Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we read through Acts or any book of history, it's easy to get lost in the details and lose the overall narrative sweep. We know that this book is about the certainty of the Kingdom. It details that certainty in a multitude of anecdotes large and small. But in particular, I want to take us this morning over the territory from ch. 4 to ch. 8. How is the reign of Christ manifested in these chapters? Well, we see the church spiritually triumphing over the temple, but being physically pushed out of Jerusalem in order to bring the good news about Jesus to people who had problems with the temple — in particular, the Samaritans (who had their own temple) and eunuchs (who were excluded from the temple). The reign of Christ is overcoming opposition, transcending old Levitical forms and moving into the new form of the church, thereby reaching new people whom the Levitical way could not reach. Actually, though, Luke makes sure to tell us, through Stephen's speech, that all of these changes had precedent in God's prehistory with Israel. Let's look a little more closely at all of this.
