We Are On a Mission from God

In one paragraph

The pastor opened the last Sunday of 2024 by returning to the book of Acts, picking up at chapter six after a month of Christmas-focused preaching. He walked through a pattern he has been tracing through Acts, showing how God's movement is always met by opposition from one direction or another, and how that opposition is always overcome. The morning ended with the opening of Stephen's story as a...

Read together

1. Acts 1:8 Jesus prophesies the disciples will be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts
2. Acts 2 God moves with power at Pentecost, word interprets, opposition arises
3. Acts 3-4 same pattern of God moving with power, opposition arising
4. Acts 5:12-42 last passage preached before this sermon, apostles arrested, flogged, told not to preach, chose to obey God rather than men
5. Acts 6:1-15 the whole of the passage preached, introduction of the seven, Stephen's arrest
6. Philippians 2 benediction about unity in Christ, encouragement from belonging to Christ, reference to Euodia and Syntyche's division

Talk about it

1. The pastor described a repeating pattern in Acts where God moves with power, His word interprets what is happening, opposition arises, and then the witness advances. Where have you seen that pattern play out in your own life or in this church?
2. When the Greek-speaking believers were grumbling about their widows being overlooked, the apostles considered the merits of the complaint rather than dismissing it. How do you typically respond when someone brings a grievance to you, and what does it look like to genuinely weigh what they are saying?
3. The apostles trusted the Holy Spirit to work through ordinary people chosen by the congregation, rather than keeping all responsibility centralized. What makes it hard to hand responsibility to others, and what would it take for you to trust God's Spirit working through people outside your usual circle?
4. The pastor noted that the believers in Jerusalem had done well spreading the gospel there, but they clumped up rather than moving outward to Judea, Samaria, and beyond as Jesus had told them to do. In what ways might we as a church be clumping up when God is calling us further out?
5. Stephen is described as a man full of faith, grace, power, and the Holy Spirit, and his opponents could not stand against the wisdom and spirit with which he spoke. What does it look like practically, in your daily life, to pursue that kind of character?