Sunday 05 11 2025
Part of May 2025 Notes

Gospel Road Test

Acts 11
19 Meanwhile, the believers who had been scattered during the persecution after Stephen’s death traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch of Syria. They preached the word of God, but only to Jews.
20 However, some of the believers who went to Antioch from Cyprus and Cyrene began preaching to the Gentiles about the Lord Jesus.
21 The power of the Lord was with them, and a large number of these Gentiles believed and turned to the Lord.
22 When the church at Jerusalem heard what had happened, they sent Barnabas to Antioch.
23 When he arrived and saw this evidence of God’s blessing, he was filled with joy, and he encouraged the believers to stay true to the Lord.
24 Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith. And many people were brought to the Lord.
25 Then Barnabas went on to Tarsus to look for Saul.
26 When he found him, he brought him back to Antioch. Both of them stayed there with the church for a full year, teaching large crowds of people. (It was at Antioch that the believers were first called Christians.)
27 During this time some prophets traveled from Jerusalem to Antioch.
28 One of them named Agabus stood up in one of the meetings and predicted by the Spirit that a great famine was coming upon the entire Roman world. (This was fulfilled during the reign of Claudius.)
29 So the believers in Antioch decided to send relief to the brothers and sisters in Judea, everyone giving as much as they could.
30 This they did, entrusting their gifts to Barnabas and Saul to take to the elders of the church in Jerusalem.

James Is Killed and Peter Is Imprisoned
Acts 12
About that time King Herod Agrippa began to persecute some believers in the church. 2 He had the apostle James (John’s brother) killed with a sword.
3 When Herod saw how much this pleased the Jewish people, he also arrested Peter. (This took place during the Passover celebration.)
4 Then he imprisoned him, placing him under the guard of four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring Peter out for public trial after the Passover.
5 But while Peter was in prison, the church prayed very earnestly for him.

Peter’s Miraculous Escape from Prison
6 The night before Peter was to be placed on trial, he was asleep, fastened with two chains between two soldiers. Others stood guard at the prison gate.
7 Suddenly, there was a bright light in the cell, and an angel of the Lord stood before Peter. The angel struck him on the side to awaken him and said, “Quick! Get up!” And the chains fell off his wrists.
8 Then the angel told him, “Get dressed and put on your sandals.” And he did. “Now put on your coat and follow me,” the angel ordered.
9 So Peter left the cell, following the angel. But all the time he thought it was a vision. He didn’t realize it was actually happening.
10 They passed the first and second guard posts and came to the iron gate leading to the city, and this opened for them all by itself. So they passed through and started walking down the street, and then the angel suddenly left him.
11 Peter finally came to his senses. “It’s really true!” he said. “The Lord has sent his angel and saved me from Herod and from what the Jewish leaders had planned to do to me!”
12 When he realized this, he went to the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many were gathered for prayer.
13 He knocked at the door in the gate, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to open it.
14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that, instead of opening the door, she ran back inside and told everyone, “Peter is standing at the door!”
15 “You’re out of your mind!” they said. When she insisted, they decided, “It must be his angel.”
16 Meanwhile, Peter continued knocking. When they finally opened the door and saw him, they were amazed.
17 He motioned for them to quiet down and told them how the Lord had led him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers what happened,” he said. And then he went to another place.
18 At dawn there was a great commotion among the soldiers about what had happened to Peter.
19 Herod Agrippa ordered a thorough search for him. When he couldn’t be found, Herod interrogated the guards and sentenced them to death. Afterward Herod left Judea to stay in Caesarea for a while.

  • Peter’s Mom is happy. What about James’ Mom, family, his brother, John.

  • In the Gospel bearing his name, he tells us quite a lot about Jesus, love and grief.

  • He uses a remarkable descriptor that tells us what John believed about Jesus after John faces so much grief
    • In John 13, we see John refer to the disciples as being loved by Jesus - and specifically, John describes himself as ‘the one Jesus loved’.
  • Same in John 19.26, 20.2, 20.9, 21.7, 21.20. That’s the guy who lost so much, when he has a chance to have the ‘last word’ on the Gospel, his last word is ‘I am loved by Jesus’.

1 John 3.16
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence:
20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God
22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.
23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.
24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

  • Jesus didn’t offer lectures on loss and suffering, he brought his life to our loss and suffering, he entered into a broken and sinful world and decided to submit to the every level of broken-ness of this world.
  • Jesus knows abandonment, betrayal, slander, being cheated, cruelty, loss, grief, being abused, rejected, spit upon, injustice and even being murdered by the people he came to save and praying for their forgiveness as they are murdering him.
  • That’s how we know what love is.
  • The hymn says ‘it was my sin that held him there’ on the cross.
  • It’s on me. Yet he is exclusively the definition of love.
  • Tyler Staton said: “John claims that God’s love is personified and personified exclusively in Jesus, joining together the culturally celebrated idea of love with the culturally rejected idea of exclusivity.”
  • But we must agree in order to believe and be saved by grace through faith, as Jesus exclusively said of himself

John 14.6
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through me.”

Acts 12
The Death of Herod Agrippa
20 Now Herod was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon. So they sent a delegation to make peace with him because their cities were dependent upon Herod’s country for food. The delegates won the support of Blastus, Herod’s personal assistant,
21 and an appointment with Herod was granted. When the day arrived, Herod put on his royal robes, sat on his throne, and made a speech to them.
22 The people gave him a great ovation, shouting, “It’s the voice of a god, not of a man!”
23 Instantly, an angel of the Lord struck Herod with a sickness, because he accepted the people’s worship instead of giving the glory to God. So he was consumed with worms and died.
24 Meanwhile, the word of God continued to spread, and there were many new believers.

  • What a difference we see here; the unsaved people who were looking to an earthly king to meet their very real needs heard what they wanted to hear from Herod and said ‘this is not just some guy, this is the voice of a god!’
  • The Bible directly tells us that the Lord struck Herod with a sickness that killed Herod because ‘he accepted the people’s worship instead of giving the glory to God.”

  • Herod tried to kill off the Gospel of Jesus by killing off James, imprisoning Peter.

  • Herod keeps playing at being a god, taking life, offering promises, receiving adulation and dying for it.
  • The Gospel, the Real Word of the Living and only God Yahweh about the Son, Jesus Christ, the Only Name that Saves continues to reproduce more and more real believers in the real Savior, Jesus Christ.

Acts 4 (NET)
Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, “Rulers of the people and elders,
9 if we are being examined today for a good deed done to a sick man—by what means this man was healed —
10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, this man stands before you healthy.
11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, that has become the cornerstone.
12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved.”

1 John 3.16
We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us.

1 John 4
15 All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God.
16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.
17 And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.
18 Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.
19 We love each other because he loved us first.

Deuteronomy 10
17 “For the Lord your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords. He is the great God, the mighty and awesome God, who shows no partiality and cannot be bribed. 18 He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing.
19 So you, too, must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.
20 You must fear the Lord your God and worship him and cling to him. Your oaths must be in his name alone.

Colossians 3
23 Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people,
24 knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord. You serve the Lord Christ.
25 For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong he has done, and there is no favoritism.

transparentlogo.png