You're listening to the 10-minute Bible number podcast. It's best on the free daily deep minute Bible. And right now we're talking about collations.
SPEAKER_00You know, it's one thing when we get started with one of these conversations, and I decide that I'm going to lead with something from Star Wars movies. Because I know that there are a lot of you are like that stuff is dumb. I don't like that. I don't watch those movies. I don't care about your dumb Star Wars things. You have a point. You don't have to like Star Wars. But usually I then want to give you the heads up, they're like, oh, it's going to be okay. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's all going to come around. It's all going to work. But then on a day like today, where I decide that I'm going to talk about a Star Wars thing, but it's not even the Star Wars movies. I'm going to talk about some weird, obscure Star Wars spin-off cartoon for a minute. Then all the more I feel like I just need to beg you. Like I am at your mercy right now. Please trust me on this. I think it's totally going to work, and I won't take too much of your time. All right. So there's this weird cartoon spinoff of Star Wars. It's called The Clone Wars. It's about some stuff that happened between episode two and episode three of Star Wars, and I think it's pretty good, actually. It holds up all right. But there's a bad guy in that show who I just think is the coolest. It doesn't appear in any of the movies. He's a space cowboy. And I got a soft spot for space cowboys. I don't know what the deal is, but anytime they take the old West, spaghetti Western type of motif and they cram it into space. For me, even though I've already seen it a dozen times, I'm like, oh, it's the first time I've seen it. This is wonderful. Tell me more. And every time they give a character in space invisible space spurs that kind of jingle when they walk into the space saloon, I'm just tickled. I adore that. Well, this obscure bad guy in Star Wars is called Cad Bain. And he's all alien looking and everything in terms of his face and all of that stuff, but he dresses like I think he's a mashup of like four or five different bad guy cowboy type character villains from old westerns and stuff. So he's got the big hat that he wears real low over his eyes, so he's all shady, and he dresses in black, and he's got the boots, and he's also real stylish. He's the kind of character who, when you pan around the saloon real slow, you see that shady character in the corner, like we were talking about yesterday. But you can't really make out anything about what's going on with his face, but then he inhales on that cigarette a little bit, which I'm against, and it makes that little crackling sound. Gives you the close-up on the cigarette, and it kind of lights up his face, and you're like, oh dang, that guy right there means business. And then, you know, inevitably the character you introduce that way, you know that guy's gonna be important, again, as we discussed yesterday. But then you also figure, like, I bet I'm gonna see that guy in action next, and I bet it is going to be bad, and it is going to be scary. And then with in the case of this character I'm referencing, Cad Bain, yeah, it's it's all of those things. It's bad and it's scary. Likewise, in the book of Acts, I feel like what we're getting here in Acts chapter seven and into the beginning of chapter eight is the introduction of a shady character all dressed in black in the back corner of the saloon who takes one long drag on that cigarette, which is bad, it'll kill you. Don't even start with it, kids. And it makes a little crackling sound and it lights up his face. And you immediately suspect that is a bad man right there. And then the next paragraph, he goes and does stuff, and sure enough, it's bad. Stephen is the first martyr. He's the first Christian to go out and say Jesus' stuff and get killed for it. He got killed by the same people who killed Jesus. I mean, technically it was the Romans who ran Jesus through and put him on the cross. I mean, they gotta own that. But this particular group of Jewish leaders, not the Jews, as some people who like to be mean to Jews would say, but this particular thread of this particular intellectual tradition within Judaism, these people at this time, they did this thing. They rejected Jesus and they cooperated with the Romans to get him executed and put on the cross. And so the same group of people, now they're not even going to bother to cooperate with the Romans. They just kill Stephen with rocks themselves, which is a huge overreach on their part, a huge breach of their agreement with the Romans. I mean, it gives you a hint as to how mad they were that they were willing to risk the hard-earned, barely stable peace with the Roman occupiers in order to spontaneously carry out this execution themselves. So we had this whole horrifying, morally insane scene we looked at yesterday. But then standing in the background, we find out is that was my crackling cigarette sound, is the shady character in the shadows, and this guy's name is Saul. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he fell on his knees and cried out, Lord, do not hold the sin against them. When he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul was there, giving approval to his death. We move forward into chapter eight. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church, going from house to house. He dragged off men and women and put them in prison. That wasn't a very long reading, but a lot of things changed very quickly in just that one paragraph we looked at, and Saul is the epicenter of it. He's the zealous, ambitious guy who's willing to put his name on the line and take the physical risk to go out and put to death this Jesus thing that he thinks is such a problem that he's willing to shed blood over it. There were probably a lot of older guys associated with the religious leaders who were like, this is very bad. Somebody should do something, but they weren't willing to get dirty themselves. This saw guy, he's a young pup. He's an ideologue. He is more than willing to put action to idea, even if that action is violent and a huge overreach of what he's actually allowed or entitled to do. And so here, a whole era of the Bible ends almost before it even got going in chapter eight of the book of Acts. Remember, up until this point, the disciples have been freely moving about in Jerusalem. They've been teaching in the temple courts. Sure, they've been scolded by the religious leaders and even flogged a little bit, but who among us hasn't? Yet they have persisted in talking about Jesus, chewing on the metaphorical cords, can't seem to get them to stop. But at this point, in these first eight chapters of Acts, it sure feels like Christianity is a reform movement? A completionist movement? A purist movement, even within Judaism. Christianity isn't its own thing at this point. Everybody in the first eight chapters of Acts who is a Christian would say, well, I'm a Jew, or I am living out the religion of Judaism. There's supposed to be a Messiah. We now know who the Messiah is. I am following that Messiah. It's been confirmed a whole bunch of different ways, supernaturally, biblically, Jesus is the guy. I mean, he's the King of Kings. This is the one we've been waiting for. I'm taking Judaism where Judaism is intended to go. And understandably, people didn't know exactly how to reconcile that for the first eight chapters, but thanks to the efforts of this dark character from the deep shadows and recesses of the room, we're not going to take the time to really figure out how all of this relates together. Saul, rather, single-handedly is going to put an end to any of this discussion about Jesus being the fulfillment of Judaism, and he's taken a right to violence. He is going to purge every practitioner of Judaism who believes Jesus is the Messiah and put an end to this right now before it can spread any further. And all of this is said against the backdrop of the burial of brave Stephen. Now remember, it says that on the day that this great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, that's Acts 8.1, it says that everybody except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. That sounds pretty bad, right? They got scattered out to the countryside and even to the larger region. But does that phrase ring a bell? Judea, Samaria. It seems like there's a rhythm there. That's because there is. The theme verse of the book of Acts, or the central plot thesis of the book of Acts is Acts 1, 8. But you, Jesus said, talking to the disciples, will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and to Samaria and to the ends of the earth. There's a very important linguistic clue right there in what we read in Acts chapter 8. Because remember the first part of Acts, where does it happen? In Jerusalem. Where did Jesus say they would need to be his witnesses? All the way back here in Acts chapter 1. You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. So I guess we can just check that off the list. Check. Okay, it looks like the Jerusalem chapter is about to largely close. And what's after the Jerusalem chapter, according to Jesus? In all Judea and Samaria. Wait a minute, back over here to Acts chapter 8. It says, And all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Luke, the guy who wrote this, is just doing a killer job right here. This is wonderful structuring. These are wonderful, subtle clues. The inattentive reader can just kind of keep rolling along and just flow with the story, but the attentive reader is going to be like, oh dang. Look at that. We're into the next act of acts. I didn't think about how that would sound in advance. Whatever, we're just gonna have to roll with it. But I think it's very important to note that the human character who initiated this whole pivot where the Jesus thing goes from being just as a little thing among a few people only isolated to Jerusalem, to the Jesus thing becoming a regional movement in Judea and Samaria. The guy who initiated that was not Team Jesus. He was the one trying to snuff out the Jesus stuff. Yet by doing so, he inadvertently causes the, well, in his mind, contagion to spread out to Judea and Samaria. Exactly where Jesus said it was going to go next. Fascinating. Before this guy even gets to a point where he's actually trying to help the Jesus thing in Christianity, which is going to come, he's going to have a change of heart. He still is inadvertently moving forward the gospel by the pressure he's applying to Christians in Jerusalem by doing evil, dark, low-character stuff to punish them for believing that Jesus is the Messiah. All right, for now we got to put a pin in Saul because he's going to go off camera for a while. And the camera is going to follow those who were persecuted and scattered. We're going to go out to Judea and Samaria for the next little bit of Acts and find out, well, what happens when the message of Jesus goes out there? What happens when this is no longer happening in the place where everybody always talks about this stuff anyway? But now it's out with, you know, the country people, the hill people, the common folk. How is that going to go? And will the enemies of this message be willing to leave their comfy confines and chase the adherents to the message of Jesus out into the sticks? Well, whatever happens next, a whole lot of the reason it's happening is because of that shady cad bane-like character who was lingering in the corner, who we could just tell by the way he was coming off over there in the shadows that he was going to go cause problems next, and he has, and that is going to set in motion some very interesting events. All right, final thought, I have a request. One of the things that really helps bring new people on board to having this conversation with us is reviews on any kind of podcast platform app. I would be incredibly grateful if you like this stuff. I mean, if you don't like it, you know, you could consider not leaving a review. It would be okay not to let anybody know. But if you do like this stuff, it would be awesome if you would consider leaving a rating and review. The algorithms that put podcasts in front of people seem to really like that. And if somebody stumbles upon this thing and sees your vouch, I would be super grateful for that. Thanks for considering it. If not, that's cool too. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.