Tour de Acts, Stage 3

I've actually got a handout for you that I'll give out to you in about a minute. We, you know, as we talked about, the book of Acts should motivate us to become the kind of a church that spreads the gospel wherever we go, wherever we are, and that the book of Acts should encourage us in that, not discourage us.

You know, it's like the, to use a biking analogy, I guess it's like the person who's never, or in a long time, has not exercised, is a couch potato, and watches the

Boston Marathon, or watches the Tour de France. And you, there's one of two reactions to that.

Either you get really discouraged because you can't even make it around the block, or you get very inspired to start doing the things that you're seeing.

And the same thing applies here with the book of Acts. That we look at the book of Acts and we see the church as Christ is expanding it, as the apostles are being faithful to witness and preach, and we begin to see the church grow.

And this is a challenge to our church today, to become what that church was in our own generation.

And so what I'd like to do, actually, I'll ask Carl and Bruce if you guys could just pass the handouts for today. These are not handouts just for this week.

These are actually handouts for the entire series, one -page, back -to -back handouts.

And what they really are for is to give you the overview of what we've covered over the last several weeks.

And while they're passing those out, just by way of review, what we had discussed was that Acts is a challenge to today's church.

The church today, compared to the church in the book of Acts, is weak compared to the dynamic, living church in the book of Acts.

And we also discussed there's three ways to divide the book. This book covers the first three decades of church history.

The first way to divide the book is around two major characters. In chapters 1 through 12 of Acts, written by Luke, the companion of Paul, the gospel written by Luke.

Luke also wrote Acts. And these two major characters in the books for the first 12 chapters of Acts, Peter is the main character who's highlighted over and over and over again.

And his movements and his activities become the focus of the first 12 chapters.

The second, chapter 13 through 28, focus on the apostle

Paul. And that's one way people break down the book is by the characters or the personalities in the chapters.

The second way we discussed was the geographic expansion of the book of Acts.

As we look in your handout, Acts 1 .8 gives us the actual outline.

And many people have looked to this for the summary or the overview or the outline of the book of Acts.

It's a thematic verse for the entire book. And as we discussed, Acts 8 .1, we see that happen by virtue of the fact church was persecuted.

And they were sent out into the Judea and Samaria, the area outside Jerusalem. And ultimately, we'll see in this lesson today, to the ends of the earth, via the conversion and missionary journeys of the apostle

Paul. And so we see in chapters 1 through 7, the church in Jerusalem, witnessing in Jerusalem, then 8 through 12,

Judea and Samaria, and 13 through 28, the ends of the earth. So that's the second way to divide the book of Acts.

The third way is through these summary statements. And we'll look at a bunch of these today. This is a device

Luke uses to move the story forward and to summarize what's gone before, section by section.

And they're located in five different sections. And I've got them down there. The first two weeks, we basically covered these first two outlined sections, the church in Jerusalem.

And I've given you dates on this handout. I didn't really give you dates before. But it's commonly believed that Christ was born in 4

BC, actually, in and around that area, and that he died around 27 to 30, in that range.

Most conservative scholars, and actually liberal scholars, actually believe that as well. What they dispute is the textual evidence that we have in the

Bible, that it's authentic. But if you look at the church in Jerusalem, if we date it starting in the year 30, the first period of the church in Jerusalem took about four years, from Acts 1 .8

to 6 .7. And the first summary statement in 6 .7, let's take a look at that right now.

If you turn with me to Acts 6 .7, I believe we've seen this in previous lesson,

Acts 6 .7. And in Acts 6 .7,

we read, and again, this is after choosing the seven to become what we consider deacons today, more or less.

Verse 7, the word of God kept on spreading, and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem.

And a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith. And that, in verse 6, it goes on to the episode of Stephen.

And from that point, actually, the testimony, the witnessing, the stoning, and ultimate martyrdom of Stephen take from about 6 .8

to 8 .3, or thereabouts. So we see that for two chapters, the church really focused on this episode.

And again, in 8 .1, we see the church getting forced out of Jerusalem. All except the apostles were scattered and spread out throughout

Judea and Samaria. And what I have there on your handout, again, that Acts is not, we don't have a comprehensive treatment of every single speech or every single activity in the early church.

What we have is, again, snapshots or highlights, much like if you have

TV coverage of a sporting event. Again, you have the highlights. You have this happen.

You don't see every single nuance and detail of the entire group of activities, mainly the camera and the announcer will focus on one thing, the same thing that Luke does here.

He kind of focuses here and there, and he gets us the picture of what is important for us to know as a church.

The Holy Spirit communicated these things and made sure that Luke wrote down those highlights that we have here in the book of Acts.

Now, the first summary statement, the church expands. You see the initial expansion of the church.

In Acts 6, 8 through 9, 31, and this took about five years, from 34 to 39

AD, and this section focuses on the three men who were mainly responsible for getting the gospel outside of Jerusalem, carried out by Greek -speaking

Jews to that general area. And why was it three people?

Well, you look at it, it centers around the persecution aspect. It centers around the idea the church was being scattered, and we see the first man,

Stephen, whose death initiated the persecution, and we looked at that last week. Secondly, the man fleeing persecution who witnessed to someone.

He actually went, you remember, the Ethiopian eunuch, and we see that Philip, again, because of the persecution, he was one of those who fled in 8 -1, and he witnessed to the area in which he went.

And the third one that we'll look at today, the Apostle Paul, the third man, who

Luke really highlights as responsible for the spreading of the gospel, a man who oversaw this persecution of Stephen.

He was present in his stoning, and the men stoning actually took their outer garments off as they stoned him, laid their clothes at the feet of the apostle at that time,

Saul, the Pharisee, who was overseeing the persecution and the direct stoning and death of Stephen.

So later on, we understand when Paul says, I am the chief of sinners, I am the worst of men, he obviously refers back to this many times, that he persecuted the church of God.

And he gave approval to the death of many as he went throughout and, in fact, was going to Damascus to do more of this, to persecute the church of God.

And so we see Paul, the man who oversaw the persecution, was then converted and took the gospel, really, to the rest of the

Mediterranean with the help of Barnabas and several others. He was the man God used to bring the gospel to those areas.

And let's turn now to chapter 9. And what we'll look at is the actual conversion of Saul.

This is after Philip preached in Samaria, began proclaiming Christ. And by the way, before we look at Paul, I know last week we looked at the, we answered a lot of questions about the early church and the gift of tongues and the charismatic gifts and things like this.

One thing that you'll see in the book of Acts, and I'm not going to develop it fully today at all, except to say, first of all, take

Pastor Steve's class in spring of 09, because he's teaching on the charismatic movement. If you have questions about this,

Pastor Steve is really the guy to speak to any of the elders, for that matter, to give you answers.

But one thing you'll notice is that when people are converted, Gentiles, this only happens with Gentiles, when they're converted, they don't speak in tongues right away unless Jews are present.

It's very interesting. When Jews are present at their conversion in this early part of church history, they immediately began speaking in tongues.

However, later on, as with Cornelius, we'll see that the church, they begin speaking in tongues, not right away, they begin speaking in tongues when the apostles are present to confirm that the

Gentiles have received the faith just as they have. Quite interesting, isn't it? And we get this idea that God is trying to convince.

They should know, but God is trying to convince these people directly with miraculous signs that, indeed, the gospel is moving from them, the

Jews, and the first believers in Christ to the Gentiles, those who before this time were considered outside the people of God.

And that's one of our themes here as well. Well, in chapter 9, we see the conversion of Saul.

Many of you are familiar with this. And let's read through, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 9.

Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples. Interesting that they say that, breathing threats and insults, threats and murder, excuse me, against the disciples of the

Lord, went to the high priest and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus so that if he found any belonging to the way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And he said, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.

The man who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing.

And leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus, and he was three days without sight, neither ate nor drank.

Now, there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias, not the same one who died in chapter 5 because he lied to the

Holy Spirit about the money he gave, a different Ananias. And the Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias.

And Ananias said, here I am. And the Lord said to him, get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named

Saul, for he is praying. And he has seen a vision, a man named Ananias, come in and lay hands on him so that he might regain his sight.

But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man how much harm he did to your saints at Jerusalem.

And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind us all who call on your name. Interesting he would question the

Lord in a direct revelation, but he did. But the Lord said to him, go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to bear my name before the

Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel. And for I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake.

So Ananias departed and entered the house. And after laying his hands on him, he said, brother

Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming has sent me so that you may regain your sight and may be filled with the

Holy Spirit. And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales. And he regained his sight.

And he got up and was baptized. And he took food and was strengthened. And we'll see, we don't have time to read it, but we'll see that Paul immediately began to preach

Christ. He didn't wait. Certainly there were periods where he did go into the desert.

But he had immediately began preaching Christ. And it's a very, I think, instructive note for us that I know when

I was in college in the Navigators, most of us were recent or new converts.

And one of the study leaders there, group leaders, went to my friend

Eric, who was a new convert, was in his group. And he advised him to withdraw from all his friends just because he was afraid.

He was into sort of a wild lifestyle and a rock band and things and so forth. And he advised him.

He said, look, you need to grow. You need to get established. And there's a certain wisdom in that. I'm not knocking that. There's a certain sense in which we need to withdraw from sin and not directly participate.

But I think it was taken to an extreme in that case. And he said, look, get away from all your non -Christian friends.

Just hang around with Christians. And so he became insulated and wasn't able to really witness the people that most needed to hear.

Yes, we need fellowship. But we also, especially when we're new converts, you all remember when you were new Christians, right?

How excited you were. I mean, you could not shut up, right? You're just so excited.

You're just going and telling everybody you know, whether they want to hear it or not. Most of them don't. But you go and you tell them.

And so we see Paul and many in the book of Acts that they immediately went out and they began to preach to others.

And they began to tell them, this is what God's done for you. Remember the blind man in John chapter 11,

I believe it is? That's Lazarus, right? I believe it's chapter 10, perhaps.

But where the blind man goes up, the Pharisees are questioning him. He didn't know anything. He said, all

I know is I was blind, but now I see. And that man witnessed to those around him because he was excited, because God had changed his life.

And if God has changed our lives, especially if we've been a Christian a while, we need to remember what it was like when we were newly born in the

Lord. And we need to remember that the most important thing that we have to do outside of this body here is to tell others about salvation in Christ.

And so if you've been a Christian a while, like some of us have, my prayer would be that we regain that zeal.

And we regain the desire to tell others about Christ as we had early on. Well, as we look in chapter 9, it's not an abrupt cutoff here.

We see Paul converted. And we see Peter. And I'm not going to read very much of this.

But later in chapter 9 and chapter 10, all the way through chapter 13, we see, actually through 12, we see

Peter being called to witness to a man named Cornelius. And as we see what happens to Peter, Peter has this vision.

He's up on the roof. He has this vision. And the Lord brings down these unclean animals down on a sheet.

And it happens three times. Many times in scripture, when things happen in threes, or at least repeated once, it's for emphasis.

So God has shown him in this vision. He says, eat these unclean animals. And Peter says,

Lord, I've never eaten any unclean thing. And the Lord basically tells him not to question him.

He says, this is something. This is a new thing that I'm trying to do. Peter didn't understand. In his Jewishness, he had all these hang -ups that were institutionalized about eating different things.

And there were certain reasons, legitimate reasons. But there was a new covenant being brought about that God wanted to do a new thing.

And so Peter here is given the, let's look at Acts chapter 10.

We see a vision, a sheet coming down in verse 11, lowered by four corners to the ground.

And there were in it all kinds of four -footed animals crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him and said, get up,

Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, by no means, Lord, for I've never eaten any unholy or unclean thing. And a voice came to him a second time, what

God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy. This happened three times and immediately the object was taken in the sky.

It kind of reminds us of when Jesus wanted to wash Peter's feet. He said, no, you're not going to wash my feet,

Lord. And he said, unless I wash your feet, you'll have no part with me. Right? And so Peter, again, true to his nature and his character, objects and God has to correct him.

But it's nice because we get to see Peter do dumb things. And we go, gee, I don't know if I'd ever do that.

But thank you that Peter did it and the Lord get to instruct him instead of me. But we have Peter getting in there and he's not quite sure what to make of it.

But he also gets a vision. He's reflecting on the vision in verse 19.

He actually gets messengers, excuse me. On verse 19, while Peter was reflecting on the vision, the spirit said to him, behold, three men are looking for you.

But get up, go downstairs, and accompany them without misgivings, for I have sent them myself. And this is the

Lord speaking. So it was a vision, or a voice at least. Peter went down to the men and said, behold,

I am the one you were looking for. What is the reason for which you have come? And they said,

Cornelius the Centurion, a righteous and God -fearing man, well -spoken of by the entire nation of Jews, was divinely directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear a message from you.

So he invited them and gave them lodging. These are the visitors. And so he goes to Cornelius.

The following day, verse 24, he entered Caesarea. Now Cornelius was waiting for them and had called together his relatives and close friends.

And when Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter raised him up saying, stand up,

I add to him just a man. And you see, Peter did not receive worship. There are some who pray to saints. There are some who worship relics and so forth.

Peter rejected that. It's very clear right here. He's just a man that God used. And as he talked with them, he entered and found many people assembled.

So there was some expectation that something was going to happen. And he said to them, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a

Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit with him. Yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean.

That is why I came without even raising an objection when I was sent for. So I ask for what reason you have sent me.

And Cornelius explains in verse 30 to verse 33 the vision and that he was to send for him.

And now Peter says a very revealing thing here about Peter's mindset. Peter opened his mouth and said, I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality.

But in every nation, the man who fears him and does what is right is welcome to him.

The word which he sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Christ Jesus, he is

Lord of all. You yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee after the baptism which

John proclaimed. You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God appointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

We are witnesses of all these things he did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They also put him to death by hanging him in a cross.

And God raised him on the third day and granted that he become visible, not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God.

That is, to us who ate and drank with him after he arose from the dead. And he ordered us to preach to the people and solemnly to testify that this is the one who has been appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.

Of him, all the prophets bear witness that through his name, everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins.

And listen, while Peter was speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message.

All the circumcised believers who came with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the

Gentiles also. For they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God. And Peter answered, surely no one can refuse the water for these to be baptized who have received the

Holy Spirit as we did, can he? And he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

And they asked him to stay with them for a few days. Now in the next few chapters, what we see is an amazing realization by the church.

Now understand this is out in Caesarea. Peter now understands that God accepts Jews and Gentiles fully.

He did waver in this as we know. Paul confronted him for his hypocrisy because he began to kowtow and to cater to the

Jews who were saying, no, they have to become Jews. They have to as Gentiles become Jews before they can become

Christians. And Peter wavered in this area later, but God is revealing to him here. He shouldn't have wavered, but he did.

God's revealing to him here that he needs to understand that God is doing among the

Gentiles a new thing. And that the apostles must understand this.

And so what we see from chapter 11, really to chapter 15, we see that ending with the

Jerusalem council, that this issue of Jews and Gentiles and how do they fit in or do they even fit in?

Do they have to become Jews first? This issue culminates in chapter 15 at the council in Jerusalem.

We'll go there in a minute, but just want to call your attention again to 9 .31. Let's go back just before this episode, chapter 9, verse 31.

So our second summary statement. 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 the comfort of the Holy Spirit. It continued to increase. And so this sets us up for this whole episode with Peter and Cornelius.

And so again, we see now it says right there in the text, throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, we see the gospel moving.

We see the missionary impulse taking form and going into these areas and God working to save people to himself.

The next summary statement appears, let's go to 12 .24. And this culminates the first expansion of the gospel to the

Gentiles there on your handout. And again, he repeats this story twice. He tells the story of Cornelius two times to really, really show emphasis.

And this established a church in Antioch of Syria. But in 12 .24, we see our next summary statement.

This is a shorter one. This is, well, actually let's go, this is an interesting episode. The death of Herod.

Basically what had happened was Herod had put to death

James and his brother John there in verse, if you go to 12 .2.

And when he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. And what ends up happening,

Peter gets a miraculous release from prison. And what happens to Herod? Herod, the one who wanted to kill him in verse 20.

Now he was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon. And with one accord, they came to him and having won over Blastus, the

King's Chamberlain, they were asking for peace because their country was fed by the King's country.

On an appointed day, Herod, having put on his royal apparel took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them.

The people kept crying out, the voice of a God and not a man. And immediately an angel of the

Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory and he was eaten by worms and died. And here's our summary statement.

But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied. And so interestingly,

Josephus, a Jewish historian also cites the death of Herod.

He doesn't see it from a heavenly perspective quite the same way that Luke does. However, this again just confirms the historicity, the reliable historical nature of the

Book of Acts that another event is confirmed to us through that.

At this point, let me just pause and ask if anybody has any questions. We're gonna continue from this point on.

It's the Apostle Paul and we're gonna whiz through his missionary exploits and summarize our lesson here today.

Also, Carl, do you have the time? I put a clock up in the back there and with those lights coming up without the sunlight,

I can't see it, so 9 .33. And there is a choir practice, I believe women's choir practice, so I don't wanna go too long.

So could you let me know when it's about, in about 10 minutes, just let me know, please, thanks. Okay, so we have, there's our second, back to your handout here.

We're gonna enter in 12 .25 to 16 .5. There's a

Jerusalem conference call to settle the question of the Gentiles inclusion with the people of God in chapter 15.

Let's turn to chapter 15. And as you're turning there, just to let you know, there are some

Presbyterian denomination particularly who point to this episode to say that we need to have a

Presbyterian form of church government. We're not gonna explore it at all, but they do look here for primary scriptural support for the representative type of government in the

Presbyterian church. And by the way, our current form of government, our representative republic is, derives its origins directly from the reformers, particularly

Knox and Calvin, and the Scottish Presbyterians who were in,

John Witherspoon particularly, who advocated for this representative type of government. So if you go to a

Presbyterian church, it's structured almost like our, it'll look very familiar because our American governmental system, you have the federal government, and then you have the state governments, and it's very much falls down.

It's not one vote, one person, just like our church isn't one vote, one person. There is a principle here, however, that we do have, see representatives.

We have the, we're not a true congregational church. As a Baptist church, we're not one person, one vote.

We actually appointed elders as our representatives for decision -making, for teaching.

And they are the ones who help us, and they lead us actually. You know, it's certainly a system that is supported, certainly in the book of Timothy and Titus with the qualifications of elders and deacons, that we have a select group of men who will lead us.

However, that's not exactly, Jerusalem Conference was a unique circumstance, and I would hesitate, with all due respect to our

Presbyterian brothers and sisters, to demand that we have Presbyterian form of government in a wider scope.

That being said, in chapter 15, we have, Paul went to, in verse 13, goes to the

Gentiles. Some accepted, some rejected, and this would be a pattern throughout his missionary journeys. And in chapter 15, verse one, we get the background of what's going on.

"'Some men came down from Judea "'and began teaching the brethren, "'unless you are circumcised "'according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.'"

Okay, directly counter to what God had just shown Peter in the Cornelius episode.

And when Paul and Barnabas had great discussion and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning the issue.

Therefore, being sent on their way by the church, they were passing through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the

Gentiles and were bringing great joy to all the brethren, and ultimately they arrived in Jerusalem. And they have this conference and the people that speak there, there's

James, Paul, Barnabas, all have a part in describing what was going on.

And what they come down to is they come to a determination that God indeed has accepted the

Gentiles. This is sort of an official recognition. God has accepted the Gentiles just as he has accepted us

Jews. And what they do is they basically say that you are not required to be circumcised to become a

Christian. A very important point at this time in church history. And they also say, there's very few regulations that they put on them in verse 29 of chapter 15, actually 28.

For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials, that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication.

If you keep yourselves free from these things, you will do well, farewell. And so we see in this episode that they again don't put any additional burdens.

If you think about the 631 some odd laws in the Old Testament law. And now they're saying faith in Christ, it's faith in Christ, except don't commit sexual immorality.

Don't participate in these other idolatrous episodes or idolatrous practices.

And that was a bare minimum because these things are widespread in that world. You know, you look at a place like Corinth, you know, was very immoral.

And so it was very good that they did not burden and they explicitly stated the Holy Spirit and we did not wanna burden you down with additional things.

It's unnecessary, faith in Christ is what is necessary. And God is included in the people of God, the

Gentiles as well. Now, for the sake of time, we may not get to, let's just look at the outline again.

This chapter or this episode ends in chapter 16 verse five.

And then we'll see the Western expansion of the gospel. Again, this first missionary journey of Paul, which we didn't have time to go into Jerusalem conference took about a five year period as well.

So again, the initial church was about four years, second expansion of the church of five years, first expansion of the

Gentiles, another five years, Paul's missionary journey, Jerusalem conference, another five years.

So you kind of see these time -wise concentric circles spreading out throughout the region to preach the gospel.

And we'll look at this again. Let me just read the summary statement in 16 .5. So the churches were being strengthened in the faith and were increasing in number daily.

Again, very similar to that statement made at the end of Peter's first speech. And we talked about the marks of the early church and the church was expanding daily.

Obviously, how does that happen? People share their faith, right? So people were witnessing and you had just an expansion of the church and kind of an effect where new people are becoming

Christians all the time and it's revival, it's an exciting time. And it happens periodically. You think of the great awakening in New England you know,

Northampton with Jonathan Edwards, things like that, the God and sovereignly in his grace at times will move in such a way that multitudes and multitudes come to faith.

Well, as we looked out in the expansion of the gospel westward in the other part of the handout,

AD 49 to 54, the gospel now is taken into Europe, into Macedonia, the vision of the man from Macedonia that Paul has, come preach to us.

And he goes and we'll see the gospel expand. Paul has second and third missionary journeys, mainly went to large metropolitan areas, politically important areas.

These were areas where the gospel, where people would come in from all around the region, come and they would hear the gospel and then would go back out again.

You know, that's a common strategy in many evangelistic plans and so forth.

And in this section, Luke draws parallels between Jesus's journey to Jerusalem and Paul's journey to Rome.

In the book of Luke, if you remember, in the last section of Luke, I don't recall the chapter, but where Jesus says he set his face toward Jerusalem, towards the end of the book.

And from that time on, he did not waver. He went straight for Jerusalem into ultimate crucifixion.

Well, here a similar thing is said of Paul in this section where Paul set his face, same phraseology, set his face to go to Rome.

From this point on, he has three trials and we look at the next summary verse in 19, 20.

Go to chapter 19, Paul is at Ephesus and Paul spent several years in this area at Ephesus.

He actually spent most of his third missionary journey, by the way, was spent in Ephesus from about 53 to 55. And here we are, verse 19, chapter 19, rather verse 20.

So the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing. And again, it marks that boundary between what happened before and sets the stage for what is coming.

And this final section from about AD 54 to 62, all the way to the end of the book, we saw there's the reference,

Luke 13, Jesus set his face to Jerusalem. And Paul stayed in Rome. Paul goes through three separate trials and he makes it very clear that this persecution and the reason

I'm a trial here, it's not political. He said, the reason I'm here is

I'm testifying about the resurrection of the dead and about Jesus. And if you read through these trials, one after another, you will see that Paul is really trying to make the case.

In fact, he witnesses to the officials as well. And one of them tells him, you think you'll persuade me to become a

Christian. And so again, due to lack of time, we will not have a chance to look at those, but we see how

God sovereignly preserved him as he journeys to Rome. This illustrates

God's sovereign hand, the shipwreck on the Island of Malta, he's bitten by a snake, he does not die, they expect him to die and they wanna worship him again.

Him and Barnabas, they think they're a couple of gods. And so they go to the end of the book and Paul makes his way and ends up in Rome.

And again, when he gets to Rome, he witnesses to the palace guard. Imagine being chained to the Apostle Paul. You're getting a good gospel presentation, okay?

Because at that time they chained guards to prisoners. So he witnessed to whoever and he says he had a chance to witness to those in Caesar's household in one of his epistles.

And the book ends here, again, we have this abrupt ending and we ask why is that? And I believe it's because Luke had, that's the events that had happened up to the time that Luke decided he was gonna write this book.

And so he spent time with Paul. By the way, this section from Ephesus to Rome, those is when

I told you before, remember the we sections? Where Luke is included in the narrative. Luke is saying, he's relating these events and those events are ones for which he was actually present, he was there.

And so while he was those two years, I am thinking and most people seem to think that that was the time when

Paul related most of this first material and where he gained a lot of his information on firsthand accounts on what had happened prior to the time that he was with Paul.

Well, if you look down at your handout, and again, the final part of this book is really just showing us the missionary movement of the church.

If you look at your handout, Paul's epistles, I find it kind of helpful to locate the epistles of Paul. Now Paul's epistles form the majority of the

New Testament after the Acts and the Gospels. And you'll see that you can break Paul's epistles down into four basic sections, what we call the eschatological epistles.

These are the earliest ones are written from Corinth in about 50 to 51. And first and second

Thessalonians, these really deal with the issue of the second coming. So if you wanna go to books that deal

Paul's epistles that deal with the second coming of Christ, go to first and second Thessalonians. That was an issue early on in the church that came up and these letters were written as a result.

Secondly, the soteriological epistles were written later from 53 to 55

AD, Galatians was written from Ephesus, first Corinthians, Ephesus, second

Corinthians and Macedonia on his way from Ephesus to Corinth and Romans was written in Corinth during that time.

Again, they're soteriological, what does soteriological mean? Yes, they're mainly epistles that deal with the doctrine of salvation.

So these are sort of grouped together thematically. The prison epistles, number three,

Colossians, Philemon and Ephesians and Philippians written for about the same time and sent by a messenger or messengers during his first Roman imprisonment.

Now, Paul was imprisoned a second time, he was released in 62, re -imprisoned in 64 in Rome and ultimately killed during the persecution by Herod.

And it's commonly believed that Peter was also killed during this time. But this is his first imprisonment and these epistles were written while he was in prison.

And he's hopeful in these epistles that he will be released, which he ultimately was. And then finally we see his pastoral epistles rather, excuse me, first, second

Timothy and Titus written in 63 to 66 AD. And in second Timothy, his final epistle, we see that Paul is basically saying

I've run my race, I fought the fight and I'm ready to go home because he knows his demise will soon come.

And so we have, this is a helpful outline, I think. Again, just to close the final questions

I have there on bottom of page two. The challenge we have is how can we become more like the living dynamic church in the book of Acts?

It's a good question to ask, we might examine ourselves, are we an evangelistic church? Are we a worshiping church?

Are we a loving church? Are we a learning church? I would say we are outstanding in being a learning church.

You're all here today. We have our IBS, we have a number of things. We are a learning church, we love the word of God.

We should look at these other areas on the handout perhaps to see in ways at which we can excel still more, certainly in evangelism and missions.

We look at the Apostle Paul and I'll just close with words of Theodore Williams of India.

When we think of the missionary flavor of the book of Acts and how it teaches us that we are to be a church that's ever looking outward, ever looking to reach out.

You know, we haven't done it, but sometimes I think it would be great if every time we walked out of this church, we would imagine that there's a sign right above those outside doors that says, attention, entering the mission field.

That's what we're supposed to do. When we leave this building, when we leave these doors, we're supposed to go and we're supposed to witness to every creature, everyone.

Yet we have the mentality many times that once we go out there, we are not focused on the people outside that don't know

Christ. We love being in here, but as soon as we cross that threshold, we have to start to think, what does

God want me to do? Who does God want me to witness to? How can I glorify God in my life?

And finally, let me share a quotation from Theodore Williams of India. He said, we face a humanity that is too precious to neglect.

We know a remedy for the ills of the world that is too wonderful to withhold. We have a Christ too glorious to hide.

We have an adventure that is too thrilling to miss. And as a church, I pray that we would not miss it.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for our time together,

Lord. We thank you for this message in the book of Acts. We thank you that these things are all true.

And we thank you, Lord, that we learned from your perspective, what was really going on. And Lord, help us to look at our lives, look at ourselves outside these walls, and to examine,

Lord, where you would have us to share our faith with family, friends, coworkers, or just people that we meet.

Lord, that we would regain that excitement we had when we were first saved. And Lord, that you would keep our zeal for you burning bright.