Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
I have a book at my house that has a lot of really short, page-long stories from missionaries, accounts of things that have taken place on the mission field, and I was reading one recently that a missionary in China was saying that when they perform baptisms, they ask the person who's being baptized four questions in this area of the Chinese church. Now, we ask one, if you've placed your faith in Jesus and haven't been baptized, the next thing to do is to be baptized. When you trust in Jesus, you need to be baptized, and it's not something like, do I want to be baptized? It's just a command.
It's what you do next, so just if you've placed your faith in Jesus and haven't been baptized, you need to get baptized. We fill up a tub. We have people get in with you, and they ask you, who's your Lord and Savior? There's only one answer to that question. You say, Jesus Christ or Jesus, but that's the answer, and we tell people, if you say something else, we're just going to get out.
You don't get to get baptized, but they ask four questions in the Chinese church is what this missionary is reporting. These are the four questions. The first one is, do you believe in Jesus? The second, has he forgiven your sins? The third, do you promise to walk with him always?
And then the fourth question they ask is, Jesus, when they come into your house and take your family away, when they beat you and try to get you to deny him, will you still follow Jesus? The reality of persecution, the presence of it, the future of it, that it will take place, that it's something you have to be prepared for, for the church, the majority of human history, and the majority of the places in the world, has been a constant. That there is persecution against t he church, and that Christians have to take seriously what it means and what it costs to follow Jesus. We're in Acts chapter 8 today.
We've been working our way through the book of Acts. If you'll grab a Bible, go, if you grab one of the black Bibles, it'll be on page 1061. If you brought your Bible with you, it's Acts chapter 8. We're going to look at the first few verses of the book of Acts today, and we're going to see Christ was crucified. And he tells his followers, if they persecuted me, they'll persecute you.
A servant is not above his master. This is coming. He tells the disciples, this is going to happen. He tells them in Matthew chapter 24, he says, they'll deliver you up to tribulation. They'll put you to death.
You'll be hated by all nations for my name's sake. So it begins with Christ, and then we see as it happens some to the apostles as they're beginning to proclaim and as the church is beginning to grow, but it really gets thrown into high gear. Last week where we were in chapter 7, where Stephen is the first martyr in the early church. They've just executed him. And now today we're going to look as the persecution spreads, as it's no longer isolated incidents, but it's just how the church is being treated.
And my hope for us today as we study this passage is that we would take courage. That in the face of difficulty and in the face of persecution, which currently in our situation we're largely untouched by, but globally is still an absolute actual reality, that we would take heart and take courage and to respond in a faithful way. That's the hope for this morning. So let's pray, and then we'll start looking at this passage together. Lord, we ask that your spirit would be at work in us at this moment as we study the word, that you would help us to not be fearful, but faithful.
Lord, we ask that your spirit would be at work in us as we go through our days and as we face whatever comes our way, that we would follow you, and that no matter what, we would never deny you. We ask for your wisdom and your help. In Jesus' name, amen. Acts chapter 8, verse 1, it says,
> 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 regions 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.
> — Acts 8:1–4 (ESV)
And Saul approved of his execution. Now, we had just previously been introduced to Saul in verse 58 of the last chapter.
It says, The witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And so that's how he just shows up. He's a young man who's watching over the cloaks of those who are stoning Stephen. And Stephen is brutally killed for his faith. And then we're told, Saul approved of the execution.
And this is our introduction to Saul. Now, if you're familiar with the book of Acts, you know what's coming. But if you're not, which I know a lot of people in our church are kind of new to this or haven't studied the Bible much, and we're glad you're here. That's why we walk through whole books of the Bible. We think it's the best way to do it.
It helps us to get an understanding of the storyline of the Bible. But if you're not familiar with Saul, you're about to be because most of the book of Acts follows him around. And he is now known to us as the Apostle Paul. He wrote the majority of the letters in the New Testament. He becomes the greatest theologian and greatest missionary ever.
But he does not start off there. He starts off as the worst, most hate-filled persecutor of the church. He starts off as someone absolutely in opposition to Christ and his people. And so Saul comes to us as someone who hates the church and hates Jesus and does everything he can to stop it. And we're told he approves of this execution, but then it doesn't just stop there.
It says, And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. These are the few things in that first verse that I want us to just make sure that we register. There's this great persecution that goes against the whole church. So now it's not just the isolated incidents, but it is now spreading.
In chapter 4, we saw that the apostles were arrested and warned. They brought before the council that killed Jesus and they said, Don't talk about Jesus anymore. And the apostles said, Watch us. What they say is, If you want us to decide between obeying you or obeying God, we'll obey God and we'll see what happens. We can't but talk about what we've seen and heard.
They're arrested in chapter 5 and they're beaten. It says they went away rejoicing because they had been counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. But it went from warning to flogging. And then in chapter 7, we have execution and martyrdom. And then in chapter 8, it's widespread.
So this tension that has been building, the dam bursts. And persecution begins outright. And the church scatters. This church that had been 5,000 believers that was meeting in homes, that was gathering in the temple, that had favor with everybody. This blessed community where there was joy and there was peace and there was love and everything was working and everything was wonderful.
It's suddenly shattered. And we're told the apostles stay. And I've heard people say before, that's in some sort of negative sense. The apostles don't go. But I think the apostles felt called to be here and to care for this church in the middle of this turmoil.
And I think they stick it out. It's actually a sign of faithfulness in the middle of this. But I do want us to acknowledge something that happens that we should have perked up to when we saw it. It says they're scattered to Judea and Samaria. Which, if you'll remember, Jesus told the apostles, you're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
And as soon as it says they're scattered, it says they're scattered to Judea and Samaria. And we should have this moment where we go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is the thing happening? Is the thing Jesus said happening? Is that happening?
And we'll get to see in a moment what happens with these believers that are scattered. But we know now that the church is spreading to Judea and Samaria in the middle of persecution and difficulty. Verse 2. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. It's unclear in the way that's written whether or not those devout men were believers and people who were part of the church, which often they're called disciples or believers.
And so since it just says devout men, it's also possible this included Jewish leaders or Jewish practitioners who did not agree with his execution. And it's possible it was both. But in the middle of persecution and in the middle of this outbreak of persecution, there are people who are publicly standing with Stephen and acknowledging that this was unjust and he should not have been executed. There's actually a contemporary rule at this point. It's not in the Bible, but it's written by the Jewish councils that you could bury someone who had been stoned, who had been executed in this manner, but you could not lament.
And so if that rule was in effect, then the people who do this are actively going against that regulation because they are publicly lamenting. They made great lamentation over him to acknowledge the injustice of what is happening. And there is a reality too, there are things that should be lamented when they go wrong in the world. And I think this is a corrective for me personally, who often just, when I'm not involved in things, tries to keep my head down, doesn't get over the top in any sort of response to stuff. And there's a reality too.
Sometimes we need to realize, hey, this is wrong and it needs to be lamented. We need to mourn brokenness. And that's an okay and good, devout response to evil. Verse 3. But Saul was ravaging the church.
Now, later he's going to be Paul and we'll cover that later. And the only reason he's Paul later is that he starts hanging out with mostly Gentiles. That's the reason his name changes from Saul to Paul. This is the, he's mostly around Jewish people. They would have called him Saul.
It just takes on the Gentile version of it later. Just like if you knew someone named Jorge and then all his white friends call him George. He didn't change his name for some special reason. Just the people he's hanging out with. His wife got a kick out of that.
But Saul was ravaging the church and entering house after house. And he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. So Saul is actively, aggressively persecuting the church and he's going house to house and arresting men and women. So if you've ever seen some World War II movie and the Gestapo shows up and they're knocking on doors and everybody's tense and everything's confusing and there are people hiding, that's what starts happening. Paul starts showing up with military figures, probably guards from the, the temple had their own temple guard, probably some of their own forces that he's showing up with and they're arresting people.
And they're hauling them off. Now, we don't exactly know what was happening to them at this moment. He's going house to house. He's going to, we had already been told they were meeting in the house. So he's finding out where they're meeting.
He's starting to show up. He's starting to arrest people. Their ability to just gather publicly and the temple is gone. We know that they're willing to, they may just warn people. They may just correct them.
They may just try to get them to recant or deny. They may be are flogging and beating them and sending them home. They may be just keeping them because it's so disruptive to just have people who have been helping lead in the church, just not there anymore. We don't know if they're executing them at this point. We know that that's going to continue as we read the book of Acts.
There are going to be people who are being put to death. He's a terror to the church. He's ravaging the church. Later in Acts 9, it's going to say he's still breathing out threats and murder. That's what he's intaking and inhaling and exhaling is threats and murder.
He's aggressively, militantly against the church. This is why Paul later when he becomes a believer is going to say that he's the chief of sinners and that God saved him so that he could put on display in Paul that everybody can be saved. And that if any of you think that there's something that you've done that keeps you from the grace of Christ, that keeps you from the hope of the resurrection, that keeps you from the forgiveness that's found in his blood, Paul would stand and say, you didn't do worse than I did. Because I went house to house and I rounded up as many of I possibly could and I put to death all that I could.
And I fought against Christ with every breath that I had. And he didn't destroy me, he showed me grace. And so if there's something right now that you have that's like, well then Jesus can't forgive this and I can't overcome this and this will always stay with me, not by the power of his blood, not by the power of his resurrection, and not by the love and grace that he offers, you can be forgiven and you can be free. But Saul's ravaging the church and this is so disruptive. There's a writer who was in the Soviet Union, his name's Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn.
He wrote the Gulag Archipelago. One of the things he talks about in being arrested, he says, he was an orthodox believer in the Soviet Union when the communists are just rounding people up, anybody who dissents to the state. He says, arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another. The gate to our past life is slammed shut once and for all. That's all there is to it.
You are arrested. And you'll find nothing better to respond with than a lamb-like bleat, me, what for? That's what arrest is. It's a blinding flash and a blow. One of the things he talks about is that so many people who got arrested originally just assumed this is a mistake, I haven't done anything.
There's no reason for me to be arrested. They would just kind of go along and they assumed, I'm going to be out soon. We're going to sort this out. We're going to figure out what's going on. And I imagine that people began to first show up to places.
It was, what have I done? What is the crime that I've committed? What are the things that have happened? And they would begin to go with him. But then you started knowing he's going to come around.
He's arresting people. The church is under persecution. This isn't just going to stop with Stephen. This is going to be everybody. And you start getting that knock on the door.
You start seeing them coming down the street towards your house. And then what do you do? Do you run? Do you fight? Do you trust the Lord?
So he begins to drag off men and women to prison. And the church scatters. I don't know if you can imagine with me for a moment what would happen if we showed up here this morning and there were chains on the doors. A notice from the local authorities said due to ordinance 997-2.5, this is no longer an acceptable place for a public gathering for religious purposes. And this happens.
There's a missionary organization that uses some of our office space and that we partner with. And there are times where he'll just report, hey, yeah, the place where this church was meeting has been locked up. There was a picture he showed me one time where they had put wax in a keyhole and wrapped the door to verify whether or not somebody came and opened it and they're just not allowed to meet. Now, if that happened, I think, you know, we'd hang out and be people in the parking lot. We'd be like, hey, look, y'all, you know, go grab lunch together.
Go be praying. We're going to figure out what's going on. We're going to talk. We may have to get a lawyer. We don't know.
We'll send you an email. If you don't get the email, you know, make sure you've given us your email address so we can send you emails. Like we would just be like, you know, we'll figure it out. Let's pray. Be praying.
Do your group stuff like normal this week and we'll go from there. We'll try to let you know as best we can as soon as we can what's going on. We don't know this ordinance. We'll try to figure out what that means and how that's going to function. We'll be okay.
And then Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, you start hearing that every group that met on Tuesday had police officers show up. And in the middle of meeting, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They've come in with printed out sheets that have pictures from the website that say, who's the group leader, where they're meeting. You find out every group leader has been arrested, detained, questioned. You start asking questions.
For how long? What for? The people who hosted, they've been questioned. Some people have been released. Some people haven't.
What did they ask you? What was happening? Your group meets on Thursday. Are we going to meet? Are we going to meet somewhere else?
How are we going to communicate with each other? Some people are saying, I don't think we should meet. Some people are saying we should meet. Some people are saying we should meet at a different house. Some people are saying, quit texting this.
Somebody's telling you we've got to get on WhatsApp. Somebody said, I told you to unplug the Alexa from your wall three months ago. Chaos, confusion, frustration. Do we go along with the authorities? What does this mean?
Do we fight? What do we do? Somebody says, I'm just here as a student. I'm going to head back to, my family lives in Iowa. I'm going to go to Iowa.
And that's what's happening. And if you can imagine the confusion and the fear and the what is God doing? Because they went from favor with the community. They went from joyously meeting, seeing people added to their number every day. They went from meeting day by day, from house to house.
They went from just learning. I mean, they're just soaking up anything that the apostles will teach them. Telling everyone they can tell. And now they're scattered. You're trying to figure out why aren't they here?
Did they move? Are they okay? Did they get taken? The amount of confusion and the inability to communicate and the inability to gather, this had to be horrific. Who's in jail?
Who's gone? Where'd they go? Verse 4. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. I love that verse.
What? Put your hoods on. Don't say anything to anybody. We're going into hiding. No.
They're like, well, we're getting out of Jerusalem. They showed up to the next town and were like, hey guys, guess what? Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is King. They're mad about it, but we can't not talk about it.
They go about preaching the word. I was standing in my front yard one time with my four-year-old son and I watched him as he ran, did his best kicking, NFL kicker impersonation and kicked a dandelion as hard as he could. And I watched as all the spores just flew through the air. He didn't understand what he had done, but I was like, no! Don't do that!
He's like, what? I was like, you've just ruined our yard for generations. Paul doesn't understand what he's just done, but when he tried to stamp out the church, it was like he'd kicked a dandelion and it just spreads because persecution doesn't stop the church, it spreads the church because that's how it works. The church was birthed through suffering, through death, through pain. Christ brings resurrection and the message spreads.
And when you attack the church, it just spreads. It just multiplies the message. Persecution leads to proclamation. It doesn't stop the church, it spreads the church. And they go about preaching and you would think that they would stop, they would be quiet, they would be fearful, but that's not what happens.
It just says, those who scattered, those who left, those who scattered went about preaching the word. They just are telling everyone they can tell how good the news is. Why? Because it's true and it's good. And the hope is made certain through the work of Jesus and the glory and the eternity are real.
This is why the disciples look, the apostles look at the Sanhedrin and they say, we have to say what we've seen and heard. We have to proclaim that Jesus is resurrected because he actually is resurrected. There's actually a hope found in him. There's actually forgiveness. He is the Christ.
There are times where people will come and say, I've had these conversations, I've seen these things play out, where someone says, well, what does the church say about blank? What do y'all believe about blank? What do y'all believe about this social issue? What do you believe about this? And it's fine to have those discussions, but they're out of order because what the church thinks about this social issue is not the first thing you should consider.
The first thing you should consider is did Jesus Christ rise from the grave? Is he actually God? Is he who he says he is? Because if he did, then we have to obey him everywhere. We have to follow him everywhere.
We don't get to come with some issue and say, well, this will decide whether or not he's God and rose from the grave. That's not how it works. We don't get to come in with issues first. We come in with, is Christ Christ? Is he the Messiah?
Is he the hope for salvation? Is there only forgiveness in his name? Is he the Lord of lords? Is he the King of kings? Will he one day judge the earth and rule with an iron scepter?
Because if that's true, and if the only hope for forgiveness is found in Christ, then everything else is on the table and we follow him wherever he sends us and we do whatever he asks of us and we obey wherever he tells us to obey and we submit wherever he tells us to submit. Because he's the King of kings. And so when they scatter, they talk about it because they can't not talk about it. And because Jesus told them this was coming, and I assume that the apostles had begun to tell the church this is coming. And that's where they, they were beaten and they rejoiced.
I assume they told them this is part of it. So I mentioned this earlier, but I want to read it to you. Matthew 24, 9, and 14. It's going to be up here. This is Jesus and he tells the apostles, then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.
Who will hate Christians? All nations. The peace and prosperity that we have enjoyed in this nation is an anomaly. It's the exception, not the rule. But Jesus says, there's going to come a day as this plays out where you're hated by all nations for my name's sake.
And then he says, a few breaths later, verse 14, and this gospel of the kingdom, this hope that's found in Jesus will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to who? All nations. The nations that hate him? Yes. They're persecuting us.
They're hating the church. They don't want the church. Right, that's who we're telling you need Jesus. There's a hope of forgiveness. There's a joy of salvation.
There's a judge that's coming. But there's forgiveness that's offered. The gospel will be proclaimed to all nations. And in Matthew 5, he says, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
When persecution comes, so does reward and rejoicing. this is why when you attack the church, it just keeps spreading. It just keeps going because there's reward and there's rejoicing and there's a hope of a future. He really did rise. He really is king.
We can't do anything else and he promises that there's a resurrection and an eternity and reward and there's joy and there's hope and that nothing that happens here can touch that. They can't take it away from you. There's a pastor named Joseph Ton who's a Romanian pastor in the Soviet Union. He's preaching. He's spreading tapes of his preaching and he would get arrested a lot and interrogated a lot and there was a specific time where there were six men who were interrogating and threatening him and he says, I told the interrogator, you should know your supreme weapon is killing.
My supreme weapon is dying. Now here's how it works. You know that my sermons are on tape all over the country. When you shoot me or crush me, whichever way you choose, you only sprinkle my sermons with my blood. everybody who has a tape of one of my sermons will pick it up and say, I had better listen again.
This man died for what he preached. Sir, my sermons will speak ten times louder after you kill me and because you kill me. In fact, I will conquer this country for God because you killed me. Go on and do it. They let him go.
But he was arrested a lot. He was interrogated a lot. He said, again, writing about this, he said, when the secret police officer threatened to kill me or to shoot me, I smiled and I said, sir, don't you understand that when you kill me, you send me to glory. You cannot threaten me with glory. The more suffering, the more troubles, the greater the glory.
Now he's just saying this to those who are reading. So why say stop this trouble? Because the more suffering, the greater the glory up there. Where there's persecution, there's reward, and there's rejoicing, and you can't be threatened with glory. You can't be threatened with eternal hope.
You can't be threatened with reward. That the church, at times, will face persecution and death and danger. It can't separate us from Christ. It can't separate us from His love. It can't separate us from a resurrection.
It can't keep us from glory. He says, dying for the Lord is not an accident. It's not a tragedy. It's part of the job. It's part of the ministry, and it's the greatest way of preaching.
Christ's church, a church of the cross, a church of an empty tomb, is impervious to persecution. Now, it can hinder some things, and it can spread some things, and it can cause some logistical trouble, but it can't stop the church. The gates of hell will not prevail against Christ's church. persecution leads to proclamation. And I don't know if you've answered this question in your heart.
And I know if you were baptized here as a believer, we didn't ask you. But I think we all ought to consider and answer the question before ourselves and before the Lord. If they come to your house and they arrest you, and they arrest your family, and they beat you, and they try to get you to deny Christ, will you still follow Him? I think we need to settle that. I think we need to look at the Lord and say, I'll follow you always.
And when Jesus gives the parable of the sower, He says that there are some who will fall away because of persecution. But He also says, there's a section of soil, that the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things will choke the word. And right now, where we are, we're not standing toe-to-toe with persecution. We're standing toe-to-toe with prosperity. For us, to proclaim the gospel, we have to give up comfort, luxury, we have to go out of our way, we have to think about things that are hard to think about in a land that's so, so insulated from so much trouble.
And I think we need to look at the Lord and say, Lord, I don't want the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of the world, or the desire for other things to choke out the fruitfulness of what you've given me. And as we plant a church, that's some of what we're doing. They were scattered. It was a healthy, vibrant, joy-filled church and they were scattered because of persecution. And we've been a healthy, joy-filled, vibrant church where the Lord has blessed and worked and we're breaking up on purpose.
And what we're giving up is some prosperity. What we're giving up is some ease. What we're giving up is some comfort. And there's not a time where anything that we face for the sake of the gospel is not worth it eternally. Paul says, I consider the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be ours.
That the hope of glory and joy and peace that's forever held out for us in Christ is worth everything here. And so we need to hold everything open-handedly. I don't know if we'll face persecution in our lifetime. In this nation. I don't know if you will.
There are nations right now that are. And if Jesus tells you to go there, you say yes sir and you go. Because that's how you respond to a king and a lord. But if he keeps you here, by God's grace may we not be lulled to sleep by prosperity so that the word proves unfruitful. But may we be people who as we scatter we preach because we can't help but tell people about this.
And I don't know what's standing in the way of you telling other people about Christ. I don't know the last time you did it. I don't know if that's a normal regular thing that you've worked on and prayed over and labored in. I don't know if it's something that you haven't done in your entire life as a Christian. I don't know if it's something you hadn't done in two years.
I don't know but I know that whatever stands in the way of us being people who proclaim this message it's not worth it and that overcoming it and following Jesus will be eternally worth it. So may we be people who scatter and proclaim and may we take heart and may we take courage and may we not be fearful and may we not look to the future with terror but with hope because we have a hope of a future that's wonderful and cannot be taken by anything. Let's pray. Lord Jesus we're thankful we're thankful for the ease and the prosperity and the blessing that we've had.
May we be grateful but may we not confuse ourselves with that's the purpose of life and that's the hope that we have and may we be people who proclaim and Lord may you bless your church that faces persecution and attack and doubt and fear and imprisonment and rape and murder because they claim your name and may you wrap them in your arms and may you empower them by your spirit and may you give them strength and boldness to hold fast to you and may you hold fast to them and Lord may we have a hope of glory in the face of whatever difficulty and trial that we face may you empower us to overcome it by your grace and may we honor you in how we respond and Lord may we cling to you forever in Jesus' name amen