Tour de Acts, Stage 2

Overview of Acts as a Survey and the Book’s Main Outline

We spent most of last week tucking in our microphone cord. No, we spent last week going over some of the main purposes of the Book of Acts, some of the main outline points of the Book of Acts. And today what we're going to do is we're going to go through most of the first Book of Acts in survey, or outline, or overview form.

As we said last week, the Book of Acts is a challenge to today's church. And today's church is weak compared to the living, dynamic events of this book. We discussed last week the three ways of breaking down the book, and we're going to cover some of those ways this week, some of the portions of the book, and some next week as well.

One way, as we discussed last week, was dividing it around the two main characters of the book, Peter and Paul. Peter will be covering most of his activity this week, chapters 1 through 12. And next week, most of Paul, which goes from chapter 13 in the Book of Acts all the way to chapter 28, the end of the book.

We also talked about the geographic expansion of the gospel, that the gospel went from, as it says in Acts 1 .8, the gospel went from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and then to the very ends of the earth, as it was considered at that time.

This week we'll discover chapters 1 through 7 in Jerusalem, chapters 8 through 12, Judea and Samaria, and then next week, 13 to 28. Again, you see how Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria also cover the same area of Acts as does the activity of Peter.

So it matches up very nicely. It's a nice way to divide up the book. And we also talked about the summary statements, literary devices used by Luke to move the story forward and to summarize what has happened before.

This week, there's a couple of summary statements. Turn with me, if you will, to Acts chapter 6 and verse 7. Acts 6, 7. And we'll read the first of these summary statements. Again, Luke is trying to get us to see where he's been and where he's going.

And so he uses these statements. In Acts chapter 6, we read, the word of God kept on spreading, and a number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.

We looked at this last week, didn't we? And this occurs after the seven deacons, if you will, call them Acts deacons, were chosen to service tables and relieve the apostles and the disciples of that duty.

And so we see one of the main things that we'll see again and again and again, the word of God kept spreading. And the number of Christians, the number of disciples, greatly increased. And this is in Jerusalem.

It gives us the geographical locator of where God is working and where the gospel is spreading up to this point. The second one of these summary statements, as we discussed, is in Acts 9 .31. Turn with me to Acts 9 .31.

We're going to be doing a lot of this for the next two weeks. So WD -40 on the binding, I guess. Acts 9 .31, we'll see the second of these summary statements that help us to outline or break up the book.

In chapter 9, verse 31, so the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up, and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. It continued to increase.

So you see how Luke does this? See how Luke says the word of God, first of all, is instrumental to what's going on here. And you can see how he gives us a geographic expansion of the church. And he outlines the book that way.

The third one, at the end of chapter 24, Acts 24, I'm sorry, Acts 12, excuse me, verse 24. Acts 12 .24, we'll see the third of these summary statements. After the death of Herod, Luke says, but the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied.

And what that means, when he talks about the word spreading, the word continuing to grow, the word of God is not growing, as we'd think of a child growing or something like that. It's not an expansion in that sense.

But it's an expansion of those who receive the word. So really, it's a euphemism. Luke's using that phrase, the word continued to spread, as sort of a euphemism for people became Christians or people believed the gospel.

And then the third summary statement in Acts 16 .5. Turn to me. Turn there with me, if you would. Acts 16 .5. Paul here is visiting Macedonia. And in verse 5 of chapter 16, Luke says, so the churches are being strengthened in the faith and were increasing in number daily.

Again, we see these summary statements. And they occur at key points in the narrative of the Book of Acts. And they help us to understand how the early church grew. And they simplify for us sort of the main events.

So we have these summary statements. I think they're a great help. As you study the Book of Acts, as you read through the Book of Acts, next time you do your own personal reading, notice how these statements pop up.

And now that we've read them, maybe as you read through, you'll see them and go, oh, yeah. That's Luke summarizing what just happened there. And so that's what we have going on. This period, the entire Book of Acts, took about 30 years.

We think about what happened 30 years ago. That was 1977, right? A lot of things happened. We have the late 70s disco. We have President Jimmy Carter. We have a lot of things going on. And so we could probably give a reliable summary.

I don't know if you've been a Christian. Some people here have been a Christian longer than that. But you could probably give a reliable summary of God's activity in your life over that period. So a lot of historians that look at Acts and they say, well, it's not really a reliable treatment of that early history.

I would submit that it's a very reliable history. In fact, a lot of people have looked at that and they've said, this is one of the most reliable histories of ancient history. Reliable historical writings, reliable historical documentations of what happened in ancient times.

And so we also talked about last week how the summary statement in Acts 242 to 47 really talked about what the church back then had become. And one of the marks of the church was that it was a learning church.

Remember, they gathered for the apostles' teaching. We also talked about the fact that it was a loving church, how there was sacrifice in their caring for one another. It was a worshiping church. There was formal and informal worship taking place in the temple and at home.

And finally, it was an evangelistic church. We talked about some of the theological points of Acts. What Luke is trying to do theologically, particularly with the idea of salvation. The idea of salvation occurs quite frequently in the Book of Acts in many different ways.

The way Luke describes salvation, people being saved, happens again and again in the Book of Acts. Well, let's start again at the beginning of the book, if we may. Let's go back to Acts chapter 1. And we'll sort of hit some of the high points of the Book of Acts and point out some key things as we go along.

The Ascension of Christ and the Promise of His Return

Acts chapter 1. And if you don't have Acts 1 .8 memorized, I suggest if you want to memorize verses, scripture memory is a very good practice. If you want to memorize the key verse for the whole Book of Acts, it's Acts 1 .8.

Many of you have memorized it, but I'll read it. This is Jesus speaking to the disciples before he ascends into heaven. And he says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you shall be my witnesses in both Jerusalem, and Judea, and Sumeria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.

And so we see again, Luke is setting the stage. Christ has said, this is what you're going to do. This is where you're going to go. Well, did the apostles just go? This command was issued. Christ prophesied, this is where you're going to go.

This is what you're going to do. What happened? How did they get there? Persecution. That's correct. They were persecuted. What prompted the persecution? Does anybody know? Well, an easy way to find it, an easy way to remember it is you go through the Book of Acts.

If Acts 1 .8 is the theme of the entire book, the same verse, just reverse the numbers. Acts 8 .1. Go to Acts 8 .1. We'll find out how this was fulfilled, how God sovereignly sent the people out. Stephen is stoned, put to death by stoning at the end of Acts chapter seven.

And we'll see Acts 8 .1. Saul, this is Paul the apostle now. Saul, before he was converted, was in hearty agreement with putting him, Stephen, to death. And on that day, a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem.

And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. So the entire church, thousands of people were scattered, particularly the other leaders, throughout Judea and Samaria with the only exception being the apostles, the original apostles, 11 plus the replacement for Judas the 12th.

So we see here, you have Acts 1 .8, seeing this glorious sending commission of Christ. But don't forget, the church had to be kicked out of Jerusalem to fulfill that commission. And so sometimes we look at our lives and we look at persecution and we say, oh, that's from Satan.

Satan buying this persecution from me, okay? But sometimes it's not like that at all. Sometimes it's designed by God to move us when we're stationary. When God wants us to go somewhere, yet we don't, sometimes God moves us through the use of persecution.

Well, let's go back to Acts 1 .8 and we'll read through some of the high points. In Acts 1 .8, we have Christ's ascension starting in verse nine. He leaves physically, he's gone into heaven. Four times it says he has gone into heaven in this chapter.

Jesus is coming again. If you look down at verse 11, men are standing up just looking up in the sky after he goes up and wondering what's gonna happen now. Well, he's gone. Christ has gone into heaven.

In verse 11, they also said the angels that had appeared, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in just the same way as you have watched him go into heaven.

So when we think of the return of Christ, we now in these last days, we're now in the last days, we look forward to the return of Christ. When Christ will come back again from heaven, down as it says from the clouds of heaven, it's not gonna be a secret return.

There'll be no secret Christ sort of in this little corner of the world. Every eye will see him, the Bible says. And so it will be visible just like it was visible when he ascended to heaven. It will also be visible, no mistaking when Christ returns.

The only debate for Christians is when that will happen. But that's minor compared to the fact that we believe that Christ will return visibly to earth. So Luke here in Acts records that the angels told them that's exactly how he's gonna come back.

And we are to preach a message until he returns. Daniel, question. I don't know how widespread that is. The question was those who say that Christ's return will not be visible. I'm aware that even back in the time of the apostles of the New Testament, there were those who taught that there's a number of heresies out there.

We don't have time to go into them right now. But that kind of teaching is just a recycling of an ancient heresy that teaches that it's sort of a Gnostic tendency where the body is bad, the spirit is good.

So Christ's body, according to some people, is still in the grave. Only his spirit ascended because the body could never ascend to heaven because in their mind, the body itself is evil or bad or dirty.

Lewis, you had a comment on that? Right. Yeah, the ancient heresy Lewis referred to is that Christ never actually came down from heaven bodily. That there was, I mean, he was incarnate, but he was never really incarnate.

It was just a spiritual presence and he just seemed to be physically manifest. Is that correct? Yeah. There was no real physical body there. He was just sort of like a ghost or a spirit that looked physical.

I believe that heresy was called docetism, meaning to seem or to think that Christ was actually here. Yes, Steve. Yeah, the physical resurrection of Christ, the bodily resurrection of Christ is central to our faith.

And so we must affirm that. And anything that's outside of that is not orthodox. It's not Christian. So they can call themselves whatever they want, but we can't believe that because denying the bodily presence of Christ, denying the deity of Christ are both signs that those people do not believe the gospel.

And we can say that without reservation. Okay, good input. Thank you. Next, there are a number of speeches, as we discussed before, a number of times where Luke records in Acts, the speeches, the actual words of the apostles.

Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, and the Church’s Witness

And so we have in chapter two, we have the upper room. Let's talk about the upper room for a second. The day of Pentecost. Let's go to chapter two, the end of chapter one. Again, they select a replacement for Judas who hung himself, who committed suicide after betraying Christ.

And they select a replacement. And that person is Matthias. Matthias was selected by Lot. Now Lots were kind of like dice used in ancient times by folks. Are we supposed to use Lots today? Question. Should we use Lots today?

Is that something we should emulate? Yes or no? What do you think? No. Why not? We have the written word. Okay, we do have the written word, that is true. And how does that take the place of Lots? How would that supersede using of, casting of Lots?

Okay, so because the word, we have the printed word, we no longer do things like casting Lots and we depend on dreams and visions as the apostles did when they were first compiling the scriptures, for example.

Steve. Right, good, good. So again, sort of the fulfillment, the giving of the word of God that things like this aren't necessary. You remember the book of Jonah? Remember how the sailors cast Lots and a Lot fell to Jonah?

And sure enough, he was why the boat was sinking and this terrible storm came up. Kind of comical in a lot of ways because we look and we say, how could Jonah have done that? How could he have been so foolish?

But God did identify Jodah through the use of this tool of these Lots. Well, this is the last time casting of Lots appears in the Bible, in the New Testament church. Also remember that the spirit came in power in Pentecost.

Okay, the second part, not only will you be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth, but you'll receive power. And in chapter two, we see the disciples receiving that power.

And so it's interesting that this happened just before that event. And so we could conclude from that, now that the apostles had the Holy Spirit in power, they were empowered not only to witness, but also to get that illumination from the spirit and the inspiration to write the scriptures.

And so that follows with what Lewis and Steve said that we don't need these decision-making tools anymore because we have the word of God to guide us. And as Christians, we have the spirit of God to help us make decisions and to give us the mind of Christ.

So we have in chapter two, the day of Pentecost, and I'll start reading in chapter two. When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled a whole house where they were sitting.

And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the spirit was giving them utterance.

And then we read on how they went out and they were devout Jews at the feast of Pentecost, which was a dual festival, harvest festival, as well as a religious festival, commemorates the giving of the law.

Interestingly enough, that's what Pentecost was. And so we have this phenomenon that happens to the disciples. Three things happened. First of all, a sound like a blowing wind. It wasn't a tornado. It wasn't a natural event, but it sounded like it could have been a tornado or that kind of, if anybody's been through a hurricane or a tornado, I think a lot of us have even up here.

You get that violent rushing wind. Papers weren't blowing around, parchments weren't blowing around that upper room, but there was a sound like there should have been a huge wind blowing through that room.

That's what it sounded like. Many times in the Old Testament, wind, the word for wind and spirit are one in the same. Many times in the Old Testament, wind was a sign of the spirit descending on God's people in a figurative sense.

Okay, so you have the wind sound. Secondly, you have the fire, little tongues as a fire. It wasn't fire. Nobody's hair was burning. Okay, we had this symbol as a fire. You remember the burning bush in the Old Testament, right?

Take off your shoes, Moses, your sandals. Where you're standing is holy ground. We have the pillar of fire when they were in the wilderness. Children of Israel, we had the pillar of fire by night that led the children.

Fire on Mount Sinai, fire over the tabernacle. This clearly was a sign of God's presence when this fire came above the disciples. God was present there. And finally, these languages, they began to speak.

The Holy Spirit filled them with these new languages, these new tongues that they could not utter. Well, they went out and they're Galileans. You know, they speak Greek, they speak Aramaic, they speak Hebrew, but they're speaking in another language.

They're all speaking in languages the people who were on pilgrimage coming to Jerusalem so that they could understand what these men were saying. And those who didn't understand these other languages accused them of being drunk.

You look down at verse 13. Well, I'll start with 12. And they all continued in amazement with great perplexity saying to one another, what does this mean? But others were mocking and saying, they're full of sweet wine.

They're drunk. They're accusing them of babbling along and they thought they were drunk. And we're not gonna go through all of the speeches here, but I do want to say that, you know, Peter's sermon is important.

Peter's sermons here in the first part of Acts are important. He quotes Joel here discussing how, we're now in the last days, that these are signs. Joel 2 verse, I had it written down here. I don't have it right in front of me now, but Joel chapter two is quoted here by Peter to say that in the last days, I'll pour forth my spirit.

He's explaining what's going on. He's saying, look, what you're seeing is not a bunch of drunk guys at 10 o 'clock in the morning. What you're seeing is God pouring his spirit out upon the people. This is inaugurating the new era of God, the last days.

And this is what you're seeing and hearing here. Now, at the end of chapter two, we see a number of people gathered into the people of God. As a result of this sermon, God used Peter. And in verse 47, again, the people were praising God and having favor with all the people.

And the Lord was adding to their number day by day, those who were being saved. Now, in verse three, chapter three, chapter four, we see some other speeches. In the beginning of chapter three, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour of prayer in Jerusalem.

Again, the faith was temple centered. It was Jerusalem centered. And so what happens is they're preaching at the temple and they go along and they see a beggar begging there and he asked them for money.

And Peter said to him, in verse six, an amazing statement inspired by the Holy Spirit. He says, I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have, I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.

Now, wouldn't you love to be able to say that to somebody who's asking you for money? I got a bad leg. Wouldn't that be great? I'd love to be, have you ever dreamed about doing stuff like that? You read this in the book of Acts and you go, wow, that would be so cool.

But we don't have the same authority or power that the apostles had. But we still should, if somebody asks us to give them money, what we could do and what a good friend of mine always does, he says, no, I'm sorry, I don't have any extra money.

See, he doesn't lie. He's got a hundred bucks in his pocket. He doesn't say, no, I don't have any money. Be careful of that, be honest. But he says, I don't have any extra money, but I do have something more valuable.

And he shares the gospel with them when people ask him for money. Because anybody who's asking for money, they need something. And there's more than likely a good chance that there's a spiritual need under that.

Somebody's out on the road begging for money. And so what we have is Peter telling him to get up and walk. First of all, he tells him, look at me. And then he says, get up and walk. And so we have this miraculous healing, just one of the many documented healings and miracles in the book of Acts.

And so all the people saw him in verse nine and praise God. And they were taking note of him as being the one who used to sit at the beautiful gate of the temple and beg alms. It says later in this chapter that he was more than 40 years old.

So we think about, you think back to 1977, those of you who are old enough, think back to 1967. If you knew a kid when you were born that couldn't walk at all, and this very day somebody went to him and said, in the name of Jesus Christ, I heal you.

And the guy gets up, he's never walked a step in his life. That would make an impression on you. And remember, this was written close to these events, close enough where there were people alive who remember that.

If that didn't really happen, guess what? They could have come up and said, I was there. That was a trick. That was a little Benny Hinn action over here, okay? Name names. The guy is a false teacher. We have people alive that knew that this had happened, and Luke documents it.

And so we see how God was at work among the first apostles to give his word, to save people, and to perform signs and wonders. As my brother Bruce mentioned last week, in the book of Acts, we see these signs and wonders at the beginning of the book.

And what you begin to see is you see that these signs and these miracles start to fade. There's a clear fading of the miraculous in the book of Acts, not only healing miracles, not only signs of speaking in tongues, but really you see some miracles of the apostle Paul, but you never see these executed or accomplished by a regular layman.

It's always by an apostle. And I think as our church, we would say that these things, we are cessationists. Do you know what cessationist means? Most of you do. We believe that the sign gifts, all these miraculous gifts, not that God ceases to work, and that's an important distinction.

God is still working today. God is still healing people. God is still performing miracles, but there are not people that have the office of apostle today. We can't write new scripture. That was left with the apostles.

We don't perform these signs and wonders like the apostles did either. We also don't see the gift of tongues, partly as Lewis shared earlier, that the canon is closed and we have our scriptures, everything we need for life and godliness can take in this book.

And so what we do is we take the position that the signs like tongues, speaking in tongues, were for that apostolic era only. There are some who take a position, well, I'm cautious. I kind of want to agree with that.

I'm cautious, but I'm open. Okay, there's some who take that position, realize that. There are others who say I'm open. Generally, I realize I still believe tongues are for today. I still believe people have healing gifts or apostleship, but I'm cautious.

I don't wanna believe everything, but most things. And then there are those who are completely open to everything. We would follow on this end of the continuum, whereas a hyper charismatic group might fall in this area of the continuum.

But there are many Christians in between who sincerely hold positions that are different. I knew that's gonna raise a question or two, but go ahead. That's right, that's right. A known language, that's the point, that it was a known language.

It was just not incoherent babbling. Exactly right. I'm sorry, Daniel, I think your hand was up first. Well, I think we have to be wise. So the question was, should we shun those who practice charismatic gifts as a church?

I think there are different levels of involvement, okay? If somebody was known to have spoken in tongues and admitted it and said, I believe this is active for today, they probably wouldn't preach from this pulpit, for example.

I feel confident in saying that. I'm not one of the elders, but I think that's safe. I think that if you have a Christian friend, what I would do is with any issue, it's not the gospel. This is not, that issue is not the gospel.

I would say what we need to do is be wise, take them to the scriptures and be aware and remind them that our Christianity is not based primarily on our experience. What is real and what is true is not based on what I experience.

If I experience this ecstatic utterance of babbling or a known language that somebody else understood, there are three possible sources. One is that it's legitimate. It's really the gift of tongues as described in the New Testament.

One possibility, another one is that it's psychological. That's been known in other non-Christian religions to occur. And the third one is satanic. So I think we have three main, there may be others, but those are three main reasons why tongues can occur.

We also have to ask, is it, if it's biblical tongues, it would be a known language. As Lewis said, I agree with that. And so we have to be wise and kind of walk them through the New Testament and you can challenge them.

Just challenge them and say, you know, why would we need these things if we have the word of God today, primarily? That's the tact I would take. Does anybody else have anything they would add to that?

Yes, yes.

Good question, great question. I probably don't have a chance to answer that. Let me answer it partly today. I'll try to give an answer for next week, because I think one of the things we discussed last week, remember last week we discussed in the book of Acts, is the Holy Spirit.

One of the main things that Luke highlights in the book of Acts is the activity and the role of the Holy Spirit. I think there's a clear line between those things that were unique to the book of Acts, nearly unique in the history of the early church, and those things which are documented to have gone on throughout church history.

One of the things we're commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit, okay? When we become saved, I'll explain what that means in a minute. When we're saved, we undergo what's called the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Okay, you're baptized, you're submersed into the Holy Spirit when you become a Christian. That's something that actually happens. So you receive the Holy Spirit as a Christian, you're baptized in the Holy Spirit upon salvation.

You're also filled with the Holy Spirit. We're commanded to continue to be filled with the Holy Spirit. What that means is that means put your life under the control of God's Holy Spirit, essentially, in a nutshell, to boil it down.

I've heard it, Todd, I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I've heard people say that it's like a sail being filled and moved along. It's not like a jar or a vessel being filled up, like I've only got this much Holy Spirit and I need more, I need more.

Okay, now I've got a quart of the Holy Spirit. I want a gallon, okay? Not like that at all. What it is is it's more like a ship with a sail and then the filling of that sail with the wind is more like being brought along or being led or being filled with the Holy Spirit in that sense is that your life is under more and more the control of the Holy Spirit.

So those are just touching briefly on some of the things the Holy Spirit does today. Your question about the Word of God, the Holy Spirit also illumines us. We don't have inspiration. The apostles were reminded of things that had happened when they lived with Christ, when they heard Christ, when they saw Christ do things, that when they came to writing down the scriptures, the Holy Spirit directed them, didn't control them completely.

There's still a personality there, but he directed them and he used them in a way that exactly what God wanted to be written down for our edification appears in these pages. Now, when we as Christians read this, what we have is we have an ability to understand God's Word that non-Christians simply don't have.

There's a capacity there or an ability to apprehend spiritual truth that we didn't have prior to that. I've heard the illustration that it's almost like right now, I don't know if any of you listen to sports radio, WEI, for example.

There's an amen from the back from the sound room. Right now, the sound waves and the radio waves from WEI are going through this room. I'm sure Andrew could tune it in back there. I don't have a receiver in my head to get sports radio.

However, if I had that receiver, I would receive the signals and I would know what they're saying. It's kind of like that with the Word of God and the role of the Holy Spirit and understanding the Word of God.

When we have the Holy Spirit, we have that receiver. So how many people have you had talk to you and say, well, I've read it, but I don't understand what I'm saying. The eunuch, we're getting the chapter eight, the Ethiopian eunuch.

I don't know what I'm reading. Okay, let's flip over there right now. We get chapter eight in the book of Acts. Nice segue, by the way, thank you. And hopefully it's answering some of your questions. We can address it more next week.

Steve, would you like to add while we're turning to Acts 8? Yes, thank you. Yeah, time is running short. We don't have time to really get much further into that, but let's say, and we do need to cover the last half of Acts next week.

What I want to do is we're gonna end up in Acts chapter eight and look at the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip. But just to basically give you the flyover again, we have chapter three, where we have the healing of the man, the man born lame, another speech by Peter.

They're arrested, they're taken out of jail by the Holy Spirit, they're released, and they continue to preach the word of God in Jerusalem. Chapter six, the seven are chosen. Then we have Stephen in chapter seven, one of the deacons who was chosen, full of the Holy Spirit.

He did signs and wonders as well. Here's an example of a deacon, somebody who is elder qualified, doing these kinds of signs and wonders and creating a great stir. Again, authenticating the message. Understand that this was a new message.

You had the Old Testament with its message of the law of Moses, the temple worship, and these kinds of things. Now you had Christ dying, this turning point in history. And it was important for God to say, I put my stamp of approval on this.

And so this is why we see these signs, these wonders, these miracles, these speech in tongues. And Stephen gets up and he gives the Jewish leaders a history lesson. Basically runs from Genesis, just about Genesis, all the way down through the prophets.

And in verse 51 of chapter seven, he says, you men, and this might have gotten him in trouble. You men who are stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit. You're doing just as your fathers did.

Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. You who received the law as ordained by angels and yet did not keep it.

Boom. Done. They heard this. They were cut to the quick. They began gnashing their teeth. They have no idea what that means, but it sounds not fun. And they gnashed their teeth and they rushed at him.

And he had a vision of Christ standing at the right hand of God. And he tells him about this. And the crowd cried out in a loud voice, as loud as they could. And they're covering their ears, running at him.

How they covered their ears and they carried him along. Maybe it was just they had their ears covered and they pushed him. I don't know. Maybe they had some who weren't covering their ears. But anyway, they drove him out of the city.

They began stoning him. And the witnesses laid their clothes at his feet. They went on stoning Stephen as he called out to the Lord and said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. In verse 60, they're falling on his knees.

He cried out with a loud voice. Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Reminds us of Christ on the cross when he asked them to forgive those who were crucifying him. And having said this, he fell asleep.

And we see the beginning of verse chapter 8. Here starts the great diaspora, as it's called. The great dispersion of the New Testament saints through the regions of Judea and Samaria. And we have Philip as one of those who is dispersed.