Christ Church


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Acts for Americans (Christ Church)


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INTRODUCTION

I want to take a step back and highlight certain patterns in the first nine chapters of Acts, lest we miss the forest for the trees. This section has particular relevance for us given the events of the last ten days. We want to read the story that we’re in, in light of God’s story in the Scriptures, because while history does not repeat itself, it does rhyme.

TEXT: ACTS 7:54-8:3

Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. 55 But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” 57 But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. 58 Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

8 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. 2 Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. 3 But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

ESCALATING CONFLICT

In this section of Acts, there are four main groups that we should attend to: 1) the apostles; 2) the believers; 3) the Jewish crowds; and 4) the Sanhedrin. The first seven chapters of Acts follow these four groups as they collide with one another again and again. Conflict abounds in these chapters, with the apostles and the Jewish leaders publicly colliding three times (4:1–22; 5:17–41; 6:8–7:60). The Sanhedrin opposes the apostolic testimony, and their opposition escalates over time in terms of the motive for arresting the apostles; the response to the apostolic witness; and the resolution to the collisions.

In terms of motive, we move from theological annoyance (Acts 4) to envy and jealousy (Acts 5) to outright hatred and slander (Acts 6–7). In terms of the Sanhedrin’s response, we move from amazement (Acts 4) to barely controlled anger (Acts 5) to uncontrollable rage (Acts 7). In terms of resolution, we move from verbal warning (Acts 4) to violent warning (Acts 5) to murder by mob (Acts 7).

THE ROOTS OF RISING OPPOSITION

What accounts for this rising conflict? First is the phenomenal growth of the church. From 120 people in Acts 1 to thousands in Acts 5. It’s no surprise that the Jewish leaders move from viewing the apostles with annoyance to being filled with envy and jealousy. They are losing their grip on the people.

The second cause of the escalation is the apostolic boldness. Christian boldness is courage and clarity about Jesus and sin (Acts 5:27-32). They fill Jerusalem with teaching about the risen Lord Jesus. And the preach clearly and courageously about particular sins and evil done by their audience. “God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness” (Acts 3:26)

WHERE BOLDNESS COMES FROM

The first and most important source of boldness is the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:31). But the Holy Spirit doesn’t operate in a vacuum. And the most obvious means in these chapters is the formation of the church. Christian boldness emerges from a resilient community, united in one heart and soul around the testimony of the resurrection, stewarding resources to meet each others needs (4:32-37), and seeking the good of the lost (3:1-10), and living in holiness and integrity. A bold church is a holy church. Whenever there is a genuine work of God, it won’t be five minutes before counterfeits show up, aping generosity. As Ananias and Sapphira demonstrate, we cannot lie to God and expect his blessing (5:4–5). God is not mocked; he is a consuming fire, and insists that we live in holy fear before him.

So where does Christian boldness come from? It comes from God the Father, who fills us with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gathers a people around the preaching of the death and resurrection of Jesus, uniting us in heart and soul, so that we sacrifice to meet each other’s needs and seek the good of the city and live holy lives of reverent fear.

APPLICATION

Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen escalating conflict in our country as the Christian faith and reality collide with our secular insanity. There have been smaller scale collisions through cancel culture and social pressure and the legal harassment. The Rainbow Sanhedrin have essentially said, “We’ve told you once; we’ve told you twice. Stop resisting, or else.”

And last week, with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, we saw our American Stephen. Like the apostles, Charlie never went to college; he was an “uneducated, common man.” Like Stephen, he was a man “full of faith and the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6:5), “full of grace and power” (Acts 6:8), and as a result of his labors, the word of God increased, and disciples multiplied in our country (6:7). Like Stephen, he was known for his boldness—his courage and clarity about Jesus and sin—for his willingness to go to the Leftist indoctrination centers that we call universities and discuss and debate and dialogue about the most important issues in our nation and in reality. And like Stephen, he was very effective, so that his opponents were “not able to withstand the wisdom and Spirit with which he was speaking” (6:10). And as a result, he, like other faithful Christians, was slandered as a fascist, a racist, a bigot, a Nazi (6:11-14). He was accused of blaspheming the current gods of secularism, progressivism, wokeness, and the gender cult. He spoke against their high places, and claimed that Jesus intends to change the wicked customs and practices that have taken root in America, especially among young people. He told them, “Trust Christ. Go to church. Get married. Have babies. Leave a legacy.” And, as a result of his faith and his boldness, he filled the enemies of Christ with teeth-grinding rage, and like Stephen, they murdered him in public. That’s where we are in the story. At this moment, in Arizona, we are in Acts 8:2: “Devout men buried Stephen, and made great lamentation over him.”

Which raises the question: what’s next? If the pattern holds, what’s next? I see an opportunity, a temptation, and an exhortation.

First, the opportunity. In the wake of Stephen’s execution, a general persecution against the church broke out, which resulted in a scattering of the church throughout Judea and Samaria. But then, Acts 8:4: “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.” They don’t act like they got kicked out; they act like they got sent out. The martyrdom of Stephen launches the Samaritan mission, the same mission that Jesus promised in Acts 1:8, and a revival breaks out among the outcasts. So may we seize the opportunity that God has given us, and show the same joyful and grateful courage and boldness that Charlie Kirk did, and may the Lord spark a revival in surprising places.

But that leads to the temptation. As the Samaritan revival takes off, we meet Simon Magus, a sorcerer and Samaritan celebrity who thought he was somebody great (8:9-11). But when the attention shifts from him to Philip as he preaches the good news of the kingdom and the name of Jesus Christ, Simon wants in on it. He even gets baptized. But when the Spirit falls as the apostles lay hands on the church, we see that Simon’s “conversion” was opportunistic. He tries to buy his way in, offering money to get some of that spiritual power and seeking to co-opt the church for his own ends.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s martyrdom, the chief threat will be allowing his deeply Christian legacy to be co-opted by opportunists who want to baptize it for their own purposes. The temptation will be to “Unite the Right” to “Fight the Left” by watering down the central truth that Jesus Christ alone is Lord, turning it into a generic call for “faith in God,” or muting our witness on the evil of homosexuality in order to link arms with secularists and gays agains the trans terrorists.  We must not allow the desire for a big tent to smother Christian boldness or dilute the full Christian gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for the glory of God alone.

And that brings me to the exhortation to boldness and to hope. Now is the time for courage and clarity about Jesus and sin. The wickedness of our nation reeks to high heaven—the abortion genocide, sexual immorality, racial and ethnic hatred, lawlessness and the perversion of justice, and ultimately our rejection of the living God and his Son Jesus Christ. We must be bold in the face of threats and dangers (Acts 4:24–30).

And here is the hope. One of the other striking parallels between Acts and our day is the approval of Stephen’s murder and the celebration of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Acts 8:1: “Saul approved of the execution.” Many of us have been shocked that thousands of our fellow citizens have rationalized, justified, and celebrated the murder of a young husband and father. But here’s the hope, and how we should pray. In Acts 8, Saul stood by and approved the brutal murder of Stephen. In Acts, he collided with Jesus on the Damascus Road, and the world was never the same. Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save.

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Singing the War Songs of the King (Psalms | King’s Cross) (King’s Cross)


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INTRODUCTION

Worship is warfare, and the Psalter is the inspired collection of our battle hymns. The Psalter is the meditations of the “blessed man” on the law of God – the war-songs of the “happy man” who is like a tree always fruitful in every season, who stands against all evil (Ps. 1). But this means that the Psalms are the songs of Jesus (Col. 3:16). He is the happiest warrior, the most fruitful wise man, our King, who came to destroy the seed of the serpent. He began this conquest by cleansing the temple, and so we join that warfare by singing the war songs of King Jesus.

The Text: “And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves…” (Jn. 2:13-17).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

It is likely that Jesus cleansed the temple at least twice, since John seems to put this at the beginning of Christ’s ministry and the other gospels put a cleansing at the end. This may echo the multiple inspections of leprous houses in the Old Testament, which culminated in destruction (Lev. 14). Here, Jesus drives out the money changers who have crowded out the central purpose for the temple: prayer (Jn. 2:14-16, cf. Mk. 11:17). And when He does this, the disciples see Psalm 69:9: “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” When Jesus cleansed the temple, His disciples see

Him acting like a zealous King David in establishing faithful worship and the only path for political stability.

A SHORT HISTORY OF SONG

We are not told exactly when God’s people began singing in worship, but given the entirety of Scripture, it seems likely that it began in the Garden of Eden. Adam’s poem about the beauty of his new wife (“this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”) was likely a song of love and thanksgiving (Gen. 2:23). One Jewish source from the Middle Ages suggests that Adam began singing Psalm 92 (“It’s good to thank the Lord!”) right after he was confronted with his sin and granted forgiveness in the Garden. Whether or not that’s true, it would certainly fit with the broader biblical witness. God’s people were made for music, singing, and worship. And in a fallen world, worship is a war cry of defiance against sin.

The first explicitly recorded song of worship is the triumphant hymn that Moses and Miriam composed after God’s decisive defeat of the Egyptian forces at the Red Sea (Ex. 15). And of course, worship led the conquest of Canaan, particularly at Jericho with the sounding of trumpets (Josh. 6).

Moses later wrote two songs that became Deuteronomy 32 and 33. Another song is quoted in Numbers 21 that is said to be from the “book of the wars of the Lord,” which may have been an early collection of hymns. Joshua 10 and 2 Samuel 1 also reference songs from “the book of Jasher,” apparently another early Israelite hymnal. It is also possible that these are all names for the same hymnal begun by the patriarchs, added to by Moses and Joshua and Samuel, and substantially expanded by David. Many believe that Ezra may have been the final editor of the Book of Psalms as we now have it.

SONGS OF THE KING

Michael LeFebvre points out that the Old Testament associates the songs of Israel not only with wars and battles, but they were also led by their leaders and ultimately their king. If Moses was the first official war-song leader of Israel, it appears that Joshua took that over as the leader of the conquest of Canaan (Dt. 32:44). While the period of the judges languished without a clear song leader, David’s zeal finished Joshua’s conquest of the Canaanites and restored the tabernacle on Mt. Zion with a significant increase in singing and music (1 Chron. 15-16, 23-25). Political wisdom and success are never possible apart from the right worship of the true God. It doesn’t seem like an accident that the very first book printed in the United States was the Bay Psalm Book (1640). A Psalm-singing culture built our country.

If Ezra was the final editor of the Psalter, it’s striking that the Book of Psalms is a book of songs for the King in a time (post exile) when Israel had no king. Many of the Psalms are titled “For the Choir Director or Chief Musician” and while the kings of Israel certainly had musical assistants, the king was the lead singer, and at least symbolically, the “Chief Musician.” Thus, when Jesus came as David’s son, part of the confirmation that He really was the Messiah, was the fact that He came singing the Psalms (e.g. Rom. 15:8-9, Heb. 2:11-12) and fulfilling them (Jn. 2:17). As LeFebvre emphasizes, “the New Testament authors want us to recognize Jesus, not simply as one who fulfils things about Himself in the Psalms, but as the song leader who leads us in singing them.” As we join His songs, we join His zealous conquest of sin, death, and the devil.

CONCLUSION

The Apostle Paul says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16). Notice that the Psalms are called the “word of Christ” – Christ is the main singer of the Psalms. And when we sing the Psalms, we are singing with Him. The Psalms are the wisdom and grace of our conquering King. What is that wisdom and grace?

The Book of Psalms consists of 150 prayers broken into five books: 1-41, 42-72, 73-89, 90-106, 107-150: many Psalms are songs of praise and thanksgiving; many are prayers of lamentation and penitence and pleas for help and deliverance; and many are meditations on wisdom: the character of the wicked and the righteous and the law and judgments of God. Some Psalms are also called “imprecatory” because they call for God to curse and destroy the wicked, which is one of the ways we “leave vengeance to the Lord” (Rom. 12:19). The Psalms are wisdom and grace because they give us a vocabulary for how to talk to God about every situation we may face.

Why do we put such emphasis on Psalm singing and musical education? Because worship is the tip of the spear in our battle against evil. The battle begins with naming accurately. Why do we have choirs and singing schools and music camps? Because singing the Psalms is how the war songs of our King dwell in us richly.

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Episodes in Ephesus (Acts of the Apostles) (Christ Church)


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INTRODUCTION

Ephesus was one of the places where the apostle Paul invested a goodly amount of time. On this occasion, he was there for two years, and you should recall that he had visited earlier in Acts. It was a port city in western Asia Minor, and the temple to Diana there (Artemis) was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was a notable city. We know it as Christians from the riches found in the book of Ephesians, and from the exhortation to return to their first love that is found in Revelation 2.

THE TEXT

“And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples, He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John’s baptism . . . ” (Acts 19:1–22).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul came to Ephesus, where Apollos had been, and found disciples of some sort there (v. 1). He asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit, and they replied that they hadn’t even heard of Him (v. 2). So he asked what their baptism was, and they replied that it was John’s baptism (v. 3). These are pretty clearly disciples made by Apollos before Priscilla and Aquila helped him out. Paul informed them that John’s baptism was pointing to Christ (v. 4), and so they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus (v. 5). Paul laid hands on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied (v. 6). There were around twelve of them (v. 7). Paul went to the synagogue, and spoke, disputed, and persuaded for about three months (v. 8). Some of them got hard-hearted, and began to speak evil, so Paul moved his operations to the hall of Tyrannus (v. 9), teaching there daily. He did this for two years, such that everyone in the province of Asia Minor, Jews and Greeks both, heard the word of the Lord Jesus (v. 10). Power to do miracles was with him (v. 11), such that even articles of his clothing could heal diseases and cast out demons (v. 12). Itinerant Jewish exorcists began to use the name of Jesus, the one preached by Paul (v. 13). One example was the band of Sceva’s seven sons—Sceva being a Jew and self-styled chief priest (v. 14). The demon replied that he knew Jesus, and Paul, but “who are you guys?” (v. 15). He jumped on them and thrashed them, such that they ran away naked and hurt (v. 16). Word about that got around all of Ephesus, to Jews and Greeks both, and they all feared. The name of the Lord Jesus was magnified (v. 17). Those who believed began to confess their deeds (v. 18). This included their occult books, which they all agreed to burn together—and which one calculation into modern terms puts at about $6M in value. So the Word of God grew and prevailed (v. 20). After this, Paul decided to go west to Macedonia and Achaia, then to Jerusalem, and on to Rome (v. 21). So he send Timothy and Erastus to Macedonia as his advance team (v. 22), but then he remained there in Asia for a bit.

DISCIPLES OF APOLLOS

We learned earlier that when Apollos came to Ephesus, he taught the Word accurately, but only up to John’s baptism (Acts 18:25). Pricilla and Aquila brought him up to the speed, but he had apparently made some disciples that Priscilla and Aquila didn’t get to. They were distinguished from others in some way (perhaps by clothing?) such that Paul asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit. They were disciples of some sort, but something must have seemed off. So they received Christian baptism, and when Paul laid hands on them, they received the Holy Spirit. Since they spoke in tongues and prophesied, this showed that God was declaring their solidarity with Cornelius and his household (Acts 10:44-45), as well as their unity with the saints at Pentecost (Acts 2:4).

TRYING TO GET A PIECE OF THE ACTION

There was a lot of excitement in Ephesus over this. Healings and exorcisms began to occur on the strength of handkerchiefs and aprons that Paul had used. The power of God was present, and so certain Jewish exorcists tried to get a piece of the action. You recall that Simon Magus tried to buy his way in (Acts 8: 18-19), but these folks just assumed they could just barge in. They started conjuring in the name of this “Jesus that Paul preaches.” That’s a bit of reflected glory, but apparently less potent than one of those handkerchiefs. They got beat up for their pains, and this caused all of Ephesus to fear. The name of Jesus grew in authority.

THE HALL OF TYRANNUS

So the response there in Ephesus was robust. After three months of weekly meetings in the synagogue, Paul side-stepped the hardened opposition by moving to a rented hall, where he taught daily for two years. The upshot of this was that all of Asia Minor was affected.

This gives us a glimpse into how a consistent, steady, drumbeat of a godly ministry has a gathering and cumulative effect.

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF GRACE

Now in the next verses we are going to see a full-scale riot caused by the economic impact of Paul’s gospel preaching. Turning to Christ threatened the sale of idols. In this section, we see the warm-up act for this reaction. The people who were turning to Christ from their superstitions took up a collection of their occult materials, and made a bonfire with them. The worth was 50K pieces of silver, likely a drachma. One drachma was on average a daily wage for skilled worker, which means that the amount was enough to catch the attention of the Ephesians. The Christians were making a difference. Sin has economic ramifications, as does forgiveness and righteousness.

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