Expanding Circles Week 2

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Persecution Breaks out

We’re gonna follow two stories here through this message: the early church in general, and Paul in specific

In the early church, this persecution breaks out after the death of Stephen. EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENS WITH STEPHEN, AND HOW DISCIPLES GET SCATTERED

In Paul’s life, HE starts out the persecution. EXPLAIN WHO HE WAS A BIT

Both of these boil down to the same thing: ‘This sounds like a bad start’.

We’ve all been in one or both of these places.

Believers - CIRCUMSTANCES DON’T SEEM GOOD - WE AREN’T WHERE WE WANT TO BE, WE AREN’T WHERE WE SHOULD BE. THINGS ARE TOUGH.

To the jews, the messiah was the person who was going to restore the nation of israel. And jesus challenged that - he showed that the real enemy he was going after was death itself.

But now, serving Jesus meant not only that Israel wasn’t being restored right then and there - they were being scattered out of it to the gentiles.

Paul - I’M JUST NOT THE PERSON FOR THIS - LOOK AT ME

If there was ever an argument for ‘hey, this guy here, he really shouldn’t be leading in the church ‘ - it’s Paul.

The truth is, that Paul’s effectiveness had nothing to do with Paul, and everything to do with God. And that’s the point.

Both sets of people seemingly made a decision - I am here. This is now. So what can I do?

And there’s one more character in this story - the Holy Spirit.

Acts 11:21

Acts 11:21 NIV

The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

And here’s the big point.

Explain: didn’t have qualifications. Didn’t have place. Didn’t have comforts of the past. But they had the Holy Spirit. The Lord’s hand was with them.

The Lord’s hand took believers turned out of their homes and out of their comforts into foreign lands, and used them to draw THOUSANDS to the Lord.

The lord’s hand took Paul, a man who by all accounts had no right to the forgiveness he was freely given - and GREATLY used him to expand and build up the church.

EXPLAIN BIG POINT: Things don’t look the same. It may have been a while even since you’ve step foot in a ‘church’. Things may look bleak. But you have the Holy Spirit. And that means, God has absolutely everything that He needs to succeed in your life.

CHALLENGE TO ALL OF US - We all have a part to play now. When the early disciples scattered, they didn’t find themselves out of the church - they found themselves starting dozens, hundreds of other ones.

CHALLENGE TO MATURE CHRISTIANS - LEAD THE WAY ON THIS ONE.

Now, moving on, in both the stories we’re following here, there’s a specific point I want to highlight. And this is where a lot of my thoughts tend to come back to.

Believers - STARTED MINISTERING THROUGH THE LAND. MEETING IN SYNAGOGUES AND HOUSES. LOTS OF GENTILES COMING TO THE LORD

Philipp, working in Samaria, Ethiopia, and the mediterranean coast

Peter, staying with a tanner in Joppa, and visiting a roman centurion in Caesarea

Barnabas going out to minister in Antioch, one of the largest cities in the Roman empire.

EXPLAIN - THESE WEREN’T IDEAL MISSION FIELDS TO THE EARLY JEWS. THESE WEREN’T THE RIGHT PEOPLE.

Their experience with God up to this point was tied to a place and a pattern.

Paul - MISSIONARY JOURNEYS STARTED SEVERAL CHURCHES

Now, we can talk about the God-fearing, righteous jews having to put up with going to the ‘wrong people’ and doing different things than they are used to.

Paul is a whole other issue.

EXPLAIN - PAUL STARTS IN ACTS AS A MURDEROUS, JEWISH ZEALOT, TRYING TO EXTINGUISH THE CHURCH

Acts 9 has this amazing experience we call the Damascus Road experience.

Paul spends time studying, then he goes on the warpath. EXPLAIN - LOTS OF MISSIONARY JOURNIES, ARGUING WITH JEWS IN SYNANGOGUES

EXPLAIN: There’s a key conversation that happens in the early church around this time. And you find it in Acts 11. EXPLAIN CONTEXT - PETER

Acts 11:15-18

Acts 11:15–18 NIV

“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

EXPLAIN BIG POINT: The believers, and Paul, were both doing something absolutely ESSENTIAL to success - both then, and now.

Faced with big changes, faced with hardships and persecutions. Faced with radically changed lifestyles.

They were really tempted to try and go back to the way it was. So are we. That’s our default - to have that thought of, ‘How do we get back to the way it was?’

Nothing wrong with that. The Holy Spirit was in those times. He moved beautifully.

But they asked themselves a question. ‘Where is the Holy Spirit NOW?’

Because as much as we have the holy spirit, and that’s all we need - he’s not ours. We’re his. And you’d be amazed the difference between the two.

I talked about how we all have a job to do. The truth is - so does the Holy Spirit. He’s out there working. He’s out there spreading power and the kingdom.

The early church, paul, they both desperately wanted to stay in step with the spirit. they wanted to be where He was - even if it meant not being where THEY wanted to be.

And there’s a connection I want you to understand, and this is something that if you go to my church, you know i’m REALLY passionate about this.

The early church consistently saw two things. One, was explosive growth. And the second was trouble.

EXPLAIN: We see trouble and hardships. Not minimizing it. But if the Holy Spirit is with us, if we’re TRULY and FULLY and DESPERATE about wanting to stay in that place of just walking beside Him - then you won’t just see trouble. You’ll see opportunity. You’ll see growth. You’ll see God move in mighty ways.

And that’s the real victory condition here. Not that things go back to the way they were. Not that we’re comfortable, or where we want to be.

The victory condition is that God’s name is lifted high. That more people hear about him. More people know about him. That more people turn to him.

Will you join with us in this journey?

Maybe you’ve been at this for decades.

Maybe you’re new at this and don’t feel qualified

Maybe you’ve never given any thought at all to your place in all of this, or a relationship with God.

SECTION 1 - PERSECUTION BREAKS OUT:

Stephen’s point to the sanhedrin - their people continually missed what the holy spirit was doing in the world. And he specifically points out that, they received the law, but they hadn’t obeyed it. (Acts 7:51-53)

They flip their lids, stone him to death. This kicks off a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. The disciples are scattered out of their homes and flee jerusalem (Acts 8:1) . Saul starts a destructive rampage against the church (Acts 8:3)

The church begins to have all these amazing encounters - and not just amazing because of the miracles surrounding them. But they were with people that, prior to this moment, they hadn’t really spent time ministering to.

Philipp starts ministering among the Samaritans (Acts 8:5). There are miracles, healings, and the Holy Spirit filling people

The Holy Spirit even directs Philip down a road to encounter an ethiopian person (Acts 8:27 )

Saul has an amazing experience we call ‘The Damascus Road Experience’ (Acts 9 )

SECTION 2 - A NEW THING IS COMING

But there’s constant things through this chapter that are interesting:

Peter in Acts 9:43 stays with a tanner named Simon. Any jew who was a tanner was constantly ritually unclean. Some rabbis lumped tanners together in the same category as public urinals, or people who collect dog poop.

Then in acts 10, Peter visits a Roman centurion named Cornelius, and Cornelius and his whole household are saved. This event is actually surprising to Peter (Acts 10:34) . At one point, the Holy Spirit descends and fills the centurion and all who was listening, and this actually astonished the believers (Acts 10:44-45)

Some of the believers called Peter on this. But Peter just points back to the Holy Spirit, with the logic that, if God accepted them, how could we possibly reject them- and how the coming of the Holy Spirit lined up even back to John the Baptist’s prophecy (Acts 11:16-17)

More believers start going to different places. Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch. Acts POINTEDLY says that ‘The Lord’s Hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord’ (Acts 11:21)

SECTION 3 - THE LIFE OF PAUL

Starting in Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas start on an amazing missionary journey throughout the Roman empire.

I think there’s two big things we can learn from Paul in this part:

1 - God can work with any start

2 - Success in God’s eyes doesn’t automatically look like success in ours - and vice versa.