't know about Jesus and it's your turn to step up and to preach and to teach and to evangelize and to send out your own missionaries. And so yes, we talk a lot about Paul in the book of Acts, but the people who do the heavy lifting are the folks that he leaves behind to preach about Jesus. And so on that note, we're going to watch a quick video about missions and then we're going to end with prayer. And I just want you to remember and I want to remind you as you watch this video.