Alrighty. Good evening. Hope you folks had a good afternoon. Maybe a few of you got to take an afternoon nap. I think that is somewhere in the King James.

It says we're supposed to take a nap. I don't know. We're in the Greek or something there. I do wanna thank you all for faithfully being here. I know that weekends are busy, and, the world thinks that we're crazy that we come out to church every Sunday.

But as Independent Baptists, we are really crazy because we come out on Sunday nights. We come out on Wednesday nights, but you folks even showed up last night, a lot of you, so thank you for that. I've had a really good, encouraging time. Thank you for, encouraging us. It's always a joy when people come and they actually speak to us, they ask questions about our ministry because that shows that you're interested and that you know how to better pray in the days ahead.

So thank you for that. Thank you for brother Ian that provided housing for us and fed us a great breakfast this morning. We want to thank him for that. And all of you that provided food for the dinner last night, and then for those that had us for lunch today, Pastor and his family and some of you others that were there on the missions committee, I just want to thank you. We've had a wonderful time, and I hope it's been even a little bit encouraging for you as it has been for us.

Does that sound right? I mean to say, if it was I hope you got even a little tinge of how good it was for us. I didn't mean it to sound like we were just a little bit encouraged, but anyway, you get what I'm saying. So, we have been ministering now, hard to believe, for almost eight years with Editorial Bautista Independiente, which is the Spanish publications ministry of Baptist Midmissions. And so, before we look at our message, just give you a little update on that.

God's opened doors and provided in tremendous way. What we do is we produce every kind of literature that a ministry, it could be a home bible study, it could be a church, it could be a seminary, bible institute, any type of ministry, a camp that you can think of. We produce the materials that they might need to help share the gospel and to help build stronger Christians and to edify the church. You know, when Debbie and I went to Peru, we were blessed that when we got there, there were a good number of churches already in place. Peru already had a couple of seminaries that were very successful.

As a matter of fact, one of them just completed its fiftieth anniversary. Peru has several camps. Peru has several radio stations. Peru has Christian bookstores. And so in a sense, there sort of values the word infrastructure that was in place in Peru that when we came there, we were very blessed that we weren't just starting from scratch.

We had something to work with when we were there. Not all countries are blessed that way, but a lot, and especially in Latin America, are really that way. So we really see that God has taken us through different chapters or different parts or different steps in missions. And we sort of see that God has strategically placed us in the next chapter of missions. So missions years ago, I believe it was in 1938 that the First Baptist Mid Missions missionary was sent to Peru.

In 1938, those were pioneering missionaries. Almost everybody in the country would have claimed to have been Catholic. There was very little understanding of the scripture. There was very few that had a clear presentation of the gospel. But those pioneering missionaries went there, and they faithfully served, and it was a struggle for a long time.

Because of their efforts, people were saved, and churches were planted, and God began to work in a very, very powerful way. And one thing that was especially exciting in Peru is that the missionaries had planted a number of churches in all different regions of Peru, but the the missionaries trained a lot of nationals, and the nationals really took the Great Commission to heart. And in a very short time, and I'm talking considering I started in 1938, over about twenty or thirty years, those national, pastors, national workers strived hard to plant new churches, and in that time period, they planted four or 500 churches on their own. This was without the help of national missionaries, without foreign missionaries. It was all done by national workers.

And so that left Peru, still with a great need, but a great foundation of churches had been planted there. So Debbie and I came. We came to go as church planting missionaries, and our goal is to always work and to to work alongside national workers to train them and to help them understand how to better serve their people and to equip them for that. And we considered ourselves not pioneering missionaries like those first, but we considered ourselves kind of like parenting missionaries. So just like a parent, you know, you have your child in your home, you come alongside, but you want them to learn on their own.

And so we have two daughters, we have learned to parent them, and there's certain things, know, to be honest with you, when I see, especially when my girls first started driving, I would much assumed, I would just assume drive myself and keep them safe, and protect them. And I would like to always be the only person that drives them around, but that's just not practical. So what did I do? I come alongside and help teach them how to drive. That's what a parent does.

Interestingly enough, I'll never forget the first time I ever let Elizabeth drive her car. She got in the seat, and I didn't think to tell her anything. I said, Okay, this is automatic. How hard can this be? We're just going to drive around the church parking lot here a little bit in North Carolina.

And she didn't know that you gradually pushed on the accelerator. So, it's like, she literally does this spin out in the church park lot then slams on the brake and she's like, what happened? I said, get out. We gotta have our first lesson here. So, you have some bumps in the roads and missionaries have bumps in the roads but like a parent, we worked with nationals.

We helped to train them and to teach them and what we really wanted to do is we wanted to be the church planners but we ultimately wanted to turn things over to them and to ourselves out of a job. But now in this next chapter of missions, we've gone from pioneering to parenting. But really the way I see it now, in all of Latin America, we're at the partnering stage. There are all kinds of well trained men, women that are able to work in ministries, but they just need somebody to come alongside and to give them the resources that they need. You know, it's not only Americans that can preach.

It's not only Americans that can teach. As a matter of fact, who can better speak Spanish and preach to a Peruvian than a Peruvian pastor? They can do a much better job than I could ever do, and so we want to come along and give them the tools that they need. And so we do that by producing literature, and it has a whole massive, process that we go through to produce our books, but then we also do teacher training. We do classes.

We do seminary modules to help them to learn to use materials that we produce so that they can be better equipped and they can use them effectively. It was interesting. One of the books, it's I see it standing up there in the back. It's light blue. It's English.

It's called Parenting with Words of Grace. It's a parenting book. It's fantastic. I read it myself in English, before it was published in Spanish, and, highly recommend it either way. But that book was just delivered to our warehouse on Friday, and so it will be going out tomorrow starting to make its way to different countries and to different people.

And just encourage you to pray for us that the Lord will continue to open up doors. And if you have any other questions about the things we do, I'd be happy to talk to you about that back at our table. Take your Bible, if you would, to Acts chapter eight. Acts chapter eight. Incidentally, it was amazing.

One of our books, it's called Blue is for Boys. It's a book that we just published in Spanish. It's in English, it's called Blue is for Boys. It's a book that was only available in in Spanish, and so we published that. It was written by a national author author, a lady named Carla Fernandez.

She's a Mexican. And she wrote this book and is talking about, how a mother can raise a biblical using biblical principles, raise a masculine son and to teach him to be a leader in the home and eventually in the church. It's an outstanding book. And so the book began to be distributed. It started in Mexico.

We got a lot down there. And somehow, a national news program heard about this book, and they called Carla Fernandez, the writer, and said, would you be willing to come to our studios in Mexico City? We want to do a morning news. We have a morning news show. We want to talk to you about your book.

And so she was able to go, and for forty five minutes, you know how on these morning shows they have little clips on and off, they had little stories and interviews with her, and she got to talk about the importance of basing rearing your children on the Bible and the importance of raising godly men to be the next generation of leaders in the homes and in churches, and she got to talk about that on national television. Our book that's written, it's called Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, it's a book about sanctity of life. Some of you may have seen it at the back. It has pictures of the developing baby in the womb, And that book was recently given to every congressman in Columbia as they consider legislation about the right to life. And so these books are being used in a powerful way.

Sometimes we hear about them, sometimes we don't. But we just trust that God will use these to point people to him. Acts chapter eight, we started out on last night talking about the supernatural nature of our mission. And I hope that you finished hearing that message and you realize that we are equipped by the Holy Spirit. If he calls us to do something, he will complete it, and we have not our abilities, but the Holy Spirit's.

We have God's abilities to help us to do the task. So that's what I wanted us to see last night. This morning, we talked about boldness that's needed for the mission, and we talked about how there's a couple of kinds of boldness, the good kind and the bad kind, and we can see how our enemy has been emboldened. The devil's at work. The evil one is at work in our world, and we have no doubt that we live in a sin cursed world.

We can all see that very clearly every day, And so I hope that this morning we left understanding that we should be emboldened, and again, through the power of the Holy Spirit, putting our confidence like we saw Peter and John do, we can have an impact on the world. Tonight in Acts chapter eight, I want us to kinda consider what is it gonna take to get us active in our mission. What's it gonna take? And I I I kinda want us to consider what we see here in this passage and how it parallels with our world today. You ever watched a movie or a television show or you read a book and it has what they would call a plot twist?

You're watching something and it's really, really interesting and and then all of a sudden there's a surprise ending. I think I remember from high school that there was a writer, maybe it was O. Henry, that would write these books, these short stories, and they would have like a really surprised twist at the end that you didn't see coming. Sometimes we'll watch a movie or a TV show or a short film, and Debbie or the girls have seen it, and they'll they'll say, oh, don't give him any spoilers. Don't tell him what's gonna happen.

And then somebody will accidentally speak up. Somebody who's an amazing wife and amazing woman will speak up, and she might steal or make a little comment that gives away what's gonna happen. Well, I want us to see tonight that I feel like this passage of scripture in a sense has a plot twist in it, something that catches us by surprise. And I want us to see that this past passage of scripture is gonna begin with kind of a somber tone. It's kind of negative.

It's not really exciting to talk about at a missions conference what's going on because it's talking about persecution in the early church. And then it mentions Saul and it describes his evil reputation. Let's look at verse one, and Saul was consenting unto his death. Now this is talking about the death or the martyrdom of Stephen. Okay?

So he approved of it. Saul was consenting onto his death, and at that time, there was a great persecution against the church which 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. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house and hauling men and women committed them to prison.

Verse four. Therefore, they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them. And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of that many that were possessed with them, and many taken with palsies and that were lame were healed, and there was great joy in the city.

Now interesting, do you all see a contrast between verse one and then what we see in verse eight? There's sort of like a plot twist in this passage of scripture. It begins out with the the execution, the martyrdom of Stephen. It talks about this great persecution that's going on in the church. It it's a time of discouragement.

It has to be a time when people, had to grow tremendously in their faith because they had to believe what they were what they were having to stand up against. And then we come down to verse eight after all this persecution, after all this description of how the people had to scatter to get away from it. Verse eight, it says, and there was great joy in the city. And that's what I call plot twist. In eight verses, we see that change so fast.

So how does such a change take place? How did they go from being persecuted, lamenting, sad, mourning the death of Stephen to where now there's great joy in the city. They've seen this godly man killed, this man brutally persecuted for his faith. Well, I want us to see today that the only way that that kind of plot twist, the only way that that kind change is really possible in a group of people is God. God takes our challenges.

God takes persecution. God takes the circumstances, the difficulties of our life, and turns it into joy. And so in the end, what happens? We learn. In the end, we grow.

In the end, the Lord changes us. I noticed on the wall today at pastor's house, there was a picture of of I think I saw that there today. I might be hallucinating. There's a picture of of someone at a potter's wheel, and he's molding something on a potter's wheel. And that's what we have to think of ourselves.

God uses the circumstance of our life just like a potter does, and he he presses and he uses that circumstance to form something. So a potter is making a vase or a potter is making a jar or something beautiful or something that they can that is useful. God is doing the same thing to us. We go through a crisis, and we have to look and say, why did God allow that? We might not understand at the moment, but God uses it for our good and for his glory.

Yesterday, Olivia had a interview for a scholarship, and, oh, you can pray this would be amazing if she could win this scholarship. It's a $16,000 scholarship, and she was one of the finalists. And so she went in for an interview, and she came back out, and she told me, she said, oh, the other people, their interviews were taking like twenty or twenty five minutes. Mine took ten minutes. She said, I think it was terrible.

And, she said, I hope that wasn't a waste of time. And I looked at her and I said, and and with all sincerity, I said, you know what? God is sovereign. God had a purpose for you to have that interview. Now it could be that God is using that to give you $16,000 to help pay part of your college tuition, to help your poor missionary parents.

God could do that. Amen? Let's hope so. But you know what? It could be that God doesn't want her to win that scholarship, but he put her through that interview.

He put her in that circumstance. Maybe she affected someone with something she said. Maybe the testimony that was in her scholarship letter impacted someone. We might not know in this lifetime, but God uses every circumstance of our life for some kind of purpose. You know what?

I wish that I was a mind reader. I wish that I could tell every time what God's doing, but God takes the circumstances of life and uses them, to grow us and to mold us and to make us what he wants us to be. And so we see that taking place here with these new believers in these new church that's just coming forth after Christ had ascended. And I want us to see today that anything we can do, that brings glory to God can bring us joy in the end. It helps us to grow.

I've I've heard it said here that the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church. Now think about that a second. The blood of the martyr is the seed of the church. So so the idea being that as people are willing to die for their faith, that often stands out, and God uses that very ugly, very difficult persecution to start churches, to bring other people to Christ. And so some people that are willing to die for their faith, that becomes noticed, And even though they're trying to stomp out the beliefs or the faith of someone, in the end, that person really shines.

They become an example. I've also heard it said that popularity pollutes the church, and persecution purifies it. So you realize that sometimes when the church, everything is going great, it's all popular, this is where everybody this is the the happening place to be, is that church, and it becomes popular, and it's just part of culture. Usually, when that happens, then that's when pollution creeps into the church. That's when false teaching creeps into the church.

Now, we would love to think that every church was full. But you know what? You know why this church is not totally filled up? We have room for more people in here. You know why?

Because church is not gonna be popular. It's like what we talked about this morning. Whenever we mention the name of Jesus, when we say the only way to have eternal life is through Jesus, it's not a popular message. And so, people aren't gonna understand that. God may choose to bless our churches, but he may choose to do it through persecution.

So that leads me back to the title for tonight. You know, what's it gonna take for us to get active in our mission? And we can look back all through scripture. We can look through how God has taken us through difficulties. We can look through these times and see how he's molded us and how he's used us.

I heard one pastor I noted down here that I read. He said that perhaps Christian suffering is the primary means God uses to advance the gospel in the world. Did you hear that? Perhaps he uses suffering to advance the gospel. And so as we consider this passage, I want us to consider how God used the circumstances here at the early church to help grow that early church and to help spread gospel.

And the first thing that I want us to see is that the persecution began. Look at verse one. And at that time, there was great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem. So the persecution begins right there in the very first verse of the passage. And I've told you all several times, I love the book of Acts.

I love to preach out of it. I I probably preached out of it here at Missouri Avenue more than any other book. And it's great history of the early church. I love it because it's an exciting account of how missions was being done. But for me, it's noteworthy that here in chapter eight verse one, it's the first time, the first time in eight chapters that Luke has used the word persecution.

There've been difficulties. There've been other problems, but it come to the point where even Luke is using the word persecution here. Hold your place here real quick and flip back really fast to Acts chapter one and verse eight. You may know this by heart. Acts chapter one and verse eight.

And it says, but you shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. I heard a missionary speaker, I believe his name was Ted Fletcher, founder of Pioneer's Mission. He actually quoted this first, and he said, if acts one eight is not obeyed, acts eight one is on its way. Look at that. Acts eight one, and there was, this martyrdom and what happened, great persecution against the church.

I'm suggesting that perhaps sometimes God has to use persecution. He has to have martyrs. He has to have these people, the blood of the martyr to be the seed of the church because we're not actively doing our part and so, I just find that interesting but it wasn't the first time that persecution took place. In Acts chapter four, Peter and John were brought before the council, and they were told not to speak in Jesus' name. Then in Acts chapter five, the persecution was still becoming more severe.

There were arrests being made because of their preaching, and they were detained. Later in that chapter, they were beaten. It says they were beaten for, like, 39 times. In Acts chapter seven, we saw the the stoning of Stephen, so the most per the most severe persecution yet. And, full fledged persecution of the church was taking place in Acts chapter eight.

So do you think that put an end? Did it stop the gospel from advancing? Quite the contrary. It seemed to cause it to grow and to spread even faster. Do any of you happen to remember back in 1989, there was a famous film or a famous picture, and sometimes it was referred to as Tank Man.

Anybody remember this? You will in a minute. Tank Man, There was a guy, there was some protest in Tiananmen Square in China, and, the protesters were revolting against some of the government's plans, and, they they were bringing in tanks to literally drive out the protesters. They were gonna show a strong force, a strong-arm of force, they were gonna run off these protesters. And some unknown man walked out and stood in front of one of the tanks.

He had no weapons. He had nothing. He literally stopped in front of that tank. So then the turret kind of turned, and the tank was going to change directions, and he stepped over again in front of that tank. He wanted to stop it.

And basically, this became a very well known It went all over the world on newspapers, it was on front pages everywhere, how this one man literally stopped a whole battalion of tanks that were coming into Tiananmen Square. Now, we don't really know who that man was. There's some different ideas of who it could have been, and it's possible that he was killed that same day for taking that action. And, what did the government do? He did stop.

It did stop their movement for a second, but the the government said no, and they were hardliners. They went in there. They weren't gonna tolerate that, and they squashed those protests with deadly force, and it put an end to that. Well, to me, it sort of seems like a modern day example of what we see here in the book of Acts. These protesters wanted to make a point.

They wanted to get worldwide attention, and they did. Well, I'm not saying that's exactly what's going on here, but Stephen's testimony was so strong that it became well known, and it triggered tremendous interest in the gospel. And it triggered widespread persecution of the church because it was becoming more and more known. You don't have to turn there, but Acts chapter 11 and verse 19 says, now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen. So it's literally telling us that because of Stephen's martyrdom, this started getting the Christians, the people that were being persecuted, they started to leave.

And Stephen is honored in scripture. We know him well. He's a hero of faith in in in our circles because he stood for truth, and he's commended as a man that was full of the holy spirit. He was full of wisdom, and he was full of faith and grace and power. Now look at verse two, Verse chapter eight verse two, and devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him.

You know, if we were studying, church history in Europe, and we consider Martin Luther, who was greatly persecuted for his faith and his teachings, he wrote the words to the hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. And he was persecuted. He wasn't killed, for his faith. He wasn't martyred. But think about one of the lines from that song, A Mighty Fortresses Our God.

It says, look, goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill. God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever. And you you gotta think that, they tried to stop the spread of the gospel.

And they can kill our bodies, but the kingdom of God will go on forever. Another pastor I read said, godly people don't concern themselves over the loss of reputation or status, the loss of property or homes. Christians don't even, concern themselves over the loss of their own life. They go about preaching Christ. So the persecution began, and we can sort of see that things started to go downhill in a sense when Stephen boldly spoke up.

It was a bad time of persecution, but it was a time that God used to start the growth of the church, the spread of the gospel, the spread of the church across the globe. So the persecution began. Now let's look at another person who started it, the person who started it. Who was behind it? Well, we know from other studies that it was Saul of Tarsus.

Saul. Look at verse three. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, inhaling men and women, committing them to prison. We see a couple of interesting words here in this verse. I I like these words, havoc.

You know, we might say, oh, he wreaked havoc or the storm wreaked havoc on the on the coastline. Well, here this word that's translated havoc in the Greek, it literally means to destroy like an animal tearing up meat. So we've seen that before, and that word is used here to describe how bad the persecution was. He wreaked havoc on them. I can tell you over in Sebring, we have we sort of live in we live in town, but it's sort of a rural area, and, there's all kinds of wildlife around.

There's a big nature preserve that borders up to our neighborhood for the scrub jays, so it's a beautiful area. But, we have these wild boars that run around sometimes. Not long ago, we live in the neighborhood, but in this neighborhood we got notification from the municipality saying to be careful that there had been bears spotted around the neighborhood. And of course, we have all the things like alligators and lizards and snakes like everybody does in Florida. But we also have these lovely armadillas.

Yeah. Why does that not sound right to me? But anyway, and you know the armadillas. Well, I think the armadillas, they like to dig around. Every time I refresh the mulch in my yard and it looks really good, I don't see armadillas for days.

Every time I refresh the mulch in my yard and get everything looking good, what happens? I go out the next morning, it looks like some kid has dug and played in my mulch bed. And then I see these little pointed marks in there, and everybody says, oh, if you got the little pointed marks, that means armadillas are digging in your yard. So I started sprinkling pepper flakes in my yard to try to keep them from digging. That sort of helps.

But they they they ruin my mulch beds. And I thought that was bad until one of my coworkers, they live in a more rural area, and he said, oh, I got up this morning to take my morning walk, and it looks like somebody took a tiller or a backhoe into my yard and dug up my yard. He says, they tore something tore up my yard, and they got to talking about it. And they said, oh, that's the wild boars. The wild boars come in, and they just wreak havoc on his yard.

Why do I say that? Well, that kind of mess, that destruction, that noticeable damage that those wild boars, or in my case, the armadillo does, that is the description of that word there, havoc. And Saul was wreaking havoc. He was causing all kinds of problems. Then it goes on another word I find interesting is he is we see the word hailing or howling, and this word means to drag off or to forcefully pull.

So you've seen protesters before, somebody that doesn't wanna be arrested and they're fighting the police and they're trying to drag them down. That's the idea of that word there. They're trying to pull them or forcefully get them. So like a wild animal, Saul is coming in here. He's on a rampage trying to destroy the church.

He's on a rampage to try to destroy anything that mentions the name of Christ. Saul's going into personal homes. He's dragging out families. He's persecuting Christians. Some were taken to prison.

Some of them were beaten, and it even talks about both men and women. Now look at verse, flip back to Acts chapter seven and verse 58. Acts chapter seven and verse 58. And it says, and cast him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet whose name was Saul. So I find it interesting.

Now, there's some speculation. We don't know exactly how involved. Some people say, well, Paul was actively participating in the stoning of Stephen. We don't know that. But the witnesses of that terrible stoning, they came up and they laid down their garments at the feet of Saul.

And so it would seem to indicate that Saul was looked up to. He was respected. They were trying to impress him, and he was important in the death of Stephen. Some people would say that it was to show respect to him. It's almost like they wanted approval.

Hey, look what we did. Saul's over here. He's the chief persecutor. Let's show him how good we did on this. And, they wanted to to to see and to prove his authority, to see who was in charge.

It's easy to picture Saul as the ringleader of the persecution, and we can see that in other parts of Scripture as we consider Saul in his early time that we see in Scripture. The good news is that the more that Paul tried to eliminate the church, the more he tried to persecute it, the more problems he tried to cause, the faster the church spread with. Now I thought about how could I describe? How could I give an example that would really show that? And then it was like the Lord gave me something kind of interesting because the other day, I'm not saying God calls this for my sermon illustration, but it came to my mind.

Just last week, we had a tremendous fire in the preserve area of our neighborhood. Right behind, maybe half a mile from our house, was a tremendous brush fire. And they do controlled burns all the time, you get used to how that looks, but something looked different about this fire. And we were coming home at the end of the day and, from work, and I could see this just billows of smoke coming up. It was a ton.

Well, it was church, wasn't it? We were coming home from church. It was last Sunday. And, this tremendous fire, And, interestingly enough, they they were talking about how it got within three feet of houses. It was pretty scary.

And they had evacuated several streets, and thankfully, they got it out. But they were talking about we had to be careful because a few sparks were leaving and they were flying across the neighborhood and they were landing in another dry area and it had started a fire over there. And it got me to thinking about, you know, if you try to put out a fire, have you ever seen somebody try to squash a fire down by stomping it out or they throw something on it and they're stomping it? What happens? There's these little embers flying up, and those embers are spreading.

Well, I sort of see that a picture of what's going on here in Acts. They're trying to put out the fire, the light of the gospel. They're trying to stomp it out. And the more they stomp it out, they're persecuting this church. They're murdering people.

They're beating people. They're taking them to jail. That would be sort of symbol symbolically being demonstrated by putting out a fire, and those embers are floating up. And what are they doing? They're landing and they're catching fire in other places.

You can't stop the spread of the gospel. And God was using it, through that method of persecution. The persecution started, we saw that. The person who started it, well, we can probably say it was a lot to do with Paul. The third thing I want you to see is that then preaching took place.

Look at verse four. Therefore, they were scattered abroad and went everywhere preaching the word. Picture that little forest fire, that brush fire for a minute, and boy, it spread fast. It went through, I forgot how many acres, in just a matter of minutes it had made a major mess of that area, endangered those homes. Well, the gospel spreads in the same way.

And as people try to persecute the church, it's gonna spread further. Verse one tells us that everyone scattered except the apostles. So we know that these are everyday people, everyday church members that are the ones we would call layman today, people in the church that are not necessarily trained, layman in the church. These are the people that were taking the gospel with them as they scattered. These were the little sparks that were flying off into other areas.

You see what that means for us? A lot of times, we get really complacent, and we think, you know what? Oh, our church is doing a great job. We have a missions program, and we have pastor. And you know what?

Pastor Rick, he is gonna evangelize the neighborhood around the church. Pastor Rick is the one that needs to be growing the church. Pastor Rick and his wife, they're they're in ministry. They need to be the ones. And of course, they do.

They want to. It's a privilege. But who was doing the work here? Who were the little sparks spreading? It was the laypeople in the church.

It was the people like all of you. And so God used this in a very, very special way. And it says there, they went everywhere preaching the word. Now I find it interesting there in that verse. The word preaching, is important.

It's a Greek word that's usually translated preach. It's caruso. I I don't speak Greek. I can I'm probably pronouncing it like Spanish. But it means to herald forth, to publicly proclaim, or to preach.

But here, Luke uses the Greek word which literally means they went about gospeling the word. They went about gospeling the word. In other words, despite all of the terrible persecution, they went about spreading the good news of the gospel. And what was the source of the good news? The Bible, the logos.

That's why that word there, kinda plays off the word logos, the Bible, the word of God. I tried to find who said this quote, and there were some different opinions, but I couldn't find it. So I'll just say it's anonymous. But, I read online, somebody said, Christians are like manure. If you leave them in a pile, they start to stink.

If you spread them out, they make things grow. Thought that was pretty interesting. So you see, we love being here in our church. But you know what? If we just stay piled up here, we probably don't accomplish a whole lot.

We become inwardly focused. But when we spread out into our community, when you spread out into your workplaces, when you spread out and talk to the people that you come in contact with, our churches grow. The cause of Christ is taking place, and so we can see that principle here. I don't want our churches to have to go through persecution, and I'm not insinuating that this is a threat from God. If you don't do my great commission, you're gonna have to suffer persecution.

I'm not saying that. But is it gonna take persecution of our churches for us to grow? Is that what God's gonna have to do? It's it's time for us to consider how blessed we really are, how blessed we've really been, We need to make sure that we take this commission, the great commission of Christ seriously, that we see it and realize how important it is. I've seen a lot of times in churches, they'll have little signs.

I think our mission used to print them. We print them at EBI in Spanish, and it basically says, as you leave the door of the church, it says, you are now entering the mission field. You see, because every time we leave the doors of our church, and in a sense, every time we leave the doors of our home, we're going into a mission field. And it's wonderful that we have these flags up here to represent countries. I will always have a special place in my heart for Peru after fourteen years of being there.

I can look at Brazil. I can look at, I think that's El Salvador, and, I can see Florida, Mexico. We can see these flags up here, and it's wonderful to see these countries represented. It's wonderful to see them on the map back there, And you were doing a great job of supporting missions, and I encourage you to continue that. I said this morning, God blesses a church that supports missions, but we don't have to fly across the sea.

We don't have to cross the border to another land. The mission field is right here. We need to make sure that we see that. And so the idea is that sometimes we get comfortable in in our confines here at church, and God might have to use something. You realize there's hurting people all around us?

There are people that are depressed. There are people that are struggling with anxiety. There are people that are having trouble with their marriage. There are people that are being abused. There are people that are being trafficked, they're being held against their will.

There's people that are struggling with addictions. We live in a sin cursed world, and people are hurting. And so we need to take the calls of Christ to them. Wouldn't it be great if we were if we could use the word gospeling, that we are gospeling, we are going about preaching everywhere we go. So I noticed here in the first three verses, some pretty sad things going on, some really difficult times.

But then in verse eight, this persecution leads to great joy. Verse five there says, then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them, and the people with one accord gave heed unto these things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits crying with loud voice came out of that many that were possessed with them, and many were, taken with palsies that were lame were healed. Philip was one of these faithful witnesses who fled from Jerusalem. He was a a deacon, but he was like a layman in the church.

He wasn't he wasn't pastor, and, I think we need to make sure that we can follow that. We shouldn't today look to find these these abilities. I don't think that God's choose to use us to lay hands and heal people. I don't think we're gonna speak in tongues today. Those were sign gifts, like I said the other night, but they were used to authenticate the messenger.

It proved that he was a man of God. That's why they were able to do those gifts, And, we shouldn't strive for that today, but we have the Holy Spirit, and we have the power of the Holy Spirit, and our lifestyle is what authenticates us. I heard an old southern preacher once tell his congregation, he said, don't you dare go into a restaurant and get good service. Don't you dare go in there and work the waitress to death and ask for refills and ask her to bring you all this stuff, and then you leave a gospel track on the table, and you don't leave a tip. He said, don't or you leave a lousy tip.

He said, don't you dare do that because people are watching you. And, and it's a true it's true that we are authenticated today, not by those sign gifts, but we're authenticated by how we live and how we treat other people. John thirteen thirty five says, by this shall all men know that you're my disciples. If you have love one to another, the world should see the difference in us. And so, the message here, we're gonna learn to turn the other cheek.

We're gonna learn to guard our words. We're gonna learn to control how we speak. We're gonna learn to guard our hearts and to live pure lives, and then we can be a an authenticated servant for the Lord. So as we finish up, we've seen where the persecution began. It began after Stephen stoning.

We can see the person who started it, and that was Saul. And then we've seen that the preaching took place. The gospel spread like a wildfire as the church was being persecuted. And finally, I want us to see that there was a purpose that was carried out. Look at verse one, the second half.

And they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria. You see, we have the gospel here in The United States because that wildfire spread, that early church scattered, that early church moved. And so we have the privilege of having heard that. It sort of reminds me of a bird's nest. You know, I've heard the stories of how birds get to a certain age, a certain development, the mother is bringing them food, and then when they need to fly, when they need to finally go out on their own, what does the mother bird sometimes do?

Pushes them out of the nest. I sort of feel like God used persecution to push the believers out of the nest. His purpose was accomplished. It's sort of like the parent that kicks their kid out of the basement that refuses to work or get a job or something like that, and they're forced to go out and do it. So that's the plot twist that I see here in Acts chapter eight.

Are we just going to carry on? Are we gonna be immune to what's going on in the world around us? Do we see the hurting people, the lost people every day? Do we see the young people that are directionless in life that don't know what they wanna do? Do we see our neighbors that are working so hard to be successful, but yet they don't have joy?

Tonight, I want us to see this plot twist from Acts chapter eight. Is this what it's gonna take us to is this what it's gonna take to get us active for our Lord? Let's pray. Father, I wanna thank you again for your word. Thank you for this other illustration we see from the book of Acts of the early church.

Father, thank you that despite the persecution, you used it for good. Lord, I believe that those terrible events, those terrible beatings, the imprisonments, the raiding of people's homes, the stoning of Stephen. You used all of those things in a way that the evil one, the enemy, didn't expect. And it helped to spread your gospel, the good news of what Christ did on the cross for us. Father, wanna ask that as we finish up tonight, you'll help us to consider all the things that we've looked at over these last couple of days.

Father, we can't do this on our own. We need the supernatural help of the Holy Spirit. Father, it still leaves us sometimes timid. Help us to be willing to do our part and to step forward. Father, we saw this morning how we need boldness.

Father, help us to boldly step out and to do the work knowing that your Holy Spirit is with us. And father, tonight, consider the persecution of that early church. Father, it was used as the the means that spread the gospel to then, the whole world. Father, I ask that maybe we can escape that persecution, but if not, that we'll be faithful to serve you. Father, don't know how these messages have touched lives here, but I ask that you will be glorified in Jesus' name.

Amen.