Sermons on Baptism of the Holy Spirit
Acts 1:1-14
From Small Beginnings Introduction: The opening verses of the book of Acts pick up right where we left off last Sunday. On Easter Sunday we found Jesus walking with two of His disciples on the Road to Emmaus and dispelling their spiritual depression by revealing Himself to them as the living, risen Christ. Now in the early verses of Acts the 40 days of Christ’s post-resurrection ministry are summarized, climaxed by His ascension to Heaven. Let’s read Acts 1:1-11: The first account I composed, Theophilus,…
Acts 2:1-21
The Birthday of the Church Introduction: When my second son, Andrew, was born two and a half years ago I had the incredible privilege of watching the event. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything, but the fact is that it was a time of many varied emotions. In addition to sheer awe at the miracle of birth, I experienced a mixture of fear, doubt, humor, exhaustion, pride, humility, and many other feelings. Birth is such an awesome event that I suppose most people…
Acts 8
Spreading the Flame Introduction: The Scripture text before us today, Acts chapter 8, can be studied biographically or geographically. If we take a biographical focus we discover there are 4 main characters—two positive and two negative: there is Saul the Persecutor, Philip the Evangelist, Simon the Magician, and the Ethiopian eunuch. But there is also a strong geographical focus in the chapter, as it describes the spread of the Gospel beyond Jerusalem and Judea to two unlikely places—Samaria and Africa. The importance of this is…
Luke 24:36-53 and Acts 1:1-11
Mission Accomplished Introduction. Since December we have spent most of our time on Sunday mornings studying the life of Christ from the gospel of Luke. We were first introduced to the Messiah’s forerunner, John the Baptist. We learned of the annunciation of Jesus, his birth to a virgin named Mary, his early life at Nazareth, his baptism in the Jordan, his temptation in the wilderness, his calling of Twelve unlikely disciples, his ministry in Galilee, his ministry in and around Jerusalem, his signs…