The book of Acts is the action book of the New Testament, and it constitutes therefore one of the most exciting books of the Bible. The full name of it is, "The Acts Of The Apostles," but there are not many apostles mentioned in it. James, John, Peter, and Paul are the only ones who appear in any prominence. Through the centuries Christians have shortened this title and called it simply, "The Acts." I like that better for this is the book of action, revealing how God is at work through Christian...
Sep 30, 2018
Contemporary views of the church today are anything but complimentary. One of the nicer things said about the church is that it is irrelevant as far as saying anything to today's world is concerned.
Sep 29, 2018
In Acts 2 we left our heroes, the apostles and their friends, waiting in the courts of the temple. If that sounds like an introduction to a television serial it is only because this is the book where the action is -- the book of Acts. As the apostles and their friends waited in the temple courts, three amazing things happened: There was a sound like a great blast of wind which roared through the house where they were sitting, the porch of Solomon. There also appeared tongues of fire dancing upon...
Sep 28, 2018
Last week we left our heroes, the apostles, in the temple courts of Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. Peter was explaining the apparent drunkenness of the believers to the crowd that gathered when they heard the siren sound of the mighty rushing wind that came when the Holy Spirit fell upon these individuals. He explained the strange excitement of these 120 people, and also their strange utterances, their speaking the praise of God in many languages, even though they were apparently peasants fr...
Sep 27, 2018
There has been a remarkable awakening sweeping across college campuses in our country today. There is a report in one of our Christian magazines of a most remarkable week of meetings that began in the chapel of Asbury College, in Wilmore, Kentucky, a few weeks ago, and went on continuously for six or seven days and nights. People would come in and fall under a deep conviction of the brokenness and the fragmentation of their lives with other Christians. Their hearts were melted and opened toward ...
Sep 26, 2018
Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at that gate of the temple which is called Beautiful to ask alms of those who entered the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. And Peter directed his gaze at him, with John, and said, "Look at us." And he fixed his attention upon them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, "I have no si...
Sep 25, 2018
In Acts, the action book of the New Testament, we are examining the first miracle in this present age in which we live: The instantaneous healing of a lame man who, waiting at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, had asked for money from Peter and John as they went up to pray. And, you remember, Peter had turned and said to him, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk," (Acts 3:6 KJV). And taking him by the hand he lif...
Sep 24, 2018
Someone has well said that Easter Sunday is the only time of the year when anyone can go to church without being accused of being religious! We are glad to welcome any who may be here this morning who do not ordinarily attend church. We are delighted that you came to be with us. We have been studying through the book of Acts in our morning services, this action book of the New Testament, where we are tracing once again the tremendous explosion of radical Christianity which burst out upon a decad...
Sep 23, 2018
We last left our heroes, Peter and John, hailed into court before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish rulers of Jerusalem. With them was the former lame man who had been made whole. Peter had said to him, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I unto you; in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk!" (Acts 3:6). Peter and John had been arrested because they had used the occasion to preach Jesus and the resurrection. It is important to notice that they did not use the occasion to begi...
Sep 22, 2018
The most exciting event of our exciting times is not the exploration of the moon, remarkable and exciting as that is and really magnificent in its scientific achievement. But the most exciting event today is the healing of the body of Christ. I see it occurring in many places. You have been reading in Christian magazines, and even in the newspapers, of movements of the Holy Spirit on college campuses across the country, notably the one that began at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky a few week...
Sep 21, 2018
When the Apostle Paul wrote his last letter to his son in the faith, Timothy, he said, "In the last days there shall come perilous times..." (2 Timothy 3:1b KJV). Those last days began when our Lord first appeared upon the earth. We make a great mistake if we read that as though Paul was talking only about the future. He was talking about the present age, his own day. All the time that lies between the first and second comings of Jesus Christ are the last days. During that whole time there would...
Sep 20, 2018
The parable of the wheat and the weeds (the wheat and tares in the King James Version) is the Lord Jesus' own prediction of conditions in the church during the age between his first coming and his second -- this present age in which we live. The whole series of parables there in Matthew 13 describes this, but in the parable of the wheat and the tares he said particularly that he, the son of Man, would begin by sowing in the field of the world those who would have the life of God in them, the son...
Sep 19, 2018
When I entered the city of Jerusalem for the first time I came down from the Mount of Olives and went through the gate called St. Stephen's Gate. In my mind's eye I can still see the activity in the Old City and I can feel again the tremendous impressions that were mine as I came in through that gate named in honor of the first Christian martyr. We meet him today in our studies in Acts. Of course this gate is not the one through which Stephen actually passed on his way to being stoned, for that ...
Sep 18, 2018
On the day when the Lord Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives he said to his disciples,
Sep 17, 2018
You remember that the book of Acts opened with a dramatic presentation of three symbols that would characterize the ministry of the Holy Spirit throughout the age of the church. These three symbols are very prominent all through the book of Acts. They were: The mighty rushing wind, the tongues as of fire, and the proclamation of various languages, the gift of tongues. These indicate three elements which we will find again and again throughout the book of Acts, and throughout the age of the churc...
Sep 16, 2018
In the great outline which our Lord Jesus gave of the progress of the gospel throughout the course of this age, he said it would move in three stages: First to Jerusalem, then to Judea and all Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth. Now, in Acts 9, we are viewing that second stage wherein the gospel is going out to Judea and all Samaria. During that period of time the gospel was being systematically preached throughout every village of Samaria and Judea by outstanding leaders such...
Sep 15, 2018
The ninth chapter of Acts is the story of the conversion of Paul, of when Saul of Tarsus became the mighty Apostle Paul. It is a great mistake to think, as many people do, that what happened to Saul on the Damascus road is a complete explanation of everything which can account for the mighty influence of this man during the rest of his life. Paul became a Christian on the road to Damascus but he did not start living the Christian life in all its fullness and potential power for quite a number of...
Sep 14, 2018
In the last year or so of Paul's life, when he was imprisoned in Rome, he wrote a letter to his son in the faith, Timothy. And, looking back across the years of his ministry, he spoke of the coming of our Savior Christ Jesus, "who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel..." (2 Timothy 1:10 RSV). That is the great and central fact in the good news about Jesus Christ: He has done what no other can ever do -- he has abolished death. That is what is unique about ...
Sep 13, 2018
It is often suggested that the book of Acts ought to be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit. I agree. Nowhere is the sovereign superintendency of the Holy Spirit more in evidence than in this wonderful account of how he moved to open the door of faith to the Gentiles.
Sep 12, 2018
Let us resume our studies in Acts. Here we learn afresh of the movement of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit at work is like a great river, cutting a fresh channel, going wherever it wishes. Sometimes we Christian flood control experts are disturbed by that. We do not like the way the Holy Spirit moves. We like to dig a channel, line it with concrete, and say, "Come, O River of God. We have dug the channel. Flow through it now according to our desire." But God does not work that way. He makes his...
Sep 11, 2018
I invite you to resume our studies together in the book of Acts. We will look at the twelfth chapter -- a very exciting passage. I am sure that you had not been a Christian for very long before you discovered that the enemy with whom we wrestle has a very disconcerting way of striking when everything seems to be going well. Just when you think the path has smoothed out and that you are having a great time in the Lord, with nothing but blessing ahead -- then everything seems to fall apart at once...
Sep 10, 2018
The missionary call of Barnabas and Saul, recorded in the thirteenth chapter of the book of Acts is replete with practical helps in a problem that bothers many Christians: How to recognize the guidance of God, how to know the directions of life, and to find the will of the Holy Spirit in these matters.
Sep 09, 2018
We will look this morning, in Acts 13, at the first recorded sermon of the Apostle Paul. This man has changed the course of world history by the power of his ministry in the Spirit of Christ. He did so by the preaching of the word of truth, and here we have a good example of how he did it. Paul had preached many messages before, but this is the first of which we have a record. It was a very powerful and shattering message. It was preached in a synagogue on a Sabbath morning and it shook a whole ...
Sep 08, 2018
When Paul and Barnabas left Antioch to go out on their first missionary journey, they started a new movement in the book of Acts. They began the last phase of our Lord's great commission. They started to go out to "the uttermost parts of the earth..." (Acts 1:8b KJV). So this constitutes a separate section of this book. We call this series of messages "The Pattern Setters" because, in this section of Acts, you find the pattern for all Christian witness in any age.
Sep 07, 2018
We are all very concerned about events now taking place in the Middle East. God has always made that the focal point of history and of current events. With the intensification of developments there the circle has now come full term, because this is where Christianity began, where the explosion of the gospel first occurred. We have been tracing in the book of Acts the wonderful story of how this radical gospel began to break out upon a decadent, pagan society, to capture the interest and the hear...
Sep 06, 2018
We are seeing so much of practical help in some of the problems of Christian life as we follow the pattern set by the apostles and the early Christians in the book of Acts. I hope you are realizing, more and more as we go through this book, that here is a description of normal Christianity. This is the way the church could have been, and should have been, in any age. Unless the church is living in the atmosphere of the book of Acts, it is missing out on its heritage.
Sep 05, 2018
We are studying the section of the book of Acts which sets before us the account of the early church in operation and which outlines for us the pattern of normal Christianity. We must remember that this book is intended to describe Christianity as it ought to be in every age. When the principles set forth in Acts are followed, the church is always going to be as vital as it was then.
Sep 04, 2018
Let's resume our study of how the most revolutionary message the world has ever heard moved into Europe and thus affected the history of Western civilization for some 2000 years. We began, you remember, in the sixteenth chapter of Acts with the story of Paul, Silas, Luke, and Timothy in the city of Philippi, and of the great earthquake that released them from prison with dramatic impact, and of how God used four distinct methods to break through the entrenched evil of that city and to implant a ...
Sep 03, 2018
At the time of Paul's visit to Athens, that city was no longer important as a political seat; Corinth was the commercial and political center of Greece under the Roman Caesars. But Athens was still the university center of the world. It was the heir of the great philosophers, the city of Pericles and Demosthenes, of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, and Euripides -- these men who established patterns of thought that have affected human learning for centuries. Almost all philosophies follow,...
Sep 02, 2018
As we continue our study of Acts into the eighteenth chapter we see the Apostle Paul leaving Athens, the intellectual capital of the Roman world, and coming into Corinth, the center of sensuality. These two cities are symbols of the twin evils which, in every day and every generation, trap and enslave the hearts of people: intellectual pride and sensual lust.
Sep 01, 2018
