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The Holy Spirit uses Saul’s vicious persecution to compel the church to leave Jerusalem and begin spreading the gospel to Judea and Samaria, many laying down their lives
Turn your Bibles to Acts 8. This morning we’re looking at verses 1-8. The Christian Church was born in blood from its very inception. Of course, it started with the bloody death of our savior, Jesus Christ, the blood He shed on the cross. But soon after that, as we’ve been studying, the martyr Stephen shed his blood for the Gospel. After that, the apostle James was killed by Herod Agrippa. The bloody journey began there and has never stopped to this present time.
The earliest attacks on the church were by zealous Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ and saw Christianity as a heretical sect. The Roman Empire and its rulers initially served oddly as protection from these attacks. We see this in Paul’s life in Jerusalem and Acts 22. It was a Roman centurion that rescued Paul from being killed that day at the temple. Later, another Roman soldier would protect Paul from an assassination attempt by a group of fanatical Jews who swore that they would not eat or drink until they had killed the apostle Paul, and again it was the Romans that rescued him.
But not long after the New Testament era ended, Rome became the greatest persecutor of the church in the world. Nero came to power as emperor in October of the year 54. Within ten years, he was almost universally hated and many claimed that he was insane. On June 18th of the year, 64, a great fire broke out in Rome. The fire lasted six days and seven nights and then flared up periodically for three more days. 10 of the 14 sections of the city of Rome were destroyed. The rumor spread among the Roman population that Nero himself had actually set parts of the city on fire so that he could rebuild it according to his vision and preferences. There was even a story that Nero had been playing an instrument and singing about the destruction of Tyre while the fire burned. Nero’s reputation was in dire jeopardy, as was his authority and he needed someone to blame. He chose the Christians as his scapegoats and the first official Roman persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire began. Christians were charged with arson initially, but eventually just for being Christians. It’s highly likely that the apostles, Peter and Paul, were among those who were slaughtered at that time.
For the next 250 years, Roman persecution of Christians waxed and waned and waxed and waned. Some emperors ignored Christians, others zealously hunted them down to slaughter them. The second and on into the third century were especially bloody. The two last persecuting emperors, Diocletian and Galerias did everything they could in the first decade of the third century to stomp out the church, ordering the Roman army to be purged of all Christians, church buildings to be destroyed, scriptures to be burned. Christian leaders were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured and killed. Though many people renounced their claim to be Christians, many others stood fast sealing their faith with their blood.
That was the story of the first Christian martyrs ending with the Edict of Milan in the year 313 under Constantine, but the trail of martyrs blood did not end there. It’s continued to this present time and it will continue to the end of the world. I believe the worst is yet to come. Under the worldwide reign of the Antichrist, the beast from the sea of Revelation 13, most of the martyrs in the end, who will ever have fallen for the spread of the gospel, will fall at that time. Daniel, the prophet foresaw this, the little horn and the fourth beast from the sea in Daniel 7. We are told he was given authority to wage war against the saints and defeat them for three and a half years until Christ should come to rescue them from his hand.
By the blood of martyrs has the church been built for over twenty centuries. Every step of the advance of Christ’s kingdom has been opposed by the same triple enemy, the world, the flesh, and the devil. It starts with the devil and his hatred of Christ and of his people. Satan rises up to defend his dark kingdom and his evil hold on the souls of his servants. He will fight every effort to preach the gospel and to win souls for Jesus. He will do that by linking up with the other two enemies, the world and the flesh. He summons his servants in the world to use their power to resist and persecute the church. These would be government officials or religious leaders who use their positions to persecute the church. They rise up to issue decrees and send police to arrest and imprison messengers and to make Christianity illegal and to crush the leaders of the church by law.
He then works also in the flesh of true believers causing them, as a result of fear, to shrink back. Or in the absence of aggressive persecution or organized persecution by the state of religious leaders, he will use the flesh of genuine Christians to become soft and comfortable and to lose the focus of the Great Commission. The great threat there is the salt will lose its saltiness and no longer be good for anything except to be thrown out. Throughout the history of the church and of missions, God has often had to give the church a strong shove to move it out so it keeps doing what it must do in the world. In our account today, we’re going to see God doing exactly that. He uses a vicious and widespread persecution to jolt the church forward so it keeps moving out and doesn’t stay put in Jerusalem so it can win souls in Judea and Samaria.
I. The Church Persecuted
My four-part outline of today’s text in this passage traces out this powerful push and the productivity that came as a result. We’ll see the church persecuted, resulting in the church pushed out and ahead, resulting in the church proclaiming the gospel, resulting in the church productive for the glory of God. We begin with the church persecuted. Look at Acts 8: 1-3. Saul was there giving approval to Stephen’s death. “On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him, but Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.” Of course, the context of this statement is the ministry and martyrdom of Stephen. For the last chapter and a half, we’ve been tracing out the amazing life, powerful ministry, amazing defense, and glorious martyrdom of Stephen.
Stephen was so brilliantly adept at proving from scriptures that Jesus was the Christ, that his enemies were paralyzed by him. They couldn’t refute or resist him. But tragically, instead of believing in Christ as they should have done, they chose to persecute him. They hauled Stephen in front of the Sanhedrin. He defended himself brilliantly against the fourfold charge of blasphemy and actually ended up turning the tables on them, showing that they were in fact the true blasphemers. They were carrying out the tragic tradition of their Jewish ancestors. They always resist the Holy Spirit. They were uncircumcised in heart and ears resisting the Holy Spirit. They became enraged at him. Stephen then had a vision of the glorified Christ in heaven. “Stephen full of the Holy Spirit looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I see heaven open and the son of man standing at the right hand of God.’” This sealed Stephen’s fate. They became like a pack of rabid wild dogs. They rushed at him. They dragged him out of the city and stoned him to death. “And while they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus received my spirit.’ Then he fell on his knees and cried out, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep.”
This brings us to the role of Saul of Tarsus. I believe Saul who we know as the apostle Paul later was the leader of the synagogue from Cilicia. Tarsus is a principal city of Cilicia. Paul said before his conversion, writing in Galatians 1: 14, I” was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” Saul had been unable to refute Stephen. He could not withstand his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke and it tormented him. As Stephen was dying, we’re told that the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. One commentator believes that he was probably the ringleader of the persecution against Stephen. This is quite likely, even though he was not a member of the Sanhedrin. Saul was a Pharisee of Pharisees so zealous for the traditions of his fathers that any attack on those traditions would enrage him, would stimulate his nationalistic pride. In this text, we don’t have to wonder. It tells us openly of his attitude. Look at verse 1, “And Saul was there giving approval to his[Stephen] death.” So Stephen’s profound and dying prayer, “Lord do not hold this sin against them,” I believe was effective at least in the case of Saul of Tarsus. He may well owe his conversion in part to that prayer.
The persecution started the day Stephen was murdered.
Saul at this point begins to persecute the church actively. The persecution started the day Stephen was murdered. Verse 1, “On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem.” Stephen’s burial account is then given. Jewish law demanded that even one stoned should be buried with some respect. But the hatred for Stephen was so great that they just left his body there for the wild animals to dishonor. But some pious Jews, I think, took it on themselves to bury this man. It says in verse 2, “Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.” It is quite possible that these men who buried Stephen were not yet Christians. For the text calls them pious or godly men, which it also used for those who had assembled at the Feast of Pentecost before their conversion [Acts2:5]. They were staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. This is a term used basically for faithful old covenant Jews who had not yet believed in Jesus their Messiah, but were perhaps about to cross over from death to life, so they buried Stephen. But Saul begins his vicious persecution of the church, verse 3. Saul began to destroy the church we’re told. “Going from house to house he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.” The word “destroy” means basically “to lay it waste”, frequently used of a besieging army leveling a city.
This is Saul. You can picture him dragging off men and picture him dragging off women to prison. Picture him gladly consenting to their execution, to their death. Later in the Book of Acts, he tells this story in Acts 26: 10-11, “On the authority of the chief priests, I put many of the saints in prison and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished and I tried to force them to blaspheme.” This is a very interesting statement, the word “blaspheme.” He accuses himself of being a blasphemer. I think when he tried to force Christians to blaspheme since the official charges against these Christians was that they were blaspheming by claiming that Jesus was Lord. Paul in that passage was saying the real blasphemy would be to deny that Jesus is Lord. That is actually true. To say Jesus is not Lord is blasphemy according to the converted apostle Paul, and he tried to get Christians to do that. Later in First Corinthians 12:3, he will write, “No one who is speaking by the spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.’”
It’s an interesting thing for him to write to the Corinthian church. No one would say, speaking by the Spirit, “Jesus be cursed.” I think that’s what he tried to get Christians to do. That would be blasphemy if Jesus actually is God, and so he tried to force these men and women to say “Jesus is cursed” and then have them dragged off to prison. Something like that. I think it’s very much what Saul in his unconverted state would say constantly, that Jesus was a deceiver of the people and a liar, yet he himself was blaspheming by doing that. I believe as I read the history of the church in Japan, early Japanese Christians were made to trample on a picture of the cross and to defile Jesus and no true Christian would do that. They would be tortured by the Shogunate at that point if they were unwilling to blaspheme or to curse Jesus. I think that was the same thing for Saul.
He also was furious with rage against them. He says in Acts 26: 11, “In raging fury against them, he persecuted them even to foreign cities.” He’s filled with rage. We’ll see later in chapter 9, with murderous threats against the Lord’s apostles. He is driven on or incited by demons to have a murderous hatred of Christians at this point. He went from city to city seeking to root out Christians and have them killed, seething with violence against them. And in all of this, as he was doing this, he thought he was serving God. He says in Acts 26: 9 , “I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus predicted this exact thing in John 16:2, “A time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.” They thought they were serving God by … And I think Saul thought this way.
I think we ought to step back and realize what incredible mercy Jesus showed to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. It struck me when I was reading through First Corinthians. I came to this passage in First Corinthians 3: 16-17. The Apostle Paul wrote these words. I wonder if he was self-reflective when he wrote them. Maybe he was. But he wrote this, speaking to the church, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and God’s spirit lives in you. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is sacred and you are that temple.” Wow, we’re told in the text we’re looking at today, Saul began to destroy the church and thereby he deserved to be destroyed by God. When Jesus stopped him on the road to Damascus and said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”, He could have killed him right at that moment. Do you see the mercy and how much Saul deserved to die for destroying God’s true temple, the church of Jesus Christ?
II. The Church Pushed
The savage persecution, that savage persecution began the day Stephen died. This caused, secondly, the church to be pushed, pushed out and pushed ahead. The church was pushed by the Holy Spirit, by providential circumstances beyond their control to get moving to the next stages of the Great Commission. Pushed out, moved out, and moved on in the mission. That early church in Jerusalem, don’t misunderstand me, was not sinning or lazy. They were energetically serving God in Jerusalem, but they still needed providentially to be pushed. Everyone tends to stay put where they’re at. There’s a great inertia in life and you’re going to do what you feel comfortable doing, what you know unless there’s something that moves you, something that pushes you out, and I think that’s what had to happen. The Holy Spirit was behind all of this, orchestrating this as you well know. In Acts 1:8, Jesus said, “You’ll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses.” Where? “In Jerusalem.” And what next? “In Judea and in all Samaria.” That’s what’s next, and then “to the uttermost parts of the earth.” Throughout the history of the Great Commission, the church has often been stagnant, needing circumstances to force them to advance the mission, and this is the result of the persecution.
Look again at verse 1, “On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered” Where? “throughout Judea and Samaria.” That’s not an accident. It’s the next way station for the spread of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Judea and Samaria, the next stages of the Great Commission. Note also who was scattered in verse 1. We’re told all except the apostles were scattered. The apostles were not scattered. They remained in Jerusalem. We don’t know anything more about it. But we have to imagine either they were arrested, imprisoned and therefore not scattered, or they chose to remain in a very dangerous place in Jerusalem to shepherd and to be the hub of the wheel, humanly speaking and did so with great courage. There’s no fault found to them, it’s just they weren’t scattered. They stayed in Jerusalem, and so who was scattered were what we would call laypeople, common people, ordinary members of the body of Christ. This was a movement of laypeople. Verse 4 is key in this. Look at verse 4, “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.” These are not the apostles.The Great Commission wasn’t given to the apostles alone but given to all Christians. It’s a responsibility we all have, not just the apostles.
This is a clear line of demarcation where the apostles remained in Jerusalem, providentially and those who were scattered, not the apostles, did the preaching and spread the Gospel. The Spirit’s making it clear that the responsibility for spreading the Gospel is not only given to the apostles, it’s not only given to the pastors or the leaders, it’s given to everybody. It’s a responsibility all people have to take the Gospel. God is using common ordinary people to do the mission. We’ll speak more in a moment about how they did it, but we see the wisdom and the forcefulness of the Holy Spirit here.
I find the word “scattered” very interesting. I had a lot of meditations on this concept of scattered. They’re physically scattered. It’s a picture to me of Jesus’ parable, a key parable, “the Seed in the Soils.” A farmer went out to sow his seed and it’s scattering everywhere. You get that image. But I also like this idea is that they were physically scattered so they could spiritually gather people together. Sin has scattered people away from God and away from each other. I’ve said before many times, sin had a scattering or explosive effect on the universe. Everything that was brought together was blown apart like a fragmentation grenade. We also see in the providence of God after the flood, people were scattered geographically all over the world and they settled in different and distant places all over the world.
Now the work of Christ is to gather into one what has been scattered. Ephesians 1:10, it says, “God’s will is to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” I picture heaven a place of complete and perfect unity of all things that God meant to be brought together. Such a beautiful picture. Jesus says this about the mission in Matthew 12: 30, “He who is not with me is against me and he who does not gather with me scatters.” That means every single person in this room is either gathering with Jesus or scattering. There’s no third category. We’re either drawing people together under Christ through the ministry of the gospel and through our lives and through our Christianity or we are part of the problem, scattering, moving people further away. It’s one or the other. [Matthew 12 30]
Again in John 11, the account there says, “Jesus died for the Jewish nation and not only for that nation, but also for the scattered children of God to bring them together and make them one.” Those are Gentiles. Those are elect Gentiles who had not yet been converted. Jesus died for the world and to bring them together and make them one. A beautiful picture. Then in his prayer in John 17, Jesus says, “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that all of them may be one father just as you or in me and I am in you.” So the lay people, not the apostles, are scattered throughout Judea and Samaria so they can do the work of gathering and bringing people together through the gospel. It’s a beautiful picture.
Now I want to talk a little about missiology, about the science of missions and how missions happens, the modalities or the manner of missions. Though the early church was doing its work faithfully, they needed the Holy Spirit to compel them to move out. The same is true of us. We can get complacent. We can get comfortable in our lives and we need the Holy Spirit to move us out of that complacency and comfort to do our jobs, to do our work. Throughout the history of missions over twenty centuries, the Holy Spirit has often had to use current events, the rise and fall of nations, wars and rumors of wars and famines and floods and all kinds of different things to move people around and get the Gospel out, to spread the Gospel. Those events are beyond the church’s control, it’s not something the church controls. It’s something God orchestrates for the purpose of the spread of the Gospel.
A number of years ago, I was teaching part of a missions class called “The Perspectives on the World Christian Movement” put out by the US Center for World Missions. There was one chapter in that written by Missiologist Ralph Winter. Ralph Winter was talking about the “go, come” mechanism of missions. The way it works is there are people located in a certain place with the Gospel, with the truth, the truth of the Word of God. Their responsibility is to go physically to those who don’t have it yet. They generally don’t do that. They generally stay right where they are and just have their own community and they stay comfortably, but sometimes they do.
So what Ralph Winter did is he set up a two by two matrix where you have “go and come.” People with the message go out and people who do not have the message come to where it is. Those are the two mechanisms. Then there’s two additional words, “voluntary and involuntary.” There’s voluntary go and involuntary go, and then there’s voluntary come and involuntary come. Voluntary go would be Paul and Barnabas and Acts 13 going out as missionaries on a missionary journey or Paul and Silas, the same on the second missionary journey. That’s voluntary come. That’s what the Chessons’ and others have done, they go somewhere for the sake of the Gospel. You don’t have to get on a plane. It’s you going across the office and sharing with your non-Christian boss who’s really cranky on Monday morning and you show great courage and you’re willing to take your lifeblood in your hands and share the Gospel. That would be voluntary go.
Involuntary go would be people who have the Gospel and they are physically taken somewhere they don’t want to go and they end up leading their captors or the people who take them to faith in Christ. Picture Christians living in England and the Vikings come by and take slaves back to Denmark or Norway. Those Christian slaves then lead their captors to faith in Christ. This actually happened with some of the Vikings; that would be involuntary go. You didn’t want to go but you were forced, but then you shine the light for the glory of God. So that’s involuntary go. I would say in Acts this would be an example of involuntary go as well. They were driven out by persecution from Jerusalem. They didn’t plan to go. It wasn’t what they wanted. They didn’t necessarily have anywhere to go, but they went and they shared the Gospel as they went.
Then there’s voluntary come. This would be pagan tribes that come to where Christianity is flourishing and they usually come for one reason, plunder. This would be the Visigoths and the Vandals and all who come to where the Gospel is flourishing in Rome. They’re not coming to come to faith in Christ, they’re coming for prosperity. What happens is wherever the Gospel settles down, it organizes life into good patterns that result in prosperity. It’s not the prosperity gospel, it’s just the Gospel tends to make people prosperous. Where the Gospel flourishes through good order, good families, people being disciplined, making good products for the glory of God, they become wealthy and people who don’t have that wealth become interested in it. Again, that would be the Vikings or others that will come and do the plundering, that would be voluntary come. They’re coming there and as they come they hear the Gospel and brought to faith in Christ. Again, this is a story of how many Vikings were converted.
Then there’s involuntary come, and this would be the tragic story of American slavery and other types of slavery where you have Africans that are taken by wicked slave traders from their homes in Africa. They’re brought to America where the Gospel is. They didn’t want to come, that’s not why they came. They were forced to make it, but then when they come, many of them come to a genuine faith in Christ.
These are the four mechanisms, and as I step back and look at that, I’m in awe of the providence of God in doing all this. He orchestrates these things. He uses history. He judges wicked people for the wicked things they do, no doubt about it. I am not saying that. But in the middle of all of it, these beautiful things are happening. People are coming to faith in Christ and they’re hearing the Gospel. This has been going on for twenty centuries. God has orchestrated this. I think we’re going to get to heaven, and we’re going to look back at history, and we’re going to be in awe of what God did to control twenty centuries of providence to make sure that not a single elect person was born, lived and died without having heard the Gospel. He made sure that they did.
III. The Church Proclaimed
This concept of gossiping the Gospel lines up with lay people just living their lives, doing their trades, their merchants, their selling their goods, and then along the way sharing Christ.
Back to our text, the Holy Spirit is pushing the church out of Jerusalem and on to the mission field. This results in the church proclaiming. Look at verse 4. Those who’ve been scattered preach the word wherever they went. Again, these are not the apostles, these are common ordinary Christians. They’re going about their business, they’re living their lives and they’re sharing the Gospel. What’s interesting is the word used here, some scholars have translated “gossiping.” They gossip the Gospel. It’s like sharing the good news like, “Hey, have you heard the news,” kind of thing. That’s the sense in the Greek. It’s an interesting statement. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I like the idea. The idea is, “Hey, I have something to tell you, something that’s really exciting in my life. Have you heard the news?” This concept of gossiping the Gospel lines up with lay people just living their lives, doing their trades, their merchants, their selling their goods, and then along the way sharing Christ. It’s a beautiful, beautiful picture. Their hearts are just so full of joy in Christ they can’t keep it to themselves. They’re gossiping the Gospel.
There’s a great illustration of this in the story of the conversion of John Bunyan who later wrote Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan has a long personal testimony called “Grace Abounding.” In it he talks about something that happened along the way that led to his conversion. It wasn’t immediate, he wasn’t converted immediately, it was part of a journey. John Bunyan was a tinker by trade. What is a tinker? A tinker is someone that traveled around from house to house, cottage to cottage and repaired pots and pans and sharpened kitchen knives and other implements. This is his trade. It doesn’t sound very lucrative, but it’s what he did. He’s gone from place to place, and he’s working in a kitchen. Through the window courtyard, there’s a number of women who are gathered together and are talking together, sharing the news. But unlike your standard housewife gossip where they’re complaining about the high price of eggs or about each other or about their husbands or something like that, these women were all Christians and they were talking about the joy they had of faith in Christ.
This is what Bunyan wrote. He said, “I thought they spoke as if joy did make them speak. They spoke with such pleasantness of scripture language and with such appearance of grace in all that they said that they were to me as if they had found a new world.” It’s beautiful. We’ll find out in heaven who those women were. They’re unnamed. Wasn’t it good that they weren’t complaining or saying bitter things or sinful things, but instead their hearts were so filled with joy of their walk with Christ that someone that they didn’t know was listening through the window heard them and eventually wrote Pilgrim’s Progress that has influenced people for centuries. It’s a beautiful story.
So I guess what I’m saying to you is you never know who’s listening. You never know. So why don’t we do everything without complaining or arguing and have our hearts filled with joy in the Gospel and talk about Christ? That’s just a beautiful picture. I think also of Colossians 4:6, “Let your conversation be always full of grace season with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone”. These early Christians did the same. Everywhere they went, they talked about salvation in Jesus.
But we also had some formal preaching done by Philip. Look at verse 5. Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there. This is the beginning of Luke’s account of Philip the evangelist. He was the second most prominent of the seven that we met in Act 6 who were taking care of the distribution of food to the Greek-speaking widows. We know Stephen, but Philip was second. We call Philip, the evangelist. He’s not the apostle Philip. Those are different people. His most famous exploits as an evangelist are told here in Acts 8, his preaching ministry in Samaria and then his famous encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch, which we’ll get to, God willing, at the end of this chapter. Philip preached formally to huge crowds in public, very much like an apostle. He had an authoritative demeanor, he preached very clearly and powerfully and did signs and wonders as did also Stephen. It’s quite remarkable. He’s one of the three non-apostles that we’re told did miracles, the third being Barnabas. There’s huge crowds and he’s preaching formally in Samaria.
It’s well known how much Jews and Samaritans hated each other and stayed away from each other and did nothing with each other. We learned this from the account in John 4 of Jesus with a Samaritan woman. Jews do not associate with Samaritans. She was shocked that a Jewish man would even talk to her. They had nothing to do with each other. They hated each other, but Philip specifically went intentionally there to share the Gospel just as Jesus had done that day. Jesus wanted to draw the Samaritans in through the Gospel. He shared with the Samaritans in that village that very day in John 4. Now Phillips is following up on that mission. He formally takes the Gospel to Samaria, as is mentioned in Acts 1:8, “in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, etc.”
As he does it, he’s preaching and doing miracles. Look at verses 6-7, “When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. For with shrieks, evil spirits came out of many and many paralytics and cripples were healed.” This is a beautiful thing. Demon possessed people are healed immediately with a word. The demons are driven out authoritatively and powerfully. Paralytics and cripples are healed amazingly. This is incredible. These are amazing miracles. We also have already seen in the book of Acts, these kinds of miracles draw a crowd. When these kinds of miracles happen, more people come and that’s a great preaching opportunity.
We’ve already seen that with Paul and John in the healing of the lame beggar. A huge crowd came and they’re able to preach. They’re doing the same thing. Philip’s doing the same thing in Samaria. This verse is an important one for God’s purpose in the signs and wonders, at least part of the purpose is because the miracles gave a sense of authority to Philip. This is a message from God with power, “pay attention.” This is part of the purpose of the miracles. It is to underscore the message, to force a seriousness on the hearers to listen to the message. Look again at verse 6, it says in ESV, “The crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip.” Through their minds they are drawn seriously around the message. “What is he saying? I want to listen because he’s doing these miracles.” They realize that Philip therefore was a messenger from God and his words were really God’s words as Paul would write to the Thessalonians, First Thessalonians 2:13, “When you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.” That’s essential to our salvation, isn’t it? You believe that the Bible’s the word of God, the Gospel is God’s word to you, calling you to repent, to believe, and you’ll be given eternal life. These are God’s words and that’s essential to salvation.
IV. The Church Productive
That leads us to the final stage of the church productive. There was fruit that came from Philip’s mission. We’ve already seen, they paid close attention to his words and we’re told in our account today they were filled with joy in what he said. Verse 8, “There was great joy in the city.” I chose to stop the sermon today at verse 8. You have to go a little bit lower to see the clear fruit that came from Philip’s ministry. Look at verses 12 and 14. It says in verse 12, “When they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized both men and women.” That says it all. They believed the Gospel, they believed in Jesus, they became Christians and they were baptized. It’s the Great Commission. Then again in verse 14, “When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God”. They accepted and believed in that message and were converted. This is a very effective ministry resulting in joy, and I love that statement. There was great joy in that city, and not just because of the physical healings, but because of the Gospel. Christ brings joy. The Samaritans were outcasts, they were hated by the Jews. But now a Jewish messenger has come with news of a Jewish savior who has come for Samaritan people. And by him, by Jesus, their sins are forgiven. By simple faith in Christ their sins are forgiven. They’re going to go to heaven when they die. There’s great joy in that city, rejoicing in Christ. It reminds me of what the angel said when Jesus was born outside Bethlehem. The angel said to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid for I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord.” [Luke 2: 10-11]
V. Applications
First of all, the Gospel is for the world. God sent this message into the world because it’s the only hope we sinners have for salvation. That’s why the Holy Spirit has been pushing so hard for twenty centuries to get this message out to the ends of the earth. There is no other savior. There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. This is the only hope. It is here now today in this church, in this building for the salvation of all sinners. As I said earlier, there may be some who have been walking in darkness until this very day. You’ve been violating your conscience. You’ve been living a slave to sin. You feel guilty. You don’t know what you can do. There’s nothing you can do. You came here today to hear that there’s forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus. There’s nothing you need to do. There’s no works you could do. Any good works you would ever do weren’t required anyway. You can never use good works to pay for previous sins and disobedience to God’s commands.
You’ve come here today and heard effectively the same message that Philip preached in that Samaritan village and that Samaritan town. As he went from place to place, that God sent his only-begotten son into the world who lived a sinless life, who died in our place. God made him, Jesus, who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might in him become the righteousness of God. If you trust in him, that mystical exchange will happen. Your sins, all of them taken off of you and put on Jesus. He died under the wrath of God and His righteousness given to you like a beautiful white robe and in that you’ll stand for all eternity, but by faith alone and not by works. That’s the message.
Secondly, be in awe of the power of saving grace in Paul’s life. I’m going to mention in a number of weeks, First Timothy 1:15-16, but it’s such a great verse. It’s Paul’s testimony verse. I think we need to hold it frequently in our minds. This is what Paul wrote, “This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason, I was shown mercy so that in me the worst of sinners, Christ, Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.” Saul of Tarsus deserved to die for destroying Chris’s church, for dragging off men and women and throwing them in prison and casting his vote against them, trying to force them to blaspheme. He deserved to die. Instead God saved him. It’s a trustworthy saying. Christ came into the world to save sinners.
Thirdly, honor the Holy Spirit for pushing the church out when it needs it. The Holy Spirit, when the church needs it, puts compulsion on the church and moves it forward in the mission. In Acts 20, the apostle Paul spoke of being compelled by the Spirit. Compelled by the Spirit to continue his mission even if it cost him his life. Ironically, in that passage, he was compelled by the Spirit to go back to Jerusalem where he would almost certainly be arrested by the Jews and attacked, if not killed. But the Holy Spirit was orchestrating and moving Paul the apostle at that point. I like that phrase, and “now compelled by the Spirit.”
Has the Spirit put a compulsion on you? Are you compelled by the Spirit to do anything for the great commission?
Has the Spirit put a compulsion on you? Are you compelled by the Spirit to do anything for the great commission? And if you say, “No, not really,” then repent of that. All of us are part of this. This is a passage that says clearly it’s not just the apostles’ job. It’s not just the pastor’s job or the missionary’s job. It’s everybody’s job. There are some people that are in your life. You are orchestrated and designed to meet those people and to share the Gospel with them in your workplace, in the neighborhood people you’re going to meet this week. Gossip the Gospel. Shares of joy, makes your heart speak like those women did in Bunyan’s hearing.
Finally see the beautiful unity that Christ brings between Jews and Samaritans. There was no way those two groups are going to get together. They hated each other. But now the Gospel came and has brought about a supernatural unity between people who ordinarily would’ve hated each other, but instead they’re one and there’s great joy in that oneness.
Close with me in prayer.
Father, we thank you for the incredible account of the spread of the gospel. We thank you for how you use very painful circumstances, persecutions, people being arrested, people being falsely accused, even some people being put to death. You use that to spread the Gospel in a marvelous way, and we’re going to spend all eternity in heaven celebrating as Paul would write later, “Now, I rejoice in what was suffered for you and I fill up in my body what is still lacking in regard to the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body.” The only thing lacking … There’s nothing lacking in the blood of Christ, but it is the suffering of the messengers and the martyrs to take the Gospel to Colossi and to the ends of the earth. Oh Lord, help us be part of that. Don’t pass us by, but use us here in Raleigh/ Durham/ Chapel Hill to take the Gospel to those who are perishing in Jesus’ name, Amen.
These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.
The Christian church was born in blood… from its very inception. Of course it started with the bloody death of our Savior on the cross. But soon after that, Stephen was martyred. Then the apostle James, killed by Herod Agrippa. The bloody journey has never stopped since then.
The earliest attacks on the church were by zealous Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ and saw Christianity as a heretical sect. The Roman empire and its rulers initially served as protection from these attacks, as we see in Paul’s life in Jerusalem in Acts 22. It was a Roman centurion that rescued Paul. Later another Roman soldier would protect Paul from an assassination attempt by a group of fanatical Jews. But not long after the New Testament era ended, Rome became the greatest persecutor of the church in the world. Nero came to power in October of AD 54. Within ten years, he was almost universally hated and many claimed that he was insane. On June 18 of AD 64, a great fire broke out in Rome. The fire lasted six days and seven nights, and then flared up periodically for three more days. Ten of the fourteen sections of the city of Rome were destroyed. The rumor spread that Nero had actually set parts of the city on fire so he could rebuild it according to his preferences. There was even a story that Nero had been playing a lyre and singing about the destruction of Tyre during the fire. Nero’s reputation was in dire jeopardy and he needed someone to blame. He chose the Christians as his scapegoats, and the first official persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire began. Christians were charged with arson, but eventually with just being Christians. It is highly likely that both Peter and Paul were among those slaughtered at that time.
For the next 250 years, Roman persecution of Christians waxed and waned and waxed and waned… some emperors ignored Christians, others zealously hunted them down to slaughter them. The second century was especially bloody, and the two last persecuting emperors—Diocletian and Galerius—did everything they could in the first decade of the 3rd century to stomp out the church: ordering the Roman army to be purged of all Christians, church buildings destroyed, scriptures burned, Christian leaders rounded up, imprisoned, tortured and killed. And though many people renounced their claim to be Christians, many others stood fast, sealing their faith with their blood.
This was the story of the first Christian martyrs… ending with the Edict of Milan in 313 under Constatine. But the trail of martyr’s blood has continued since that time right up to the present day. But the worst is yet to come… under the worldwide reign of the Antichrist, the “Beast from the Sea” of Revelation 13, the most martyrs in history will fall.
Daniel foresaw it: the “little horn” on the fourth beast from the sea in Daniel 7 was given authority to wage war against the saints and defeat them for 3 ½ years until Christ comes to rescue them from his hand.
By the blood of the martyrs has the church of Christ been built.
Every step of the advance of Christ’s Kingdom has been opposed by the same triple enemy: the world, the flesh, and the devil.
It starts with the devil… Satan rises up to defend his dark kingdom, his evil hold on the souls of his servants. He will fight every effort to preach the gospel and win souls for Jesus. And he will do that by linking up with the two other enemies—the world and the flesh.
He summons his servants in the world to use their power to persecute the church. Perhaps officials—government or religious—rising up to issue decrees and to send police and to arrest and imprison the messengers, to make Christianity illegal, to crush the leaders of the church by LAW.
He then works also in the flesh of true believers… causing them to fear and to shrink back. OR in the absence of aggressive persecution, he will use the flesh of genuine Christians to become SOFT and COMFORTABLE and to lose the focus on the Great Commission.
So throughout the history of the church and of missions, God has often had to give the church a strong SHOVE to move it out so it keeps doing what it must do.
In our account today, we see God doing exactly that… using a vicious and widespread persecution to JOLT the church forward so it keeps moving out and doesn’t stay put in Jerusalem, so it can win souls also in Judea and Samaria.
My four-part outline of this passage traces out this powerful push and the productivity that came as a result:
The Church Persecuted, [resulting in] the Church Pushed (Out and Ahead), [resulting in] the Church Proclaiming, [resulting in] the Church Productive
I. The Church Persecuted
Acts 8:1-3 And Saul was there, giving approval to his death. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.
A. Context: The Ministry and Martyrdom of Stephen
1. For the last chapter and a half, we have traced out the amazing life, powerful ministry, amazing defense, and glorious martyrdom of Stephen
2. Stephen was so brilliantly adept at proving from the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ that they were paralyzed by him… but tragically, instead of believing in Christ, they chose to persecute him
3. Hauled in front of the Sanhedrin, Stephen defends himself against the charge of blasphemy and actually turns the tables on them, showing that they were carrying on the tragic tradition of their Jewish ancestors… resisting the Holy Spirit!
4. They became enraged and rushed at him… Stephen then had a vision of the glorified Christ in heaven
Acts 7:55-56 Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
5. This sealed his fate… they became like a pack of rabid wild dogs, rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and stoned him to death
Acts 7:59-60 While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.
B. The Role of Saul of Tarsus
1. I believe Saul, who we know as Paul, was the leader of the Synagogue from Cilicia; Tarsus is the principal city of Cilicia
2. Paul said before his conversion,
Galatians 1:14 I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
3. Saul had been unable to refute Stephen, and it tormented him
4. As Stephen was dying, we are told this:
Acts 7:58 Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
5. One commentator believes this showed Saul as a ringleader of this whole effort to condemn Stephen, though Saul was not a member of the Sanhedrin
6. Saul was the Pharisee of Pharisees, so zealous for the traditions of his fathers that any attack on those traditions enraged his soul
7. The text openly tells us his attitude:
Acts 8:1 And Saul was there, giving approval to his death.
8. Stephen’s profound and dying prayer was effective at least for Saul… he may well owe his conversion in part to that prayer:
Acts 7:60 “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
C. Saul’s Persecution
1. The persecution started the day Stephen was murdered
Acts 8:1 On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem
2. Stephen’s burial
a. Jewish law demanded that even one stoned should be buried with respect
b. But the hatred for Stephen was so great that they left his body for the wild animals to dishonor
c. But some pious Jews took it on themselves to bury this man
Acts 8:2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.
d. It is quite possible that they were not yet Christians, for the text calls them “pious” or “godly” men, which it also uses for those who assembled for the Feast of Pentecost
Acts 2:5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
This is a term used basically for faithful Old Covenant Jews who have not yet been converted to Christ
3. Saul’s Vicious Persecution
Acts 8:3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.
a. The word “destroy” means basically to lay waste, as a besieging army would level a city
b. Picture him dragging women to prison… picture him gladly consenting to their executions
c. Later in the Book of Acts, he tells us this
Acts 26:10-11 On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the saints in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. 11 Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme.
d. When he says he tried to force them to blaspheme, since the official charges against these Christians was that they were blaspheming by claiming that Jesus was Lord, Paul is in that passage saying the real blasphemy would be to deny Jesus is Lord…
1 Corinthians 12:3 no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.
e. I believe Saul was trying to get these Christians to curse or defile the name of Jesus by threatening to torture or kill them if they refused
In the early phases of Christianity in Japan, the Shoguns tried to get Japanese Christians to trample on a depiction of Christ on the cross. If they refused, they were executed.
f. He said he was filled with furious rage against them
Acts 26:11 in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.
Paul went from city to city seeking to root out Christians and have them killed. He was seething with violence toward them
4. Saul also felt in all of this that he was serving God
Acts 26:9 I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
As Jesus predicted:
John 16:2 A time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.
D. God’s Mercy to Paul
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
Saul deserved to DIE for destroying God’s true temple, the church of Jesus Christ… the people.
This savage persecution began the day Stephen died.
II. The Church Pushed
This persecution resulted in the church being PUSHED by the Holy Spirit to MOVE OUT and MOVE ON in the mission
A. The Early Church in Jerusalem Was Energetically Serving God
1. BUT they still needed to be pushed
2. Everyone tends to stay put in what they know
3. The Spirit is the one driving all of this, the spread of the gospel
Acts 1:8 you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
4. Throughout the history of the Great Commission, the church has often been stagnant, needing circumstances to force them to advance the mission
B. The Result of the Persecution
Acts 8:1 On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.
1. Note the words “throughout Judea and Samaria”… the next stages of the Great Commission
2. Note also WHO was scattered: “All EXCEPT the Apostles”
3. The apostles stayed with a small remnant in Jerusalem as the base of operations; possibly the apostles were imprisoned
C. A Movement of LAY PEOPLE
Acts 8:4 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.
1. The Spirit was making it clear that the responsibility for spreading the gospel was not only given to the apostles
2. God used common, ordinary people to do the mission
3. We’ll speak more about HOW they did it in a moment
4. But see the wisdom and the forcefulness of the Holy Spirit here
D. Scattered
1. I find the word “scattered” significant
2. They were physically scattered so they could spiritually gather
3. Sin has scattered people away from God and from each other
4. Also the providence of God has caused people to be scattered all over the globe
5. The work of Christ is to gather into one what has been scattered
Ephesians 1:10 [God’s will is] to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
Matthew 12:30 He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.
John 11:51-52 Jesus [died] for the Jewish nation, 52 and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.
John 17:20-21 I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.
E. The Modalities of Mission
1. Though the early church was doing its work faithfully, they needed the Holy Spirit to COMPEL THEM to move out
2. How much more do we? We can get comfortable and complacent
3. Throughout the history of missions, the Holy Spirit has often had to compel the church to do the next phase of it mission, generally by geopolitical events beyond the church’s control
4. Ralph Winter in the “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement” class spoke of the “Go-Come” Mechanism of missions
a. The people with the gospel are commanded to go to those who don’t have it yet
b. BUT they are not always faithful in doing so
c. Therefore God often works in other ways to get the lost people together with the people who have the blessing of the gospel
d. 2 x 2 matrix: Voluntary/Involuntary; Go/Come
e. Voluntary Go = missionaries like Paul and Barnabas choosing of their own will to get on a ship and go to the lost people and preach to them
f. Involuntary Go = people who know the truth forced by circumstances to leave their homes and go to a different location, whereby they can share the truth
Whenever Christians are captured by raiders and brought as slaves to the pagans who captured them, they are then able to witness to them. Like when the Vikings came to plunder England and captured some Christians who then went back to Denmark and Norway and led some of their Viking masters to faith in Christ.
g. Voluntary Come = pagan tribes who invaded Christian Rome and then learned the gospel as a result; or the Vikings I just mentioned
h. Involuntary Come = African people kidnapped by slave traders, brought to America and then finding genuine salvation in Christ despite the wickedness of the slave traders
5. God has orchestrated all of history to keep the gospel moving, especially because the people with the gospel tend to settle down, get comfortable and prosperous and lose their passion for lost people
SO the Holy Spirit pushes the church out of Jerusalem and on into the mission field
III. The Church Proclaiming
Acts 8:4 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.
A. Again, these are NOT the apostles; common, ordinary Christians
going about their business, living their lives
B. Gossiping the gospel
Verb translated “preached the word” is literally “announcing good news”
1. But in the Greek usage of that day, it was often seen as the way gossip is spread, or a story too good to be kept quiet
2. “Have you heard the NEWS?”
3. So some church historians have spoken of the early Christians “gossiping the gospel”
4. Their hearts so full of joy in Christ they couldn’t keep it to themselves
Centuries later, a clear example of “gossiping the gospel” from John Bunyan’s testimony:
Before he was converted, John Bunyan made his living as a tinker, meaning a repairer of pots and pans, and a sharpener of kitchen knives. He was hired by housewives and would work in the kitchen while they sat outside talking with the neighboring housewives like women do. But one day, while Bunyan was doing his work, he heard some Christian housewives, three or four poor women, talking with each other about their Christian faith. Bunyan said, “I thought they spoke as if joy did make them speak; they spoke with such pleasantness of Scripture language and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had found a new world.”
Those women had no idea that Bunyan was listening to them. They could have been sharing the usual sinful gossip about this or that person they heard this or that about. Instead, effectively, they gossiped the gospel.
Colossians 4:6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
5. So, these early Christians did the same
6. Everywhere they went, they talked about salvation in Jesus
C. Philip’s Formal Preaching
Acts 8:5 Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there.
1. This is the beginning of Luke’s account of “Philip the Evangelist”
2. He was the second most prominent of the Seven, after Stephen
3. He is different than Philip the Apostle that I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon
4. His most famous exploits as an evangelist are told here in Acts 8, especially his evangelism of the Ethiopian Eunuch
5. Philip preached to huge crowds in public like an apostle; that was different than the “gossiping the gospel” approach of the common believers
D. Samaria
1. It is well known how much Jews and Samaritans hated each other and stayed away from each other
2. In the story about Jesus and the Samaritan woman, she was shocked that a Jewish man would talk to her
John 4:9 For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
3. But Jesus clearly had a saving plan for Samaritans, as shown by his mission there in John 4
4. And by specifically mentioning Samaria in Acts 1:8
5. It is Philip the Evangelist who formally takes this mission on
E. Preaching and Miracles
Acts 8:6-7 When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. 7 With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed.
1. As we’ve already seen in Acts, the miracles drew a crowd
2. People were stunned and amazed!!
3. AND more importantly, they gave close attention to his words, to his message
4. This verse is an important one for showing God’s PURPOSE in the signs and wonders, at least PART of the purpose… to VALIDATE the message and force a sense of seriousness on the hearers
[ESV] Acts 8:6 the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip
5. They realized Philip was a messenger from God and his words were really God’s words
1 Thessalonians 2:13 when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.
IV. The Church Productive
A. The Fruit that Came from Philip’s Mission
1. Initially here all we have is 1) they paid close attention; 2) they were filled with JOY at what he said
Acts 8:8 So there was great joy in that city.
2. BUT it is clear from the rest of the chapter that there were many believers as a result of the ministry of the word in Samaria
Acts 8:12 when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
Acts 8:14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.
So it is clear that there were genuine conversions as a result of Philip’s mission of preaching
B. The Joy of Salvation!!
1. “There was great joy in that city”
2. Christ brings joy… the Samaritans were outcasts, hated by the Jews
3. But now a Jewish messenger has come with news of a Jewish Savior who has come for Samaritan people!!
4. Their sins are forgiven, they are accepted in Christ, they are going to heaven when they die!
Rejoicing in Christ!!!
As the angel said to the shepherds outside Bethlehem
Luke 2:10-11 the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.
V. Applications
A. The Gospel is for the World
1. God sent this message into the world because it is the only hope we sinners have for salvation
2. This is why the Holy Spirit has been pushing so hard for twenty centuries to get it out, to move it from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth
3. And now, it has made its way HERE! To US!!
4. Have you received the forgiveness it offers? Have you repented and trusted in Christ?
5. There is no need to go on one day more in hopelessness and in sinful rebellion against God
6. He has been patient with us all… but now he commands all people everywhere to repent and believe in his Son
B. Be in Awe of the Power of Saving Grace in Paul’s Life
1 Timothy 1:15-16 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners– of whom I am the worst. 16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.
C. Honor the Holy Spirit for Pushing the Church to Move Out!
In Acts 20, the apostle Paul spoke of being “compelled by the Spirit” to continue in his mission, even if it cost him his life
Amazingly, in that passage, he was compelled by the Spirit to GO BACK TO JERUSALEM!!
But in our chapter today, the church was compelled by the Spirit to leave Jerusalem and begin spreading the gospel to Judea and Samaria
Honor the Spirit’s wisdom and control of all events, even using Saul’s vicious persecution to save many souls
D. See the Unity that Christ Brings to Jews and Samaritans!!
E. Gossip the Gospel THIS WEEK
Acts 8:4 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.
Turn your Bibles to Acts 8. This morning we’re looking at verses 1-8. The Christian Church was born in blood from its very inception. Of course, it started with the bloody death of our savior, Jesus Christ, the blood He shed on the cross. But soon after that, as we’ve been studying, the martyr Stephen shed his blood for the Gospel. After that, the apostle James was killed by Herod Agrippa. The bloody journey began there and has never stopped to this present time.
The earliest attacks on the church were by zealous Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ and saw Christianity as a heretical sect. The Roman Empire and its rulers initially served oddly as protection from these attacks. We see this in Paul’s life in Jerusalem and Acts 22. It was a Roman centurion that rescued Paul from being killed that day at the temple. Later, another Roman soldier would protect Paul from an assassination attempt by a group of fanatical Jews who swore that they would not eat or drink until they had killed the apostle Paul, and again it was the Romans that rescued him.
But not long after the New Testament era ended, Rome became the greatest persecutor of the church in the world. Nero came to power as emperor in October of the year 54. Within ten years, he was almost universally hated and many claimed that he was insane. On June 18th of the year, 64, a great fire broke out in Rome. The fire lasted six days and seven nights and then flared up periodically for three more days. 10 of the 14 sections of the city of Rome were destroyed. The rumor spread among the Roman population that Nero himself had actually set parts of the city on fire so that he could rebuild it according to his vision and preferences. There was even a story that Nero had been playing an instrument and singing about the destruction of Tyre while the fire burned. Nero’s reputation was in dire jeopardy, as was his authority and he needed someone to blame. He chose the Christians as his scapegoats and the first official Roman persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire began. Christians were charged with arson initially, but eventually just for being Christians. It’s highly likely that the apostles, Peter and Paul, were among those who were slaughtered at that time.
For the next 250 years, Roman persecution of Christians waxed and waned and waxed and waned. Some emperors ignored Christians, others zealously hunted them down to slaughter them. The second and on into the third century were especially bloody. The two last persecuting emperors, Diocletian and Galerias did everything they could in the first decade of the third century to stomp out the church, ordering the Roman army to be purged of all Christians, church buildings to be destroyed, scriptures to be burned. Christian leaders were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured and killed. Though many people renounced their claim to be Christians, many others stood fast sealing their faith with their blood.
That was the story of the first Christian martyrs ending with the Edict of Milan in the year 313 under Constantine, but the trail of martyrs blood did not end there. It’s continued to this present time and it will continue to the end of the world. I believe the worst is yet to come. Under the worldwide reign of the Antichrist, the beast from the sea of Revelation 13, most of the martyrs in the end, who will ever have fallen for the spread of the gospel, will fall at that time. Daniel, the prophet foresaw this, the little horn and the fourth beast from the sea in Daniel 7. We are told he was given authority to wage war against the saints and defeat them for three and a half years until Christ should come to rescue them from his hand.
By the blood of martyrs has the church been built for over twenty centuries. Every step of the advance of Christ’s kingdom has been opposed by the same triple enemy, the world, the flesh, and the devil. It starts with the devil and his hatred of Christ and of his people. Satan rises up to defend his dark kingdom and his evil hold on the souls of his servants. He will fight every effort to preach the gospel and to win souls for Jesus. He will do that by linking up with the other two enemies, the world and the flesh. He summons his servants in the world to use their power to resist and persecute the church. These would be government officials or religious leaders who use their positions to persecute the church. They rise up to issue decrees and send police to arrest and imprison messengers and to make Christianity illegal and to crush the leaders of the church by law.
He then works also in the flesh of true believers causing them, as a result of fear, to shrink back. Or in the absence of aggressive persecution or organized persecution by the state of religious leaders, he will use the flesh of genuine Christians to become soft and comfortable and to lose the focus of the Great Commission. The great threat there is the salt will lose its saltiness and no longer be good for anything except to be thrown out. Throughout the history of the church and of missions, God has often had to give the church a strong shove to move it out so it keeps doing what it must do in the world. In our account today, we’re going to see God doing exactly that. He uses a vicious and widespread persecution to jolt the church forward so it keeps moving out and doesn’t stay put in Jerusalem so it can win souls in Judea and Samaria.
I. The Church Persecuted
My four-part outline of today’s text in this passage traces out this powerful push and the productivity that came as a result. We’ll see the church persecuted, resulting in the church pushed out and ahead, resulting in the church proclaiming the gospel, resulting in the church productive for the glory of God. We begin with the church persecuted. Look at Acts 8: 1-3. Saul was there giving approval to Stephen’s death. “On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him, but Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.” Of course, the context of this statement is the ministry and martyrdom of Stephen. For the last chapter and a half, we’ve been tracing out the amazing life, powerful ministry, amazing defense, and glorious martyrdom of Stephen.
Stephen was so brilliantly adept at proving from scriptures that Jesus was the Christ, that his enemies were paralyzed by him. They couldn’t refute or resist him. But tragically, instead of believing in Christ as they should have done, they chose to persecute him. They hauled Stephen in front of the Sanhedrin. He defended himself brilliantly against the fourfold charge of blasphemy and actually ended up turning the tables on them, showing that they were in fact the true blasphemers. They were carrying out the tragic tradition of their Jewish ancestors. They always resist the Holy Spirit. They were uncircumcised in heart and ears resisting the Holy Spirit. They became enraged at him. Stephen then had a vision of the glorified Christ in heaven. “Stephen full of the Holy Spirit looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I see heaven open and the son of man standing at the right hand of God.’” This sealed Stephen’s fate. They became like a pack of rabid wild dogs. They rushed at him. They dragged him out of the city and stoned him to death. “And while they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus received my spirit.’ Then he fell on his knees and cried out, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep.”
This brings us to the role of Saul of Tarsus. I believe Saul who we know as the apostle Paul later was the leader of the synagogue from Cilicia. Tarsus is a principal city of Cilicia. Paul said before his conversion, writing in Galatians 1: 14, I” was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” Saul had been unable to refute Stephen. He could not withstand his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke and it tormented him. As Stephen was dying, we’re told that the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. One commentator believes that he was probably the ringleader of the persecution against Stephen. This is quite likely, even though he was not a member of the Sanhedrin. Saul was a Pharisee of Pharisees so zealous for the traditions of his fathers that any attack on those traditions would enrage him, would stimulate his nationalistic pride. In this text, we don’t have to wonder. It tells us openly of his attitude. Look at verse 1, “And Saul was there giving approval to his[Stephen] death.” So Stephen’s profound and dying prayer, “Lord do not hold this sin against them,” I believe was effective at least in the case of Saul of Tarsus. He may well owe his conversion in part to that prayer.
The persecution started the day Stephen was murdered.
Saul at this point begins to persecute the church actively. The persecution started the day Stephen was murdered. Verse 1, “On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem.” Stephen’s burial account is then given. Jewish law demanded that even one stoned should be buried with some respect. But the hatred for Stephen was so great that they just left his body there for the wild animals to dishonor. But some pious Jews, I think, took it on themselves to bury this man. It says in verse 2, “Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.” It is quite possible that these men who buried Stephen were not yet Christians. For the text calls them pious or godly men, which it also used for those who had assembled at the Feast of Pentecost before their conversion [Acts2:5]. They were staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. This is a term used basically for faithful old covenant Jews who had not yet believed in Jesus their Messiah, but were perhaps about to cross over from death to life, so they buried Stephen. But Saul begins his vicious persecution of the church, verse 3. Saul began to destroy the church we’re told. “Going from house to house he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.” The word “destroy” means basically “to lay it waste”, frequently used of a besieging army leveling a city.
This is Saul. You can picture him dragging off men and picture him dragging off women to prison. Picture him gladly consenting to their execution, to their death. Later in the Book of Acts, he tells this story in Acts 26: 10-11, “On the authority of the chief priests, I put many of the saints in prison and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished and I tried to force them to blaspheme.” This is a very interesting statement, the word “blaspheme.” He accuses himself of being a blasphemer. I think when he tried to force Christians to blaspheme since the official charges against these Christians was that they were blaspheming by claiming that Jesus was Lord. Paul in that passage was saying the real blasphemy would be to deny that Jesus is Lord. That is actually true. To say Jesus is not Lord is blasphemy according to the converted apostle Paul, and he tried to get Christians to do that. Later in First Corinthians 12:3, he will write, “No one who is speaking by the spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.’”
It’s an interesting thing for him to write to the Corinthian church. No one would say, speaking by the Spirit, “Jesus be cursed.” I think that’s what he tried to get Christians to do. That would be blasphemy if Jesus actually is God, and so he tried to force these men and women to say “Jesus is cursed” and then have them dragged off to prison. Something like that. I think it’s very much what Saul in his unconverted state would say constantly, that Jesus was a deceiver of the people and a liar, yet he himself was blaspheming by doing that. I believe as I read the history of the church in Japan, early Japanese Christians were made to trample on a picture of the cross and to defile Jesus and no true Christian would do that. They would be tortured by the Shogunate at that point if they were unwilling to blaspheme or to curse Jesus. I think that was the same thing for Saul.
He also was furious with rage against them. He says in Acts 26: 11, “In raging fury against them, he persecuted them even to foreign cities.” He’s filled with rage. We’ll see later in chapter 9, with murderous threats against the Lord’s apostles. He is driven on or incited by demons to have a murderous hatred of Christians at this point. He went from city to city seeking to root out Christians and have them killed, seething with violence against them. And in all of this, as he was doing this, he thought he was serving God. He says in Acts 26: 9 , “I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus predicted this exact thing in John 16:2, “A time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.” They thought they were serving God by … And I think Saul thought this way.
I think we ought to step back and realize what incredible mercy Jesus showed to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. It struck me when I was reading through First Corinthians. I came to this passage in First Corinthians 3: 16-17. The Apostle Paul wrote these words. I wonder if he was self-reflective when he wrote them. Maybe he was. But he wrote this, speaking to the church, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and God’s spirit lives in you. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is sacred and you are that temple.” Wow, we’re told in the text we’re looking at today, Saul began to destroy the church and thereby he deserved to be destroyed by God. When Jesus stopped him on the road to Damascus and said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”, He could have killed him right at that moment. Do you see the mercy and how much Saul deserved to die for destroying God’s true temple, the church of Jesus Christ?
II. The Church Pushed
The savage persecution, that savage persecution began the day Stephen died. This caused, secondly, the church to be pushed, pushed out and pushed ahead. The church was pushed by the Holy Spirit, by providential circumstances beyond their control to get moving to the next stages of the Great Commission. Pushed out, moved out, and moved on in the mission. That early church in Jerusalem, don’t misunderstand me, was not sinning or lazy. They were energetically serving God in Jerusalem, but they still needed providentially to be pushed. Everyone tends to stay put where they’re at. There’s a great inertia in life and you’re going to do what you feel comfortable doing, what you know unless there’s something that moves you, something that pushes you out, and I think that’s what had to happen. The Holy Spirit was behind all of this, orchestrating this as you well know. In Acts 1:8, Jesus said, “You’ll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses.” Where? “In Jerusalem.” And what next? “In Judea and in all Samaria.” That’s what’s next, and then “to the uttermost parts of the earth.” Throughout the history of the Great Commission, the church has often been stagnant, needing circumstances to force them to advance the mission, and this is the result of the persecution.
Look again at verse 1, “On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered” Where? “throughout Judea and Samaria.” That’s not an accident. It’s the next way station for the spread of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Judea and Samaria, the next stages of the Great Commission. Note also who was scattered in verse 1. We’re told all except the apostles were scattered. The apostles were not scattered. They remained in Jerusalem. We don’t know anything more about it. But we have to imagine either they were arrested, imprisoned and therefore not scattered, or they chose to remain in a very dangerous place in Jerusalem to shepherd and to be the hub of the wheel, humanly speaking and did so with great courage. There’s no fault found to them, it’s just they weren’t scattered. They stayed in Jerusalem, and so who was scattered were what we would call laypeople, common people, ordinary members of the body of Christ. This was a movement of laypeople. Verse 4 is key in this. Look at verse 4, “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.” These are not the apostles.The Great Commission wasn’t given to the apostles alone but given to all Christians. It’s a responsibility we all have, not just the apostles.
This is a clear line of demarcation where the apostles remained in Jerusalem, providentially and those who were scattered, not the apostles, did the preaching and spread the Gospel. The Spirit’s making it clear that the responsibility for spreading the Gospel is not only given to the apostles, it’s not only given to the pastors or the leaders, it’s given to everybody. It’s a responsibility all people have to take the Gospel. God is using common ordinary people to do the mission. We’ll speak more in a moment about how they did it, but we see the wisdom and the forcefulness of the Holy Spirit here.
I find the word “scattered” very interesting. I had a lot of meditations on this concept of scattered. They’re physically scattered. It’s a picture to me of Jesus’ parable, a key parable, “the Seed in the Soils.” A farmer went out to sow his seed and it’s scattering everywhere. You get that image. But I also like this idea is that they were physically scattered so they could spiritually gather people together. Sin has scattered people away from God and away from each other. I’ve said before many times, sin had a scattering or explosive effect on the universe. Everything that was brought together was blown apart like a fragmentation grenade. We also see in the providence of God after the flood, people were scattered geographically all over the world and they settled in different and distant places all over the world.
Now the work of Christ is to gather into one what has been scattered. Ephesians 1:10, it says, “God’s will is to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” I picture heaven a place of complete and perfect unity of all things that God meant to be brought together. Such a beautiful picture. Jesus says this about the mission in Matthew 12: 30, “He who is not with me is against me and he who does not gather with me scatters.” That means every single person in this room is either gathering with Jesus or scattering. There’s no third category. We’re either drawing people together under Christ through the ministry of the gospel and through our lives and through our Christianity or we are part of the problem, scattering, moving people further away. It’s one or the other. [Matthew 12 30]
Again in John 11, the account there says, “Jesus died for the Jewish nation and not only for that nation, but also for the scattered children of God to bring them together and make them one.” Those are Gentiles. Those are elect Gentiles who had not yet been converted. Jesus died for the world and to bring them together and make them one. A beautiful picture. Then in his prayer in John 17, Jesus says, “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that all of them may be one father just as you or in me and I am in you.” So the lay people, not the apostles, are scattered throughout Judea and Samaria so they can do the work of gathering and bringing people together through the gospel. It’s a beautiful picture.
Now I want to talk a little about missiology, about the science of missions and how missions happens, the modalities or the manner of missions. Though the early church was doing its work faithfully, they needed the Holy Spirit to compel them to move out. The same is true of us. We can get complacent. We can get comfortable in our lives and we need the Holy Spirit to move us out of that complacency and comfort to do our jobs, to do our work. Throughout the history of missions over twenty centuries, the Holy Spirit has often had to use current events, the rise and fall of nations, wars and rumors of wars and famines and floods and all kinds of different things to move people around and get the Gospel out, to spread the Gospel. Those events are beyond the church’s control, it’s not something the church controls. It’s something God orchestrates for the purpose of the spread of the Gospel.
A number of years ago, I was teaching part of a missions class called “The Perspectives on the World Christian Movement” put out by the US Center for World Missions. There was one chapter in that written by Missiologist Ralph Winter. Ralph Winter was talking about the “go, come” mechanism of missions. The way it works is there are people located in a certain place with the Gospel, with the truth, the truth of the Word of God. Their responsibility is to go physically to those who don’t have it yet. They generally don’t do that. They generally stay right where they are and just have their own community and they stay comfortably, but sometimes they do.
So what Ralph Winter did is he set up a two by two matrix where you have “go and come.” People with the message go out and people who do not have the message come to where it is. Those are the two mechanisms. Then there’s two additional words, “voluntary and involuntary.” There’s voluntary go and involuntary go, and then there’s voluntary come and involuntary come. Voluntary go would be Paul and Barnabas and Acts 13 going out as missionaries on a missionary journey or Paul and Silas, the same on the second missionary journey. That’s voluntary come. That’s what the Chessons’ and others have done, they go somewhere for the sake of the Gospel. You don’t have to get on a plane. It’s you going across the office and sharing with your non-Christian boss who’s really cranky on Monday morning and you show great courage and you’re willing to take your lifeblood in your hands and share the Gospel. That would be voluntary go.
Involuntary go would be people who have the Gospel and they are physically taken somewhere they don’t want to go and they end up leading their captors or the people who take them to faith in Christ. Picture Christians living in England and the Vikings come by and take slaves back to Denmark or Norway. Those Christian slaves then lead their captors to faith in Christ. This actually happened with some of the Vikings; that would be involuntary go. You didn’t want to go but you were forced, but then you shine the light for the glory of God. So that’s involuntary go. I would say in Acts this would be an example of involuntary go as well. They were driven out by persecution from Jerusalem. They didn’t plan to go. It wasn’t what they wanted. They didn’t necessarily have anywhere to go, but they went and they shared the Gospel as they went.
Then there’s voluntary come. This would be pagan tribes that come to where Christianity is flourishing and they usually come for one reason, plunder. This would be the Visigoths and the Vandals and all who come to where the Gospel is flourishing in Rome. They’re not coming to come to faith in Christ, they’re coming for prosperity. What happens is wherever the Gospel settles down, it organizes life into good patterns that result in prosperity. It’s not the prosperity gospel, it’s just the Gospel tends to make people prosperous. Where the Gospel flourishes through good order, good families, people being disciplined, making good products for the glory of God, they become wealthy and people who don’t have that wealth become interested in it. Again, that would be the Vikings or others that will come and do the plundering, that would be voluntary come. They’re coming there and as they come they hear the Gospel and brought to faith in Christ. Again, this is a story of how many Vikings were converted.
Then there’s involuntary come, and this would be the tragic story of American slavery and other types of slavery where you have Africans that are taken by wicked slave traders from their homes in Africa. They’re brought to America where the Gospel is. They didn’t want to come, that’s not why they came. They were forced to make it, but then when they come, many of them come to a genuine faith in Christ.
These are the four mechanisms, and as I step back and look at that, I’m in awe of the providence of God in doing all this. He orchestrates these things. He uses history. He judges wicked people for the wicked things they do, no doubt about it. I am not saying that. But in the middle of all of it, these beautiful things are happening. People are coming to faith in Christ and they’re hearing the Gospel. This has been going on for twenty centuries. God has orchestrated this. I think we’re going to get to heaven, and we’re going to look back at history, and we’re going to be in awe of what God did to control twenty centuries of providence to make sure that not a single elect person was born, lived and died without having heard the Gospel. He made sure that they did.
III. The Church Proclaimed
This concept of gossiping the Gospel lines up with lay people just living their lives, doing their trades, their merchants, their selling their goods, and then along the way sharing Christ.
Back to our text, the Holy Spirit is pushing the church out of Jerusalem and on to the mission field. This results in the church proclaiming. Look at verse 4. Those who’ve been scattered preach the word wherever they went. Again, these are not the apostles, these are common ordinary Christians. They’re going about their business, they’re living their lives and they’re sharing the Gospel. What’s interesting is the word used here, some scholars have translated “gossiping.” They gossip the Gospel. It’s like sharing the good news like, “Hey, have you heard the news,” kind of thing. That’s the sense in the Greek. It’s an interesting statement. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I like the idea. The idea is, “Hey, I have something to tell you, something that’s really exciting in my life. Have you heard the news?” This concept of gossiping the Gospel lines up with lay people just living their lives, doing their trades, their merchants, their selling their goods, and then along the way sharing Christ. It’s a beautiful, beautiful picture. Their hearts are just so full of joy in Christ they can’t keep it to themselves. They’re gossiping the Gospel.
There’s a great illustration of this in the story of the conversion of John Bunyan who later wrote Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan has a long personal testimony called “Grace Abounding.” In it he talks about something that happened along the way that led to his conversion. It wasn’t immediate, he wasn’t converted immediately, it was part of a journey. John Bunyan was a tinker by trade. What is a tinker? A tinker is someone that traveled around from house to house, cottage to cottage and repaired pots and pans and sharpened kitchen knives and other implements. This is his trade. It doesn’t sound very lucrative, but it’s what he did. He’s gone from place to place, and he’s working in a kitchen. Through the window courtyard, there’s a number of women who are gathered together and are talking together, sharing the news. But unlike your standard housewife gossip where they’re complaining about the high price of eggs or about each other or about their husbands or something like that, these women were all Christians and they were talking about the joy they had of faith in Christ.
This is what Bunyan wrote. He said, “I thought they spoke as if joy did make them speak. They spoke with such pleasantness of scripture language and with such appearance of grace in all that they said that they were to me as if they had found a new world.” It’s beautiful. We’ll find out in heaven who those women were. They’re unnamed. Wasn’t it good that they weren’t complaining or saying bitter things or sinful things, but instead their hearts were so filled with joy of their walk with Christ that someone that they didn’t know was listening through the window heard them and eventually wrote Pilgrim’s Progress that has influenced people for centuries. It’s a beautiful story.
So I guess what I’m saying to you is you never know who’s listening. You never know. So why don’t we do everything without complaining or arguing and have our hearts filled with joy in the Gospel and talk about Christ? That’s just a beautiful picture. I think also of Colossians 4:6, “Let your conversation be always full of grace season with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone”. These early Christians did the same. Everywhere they went, they talked about salvation in Jesus.
But we also had some formal preaching done by Philip. Look at verse 5. Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there. This is the beginning of Luke’s account of Philip the evangelist. He was the second most prominent of the seven that we met in Act 6 who were taking care of the distribution of food to the Greek-speaking widows. We know Stephen, but Philip was second. We call Philip, the evangelist. He’s not the apostle Philip. Those are different people. His most famous exploits as an evangelist are told here in Acts 8, his preaching ministry in Samaria and then his famous encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch, which we’ll get to, God willing, at the end of this chapter. Philip preached formally to huge crowds in public, very much like an apostle. He had an authoritative demeanor, he preached very clearly and powerfully and did signs and wonders as did also Stephen. It’s quite remarkable. He’s one of the three non-apostles that we’re told did miracles, the third being Barnabas. There’s huge crowds and he’s preaching formally in Samaria.
It’s well known how much Jews and Samaritans hated each other and stayed away from each other and did nothing with each other. We learned this from the account in John 4 of Jesus with a Samaritan woman. Jews do not associate with Samaritans. She was shocked that a Jewish man would even talk to her. They had nothing to do with each other. They hated each other, but Philip specifically went intentionally there to share the Gospel just as Jesus had done that day. Jesus wanted to draw the Samaritans in through the Gospel. He shared with the Samaritans in that village that very day in John 4. Now Phillips is following up on that mission. He formally takes the Gospel to Samaria, as is mentioned in Acts 1:8, “in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, etc.”
As he does it, he’s preaching and doing miracles. Look at verses 6-7, “When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. For with shrieks, evil spirits came out of many and many paralytics and cripples were healed.” This is a beautiful thing. Demon possessed people are healed immediately with a word. The demons are driven out authoritatively and powerfully. Paralytics and cripples are healed amazingly. This is incredible. These are amazing miracles. We also have already seen in the book of Acts, these kinds of miracles draw a crowd. When these kinds of miracles happen, more people come and that’s a great preaching opportunity.
We’ve already seen that with Paul and John in the healing of the lame beggar. A huge crowd came and they’re able to preach. They’re doing the same thing. Philip’s doing the same thing in Samaria. This verse is an important one for God’s purpose in the signs and wonders, at least part of the purpose is because the miracles gave a sense of authority to Philip. This is a message from God with power, “pay attention.” This is part of the purpose of the miracles. It is to underscore the message, to force a seriousness on the hearers to listen to the message. Look again at verse 6, it says in ESV, “The crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip.” Through their minds they are drawn seriously around the message. “What is he saying? I want to listen because he’s doing these miracles.” They realize that Philip therefore was a messenger from God and his words were really God’s words as Paul would write to the Thessalonians, First Thessalonians 2:13, “When you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.” That’s essential to our salvation, isn’t it? You believe that the Bible’s the word of God, the Gospel is God’s word to you, calling you to repent, to believe, and you’ll be given eternal life. These are God’s words and that’s essential to salvation.
IV. The Church Productive
That leads us to the final stage of the church productive. There was fruit that came from Philip’s mission. We’ve already seen, they paid close attention to his words and we’re told in our account today they were filled with joy in what he said. Verse 8, “There was great joy in the city.” I chose to stop the sermon today at verse 8. You have to go a little bit lower to see the clear fruit that came from Philip’s ministry. Look at verses 12 and 14. It says in verse 12, “When they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized both men and women.” That says it all. They believed the Gospel, they believed in Jesus, they became Christians and they were baptized. It’s the Great Commission. Then again in verse 14, “When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God”. They accepted and believed in that message and were converted. This is a very effective ministry resulting in joy, and I love that statement. There was great joy in that city, and not just because of the physical healings, but because of the Gospel. Christ brings joy. The Samaritans were outcasts, they were hated by the Jews. But now a Jewish messenger has come with news of a Jewish savior who has come for Samaritan people. And by him, by Jesus, their sins are forgiven. By simple faith in Christ their sins are forgiven. They’re going to go to heaven when they die. There’s great joy in that city, rejoicing in Christ. It reminds me of what the angel said when Jesus was born outside Bethlehem. The angel said to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid for I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord.” [Luke 2: 10-11]
V. Applications
First of all, the Gospel is for the world. God sent this message into the world because it’s the only hope we sinners have for salvation. That’s why the Holy Spirit has been pushing so hard for twenty centuries to get this message out to the ends of the earth. There is no other savior. There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. This is the only hope. It is here now today in this church, in this building for the salvation of all sinners. As I said earlier, there may be some who have been walking in darkness until this very day. You’ve been violating your conscience. You’ve been living a slave to sin. You feel guilty. You don’t know what you can do. There’s nothing you can do. You came here today to hear that there’s forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus. There’s nothing you need to do. There’s no works you could do. Any good works you would ever do weren’t required anyway. You can never use good works to pay for previous sins and disobedience to God’s commands.
You’ve come here today and heard effectively the same message that Philip preached in that Samaritan village and that Samaritan town. As he went from place to place, that God sent his only-begotten son into the world who lived a sinless life, who died in our place. God made him, Jesus, who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might in him become the righteousness of God. If you trust in him, that mystical exchange will happen. Your sins, all of them taken off of you and put on Jesus. He died under the wrath of God and His righteousness given to you like a beautiful white robe and in that you’ll stand for all eternity, but by faith alone and not by works. That’s the message.
Secondly, be in awe of the power of saving grace in Paul’s life. I’m going to mention in a number of weeks, First Timothy 1:15-16, but it’s such a great verse. It’s Paul’s testimony verse. I think we need to hold it frequently in our minds. This is what Paul wrote, “This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason, I was shown mercy so that in me the worst of sinners, Christ, Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.” Saul of Tarsus deserved to die for destroying Chris’s church, for dragging off men and women and throwing them in prison and casting his vote against them, trying to force them to blaspheme. He deserved to die. Instead God saved him. It’s a trustworthy saying. Christ came into the world to save sinners.
Thirdly, honor the Holy Spirit for pushing the church out when it needs it. The Holy Spirit, when the church needs it, puts compulsion on the church and moves it forward in the mission. In Acts 20, the apostle Paul spoke of being compelled by the Spirit. Compelled by the Spirit to continue his mission even if it cost him his life. Ironically, in that passage, he was compelled by the Spirit to go back to Jerusalem where he would almost certainly be arrested by the Jews and attacked, if not killed. But the Holy Spirit was orchestrating and moving Paul the apostle at that point. I like that phrase, and “now compelled by the Spirit.”
Has the Spirit put a compulsion on you? Are you compelled by the Spirit to do anything for the great commission?
Has the Spirit put a compulsion on you? Are you compelled by the Spirit to do anything for the great commission? And if you say, “No, not really,” then repent of that. All of us are part of this. This is a passage that says clearly it’s not just the apostles’ job. It’s not just the pastor’s job or the missionary’s job. It’s everybody’s job. There are some people that are in your life. You are orchestrated and designed to meet those people and to share the Gospel with them in your workplace, in the neighborhood people you’re going to meet this week. Gossip the Gospel. Shares of joy, makes your heart speak like those women did in Bunyan’s hearing.
Finally see the beautiful unity that Christ brings between Jews and Samaritans. There was no way those two groups are going to get together. They hated each other. But now the Gospel came and has brought about a supernatural unity between people who ordinarily would’ve hated each other, but instead they’re one and there’s great joy in that oneness.
Close with me in prayer.
Father, we thank you for the incredible account of the spread of the gospel. We thank you for how you use very painful circumstances, persecutions, people being arrested, people being falsely accused, even some people being put to death. You use that to spread the Gospel in a marvelous way, and we’re going to spend all eternity in heaven celebrating as Paul would write later, “Now, I rejoice in what was suffered for you and I fill up in my body what is still lacking in regard to the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body.” The only thing lacking … There’s nothing lacking in the blood of Christ, but it is the suffering of the messengers and the martyrs to take the Gospel to Colossi and to the ends of the earth. Oh Lord, help us be part of that. Don’t pass us by, but use us here in Raleigh/ Durham/ Chapel Hill to take the Gospel to those who are perishing in Jesus’ name, Amen.