And so, we have here another interesting story that's surrounded by a whole bunch of travel, right? We're seeing all these controversies in the early church, not necessarily controversies within the church, while there were plenty of those when you read Paul's epistles, you see those issues, but the controversies are the persecution that is coming.

 Well, here's another story that is kind of a passing story. It helps us get. Our heroes from the story, from one place to another, right? Paul is in Ephesus for a considerable amount of time. We read that in the last couple passages, is that he was there a long time and was doing significant work. Well, now we are finding out that they're going to be moving on and there's this riot in Ephesus.

 So, we come across another interesting sequence of stories. But all pointing to the same basic idea that we've been seeing now for many chapters. So, Paul happens to end up in Ephesus, a primarily Gentile city, like many of the city names that we have seen here. But he does what he normally does. He goes to the Jewish synagogues.

 So, we read a lot of text there today, reason being there's a lot of movement, but not much in the way of, of stuff to comment on. It's just keeping the story moving. The things that I really want us to draw out, if you're watching on video, I have highlighted and we see that in verse six. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, your blood be on your own heads.

 This passage is really interesting because we see Paul interacting more with a Greek audience, don't we? Now he goes, he is in Athens and he finds the synagogue where the Jews gather and he, he talks with them. But we see that he also goes into the marketplace every day and talks with those who happen to be there.

Now this was a place where people would go and they would share their thoughts, they would philosophize, etc. And we see in verse 18 that some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, two different schools of philosophy, they talked with him. And you gotta love what it says here. What does this babbler wish to say?

This is an interesting passage to look at, if for no other reason, trying to say Amphipolis, for me, is rather difficult. Uh, maybe I should put together a blooper reel of my inability to say that, but I think I had to try five times to get it right. But I did. And so, here we sit in this story of Paul and Silas moving around.

They've come to Thessalonica. Now, there was a synagogue there and Paul had this habit of going there. That was his target audience, you know, while he was trying to reach the Gentiles. His target audience was to go to the synagogues and to talk about Jesus and how he was the Messiah. And that's what we see here.

 This is a pretty interesting story and has a lot of stuff going on, doesn't it? We think about them being arrested, and I mentioned that they were beaten without a trial, and they were Roman citizens, and this wasn't a good thing, and we're going to see that resolution at the end of this passage. But the real meat of the passage comes in the middle of this story, right?

While not very many verses here, this is a rather interesting story, isn't it? We have Paul and Silas. Walking about this city and we find that they come across a slave girl who has this spirit of divination that has identified them as servants of the Most High God who are proclaiming the way of salvation.

Now, I’m not sure why it is that Paul is so annoyed, as it says here, greatly annoyed. About this slave girl. She is telling the truth. She's bearing being very clear About who they are and that's who they are They are servants of the most high god proclaiming the way of salvation, but Paul gets annoyed, you know, perhaps She was interrupting perhaps they were trying to go about and have conversations with people and she is yelling these things and it's disrupting Everything that's going on but Paul being annoyed turns and says to the spirit I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her And it came out that very hour.

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.