Christ is Life Podcast

So as we begin to think about this new year and what all God has in store for us, and I mean 2026,
and all of those kinds of things, one of the things that you may be thinking about is how many people there are in this world going into this new year and all the things that they're thinking about, and what's going on in their law lives, along with our lives, and what God is up to in and through all of that. And it's a lot of people. I mean, according to the latest census numbers, we are able to know that there's around 340, 3 million people who live right here in the United States alone, but that there are 8 billion people who live throughout this world that you and I share with them. The good news about that is that when we do these kind of censuses, and we have other agencies like Barna and other places that look to do research along these lines, we know that several of those people are Christians. The reports tell us that there are about 200 million people in the United States who have put their faith and trust in Jesus and are a part of the church. And we're told that about 2.6 billion people throughout the world have professed to be Christians as well. And so this is good news when we think about that. I mean, we think about 2.6 billion people knowing Jesus Christ and being a part of his family, that's a really encouraging thing.
But then when you begin to think about that, and you do the math on that, then you know pretty quickly that that means that there's also 5.5
billion. People who live on our planet who don't know Jesus, 5 billion people who don't have the forgiveness that Jesus purchased for them on the cross and that is available to them. 5 billion people who don't have a relationship with their Creator and were meant to live in that relationship with Him as their source. 5 billion people who are not part of the family of God, who don't know and experience the love of God and His peace and His joy and his comfort and His mercy and His grace. 5 billion people who will not spend eternity in Heaven with Jesus or with those of us who have put our faith and trust in Him for salvation.
When many of us hear those statistics and hear those numbers, we think of them as just that. But then, as we do, hopefully, we are reminded that those statistics represent people that we know,
that out of those 5 billion people, that includes our own family members who don't know Jesus, our own friends and co workers and neighbors and classmates and teammates, people that we know, people that we love, who don't know Jesus and will not spend eternity in Heaven with Him or with us. But the truth is, even if we don't know, the majority of those 5 billion people, those still represent, those are people who are made in the image of God and missing out on the abundant life that Jesus created them to have and experience in a relationship with Him, and they're missing it.
These are people that God loves so much so that he sent Jesus to die on the cross for their sins, not just our sins, so that they could experience that forgiveness and receive that eternal life and experience it now and forever more. And so what about all of those people? What about all those 5 billion people on our planet who don't know Jesus? What about those 143
million people the United States that don't know him? What about your own family members and co workers and neighbors and classmates and teammates who don't know Jesus. Many
of us are thinking, God, you saved me. You rescued me from my sins. You know that I have eternal life and that I get to live in that assurance, but, but what about them? What about the people that I love that don't know you? What about the rest of the people around the world? What about them?
Sure it wasn't something that we're only thinking of right now, but my guess is that the early church was thinking along those lines as well as we've been studying the book of Acts, we've been looking at the early church and life in the Spirit, and what it looks like for them and for the Holy Spirit to change their lives, to radically transform them, bring them the assurance of salvation. And I'm sure there's no doubt that many of them were thinking along the same lines, God, you saved us. You rescued me. I'm getting to experience peace in a way that I've never experienced it before, love in a way that I've never experienced it before, the assurance of eternal life being spent with you. But what about the rest of my family? You.
What about the friends? What about my neighbors? What about my coworkers? What are these people I know and that I love? What about them? And I'm sure they were thinking much of the same thing.
Well, today, as we continue this message series, as we look at just these first four verses in the book of Acts of chapter eight, we're going to see God speak into that whether they were thinking it or not, and whether we're thinking it or not, it's going to say something about what God was doing in their lives, and it's going to say something about what God still wants to do in our lives. Today, we left off at the end of chapter seven, and so we're again beginning in chapter eight, and we find this strange opening line at the beginning of a new chapter, and Saul approved of their killing him. And you go, well, that's a weird way to start a brand new chapter, and quite honestly, it is. But the thing that we have to remember is that these little numbers that represent the chapters and that represent the verses in our Bibles today were not originally there. It wasn't like Luke was writing and the Holy Spirit was inspiring him to write what it was written here, and that we're still seeing today. And he was like, Okay, that looks like that's the good end of a chapter seven. And so let's start chapter eight, and we'll put the verse one that's going to start here, that wasn't there. He was just writing it all down. And what he writes here is really just a part of what he was writing in chapter seven. And I have no idea why people decided that they should just tack it on and put it right here at the beginning of an opening chapter, but that's what we have. And so when we see that Saul, this guy named Saul, that we're going to continue to hear a lot more about as Act goes on, approved of their killing him, we go, Well, if we haven't been here for this series or ever read the book of Acts, who are they talking about? Who did they kill? If you were here, you know the answer to that. His name was Stephen. It was a guy who was just part of the early church. He wasn't a big, known leader at the time. He wasn't he was just a guy that had put his faith and trust in Jesus, had his life and transformed and changed forever, and was part of what God was doing in and through the church. And he was beginning to kind of tell other people about Jesus, and people didn't like it, and so they put him on trial, and they accused him. The religious leaders of the day accused him of breaking God's law, and he's given the chance to go on trial to give a response to these accusations, and he gives this really long speech. I mean, Chapter Seven is really long, and it's basically the history of all the Jewish people in the Old Testament, religious leaders who were missing what God was up to. He's just showing them. Do you see how many times the religious leaders of the day missed what God was up to? And guess what? He says, You guys as religious leaders, are missing it today, because Jesus is the Messiah. He's the prophesied one, the Messiah that was prophesied about that was that God said He was going to bring one day, he's been here, he showed up and you crucified him. Well, they didn't like that very much. They got really angry about that, and so they began to stone him to death. But Luke continues as he told us all about that event, and tells us now it's important for us to know that there's a guy named Saul who was there at the killing of Stephen and that he approved of it, maybe even had a huge role in influencing the decision and what they decided to do that day. And we'll learn more about that as we go. He goes on now and says, On that day, on what day, on the day Stephen died, on the day that Stephen was stoned to death by the religious leaders, the Jewish religious leaders of the day, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. So one of the questions that may arise when you see that and you go, okay, all the people were scattered that were part of the church, but the apostles remained. Like, like, why did they stay there? Why did everybody else leave but the apostles stay in Jerusalem, and quite honestly, we don't know the exact answer to that. There's some people who think that when we see in Acts chapter seven, that there was a mention of just some things with the Hellenistic Jewish Christians that were going on, that maybe that was a key part of the suffering and persecution that was going on, and it didn't influence them as much, since they weren't the, you know, Hellenistic Jewish leaders. But I really don't think that's the case, because they had experienced a lot of persecution before. We see this all the way up to chapter seven, where the apostles were arrested and thrown in jail and they were beaten and they were being tortured. And so they had already experienced a lot of persecution and suffering and so, so if they were experiencing that, and there was even a greater persecution that began to break out, then why did they stay?
Well, I think that the reason was, is because we saw their answer to that in an earlier chapter. I mean, when they were flogged and beaten and being persecuted and tortured for.
Their faith, they rejoiced. They were like, yes, we got to suffer in the same way that our Lord and Savior suffered, and we saw the good that God brought from that. And so thank you that we get to be a part of that and experience it in our lives, because we know you work on a greater scale to do really good, even out of our suffering. And so I think they were willing to stay and suffer more persecution for their faith, because they knew they'd already experienced it. They'd see what God does on the other side of that. And so they stay, but as a result of this great persecution, the people are scattered. But even though that they're scattered, Luke makes sure to mention, and this was a really important it was a really big deal in this particular day and age, that even though that persecution was going on and everyone scattered, that godly men buried Stephen and mourned for him deeply. Now the question arises, is this, if he, if we're to take Luke literally here, and he says that everyone was scattered. Everyone in the church left Jerusalem to go to Judea or Samaria. Then the only ones left are the apostles. And he doesn't say that the apostles buried Stephen. That's not his normal way of addressing them. Is godly men. And So who are these godly men who buried Stephen, if the Christians are gone and it wasn't the leaders,
again, we don't know for sure, but most likely these are Jewish men, Jewish devout men, who followed the Law closely, and most likely they were listening to the speech that Stephen gave, and they saw the response from the other religious leaders who acted out of just pure anger and stoned a guy to death. And so maybe they thought, this is not the way that this should be going. Maybe God was using something that Stephen was saying to go, oh yeah, they did miss so much that God was up to. Maybe we are missing it today. And so these are Jewish men who weren't Christians at the time, but were moved by what God did with Stephen. Maybe they heard Stephen cry out, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do whenever they were stoning him and go, Oh my gosh, how could this guy be anything but from God, if he's going to respond in that way? And so what I'm pointing out is that most likely, God was already up to doing something greater, even though this persecution that was going on to capture the attention of people and start bringing even more people in to the church in this way. Either way, we see that Stephen, the first Christian martyr, received a proper burial, which was highly valued in this day and age, and they mourned for him deeply. After, Luke pauses to make sure we're aware of this and what happened? He turns his attention back to the persecution. Now, to give us a little bit more detail about that great persecution that broke out in verse three, it says, But Saul, the guy we were introduced to in verse one, began to destroy the church. And we're told that going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. And so we see that this guy, Saul, who approved the killing of Stephen he has a big role, a huge role, in the persecution of the church, this great persecution that broke out after that. He went there and he dragged people off. He didn't just arrest him. I mean, he violently dragged people away. This was a huge, great persecution, and why so many people fled to Judea and Samaria. I want you to take notice, it says, But Saul began to destroy the church. When you see that language destroy what comes to mind, as far as in our Bibles about someone else who uses that kind of language in regard to their kind of work, Satan, right, our enemy, John 1010.
We're told that he comes to do what, to steal, kill and to destroy. And so even though we see right here that we're told about this man named Saul doing this, and it is him, but what we want to take note of is this, that there is an enemy above it all who is at work on a bigger, greater, grander scale, in and through Saul to try to destroy the church. The enemy hated to see what was going on. He thought he had taken Jesus out, and now, all of a sudden, Jesus was raised from the dead, and now all these people are coming to know Him, and this church is exploding, and 1000s of people are having their lives transformed and changed, and the enemy is sitting there going, No, you.
All these people are experiencing the abundant life of God, and I am here to steal, kill and destroy we'll stop that from happening. And so he was at work to try to destroy the church. He's still at work today. He's still trying to destroy the church. He's still trying to destroy you. And that's one of the things that I think I just want to highlight really quickly before we move on, is we've got to be aware that we have an enemy, and he is out to steal, kill and destroy, and he's a liar and he's a deceiver, and he will try to work in and through the situations and circumstances going on to allow you to not be able to see him at the forefront and to blame everyone else and everything else that's right in front of you.
Last semester, we had a Wednesday night marriage class, and it was so good. And one of the things that they kept saying over and over again is, guys, you have an enemy, and he is not your spouse. But, you
know, I'm saying that's what we tend to think about. And whoever it is that's causing it, it's that person. We go, no, no, it's greater enemy that is going on. We have an enemy. His name isn't really Saul. It was Satan who's at work in this story that God is writing and that we all live in and we want to be aware of today. So he, along with Satan, working above and through it all, was trying to put an end to this movement, but God was at work in it like he always has been throughout history, and that we saw in Jesus, and we saw in the apostles in the earlier part of Acts, and he's still continuing to work in and through this great persecution to bring things together for his greater purposes. Here's where we see it Acts, chapter four, and this is we're going to stop and pause the rest of our time together today. He says, Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. Now, here's my question for you again, we already talked about it, but who are those who have been scattered? Who are we specifically talking about right here?
Those who are not the apostles, everyone in the church who was not an apostle, we're told that they were the ones that were all scattered. It wasn't them. And so when we see this, when when Luke references that those who have been scattered, those who left to Jerusalem, just continue to keep in your mind that these are not the people who spent three years with Jesus. They didn't get all the individual specific training and all the seminary level training, if you will, to go out and do what it is that they were going to be doing. They weren't the ones, these ones who had been scattered, weren't the ones who we had seen written about all through chapters one through six, where there were big miracles happening, and Peter and and John and these guys who were doing big time, huge, miraculous, supernatural things that were happening. It wasn't wasn't those guys who were being scattered. It wasn't the real church leaders, the official ministers and pastors of the church, if you will. It was just ordinary people. Think of it like this. It would be like like me and maybe the rest of our pastoral staff if there was a great persecution that broke out here in the Tyler area against the church, and it was so great that every single one of you guys scattered to a completely different area, and we were the only ones who remained here. It would be you guys, be just normal everyday church people, and what we're told, and we skip over this and just read it in through Acts, and don't pause and think about it, but those people who had no official training, who weren't the apostles, who weren't the official ministers, weren't the official pastors. That those who had been scattered wherever it is that they ended up, they preached the word wherever they went.
It would be like me saying you guys as the church who were scattered somewhere changed the course of the world wherever you ended up and were scattered to
because you preached the gospel wherever it is that you went. And lives were transformed and changed, and the church began to explode at that particular point. We need to talk about this a little bit when it says those who had been scattered preached the word don't get in your mind that they were doing what I'm doing right now. We're not talking about some formal kind of one time way. This is written in the present tense, which means this was something that was continuously happening. And the word preached there just really literally means to share the good news, to tell other people about the good news of Jesus, to share the gospel. And so wherever it is that they ended up, whether they ended up in Judea or Samaria somewhere, they told other people about Jesus, and it changed the world. They met.
New neighbors. They told their neighbors they started a new job, and they told people at their job, they met new friends, and they had their friends over for dinner, and they told their friends, and on and on and on. Here's the way Kenneth la Tourette talks about what it is that they did there. Listen to this listen to this language, the chief agents in the expansion of Christianity.
The chief agents in the expansion of Christianity appear not to have been those who made it a profession, not the professional ministers, leaders, if you will, but men and women who carried on their livelihood in some secular manner. They were lay people who had secular jobs out in the world who carried on their livelihood secular manner and spoke their faith to those they met in this natural fashion, just as they did their normal life. They told people about Jesus and that the expansion of the church at this point didn't depend on the apostles, but on the grass roots, men and women gossiping the gospel as they went. Would you love that phrase? They gossiped the gospel wherever it is that they went.
They were responsible for changing the world. We asked the question earlier, what about our friends? What about our family? What about our neighbors? What about our co workers who don't know Jesus? We asked the question, What about the 5.5 billion people around the planet who haven't said yes to Jesus? Well, according to Acts four, God is going to send us to tell them the good news about Jesus.
We're the answer to that question, his plan is to send us. He sends normal, everyday people in the church who have secular jobs into the world to save the world.
This is what he was up to in and through the persecution. Here's how we hear about it. Read about it in Romans 10,
for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on Him to save them, unless they believe in Him? And how can they believe in Him if they've never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And How will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news. How can they know without being sent?
When the disciples gathered together in the beginning of Acts, we read about this in Acts one, right before his ascension, before the sending of the Holy Spirit, he meets with them. And Mary, this is what it says right here. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses, where in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Now we go, oh man, great. He met with the disciples. He told them they're his witnesses in all of those different places, until we get to Acts Eight four. When
you get to Acts Act Four, it tells us or acts eight, one, whichever part it was, says all were scattered except who
the apostles.
They stayed where
they stayed in Jerusalem, but Jesus said He was going to use them as his witnesses all throughout that world. Well, apparently he was meeting with them. He didn't just mean them. He wasn't just sending them out to be the witnesses saying. He was saying you and as you share and you're my witnesses in Jerusalem, more and more people are going to come to know you, and I'm going to use them to be my witnesses as I scatter them in to other places as well. How can they believe? How can they know, if we're not sent, we are sent. We're all sent. We are all sent, ones as the church Jesus transforms and changes our lives by putting His life in us to express his life through us as part of His kingdom work, so that other people come to share in the things that we're sharing. It's how he changes the world.
Here's the other thing that I really want us to notice before we we move on when we look at Acts four, and we see what God was up to in and through them, there was something that had to happen in order to get the gospel into Samaria and Judea and begin to change lives in that particular area. And it's really part of the application today, because what we see happening there is the same thing that we can expect God to do in our lives, which is what we've been asking throughout this series. If you remember, it's called life in the Spirit, because we're looking at what life in the Spirit looked like in the early church, and go, Oh, the same Holy Spirit lives in us. And so what can we expect life to look like in when we're living life in the Spirit, when we're trusting in the spirit, living.
With Him as our source instead of our own flesh and strength. And so here's what we can expect, because it what was what happened with him in the early church as well. Life in the spirit means that he will sometimes disrupt our comfortability for his greater purposes.
That's what we saw happen in the early church.
We saw Jesus, the Holy Spirit God the Father, disrupt their lives so that they could be a part of his greater purposes. Think about what we've read up until this point. They all come to know Jesus. Their lives are transformed with change. They're baptized. What does the community look like at the end of Acts chapter two, man, they're meeting with the disciples. They're meeting in homes. They're breaking bread together. They're worshiping together. They're learning about Jesus from the guys that spent three years. I mean, life is good. This community is good. This is the kind of real, authentic community that they were always designed to have an experience, and they were experiencing it in that moment. Oh, life is so good. We're so happy. This is such a blessing to be able to be a part of this community. And there was purpose in that it was good he meant to disciple them and grow them and be in that community, but he had a bigger purpose than them being comfortable and staying in it, and it was to put them in that community, to help them see about their life in Christ, to send them out to share that life in Christ with other people, and so in order for God to get the gospel to other parts of the world, God had to disrupt their comfortability.
They were comfortable in their own community, they were comfortable in their own family, they were comfortable with their friends, and they were comfortable in their jobs and in their church community. But God allows persecution to happen, persecution that was originally intended for evil to be a part of his greater purposes. He allowed it to be a part of his greater purposes, to scatter his people from their place of comfort into an unknown area. Think about that
uprooted from your home, your job, everything that you had there in a hurry on that day, on that day, a great persecution broke out. Well, let me, let me get on the phone and call our realtor and see if they got any houses in Judea. And you know, we can find something good over there. We'll stick around and sell our house here and and we'll make some money off of that, and we'll be comfortable in the grape No no, just great persecution. Go they left
to an unknown place, no family there, no friends, no job, no home, no church. But they did have the Holy Spirit.
They were not alone. God was with them. He had put his life and his power in them. He was at work to provide for them in their new situation, to start a new life there, and to ultimately be a part of a greater work that he wanted to do in them and through them, to transform and change the lives of those around them in that area, and so guys, sometimes that is what life in the Spirit will look like for us. Today, he will make us uncomfortable to get us to go
to allow his life to be expressed through us, to share this good news with others around us. Sometimes that will look like Acts chapter eight, four, where it means going to another place. Now it may not be involved in the same situations and circumstances. It may
maybe the Holy Spirit will allow persecution to happen that will cause us to scatter, in a literal sense here, but we don't need to look at that and go, that's the only way, right? God will cause us to be uncomfortable in our lives, sometimes with what's going on here and now to get us there,
away from where we are, away from this area to another part of the world. Perhaps
it's what happened in the lives of Doug and Karen layman,
they're here today on break, but their family lives here in Tyler, or daughter lives here in Tyler. They're comfortable here.
God disrupted their comfortability
and put it on their hearts to go share the gospel with those in an unreached part of the world. And so they left the life of comfort here and the life of family.
Here to go there in a very dangerous and risky part of the world to serve and meet needs of those who are there so that they can have an open door to tell them about Jesus, and we get reports from them. And they're even here today. I didn't even know they were here today, but they're here
on rest in sabbatical before they go back in a while. But we receive communication from them often about people in this this unreached area who didn't know Jesus, and they have the opportunity to share Jesus, and they go, Oh my gosh, yes, I want to say yes to Jesus. And now their lives are being transformed and changed. Their family's lives are being transformed and changed, and then they're being discipled. And not only they're being discipled and in great community, and their lives being comfortable and yay, we get to go to heaven forever, they're sending them out. We get reports often to them going, this is what happened here. And then they're being sent out to go to another community to tell people in that community about Jesus so that community can be changed. And that happened with people just like you, who are laying the church, who God disrupted their comfort in life. Here to go, I want to send you there. And it wasn't like they were going, oh gosh, this whole Christianity thing stinks, and God just makes us go do stuff we don't want to do. It was like, Yes, we're so excited about that, because God changes your heart about those kinds of things. We don't need to approach them and go, I'm so scared to pray about it, because God may send me halfway around the world and go somewhere I don't want to go. You think God's really like that? No, but if he's calling you to it, you're going to sense that. And when you sense it's not something that you want to ignore. And so I want to invite you, if that's part of what this whole thing is about today, that God's doing something similar in your lives, the same way that he did with two of our members here to send you to another part of the world as a missionary, to share the gospel with him. Do not ignore that. Let us know so we can pray about that with you, so we can help you take those next steps, possibly to pursue God working in and through you in that area. But as we do say that when we talk about life in the Spirit meaning he will disrupt our comfort that doesn't always mean to go somewhere else. Sometimes it means that he's He's disrupting our comfortability here to just be more involved here in what it is that he's doing in our sphere of influence, because maybe it's your
your comfortability that's keeping you from his greater purposes in your home and in your neighborhood and in your workplace, in school or with your friends.
And that can be scary. It
can be scary to think about stepping out of where you're comfortable and into something else that God's doing in your school or in your sport, with your teammates, in your job, with your neighbors and your family, with your friends. But one of the things that we want to recognize is that God does not give us a spirit of fear, and so the moment we start to experience that fear about stepping out of our comfort zone into that that is not from God, but as we talked about earlier, that is from your enemy, who is out to steal, kill and destroy, he immediately puts the fear there to keep you from stepping into the risky part of it and to trust God, because he knows that God is going to show up when you step out in that place, and things are really going to begin to happen there. So you think he really wants you to do that. No, no, no, he's going to lie. He's going to deceive you into thinking you know what your best life is a life of comfortability,
gaining all the stuff and living in ease. That's where it's really at, right there. But he's a liar and a deceiver, and God wants to work in and through us, to step out into his greater purposes and to trust him. Trust Him in the unknown, in the risky things, whenever he makes us uncomfortable with those things, and to trust him, because what it is that he's up to is so great that it can change people's lives forever. I
mean, we get to be a part of things where people can celebrate being in heaven for all of eternity, because we step from here into the unknown and the risky and went, Okay, God, let's go.
What a privilege it is to be a part of those things. And so my question to you is, what in what ways
is God calling you out of your comfort zone today,
have you allowed Satan to
deceive you
into
building a life of comfortability? You.
The
abundant life is found in Jesus and in His Kingdom work in us and through us. And if he's leading you out of your comfort zone and into one of those areas, a lot of times, it's because the life in the Spirit means that he's going to lead and empower us to share the gospel and reach more people. And again, that can be a scary thing, but
we don't have a spirit of fear.
5.5 billion people on our planet who don't know Jesus. 143
million people in United States who don't know Jesus,
your family members, your friends, your teammates, your schoolmates, your neighbors, your co workers who don't know Jesus,
who is the Spirit leading you to tell who?