Well, we are now on the other side of the council at Jerusalem. We've been seeing this whole movement of the gospel going to the Gentiles and at the council of Jerusalem, they decided that you did not have to be circumcised. So now we come to chapter 16 and something very confusing is happening. Paul has Timothy circumcised, or it says that he circumcised him.

This council at Jerusalem was a very big deal. As we've seen, a big part of the Book of Acts is this movement. Of the gospel going out to the gentiles not just going to the Jews to the Hebrew people but out into the whole world and then we come up against this for lack of a better term obstacle In the middle of acts these people are saying hey if you want to be circumcised if you want to be saved You have to be circumcised.

 As we come to chapter 15, we're seeing this transition we've been seeing in the book of Acts come to a head. We have seen that there's been some resistance to the idea of Gentiles coming to faith, but now we're getting down to it that something is going to have to be done. And so, we see here as chapter 15 starts out that some people came down and they were saying what their beef was with Gentiles coming to faith.

As we come to the end of this chapter, we're seeing something that we have seen before, persecution for the disciples. Now, we have Paul here at Lystra, and something very bad happens to him, right? He is stoned, and they are doing this to try and stop the message of the gospel. But what is the message that we've been seeing in the book of Acts so far, the message of the gospel can't be stopped.

 The story continues to be the same here in Acts, doesn't it? The gospel is going out to the Gentiles, but they're still preaching in the synagogues. And so, we see here at Iconium, there were both who believed, but then there were those who stirred up people to try and get them to not believe. There was persecution.

 We've been following this turn in the book of Acts for quite a while now. We have seen that the gospel is turning from the Jewish people now out to the Gentiles, that they might come to faith in Jesus. And so here we see that Paul and Barnabas are going to the synagogues. They're teaching, uh, they're teaching Hebrew people, Jewish people.

So, we have learned and continue to see that nothing will stop the advancement of the gospel. Man may come against it, even kings, but God will prevail. And so, the story here in Acts is once again shifting. It's going to show us even further how the gospel is going to the Gentiles. And so, we see this here as we start looking at the church in Antioch. Now there were people there, Barnabas, Simeon, let's see, Lucius, Manan, and Saul. And so, they were praying, they were worshiping, and they received a message from the Holy Spirit telling them that Barnabas and Saul are to be set apart. There's work that they have to do.

As I said, this is just the perfect story for the Christmas season. Someone being struck down by God and eaten by worms. Yeah, this is an interesting story, to say the least. I always remember it because when I was in my early high school years, I listened to a thrash metal band, a Christian thrash metal band, called Vengeance Rising. And they had a song entitled, “Herod's Violent Death” that was about this incident in the book of Acts. I listened to it this morning, I don't recommend it that you listen to it. It's not terrible But it's just not very good either, but it tells the story and talks about this passage. And so, here we have these five verses what in the world is Luke telling us this story for?

As the book of Acts continues, we're starting to see this continued story of the persecution that is going on near Jerusalem. Well, we start out learning that James, the son of Zebedee, the brother of John, is killed by Herod. Now, Herod sees that this was popular. The Jews liked the fact that, well, that this persecution was happening, that these people that they did not agree with were being taken care of by Herod.

 The story of the shift of the missionary focus in Acts. continues through chapter 11 here, doesn't it? We see that there is now a church in Antioch. And so, what had happened was, when Stephen was persecuted, when Stephen was martyred, uh, the believers spread out, and they went to all these different cities.

We see Phoenicia and Cyprus, Antioch. While they were speaking the word, and notice what it says here, to no one except Jews. We've talked about this earlier on, specifically on Wednesday. about how they were just going to those who were clean, those who were ritually clean, that they were the ones who were Hebrew people.

 Now, I know it feels like this, what I'm calling the shift in the book of Acts is taking a long time to happen. This is a whole lot of story and there's some repetition, but this just reminds us just how significant this shift is. This shift of going to Jerusalem and Judea, to the ends of the earth.

There's a big gap there because these people were outsiders. They were unclean. The Gentiles were not a part of the people of God. And so, this is going to require a whole lot of understanding, a whole lot of, for lack of a better word, proof that this shift is happening. And so, we have quite a bit here in the book of Acts when we think about it.

If you will remember back to Friday, you'll remember I said that we were seeing a shift in the Book of Acts. Now, let's remember what is happening in the book of Acts. What is the general theme? That the gospel will go to Jerusalem, Judea, then Samaria, and then the ends of the earth. And so, we're seeing that shift here.

Primarily the gospel has gone in the book of Acts to Hebrew folk, to the Jewish people. But now we're seeing this shift, and we had Cornelius and all of that stuff on Friday. Well, now Peter has gone to those Gentiles and he is doing something. Well, what is that something? He is proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.

 So, this is a rather well-known portion of the book of acts. Once again, I can remember from my children's Bible. It was kind of like a comic book style of Bible from when I was a child. I can remember this story rather vividly. Uh, I'm guessing that is because the image of a sheet with four ropes at the corners with a whole bunch of animals being, uh, descended was It was sort of bizarre to me at seven or eight years old, and as I always think back on that image and think back on that story, the normal thing that I think about is, OK, this means that I can eat pretty much any kind of meat.

 So, we find the story here in Acts shifting back to Peter for a while. Remember we started in Jerusalem and the gospel went out after Pentecost. We've seen Peter and John doing healing, but then we had this detour. We had the death of Stephen, then we had Saul who was approving of this, then we had the conversion of Saul, then we had Saul proclaiming the gospel coming to Jerusalem, and then the last part that we looked at on Monday.

 One thing that is always interesting in working through a book of the Bible, sort of slowly, is that you find the stories that you, that you know very well. Maybe they were Sunday school stories, such as here's the conversion of Saul being knocked down and the scales on his eyes falling off. Those are stories we always remember.

And then you move on to the next part and you see some interesting details that you know you've learned before, but probably forgot because you were focused. On the other story, and there's really some beautiful stuff here that I think we often forget about the conversion of Saul. And one thing that is just amazing to see is that he immediately proclaims Jesus in the synagogues.

And so here we have come to a major turning point. in the story in the book of Acts. Remember what we are seeing here in Acts is how the gospel went to Jerusalem, Judea, then Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth. And now we are going to see the instrument that God is going to use to take the gospel to the Gentiles.

Now from what we have seen about Saul thus far, this is not at all what we would expect. He is the one who has been persecuting the church. He is a Hebrew of Hebrews. How is this person who is, and we learn from the rest of the New Testament and his writings, how adamant he was in the ways of the Hebrew, of the Jewish faith, and now he is the one who's going to bring the faith to the Gentiles.

 We find ourselves in another well-known story and a fantastic story about the advancement of the gospel. That is the underlying message that we have seen so far in the book of Acts. Remember this underlying theme that we're looking at, that Jesus said that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea.

To Samaria and to the ends of the earth in other words the gospel is going out to all people the Hebrew faith is expanding to Include the gentiles through faith in Jesus. That's the important thing that we have to remember That is what Luke is trying to make sure we understand as the story and so here we come to Philip and the spirit leads him to a particular place where there's an Ethiopian eunuch reading from the book of Isaiah.