Acts part 2- Laborers' Podcast

Welcome to the Laborer's Podcast. Thank you for joining us tonight. We are going to be looking at the book of Acts part 2.

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It's wonderful, wonderful what they're doing. Tonight we're going to talk about Acts. Let's jump into it.

Acts is an interesting book. Some people want to pull out literal application, but we talked about before how we need to look at it as more historical and not necessarily as practical application.

So we want to look at some of these chapters, pull out a question for each chapter.

If you have a question for Acts, please leave in the comments. We have, the

Reform Berean is on. My brother. Got a big group today.

He's from Darrell Kings. He's from Darrell Kings Network. Nice. Thank you for joining us

Reform Berean. If anybody has any questions about Acts that we don't touch on, feel free to put in the comments.

Absolutely. We will try to address it. And if I can say it to the

Reform Berean, I appreciate you watching the other day of the unveil with Brother Austin and Pastor Holyfield.

I appreciate your input and your attendance. Thank you, sir. I watch that too,

Rob or John. Y 'all did another great job. Folks need to be tuning in to that. To God be the glory.

So if I'm thinking correctly, we ended on chapter 4 and we want to start on chapter 5.

So tonight question comes from chapter 5 verses 1 through 11. I've heard, and I still got the the

CD cassette from a church discipline conference. They do a different topic, of course, each year, but this comes from a church discipline conference that particular year.

And I heard one of the speakers talk about this verse and also probably read it in a book that they use this passage as a defense of church discipline or what may happen as evidence when church discipline is practiced.

So just a brief overview, you have, and most of you are probably familiar with what happened. You have Ananias and Sapphira who lied to the

Holy Spirit and, of course, were both struck down by the Holy Spirit and their bodies were carried out.

But then you have in verse 14 of chapter 5, and all the more believers in the

Lord, multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number. So there was a fear that come over from the people because of what the

Holy Spirit did, but then you have this increase in number. And the argument was, well, when you practice church discipline, this is a result.

You may have an increase in number. So what do you guys think? If you're teaching, preaching on church discipline, would you use this passage?

This passage? Probably not this passage. Okay. But I think that if you're not practicing church discipline as a congregation, you're not walking in obedience to Christ.

Yeah. If nothing else is listed in Scripture as being just, right, and holy, so we ought to be people who practice church discipline.

I thank Matthew. Oh, somebody has a better memory than me. 18?

Perhaps. Is that what he says? Bring your...

talk to your brother, and if you can't be persuaded, then go take one person on by and go to him.

Yeah. I think that's as good as an example of church discipline in the

New Testament, and if nothing else is a step -by -step procedure of how you ought to do it, right? So in this case, if I were going to use a verse of Scripture, I would use one that lists the steps, you know, in a way that are applicable and are timeless, as opposed to an account, which,

I mean, I believe is 100 % accurate, you understand, but I don't know that that's descriptive manner of how church disciplines played out modernly.

We don't really see the church applying to discipline in this particular situation either way, right?

It's a supernatural outworking of the Holy Spirit, which is not unusual in Acts for the

Holy Spirit to get involved, right? So not that he's not involved, but, you know, not merely working through the church.

I mean, you know, he... listen, last time I checked, we're not allowed to kill anybody in church, right?

I'm just saying. So I don't see how that could be church discipline. That's right.

Yeah, and too, I think it is, like John said,

I think the most direct and practical descriptor of church discipline would be there in Matthew 18.

However, in being explained and talked about what is the purpose of church discipline, number one is to reconcile.

I mean, you can see in 1 Corinthians 5, right? Paul, you know, calls out on the carpet and says he's already made the judgment, and then, but we understand that the purpose of church discipline is ultimately reconciliation, and the reality of salvation and the relationship between brothers and sisters in Christ, long -term, because of the work of the

Holy Spirit, will produce reconciliation. Otherwise, it's a way of identifying...

this may sound strong... it's a way of identifying false professors.

I mean, if a person continually... I mean, again, we see the gamut in the

Scripture. We see in 1 John, right? We love our brothers, and if a man say he hates his brother, the love of God is not in him.

And what does love cause us to do? Jumping back over, back to Ephesians, again, it's all through the

Scriptures. Be kind one to another, tender -hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, also has forgiven you.

We see this. But it's important that we take the whole counsel of God into consideration when we think about church discipline, and we don't just see the negative aspects, but we understand that what

God has laid out in His Word, the long -term goal is ultimately a positive aspect.

And then there's, in this passage, the fear of God that says, hey, you need to really understand something.

You may slip by with man, but you ain't gonna slip by on God.

God knows what is up, and He knows how to take care of what's going on. I think that's a perfect example of the direction, or what we can take out of this.

This may not be an example or a go -to passage or playbook for church discipline.

However, those are the kind of principles that we can learn from this that are related to church discipline.

Sure. You know, fear the Lord. Exactly. If church discipline is practiced, you know, there's gonna be a sense of awe, a sense of fear, and it also depends on the circumstance of your church.

If you have a membership that's never heard of church discipline, it's gonna rock their world. Yeah. And then you want to start to implement it in your church, so you're gonna have that to deal with.

But if you begin to practice church discipline, you may have some fall -off before you have some increase.

I think that you're 100 % correct. The thing that I would take away from this is that the fear of the

Lord is healthy in the church. The church grew because of what?

Obviously, I mean, the big story is upper stories, as Brother Jonathan says all the time, is the

Lord's calling people out and saving them, right? Obviously, that's how the church grows. But the church was growing at a rate that was exponential because of the persecution on the church.

Whether we like to admit it or not, whenever the world turns the heat up, the church burns brighter, and whenever there's purity in the church, it just continues to be better.

For instance, most ministries that I've seen that don't practice church discipline are because from the top down, there's a lack of integrity in the leadership.

Amen. And you're not going to get up and teach on discipline and integrity and ethics and holiness if your life has holes all in it, all over the place, right?

If you fear to get called out yourself. Yep, exactly. And truthfully, the fear that a lot of the people have whenever you practice

Matthew chapter 18 discipline is that their neighbors and family members will understand or will hear about whatever is going on, and that's one of the reasons why they would stop whatever actions that you brought before them.

And even that's not a good enough reason. You ought to be afraid of the Lord. You ought to be ashamed before God if there's something that you get called out on.

Amen. I was gonna piggyback on what Claude said, because when

I first looked at these two passages, thinking about Matthew 18, and as Claude said, the ultimate goal of church discipline being reconciliation,

I didn't really see the correlation, because obviously in Acts, there's no attempt at reconciliation.

There's just immediate death. But it was interesting. I was listening to a sermon a couple days ago by John MacArthur, and he wasn't talking about church discipline, but he brought up this passage in Acts, and he discussed it, and he said, we look and see the early church.

They were growing. They were doing well, thriving, and then you have this incident where sin is brought into the church, and there could have been the potential for that sin within the church to grow and ultimately impact what the church was experiencing and doing.

So God just cut that off as a way to keep the church pure.

And the same instance with the church discipline laid out in Matthew 18, again, the goal was to reconcile that person, two brothers and sisters, and bring them back in the church.

But beyond that, again, it's to keep the church pure, keep that sin out of the church, and he made a good point that ultimately the purity of the church is a good testimony of the validity of the gospel.

If we've got the church proclaiming the gospel, proclaiming that they have been transformed by the power of the gospel, yet we see unrepentant sin rampant in the church, what kind of testimony is that to the world?

So I think we can look at both these passages, and again, I think what everybody said is correct.

When we're looking at it as a process today, we need to go to Matthew 18. We can look at the two passages as pointing us to the importance of the purity and keeping sin out of the church.

Yeah, we see that explicitly in 1 Corinthians 5, 13, you know, purge the evil person from among you, or even like 1

Timothy 1, I don't remember exactly which verse, but it's talking about Hemanas and Alexander, you know, where Paul says that he hands them over to Satan so that they can learn not to blaspheme.

You know, I think the way that he lays that out is so like epic, because you know, it's so like, you know, we have to make sure that we are teaching these people that when they are doing something wrong, and they keep doing it unrepentantly, that doesn't belong in the house of God.

Amen. You know what I mean? Well I think that you see an example in Acts of the

Lord looking after his church, right? As Brother Matt was saying that, about how it didn't look like an example of reconciliation, but in a sense, the church is just being born, right?

The church is just being founded. We can't have a bad foundation of this thing getting started off the ground, and I was thinking about how this looked like Korah in the

Old Testament, and how there was disobedience in the Exodus, and God just opened the earth and swallowed a bunch of people, and it eventually got to the point to where it was like, look, everybody ever told you with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, you're not even going into the

Promised Land because, you know, you're too bound and bent on Egypt, right?

And I think that you see that happen in a New Testament translation, or a

New Testament example with an ice and fire. See, my church is going through 1st

Samuel right now, verse by verse, and we've been working through the sons of Eli, and so we've been talking through Eli and his sons, who were wretched people so much so that actually says in 1st

Samuel that God hated them, which is strong language. Eli's the priest.

He should, of all people, he should have had this figured out. He should have had this in order, but he doesn't.

And it gets to a point where they are profaning the order of things in the temple.

I'm sorry, not the temple. The temple hasn't been built yet, but in the holy place, in the tabernacle.

And so God kills them in battle, and has the Philistines take the Ark of the Covenant back to their camp.

And it was a picture of just of God turning them over, like we see in Romans 1, that God gave them up.

That it's almost, it's just kind of the natural consequences of the rebellion.

So you're saying the same God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament? Absolutely. Thank you,

Gene Codd! I think the most God of the Old Testament thing ever written is in the book of Luke, when

Jesus says, depart from me into everlasting fire, man. That's got to be more, quote,

God of the Old Testament than anything actually in the Old Testament. Right. And I think with Ananias and Sapphira, in light of Eli and Samuel, it's an extreme.

This is the gravity of how God views our worship, the way we operate as the people of God.

It talks in Hebrews 12, that you have not come to a mountain that may be touched, but you have come to Mount Zion.

You have come to myriads of angels. And while we might differ on how to apply that exactly, there is weight when the church comes together, when we worship the risen

Christ. There is weight in that, and I think Ananias and Sapphira shows the extreme of when we disregard that, when it's just the thing that we do.

Amen. That's good stuff right there. Because it's all before the face of God. Exactly.

Amen. Exactly. Quorum Deo. I appreciate you bringing that up,

Matt, and all the conversation that happened after that. It's a beautiful thing to see that we can bring...

what principle we can bring out of this passage is that we can see the mind of the

Holy Spirit and how he views his church. Yeah. I think

God purifies his church, and sometimes it's through church discipline, you know, through his church, but there are other means, right?

And I think this is just one of those other means. What I think

I heard Tyler Noe say is that they need to stay hitched to the Old Testament.

That's right. They don't want to hitch to the Old Testament. That's where Jesus is. That's right. Let's keep them hitched.

Alright, let's move on to number 2, chapter 6, and in the same way, and this has been my background, maybe some of yours as well, we want to use this passage concerning deacons and how we choose deacons.

Should we use this passage in choosing deacons in a church, church leaders, pastors here, and how does it talk about disciples and discipleship in this passage?

So would I can do my clod, praise the Lord. Well, let me do my clod.

Roll Tide. Matt shakes his head.

So I think yes, yes, we do apply this, particularly,

I think, in practice here because this is one of those places where, yes, the

Book of Acts is a historical narrative. However, there are principles that should be applied for the

New Testament church, and this is a very good principle that, for example, like how the deacons were chosen.

Notice, they were chosen and then presented to the congregation, right?

That's what it says, doesn't it? The twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, it's not desirable. They say that, and so they presented these men and the saying, please the whole multitude, and they chose

Stephen, a man full of faith, and the Holy Spirit, Philip, Prochris, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch, whom they said before the apostles, and when they prayed, they laid hands on them.

No special power was conferred upon them by the laying on of hands, but that was somewhat of an affirmation, public affirmation, of these men being ready for ministry, and what does the

New Testament teach us about deacons in 1st Timothy, right? A deacon should be tried, tested, proven, and then when they are proven, then they've attained for themselves a good name, is what the

Scripture says. So I think very principally, yes, we apply this practice.

It's good because it prevents like, so let's say the pastor and the elders, you know, they don't just put somebody in this position of deacon that they like.

They're not, you know, they're not trying to build a cult, right, yeah.

This guy's least likely to disagree with my decisions. That's exactly right. You want people that are willing to, and by the way, there's a difference between the office of elder and deacon, and we all know that.

I know we all know that, but just so that folks are watching, but the deacons have a very important role when it comes to carrying out a function in the church.

That's why it's set aside as a specific office. Bishops and deacons, or elders and deacons, interchangeable, those terms are used, but very, very important, and what a lot of folks fail to understand when you really start to study it out, deacons are really, when you start looking at the function and the role throughout the scriptures, they are really like an extension of a sense of the elders.

They're a great help and an aid to the elders of the congregation, so that the elders can perform the function that they are called to do, which is to give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the

Word. So, you know, a lot of folks think the old -time Baptists say, you know, basically the deacons run the church.

No, the deacons serve the church. The deacons serve the elders. The elders preach and teach the gospel, the

Word of God to the people, and the body itself functions as a whole, successfully limping along the way.

Let me ask you something, guys. In light of that, if the deacons serve the church, they don't run the church, does the ordination of deacons sometimes undermine that?

How so? Right. I'm just thinking in terms of just the elitist mindset that a lot of churches have had, that we've got a title, we've got an office.

Is that sometimes counterproductive to lift up these guys in the church? I'm gonna make a statement and give it to somebody who has an office of deacons in their church more than ours.

One of the things that I would say is that whenever you take a position, with it should come a measure of accountability for that position.

Amen. If you're going to be put in a position like any kind of leadership, let's just call deacons leaders and just be done with it, right?

Because whether they be people who help with whatever financial decisions going to the church, or whether they're people who help with security,

I don't really care. In a moment, of them is going to be asked for them to use their best sense and knowledge that they have to address a situation, and if you're going to do that, then first of all, you need to know who they are, and they need to be vetted, but they also need to be held accountable for that, and the easiest way to do that is to make the position something that comes with accountability.

Therefore, whenever you take that position, you know what you're taking, and it doesn't change from person to person, right?

If you say, Brother Tyler, I want you to become the Sunday school superintendent, first thing you should be asking, what does the

Sunday school superintendent do? Orders all the material, and make sure the material is

Christ -honoring, is biblically centered, it isn't some knuckle -doodle -whack job that we bought off of eBay, that the source where you get it from is accurate, right?

Like the Church of God Publishing House. Anyway, the point is that you would know what your job is, and then if all of a sudden,

Sunday school material came in that didn't make the cut, and you put it out there, then who would be the one who has to answer for it, right?

It's all about structure, accountability, honest, open, and trustworthy ministry.

Okay. I was just curious, because I have seen ordination change people, and not for the better.

I'm not saying it can't. I'm just saying that ideally. But I think that speaks to other problems that are going on in the church.

You know, are they even defining what a deacon's role actually is, you know? Because there might be some misconceptions among the congregation as to what a deacon even is.

I remember when I was younger, you know, I thought a deacon is just another type of pastor, you know what

I mean? They run the church, it's like you guys are saying, you know. And so, you know, you saw deacons as like these people that were like somehow higher than you, when in reality we're all brothers and sisters who are trying to serve, and that's exactly what a deacon is doing.

It's just, he has that special office, because he has qualified, he has shown himself to be dependable, to be trustworthy.

I mean, you know, 1st Timothy 3, right? He has met those qualifications. So, you know, we can't—people have a tendency to lift up human beings rather than God, and that's what happens sometimes with deacons, or elders, right?

Or whoever. But we have to bring the church back to reality that, hey, we're all brothers and sisters who are fallible, right?

And we're all ultimately serving God in different functions, but the only one that we should be upholding like that is

God himself. Not the pastors, not the deacons, not the Sunday school teacher, not whoever.

That's right. I think in my experience, I think you see a pretty big difference in churches that have a plurality of elders versus a single pastor.

If there's a single pastor, I think there's a much bigger danger of blurring the lines of what the responsibility of the deacon is, because they want to, or maybe even feel like they need to, not out of any wrong motive necessary, do more than what their position biblically warrants, because a single pastor, in most instances, is trying to do too much.

Amen. Going beyond their responsibility as well. I think what Claude pointed to, and I think we can kind of miss in this passage, and it's something

I didn't understand for the longest time, but what having a good solid group of deacons frees the elders up to be in prayer and ministry of the

Word. That is their focus, and again, growing up in Southern Baptist churches all my life, you just expect the preacher to be visiting everybody in the hospital, everybody at home, making phone calls, doing it all, and that's not his biblical job description.

Not that they can't do that when time warrants, but that's why Scripture sets out these different positions to be able to handle those different functions in the church.

And, I mean, we truly, when you want, if you want to do and be analogous, we can be analogous and go back to the

Old Testament. Jethro, Moses' father -in -law, told him, Thou doest take too much upon us thyself.

It was in the King James when he said, that's why he said the seventy elders.

He said, let them look out and oversee these things as well.

The big matters they can bring to you, but don't try, like Matt said, that the elders shouldn't try to do everything themselves.

God knows what He is doing. That's right. Let's look at this verse.

I want to ask Brother Rob, because he don't get to do a lot of this. I'm going to throw a curveball at Rob. Is there permission?

Oh, careful raising your hand. Your camera's moving. Oh, man.

Y 'all could be the pre -show, could see the shenanigans. Anyway, so a while ago,

I said that Acts chapter 5 was a description of what had happened, but Matthew chapter 18 was a better example of church discipline.

Just to back that up. Not that I think that obviously whatever God did is right in Acts chapter 5.

I don't want y 'all to think I'm drawing God into question here by no means, but one of the reasons why I say that this is an example that we should sit here to is look how systematic it is.

It looks like a procedure. We have the very beginning, we see a problem. We need to solve the problem.

How is it that we suggest to solve the problem? When you look at these two things, can you describe to me, and I feel like I might be fishing or soft tossing it.

Do you see the difference there? Like if you were trying to describe the difference between what is prescriptive and what is descriptive in this book?

I appreciate you using those terms. Those are the terms that I forgot earlier. Descriptive and prescriptive is how we look at Acts sometimes.

Well, that kind of leads me to a question that I wanted to draw from or propose as well, because if you're a new believer, you're a new

Christian, you're just taking this on and you're directed to this passage. You're studying the topics of deacon, church polity, and you're directed to this passage, and you're looking at this with new eyes, with fresh eyes, and this is where they get choosing deacons from.

I guess my question from that point of view would be, okay,

I don't exactly see a perfect parallel. So the leaders here are the apostles, and in the church you have the pastors, the elders.

You don't have the term, actual term deacon used, but you have the term those who serve, at which deacon means to serve.

So that's where they draw it from, but it's not an exact parallel because you're not using the same terminology, and Claude brought up a word, too, and I think you were hinting at it,

Claude. People will use this as a reference or support for elder -led instead of elder -ruled because they brought them before the congregation and the congregation approved.

I don't know if that's exactly where you were going with it, Claude, but you know, I can see where some people would use that as a reference or a support for elder -led versus elder -ruled because they bring them before the congregation and the congregation approved.

You do see a principle parallels that you were talking about, you know, the leadership in both aspects, and this is kind of what you're getting at,

John. You have the apostles and the pastors, they're focusing on the Word, and then you have the deacons, and in this case the servers, who are ministering and serving the church.

So they're not using the same terminology but the same practice in those positions.

Okay, so forget the terminology, then look at the practice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see the same practice. Yeah, so it'd take too long if I ask it again or ask it in a different way, but I think you answered my question anyway.

I appreciate that. Yeah, well, and I think it was brought up in Acts chapter 5.

It was more the Holy Spirit leading and directing this. It wasn't the church members following Matthew 18 where they brought somebody, you know, they went to them first, and then they brought two or three with them, and they didn't listen.

Then they brought them to the church, and the church didn't kill them. This was a Holy Spirit deal altogether. Sure, sure.

So yeah, I see the difference that you were talking about. So how does this help with discipleship?

Yeah, that's the second part of the question, so I'm gonna ask it of you. My phone won't open up so I can read the question exactly.

Bear with me, technical difficulty. Here we go. I've got it right here. Go ahead, my brother. So are you, oh, go ahead.

I want to ask you the second half of that question, the number two. Does this passage teach us about making disciples and discipleship?

So this is where, this is where I saw that. So you go to verse 7. The Word of God kept on spreading.

Why did it keep on spreading? Well, they put this, they established this foundation, they put this in place where you have the apostles, the leaders at this time.

They were able to focus and preaching and sharing the gospel and the

Word of God and laying that foundation, and they didn't have to stretch themselves to where they were so thin because they were having to serve the tables.

They were able to focus on the Word, so therefore the result was a number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.

So I think if we are obeying God, and this kind of goes back to one of the points that I wanted to make in Acts chapter 5, one of the principles that we can pull out of this is we can't dogmatically say, if we practice church discipline, this will happen, or if we do this, this will happen.

We can't say this, but what we can say in principle or in generality, if we obey the

Word of God, God will bless His Word. His Word will not return void. So if increasing our numbers is how

He wants to bless us, that's how He'll bless us. If He wants to increase our faith, if He wants to increase our knowledge, if He wants to increase our understanding of the

Holy Spirit, whatever He wants to do in that local body, that's what He's going to do, and we find ourselves in a position for Him to bless us when we are obeying

His Word, and I think that's what's happening here. They were obeying His Word. They were being organized, following the

Holy Spirit, and people were, the disciples were growing, and even the priests were coming to faith.

Sweet. Next question. Next question. Alright, Acts chapter 7. What was the role of the

Holy Spirit in Acts 7, especially the stoning of Stephen? I like hearing,

I want to hear y 'all go on this. I'm Pentecostal. We talk on Acts all the time. So what do you think?

Anybody have any thoughts on the role of the Holy Spirit here? Well, first and foremost, the

Holy Spirit is interpreting the Old Testament to the

Jews. The Holy Spirit is bringing clarity and presenting Christ and Him crucified through the history of Israel, starting with Egypt, going back to the

Exodus, and Moses, who was a rejected Savior, just as you have rejected

Christ. That's right. And so the Holy Spirit, first and foremost, brings clarity to what has been in order to show what is.

Amen. I love it. I love it. And then Stephen goes straight from that into, they have resisted the

Holy Spirit. That this same Holy Spirit who preached Christ to them just then. Yes.

He says, you stiff -necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears, which is very Old Testament.

That is all over the Old Testament. Hitch up. Hitch them up. That's Deuteronomy right there.

We may stop calling you Tyler and just start calling you Hitch. And he says, you are always resisting the

Holy Spirit, as your ancestors did you do also. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?

They even killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become.

Trap. And from there, Stephen becomes the first martyr of the church and says that he was full of the

Holy Ghost and gazed into heaven. That in the midst of being killed for the faith, for being martyred for Christ and him crucified, the

Holy Spirit gave him a peace. Amen. To gaze up into heaven as he was being stoned to death.

Amen. He says, look I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

Trap. And among those persecuting him, among those that took part in his stoning, there was

Saul. Who we'll get to in a minute. Amen.

One thing you all had touched on in prior episodes on other topics, but as Tyler just read starting there in verse 55, the

Holy Spirit ultimately exalted and pointed to Christ and enabled

Stephen to again gaze into heaven and see what it was all about in that moment.

So that leads me to point to our conference, which is going to point to the

Holy Spirit, which is going to point to Christ. In April, the end of last week in April, we're gonna be in at Ephraim out of Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, empowered by the

Holy Spirit. And just to reiterate what you were talking about, Matt, you look at Stephen's sermon here, and he's talking to the

Jews, this is what God has done, this is what God has done, this is what God has done. And then how can you do this without being empowered by the

Holy Spirit? Say to them, which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute and kill?

And you have done this to the Messiah, and in the midst of death, look up to heaven and see

Jesus and have the faith, the courage to speak the truth to these men, and then have the faith to face death by stoning.

You can't do that without the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So let me back up, right?

Chapter 6, verse 3. Therefore, brothers, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the

Spirit, with a capital S, wisdom and wisdom, whom you can appoint to this duty.

Now let me ask you a twofold question. Do you see the importance of following this step first?

What would Stephen, if Stephen would have just been a good old boy that was in tight with Peter, what would his testimony had been to those

Jewish leaders? Who knows, right? Obviously, we can't tell because we weren't there.

The second part of that question is, what got him stoned? Servant, hungry widows, and orphans that had been neglected?

No. Preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ is why he was stoned. That's right. Being a deacon or a leader in a church does not conclude your ministry obligations to God.

Your ministry obligations to God still include personal witnessing, where you work, live, and play, and being an example of Christ in your community and in your church, which is one of the reasons why you follow these steps.

You don't skip steps because you wind up putting the wrong people in the wrong places, and you set them up for failure and whoever they're testifying to for failure.

That's right. That's true. It's good words. Amen. Anybody else on chapter seven?

Well, we're moving right along. Fantastic. Well, we did get a question from Nancy.

Nancy says, sorry, I'm looking for the right comment.

I'm in the path of the eclipse in October. Has anyone been researching Christological astronomy?

I don't know nothing about it. No, sir. No. I have not.

Only thing I would say to that is Nancy, you know, that's fine, but what

I would encourage you to do is primarily look to the Word always. A lot of people try to kind of try to figure out

God in different signs and different, you know, whether it's looking to the heavens or be seeing how people are behaving or looking at a particular pastor or whatever.

You know, there's a reason why we believe in Sola Scriptura. It's because that is the sole highest infallible authority that God has given us to know him and know what his will is.

So I would encourage you to concentrate on that first and foremost.

Amen. Well, you just blessed my heart. You've got a new nickname now, Pastor Jay.

That was that was amazing. I was very pastoral. My reformer brother.

I'm gonna have to talk to my pastors then. Be like, hey, these guys are ordaining me over here.

We have to talk through some of your eschatology, but if you want to come join the Church of God. Listen, get in line because my pastors have talked to me about that as well.

Okay. Well, while we don't have that authority here, we do recognize your... You're accountable to your local congregation, to your local elders.

I appreciate your heart. I appreciate your heart and how you dissected that.

To answer her question shortly, I have absolutely zero idea what you're talking about. I want to ask the question.

Can I ask number four? Ask away, brother. Ask eight. What does the encounter between Philip and the eunuch, the

Ethiopian archbishop, teach us about spreading the gospel? That's the first question.

There's two follow -ups. What does it teach us about baptism and all the

Methodist shuttered? What should we expect? Part three. I'm really bad at asking questions.

Part three. Should we expect... Oh, you're editing it right now, you rascal.

It's the T -word. Go ahead. Teleportations today. To be up front,

I use the word transportation. I love this group.

Oh, I love this group. Okay, so first part of the question. What does the encounter between Philip and the eunuch teach us about spreading the gospel, brother man?

I would say that it shows us that we have a responsibility to act and to go, but ultimately it's the

Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit and God's providence is gonna initiate these encounters that we're involved in.

So everything by God's providence is lined up, but Philip still had to ultimately go and act on what he was told to do.

I'm glad you added that part because I was gonna ask the Reformed Rican. I don't understand all the points of Calvinism, so I don't want to offend either ignorantly or on purpose, so we do see

Philip exercising surrender to what God's telling him to do prior to him leaving to go meet the eunuch, right?

Okay. So from a Calvinist worldview, what does...

I mean, I know what it looks like because we got it in Scripture, so I don't think you've read a different Bible or nothing, but how does this obedience...

obviously we see the importance of why it happened, right, in history actually more than in Scripture, but...

Are you referring to him ultimately reaching the Ethiopian eunuch? Sure. Okay, all right. Take it away from him leaving where he was at preaching the gospel to go to one person, right, leaving all the crowds that he was seeing saved.

If you want to give the backstory or the context to support any of your claims, by all means, take the time to figure it out the right way.

I guess I'm trying to figure out, like, you brought up Calvinism... Yes, okay, you're right, I'm sorry, the question

I didn't ask it entirely, my fault, bad at asking questions. So my understanding of Calvinism is very limited, but I believe there's some manner of free will that's absent, right?

Well, depends on which Calvinist you're talking to, and depends on how you're defining free will, because some...

you know, I would say, depending on who I'm talking, I might say, yeah, there is free will,

I just wouldn't say there is unlimited will, right? We are limited to God's parameters, but, you know, if I wanted to, say,

I don't know, pick up this pen, I can pick up this pen. I decided to do that, you know what I mean? Like, if that's what we're defining as free will, sure, we have free will.

Okay, so in this case, Philip leaving is just simply exercising his free will to either obey

God or to disobey God. He wasn't in any way, shape, or form constrained or coerced that he had to obey

God in his going. So what I would say to that is this. God molds us, right, and shapes us.

Sometimes through supernatural means, sometimes through ordinary means. I think, for example, of, you know, that, you know, what's the guy?

Oh my goodness, I'm blanking out. The guy that got swallowed up by the fish. Jonah. Jonah, okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Jonah. So Jonah didn't want to go preach to Nineveh, right?

Ultimately, though, he did, right? Now, God, you know, sometimes brings you in real close, and sometimes he kind of, you know, releases ebbs and flows,

I guess you could say. But ultimately, his, you know, it's like Isaiah says, my purpose will stand.

My counsel shall stand. I will accomplish all that I will, right? And so, I don't know if your question is, could

Philip have said no? But if that's your question,

I would say, maybe. Did God will for him to say no?

So, I think my question more along the lines is, I know how I've read this Scripture, and how

I've taught from this Scripture, and been taught from this Scripture, and I really just wanted to hear your take on it from your point of view, because,

I mean, I won't know if I don't ask. Okay. So, to make it real simple, I think

Philip did what he did, and decided to do what he did, because God had turned his heart towards obeying him.

Good enough. Well, we see evidence of that with him and the other evangelists here spreading the

Gospel in Chapter 8. I mean, God has turned all their hearts, and they're being obedient, and going to these different villages and towns, and they're preaching the

Gospel. It's important here, too, when we consider what y 'all are talking about there, to make a sharp distinction.

When we talk, when the terminology of free will is used, no matter from what perspective, it's speaking in relation to soteriology, or God's saving individuals, not that of after a person is saved, you know, because what

God does is changes the will of man, where we desire the things of God, where we live in cooperation with the

Holy Spirit, where before salvation, we were at odds with the Holy Spirit, with God the

Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. But as a believer, we are in cooperation with Him.

Now, because we are in the flesh, we still sin, and we still are disobedient, and we still fall short, but the distinction, again, needs to be made in this.

This is not a matter of free will. That's a speculation, and that's speculations, it has been said, you know, basically, should be left out, because when we speculate on, could

He have, or could He have not, then we're intruding, and we're bringing what we all hate, we're bringing eisegesis into the text, when we bring those speculations that aren't spoken clearly, so.

I just want to read one thing real quick, Philippians 2, 12 and 13, verse 12 says, therefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

So here's a command, right, to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. All right, so you got to do something here, right?

But then, verse 13, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

Ultimately, you know, there's no distinction, at least me as a Calvinist, I wouldn't necessarily say those are completely separate, independent of each other.

No, there's something working there together, right? God is working in us at the same time that we are doing these things.

So help me unpack that for, and I, you know, first of all, I'm not like disagreeing with anything you said, right?

Sure, yeah. Help us unpack that for folks who are watching tonight or down the road, who either, one, are uncertain if they're saved, or certain they're saved, or certain they're lost.

But to those who believe, who they've made the confession that I know the

Lord, they've prayed as they were directed or called on, they're reading

Scripture, and they see that Philip, Paul, John, Mark, the

Apostles, those that come after them are so obedient to the

Holy Spirit, they're so sensitive, and they hear the Spirit speaking to them, and they say, this is absent in my life.

How do I know that I'm even saved? Well, I would say, are you asking me specifically? I'm asking you to explain that to someone who's listening, who doesn't have assurance of salvation, or maybe they have a false assurance of salvation, and they're just walking in disobedience, because after all, the point of the podcast is to help those in all areas, those who are walking with the

Lord for many years, or those who are just now beginning, or aren't affiliated altogether, and we're appealing to them from their position.

I've had that conversation so many times with so many people, and even people that don't, you know, it's not even about Calvinism per se, it's just people that like, hey man,

I don't know, you know, I want to do the right thing. Sometimes I just can't, you know, and I point them to Romans 7, you know, what

I want to do, I don't do. What I don't want to do, that's what I keep on doing. Now, there's a certain sense in which you do want to do it, right?

In the flesh, you do want to do what is wrong, but in your spirit, right? Like, there's something that's convicting you.

There's something that is driving you nuts, about the fact that you do what you ought not to do.

So my question to that person is, have you repented and looked to Christ? Have you asked forgiveness?

Have you asked for mercy? If they say no, I say, well then, do it, and then yeah, you'll be saved.

And if you have, then you have nothing to worry about. Now, keep asking him to help you love him more and hate your sin more, because, you know, we still are called to obey, but that obedience in and of itself is not what's going to save you.

Rather, your salvation is going to outwork that obedience, and it's not a perfect obedience.

You know, we see so many times, David, a man after God's own heart, committed adultery, murder, and, you know, he was still a man after God's own heart.

Peter denied Jesus, the Lord, three times. But what did Jesus do? He restored him.

So, I mean, you know, we're going to have those moments, absolutely. My question is, do you not care whether you're sinning or not?

Does it not affect you? Are you indifferent to it? I would make an argument that if you don't care, or rather that if you do care, it might just be that there's a conviction of the

Holy Spirit. And if there's a conviction of the Holy Spirit, then that just may be that you are saved.

Amen. That's good. I enjoyed that. And I agree with that. So, we've got an encounter with Philip, who is, well, he's just witnessing, right?

This is one -on -one gospel sharing, Ray Comfort style,

Mesopotamia, right? I mean, this is teleporting, this is camels, this is

Ethiopian eunuchs, this is water appearing in a desert. There's all kinds of supernatural going on, right?

So, and this... You're killing me, Claude.

I tried like everything not to smile when I said that. You're killing me. So, with that being said, how do you approach it,

Brother Robert? I mean, we see the importance of independent witnessing all throughout

Scripture, right? We see the importance of sharing the gospel in everything that you do.

What does this encounter with the eunuch tell us about walking with assurance of salvation and with the power of the

Holy Spirit present in your ministry? Think about how he encounters him.

What does Philip say to the eunuch whenever he walks up to him? What does

Philip say to the eunuch? You ask him a question. What are you reading? That's exactly right.

What are you reading? The book of Acts chapter 8. I'll try to make this quick and answer that question if I can.

I'll do my best, but also to talk about what you were bringing up earlier about Calvinism. Just like Matthew 8 or Acts chapter 5 and Matthew 18, you know, we can go to other places in Scripture to have a discussion about free will, but if you want to bring up Calvinism slash the sovereignty of God or the understanding of the sovereignty of God within Calvinism, I think you can look at this passage to understand the

Calvinistic understanding of the sovereignty of God. Because look at the specificity of what's happening here.

He says he's taking Philip and he's going to a specific place to a specific person.

That's number one. And number two, he's fulfilling what he said he's going to fulfill.

He's sending them out to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world.

You've got an Ethiopian. He's coming from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship with a false understanding.

God takes a specific person, Philip, to another specific person, the Ethiopian eunuch, and corrects his understanding or helps him to understand the

Old Testament in the light of Jesus Christ, who came to save him, who is now, who came from Ethiopia with a lack of understanding or misunderstanding of the

Old Testament passage, but now he's going back to Ethiopia with the gospel. That's right.

Baptized. That's right. And so I see the specificity and the sovereignty of God in this passage, where he's doing something intentional and purposeful.

I do, too. And so, yeah, and bringing up the Isaiah passage, that's part of the gospel here, is that in your witnessing, your one -on -one, you've got somebody who doesn't understand.

He's taking him where? To Scripture. He takes him to the cross. To the cross, to the

Scripture, yeah. That's right. And it's done by the power of the Holy Spirit, though, right?

That's right. Because he couldn't take the gospel accounts and read them to him, could he? And here's what's interesting about this situation, because we want to emphasize the

Holy Spirit, but if you look at the complete story, it's the Holy Spirit who took him, who teleported him out.

But what led him to the Ethiopian eunuch? He had to run. The Spirit.

Verse 26. That's right. By the Spirit, he ran, outran that chariot. Hold on, verse 26.

Hold on, I'm out of line. I've got a...I'm in Philippians. An angel of the

Lord. An angel. So, we want to emphasize the word of the

Holy Spirit in Acts and get our theology about the Holy Spirit from Acts. And we've talked about them a lot here in chapter 8.

But when it comes to the initiation, it was that God sent an angel.

Well, what are the...what's the job of the angels? Messenger. Yeah, ministering spirits and messengers, yeah.

So, but he ran down a horse and chariot. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty fast. I'd say.

I mean, that's Pentecostal fast. I don't even know if they make a gimbal to keep up with that.

You have to have a GoPro. Hey, can

I speak to the teleportation piece for just a moment? Absolutely. Transportation, you mean?

Yeah, yeah. So, we're all broke. Transportation meant teleportation and the...what

was the word you used? Nuckerdoodles or what was that you used earlier, John?

Or talk about the... Which...did I say something, Redneck? We were talking about the...maybe the extremes, right?

Oh, and I said the...oh, what did I say? Anyway, the wingnut

Nuckerdoodles. I'll use Christopher Roosevelt's term. So, the New Apostolic Reformation, Word of Faith people will go to extremes focusing on something like this.

I would like...and this is just for speculation, but again,

I think when we look at the Scriptures, we have to look at it with balance, not to downplay the role of the

Spirit's work, but to look at it just from a logic perspective for just a moment.

So, Luke wrote Luke and Acts, right? Sure. And what these are are eyewitness...well,

the Gospel are eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life, so it's like Luke reporting. Here in Acts, it's

Luke actually not only taking eyewitness accounts, but reporting himself.

So, the idea...or the statement in verse 39 and 40, now, when they came up out of the waters, speared up the

Lord, caught Philip away so that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus.

In passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. This could very well be, again, because of the way that it's misconstrued as...by

some of the wingnut wackerdoodles, even as teleportation, this could just be a grammatical way of stating that Philip immediately went to Azotus and began to preach.

Again, this is one of those areas where speculation is dangerous because it creates whole new ideas, and particularly for the...and

again, I told you I was going to start you being specific about this. The New Apostolic Reformation people, the

Word of Faith people, for them to create whole new ideas that these are the things that Christians need to be doing, or these are things that are normally happening.

But so for me, I would say looking at that particular section, I would say that that's just a way of Luke...the

way that Luke is communicating that, yes, just as the Spirit led him to this place, he didn't teleport him to this place, he led him to this place, and just as soon as he was finished, he led him to Azotus and led him to the rest of the towns of Caesarea where he preached.

So what you're saying is, if I could summarize in my mind, it's not out of the realm of possibility for God, but you can't build a doctrine off of a one -off that's speculative at best.

Exactly. Gotcha. I think that Philip most certainly was teleported, and Luke was salty that he had to walk.

That's exactly what happened. We all know that's what happened, because nobody liked to walk that far. We've run up on our time, and I appreciate all of your input.

I appreciate your humor and causing me to laugh and be encouraged tonight, and I hope that you guys who watch or listen will be encouraged.

We love you, and we hope that you were edified in what was said. Again, if you have any questions about Acts or anything else from Scripture, let us know, and we'll do our best to try to answer that.

We want to end, of course, with the Gospel. Tyler, do you mind to share the Gospel with us tonight, and Big John, will you close us in prayer?

I'd be happy to. I'd be glad to. And so, following the track of Philip and the eunuch, it's important that Philip was a eunuch, because in the

Old Testament, that moral code for how God called his people to live, you couldn't be a eunuch.

That was a direct violation. That was something that would have rendered this man an outsider.

And every single one of us is, by definition, an outsider, because we have all broken that same law of God.

We've all become isolated from God in a very real sense because of that rebellion.

It's that, as in many places, that our righteous deeds are filthy rags, that we cannot be good enough for God.

And so, when Philip reads to the eunuch, Isaiah 53, about the suffering servant who is

Christ, if we skip two chapters over, just a little further down, we find this.

No foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord should say, the Lord will exclude me from his people.

And the eunuch should not say, look, I am a dried up tree. For the

Lord says this, for the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths and choose what pleases me and hold firmly to my covenant,

I will give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters.

I will give each of them an everlasting name that will never be cut off. Amen. When the eunuch was baptized, he's carrying water.

That's an important piece, that he's carrying water from his eunuch duties that's been likely consecrated for pagan use.

And so, Philip takes him to a natural body of water and he's baptized there because he's been given a new name.

He's been given a new identity in Christ. And likewise, just as we were foreigners in relation to God, God beckons us to come unto him and be received as sons, to believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ who suffered and died that even the eunuchs would have a place in the house of God.

And we as the Truth and Love Network implore you to go to God.

Amen. To go to God with empty hands, broken hearts, with a spirit in need of reconciliation, to go to God and you will find

Jesus Christ to be a perfect and all -sufficient Savior. Father, I come to you.

We come to you in Jesus' name. Nothing in our hands we bring.

We rely 100 % on you, on who you are, on you being faithful, on you being true, on you being

God. I need you, my Lord. I need you.

I can't walk if you don't carry me. For my brothers that are here tonight,

Lord, I pray that you minister to them, that you bless them, those that are on and those that are in the text thread that minister to us every day.

For those that watch online, I pray that you minister to them. I pray that you draw all men to you,

Lord. For those of us who be saved and boast in this, that we know you and that you know us and nothing else.

Lord, please use us as much as you wish to make much out of your cross. It's in Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. Amen. Thank you, Jesus. Amen. And thank you for watching the Laborer's Podcast.

We sure do appreciate you and we hope you will tune in next time. Thank you. Thank you for joining the

Laborer's Podcast. Remember, Jesus is King. Live in the victory of Christ.

Speak with the authority of Christ. And go share the gospel of Christ. Be sure to tune in next time for the