We want to train our minds to run in biblical ruts, to have God’s acts in history shape our understanding of ourselves and our own day.

In this sermon, guest preacher Voddie Baucham unfolds the narrative of Acts 12 and shows us the sovereignty of God in death and deliverance.

The gospel and the community it creates, called the church, are on the move, beginning at Ground Zero in Jerusalem, but not staying there. 

One of our goals in reading the Bible is to train our minds to run in biblical ruts. We want to learn to read the story we’re in by immersing ourselves in the stories God likes to tell.

Luke wants us to make the connection to Isaiah 56 and know that the gospel has now advanced, and is advancing, to the ends of the earth.

Acts 8 is a transitional chapter in the book of Acts. We move away from a Jerusalem-focus to a wider vision of the church’s growth.

The point of Stephen’s sermon is the repeated rejection of God’s will by God’s people; he cashes it all in (verses 51–53) with their rejection of the Messiah.

Baptism is where Christians identity with Jesus’s death and resurrection, not by just saying it, but by dramatizing it. In baptism we are saying, to everyone, that we are with Jesus, that what he did, he did for me — and we say it in the most vivid way. 

The task in this sermon is to look at the first part of Stephen’s speech and ask the question: “What is Stephen getting at with these Old Testament examples?”

This is Easter Sunday. Resurrection Sunday. And on this Resurrection Sunday, we’re going to talk about death: what is death? What happens when you die? 

As the word of God grows, and the church increases, the practical dynamics of church life inevitably change.

One of our tasks as Christians is to learn to read the story that we’re in. As individuals, we have a past and a future. As families, communities, and as a nation, we have pasts and futures. And we tell ourselves stories in order to make sense of where we’ve come from and where we’re going and what our role in the story is. 

We all know that there are passages in the Bible that make us uncomfortable. Often it’s when God does something that we don’t expect or don’t understand, usually something frightening. The story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 is one of those.

What we find in the last section of Acts 4 is not an isolated event, but starting here, we discover a theme that is repeated throughout the rest of the book. And that theme is a vision for how the church lives in this world.