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The Church Multiplies
The Church Multiplies Acts 9:20-43 Key Verse: 9:31 “Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.” Last week we saw how Jesus completely changed one man. It was not an ordinary change in a person that one sees every day. One moment Saul was breathing out murderous threats against Christians. He was on his way to a foreign city round up as many as he could and forcefully drag them back to Jerusalem where they would have to stand trial before the Jewish religious leaders. The outcome of that trial would probably be excommunication at best, or, in the worst case, they might be stoned as Stephen was. Then Saul was confronted by Jesus and asked by Jesus why Saul was persecuting Him. Saul knew that the light that was blinding him and the voice that was coming out of it were both coming from heaven, but he could not understand why God would be saying that Saul was persecuting Him. When Saul asked who it was that was speaking to him, he got an answer that he couldn’t believe: “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” After a brief conversation with Jesus and three days of lying blind without food or water, Saul was a completely changed man. Everything he had once believed about Christians was completely wrong. His way of life was also completely wrong. In today’s passage we can see how great the change of just one man can be. Paul begins teaching and proving that Jesus was indeed the Christ of God. The violent persecution of the church stops, and the church members were edified by the word of God and their numbers multiplied. Finally Peter, and likely the other apostles, were able to freely travel around to the churches scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. May God bless our study of this passage and help us to see how He can work powerfully in times of peace to edify and grow His church. First, Saul begins to proclaim Jesus is the Messiah. (20-30) It must be noted that Luke’s account of Paul’s conversion does not exactly match Paul’s own account given in the first chapter of the book of Galatians. Luke leaves out about three years in which Paul went into Arabia. It is unclear what Paul was doing there because he does not tell us. Perhaps he was preaching the gospel as he does in Damascus and Jerusalem in this account, or perhaps Jesus was continuing to reveal himself to Paul. We simply don’t know what happened during that period, and perhaps, although he was a traveling companion of Paul, perhaps Luke didn’t know either and so he left it out of his account. The point is that, much of this account likely takes place about three years after Saul’s conversion that we studied last week. What did Paul do after his conversion? Look at verse 20. “At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.” Before Paul met Jesus preaching that Jesus was the Son of God was considered blasphemy to Paul. It was a crime worthy of trial before the Sanhedrin, excommunication or even stoning to death. This was Paul’s mission in life – to hunt down all the blasphemers and rid them from the community of true believers. But now it wasn’t blasphemy to Paul any more, it was a message that every Jewish person needed to hear. So, Paul went to the synagogues where devout Jews met to study the Bible and worship God and boldly proclaimed this truth. Verse 21 tells us that this truly astounded those who heard him. They all knew who Paul was and the mission he was on when he first came to Damascus. To them, Paul was the one who was supposed destroy this blasphemous teaching and here was boldly preaching it in the very synagogues where he was to stamp it out. What could this mean? It seems that it could only mean one of two things. Either Paul had lost his mind or he had found some proof that everything he believed before was wrong. If we look carefully at verse 22 I think it becomes clear that the latter is the case. “Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah. It says that Paul was proving that Jesus is the Messiah. It does not say that he was trying to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah, it says that he was proving that Jesus is the Messiah. We must assume that Paul was proving this based on the Old Testament texts. Remember that Paul was a Pharisee, which meant that he had an extensive knowledge of the Bible. He knew that the Old Testament predicted that God would send His Messiah and he would have known which chapters and verses referred to this. Verse 22 also says that as Paul grew more and more powerful, he baffled the Jews living in Damascus. To baffle someone means that you really confuse them. So, what was so confusing about Paul’s message. First of all, I have already mentioned that the Jews in Damascus all knew that Paul was there to make sure this message was completely silenced. But, I think even more confusing to them was the message itself. How could Jesus be the promised Messiah if He had been crucified and the Jews were still under Roman rule? Wasn’t God’s Messiah supposed to free His people from their enemies who were oppressing them? Jesus didn’t look to the Jews like the Messiah they were waiting for. Jesus was humble, poor and didn’t look like a conquering hero. But most importantly, Jesus was dead, so how could he be the one to reign on the throne of David forever. Paul’s message was indeed baffling, and yet he was somehow proving to them that it was true. How did the Jews reacted to Paul’s message? Look at verses 23&24. “After many days had gone by, there was a conspiracy among the Jews to kill him, but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him.” It took them many days, but when they realized they couldn’t prove Paul wrong or make him be quiet, they decided to go ahead and kill him. God’s persecutor now became the persecuted. A short time before, it was Paul who was breathing out murderous threats, but now his life was threatened. It seems that Jesus was beginning to show Paul just how much he was going to have to suffer for his name. Paul learned of the plot, but there appeared to be no way of escape. Damascus was a walled city, meaning that you could only enter it and exit it by way of a gate. Paul’s persecutors kept a close watch on this gate both day and night to make sure that Paul could not escape. It seemed that all he could do was hide there in the city. God’s message cannot be silenced, so He provided a way out for Paul. Look at verse 25. “But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall.” Here it is interesting to note that not everyone rejected Paul’s message. In the NIV it appears that the people who helped Paul escape were his followers or disciples, but in the KJV it is more clear that they were disciples of Jesus and not of Paul. “Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.” The people who helped Paul escape were followers of way. Whether they were already Christians before Paul began to preach and prove that Jesus was the Christ, as Ananias was, or if they became Christians after hearing Paul’s message we do not know. Anyway, one of them must have had either a home that was connected to the city wall or had some type of special access to an opening in the wall. They made use of this to secretly get Paul out of the city. From there, Paul went on to Jerusalem. Life in Jerusalem probably wasn’t any easier for Paul. He certainly wasn’t going to be welcomed by his former friends and colleagues and the Christian church there had no reason to trust him. Many of them might have been thinking that Paul was just pretending to be a follower of Jesus so that he could get close to them in order to turn them all over to the Jewish ruling council. He really didn’t have anywhere to turn in Jerusalem. However, Paul found a friend in Barnabas. We don’t know how Barnabas found Paul or how he knew of Paul’s conversion and preaching in Damascus, but we do know that he was the one who brought him to the apostles. Here, in Luke’s account, we have what looks like a slight variation from Paul’s own story of this trip to Jerusalem. In Paul’s version he only met with Peter and James the brother of Jesus for a period of fifteen days. Anyway, Paul was eventually accepted by the members of the Church at Jerusalem. Once again, Paul didn’t keep quiet when he was accepted in Jerusalem. Look at verses 28&29. “So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. 29 He talked and debated with the Hellenistic Jews,[a] but they tried to kill him.” Paul was really in enemy territory in Jerusalem. His former bosses and colleagues all wanted to shut Paul up, but that didn’t stop him from speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. Paul even went to the Hellenistic Jews and debated with them. Remember, these were the same Jews that Stephan debated with and that ended up in his being stoned to death. Perhaps Paul thought that he could convince these Hellenistic Jews because he was one of them – he was born in Tarsus. This debate did not go the way that Paul wanted it to go. Instead of accepting Paul’s message, they rejected it, and just like with Stephen, they tried to kill Paul. When Paul’s fellow believers found out about this they got him out of Jerusalem as fast as possible. They remembered what happened after the stoning of Stephen and they didn’t want to go through another persecution like that again. This was in accordance with God’s plan to establish Paul as the apostle to the gentiles. So Paul was sent off to Caesarea and eventually his home town of Tarsus. Second, a time of peace, edification and growth. (31). Let’s look at our key verse. “Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.” This verse might not seem all that important on at first glance. However, there are several things we need to think about here. First of all this time of peace for the early Christian church came about after the conversion of one man – Saul. Saul was relentless in tracking down and stamping out the early Christians. Probably most other Jews didn’t even pay attention to the early church members. After all they were for the most part, practicing Jews. They followed the Law of Moses and they kept the Sabbath day holy. The only difference was that their rabbi or teacher was not one of the religious leaders, but this dead guy Jesus. They probably figured that after a while all these early Christians would come back to their senses and rejoin the mainstream Jewish religion. But Saul was not like this. Saul was a zealous defender of the faith. Any deviation from the Jewish religion that he had learned growing up and studying under Gamaliel needed to be exterminated, and he dedicated his life to doing just that. However, when Paul met Jesus on that road to Damascus everything changed. He was no longer there to lead the fight against the followers of Jesus, and that fight within the Jewish religion simply faded from everyone’s memory. This shows the powerful influence one man can have. His conversion brought about a time of peace for the early Church, but it also brought about something even greater. As we have seen in the first 10 verses, wherever Paul went he boldly proclaimed the truth of God. He debated with the God fearing Jews in Damascus and Jerusalem. However, I also think he was sharing the word of God with his fellow believers as well. As we will soon see in the following section, Peter was now able to get out of Jerusalem and visit other believers scattered throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria. In this way, many young Christian got to hear God’s words preached by eyewitnesses to Jesus and at least one expert of the Law. In short, this time of peace was a time of strengthening for the you church. Furthermore, this verse tells us that God used this time of peace to increase the numbers of the church. God used the persecution following Stephen’s martyrdom to scatter the Jerusalem members of the church and spread the Gospel message as far as foreign cities like Damascus. Now God was using this time of peace to strengthen His young church and to increase the number of believers. God can use anytime to complete His world salvation work and as Jesus said He is always working even to this day. Therefore, we don’t have to wait for the appropriate time to take up our cross and follow Jesus because if you haven’t already done it now is the time. Third, Peter goes out to strengthen the church and does miraculous works of God. (32-43) Beginning in verse 32 we see that Peter used this time of peace to go on visiting ministry. This ministry was vitally important for the young church. The young believers had just been through a terrible time of persecution and trial. Many of them had been driven from their homes and forced to flee to unknown cities. Without encouragement, many of them might have simply fallen away from the faith. No one wanted to see this happen, so Peter (and I’m sure other of the apostles also) went on a visiting ministry to strengthen the churches scattered around Judea, Galilee and Samaria. Luke only gives us a portion of Peter’s visiting ministry before he moves on to Paul’s work exclusively. In this passage we are given very powerful example of the power of the gospel working through Peter. First of all Peter went to visit the city of Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas. Apparently something had happened to him eight years before that left him paralyzed and unable to get out of bed. I am sure that he and all of his close family and friends had given up all hope of him ever getting better. They were probably just waiting for him to die so that his suffering would end. But when Peter saw him, he saw Aeneas with the eyes of Jesus. When Jesus saw such people, He had compassion on them and He healed them. Jesus gave hope and a new life to hopeless people. Before meeting Jesus, Peter probably just walked right past such people because he had problems of his own and he knew that he couldn’t do anything for them anyway. However, Peter was a changed man. He now had the compassion of Jesus for this helpless and hopeless man. Look at verse 34 “’Aeneas,’ Peter said to him, ‘Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and roll up your mat.’ Immediately Aeneas got up.” Peter was still only a human being and humanly speaking, Peter had no ability to heal this man. However, Peter learned many things from Jesus and one of them was that he could do all things through faith in Jesus. The faith and compassion that Peter learned from Jesus is what healed this man. We don’t know if Aeneas was a believer before Peter healed him, but I am sure he was after this event. In fact, verse 35 tells us that he became a walking testimony of the grace of Jesus and everyone who saw him in Lydda and the nearby city of Sharon turned to the Lord. God started off Peter’s visiting ministry with a great work of God that brought in many more believers. Joppa was a port city not far from Lydda. In that city a wonderful woman lived. Her name was Tabitha, or Dorcas in Greek, and the Bible says that she was “…always doing good and helping the poor.” She was clearly a believer before she met Peter, and she was dearly loved by all the believers in Joppa. But as verse 37 tells us, one day she got sick and died. The disciples heard that Peter was currently in the nearby city of Lydda so they sent two men there to get him. It is a little unclear why they sent for Peter. Did they want Peter to acknowledge this great woman of God by attending her funeral or did they believe that Peter could raise her from the dead? I don’t know for sure, but they wanted Peter there. Peter didn’t have to go there, he could have remained where he was and continued strengthening the church. However, Peter quit what he was doing to go to Joppa and strengthen the disciples there in whatever way he could. When he got there, he was surrounded by a bunch of mourning widows who had been the recipients of Dorcas’ charity. Clearly they loved this woman and were devastated by her loss. Peter listened to them patiently before quietly dismissing them from the room where Tabitha was lying in preparation for her burial. When they were gone, Peter got down on his knees and prayed pouring his heart out to God. Once again we can see that Peter was a changed man. On Jesus last night before his crucifixion, Jesus begged Peter, James and John to stay with him and pray. But when Jesus checked on them three times He found them all sleeping. Peter wasn’t sleeping any more. He was praying with all his heart. When Peter was certain that Jesus had heard and answered his prayer, he turned to Tabitha and simply said, “Tabitha, get up.” Here again we see the absolute faith of Peter. Peter had no doubt that God had heard and answered his prayer, so he knew that Tabitha was going to listen to him. Following this Peter led her out and presented her to the believers, especially the widows. Only by faith in the power of Jesus was Peter able to do this. As the gospels point out Peter was just a weak human being like you and me, but when he learned faith in Jesus he became a great man of God who could do impossible things. This is the faith that we need. In this passage, we see how God brought about a time of peace and strengthening for his young church and how he used this time to increase the number of believers. God has also given us a time of relative peace. We need to use this time to strengthen our brothers and sisters and increase God’s church through a campus visiting ministry. |
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