AD Norris - The Apostles, Their Acts and Their Words - Class 2

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1. 0:00

   This is the 1981 Christadelphian Bible School and this is the second in a series of classes by a brother, Alfred Norris. The subject? Apostles, their Acts and their. Words Good morning, brothers and sisters. The Travis that Stephen had shown in his disputations with the Jews of the Singer of the Libertines, and the Serenians, and the Sedicians and the Alexandrians.

2. 0:30

   Did not forsake him when he was placed on trial. They might almost have expected, in fact, the result that the trial did bring forth. In that matter. For for Stephen to have withstood the challenging and the questions of a group led by Saul of Tarsus, the disciple of Gamaliel, was a clear indication that they had not much opportunity of defeating him in reasoned discussion.

3. 0:54

   They were not able to withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke, we are told. They did with Stephen what they did with his Lord. When his words were too strong for them and his might too great, they resorted to bribery and corruption, and they suborn false witnesses who were to say things about Stephen that were not true in the hope of winning a conviction. They did it about Jesus.

4. 1:22

   But at that time, because it was the will of God that the trial of Jesus should take a particular course, even their witnesses could not agree together. 2 By 2 the confusion of Bale of Babel descended upon their tongues, and they were frustrated in their efforts to have him condemned. So finally, with Jesus, they resorted to a strategy that was quite unlawful, by inviting him quite simply to condemn himself.

5. 1:47

   They said, I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us art thou the Christ, the Son of the blessed? They had no right in law to do this. And if they did it and secured an admission from the Lord, as they did, for he agreed that they were right, he did make such a claim, Then it would have been their duty to find out whether the claim was true, instead of which they took it for granted it was false and condemned him for having made the claim, making themselves the blustingness instead of him.

6. 2:16

   It was much the same with Stephen. They went through the motions of law. They took him before their their courts to answer certain charges spoken by false witnesses, and all the outward appearances were not of a legitimate trial. And the false witness had said he speaks blasphemous words against Moses and against God.

7. 2:37

   Their witness was We have heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place. I think they might have heard him say something which included words like that. But Stephen wouldn’t have said what they said, he said, any more than Jesus had said the same things when they said thou that destroy us the temple, and raises it in three days.

8. 3:01

   Jesus had never said, in spite of their accusations, that he would destroy the temple and raise it in three days. He had said they would destroy the temple, and he would raise another one in three days. He said it in John chapter 2, at the first cleansing of the temple. Destroy this temple, he said. And in three days I will raise it up. And he went that when they had brought about the destruction of their own temple by their perversity, when God had caused the veil of the temple to be rented twain from top to bottom, when it was no longer accepted by God as its proper place of worship, nor were their priests accepted as his priests. Then the time would come when Jesus would erect another temple, when the time would come, when neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem would men worship the Father. For God is a spirit.

9. 3:48

   And they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And when they would flock to him sheep from other places, many to join the one fold of the flock of the Lord Jesus Christ, and worship him wherever the gospel was preached. Jesus had indeed forewarned them that the time would come when they would not be left one stone upon another, that should not be cast down when this temple was destroyed by the Romans. And if that was postponed for 40 years, it was nevertheless a true thing that should happen.

10. 4:15

    Stephen could well have repeated that. And they could well have perverted it in what they said, and with the zeal for the temple that they all showed, that would have been a good enough ground to place him on trial, or at least a good enough excuse. And on trial they placed him and the high priest said, giving Stephen the opportunity to speak. Are these things so we will not follow him through the detailed knowledge of the history of Israel that he revealed? Safe to say that.

11. 4:47

    The gist of Stevens speech and answer to their charges was this. God was not bound to any particular place of worship. There had been numerous occasions in their own history when he had shown that when he called Abraham when he was yet in order of the Kaldis, and Abraham became God’s man worshipping God when he was with Abraham when he brought in Kalam, and Abraham was still God’s man worshipping God. When he accepted Abraham, when he journeyed to and fro in the land of Canaan, but as a Pilgrim, not as a resident, and still Abraham could worship God, that he was with Joseph. When Joseph was in in jealousy.

12. 5:27

    So to those who took him into Egypt, and Joseph could worship God, those dwelling in a foreign land, that he was with the people when they came out of the land under the leadership of Moses. When, having rejected Moses once in Egypt, who made the judgment a divider, words very similar to those that Jesus used about himself, Moses made the Tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness.

13. 5:50

    Our fathers had that, he said. But that wasn’t in Jerusalem. You couldn’t tell from one day or another where it would be. It wandered all over the place when camp was pitched, and when camp was struck, they were entitled to demolish it and put it together again. And it was God’s place of worship wherever they put it. Of course it was a destined place. They shouldn’t worship outside it or in other places, but still it didn’t matter where it was, and it could be in many places, even in the land itself.

14. 6:19

    Steve could have said, and by virtue of his words did say. In effect, the place of worship of God had not always been Jerusalem. It was mostly Shiloh in the earliest days with high places around. Only when Shiloh was decimated by the Philistines, after the people rebelled and the Tabernacle was divided into two parts, with the building in Gibeon and the Ark in Kiryati, Arim, and then in Jerusalem, did God begin to make known that there was another place he had in mind.

15. 6:48

    And only in David’s days was Jerusalem designated when its citadel was taken away from the Gentiles. But only in Solomon’s days was the temple built. You had to wait a long time, Stephen seemed to tell them, Before Jerusalem became the capital and before the Temple there became the authorized and the only authorized place of worship. And you’ve had a long history since then. And in fact your temple has undergone many vicissitudes since then.

16. 7:13

    It didn’t last very long. It must have been founded something after 1000 BC and it was thoroughly destroyed. A little after 600 BC, it could only have lasted about 350 years. The one you’re worshipping now is in quite, quite new. It was brought into being by Haggai and Zechariah in the days of the returned people going back to the land after Nebuchadnezzar’s days, it was very heavily increased and augmented.

17. 7:39

    So it’s almost to become a new place by Herod the Great. But Herod the Great was not very long ago. Was he 40 and six years? You said yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ. 40 and six years has this temple been in building. So by now we might have got to, what, 55 years or something of the kind?

18. 7:54

    That’s the only life this temple in the form you now see it has had. God can change things. If He wills and He does will, He’s not bound to any particular place. His own nature is not bound to any place at all. And would you turn now? See how Stephen elaborates that point about the last opportunity he has of elaborating anything? I’d be glad if you would.

19. 8:18

    I think it. Would be best if you would turn to the prophecy of Isaiah and find the last chapter in the first verses, Isaiah chapter 66. And I will have before me both that passage and the one in the Acts and invite you to notice the way the things developed. So Isaiah chapter 66.

20. 8:51

    And verse one. Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house that ye build unto me? And where is the place of my rest? For all these things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been saith the Lord. Now I’m sure your eyes have been going on to the rest of that verse.

21. 9:17

    And I’m sure the retentive memories of Stephen’s judges were going on to the rest of that verse too, when Stephen suddenly broke off from reading that verse and said something quite different. So go on reading that verse. Would you in fact start again at the beginning? And I will now read from the Acts.

22. 9:33

    Harvey at the most High Dwelleth knocked in temples made with hands and set the prophet. Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. What house will you build unto me, Set the Lord? Or what is the place of my rest? Hath but my hand made all these things ye stiff, necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears. You don’t always resist the Holy Spirit, as your Father’s did. So do ye and their minds had been hoping to go on with But to this man will I look even to hinders of a contrite spirit, And that trembleth at my word.

23. 10:07

    You’re not like that, said Stephen. Savor those words if you like, but you’re the very opposite. You stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. You do always resist the Holy Spirit as your father’s did. So do ye. Can you wonder at their reaction? And they were pricked in their heart. Oh, no, they weren’t.

24. 10:33

    There had been on the day of Pentecost, some Jews had, and 3000 had been baptized. Their consciences have been touched, but not now. Now they were outraged. Stephen was not only attacking their building as they thought, he was attacking them. They didn’t deserve to have a temple. Stephen was saying. They deserve to be cast out and replaced by another people.

25. 10:52

    He seemed to be hinting. And so they were cut to the heart, cut to the quick. We would say, wouldn’t we? We would take the expression that we use when you take a pair of scissors and you cut a nail and you go too deep and the sudden pain strikes you and you’re angry with yourself.

26. 11:10

    And Stephen was doing that to them. They were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth, and the men became wild beasts. And they dragged him from their place of judgement, and took him to the place where, against all Roman law, they committed the ACT to be executing him on the testimony of false witnesses and in response to the anger of their hearts.

27. 11:30

    And they stoned him, and the young men laid their garments. At the feet of another young man, whose name was Saul, whom Stephen had defeated an argument, who now became the leader of Stephen’s executioners, and Stephen died under the rain of stones. They had seen his face as he made his final declaration of faith.

28. 12:00

    They beheld his faith as though it was the face of an Angel. They heard his words as they put him to death. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Lord lay not this sin to their charge. And Saul was watching, and Saul was listening, and words were spoken there. Which could this man Saul have heard before?

29. 12:31

    Even if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t forget them as they were spoken then. Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. Lord Jesus received my spirit.

30. 12:46

    Saul was a young man. That he was a man in the position of authority that he did hold suggests that his youth must have taken to the age of 30 or so.

31. 12:59

    And if that was the nature of his youth, which fits in very well with his describing himself in the later stages of his preaching as an old man some 40 years of experience lying between, then he would only have been some four or five years at the most, perhaps only two or three.

32. 13:17

    Junior to his master, Paul was about the same age as Jesus of Nazareth, a little younger, but not much. He had been brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel. His formative years as a Rabbi to be were spent in Jerusalem. It is at least possible, and the best very likely, that he lived in Jerusalem, while the Lord was preaching in Judea and in Galilee, and in Samaria and in Decapolis. It is certain that if he were in that position, he must have heard about the activities of the Lord, must have known about the conspiracies against him, and must the view of his present attitude have joined in them in spirit, have been one of those hostile to the Lord’s teaching.

33. 14:13

    Might, even though perhaps he hadn’t yet attained that seniority, have been amongst those who were consenting to his death when the Lord was placed on trial. In the High priests judgement hall.

34. 14:25

    But at least he must have known about him. And there was a certain young man, a rich young man who came to Jesus and said, good master, what good thing must I do that I may inherit eternal life? We considered him yesterday and put him on the shelf. For a while now, we take him down and examine him a little more closely.

35. 14:49

    He was young. Well, he would still not be old three or four years later, would he? He was rich. Paul had enjoyed all things, and had counted that done that he might win Christ when he lost them, and he had known how to abound. He must have been rich too. He was a ruler, Pauline consenting to his desk to destroy that.

36. 15:12

    He too was amongst the ruling category, perhaps the Sanhedrin member. He counted himself a righteous man. All these things that I kept from my youth up. Paul, defending himself, later said my manner of life from my youth up the same praise. Know all the people he was amongst. The company of those who he later described as being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to establish his own righteousness did not submit himself to the righteousness of God and went away sorrowful. We don’t know that the one who went away sorrowful went also away angry.

37. 15:50

    But he might have done. We don’t know at what point Saul of Tasas, of whom we rehear Forsook so far, the traditions of the Gamaliel who taught him. As to become a persecutor of the faith. But he did. Gamaliel wasn’t like that. Although Paul so revered the memory of this man in his unregenerate days, that man had counselled against persecution. I said Let these men.

38. 16:14

    Go. Don’t do them any harm. If this is the will of God, you won’t be able to stop it, and you might be found fighting against God. This man, Saul, fought against God quite cheerfully and deliberately. Something had happened to make him estranged from the teaching of Gamaliel, and if it was that, being rejected by the law when a rich young man came to him.

39. 16:33

    Exacerbated by the manner in which Stephen had hopelessly defeated him in argument that might account for his bitterness. The Lord had loved that rich young man. We are about to consider something of the career of one who wrote about himself when it pleased God who called me from my mother’s womb. He was a marked young man. This Paul was before he was born, like Jeremiah when he was born, God watched him through his career and guided him to the point when something would happen to him that would make him a disciple of the Lord.

40. 17:10

    Conjecture. Yes, of course. It’s conjecture. But sanctified conjecture I think, fitting in with the characters of the people concerned, giving us a a pleasant detective research in the words of the scriptures, leading us to an appreciation of this man whom we are now to consider. Which is perhaps heightened rather than diminished by it.

41. 17:30

    A little excitement to which the word of God leads us. But now Saul is conniving at a murder. Now he is witnessing an execution he has provoked. Consenting to a lynch law. And Stephen has said, Lord Jesus received my spirit, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And if Saul was that rich young man, if Saul was, whether that rich young man or not, in Jerusalem at the time, which he so easily could have been, he had heard words like that before, For from his cross, or while being knelt to the cross, the Lord had said. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And what is the difference between that? And Lord lay not this sin to their charge. Stephen was engaged in an act of memory, reminding the people of words that many of them might have heard before, saying what Jesus said when they were killing him. It would be the hardest to forget that if you heard it before, it wouldn’t be easy in any case. And then?

42. 18:40

    As the Lord was about to expire, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And now Stephen is saying to him, Lord Jesus receive my spirit.

43. 18:53

    We who hear both those sets of words look back upon the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ. See the? Horror of the great darkness which has come upon him, know that he has been rung from his lips. The words My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And see him enduring his suffering alone, as a criminal would have had to. And yet we see the faithful, though pinioned hands of the Lord, stretching out into the places above and saying, in effect, Father, I know you’re there. You won’t let me down.

44. 19:23

    I die in faith, Father. Into thy hands I commend my spirit. And now we find Stephen, almost as it were, reminding the Lord, Lord, you put your trust in your Father, and he hurt you. Do the same for me now, Will you, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit?

45. 19:47

    And he fell asleep. What strange words to use. I know it’s a technical term for dying, particularly dying when you’re going to rise again, as Stephen so surely will. But Luke’s worth putting. It mingles together the horror of that place of execution. And the bloody death that Stephen died with the innocence of a child saying it’s prayers and going to sleep. He’s just said his prayers.

46. 20:18

    Lord Jesus received my spirit. Lord, no not listen to their charge. And then it’s almost as though he climbed into his comfortable cotton, puts the coverlet over him and falls asleep in peace. When he had said this, he fell asleep. So wonderfully does Luke. Picture for us the innocence, the calmness, the confidence, almost the joy of this man. And Saul was consenting unto his death. Those words could not have been exposed from his mind by anything.

47. 20:56

    They were there, and so was that sight. However, the immediate result was quite other than Saul’s conversion, it resulted in heightened, redoubled activities in a bitter persecution, such as the communities in Jerusalem and elsewhere had never known they that were scattered abroad. We read in chapter 8. And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church that was at Jerusalem, And they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles and devout men, carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him.

48. 21:43

    As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and hailing men and women committed them to prison. They therefore that were scattered abroad. Saul ran amok. He would have wiped out the church if he could. He himself says that many people were held to prison and to death by his deeds.

49. 22:04

    But the effect was not quite what Saul was working for, though that was scattered abroad, we are told, went everywhere preaching the word. So a gospel hitherto confined to the environs of Jerusalem, spread outwards through Judea and into Samaria, as the Lord had said. They were beginning to act. He should be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the world. Now they had got as far as Samaria before another three chapters have gone, they will have gone further still into strictly Gentile territory, and after that there will be no limit to where they will go and Saul. Humanly speaking, started it all. Started it all by trying to stop it all. Saul’s first missionary work was done against his own will, by scattering aboard the preachers, by blowing the seed into the winds and letting the seed settle to the ground and take root.

50. 23:01

    That was Saul’s work, humanly speaking. Why he had lost. It seems all thought that he might be found fighting against God, lost it or shouted it down.

51. 23:20

    What do you do when something is nagging at your conscience and you don’t intend to take any notice? Or you turn up the sound of the high five, or switch on the telly? Or you take an aspirin and go to bed? You do anything to get the thought out of your mind. And if the noise still keeps on digging in, then you go to somebody else and start talking about something different. You shut it down.

52. 23:42

    That’s what you do, don’t you? And it doesn’t work. And it didn’t work with Saul and when he got to his. Worst point. So he got to the point where he was now ripe for the change asking of the chief priests. We are told in Chapter 9, Letters to Damascus that going right outside normal Jewish territory and going into a city where. One would think the Jewish writ did not run, but Damascus was one of the cities of the Decapolis and perhaps that was why it did run.

53. 24:13

    Asking of the high priest letters, he went to Damascus, intending to hail more men and women, if he found any of this way, to bring them to the death, to trial in Jerusalem, and then to whatever might follow. And he was well on his way to doing that when approaching Damascus. He was stricken down. You know the passage Acts, Chapter 9, verse three. And as he journeyed, it came to pass. As he drew nigh to Damascus, and suddenly thou shined down about him a light from heaven, and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord?

54. 24:57

    And the Lord, said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. And the men that journey with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man, and saw the roast from the earth. And when his eyes were opened, he saw no man. But they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight and did neither eat nor drink.

55. 25:34

    He was going out to Damascus, breathing threatenings and slaughter the most, one has told us. He had a set purpose for which he would not be deflected to go to the purse the disciples might dust, I have gone, and bring them to what he would perversely have called justice.

56. 25:50

    And he was strapped down, And the voice said, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the Goad. Why persecutest thou me?

57. 26:09

    He doesn’t just bring home to Saul that he is committing a far worse offence than merely hurting men, but he is going against someone who is now at the right hand of God in heaven. It does that, but it does more. It perhaps revealed to him, as it must surely reveal to us, that when anyone does anything against the servants of God, or indeed against the will of the Lord, it hurts. Hurts in the heavenly places, hurts the Lord himself. Saul, you’re persecuting me.

58. 26:43

    You had those stones thrown at me. You are crucifying me afresh. You’re travelling under foot, the Son of God. You are counting the blood of the covenant wherewith you might have been sanctified. An unholy thing. That’s what men do to Jesus when they turn against him and hurt his disciples or reject His words. That’s what we would do to our Lord were we to reject His ways or go astray, or be ruthless with those who trust in him. We will be persecuting him.

59. 27:18

    We will be trampling under foot the Son of God. We will be counting the blood of the UN covenant, the covenant whereby we were sanctified, an unholy thing. We will be hurting our Lord. You remember how the Lord said I was sick and in prison, and you came not unto me? I was naked, and you gave me no clothes.

60. 27:40

    I was hungry. You gave me no food. And you picture the Lord beholding A disciple, being neglected by other disciples, and given no clothing in the cold. And the Lord shivers You picture the disciple being hungry and devoid of the means of daily living, and no food is given him. And the Lord Pines he that hurteth you and despise of you, he despiseth me, said the Lord. Not just he is doing a thing as bad as that, but I feel it. So says our Lord.

61. 28:12

    So he said to Saul, Saul, Saul, why persecute astound me? He’s hard to lead to kick against the pricks. I’m sure every other donkey feels the same. You stop in your tracks and you are goaded on by the nail in the sharp stick, and you still stay doggedly where you are, and it hurts the donkey. Saul, you donkey, why don’t you turn round and go the right way? So the Lord is saying to him as explicitly as that, stop kicking against the goat.

62. 28:45

    Go the way, then you know you must go. It wasn’t. So much a sudden conversion as a sudden yielding to conversion that Saul underwent on that Damascus Rd. He had inside his heart, suspected all along that things were not right. The way he was going. There was still that haunting face, as it had been the face of an Angel that couldn’t be expunged from the eyes of his mind.

63. 29:11

    There was still those words of Stephen. I see the Lord Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and now something from above is talking to him. Who art thou, Lord? And there was still that calm falling asleep, of the man who had said, Lord Jesus received my spirit. Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And the man ripe for conversion collapsed, abandoned all his rebellions, allowed himself to be led by the hand experience, the blindness which the Lord had said, came to all people who rejected him.

64. 29:52

    Fools and blind they were. Yet they said, they saw and was met by a man who had every reason to be afraid of him, who had heard by many of this man how he had destroyed the people of God, but responded with chastened bravery to the commandment of the Lord, and went to greet the chosen vessel.

65. 30:16

    Brother Saul, he said in anticipation received thy sight. And then arise, why carry us? Thou wash away thy sins, calling upon the name of the Lord? And Saul did that.

66. 30:35

    And what a change there was in the confession of this man at that stage. Hitherto it had been all these things have I observed from my youth up, he could later say about his former way of life and thinking my manner of life from my youth up know. All the people I was.

67. 30:54

    What was he? A Hebrew of the Hebrews. A Hebrew child of Hebrew parents. A true born Hebrew. A Pharisee of the Pharisees. A faithful Pharisee with a Pharisaic father of the tribe of Benjamin circumcised the 8th day, touching the righteousness which is of the law blameless, all those things Was this I profited in the Jews religion of many my equals not just a Pharisee of the Pharisees, but a super Pharisee better than the others. He could stand side by side with his fellow Pharisees and think the publicans profiting in the deuter religion above many mine equals.

68. 31:30

    That’s what this Saul was. And from all that fragile fabric of righteousness he retreated. So it crumbled into the dust, shattered and confessed his sins. And now why, Tarius, thou arise and be baptized, and call upon the name of the Lord, and wash away thy sins, said Ananias to him. And he did.

69. 32:00

    And Saul the persecutor became Saul the disciple, still Saul. I’ve called him Paul once or twice today, but that name doesn’t belong to him as a Christian name as yet. That’s yet to come. He still saw until we reached Chapter 13. And Saul had the same courage in his new convictions as he had had personality in his old he said about the new job, with the same zeal he had shown about the old job and straight. Away in the synagogues of Damascus preached Jesus that he is Christ and the Son of God.

70. 32:36

    It’s not quite easy to reconstruct for sure the events in Damascus. Appeal of something over three years is spanned by them. He preaches there. He goes to Arabia. He goes back to Damascus and preaches again. So he tells us that in the letter to the Galatians. But after his second episode in Damascus, it becomes plain that Damascus is now too hot to hold him. He begins an experience of the hostility of his former allies that was to last in the rest of his life, and human speaking custom his life too.

71. 33:08

    His fellow Jews hated him, now with a devouring of consuming and implacable hatred. The leaders of the people would stop at nothing to destroy Saul, as they had stopped at nothing to destroy his master in the years to come. Saul’s life would never be safe, humanly speaking, so long as the Jews of Jerusalem and those who followed them had their say.

72. 33:29

    And he experienced the first taste of that in Damascus when the polygons, his life and the God around the city was so serious. That the only way to get him out was to bundle him up into a basket and let him down from the wall like so much laundry. Very humiliating for a proud Pharisee. Saul remembers it almost with humiliation, when he writes to the Corinthians in the second letter, and says almost as an afterthought, after detailing his persecutions. And in Damascus, the governor under Aretas, The king, was there, and I was let down in a basket from the walls almost to saying, Imagine that me in the frame of mind I had then. And he went to Jerusalem, so the chapter tells us. And there he was faced with a double problem, that as soon as his fellow Jewish unbelievers got to know about it, his life would be not worth a moment’s purchase again. And that he wasn’t too well received by the believers themselves.

73. 34:23

    He was falling very nicely between 2 stools, this converted soul. The Jews now hated him. The disciples didn’t trust him. You can’t really blame them. They’d had plenty of reason to mistrust him. They’d suffered grievously at his hand. They’d loved Stephen. So what was to be done? Well, you know, don’t you? Acts Chapter 9, verse 26.

74. 34:48

    And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he are saved to join himself to the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple, but Barnabas. But Barnabas took him. And brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him. And how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.

75. 35:15

    Barnabas filling the role that we’re coming to expect of him. Called by the apostles, the Son of Consolation. The man always ready with the helping hand. The man who sold his goods and brought the money to feed the poor. The man who now takes the outcast, who nobody loves and brings him to the apostles, and by his own trust in this man inspires their trust.

76. 35:39

    And now they do believe that he’s a disciple. We haven’t seen the last of Barnabas in that kind of capacity, not by any means. But I hope we’re beginning to warm, warm to him. He’s a marvelous man, this Barnabas, so the disciples. Receive him, and Saul has a free passport to go where he will amongst the believers.

77. 36:00

    He engages in their work with them. They gross and know and like him. And he preaches again in Jerusalem, but that can’t go on for long. Verse 28. And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem. And he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians. But they went about to slay him, which, when the Brethren knew, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him forth to Tarsus.

78. 36:27

    They took him to the coast. The most natural assumption there is that Saul being sent away from the scene of their hostilities to his own hometown of Tarsus, would have gone straight across by sea in a roughly normally direction. Most maps draw it as though he did, and he might have done 2 though his own later words about preaching the gospel in Syria and Synesia see us that perhaps he might have gone round by land and done a bit of preaching on the way, Not very much you would see him because the developments come later.

79. 36:55

    But amongst Jews it seems Paul might have started preaching the word. I saw it as a new disciple, and there we lose him for a little. He retires into obscurity, and Moses is back in Midian, as was the Moses of the Old Testament times in the House of rural his father-in-law for 40 years now.

80. 37:15

    For a short time, we don’t. Know how long Saul goes into obscurity. It was no doubt a good thing in the purpose of God, that his preparation should continue in this way. But he would be called when the time came and the time did come. There were, however, important developments before that could happen.

81. 37:35

    So far, the apostles have begun. They have preached in Jerusalem. It has spread through Judea Philip going back to Chapter 8 for a moment, one of those seven appointed to adjudicate over the matter of the widow’s relief. Had gone as far as Samaria, and had preached the word there to a city of Samaria, perhaps Syca, where the woman of Samaria had been, and where the Lord had first said, They that worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth. It might be in that company, where some men had already believed in Jesus, that the gospel took its new foothold. When Philip went N to a city of Samaria, and when he got there marvelous works were done by Philip, the apostles in Jerusalem got to know about it.

82. 38:20

    And what did they do? There’s a legend about the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the sooner it is laid the better. And that legend is that they were reluctant men, that they were parochial Jews at heart, that they didn’t want to preach outside the Jewish community, that they had to be pushed and shrugged before they would.

83. 38:39

    And it’s just not true. What they were is men of responsibility. They heard the Lord Jesus Christ say Quite. Plainly in the Mark mark record go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and they want them in to rebel against that. They heard the Lord Jesus Christ say in the Matthew 28 record that they should go and make disciples of all nations and they want them in to rebel against that.

84. 39:05

    They’ve heard the Lord well. The Lord say in Luke chapter 24 that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in His name amongst all nations beginning at Jerusalem, and they wouldn’t go against that. And they have been. Told by the Lord in Acts chapter one, that the gospel must be preached from Judea, by his witnesses, from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria, and as I have said, to the uttermost parts of the earth. The Jerusalem beginning had taken place. They would move to the other areas when the signs were given to them.

85. 39:36

    That now was the time, and this was the way to move. Philip started the next one in Samaria and what did they do? They sent Peter and John. With the obvious intention of trying to find out whether Peter and John were satisfied with what they saw. This was an authentic work of God, and Peter and John were so very satisfied that they clearly went back with a very good report, and the gospel was confirmed with preaching in Samaria.

86. 40:00

    Spirit gifts were bestowed as a sign that this was God’s work, but there was further yet to go. Samaritans were a kind of halfway house. Neither quite Jews nor quite Gentiles. Probably descendants of those who were brought in by Isa Haddon, the Egyptian, the Assyrian king, when the Israelites were deported from the Northern Kingdom to populate their cities, and who compromised very nicely by serving the Lord and worshipping their own gods. That’s the kind of people, perhaps, through whom these Samaritans were descended.

87. 40:30

    The Jews didn’t trust them, but still they weren’t quite Gentiles. They did hold the Pentateu. They did believe in at least the earliest part of the word of God. So. Pure Gentiles. They’ve not come in on any scale as yet. That was to be the next move, and that takes us to Acts Chapter 10.

88. 40:52

    There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian Italian band, a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much arms to the people and prayed to God all way. Obviously he was quite all right, wasn’t he, this Cornelius? He didn’t need anything more, did he? He was a righteous man.

89. 41:11

    He lived well, He gave alms, he prayed to God. Obviously salvation was well. It was being given to him on a plate, wasn’t it? So good was this man. No, not that. Send men to Joppa, where there is one Simon Peter lodging with one Simon of Tanner. He will tell thee what thou oughtest to do.

90. 41:33

    He hadn’t started. He was just fruitful material for salvation. But he needed, like everybody else, to go through the right procedure to know about the Lord, to see his need of the Lord’s death, to be aware of his own nature, to take the gesture of obedience and become a disciple. Profiting then from what the Lord had done, Peter will tell you, sent for him.

91. 41:54

    Meanwhile, in the Providence of God, Peter in Joppa was pacing the housetop. He was waiting for his meal, of course, but he was. On the House stop. And he fell into a vision, and he saw sheep let down from heaven with all manner of unclean beasts and birds and creeping things in it. And the voice came saying, Arise, Peter slay and eat. And the Jew in Peter came to the surface as it would in the dream, wouldn’t it you you’d say the way you feel in the dream, there’ll be no inhibitions there. And he said, Lord, nothing common or uncleaner than any time past my lips.

92. 42:30

    And the vision came three times, and each time with the words What God hath 10s that call not thou common? And Peter stood on the housetop and wondered and pondered, until they called him down to meet the friends who’ve just arrived. Gentile friends, important gentile friends. The chief officer of Cornelius household, Cornelius was not doing anything. By hearts he sent the right people for the job, the most imposing people he could send.

93. 42:57

    I wonder where Peter was thinking in his mind when he placed him on a housetop. Joppa was the place from which Jonah had set sail in the ship of Tashish. He was indeed trying to get away from it all, but it was a place where you could get away from it all, a good place for exporting your feelings or your person or your views or your teaching or your gospel. Peter had been to Samaria.

94. 43:20

    He’d gone out through litter and he’d arrived at Joppa. Or was he waiting for a ship to take him overseas? Was he wanting God to tell him how he could use that second key to open the door to the Gentiles? I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven. Well, if he was, he wasn’t directed that way, but he got his directions nevertheless. Go with these men to see Zarya and talk to them. It was a strange meeting of persons. That wasn’t it.

95. 43:51

    A possibly retired centurion in genteel surroundings. Gentile by thinking elegant, rich, socially high in the scale. Oh Cornelius says the message to him in his dream. Just send a messenger or more than one. Sent somebody anyway and goes to the leather workers place. Don’t mind about the smell, just go there and fetch it. An ex fisherman.

96. 44:20

    And he will tell you what to do and think of the humility of that man who sent his best servants to go to a tannery and ignoring what a tannery inevitably would smell like, or the house where the tunnel lives, fetch A fisherman and take him home, and almost worship him when he got there.

97. 44:44

    There was no I thought he would come and strike his hand up on the place. As the leper Neyman had said before, he learned better ways. Cornelius, for all his fine clothes, knew the leprosy beneath and didn’t have to be told he would do whatever it was the Prophet told him to do when Peter came. Peter, on his part, has his problems. He might smell of fish and he might smell of leather, but at least he was a disciple of the Lord and he was a Jew, and things unclean didn’t pass his lips. And now he was going and talking to Gentiles. You know, he said, beginning a rather tactless but highly proper speech to Cornelius.

98. 45:22

    You know how it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company with a Gentile. But God has told me that I should not call any man common or unclean. You know what I think about you, don’t you? He said. You know what kind of people we Jews think you Gentiles are. I would have told you so if I hadn’t been forbidden. But as it is now, I know I’ve got to come and preach to you. That was a part of Peter’s experience too, learning the ways of the Lord by humbling himself too, and recognising the Gentiles to a people.

99. 45:51

    There’s to be no longer in the ambit of the gospel, the distinction between clean and unclean meats. There wasn’t to be that either. Literally, in due time, there is to be now a recognition that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, There’s neither bond nor free. There’s neither male nor female. You’re all one in Christ Jesus, and he preached, and Cornelius and his household listened.

100. 46:14

     And there’s no reason to think that Peter had any reluctance then to accept the consequences of what he was doing. But those that were with him, perhaps were different. Several people had gone with him to Cornelius household, and at that point there came the gift from heaven. At that point those men, prematurely, as it were, began to speak with tongues, and Peter, possibly relieved that the need to argue, was taken out of his lips, said, who can forbid water? That these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Spirit as well as we.

101. 46:46

     And they were baptized to the great joy of the household, to the deep satisfaction of Peter, who had now used his second key with effect. And the apostles at Jerusalem, what did they think? Well, I suppose this is one of the stones on which the legend of the apostles of reluctant men is built. Chapter 11, verse one.

102. 47:07

     And the apostles and brethren that were at Judea, they heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. And when Peter was coming to Jerusalem, there that were of the circumcision contended with him saying, Thou wentest into Milan, circumcised, and delete with them. Now of course in Jerusalem there would be apostles, and there would be other members of the Ecclesia.

103. 47:26

     And no doubt the apostles were better instructed than some of the other members were. And there might have been some Jewish converts who really were filled with distaste of what Peter had done. But the apostles wanted to know. They needed to find out. They would not take steps in the dark. They would do as they knew.

104. 47:42

     The Lord wanted them to do so. Peter had better account for himself. And Peter did. Told about his visions, told about his preaching, told about the pouring out of the gifts from heaven, and who was I that I should withstand God, he said. And their reaction was that of generous minded men who really wanted this to happen, but wanted to be sure. And when they heard this, they glorified God, saying, Then hath God also unto the Gentiles granted repentance unto life? Fellow Gentiles, aren’t you glad?