We begin a new series in the book of Acts focusing on the missionary journeys of Paul. We see him embark on his first journey and the Spirit work through him in Cyprus.

Transcript:

In the course of my short life, I have lived on the precipitous decline of the church in the West. In his book, "Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America," Christian Smith identifies the year 1991 as the zenith of when this obsolescence began. If you didn't know, I was born in 1992, so literally right when this is beginning. Scholars like Smith and Ryan Burge who are experts on religious statistics consistently report the reality of this decline, we are not misremembering how things once were; simply based on the numbers, these fellows don't encourage any optimism of this trend being reversed anytime soon. Now, some people dissent of course. A prominent example of this is Justin Brierly, who's the author of the book, the, "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God," and he also hosts a podcast of the same name. And, and on this podcast, he shares other statistical data and a multitude of, of anecdotes of notable people who have turned to God, who have turned to Christ, that suggest that there is a shift in the air-- that there might be indeed a quiet revival afoot.

It's an interesting conversation, often discouraging and, and sometimes encouraging. Why do I look into all this and, and why do I mention it to you? For two reasons.

The first, it's always relevant for us to do our best to understand our neighbors, and in some ways understand ourselves, to understand where their spiritual compasses are pointing, and to try to intersect that course with the gospel.

Secondly, more importantly, I mention this to you in order to set up a backdrop. To offer a reminder to you and, and really to offer a reminder to myself, which is this: the future of the Church is not determined by sociological trends.

Our fate is not written in the statistics. The decline is real, there's no denying that at all, but that does not mean that demise is our destiny. The Church is not a product of sociological evolution, a product of natural origins. The Church is supernatural in origin. It is natural insofar as it's made up of human creatures, but it is supernatural in that its power and growth cannot be ascribed to us. God uses material things, people, language, Roman roads, but the power is not in those things. The power is God himself, manifest in the person of the Holy Spirit who indwells the body of Christ, the church. If the sociologists, sociologists and statisticians had been around in the first century AD, the numbers just wouldn't have added up for them. That a small group of disciples, followers of a crucified Messiah, would come to dominate the known world, the Roman Empire. Naturally speaking, it comes out of left field. It can't be accounted for. But the Bible testifies that it's the fulfillment of the word of God, his divine plan and purpose. The church is God's own creation in Jesus Christ, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.

And so in this series, we're gonna be looking specifically at the Apostle Paul, but this is really just a continuation of the Book of Acts, which gives to us the origins of the early church, and the church originates from Jesus Christ. Christ is the cornerstone of the church. The church emerges following Christ's death, his resurrection, and then the commission that he gives to the apostles to go to the ends of the earth with the gospel, and then he ascends. And then as we read almost a year ago now, in Acts one verses four through eight, Jesus tells them that they're to go to Jerusalem and await the pouring out of the Holy Spirit which will be the driver behind their mission.

In Acts one verses four through eight, leaving out a few parts just to kind of condense things, Jesus says, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit. And then in verse six, the disciples ask is the kingdom going to come now? And Jesus says, it is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And so the last time we were in Acts I, I named the series The Spirit and the Church. Because that's what we really see going on in the Book of Acts, is how the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples signals the beginning of the church, the beginning of the mission of the church.

You see, the disciples didn't just go out with a message, a teaching. They went forth with power which was not their own, power which came from the person of the Holy Spirit, which came to indwell each, each and every one of them, the church as a whole. And this happened on the day of Pentecost. And we, we have it accounted in Acts two of how when the Holy Spirit descended upon them, the disciples began speaking in foreign languages to those who are gathered in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentacot. And what this symbolized was God's global intent to redeem all people from all nations in Jesus Christ. It signaled that Jesus was not just for the Jews, but that Jesus was in fact for the world. And so after this point, we see the community of the church form. And what we, and what is revealed here is that in fact, these people, those who have been bound together and built upon Jesus Christ, are the new temple of God at that time. The temple in Jerusalem still exists, but it's being displaced by the church and ultimately the, the brick and mortar or or, or granite or whatever it was made out of, a marble, that's ultimately destroyed in 70 AD. And so that old temple is passing away. What is emerging is the new temple, which is formed in Jesus Christ, which is made up of spiritual stones of, of the people of the church. And we see, we hear stories about how God is intent on that being a holy community so that when Ananias and Sapphira, a husband and wife who are part of that early community, decide they're going to lie about how much they were giving to the church, they said, oh, we sold our land and we're giving all the money to the church but in fact, they kept some of it back for themselves, they were struck dead for their deception. We see both the power of God and his intent for the church.

We see how Peter and John stand firm in their testimony, even in the face of opposition from the same people that crucified Jesus. They tell Peter and John to be quiet, to stop talking about Jesus. They say, we can't do anything other than what we've seen, we must testify to that. It's better for us to obey God than to obey man. And what we see gradually is how the command that Jesus gave to the disciples begins to be fulfilled, sometimes not really at the prompting of the disciples themselves. Sometimes it's driven by persecution.

So we see that Philip goes to the Samaritans, people who had a mixed ethnic heritage. They weren't, they weren't entirely Jewish. And among the Samaritans, people turned to Christ. We hear about how the Deacon Philip, he went to the Ethiopian Eunich. He encounters the Ethiopian Eunich along the road, and then he, then he was transported away from, after he had this encounter with the Ethiopian Eunich and introduced the gospel to Africa through this man who was a servant of, of this queen in Africa.

And then we have the story about how Peter and and Cornelius, Peter a Jew, going to a Centurion, Cornelius, and preaching the gospel there. God revealing to him in a dream that in fact God's intent was to bring all people to himself in Christ, and the Holy Spirit descended upon all those gentiles in the household of Cornelius.

And we see how this testimony is fueled even when things are getting tough. One of the deacons, Stephen, for his testimony before the Sanhedrin, is stoned to death, and it drives people, more of the Christians further out from Jerusalem with this message. Now, among those that were in the crowd that stoned Steven to death was a man named Saul of Tarsus, and as we'll see, the remainder of the Book of Acts is dominated by the work of the Holy Spirit, who God's calling upon this man, Saul.

So just recalling who Saul is. Saul, who becomes more familiarly known as as Paul, and I'll get into that as we proceed along here, Saul was a Jew's Jew. He didn't grow up in Israel. He, he grew up in, in Tarsus in Asia Minor, but he was a Pharisee. He was a student of a prominent Pharisaical teacher named Gamaliel, and from the point of the stoning of, of Steven, which he didn't throw any stones himself, but he held the coats so that people could stone Steven. In his zeal, he took it upon himself to try to eradicate the Christians by jailing them, even having them killed.

But God has a different plan for Saul. He stages an intervention on the Damascus road. Saul is confronted by the person of Jesus Christ himself in Acts nine, verses four through five. Luke tells us that Saul fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord? Saul asked. I'm Jesus, whom you are persecuting, he replied. Now, by this encounter, Saul was blinded because he encountered a bright light, and he was directed to ...