And welcome to the Western Church Special Monday morning coffee.

Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for Monday, February the 16th. I'm Mark and I am holding a wonderful cup of coffee. Just pulled this Americano out of my espresso machine. Great coffee. Got my Bible open to the Book of Acts. I'm so excited to talk about Steven and this amazing, all the amazing things that he does here in our reading for Monday. I want to think about yesterday's sermon a little bit more because I got to talk about sermons and preaching. Oh, there's so much on the table. Hey, come on. Grab your coffee. Grab your Bible. Let's grow together. Yesterday was the final sermon in this three-part series, Preaching Matters. And one of the things that I did not get to talk about, you know what I'm always going to say? Can't talk about everything. One of the things I didn't get to talk about is how we don't listen to sermons alone. Well, maybe we do, but the New Testament church certainly didn't. They listened as part of a body. They listened together. And I think sometimes, sometimes sermon listenings become too much of a private internal thing, which gets into that whole, did I get anything out of that? Did that speak to me? What did I learn today? But in the New Testament, preaching is a community exercise. It's that whole network effect thing. And so, in think about it, in the early church, sermons weren't consumed privately on a podcast or on a YouTube channel, or by downloading it off the church's website and I plug my earbuds in and then I then I get to listen. No, the word was processed together, heard together, lived out together, which means the people sitting around you should not be a distraction to your listening. They are, they are part of how the New Testament church originally heard the word. And so, yes, sometimes God uses the sermon to speak directly to me, but other times he's using the sermon to shape us. And can you think of a recent sermon that was doing that? Yeah, that's that whole three-part series that I just did. I'm trying to shape from the Word of God how we will receive the Word as a church. So maybe the thing to be said about that is don't be afraid to listen to a sermon with others so that you can then talk about it and work it into your lives with others. We're not listening to rate and review sermons. We're trying to get it in our lives, we're trying to get it in others' lives, and we do that better when we do it together. We do it together. The sermon doesn't end when church ends. It goes on and affects the church as a whole. And it especially does that when the church is consuming that sermon. Don't know if I really like the word consuming, hearing that sermon, taking that sermon in, participating in that sermon together, and then and then talking about that sermon afterwards. What stood out to you? What's one thing you will try to do with from that sermon this week? What did that challenge you to think about? How did that sermon affect you? How do you think that sermon affects us as a church? That's why, that's why we start the podcast every week reflecting on the sermon because we want it to shape us all, all of us who are listening to God's word being proclaimed, we all together want to be faithful listeners to his word. That, I think, is something that we don't give enough attention to, but that listening together as a church is one of the reasons why sermons matter. And now let's think about the word of God in one of the greatest sermons ever preached. Turn your Bible to Acts chapter 7. It's almost impossible to stop reading after the end of Acts 6. You want to know what's happening to Stephen, what will he say? How will he defend himself? And I could talk for a really, really long time about Acts chapter 7. It is the longest recorded sermon in the book of Acts. Think about that. Not Peter's sermon, not Paul's sermon, Stephen's sermon. And there's a couple things to make sure that you have on deck as you're working with this. First, clear off any ideas that it's a recounting of Israelite history. It's really not. Stephen does not talk about the major events of Jewish history, or at least some of them that could be mentioned, like Hezekiah and Josiah. It's not just a bunch of rambling around. It is very carefully constructed to make a very specific set of points. And it isn't really a classical gospel sermon. Jesus doesn't even appear until verse 54. Maybe you could argue it was about to become a gospel sermon if they hadn't interrupted him. But it is a classic defense speech. The charge is that he spoke against the temple and that he does not hold Moses, uh, that he's not hold uh he's not treating Moses. Wow, more coffee. How about that? Drinking coffee today out of one of my favorite mugs. It's a mug from Yellowstone, it has a bear on it, and I just love this mug so very, very much. Um, he will change 614. What if I just try to read the Bible? He will change the customs that Moses delivered unto us. What Stephen does is show clearly there isn't anybody in the room that respects the temple more and knows what its real purpose is about, and there isn't anyone who respects Moses more than Stephen. The major themes here are that the Jews always reject the work of God. And there's a lot of language here about resisting the Holy Spirit, a lot of resisting language. Look at verse 27, verse 35, 39, 42. And then probably the thing that Stephen is working the very most, make sure you have this front and center right on deck. God works outside the promised land. What's happened here is the temple is being used to say, we've got God in a box, and he's always going to be with us because we have this temple, and this is the only place that God works. It is clear that Stephen is preaching that everyone, even people who don't have access to the temple, like Gentiles, oh, they can be saved. They can be part of the kingdom of God, they can follow this Jesus the Messiah, and oh my, that's certainly not possible. It is all about the temple. Everything is centered in the temple. You have to come to the temple. No, Stephen says over and over again, out of the land of the Chaldeans, verse 4, go out from your land, verse 3, in a land belonging to others, verse 6. In the wilderness of Mount Sinai, verse 30. Jacob went down to Egypt, verse 15. It's just all through this sermon. God works outside the promised land. And I think as he comes to the conclusion of the sermon, as we'll see as we work down through chapter 7 today, I think Stephen says, really, the pinnacle of worshiping God was not in the temple, it was in the tabernacle. So notice a couple things here. Verse 5: Abraham never owned any land, but he still had a vital relationship with God. Being in the land is not as important as obeying God. And I love verse 9, the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, not the brothers of Joseph, the patriarchs, the representatives of all Israel. They're the ones that rejected God. And so Joseph becomes Stephen's first example of Israelite rejection of those that would deliver them. That continues, of course, in Moses. Stephen's been accused of speaking against Moses, but he says Moses is a great example, but he was rejected. Thrust him aside, verse 27. Thrust is very strong language there. We don't want you. We don't want the salvation that you are bringing us, Moses. They rejected him. Verse 35, this Moses, whom they rejected. Verse 39, our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside. The ESV is carrying that beautifully. And then, of course, Stephen brings up the golden calf. This episode in the history of Israel was so horrible that later rabbis would call the making of the golden calf the unspeakable deed. We can't even talk about it. We can't believe that we did that. And then 44 and 45, Stephen, one writer says, Stephen seems to have viewed the epitome of Jewish worship in terms of the tabernacle, not the temple. Very likely this was because he felt the mobility of the tabernacle was a restraint on the status quo mentality that had grown up around the temple. And I'll give you a quick aside here. I wonder sometimes how often we just get caught in church building anity instead of Christianity. Our religion relies and resides in a building instead of day-to-day living in our hearts. So then all of this comes to a head, verse 51, your stiff neck. That's a charge that's been made in scripture before. Jeremiah likes to use that expression. And you're uncircumcised. Oh wow. That would be called like calling a British soldier who fought in World War II a Nazi. That would be like calling the most patriotic person that you can think of who's wrapped in the red, white, and blue. Hey, hey, you're a communist. That would be so insulting. And these people are deeply affected by that. But notice Stephen is still full of the Holy Spirit. Verse 55. He is being treated like Jesus was, not listened to, not received, rejected. And so he is fully treated like Jesus. Very significant in verse 56. That's the only place outside the Gospels that Jesus is called the Son of Man. It is a clear reference to Luke 22, 69. Luke is the one who recorded that. Luke is the one that has Jesus say to the Sanhedrin, here, who records Jesus saying to the Sanhedrin, hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God. So here is Acts, which really, as you know, I like to think of as Luke the sequel or Luke part two, picking up part of Luke 1. They cast him out of the city. This is mob action. It's not sanctioned by the Roman government. They don't even try for that. That's why Stephen is not crucified. They drag him out, they stone him, and there is Saul. There is Saul. Once again, Luke gives us a glimpse of someone who later will become very, very important in the narrative. And I think this will emphasize you can't convert this guy. This guy will never become a Christian. He puts Christians to death. And so Stephen dies, verse 60, like Jesus died asking for forgiveness. No, this does not imply that they were forgiven without repentance. You have to repent, but Stephen prays that they, as Jesus did, they will be given a chance to repent. Our reading on Monday, Acts chapter 7. Welcome to Tuesday. Today's reading is Acts chapter 8. The reading for Tuesday, Acts the 8th chapter. A couple of things working in this chapter, really three sections. There's persecution, Samaria, and the Ethiopian eunuch. Saul here then is the one who's destroying the church. Ravaging is a very strong word, verse 3. And church here is that word Ecclesia. Oh, more coffee, how about that? It is that word ecclesia, and that says that Saul is opposing the true Israel of God, the people who've responded to the Messiah, he is attacking them. And they go everywhere, verse 4, preaching the word. The word here for preaching is uh the word for evangelism or gospel, uh it's good news or good newsing. They went everywhere gospeling. That's what they are doing. And this is really unexpected that they went, verse 5, to the city of Samaria. Now that fulfills Acts 1.8, but that isn't where any Jew would go. The Jews hated the Samaritans, and the bad blood goes way back. This is a thousand-year-old breach between two racial groups. The Old Testament that the Jews thought so much of, most of that the Samaritans, except for the first five books, they didn't even accept that as Bible. And there's been some civil war, and at one point uh some Jewish leaders went and burned down their temple. And when the Samaritans tried to rebuild that temple, um, when Herod offered to help them, they said, No, you're building those Jews a temple. We don't want your help. If you're helping them, you're not helping us. So everybody hates everybody here, and yet the gospel goes to this place and brings joy and all kinds of wonderful things are happening. Joy in the city, verse 8, of course, there's joy in the city. Luke is always so optimistic. And then the gospel for the first time encounters magic. And it's very important for us to remember that magic is viewed in the first century as a real, genuine force. We've become a little too sophisticated for that in our day. We don't give much stock to that. I think that's a huge problem. Uh, I, for one, give an awful lot of stock to dark forces and demons and the things that the devil can do. I think we are fighting against unseen forces. Paul tells us that in Ephesians chapter 6. Whoops, I jumped out of Acts. I think we need to pay more attention to that and quit dismissing all of that, but nobody's dismissing it here in Acts chapter 8. This guy is seen to be the real deal. And remember, he's not Harry Houdini, he's not Doug Henning, he's not David Copperfield doing sleight of hand tricks and making things disappear. He's a sorcerer. He's a warlock. He can bend reality by casting spells. That's what he's doing. And he has no power compared to the power of the gospel. Notice what preaching the gospel, the good news, verse 12, what does that mean? That means you talk about the kingdom. Israel is being reconstituted under Jesus. You talk about the name of Jesus, that's his authority, and you talk about baptism. Somebody says they're preaching the gospel and they're not telling you about baptism. No, they are not. And of course, the question that people ask is out of verse 16, why didn't these folks get the Holy Spirit? And the answer is they did get the Holy Spirit. They got the gift of the Holy Spirit that everybody gets when they're baptized upon their confession of faith and upon their repentance. The Acts 2.38, gift of the Holy Spirit, everybody gets that. What they didn't get here is spiritual gifts. And this passage is so helpful in assisting people in seeing how that worked. You could get a gift if an apostle laid his hands upon you, but you couldn't transmit that gift to anybody else. It stops with you. And there would be a lot of wisdom with that. In fact, Acts chapter 8 shows us: wow, if Simon gets the ability to hand out spiritual gifts, he's going to set up a booth and make a fortune doing that. And spiritual gifts are going to go everywhere and they're going to be given to everybody, and then they're not going to confirm the message anymore because people who aren't even Christians will have them. No, if you want a spiritual gift, you need an apostle to lay your hand his hands upon you, which says an awful lot about what happened to spiritual gifts when all the apostles died. Think about that. But he treats this, Simon does, verse 19, like it's some sort of trade secret.

Hey, we all we're all in on this. I'm a magician too. Why don't you tell me what the secret is? Give you some money.

And interestingly, in the medieval church, money could buy you a place in the church. You want to be a bishop? Got enough money, you could be a bishop. And that practice was called Simoning. Simoning. And Peter says, We got nothing for you, buddy. That's your money is cursed. You are under the curse of sin and death for this kind of outrageous behavior. And so wow, in Acts chapter 8, you just get a ton of stuff. The importance of baptism, what spiritual gifts are all about. Then you get, yes, a Christian can fall from grace. And Simon, in fact, does that without any question. Then we get the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. And so Luke kind of takes us back to the story of Philip. And I should say this: being a eunuch, that may be just a royal title. Candacey is a royal title, verse 27, like the Caesar, the Candacey. And he may just be a royal official, and he may not be a eunuch in the full physical sense of that. He probably, verse 30, is in, uh he probably, verse 29, is in a wagon, not a war chariot. The word here is an ox drawn wagon. Makes me think of the wagons going across the old west. And so he's in this wagon and he's reading his Bible. And that would say something about him being wealthy and also being literate. And so Philip says there's a wordplay here. Do you understand what you're reading? And the wordplay here, he literally says, Do you understand what you're understanding? Can you read what you're reading? Can you read what you're reading? Notice everybody reads out loud in the first century. People did not read silently like we do. And what happens next, of course, is that Philip explains to him who Jesus is and that he's the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. And Luke is emphasizing to us that Christians can unfold the true meaning of the Old Testament. This is a little like the road to Emmaus, isn't it? And you may notice, depending upon what translation you're reading, that there's no verse 37. Verse 36, then verse 38. What happened to verse 37? Verse 37 is found only in some Western manuscripts. And since the King James and the New King James follow that text family, it's in the King James and the New King James. But that is not the best manuscripts. That's not the best text families. And that's why it's in the margin or down at the bottom in italics. That's why it does not appear in the text of the ESV, the New American Standard, other translations that rely on better manuscripts. And sometimes people just go ballistic about this kind of thing because they're just sure that the horrible ESV or NASV, they're deleting verses from the Bible. That is not the case at all. What we want is the best text. And yes, it's terrible to take verses out of the Bible, but guess what? It's also terrible to add verses to the Bible. And if somebody, a scribe who thought, wow, can't baptize this guy without a confession, let me just jot this here in, that I was write this in the margin. You can't add stuff to the Bible. You can't. And when we discover that there has been an addition to the Bible, we want the best Bible. We want them to delete the addition. And this is not part of the original text. And that's why in the better translations it has been deleted. Finally, I should say this. Greeks thought that the Ethiopians lived on the edge of the world. So this account here shows the fulfillment of Acts 1.8. The gospel goes to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. Guess what? Acts 8. It's already there. It's gone to the uttermost parts of the earth. It's gone to Ethiopia. The reading for Tuesday is Acts chapter 8. We do have a Zoom call tonight, West Siders. That has just been crazy great the last couple of weeks. And more and more people are coming. And that great participation means more people are participating. Really great opportunity to pray together and read the Bible together. So I'll see you tonight, West Siders, on the Zoom call, and I'll see everybody else on the podcast tomorrow. Reading for Tuesday, Acts chapter 8. Welcome to Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. Today our reading is Acts chapter 9. The reading for Wednesday is Acts chapter 9. Acts 9.1 begins Saul breathing threats and murder. So that's the link back to Acts 8.3. Luke is a master storyteller and he's holding that story together. And this does begin the most unlikely conversion story in the book of Acts. Sometimes I'm not certain we give enough emphasis to that. We just kind of think Paul's standing around ready to become a Christian. He absolutely is not. He is not reading his Bible to learn about the Messiah. He's not searching for answers about this Jesus of Nazareth guy. He has none of the virtues of Cornelius, a very humble God-fearer. He hates Christians. He hates what they believe. He is determined to stop them. He is, he is everything a Christian is not. And his conversion is so important that Luke tells us the story three times. That ought to say something. And there's lots of discussion about Paul's life before he became a Christian, a fair amount of discussion about his life after he became a Christian. People wonder if he was part of the Sanhedrin Council because he gets letters, verse 2, and is going to Damascus. And he may have been. There's a couple of places in Acts where it kind of sounds like he was on the council, but it seems like Luke would have mentioned that. Just seems like that. So he's on his way to Damascus. That's 140 miles north of Jerusalem. Josephus says there were 10,000 Jews living there, and they are doing what? They are in the synagogue. Please notice Judaism and Christianity have not. Not split and gone their separate ways. Christians are still participating and acting very much in Jewish ways and Jewish rites. And there is some irony here. Anyone belonging to the way, verse 2, Paul will get on the way while he is on the way. And so Jesus appears, and I'm so impressed here, verse 6, rising into the city, you'd be told what you to do. If there was ever anybody converted with a massive vision and you could just trust Jesus in your heart and all that kind of thing, have an encounter with the Lord, it's this guy. This is it. This is a genuine manifestation of Jesus. The whole nine yards, he still has to obey the gospel, still has to be baptized. How about that? And he is struck blind, which, given what happens to Elemaeus in chapter 13, that kind of sounds like the judgment of God. That kind of sounds like the judgment of God for opposing the Lord. And again, I just can't emphasize enough, this guy can't become a Christian. There's just no way. Think about the culture of the time, how Jewish people look at heretics. Moses had the people who worship the golden calf killed. They were put to death. Thenahaz kills an Israelite woman who is all caught up in sexual immorality with a Moabite woman, Numbers chapter 25. During the time between the Testaments, Matthias and his sons, they are huge heroes because they root out apostasy among the people, people who are conforming to Greek culture. The Dead Sea scrolls define a righteous man as, quote, one who bears unremitting hatred toward all men of ill repute and calls for volunteers to root out apostasy. That's everything that Saul of Tarsus is. He can't become a Christian. Guess what? He becomes a Christian. Just incredible that this could happen. Ananias is the servant who is sent to help him do that, and he engages in the final art of arguing with God, which has been practiced all through the Old Testament by Israelite and Jewish people for a long time. And he is baptized, not Ananias Saul of Tarsus. He is baptized. Notice here, he is going to be filled with the Holy Spirit, verse 17, like Stephen. Like Stephen. So he begins to preach immediately. And verse 20, that's the only occurrence in Acts of the title Son of God. And this must have been a shocking message, but it could not, the message could not have been as shocking as the guy who was preaching that message. And that results, of course, in people saying, hey, you know what? We ought to just kill this guy, verse 23. And we don't have all the chronology here. And that's beyond the scope of a podcast episode. But how many days pass, verse 23, that that may be more than just a week? But he goes to Jerusalem and looks pretty brief about that as well. Even though some time has passed, they're still afraid of him. Is this guy a mole? Is he like a secret agent? He's trying to get in among our numbers and identify us. Everybody's just terrified of him because he's such a rabidly anti-Christian person. But no, now verse 27, he's preaching boldly in the name of Jesus. And who is it who helps him? It's Barnabas. Barnabas is doing Barnabas things. Then there is a very abrupt shift. 32. Now it's Peter. Very abrupt transition. Most of this is about getting Peter in position to go help Cornelius, which we'll see in tomorrow's reading. But there's a couple things to make certain that you notice. He heals a man who's bedridden, and this looks exactly like Luke 5, 17 to 26. Exactly like the healing that Jesus does there. And then he restores Dorcas to life, and that looks exactly like the widow of Nain, Luke 7, and raising Jerusalem daughter, Luke 8. What's the book of Acts about? The work of Jesus goes on in his disciples. The church continues what Jesus started, which is in the main preaching the gospel. But of course, at this time in the gospel's history, that includes miracles that authenticate the messenger. The miracles authenticated Christ, and they authenticate Peter. Acts chapter 9, an incredible chapter, powerful chapter. We now have the dominant Christian preacher and writer on the stage. He no longer hates Christians. I can't believe it. Paul has become a Christian. Praise God for his mercy and grace, and for the powerful way that he uses Saul of Tarsus, who becomes the Apostle Paul. Reading for Wednesday, Acts chapter 9. It is Thursday. It is Thursday, and it's time for Gentiles to be in the kingdom of God. Our reading for Thursday is Acts chapter 10. What I just said paves the way for me then to argue that Cornelius is the most important conversion story in the book of Acts. It's easy to say Paul is that story, but Cornelius is a landmark case. Remember, the Ethiopian man went home to Ethiopia. Cornelius will remain in Caesarea. And this story is told twice in extensive detail. And I think maybe in many ways we will always wonder, at least at least until we get to heaven and we can ask if that kind of thing is important at all, is Cornelius the centurion that Jesus met in Luke chapter 7. But the importance here that Luke is stressing again and again the big issue for Luke is that God is the one that moved the church, moved Peter to preach to Gentiles. And I think in many ways we don't get how big the gulf was between Jews and Gentiles. Pay attention here. Notice Peter will actually say, What I'm doing here is just unlawful. I can't even be doing this. It is unthinkable for a Jew to preach to a Gentile, to go to a Gentile's home. None of this can happen, and that will be the subject of much discussion from this point on in the Book of Acts, indeed, in the rest of the New Testament. Now, Caesarea is known as Caesarea Maritima to distinguish it from Caesarea Philippi, and it is about 65 miles northwest of Jerusalem. There was a harbor there that Herod the Great had constructed. It never worked out really, really well. It was a man-made harbor. Lots of ruins there. The aqueduct there ran for eight miles, and it's a beautiful aqueduct. I've stood under that aqueduct. It's a very cool place to be because it appears in the Bible so many times. So here is Cornelius. He's a centurion of what was known as the Italian Korot. He would co oh, what's the answer to that? Uh-huh. More coffee. Cohort. And a centurion would be commanding about a sixth of a regiment. A legion had six thousand men and was divided into ten cohort, ten regiments. He would command about a sixth of that. He is an important man. Let's pay attention here and think about why God chose Cornelius to be the first Gentile. And I think a lot of that is contained in verse two. He is a God fearer. He's a devout man who feared God. Now, God fear here is a technical term that was used in New Testament times to designate a Gentile who was a near proselyte to Judaism. These are people who have done just about everything to become a Jew except be circumcised. And if you're watching, you'll see in verse 5, there's no reason given here for him to send for Peter. He's just told to do that. Is that a test of obedience? And maybe this is a good place to ask, why did God choose Cornelius? And there's been lots of discussion, particularly on social media, about grace and how grace is unmerited, favor, which is not really the very best definition of grace by any stretch of the imagination, and that we don't earn God's grace, which of course is absolutely true. But biblically, lots of people who are trying to do what's right and trying to follow the Lord are the people that God chooses, God calls, God works with. And I know that that is not always the case. I'm thinking of King Cyrus. Isaiah 44 calls him out as the one who will send the Jews back from captivity. I get it. But in the main, Noah, Abraham, Cornelius, these are people trying to do what's right. And there's a huge emphasis here on prayer. And then Peter sees these visions. Everybody's praying all the time here. When people pray, God can work. And Peter sees these visions, and it's very significant that this is about food. Because the question will be what do we do with Gentile Christians? Jewish Christians might be willing to let Gentiles in on the gospel. They could be baptized. I get it. They need, wow, Gentiles especially need to be baptized to have their sins washed away. But we're not eating with those people. We're not crossing racial lines and going into their homes. We can't do any of those kinds of things. Look at verse 28. It's unlawful for a Jew to associate with or visit anyone of another nation. So even touching the possessions of a Gentile was considered absolutely forbidden and unclean for a Jew. So what will we do with these people when they become Christians? And maybe Peter comes here thinking he's just going to do a healing. Verse 29. Is there somebody sick here? I've done some healings. And do I need to do that? No, this is about preaching. And the contrast here is that God is not favoring people based on race. He favors people on who's doing what's right. And verse 38 is highly reminiscent of Luke chapter 4 and Jesus' use of Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth. And then the Holy Spirit falls on the house of Cornelius. And that's caused a lot of confusion. And maybe in some ways, I understand about that confusion, particularly in light of what Holy Spirit baptism looks like today. And then you couple that with what's happening here because the order at Pentecost was preaching, conviction of sin, repentance, faith, baptism, and then the gift of the Holy Spirit. And just the apostles have the Holy Spirit fall upon them. And here the Holy Spirit's falling upon everybody, and they haven't even been baptized. And of course, this passage is used to prop up the idea that you don't have to be baptized. Remember, Holy Spirit baptism is not something that you can command. It's extremely rare in Scripture. There's only two occasions where this happens. And there's many, many reasons. There's only one baptism, Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4. We'll talk tomorrow in Acts chapter 11. Decisive little passage that helps us see this does not happen all the time. It is a special sign from God to give Peter and the men with him a kick in the pants to say, do this, do this. And they do. Verse 47, can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who've received the Holy Spirit just as we have? So now we have a full-fledged bona fide Gentile, and he's become a Christian. And you'd think everybody's pretty excited about that, but you'd be wrong. Tomorrow, our reading will show not everybody's real pleased about this. But our reading for today, reading for Thursday, Acts chapter 10. Welcome to Friday. Welcome to Friday. You made it through the week, and today we're reading Acts chapter 11. The reading for Friday, Acts chapter 11. I want to treat the first 18 verses pretty briefly because it's largely a retelling of what we just read in Acts chapter 10. The key here is verse 2, the circumcision party, that's the ESV. Not every translation has it that way, and some scholars have been critical of that, but I think that's working here. And please notice the charge in verse 3. You went to uncircumcised men and baptize them. No, that is not the charge in verse 3. You went to uncircumcised men and you ate with them. Now, if these men will be circumcised and become Jews, it's all good. But we're not, we're Jews and we don't have anything to do with Gentiles like this, and we're not about to have anything to do with Gentiles like this. So this is a huge issue for the New Testament church. Are all of these Jew Gentile divisions and all the hatred, are we done with are we done with that? And everybody's good and we're all one in Christ, it's going to take a long time for the church to arrive at that place. Meanwhile, verse 19, we resume the narrative from Acts 8, and the gospel has come to Antioch. A big part of this is that Antioch is such an important city. It is the third largest city in the Roman Empire. Roman Alexandria are bigger, maybe a population as big as a half a million people. It was famous for its vices. It was also famous for lots of beautiful buildings and architecture. Lots going on in Antioch. And what happens? People come there and they're preaching the gospel to Gentiles. See how it's spreading, verse 19? And Luke here is really, in so many ways, he's more geographical than chronological, but he is saying this is the doing of the Lord. God did this. Verse 20, they're preaching the Lord Jesus. They're not preaching Jesus as the Messiah. That wouldn't mean anything to Gentiles, but King. He is the Lord. And we get a bunch of gross statements, 21, 24, 26. The church is growing. It's just growing, growing, growing. And there's not anything being said here about, hey, you Gentiles, if you want in the kingdom of God, you need to be circumcised and you need to become a Jew first. It's all about everyone can be one in Christ, and we are freed from the law. And Barnabas comes. He's a good man, he's the perfect choice. He's not a Jew from Jerusalem. He's from Cyprus. He's a big encourager. And he shows up and he encourages everybody, but he does not tell them you have to keep the law. And then he goes and gets Paul. We don't know. Everyone's everybody wants to know. I want to know. Where was Paul? When was Paul? The timeline of Paul's life is very difficult to construct, but Paul comes and more people come to the gospel. And then that name, verse 26, gets tagged on the believers, probably in ridicule, probably from non-believers. Those are the Christ people. They're always talking about the Christ. And then I love this last little bit here about famine relief 27 to 30. Here, the gift of prophecy is being exercised. And there are records, by the way, of this famine during Claudius' time. So somewhere around 45, 46, 47, Judea was really hard hit. And I think the point of this is the cycle is complete. Jerusalem blessed Antioch with Barnabas, and now Antioch blesses Jerusalem with famine relief. The church cares for its own. Brethren care for brethren. The reading for Friday, Acts chapter 11. And that concludes the podcast for the week. Thank you so much for listening. I can't tell you what a joy it is to bring the podcast to you and especially to meet people who are being helped by the podcast. I was in Tampa a couple of weeks ago for the Florida College Lectures and talked to several people who mentioned to me that they listen to the podcast and it is helping them, and that is so encouraging. I just appreciate everyone at Westside who listens to the podcast and helps with the podcast and is about the podcast, but it's it's extra special when I meet somebody outside the Westside family who says, Hey, that podcast thing, that's very cool, and that's helping me stay in my Bible reading and helping me walk with the Lord. So just appreciate that so very much. Well, that's the podcast for the week. Tell others about it, leave a rating and review. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. I want you to come to. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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