Download audio Download sermon Acts 28:17-31 We come this morning to the end of the Book of Acts. If you are interested, this is the fifty-fourth sermon in the series. In some ways, of course, as we will see, the book ends in medias res. There is no ending in the sense that there is […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 28:1-16 Paul and the 275 others on the ship had made their way safely to shore on what proved to be the island of Malta. Text Comment v.2 “Native people” is literally “barbarians,” a term which in that time probably meant simply someone who didn’t speak Greek, though it […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 27:1-44 Paul had appealed his case to Caesar, as was his right as a Roman citizen. Festus, the new governor, unlike Felix, neither hoping for a bribe nor obliged to do the Jews a favor, sent him on to Rome for his case to be heard there. Text Comment v.1 […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 26:1-32 Last week we considered the circumstances that provided an opportunity for Paul to make still one more defense of his life and conduct, this time before the governor, Festus, and one of Rome’s client kings, Herod Agrippa II, and his sister, Bernice. Now we hear the defense itself. Text […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 25:1-27 We left Paul last time in Caesarea where he had been incarcerated for the previous two years. At the end of the previous chapter we read that Felix, the Roman governor, had been replaced by Porcius Festus, whose responsibility Paul had now become. According to Josephus, Felix was recalled […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 24:1-27 Paul has been taken from Jerusalem to Caesarea for his own safety and for the adjudication of charges made against him by the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. Text Comment v.2 Isn’t it amazing how similar that world was to ours today? The Jews came to present their charges, but […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 23:11-35 Paul has been placed under guard by the Roman authorities in Jerusalem. Remember, Jerusalem was not the capital of the Roman province of Judea. That was Caesarea, a new and beautiful city built by King Herod the Great on the Mediterranean Coast, where Paul was soon to be taken. […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 22:2-23:11 To be frank, I’m not entirely sure what Luke would say if I were able to ask him why he included the narrative we are about to read. It is interesting, to be sure, and it carries the story along – explaining how it was that Paul was taken […]
Download audio Download text Acts 21:37-22:22 As we left Paul last time, he had been beaten by a Jewish mob in the Temple’s outer court and then put in protective custody by the Roman tribune. Text Comment v.38 Greek was the language of Egypt at this time, so the question that begins v. 38 might […]
Download audio Download text Acts 21:27-36 I suspect there are a few of you who recognize my sermon title but are trying hard to remember where you have seen or heard that phrase before. Well keep at it for another week or two and I’m sure it will come to you. Paul is now in […]
Download audio Download text Acts 21:16-26 Chapter 20 and the first part of chapter 21 told the story of Paul’s trip from Greece to Jerusalem, partly by land, mostly by sea. Now he has arrived. Luke is about to tell us what happened when he and his Gentile converts, the representatives of his Gentile churches, […]
Download audio Download text Acts 21:1-16 Remember, Paul is en route to Jerusalem in the company of a number of representatives of his Gentile congregations who are bringing with them a substantial sum of money for the relief of the poorer members of the church. He planned his itinerary so as to reach Jerusalem before […]
Download audio Download text Acts 20:13-38 Paul was en route to Jerusalem, needing to reach the capital by Pentecost. As Luke tells us in v. 16, he was in a hurry. But, having left Ephesus some months before, he was anxious to have a final word with the leadership of the church there. Text Comment […]
Download audio Download text Acts 20:1-12 Paul had remained in Ephesus for about three years, but it was time for him to deliver the financial gift he had been collecting from his Gentile congregations for the poor in Jerusalem, an important effort to cement a sense of brotherhood between Jewish and Gentile Christians. So once […]
Download audio Download text Acts 19:11-41 Paul’s ministry had begun in Ephesus. Whether at its beginning Paul knew he would remain in Ephesus some three years we cannot say, but the success the Holy Spirit gave to his ministry meant he couldn’t leave. Text Comment v.11 It is important to note that Luke himself describes […]
Download Audio Download text Acts 19:1-10 Now Paul arrives in Ephesus where he will remain for between two and three years, the longest period of residential ministry on any of his three missionary tours. And Luke begins with an interesting and somewhat odd report of the apostle’s encounter with some disciples of John the Baptist. […]
Download audio Download text Acts 18:18-28 After a year and a half of extremely fruitful work in the great city of Corinth, Paul made his way back to Antioch to report to the home church on his labors. Along the way he made a brief stop in Ephesus, a stop that was to result in […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 18:1-17 We’ve been away from Acts for a month, so let me remind you where we are. Paul is in the midst of what is called his second missionary journey. Remember, “journey” is an appropriate description of this period in Paul’s career so long as we realize that very little […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 17:16-34 Apparently Athens had not been part of Paul’s plan for this second evangelistic and church-planting tour. He had established churches already in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. Where he would have headed next, had he not run into opposition in Berea, we are not told, but it would probably have […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 17:1-15 Paul and Silas are making their way through what is now Greece on what is typically referred to as Paul’s second missionary journey. Text Comment v.1 It was a hundred mile walk down the great Roman road, the Via Egnatia, from Philippi to Thessalonica, the capital of the province […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 16:6-40 We had an extensive account of Paul’s evangelism and church-planting ministry in chapters 13 and 14. Now Paul returns to that ministry and, in this case, we are furnished with more personal detail. There are sermons aplenty in the text we are about to read, but I plan to […]
Download Audio Download sermon Acts 15:36-16:5 Two Lord’s Days back we considered the heroic effort made by the early Christians to overcome all obstacles to their unity. Jews were welcoming Gentiles into the church and vice versa, no matter the deep cultural divide that had so long separated the two populations, no matter the ancient […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 15:22-35 We considered last time Luke’s record of the first formal meeting of the leadership of the international Christian church. They met to resolve a disagreement about precisely how Gentiles were to be incorporated into the Christian Church. Today is Pentecost, the celebration of Christ’s gift of the Holy Spirit […]
Download audio Download text Acts 15:1-21 Paul and Barnabas had returned from their first evangelistic and church planting tour and had reported their amazing success to the church in Antioch, the church that had sent them on that tour. It is what missionaries do still today, come home to report on their work to […]
Download audio Download text Acts 14:1-28 Paul and Barnabas, driven out of Antioch by the city’s rich and powerful element, made their way to Iconium, some 90 miles eastward along the Roman road. Iconium is, today, the large Turkish city of Konya. Text Comment v.1 Once again the word of God proved itself powerful to […]
Download audio Download text Acts 13:13-52 The missionary travels of Paul and Barnabas had begun in Cyprus. But now they crossed the sea between that island and the Asia Minor mainland. v.13 Nothing is said of this here, but we learn later that John’s leaving was actually desertion or dereliction of duty. This is the […]
Download audio Download text Acts 13:1-12 Chapters 13 and 14 of the book of Acts relate the first extensive missionary activity conducted on behalf of the Christian gospel. We cannot say, of course, that Paul was the first Christian missionary. But he is the first of whose missionary work we have a contemporary report. Other […]
Download audio Download text Acts 12:20-25 We’ve been away from Acts for several Sunday mornings and return to it at a paragraph that relates an incident that has, at first glance, little obvious connection to the main drift of the narrative to this point. It is not about what the Christians were doing to spread […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 12:1-19 We have now witnessed the epoch-making introduction of Gentiles into the Christian church, a development that, in the nature of the case, happened in areas where Gentiles were concentrated. The Word of God, as our Savior had said it would, was spreading outward from Jerusalem, but events there now […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 11: 19-30 Text Comment v.19 In other words, Luke is picking up the thread of his narrative from 8:4, where he described the persecution in Jerusalem that had scattered many of the Christians there. v.20 Most of the Jewish Christians who had left Jerusalem to escape the persecution had been […]
Download audio Download text Acts 11: 1-18 The report of the phenomenal events recounted in chapter 10 had spread like wildfire throughout the Jewish Christian community. That is more evidence of how unprepared the Christian community – at this point entirely Jewish – was for this dramatic change, that Gentiles would belong to the church […]
Download audio Download text Acts 10: 23 – 48 We considered last time how the Lord brought Peter to an understanding that the church would now incorporate Gentiles as Gentiles, that is, that non-Jews who believed in Jesus would not have to become Jews to be Christians. We now proceed to see how Peter translated […]
Download audio Download text Acts 10:1-23 Text Comment v.2 “God-fearer” here is probably the technical term. In those days a “God-fearer” was a Gentile who had embraced the Jewish faith, its monotheism and its theology of God, but was not yet a practicing Jew in the full sense, since he had not submitted to circumcision. […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 9:32-43 As we noted last time, 9:31 ended the second chapter or section of the book of Acts. With v. 32 we begin the third of the six sections that make up the book. This may partly explain why Luke begins with the account of two miracles. He is in […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 9:1-31 We read most of our text last Lord’s Day morning, vv. 1-19, and considered the narrative for its apologetic significance. The conversion and subsequent ministry of the Apostle Paul is one of the great demonstrations of the truth of the New Testament record, of the historicity of the resurrection […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 9:1-19 We have before us this morning one of the most important chapters in the New Testament. I say that not because it contains the clearest exposition of the Gospel or is the locus classicus for some important Christian doctrine or teaching. This chapter is as important as it is […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 8:26-40 I have made a point of this repeatedly in our consideration of Acts to this point, but it is very important to remember. The narrative of Acts is very definitely not an account of everything that Luke might have included in a history of the earliest church, as if […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 8:1-25 The execution of Stephen, we now learn, emboldened the religious leadership to unleash a more systematic persecution of Christians living in Jerusalem, to go for the jugular as we might say. And as we will read, Saul of Tarsus was the principal instigator, a man perhaps already desperately seeking […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 6:8-8:1 We have an unusually long text to read this morning, but it is very clearly a distinct section of Luke’s narrative, what scholars call a pericope. As we read it put these two questions to yourself: why did Luke think it important to tell this story with so much […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 6:1-7 We have said already more than once that, given all the wonderful stories Luke had to choose from in writing his narrative, what he did choose to include he must have considered to be particularly important. His readers needed to know this if they were to appreciate how the […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 5:17-42 In the short section we read last Lord’s Day morning we read that “more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women.” Some of the reason for that, no doubt, was the miracles that were being performed by Peter and the other apostles. […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 5:12-16 We are in the midst of Luke’s narrative of the explosive growth of the fledgling Christian church and the gathering of storm clouds as the establishment had by this time realized that the Christian movement was a serious threat to their power and prestige. We have just been treated, […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 4:32-5:11 In this case, the chapter division is not well placed. Remember, the Bible was not divided into chapters until a thousand years after Christ, so these divisions are hardly original to the biblical text. Some are better than others. We ought to begin a new chapter in v. 32 […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 4:23-31 It is Reformation Day and for two reasons I have decided to continue our sermons in Acts rather than preach a sermon apropos that great theological and spiritual renewal of the 16th century, the event that created, however unintentionally, the Protestant Church of which, of course, Faith Presbyterian is […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 4:1-12 We read these verses last time and, indeed, to the end of the paragraph at v. 22. This morning we read the first twelve verses again in order to pay attention to Peter’s monumentally important statement in v. 12. As I commented on the text last Lord’s Day morning, […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 4:1-22 A great miracle had been performed in a most public place. The news was spreading through the city and great excitement had overcome the crowds of people in the temple. We now learn what happened next. Text Comment v.2 The Sadducees were particularly annoyed by the apostles because they […]
Download audio Download text Acts 3:1-26 Chapter 3 is a record of the next great event that Luke saw fit to record in his early church history. And there are some striking similarities to the first. As with Pentecost, Luke first supplies a straightforward narrative of the miraculous event itself. That is followed by a […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 2:42-47 What we will now see is typical of Luke’s narrative style: a major narrative – in this case the Pentecost event – the miracle of tongues, Peter’s sermon, and the response of the people – is concluded by a short summary. Obviously Luke was constrained by the amount of […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 2:36-41 We read these verses last time, but devoted our attention to the burden of Peter’s sermon. Today I want to consider that sermon’s effect. We are going to be treated throughout the Book of Acts to a number of accounts of people becoming followers of Jesus who were not […]
Download audio Download sermon Acts 2:14-41 I do not plan to spend years on end preaching through Acts. As a result I cannot spend several months preaching through Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. That would be easy to do. It is chock-full of rich material worthy of attention but I will pass most […]