If you take your Bibles, please turn with me to Acts chapter eight. We're going through the book of Acts. And we come this morning to Acts chapter eight. We're gonna read the first 25 verses. And what we read here comes immediately after Stephen, who was a deacon in the early church, right after he was stoned to death. So he was announcing the gospel of Christ, but the religious leaders in Jerusalem were envious of him, and they couldn't They couldn't beat him in his argument. They couldn't prove what he was claiming about Jesus to be untrue, and so they went after him with force. And he is stoned to death, and as he is dying, He sees Jesus sitting on his throne and he pleads with the Lord to not hold the sin, this sin against them. He dies even with his last words announcing the wonderful forgiving grace of God. And so chapter eight verse one picks up from that this way. And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. And the crowds, with one accord, paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city. But there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, this man is the power of God that is called great. And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philip, as he preached the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized, he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed. Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit, Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. "'Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours "'and pray to the Lord that if possible, "'the intent of your heart may be forgiven you, "'for I see that you are in the gall of bitterness "'and in the bond of iniquity.' "'And Simon answered, "'Pray for me to the Lord "'that nothing of what you have said may come upon me. Now when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans. Let's pray and ask God to bless His word to us. Lord, we thank you for this amazing account of your salvation spreading. And we pray, Lord, that you would teach us by this that you would teach us about your great power that is still active, your great power that is still active in spreading your salvation. For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, we've been seeing that the book of Acts is a book of scripture that assures us that Christ the King is still powerfully active in this world. The book of Acts assures us that Christ the King is still powerfully active in this world. Christ Jesus, the one who died, the one who was raised, and the one who ascended to God's right hand as King, ascended as the King who would make all things right, is still powerfully active in this world. And this is very important for us to remember and to understand because when we look around at the world, we notice that all things are not yet right. In fact, all things seem to be worse than they've ever been. We advance in some ways as a human race, we develop all kinds of new technologies, standards of living, quote unquote, get better in some ways around the globe, but even with certain standards of living growing, we see standards of depression and anxiety increasing too. Nothing actually seems to get better. I read a report this week about a tribe in the Amazon, maybe you saw this headline, a tribe in the Amazon, very remote, got connected to the internet through Starlink being donated to them. And almost immediately, the village gets addicted to porn and social media. And it begins to completely break down. And the elders of the village are saying, what's going on? What's going on? This on the one hand enables us to get medical help and to call in for anti-venom when someone gets bit by a snake, but now everyone's lazy and no one's growing food anymore. And relationships are strained and breaking down, right? Great technological advance. But we all know it. We all know it from experience. Great technological advance does not mean things are actually getting better. And as Christians, we can go, What's going on? If Jesus is on the throne, and he is, if he is the king that came to make all things right, what's he doing now? Well, the book of Acts tells us. The book of Acts tells us what Christ is doing. It assures us that he's still active, and it tells us about how he's at work, even while things are so bad. Things are happening like we see in the first part of our passage, don't we? Where persecution broke out against the church. We read it was a great persecution against the church. And Saul, who had overseen the killing of Stephen, is going house to house in Jerusalem. Think about that. They're not just pressuring Christians to compromise. They're not just saying, don't do this in public. Saul is going house to house. He's banging on doors, demanding if the people inside confess Jesus to be Lord, and if they do, he drags them out, men and women, and he commits them to prison. Persecution is sweeping through Jerusalem. So what's Christ doing? Well, we see that this story tells us how King Jesus is powerfully active even in these situations. How he's powerfully active. And that leads us to our first point because we notice immediately in the story, don't we, that Christ is powerfully spreading his saving power even through the persecution. How is Christ active? He is powerfully spreading his saving power through the persecution. He's spreading his salvation, his saving power, not just in the middle of persecution, but notice he's doing it through the persecution because the persecution hits Jerusalem and the Christians spread. They're fleeing from the persecution, but what happens? Verse four, now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Those who were scattered went about scattering the word. exactly according to what Jesus the King promised would happen before he ascended. He said, wait in Jerusalem until you receive power from on high, the power of the Holy Spirit. And he says, when you receive this power from on high, you're gonna be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And that's exactly what we see happening right here. Christ is not just present with his people in the persecution, he is powerfully present by the Spirit such that he is using the persecution to spread his salvation. That's a beautiful thing. We can confess that our God turns obstacles into opportunities. Our God turns obstacles into opportunities. Now, that's a bit of a cheesy way of saying it, because it fits on like a motivational poster. You can picture like a mountain goat leaping over a rock and the words obstacles and the opportunities on it. But it's absolutely true. It's not just kind of a motivational slogan. It's the fact that we see here. To put it in more graphic terms, we can say that we believe in the gospel being spread by the sword. We believe in the gospel being spread by the sword. Numerous religions believe in their gospel, their religion being spread by the sword. Islam spread very much by the sword. Hinduism today in India is spread by state, by state authority or by communities attacking Christians, burning them out of their houses and homes. My parents know of a family that was burned to death in their car. because they're trying to purify the country and make it all Hindu, and the government just kinda steps back and lets it happen. Throughout history, religions have spread by the sword, and we can also say, yeah, we believe in the gospel spreading by the sword, but there's a difference, because it doesn't spread by the church wielding the sword. It doesn't spread by the state wielding the sword in the name of the gospel. The gospel spreads by the sword being wielded against the church. The gospel spreads when the attacks are coming against the church. It's in that persecution. that King Jesus is actively, powerfully moving, spreading his saving power by means of the persecution. They were scattered and those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Now we need to hear this because this is what motivates and enables us to be faithful and beyond faithful even confident in the face of persecution ourselves. Confidence is something we need to be built up in as persecution may only increase against us. Now I'm not making any predictions but We in the US have had it very, very easy. That may not be the case in the future. We don't know what kind of persecution may come against us if it's just social pressure. Maybe at some point it might quite literally be the sword, the power of the state dragging people off to prison. We don't know. But we know it can happen. We know it is happening in certain parts of the world. We know it does happen. And so we need to grow in our confidence that God uses the persecution. King Jesus is powerfully active through it to spread his gospel so that we will be strong and faithful in the face of it. And we see this throughout church history. There's stories of martyrs. that had confidence that despite persecution, the mission would not fail, and they kept going. I could read an account of martyrs in the early church facing the lions with confidence in Christ, but we don't need to look to church history in that sense. We just read about it in Acts chapter seven with Stephen. who was able to boldly announce the gospel and even pray for the forgiveness of those who were stoning him because he saw Jesus standing at God's right hand, because he was confident in King Jesus powerfully spreading his gospel despite persecution. So he died faithful because he died confident in that great fact. No matter how bad things get, Christ is powerfully active in the persecution, even using it to spread His saving power. Now we've already seen that in the book of Acts and we're gonna see it again because it's one of the things the book is driving home to us. But we also see in our text today two other things about how Christ is powerfully active. Two other things that are also central messages of the book of Acts. We see that Christ is powerfully spreading his saving power through persecution. We also see that he is powerfully spreading his saving power to all people. To all people. You know, we don't think much probably about the gospel going to Samaria. We read it, went out to Samaria and we go, okay, I guess that's some place, you know, kind of near Jerusalem. But this is a massive deal. Samaria was not just some place. Samaria was, a people that had split off from Israel and they were only quasi-Jewish. And because of that, the Jewish people just cursed even thinking about them. They only believed in the first five books of Moses. They weren't fully children of Abraham. They didn't believe in the temple in Jerusalem. They had their own false idea of how God should be worshiped. Jewish people did not wanna have anything to do with the people of Samaria, but here we find Christ is spreading his gospel to everyone, even the Samaritans. It is, again, a fulfillment of Christ's promise and commission. in chapter one of Acts, where he says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And so here we have Christ fulfilling that promise and the amazing first steps of the gospel going worldwide, the amazing first steps of the gospel going to the outcasts and to the pagans. And there's a lot I wanna say about that. And we're gonna see the importance of it when we get to Acts chapter 10. We're gonna spend some time thinking about that fact, that the gospel is going out to all people when we get to Acts chapter 10. But for now, I want us just to notice that right as the gospel is breaking out of this Jewish context, what we're shown in our text is that as the gospel is breaking out of this Jewish context, spreading to all people, it runs smack up against pagan assumptions. It collides with pagan assumptions. But it's in this clash with pagan assumptions that we see the next point about how King Jesus spreads his saving power. He spreads his saving power through persecution, he spreads it to all people, and he spreads his saving power as a free gift, as his gift. And we need to emphasize both of those words, his gift, his kingdom. to spread His power, His will, His way, His reign as His gift. And this runs smack up against pagan assumptions. You see, pagans thought that you could manipulate the gods into doing things for you by paying them off. You could get the gods, the divine powers, the spiritual forces of the universe, whatever you called them, whatever you believe specifically about them, you could get the gods to do things for you by paying them off. In other words, you could get the gods to give you your way if you pay. That's the pagan approach to things. Pay to get your way. Pay to get your way with the divine powers. And this is where Simon the Magician comes in, right? This Simon the Magician guy, that was his whole gig. His whole gig was pay to get your way. Because this was a guy who, we don't know the details whether it was by illusion, illusion, trickery, or by demonic powers, which is actually more likely because in the ancient world, when you said magic, it wasn't Penn and Teller. It wasn't rabbit out of a hat. It was a cult access into demonic type powers. So whether it was by illusion or demonic activity or both, he wowed the crowds and became known as great. He became known as great. Look at verse 10 there. They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, this man is the power of God that is called great. He was the man to see if you needed divine power on your side. He was the guy you came to. He was the guy you paid, and he would tell you what you had to pay the God to get the gods to do something for you. And so, when he sees the apostles doing their thing and showing that they have divine power and the apostles lay their hands on people and the people receive the Holy Spirit. We don't know what he saw. He probably saw them speaking in tongues, more miracles happening, but it was obviously a show of divine power indicating that the Spirit really had been poured out on those people. He sees that and he does what makes sense to him. He offers them money to get this power for himself. He offers to buy this power. And it's not hard to see what he was up to. our text here crafts the narrative really well. It shows us the character of Simon, right? This guy who was esteemed and regarding whom everyone was amazed at his power and ability, but then we read that that amazement switches over to the apostles and even Simon is now amazed The same word used, amazed by the power the disciples have. And so Simon, no doubt, is thinking, hey, I want this power. I wanna get great. He was obviously making money from it, so he makes an investment. He's like, I'll give you some of this money, and you give me this power. And Peter, condemns him. In fact, Peter condemns him, don't we read, he condemns him hard. Look at verse 20 and following again. Listen to what Peter says. He goes, give me this power also so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you. because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you, for I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. He doesn't hold back, does he? Man, you talk about rebukes. What Peter is saying is so important. He's showing us that God's power is his to give and it's not ours to control. It can't be purchased for our purposes. The power of God can be purchased for our purposes. Notice he drills into the wicked intent that Simon had. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. He's condemning what Simon was after by this power. Simon wanted this power, in other words, for greedy, selfish purposes. He wanted this power for himself so that he could continue to be the man they called great. And Peter lays into him for that. God's power can't be purchased for our own purposes. And we look at Simon and we think, what a selfish jerk. But think of how common this attitude is today. This is literally the health and wealth gospel. The Health and Wealth Gospel, which is ravaging the church around the world. It started in the United States, and we're good at exporting our technologies and ideas, good and bad. And boy, we were really successful in exporting this horrid, horrid false gospel. and those in more devastated, economically devastated parts of the world just grab onto this and they eat it up and it is awful and it is destructive. The health and wealth gospel has an outright obvious form and you'll recognize it as when the preacher says, pay me money and God will pay you money. That's his most blatant form, pay me money so I can have the private jet as a servant of the Lord And if you pay me money, if you give your $30, $300, I'm feeling right now, God is telling me, there's someone out there with $30,000. If you give that money, then God is gonna bless you. And your harvest is gonna increase and increase and increase. And we scoff at that. Give me your money and healing is coming your way. Healing to your body, healing to your marriage, prosperity at your work, just send me your money. And we scoff and rightly call those men frauds. But there's a more subtle form of the health and wealth gospel. In fact, it's massively prevalent. It's the false gospel that says if you have faith, if you're doing what's right, if you are following God's principles and applying God's principles in your life, then God will give you a blessed life, which means the good life, which means the American dream. God wants you to live a blessed life in prosperity. He doesn't want you to be struggling financially under debt. You just need to X, Y, Z. If you follow these principles, Healing can come to your marriage. You're gonna have kids that are happy, healthy, good looking, get straight A's and can go off to a school that tells them to worship Satan or, but they'll be doctors so it's all good. If you do for God, He will do for you. It's still health and wealth, it's still the pagan way. Pay to get your way, to get your American dream. But the true gospel does not allow for this at all. If you are just using God to get your way, and Peter's condemnation of Simon makes this so clear, if you are just using God to get your way, you are not saved. Because you have not come to Jesus as king. You may be saying, but I'm reading the Bibles, I'm trying to follow the principles of the Bible, I'm looking to God to give me this X, Y, and Z. You can do the pagan way in Jesus' name, but you're not following Jesus when you do it. Because you haven't come to Jesus as the King. Now we need to be careful here because on the one hand, We are to ask God to provide for our needs. When we are under financial difficulty, when we're stressed at work, unemployed, when we don't have housing, when our marriage seems to be falling apart, we bring all of our cares and concerns to the Lord. And the Lord receives all of those things. God cares. He says, look at the lilies of the field. Consider the birds. I care about each of them. I know the number of your hairs. Do you not think that I care more for you than the grass in your yard? I absolutely do. You need to rely upon him for everything you're struggling with. You need to cry out to him in your need, knowing that he cares, but he is not there to help us attain our own selfish greatness and goals. He doesn't cut deals. And he's not your assistant, your assistant in building your own kingdom. He's all about building his own kingdom. So the true gospel doesn't allow the pay to get your way approach to God. But the true gospel is so much better than that. Peter shuts this down. He condemns it outright. Because the true gospel is so much better than pay to get your way. The true gospel says that God is giving the fullness of his saving power as a gift. He's giving the fullness of his saving power as a free gift. Notice the first thing that Peter says in condemning Simon. Notice verse 20 with me. He condemns Simon's intentions, his evil intentions, his selfish intentions, but his first concern is that Simon thought he could acquire the Spirit with money. That's his first, That's his first objection to what Simon is doing. Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. And in the Greek, the gift of God is emphasized. It's like it's underlined. It's like he's saying, you thought you could get the gift of God with money? Peter's saying, no, what you're after here is clashing directly with how Jesus, the king, operates. It's not pay to get your way. Because it's not about you paying. It's about God in His grace giving the Spirit, the fullness of God's saving power is God's to give and He gives it for free. He gives it as a gift to all who come to Him. When you come to Jesus, you come to the true king. And think about the grace of this true king in demanding that he be the king. Think about the grace of this king in demanding that your way be abandoned. He's saying your pathetic little dreams aren't good enough. He doesn't want us to get our way because our way stinks. You come to the one, in other words, when you come to Jesus as king, you come to the one who condemns your selfishness because he's saying your selfish dreams are not what you were made for. This is not the true treasure. When you come to Jesus as king, you come to the one who invites you into his kingdom, which is so much better than the little kingdoms we're trying to build ourselves. and you come to the one who gives you all his riches, all his grace, all his forgiveness and saving power, all the power of his kingdom, he gives it to you for free. Because when you come to Jesus, you're coming to the one who has already paid to give us something far better than our way. and he gives it to us for free. The true gospel is so much better than pay to get your way, because your way stinks. But the way of Christ says, you don't pay. I have already paid. You receive it for free. When we come to Jesus, we come to the one who calls us to die to ourselves. to give up on our selfish ambition and to receive from Him the free gift that is much, much better than our selfish fantasies. Our silver and our gold, it is gonna perish with us, isn't it? All our attempts to build our own kingdoms and all our attempts to pay God off, all our attempts to earn God's blessing are gonna die with us. But what he calls us to is a kingdom that will never perish. And it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what you've done. It doesn't matter what you deserve. Because when you come to him as king, he gives it all to you for free. Let's pray together. Lord God, what a great king you have given us in Jesus. And all of us here today, Lord, acknowledge that we have selfish ambition. We struggle, Lord, with wanting our way. We struggle, Lord, with wanting you to be our servant and to help us fulfill our goals. And so we thank you for your correction, for bringing us back to see the fact that our goals, unless they are fully aligned with your will, they are lesser goals. They are foolish, they are selfish. Because when we give up our lives for you, when we give up on this earthly world, we're giving up on things we can't keep. We're giving up on things that rust and decay and die. But what we find in you with your kingdom is everlasting treasure, is everlasting life. And as a life lived in this world full of meaning, full of significance and adventure and full of your constant loving care and you give this to us out of sheer mercy and grace. We thank you that our king is one who is on the throne because he first died for us. We thank you, Lord, that whenever we fail you, we come to our king and we find forgiveness. And we are reminded that all of his blessings and treasures are ours as a free gift because we belong to him. We thank you, Lord, that you don't take the spirit from us, but you will use even us in powerful ways to spread your gospel. And so we pray, Lord, that we would be built up in our faith, that we would be built up in our confidence, that we would rejoice in your grace, and we would seek your way above all as we receive your gifts for free. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.