Hello, and this is Bob from Hackberry House. Welcome again to God's Word. Lord, bless your Word today, I pray. May your people be encouraged by what they hear from the Book of Acts. In Jesus' name, Amen. It's good to be with you again. It's good to be sharing God's Word from Hackberry House, which is a website that you can access easily. by just typing into your computer myheartcry.net. When you get there, go to the library page, scroll down and find the lesson we're on. We're on lesson 41 in the written form, even though it's 105, I believe, in the audio form. Let me put that down, 105, yes. We are going through the Bible. chronologically. We're in the New Testament now, obviously. We're only about 12 lessons away from the end of this study. That's 12 written lessons. That could take quite a few audios, though, as you well know by now if you've been staying with us all this time. There are other things on the website if you're interested in studying the whole issue of Romanism or Ecumenism or Eschatology, even Bible translations. We've got a little bit of everything there. And we have things not just from yours truly, but from a former Catholic priest and a former Catholic nun and one of the chaplains at the Cook County Jail. We're glad that you're with us today. We're in Acts chapter 8 and 9. May God add His blessing to the study of His Word. We're talking about the man Saul today, or at least to start with. Saul is standing there and approving of the death of Stephen, what we call our first martyr. He's not called a deacon there, but he did do the work of a deacon, as did all those seven that were chosen. Seems like these men were just men like us, and like the apostles, they were just men chosen of God to do a special work. But Saul wanted him dead. And the time that he was doing this the great persecution arises. He was responsible for this great persecution in verse 1. And everybody gets scattered everywhere except the apostles. And why are they scattered? Well, they were told to go into all the world anyway. So here was God's way of giving them that shove. Sometimes He may have to give you one or me one if we're not going to do willingly what He's asked us to do. Stephen is buried, but Saul continues on, goes from house to house looking for search, a search for Christians. But then we turn the camera to another scene, and in verse 4 we're going to deal with the scattered people, not with the scatterer, because Paul, if he only knew it, had actually started a good thing here. It started out very evil, of course, But as someone said, the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church. When a man dies for Christ, and people see that, even Paul himself, we believe, came to Christ later partly because of this, because of the conscience problem he was having. The Lord appeared to him and changed his life. Well, we're dealing with Philip, though. One of the other seven that was chosen for the what we would call secular work. But in fact, these men, Stephen and Philip, were nothing more than little apostles. They were going out, spreading the Word of God in power. So those who want to say that the things of the miracles were only for the apostles need to look again at these two men. And I would think some others also. Philip becomes a mighty preacher of the Gospel. They see his miracles. They see the spirits coming out of people. There's great joy in the city of Samaria. You remember Samaria from the Old Testament, the capital of the Northern Kingdom that fell into great idolatry later and even in these days was not totally walking in the truth and quite despised, in fact, by the people down south in Judea. But Philip went there to preach the gospel because God is no respecter of persons and everywhere these men went, They preach the gospel. So Samaria begins to see wonderful things start to happen. And of course, whenever there's the wonderful things happening, there's going to be some other stuff coming along. And here comes Simon. Not our Simon, but another Simon who we have labeled the sorcerer, because that was what he did at times, at least for a living for a while. And went around telling everybody how great he was, and everybody believed it. because of his miracles. So you see, be careful with the whole miracle mentality in the church today. I don't doubt some of it. I don't doubt God is able to do what he wants to do. I like people with that attitude, and that's the attitude I have, and I will continue to proclaim it. God can do what he wants. There is nothing in his word that says miracles will just stop. We know that the greatest miracle is a changed life, but let's don't write off anything else that God might want to do. However, on the flip side of that, we know that there's a lot of other stuff going on in the church and out of the church, and there are men like Simon still today wowing the crowds and getting a lot of people to follow. It says, though, that Simon, after he believed Philip, he was baptized and actually continued on with Philip. Now, that's an interesting thing that's happened here. Some of the Pharisees, we're going to find out, actually came over to the faith too. So, was it a surface conversion? We're going to see some problems with him later on, but somehow it does say he believed and he was baptized. We can't doubt that something happened in his heart, can we? Should we? He did continue with Philip, but there seems to be still something in his heart that's just going after the miracles because that was his trade. and he sees all these things, and he sees some real things. Evidently in his sorcery there was some phoniness. He was perhaps more of a magician, but perhaps in touch with the other world also, the spirit world of Satan. When the apostles heard that Samaria was under revival, that God's spirit was there and doing things, well, they wanted to be sure that everything was okay. And in those days, the apostles ruled the church. We need to understand that now. These were right under Christ. There was a type of hierarchy, although I hate to use the word. Christ, number one, and then these men. And they appointed elders in the churches to take over from them. They did not desire to hold on to any power, to sit in an office somewhere. They just wanted to go around spreading the Word of God and the life of God. And they laid hands on men in the churches, and they took it from there, and we have it today. Because the real thing just kept being passed down, and passed down, and passed down. But in those days, again, the apostles were in charge. Did you know what? In our day, the apostles are in charge too. That is, if you want to settle a problem, if you want to get something done in the church, and you want to settle a problem that's come up about doctrine, you refer to the apostles. Go to the apostles and ask Matthew. Ask John. Ask Paul. Is this true? Read their words. Read what the Holy Spirit gave to them. They're not going to change their minds about it. We don't need those kind of apostles with us today. I don't want to bust bubbles here, burst bubbles, but we do have apostles in the church today, the other kind, too. I know you don't like to think about it, but the term missionary in the Latin is the same as Apostle in the Greek. The origins of those two words are exactly the same. One who is sent. So we do send people, missionaries, into all the world today. And you know as well as I do that when the missionary comes to that foreign soil, if he's the only one around, he kind of has a take-charge attitude. He takes over that area for Christ. He's God's man in that area. And people listen to him. And he lays hands on elders, nationals and so on. So we have a measure of that going on. Let's don't write it all off, but always with a small a. We certainly don't need the kind of apostles who are going to lay the foundation again, because the foundation's already been laid in Christ and through these men. The foundation, the apostles and prophets, that's what it talks about in the Word. That's what it says about itself, that the apostles and prophets and Christ are the foundation that has been laid. Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. But the words that Christ gave to these men are foundational material. We don't need another Matthew to live today. But we do need men to go into all the world and be sent ones. We're always going to have sent ones going into the world. We do need those people. Anyway, when they came down, they prayed. The Holy Spirit would fall on them. You notice on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit fell independently. Later on, we're going to see when the Gentiles receive the Word at the hands of, not the hands of, but because of the message of Peter, Cornelius' group also gets an independent falling of the Holy Spirit on them. Why wasn't there an independent falling here? Because it looks like there was no Apostle present. And it looks like God is orchestrating this thing the ones that he ordained from Christ, the apostles, are going to be the ones to, so to speak, supervise what happens here. Now God could have done it all by himself, and he could have used deacons and this and that, but in fact he's using apostles. And there were no apostles present, and so God did not rain down that spirit on them. So here, since he had fallen on none of them, but they had been baptized, they had been baptized in water, In the name of Jesus, they were baptized, but they hadn't received the fullness of the Holy Ghost because He was only coming in those days when the apostles were present. So they laid hands on them and received the Holy Spirit. Opens up a whole argument, doesn't it? How do we get the Holy Spirit today? Well, not going to go deep into that. And I don't believe there is one answer that will satisfy everybody, and I'm not trying to satisfy everybody. But as I look through the book of Acts, I do see a variety of methods that God's Spirit comes on to people. This much I know, that a man who wants the Holy Spirit will have the Holy Spirit. And a man who wants more of God will have more of God. Let's keep it simple. Let's don't doctrinalize this thing until there's no life left in it. If a man draws near to God, God will draw near to him. He'll give the Holy Spirit, it says, in another place to those that obey him. And he talks in another place about how if you ask for a fish, he won't give you a serpent. If you ask for bread, he won't give you a rock. You know, just ask for more of God. Of course, when we ask Jesus Christ into our heart, we do receive a manger of the Holy Spirit, and that's the big thing. That's the most important thing. To receive Christ is to receive the Holy Ghost. Is there more? You decide. You read the Word. Is there more? You decide. Ask God yourself, and read the Book, and be sure you have read exactly what He wanted you to read. Keep searching. Keep searching. fighting with people all your life about this. Even the most fundamental of the fundamentalists has a different doctrine about the Holy Ghost than another fundamental fundamentalist. And then you go to the Pentecostal side and you have even more. And I don't want to lead you either way or any way. I want you to just forget the name tags and forget it all and look in this book Look what happened here. Read the epistles. And until you are convinced, you don't have to listen to any man. If you're asking for more of God, you probably already have God in you, and He's going to lead you. Him that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. That's for salvation or for anything. If you're coming to Him for it, and you believe you've found something in His Word, and you're hungry for God, He's going to satisfy you. If you've already got all you need, He'll tell you that too. But don't let go of God. You can let go of some men, because they're trying to get you into their way of thinking, into their church. I want you to know I'm not. And I know there are many men who are not. They just want you to know God in all of His fullness. Everything you can get, get. And everything you give, give. Anyway, Simon is standing by here. watching the Holy Ghost follow them. I do want you to see that when they received the Holy Spirit, it wasn't just a calm day in May. There was something that happened. It happened on the day of Pentecost. I'm not talking so much about tongues, but there was something visible that happened in those days. And some say in these days, something visible happens to a man. How can you receive God in your life. And some people cry when they receive Christ. Their sins are forgiven and they're so happy. Some people jump up and down. Why shouldn't we? Why shouldn't we show emotion when Christ comes into our life? Who told us that this whole thing was supposed to be cold and legal and formalistic? Who gave us that? Didn't it come from Rome? Where is emotion? It's in the Bible. Read about it. Something's happening to these men, so much so that Simon saw it. And he was so impressed by it, he wanted to be able, not to have what those people had, but to have what the apostles had. The power to give it. The power to do a greater magic trick than he had ever done. That's what he wanted. His heart wasn't right. He offered money for this gift, and Peter cursed him. Cursed him. You thought you could purchase the gift of God, your money perish, and you perish with it. You're lost. Your heart's not right with God, verse 21. You better repent. He didn't say your heart can never be right with God. He said, what you just said was wicked. Now, Peter's saying this. This is Peter. You remember Peter, the one who took Jesus aside and said, oh, you're not going to no cross. And Jesus called him a devil. Peter's turning it around now. He's got a hold of it. He knows the truth now. He knows where his Lord was coming from now. And he's going for it. He said, you don't understand anything. You're from the devil. You're going to be lost. You're going to hell. Repent. Tells that to a believer. Verse 23, you're poisoned by bitterness. Have you ever been able to rebuke a brother like this? I know you love your brothers and sisters in the Lord, and it's difficult to come against them, but sometimes you need to do it. Especially if you're in a place of authority. If you're not, you better be very careful how you come against an elder, a pastor, a teacher. Don't receive accusations against them, but if you know something personally yourself, you need to go to them, but you need to go in gentleness, and in love, and in humility. You might be wrong about something. Anyway, Simon said, pray for me, and we're assuming that he did. We don't hear about him anymore. Great revival going on, but Philip is plucked out of this revival, you remember, and he's taken over aside to another place. to a man out in the desert. This is how the Holy Spirit works. He wants you to be able to go at a moment's notice wherever He says to go. Not get attached to any particular way of doing things or crowds or single. Just be open to His call. He wants to bless through you. And be ready for most anything when the Lord is calling people. He calls them to the what we call the Ethiopian eunuch. He was the treasure of the Queen of Ethiopia, a very important man, but a man who had been converted to the Lord and was on his way, had been in Jerusalem for the feast and now is coming back out. And he's sitting in his car, we would say. He's reading his Bible. He's reading one of the scrolls that he brought along with him just to accompany him on this trip, the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And the spirit says to Philip, this is the man. This is why I sent you out here into the desert. Go to that car. Go to that chariot. You know, car is just short for chariot, for real. Philip says, do you know what you're reading? He says, how can I? This is very difficult. And he asks Philip to come up and just sit there in the chariot with him. Can you imagine? They're really riding along together, as you'll see later on. The place in the scripture was Isaiah 53. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. In his humiliation, his justice is taken away. Who's going to declare his generation? I mean, he's He's cut off, his life is taken from the earth. How's he going to have children? Why is his life stopping right here?" And the eunuch answered Philip and said, I gotta know, who is this talking about? Is he talking about himself or is he talking about someone else? And just like Jesus did, and just like Stephen did, and just like all these men will do in the Book of Acts, these preachers, take the person back to the Old Testament and tell the story, everything that there is in there about Jesus, they tell. There's a lot of stuff. And so they sat there and rode on to Ethiopia quite a long time before finally the man said, you know, there's some water over here. Why couldn't I be baptized? Evidently, either Philip said something to him about it or he had seen some people being baptized or just knew that much himself. Philip said, sure, you can be baptized, no problem, if you believe with all your heart. Well, he said, I believe Jesus is the Christ. I do. I believe he's the Son of God, he said. And so, that was enough for Philip. No, he didn't need a three-week seminar. No, he didn't need a whole lot of things. He didn't need to wait. Philip knew the man's heart. And we can know a man's heart You should know his heart before you baptize him, for sure. But it doesn't take long to find out a man's heart. One conversation will do it. When you're sure his heart is right, you baptize him. Don't make him wait. In fact, don't let him wait. Encourage him to go to the water as soon as possible. It's the first thing Jesus asks of people who have the Holy Ghost in them in some way. Well, he gets baptized and walks on down the road rejoicing, and Philip is gone. Not run away, but caught away by God. Another miracle. The book is filled with miracles. We haven't come to the end of the miracles in this book yet. God just keeps doing things. by power, by His power. Wouldn't you like to see God's power working like that today? Wouldn't it be wonderful if God would just intervene as we're trying to bring people to Christ so that we could really see things happen? Let's ask God for more power. I hear stories about it, not just from them, But I hear stories about the power of God in different parts of the world where people don't have all the doubts that we have. Remember how it was when you first started with Christ? You just believed He could do anything? I had a miracle happen to me to introduce me into the Christian walk. I don't believe He does miracles every day for people, for one person. But I believe He's doing miracles every day for somebody. Why don't you ask about it? Maybe there's one with your name on it. Maybe you need one right now. The Bible is not against miracles. The Bible is not against the power of God. You've let certain things that you've seen scare you and turn you off. But if we seek the Lord with all of our heart, we'll find the Lord, the Lord over all creation. He can still do some pretty wonderful things. And when you ask Him, ask in faith and ask in fire. That's in James. I'll talk about that. Well, I already talked about that. It talks about the fervent prayer of a righteous man. The fervent, that means fired, fired up. Let's see what these questions are in our lesson. Who was Philip? Well, we call him a deacon, but basically an evangelist, wasn't he? What gifts did he demonstrate? Preaching, casting out demons. Is water baptism the automatic way to receive the Spirit? No, not according to verses 14 to 17. And who was the first African to enter the church? That was the Ethiopian unit. Somebody brought out that the order of the sons of Noah was always Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Shem was the father of the Jewish people, Ham of the people who went south, and Japheth of the people who went west, the Europeans and so on. Well, that's how they came into the ark of Christ too. The Semitic people, the Jews, are already in on the day of Pentecost. Here comes Ham now, the Hemitic people, they're in the Ark, and Japheth is going to come in Chapter 10 with Cornelius and the Europeans and so on, the Gentiles, the rest of the Gentiles. Well, what is required of one is to be baptized. That's to believe with all your heart. You've got to have that in you before you can be baptized. How do we know that Saul had been under conviction for a while? Whoops, got ahead of the story. Let's go to chapter 9. Saul comes back into the story. Oh, this man. He's breathing. Do you see this? Breathing threats. Breathing murder. Paul says, I was once a murderer. He was. He killed Christians. Some of us need to be encouraged. Maybe we never went that far. God can forgive you. Even if you did murder, God can forgive you. I'm not saying to do it now. We all sin against the light. But God will forgive you of your sins. Well, he is so antagonistic to Christians that he's asked from the high priest an authorization letter that he can just take anywhere he wants, but especially to take to the synagogue of Damascus. He's going to go up to Damascus with this letter. And if there's anybody in the synagogue there that's worshiping as a Jew, but really is a Christian, he's going to ask if he can arrest them. And that's what the letter says he can do. He wants to evangelize. He wants to evangelize his cause already. He is a zealot for God. That's perhaps one of the reasons God is going to use him. So he goes up there, and he's on his way, and you know the story from there. There's this big light, big light. And he's going up there to make prisoners. Before this little story is over, he's going to be a prisoner. He's a prisoner of Christ, then the rest of his life. A light shines around. He falls to the ground. Did he trip and fall? Did he fall because of the light? Or did he just kneel in prayer? I'll let you struggle with that one, this falling phenomenon that we're seeing. Is it from the Holy Spirit? Look at verse 4. Is there anything there that might connect to what we see today? It doesn't seem so. Saul, why are you persecuting me? He said, well, who are you? Lord. He calls him Lord because this voice is coming from heaven. The Lord said, I'm Jesus. The Lord said, I am Jesus. Now, if you have a person who doesn't believe in the deity of Christ, There it is. The Lord said, I am Jesus. I'm the one that you're persecuting. It's hard for you to do what you're doing. You're kicking against the goads, aren't you? The goads are those little sticks or rods that the shepherds would use to hit their sheep in the back and make them go the right way. Our conscience is like that. Our conscience goads us on. It tells us to do this and do that. And Paul is going against his conscience, I think, ever since he saw Stephen die. I can't prove that. Or maybe he's seen others die. He's gripped by the way they go into the next life, rejoicing and thanking God for this opportunity. Lord, what do you want me to do? He says he's trembling. The Lord said, just go up to the city and you'll be told what you must do. He keeps him in suspense. He could have told him everything right then. This was going to be a long process. We read about it in a short time, but there were many years involved in Paul's preparation. He didn't go right into the ministry right away, not fully. He had to go out to the wilderness just as Jesus did. And as any man today who wants to follow Christ will have to do, there's a wilderness that is yours. Well, the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no one." Uh-oh. In Acts 22.9, we have Luke versus Luke. Now, Luke wrote this whole thing. But in Acts 22.9, he says, Now those who were with me saw the light, but didn't hear the voice. Let me say again, verse 7. They heard a voice, but they saw no one. They saw no one and saw a light, That's not a contradiction. No problem. They saw the light, but they didn't see a person. So don't let that one bother you. But in Acts 9, it says, heard a voice, and Acts 22, 9, didn't hear the voice of him. Now, let's read Acts 22. I want to go there first. Acts 22 is Paul's account of this story. And Paul tells exactly what happened. You can compare it to Acts 9. You'll see it was exactly the same thing. So I answered, Who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you have persecuted. Now up until that point, verse 9, those who were with me didn't hear the voice. Now read on in Acts 22, verse 10. So I said, What shall I do, Lord? Now that picks up. That's the rest of the story. They haven't heard the voice yet. But in Acts chapter 9, after he says, What do you want me to do, Lord? It says they did hear that voice. When Jesus responded, Arise, go into the city, and you'll be told what you must do. Now they're hearing that voice. So they didn't hear the first part, and they were all confused. It doesn't make any sense. Why is Saul looking up into the heavens? Why is he talking to himself here? Jesus made his voice visible, audible to them, and they heard the voice. You read that very carefully and you'll see there is no contradiction. How could it be? And you know, solving a little thing like that is encouraging to some people because there are people who want us to have Paul versus James, for example, or Moses versus Jesus in the scriptures. Well, Moses said this, but Jesus said just the opposite. Who's right? Paul said this, but James said just the opposite. Who's right? The fact is you don't have to do that. The fact is that there are no contradictions in the scripture. Here's Luke versus Luke. It looks like it. No, not at all. Well, Saul is baptized. He gets his sight restored that he lost from that blinding light. And he's told that he's going to have to suffer many things. And Ananias, of course, doesn't want to go do all these things, lay hands on Paul, because he's heard all about him. And he tells him, man, I don't know if I want to go there. He's done harm to your saints. And he's even got authority. Did you know that Ananias, this man here, was on his way to be killed? He was going to be killed. He knew that. And God stopped that. And instead of preparing for death now, he's preparing Saul for life. And Ananias goes and does what he's told, and he's filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately he preached Christ in the synagogues. He's filled with the Spirit. That's your prerequisite for preaching the Gospel, by the way. Bible college is not, hello, not a prerequisite. If you go there, praise God, and you learn more and more, that's wonderful. But God never said you had to do that. You're going to learn. Believe me, He'll take you into His school and He'll teach you. My Bible college experience was a mixed bag, but I've forgotten it all, long since forgotten it all. And the things that I do now are absolutely nothing to do with the things I did then and the things I learned about how to. Bible is the same. But the methodology, no. You learn that from Christ. You're filled with God, and you just go and speak to somebody or some group about Jesus. And you're a preacher of the gospel in that small sense. All right. And in that large sense, too. Saul preaches Christ then, and he's confounding everybody. Everybody's wondering, what is going on? After a while, the Jews up in Damascus get wind of the fact that they've been betrayed, or it looks like it anyway. They're wondering, what's going on here? This man is, he comes up here to kill Christians, and what's he, he becomes one of them? Uh-uh, we got to get rid of this guy. They're going to kill him. This is the first of many, many such incidents in Paul's life. They've got to kill him. They've got to get him off the scene, and he starts out his ministry here as an escaped prisoner. He comes down to Jerusalem, or up to Jerusalem, He tries to join the disciples. They don't want to have anything to do with it. They're still afraid. And he needs a friend, and he has a friend in the man Barnabas. Thank God for Barnabas and men like him, who will put an arm around a brother and give him comfort when he's needed. He's called the son of consolation, and he was indeed. He brings him personally to the apostles and says, I put my approval on this man. This is a good man. You know, Barnabas perhaps was one of the men Select could have been one of the men selected to be one of the twelve. He's very, very high up in respect level anyway in the church. And so they respected his judgment. And he stayed with the apostles and proved himself to them. And now here comes another preaching appointment in verse 28. He speaks boldly and disputes with the Hellenists right from the beginning. He's attacking other religions. He's attacking the Hellenists. We talked about who they were earlier. But they try to kill him, too. This time, they try to get him out of the city another way. You know, the first time, they actually put him over the wall in a large basket. Now, they're just sending him real quick down to his hometown of Tarsus. Well, you can imagine that the church is at rest now, because Saul had been the one, the ringleader behind the whole thing. When he was gone, The church had rest, and oh, what a comfortable and wonderful time it was for the church. The Holy Spirit is there everywhere comforting them. There's peace, there's miracles, there's power, and the church continues to just grow and grow and grow. And right there we leave Saul for just a minute. We're going to go over to Peter again. We're going to catch up on some things he's been doing. He's been preaching everywhere too. runs into a man named Aeneas, been in a bed eight years, hasn't got up for eight years, he's paralyzed, and Jesus, through Peter, just heals that man. And again, when people see the miracles, they see the power of God working, they turn to the Lord. You see, that was God's method of getting people saved. He Himself would intervene in the church, in the area, in a sick life. And people would gather together and say, pray for me too. And before you know it, you've got revival. Because they see this is real. Well, if he can heal my body, perhaps he can save my soul. I can trust him for eternal things too. We want to go the secular route. We want to help material things, but not through the power of God. We start bribing people to come to church. And we try all kinds of secular methods in God. is not impressed or blessed with this. He wants us to seek Him with all the heart so that His power can be released in some way. Here's another miracle in verse 36. A woman named Tabitha, also translated Dorcas. Both of these words, if you trace them back, mean gazelle. At one time in her life, maybe very quick in her speed and running. We don't know. Maybe an athletic person at one time. But she's an older... Well, we don't know how old she was. We do know that she had been helping the sisters there for quite a while, especially the widows, and they couldn't take care of themselves, and she had it within herself, through her means, to bless them, and she wanted to, and she started making little things for them and blessing them. And they were so sad the day she died, they couldn't believe it. Evidently, she was not a very, very old woman. And so Peter happened to be in the vicinity. They bring him back, and again, You can imagine what's going to happen next. He did what Jesus did, ask everybody to leave because there was unbelief in there. Perhaps when Jesus did that one day, Peter asked him, why did you ask everybody to leave? He said, I'm sure it had something to do with unbelief. Whenever there's unbelief in the room, God cannot move very much. And Peter wanted everybody out. And sure enough, after he simply says to her, Tabitha, arise. She comes back from the dead. These things we've just heard about so often, we just want to write it all off as first century. What about it? Can God do great things today? Well, look at verse 42, though. Because of what had happened, many believed in the Lord. That was the bottom line. That's what God wants. The miracle is great. God has compassion on sick people and dead people. But in fact, the thing that he wants is soul say for eternity. So because of what happened to her, God was able to grow his church a little bit more. We're going back to questions now. Number seven, how do we know Saul had been under conviction for a while? When do you think it started? Well, my guess has been Stephen. Talks about the goad, the pricking there. Number 8. Read 9, 7, and 22, 9. Luke and Paul seem to contradict each other. Resolve it. Well, I think I already covered that earlier that it's just a matter of time. They didn't hear some of it, but they did hear it later on. Number 9. How did Saul know that Ananias was of God? Well, Saul got a vision. Number 10. Where did Paul first preach? That was in Damascus. Who first befriended Paul? That was Barnabas. What effect did Paul's conversion have on the Church? Well, there was great peace. Number 13. What two powerful miracles of Peter are recorded after Paul's conversion? He heals Aeneas and raises Dorcas. Let's go to Chapter 10. We go to the Gentiles now. We should say the rest of the Gentiles. Japhethites. There was a certain man in Caesarea. His name is Cornelius. He's an Italian. He's a man high in the army of the Romans, a very devout man who feared God. I'm not totally sure what we're to believe by this, that he was a Jewish man, a Jewish convert, living there among Romanism, the Roman Empire, or just served God the best way he knew how, from the different stories that he got about who God was. For one thing, we know for sure he didn't know God. He didn't know God. He knew about God. Isn't it interesting? He feared God. He did righteous acts all the time. He was very devout. Most people would not have even thought of sharing the Gospel with a man like this. Most people think this is what being saved is all about, being very religious, giving to people, fearing God, Isn't that enough? What more could you have? Well, the more is Jesus. The more is all your sins, all your sins forgiven. Well, God saw this man who wanted so much to serve Him. As He always sees that all over the world, He sees people who have a heart to know Him and serve Him. And when He observed him, he was afraid and said, What is it, Lord? Well, wait, I skipped over a little bit. Verse 3, he has a vision. He sees in a vision somebody coming in and saying Cornelius to him. And he looked at him, and of course this is Cornelius. He's a pagan still. Well, I won't call him a pagan because he's worshipping God. Seems to be the true God. But he's not saying that he's not experienced in the things of the Spirit and very much afraid. And he's told that all of his prayers have been heard. He's told that all the things he's done have been seen. Isn't that encouraging to you? To know that about your own life, too? So he says, you need to send some messengers down to Joppa. There's a man down there named Simon, Peter. And I want you to ask him to come to your house. And he'll do it. Well, now let's go down to Peter, verse 9. Peter is praying one day. And he gets real hungry. wants to go down and eat, but he actually falls asleep first and falls into a trance, and he sees heaven open. He's half here, half there. And he sees this big sheet, big, big, big, like a canvas, we would say, and on top of it are all kinds of animals, things that aren't too pretty to look at, unclean to the Jews to eat, just very nasty looking. four-footed animals, but also wild beasts and also creeping things, insects, birds. The voice says, Peter, you're hungry? Go ahead and eat. Oh, no, no, no. I have never eaten anything common or unclean. Isn't this like Peter? Oh, no, Jesus, you'll never go to Jerusalem. That doesn't make sense to me. Oh, you'll never wash my feet. I'm not going to let you do this. You are the Lord of glory, and I believe it. Oh, I'll never betray you. You've got the wrong man. Peter jumps to conclusions. He doesn't want to just take things that the Lord gives him, even now. Spirit-filled Peter, we would call him. Peter said, No, I can't do that. The voice says, Look, I say they're clean. You can eat them. This happened to him three times, and finally, In the middle of all this, while he's thinking, I wonder what all this is about, the men who had been sent from Cornelius stood right at his gate. They came in and they said, and Peter is told, go down and meet them. And Peter went down, said, yes, I'm Peter. Who are you? What do you want? And the messenger said, there's a man named Cornelius. He's a Gentile, but he really fears God. He's got a good reputation. He's given so many things to the Jews, an angel has appeared to him and told him that you are to go to his house and tell him something. So, finally, Peter says, oh, come on in my house. Now, this is a Jewish house, and he actually gets it. He gets it. He puts the vision and this invitation together. He says, oh, sure, come on in. And the next day they went together. But the big miracle, the first miracle that's happened already is that he allows these Gentiles to come into his house. So the next day they go to Caesarea where Cornelius is. And he's waiting. He's all excited. He's called all of his big family together. Peter comes in. Cornelius fell down his feet and worshipped him. He didn't know any better. Peter said, Get up. Now, in our day, they wouldn't have said get up, would they? The men who thought they were successors of Peter never said, get up. And never said, forget it. Go ahead, kiss my foot. Grumble a while. It'll make God happy. Oh, no, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. And so he goes in, second miracle, a Jew now going into a Gentile home. That's a miracle. It's a miracle of a changed heart, a changed world view, if you please. And right away he starts talking about it. He says, you know I'm not allowed to do this. You know I'm not allowed to come in here because I'm a Jew. But don't look at me that way. God just talked to me too. He's telling me I can't call anybody unclean ever again. So I came right away. Now I need to know what you want me to talk to you about. Cornelius said four days ago I was fasting and I saw this man, I don't know if he was an angel of course, and he told me, Cornelius, Send for Peter and let him talk to you. Then Peter starts talking, verse 34. And he talks all the way to 43, preaching the Gospel. What does he do? Goes back to the Old Testament again. Talks about Israel. Talks about how God used Israel to bring Christ into the world and how God called this special nation to do special things. Then starts talking about Jesus Himself. How God anointed Him and who He was and what He did. and how we are witnesses of it. And God raised Him up and showed Him, not to everybody, but to certain people. And then He told us to go preach to everybody. That's who it is. And to Him, all the prophets witnessed that through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins. Water baptism is not mentioned here. So put Acts 2.38 together with this, and you'll see the gist of what was being said. The heart of it was belief and repentance. Look at in the message, what do you see? You see what God did. That has to be in every message we preach of salvation. And then we see what man did and the sin that he went into and how he needs God. That has to be in every message. And then what man must do now in talking about Christ and what the requirements are. When that's finished, it's been preached. Peter was going to probably go on, but it says, while he was still talking, the Holy Spirit falls, and it's in verse 44. And the Jewish people who thought they really were the promised people, and they were. They were. They were the ones to whom God promised everything. They were the anointed ones indeed, but now Israel's being opened up to Gentiles, and they are amazed. How did they know? How did they know anything happened? Something happened there, didn't it? They heard them speak with tongues and they heard them magnify God. I mean, suddenly, there they were, hands up in the air, probably, and just praising God at the top of their lungs and enjoying the Lord. That was something visible. When Peter saw all that going on, he says, well, I guess God's given the Holy Spirit to them, too. and they need to be baptized. He didn't want to miss a trick here. He takes them down to the water and they're baptized. Well, in chapter 11, the apostles hear about this and Peter comes to Jerusalem and he's got a problem on his hand because the Jews, there are Jews there saying, wait a minute, you went into Gentile homes. You can't do that. Who told you to go in there?" Peter starts his story from the beginning. And were these saved Jews or unsaved? Looks like maybe Christians, because they would be the only ones interested in this particular thing, as Peter begins to preach. And he tells the whole story of his dream, all the way from 4 to 17, is the territory we just covered. And I'm not going to cover it again. Go to verse 18. When they heard the story, that I just told you, they were very quiet. And said, just like we said and Peter said, then God must have granted life. They knew now that the Gentiles were somehow in this thing. End of that story. We switch back over to Barnabas and Saul. The people that were scattered, the people that were scattered kept traveling and kept preaching. And they preached only to the Jews. But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene. And they started speaking to Hellenists. They're reaching out a little bit. These are compromising Jews. We talked about the Hellenists. They preached Jesus to them. and found, to their great surprise and delight, that God was touching them and the hand of the Lord was with them. And so let's get Barnabas and Paul, let's get some of these higher up church authorities down there to bless that. Verse 23, When they came and had seen the grace of God, they were so glad. Barnabas was, and it talks about, verse 24, he was a good man. I like the way the Scripture talks about this man. He was a good man. Luke wants you to know that perhaps for a reason later on. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit, full of faith, and a great many people were added through the Lord. So Barnabas I'm sorry, Saul's not on the scene yet. I read Saul into that. He's coming on the scene now. Barnabas is going to go looking for Saul, but it's Barnabas that did this whole thing of approving this other work. He's now kind of considered one of the apostles at this point and being sent out on these special missions. So it seems like every time the Holy Spirit goes somewhere, you need an apostle to go there and check it out. After a while, the apostles will lay hands on other people who will be apostolic in nature, like Barnabas. And these men will be able to carry on the work. And we're not talking, when we say lay hands on, we're not talking about some huge ritual. It's just, let's pray for you brother, we're going to send you out and God will be with you. He's already received the Holy Spirit. And he's being sent on a special mission from the apostles. And we do need an authority structure of some sort. The elders of your church, the elders of the church are an authority structure for you. whenever possible, you need to submit to them before you would do something for the Lord. In those days, prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch to prophesy about what? A famine that's coming. And so they start taking up offerings for this, believing God. And sure enough, it did happen later on in the days of another emperor, Claudius Caesar. Took up their money and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. And that story is Gone on in chapter 13, it's continued in chapter 13, actually 12, 25 is where the story picks up. But first, we've got to go back to Peter again, and we're going to talk about Herod too. But before we do that, let's get questions answered in chapter 11. Aren't fearing God, giving, and prayer enough? About Cornelius, no, no, you must be born again. Why do you think a Roman soldier was chosen first? When it says, why do you think, you know, just give your own answer. I said it was perhaps the most hated class of Gentiles. God is no respecter of persons. These were centurions that commanded a hundred soldiers. Cornelius belonged to a cohort, a regiment of 600 under a tribune. A cohort of Romans stationed in Caesarea, not Caesarea Philippi, but on the coast north of Joppa. Next question, number 16. Are God's men to be worshipped? Absolutely not. Number 17. Explain Peter's vision. Unclean animals? Well, there's no man unclean if cleansed by God. No racism in the church. Number 18. What had been preached when the Holy Spirit fell? Believe in Jesus, crucified, risen. Number 19. What was the initial Jewish reaction to Gentiles being approved by God? Well, they were astonished. Then the next reaction, let's get him baptized. Number 20, who is sent to confirm the word to certain Jews and Greeks reached by various disciples? That was Barnabas. Number 21, who does Barnabas ask to go with him to Antioch? And that's verses 11, 25, and 26. That's Saul. And don't confuse this Antioch, by the way, that's in Syria, with the one that's in Asia Minor, Pisidia, that we'll be coming to very shortly. All right, and then what was the norm of the early church regarding its suffering members? They cared for one another. God wants that to be the norm in our church today. Quickly on to chapter 12, about that time Herod the king, you remember Herod, decides he's going to persecute. We don't know all of his motivation. There's usually something else going on to motivate him, but he kills James. This is the Apostle James, John's brother. James is now dead. If you ever hear the name James again, it's the brother of the Lord, not the brother of John. Now it's down to the ten, if you don't count Matthias. And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he decided, hey, this is cool. I am going to arrest Peter also. They like me for this. They really like what I'm doing. So he arrests Peter. And Peter is put in prison, but the church prays, and they learn their lesson from losing James so quickly, perhaps, but they don't want to lose Peter. And they're praying and praying. Herod is about to bring him out. He's going to bring him out the next morning. is brought out by someone else. He's brought out by an angel. And here he is. He's got soldiers all around him and chains, but the chains just fall off. And he thinks he's dreaming and the angel brings him out into the street. There's a lot of miracles in this. First, number one, the angel himself. That's a miracle to receive an angel's visit. Struck Peter on the side and the chains fall off. That's two. Three, he thought he was seeing a vision. Four, They went past the first and second guard posts, and there's guards there, folks, and they just went right past them. Five, the city gate just opens by itself. Now the angel's gone, there's no more miracles coming up, but Peter goes to that prayer meeting, and he knocks on the door of the house where the prayer meeting's at. By the way, this is at the house of a woman named Mary, who is the mother of a man named John, who has another name, Mark. John Mark, we believe, is the one who wrote the Gospel. He was a companion of Paul and Barnabas. We'll tell that story soon. Becomes a son to Peter. He becomes a greatly respected leader by Paul, even though not at first. And he himself becomes a successful church leader in years to come. this man that's mentioned right here. But Peter's knocking at the door of John Mark's house. A little girl, maybe a big girl, named Rhoda comes to the door and says, it's Peter. And she goes right back in and says, I've seen Peter. He's at the door. He's at the door. She doesn't bother to open the door. She's all excited. And Peter's standing out there. They didn't believe, did they? Well, they did believe. But sometimes we think it's going to come much later, and it comes sooner. Thank God. Sometimes we think it's going to come much sooner, and it comes later. But it does come. God hears his people. Keep on believing God. Go tell these things to James, he says. But James is dead. No, the other James. And to the brothers. Notice, James seems to have a very prominent position in that church. We're going to see him in the council in Acts 15 here. doing some authoritative sorts of things. So Peter, James, both very strong leaders in that early church, and Paul will be coming on strong himself. But Peter says, go tell James and the brothers what's happened. Well, as soon as it was day, the soldiers found out what had happened. Herod found out what had happened, and he killed all his guards. He goes down to Caesarea, stays there, and you'll see in the next few verses that he becomes proud. You can read the incident yourself. He becomes very proud about something that happened in another town, and God struck him dead for his pride, for all the things, the gall that he had to think he could come against the people of God. But, verse 24, the Word of God grew and multiplied. of this world will come and go, and their rulers will also come and go. But the Word of God will keep multiplying, and God will keep doing what He wants to do. Before I lose my voice altogether, let's go to some questions and call it a day today. Well, which James is killed by Herod, number 23? That's the brother of John, the apostle. Regarding the Herod family, Herod the Great, remember, the king at Jesus' birth, Herod Archelaus' son, ruler in Judea during Jesus' childhood. Herod Antipas, another son of the great, ruled Galilee during Christ's ministry and death. Herod Agrippa I, son of Antipas, is the one that killed James right here, the one that just died. And Herod Agrippa II is going to come along and listen to Paul later on. Which James first received the report of Peter's release from prison? That would be the brother of Jesus. And the author of the book of James, we've already had. 25. Describe the humor of the release of Peter. Well, he's knocking at the door, but they didn't believe in their own prayers. 26. How does Luke compare the kingdoms of men with the Word of God? Well, they go, but the Word of God grows. That will bring us to number 27 next time and chapter 13. Actually, we're going to start at the very end of chapter 12 next time, verse 25, as we trace Continue to trace this marvelous, marvelous story of the grace of God. It's your story, and it's my story. And let's make it ours today, and let's have the book of Acts just continue right into our own day. Amen and amen.