Now we come upon another interesting story here in the book of Acts. It seems like it's one after the other. But we have to remember what we saw on Friday. Remember that there was persecution going on in the church in Jerusalem. And so, they were being scattered. And so, what happens? Now remember, at the beginning of Acts, what did Jesus say the Apostles would do that.

 And we see this negative result in what Stephen has proclaimed to the religious leaders of the time. Uh, they are upset with him. He has made some claims and, and one of those claims is that they have always persecuted people and you're just doing it again now. Uh, your father's persecuted the prophets.

And you are just like them. And Stephen is making some bold claims here about who Jesus is. And so, as they are getting angry at him, and you gotta love this language, right? They were enraged, they ground their teeth. You can picture this. While Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazes into heaven and he's able to be given a glimpse of what heaven is like at that present moment.

As I said, that was a long one, but you can also see why I didn't want to break it up. It tells one long story and makes one very big point. The point is that throughout the story of redemption, The truth of God's word has been rejected by the people. They turned away from the words of Moses. And as Stephen said here, Which one of the fathers, of which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?

Once again, another interesting story in the book of Acts. The first thing that we see is that there is so much to be done that the apostles are finding themselves not doing a good job of making sure that everybody's needs are met because there are so many people. We see this here that there is a complaint from the Hellenists against them.

Now the Hellenists would have been Greek speaking Jewish people. And so, they were concerned that they were not getting the distribution for their widows. They were being neglected and so they spoke up and so the Apostles Basically say, we just can't keep up, so there needs to be a group of people, and essentially these are deacons who help other people who, uh, while the apostles take care of spiritual matters.

And so, we find ourselves in another passage talking about signs and wonders and then we see the proclamation of the of the gospel And we see how the apostles are being persecuted Well, we start out here and we see all these signs and wonders being regularly done and people are seeing this and people have trust in this so much so that they're carrying the sick out into the streets and people Are being healed even just having peter's shadow fall upon them.

 We have seen already how the early church had things in common and they shared so that people in need would be taken care of. Now, I talked about when we saw this before in the book of Acts, how this was voluntary, how it was not something that was normative in the entire New Testament. It has been normative in the rest of the history of the church.

And so now we're going to see an example of that, of how they did this. But we're also going to see something very bad that happens because there was not truthfulness in this giving. It was not done out of goodness of heart. There was deception involved. And so, we see here about how they had everything in common.

 Now, remember what we saw earlier on in this chapter. Peter and John go before the leaders in Jerusalem and their question about what they're doing, and they boldly proclaim Christ and him crucified and talk deeply about the gospel. And so now they are being released. We see that they are going out and so they go to their friends and they're reporting what all these people had said to them.

Remember, they were told to stop. And they said, no, not going to, we're going to obey God instead of man. Basically, that is what happened. And so now they are praying to God after they have told their friends what was said. And they talk about how God has made the heaven and the earth. And they pray from the Psalms here.

 So, here we see the continuation of the story of Peter and John healing the lame man. They are taken before the high priests, and they have questions, and they want answers. They want to know by what power, by what name they did this because it's clear that this lame man is now walking. So, Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit and he answers.

He tells them that it's through the name of Jesus. The name, the name of Jesus of Nazareth whom they crucified, but he was raised from the dead. That's the reason this man is able to stand there. It's not by their power. It's nothing that they have done. It is through the name of Jesus, and this is the Jesus that they killed and by the power of God He was raised a victory was won.

 So here we have, at the end of chapter three, Peter once again proclaiming the gospel. And here, it was brought on by the healing of this lame man. Remember, we looked at that on Monday. And we see that the people are astounded. And, and so Peter says something to them. He, he says, why are you looking at this like we did something?

As if by our own power or piety, we healed him. And so, Peter wants it to be very clear. That it is Jesus, it's the name of Jesus and faith in him that has caused this to happen. Peter in and of himself does not have the power to heal. He is trusting in the name of Jesus to do so, and he wants the people to understand that. Because ultimately what does Peter desire? That the people would hear and believe and trust in Jesus themselves that they might be saved in his name. That is the ultimate goal. And so, he tells the story of what happened. He reminds them that of which they know that they handed over Jesus to Pilate.

 So, we find ourselves here in an interesting transitional passage. We started out the book of Acts with Jesus ascending. And so, Jesus is no longer present, the spirit is sent, and the apostles are now the representatives of Jesus spreading the word here on earth. And then we have Pentecost. You know, this is a big thing.

Peter preaches, people come to faith, we have all this happening. And so now what we're going to see is a passage That tells us something that happened in the lives of Peter and John that shows that they have this authority to teach. They have this authority to show that what they are teaching is true.

What we find as we come to this portion of Acts is a group of men who are in transition, right? We have heard that they saw the ascension. We know that Pentecost has been promised and it's coming. It hasn't been called Pentecost yet. Uh, but we know that the Holy Spirit is going to come upon them. We have that promised.

And so, we're somewhere between Jesus being absent from them and the Holy Spirit. Coming at Pentecost and so we see this transitionary phase and it's described to us in with a pretty good detail From Luke and what they're doing is they are going to replace Judas who betrayed Jesus with someone who has some specific qualities now they say that they're going to pick somebody who is with them from the time of that John baptized Jesus until the Ascension.