Acts: The Kingdom on Mission

Caleb Nelson

The newest sermons from Harvest Reformed Presbyterian Church on SermonAudio.

  1. 10/09/2022

    Maltese and Roman Hospitality

    In this final quarter of Acts, Luke is adopting the Genesis-style narrative of promise and fulfillment, where God's promise meets with threat after threat, but vanquishes them all in succession. The story of Paul's journey to Rome is just such a Genesis-style narrative. Paul decided to go to Rome back in chapter 19, and then for ten chapters met with obstacle after obstacle to the fulfillment of God's promise. One such major obstacle, of course, is the shipwreck on the island of Malta that Luke recounted at length in the previous chapter. Now, at the beginning of this final chapter, Luke records how the apostle was received in Malta. Many commentators have noticed that Luke doesn't say that Paul preached, that people were converted, that Paul started a church on the island, etc. One even goes so far as to say that the text is all about how Christians can cooperate with non-Christians to make the world a better place. But I much prefer the comments of Luke Timothy Johnson, who points at that by this point in the story, Luke doesn't need to tell us that Paul preached and planted a church. Instead, Luke shows us the symbols that he has used time after time in his two-volume work. If you look, the marks are there. The natives received Paul; they showed hospitality; and they ruled money, showing generosity with their possessions toward the mighty apostle and his companions. Taken together, these three symbols leave no doubt: The Maltese show major evidence of conversion. The Son and Spirit of God were at work on this island, converting the Maltese and bringing them into the Kingdom.

    26 min
  2. 09/11/2022

    Five Steps in Evangelism

    I got this entire sermon from evangelist Jim Wilson's book Taking Men Alive. But the content is just so good, so life-changing, that I want to proclaim it to you tonight. You see, most of us have no idea how to do evangelism because we are looking at the whole enchilada and thinking "That is a big enchilada." Perhaps you think back to your own conversion, and the years of preparation and the baby steps that led up to it, and then the years of follow-up work as you continue to pursue Jesus, and you think "How on earth am I going to communicate all of that in a three-minute conversation, or even a thirty-minute conversation?" The answer, of course, is that you're not. And therefore, we tend to want to give up before we've even started because we have such an exalted concept of what the Christian life is. That concept is correct; getting saved really is something the size of your whole life, something that takes a lifetime to understand, internalize, and live out. But my point today is that, armed with this playbook from Jesus, you will be able to focus on a manageable-size step of the process. You will be able to evaluate where the person you're talking to is at, and by the grace of God say something that represents progress in the right direction. Don't think that you have to complete all the steps in one conversation. Working on a piece of the process, taking even a portion of one step, is the goal. Jesus, in this verse, tells us how to evangelize.

    28 min

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The newest sermons from Harvest Reformed Presbyterian Church on SermonAudio.