Sermons About Early-church
Persecution Begins
In this message we cover around four years. We see extraordinary things that God did, but we also see the beginning of persecution.
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The Birth of the Church
In the second message in this series on the book of Acts, we look at the birth of the first church. As we will see, this was in no way planned by any man. This was all orchestrated by the Spirit of God, and from here on, for the next 33 years, we see a group of ordinary men and women desperately trying to keep up with what the Spirit is doing.
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3/8/09 Sunday AM Acts 3.12-18 - The Name of Our Lord
The Name of Our Lord 1) Servant 2) Savior 3) The Holy and Righteous One 4) Author of Life 5) Christ (Messiah)
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The First Martyr
Acts 6:8-7:60 The theme of Acts begins with an account of how the apostles were commissioned to remain in Jerusalem until the day that the Holy Spirit would be sent by the risen Christ to indwell them for service to spread the gospel to the rest of the world. In Acts 6-7, Luke records how the radiant testimony of Stephen, the first and perhaps one of greatest martyrs of the early church, was the climax of the church's witness to the Jews and how his death propelled the church to spread the gospel beyond Jerusalem. This account in Acts illustrates for us how Stephen lived out the end of his life as a faith-filled and Holy Spirit-filled man. More significantly, the martyrdom of Stephen poiniantly illustrates the fact that the end of his life mirrored that of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Indeed, like Christ, Stephen confronted Jewish leaders, was falsely accused, arrested, sentenced, and executed in the same manner. Stephen's response to this accusation was to deliver an apologetic, one of the longest and most significant sermons found in the Bible, which served as a history-based defense that he was not guilty of blaspheming God, Moses, the Temple, or the Law. His stance in the face of such persecution, and ultimately his execution, was to exhalt God and the name of the Lord. Stephen's martyrdom should leave a lasting impression on us just as it did for the apostle Paul, and as it has been said, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church" - Tertullian.
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Christian Living 101
The fundamental basics of the early church and the two essential evidences of the Holy Spirit.
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An Effective Middle Man
This is the last message of the series, "Lessons in Table Manners," where we look at the conversion of Peter from one who believed God was just for his kind to a missionary to the gentiles.
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Managing The Ministry
If Satan cannot destroy the church from the outside by persecution, he will seek to disrupt it from within by pitting believers against each other. Experience throughout the church age demonstrates that one complaint, not dealt with in a godly way, is all it takes to divide a church. In Acts 6:1-7, Luke explains how the twelve apostles wisely managed the rapidly expanding ministry of the early church by delegating the temporal tasks of the church to capable, qualified men so they could maintain their spiritual priorities to pray and preach. As D. L. Moody once said, "It is better to put ten men to work than try to do the work of ten men."
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The Damascus Road
The testimony of the Apostle Paul is recorded three times in the Book of Acts. This is an important story, and we should pay attention to it. We have all been on the road lately. Saul of Tarsus was experiencing some "road rage" as he headed to Damascus to throw Christians in jail. God interrupted his journey and dramatically changed his passion. He stayed on the road, bu this time he was traveling as a Christian missionary rather than a hit man.
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The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit
The pride and self-worship of the people who built the Tower of Babel prompted God to send confusion of languages that divided the nations. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost was a reversal of that fracture, a coming together by people from many languages and cultures.
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