Many years ago I was at a church where they were preaching through Acts, and I just remember feeling like I was taking a geography lesson about some ancient civilization. Whatever truth there was to be gained for me was obscured by the confusing and often boring geographical details of Paul’s missionary journeys. So today I want to avoid focusing on all the stops of Paul’s journey and the various particulars of each city or culture, and instead I want to direct your attention to the point of Paul’s mission. The point of Paul and Barnabas’s missionary journey is the

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So far in the book of Acts, we have studied the record of a couple of notable sermons, particularly the first message of Peter as well last sermon of the martyr Steven. Today, we look at the first recorded message of the Apostle Paul. As I noted last time, in this chapter, Paul transitions from being called Saul to being called Paul, and he is no longer called Saul on any longer, which indicates to me that he began his apostolic ministry at this point. This apostolic commission was attested to with signs and wonders as an attestation of the

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Last week we looked at government’s attack upon the church as evidenced in chapter 12 when Herod imprisoned Peter. And through that study we understood that though governors and rulers of government are granted their authority from God, yet at the same time they are often used by the ruler of this world, Satan, to bring persecution upon the church of God. Now this week we are looking at another passage which illustrates the two pronged strategy of Satan’s attack on the church. He uses external means, such as governments, to attack the church, but he also uses internal means

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Recent decisions on the part of the government, not only in America, but also in various other countries, have amounted to nothing less than an attack on the church. And I believe that this is just the beginning of a wholesale attack on the church which will continue to get worse and worse as we go forward. The Bible makes it clear that in the last days, perilous times will come. Paul described such days as this in 2Tim. 3:1-5 “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers

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Last week as we looked at the previous chapter, we studied the way in which God brought the gospel to the Gentiles. If you will remember, Peter had a vision in which he saw a great sheet lowered down out of heaven with all kinds of animals and creatures in it, which contained animals considered both clean and unclean. And I will not take the time this morning to review the details of that story. Peter himself reviews it once again in this chapter as we have just read. But I would ask you to consider the importance of such

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In Matt. 16:19, Jesus told Simon Peter that “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” As such, Peter had a unique ministry. This verse does not establish Peter as the first Pope, as some would try to say, but he is a special emissary of Christ as the chief representative of the apostles to open doors to the kingdom of God that had formerly been closed in Judaism. Once these doors are

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Just the other day I saw an advertisement which was marketed to women (and I think that women today have become very susceptible to this marketing ploy in particular) and this ad was declaring that yes, women, you can have it all. I’m not sure what they were selling, but I understood the message they were conveying very well. When I saw that ad I couldn’t help but think that Christians are especially vulnerable to this type of thinking as well. The idea that somehow being a Christian will bring about both spiritual and physical blessing in my life, and

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Acts is an account of the birth of the church. God called out a people who would be the body of Christ by great power and signs and wonders. In Acts we see something of a New Testament parallel to the Israelites coming out of Egypt by great signs and wonders of Moses. And in yet another parallel, we also see that the devil attacks the congregation of the Lord in various ways, through persecution, and through corruption from within. So as the church is growing mightily, there is also strategic attacks on the church from without and within. We

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