November 19, 2025 | Acts 9-10
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Introduction and Welcome
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Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible podcast. Happy Wednesday everybody. Happy Wednesday. We are back at it.
Sermon Preparation Insights
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Wednesday's my study day, so lock myself in my office. Not entirely. In fact, we've got some other things going on today, but usually I'm in the office for most of the day, just.
Studying the word getting ready for the sermon this weekend. So are you mostly done by Wednesday then? I get a lot of it done by Wednesday. A lot of it. So you have the points, questions? Yeah. Direction. Well, no, I don't have questions yet, but I do, so Wednesday all day is sermon prep. Thursday morning is usually another four hours or so of sermon prep.
Friday morning, another four hours or so. And then. I spend some time on Saturdays as well, 16 hours on Saturday, so usually about 20 hours when everything's said and done.
Book Recommendation: Praying for Sunday
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Hey, if I haven't recommended it recently, I'm not sure if I have on the podcast. So if I haven't, this is brand new. For some of you, there is a book that I would love for you to use to pray for Pastor pj.
In fact, if you have a pastor and you care about him and you wanna pray for him, this is a great book for that. It's called How to Pray For Sunday, or Praying for Sunday. [00:01:00] Praying For Sunday. Yeah, praying for Sunday. By a guy by the name of, hold on, I'm just typing it in here. I think it's Sunday. Mike. Oh, Mike Ez.
Mike, Mike Fa. Michael, Mike Fez. I'm not sure how to say his last name. Praying for Sunday. You can find it on Amazon. It's a short booklet, 31 pages long, and the whole idea is how to pray for your pastor. During his preparation, during the Sunday sermon, after the sermon, things like that. So this is a really helpful resource.
We would commend that to you. It's just a few bucks. You can pick it up quite cheaply and it would be really helpful and appreciated, I'm sure, from Pastor PJ as he prays for the sermon himself and even prays for his own sermon prep, his heart as he goes about it. This is a really valuable resource. And man, if you want a blessed church, bless your pastor in prayer.
Yeah, that'd be huge. Yeah, please pray for your pastor. Absolutely. I agree. Yeah. Need that for sure, for sure.
Discussion on Acts 9: Conversion of Saul
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Well let's jump into our text. We've got Acts chapter nine and Acts chapter 10 today. So we are in two chapters. We've got Conversion of [00:02:00] Saul and then another conversion in Chapter 10 both of which are pretty exciting.
Both of which happened in, in pretty unique ways. So we pick up in, in chapter nine with Saul, who was, if you remember, at the end of chapter eight, he was involved in the persecution of the church. End of chapter seven. He was there as Philip was Stone. Chapter eight opens up, he's involved in the persecution of the church.
Chapter nine opens up with Saul. It says, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. Pierre do you take that to imply that he. Either was responsible for killing Christians or that this was simply his threat, or that he was at least responsible for sending them to prison where they may have been executed for their faith.
I take it to mean that he's at least complicit in the process. To what degree and how mu How many? How much? I don't know. 'cause it's breathing threats and murder. Right? It's not necessarily actualizing them again, he's sitting at the feet or he's standing in approval at the death of Steven. So I don't know if I could say he's.
Not guilty there, but he's not [00:03:00] primarily guilty. Yeah, because he's not the one who's throwing the stones, or at least I don't think so. It doesn't say so. So I think he's in a similar way, encouraging, maybe authorizing the death of other Christians, but not necessarily personally accountable.
Yeah. In the same way. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. Well, the chapter goes on that he's on his way to, to see more prisons, more Christians imprisoned, more prisons filled up with Christians, and he's confronted on the road by a bright light that knocks him off his ride, his horse there in a voice that says, Saul saw, why are you persecuting me?
And he says, who are you? And the revoice says, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. And I just I love that Jesus. Does that, that this way because it shows his identification with his bride. The church. It shows that as Saul was persecuting Christians, that it was Jesus feeling that himself, Jesus was enduring that persecution himself.
Now Jesus has ascended. He's at the right hand of the Father right now, as Stephen saw him, as we saw in the episode a couple of days ago. [00:04:00] But. This is just that reminder that Christ loves his bride, and that when Christians suffer for him, that there's a, an identification with us, that Jesus experiences, and that's why he confronts Saul here the way that he does.
Yeah, that's really interesting that he says that I'm Jesus whom you're persecuting. He makes no distinction between the way that his body suffers and the way that he himself suffers. Which again, to your point, is such a tender way for Jesus to identify with us. Right? And notice in verse seven here, there are men who are traveling with him and they're speechless.
'cause this is interesting. They hear the voice, but see nobody. And so they're having some kind of experience. So it seems like Saul, who would be Paul, is having a vision of Jesus. Or he has a special. Grace to see Jesus who maybe is invisible to these guys but is visible to, to Saul. So it's interesting to figure out what's actually happening here.
Is this a vis a visual miraculous gift that God is giving Saul, or is he really there and they just can't see him, but they can hear him? Really interesting to know what's happening. Like what is this a vision? Is this a real life? [00:05:00] Not real. This is real, but is this is Jesus physically present here, right?
If so, why can't they see him? There are lots of interesting dynamics happening here. Yeah. And when Salsa or Paul later says, and he appeared last of all to me as the least of these. Yeah. Maybe that lends itself towards, it's an actual appearance. Well is actual, and I guess that's my point. Yeah.
It's not false. Right. But is it a vision or is he physically present? And if a vision you see with your eyes. Through a vision? Yeah. I don't know. I guess it's a curiosity. It's not gonna change the way you read your Bible, but I am curious as to what's happening here. It's true. Maybe, although maybe an argument for it being a vision, not a physical appearance.
If this is a physical appearance, wouldn't this be the second coming? This goes back to our conversation about the Perusia, right. You know, the second coming of Jesus, the rapture. Is this an actual, it's not technically the second coming, right? It's one of the intervening time. Yeah, that's a good point too.
Yeah. Well, from here, Saul is commanded to go to the House of Man named an Ananias. And there's an interesting interplay between Ananias and the Lord because Ananias is told by the Lord, [00:06:00] Hey, Saul is coming here and I want you to pray for him. And Ananias says. Do you remember? Do you know what you're saying here?
And God says, yes, I'm gonna show him how much you must suffer on my account. He's gonna be mine. I'm redeeming him to be my instrument. Not of persecution, but of planting. And so, Anais agrees to do this. Anai pray for him says something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, which is just demonstrating that moment of conversion that he can see.
And then he is going to end up. Being filled with the Holy Spirit here. He's gonna be baptized and then he is gonna stay there in verse 22 and increase all the morn strength and confound the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ. So immediately we see this transformation in Saul, which I think is important for us to think about when he goes on in Second Corinthians five later on to write that anyone in Christ is a new creation.
This is what that meant for him. He went from trying to kill Christian Christians to arguing in the synagogues for Christianity. Which talk about in and I as being shocked, I can only imagine the people in the synagogues going, oh, here comes Saul. He's one of ours. Only to [00:07:00] have Saul say, Hey, we need to talk about how Jesus really is the guy.
Yeah. Psych. I remember that phrase. I find it interesting that Jesus says about him in verse 15, that he's gonna go before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. So he has a mixed audience, although he is primarily an apostle to the Gentiles. It's not exclusively, but he does have. A large role with that particular demographic.
The Significance of Baptism
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I also find it fascinating here that the first thing that Saul does after being saved is he gets baptized. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. He gets baptized right away, which and the reason why is because Jesus commanded this. Right. Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them. This is part of the Christian command, so if you're a Christian and you've not yet been baptized, this is a really good reminder for why you should, and this is what disciples do.
Honor the Lord by obeying him. And we get baptized. Obviously Saul is unique and exceptional for so many different reasons, but among them, this guy gets it and when he gets it, he's on fire and he never gets put out. Yeah. Except when he's eventually persecuted by the Roman government. But before that, I mean, this guy's a firebrand and there's no doubt [00:08:00] why he gets it.
He understands it right away. He puts all of his energy and his effort into obey the Lord and the Lord commends that. Yeah, no, for sure. and we've mentioned this before, I think. With the Ethiopian eunuch, we would in some cases. Counsel, somebody to wait on baptism. Especially in cases of younger children as they come to faith in Christ.
That's right. There are certain, yeah, because today's different. But the ordinary order of things is that Christians get baptized. You get converted to get baptized, but there are times when it makes sense to wait and part of the reason why you might wait, it's to make sure that you understand what you're professing faith in.
You understand what the gospel is. This is why we love partners. We talked about the last podcast episode. Yep. You wanted to go through that because Partners chapter one. Lays out the gospel in clear black and white high deaf for you to see, and then you can judge your own story based on that. And then you get baptized after your conversion is evident and you understand the gospel.
Yeah. And.
Yeah. Yeah. We've said before and we've talked about it before. I think the other thing too is I think baptism as a connection to the local church is really [00:09:00] important as well, because one of the things that baptism was there to do, was to symbolize, was to. Identify you with the body of Christ.
And so spiritual baptism places you into Christ, which places you into the body of Christ at large as well. And that's why we encourage baptism as part of the church. And so sometimes, you'll see people go to Israel on trips or you'll see conferences where people get saved and sometimes there's baptisms happening in the Jordan River.
There's baptisms happening at this church conference where a bunch of different churches are gathered together. And we're not gonna invalidate those baptisms. But I think that the vision and God's purpose for. For baptism is to say, Hey, this is you with your local church. Identifying with them with a specific body of believers.
You're being baptized by your pastor. I ideally there in a situation where you're being brought into that family and made a part of that family. So that's one of the reasons why we argue for the fact that we think baptism is an ordinance of the church and we're not alone in that. That's historically, baptism is an ordinance of the church along with communion and.
If possible should be done within the context of the church. So we would largely discourage someone, let's say a dad, his [00:10:00] 6-year-old professes faith in Jesus. You're not gonna tell that dad, Hey, go to your bathroom, turn on that water right. Fill up the tank and then shove him in there. Right. The bath tank.
Not the other one. Yeah. No swirly baptisms. No swirly bap. That doesn't count. That's the way Presbyterians do it. We would dunk you entirely. Yeah. But that's best. Done in the church? Yeah. Is it sin to do it outside the church? No. We're saying that it's not sin. Right. We wouldn't call you a heretic.
Correct. But we would say this is the orderly way to do things. Yes. And you have the protection and the covering and the oversight of your pastors who care about you and there'll be, they will be held to account to God on your behalf. Yeah.
Saul's Early Ministry and Persecution
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Well, from this point, Saul has to flee because the Jews don't like what he's doing.
So he runs from his life. He ends up, down in Jerusalem. He goes in and out amongst the brothers there. They kind of have to have him vouched for, because they're skeptical as well. That tells you the reputation that Saul had before coming to faith in Christ. But then again, it's not long before the Hellen this time want to.
In Paul's life. And so he's gonna have to flee again. This time they go down and they take him to Caesarea and then eventually they [00:11:00] send him off to Tarsus. But the church is going to be growing. The church is walking in the fear of the Lord. It says, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, verse 31 and multiplying.
So again, it's adding those numbers. It's growing and and it's healthy, which is super encouraging. And the reason that people want to kill him, then what's that about? They're seeking to kill him in verse 29. What's going on with Paul or slash Saul at this point? Why are people trying to kill Saul if if this is the Lord's work?
It goes back to what Jesus said in John John chapter 15. He said, if they hated me, they're gonna hate you. And so here you've. Saul being shown what God said he was gonna do. I'm gonna show him how much he must suffer for my namesake, and he's already right off the bat suffering because his life is in danger now for the second time here.
Because people, people hate him. And so it's a. Imperfect analogy, but when you've got somebody on your favorite sports team that leaves your sports team in free agency and goes and signs with your rival, and then when that guy comes back to play, you, everybody in the stadium is booing that guy when he is introduced, because not if he's Luca, not if he's Luca, but Luca got traded [00:12:00] because he abandoned you.
He went and signed with your enemy and now he's working against you. And I think we're seeing the same thing here with Saul. Saul is now working against the Jews, and so the Jews are angry about this. The Hellenism even are angry about this. Yeah. And so both of them want him dead. That's right Luca. We always welcome you back.
By the way, you can come back, leave, come back here. Come back. Yeah. Nico's gone. Did you hear that? Yes. Isn't that crazy? Yes. He got booted. Yeah. Fire Nico. I don't even follow sports. And I found that, yeah, the internet decided I needed to know that. Yeah. Yeah.
Peter's Miracles and the Story of Tabitha
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Sorry, Paul Persecution after this we flash back to Peter.
Peter is showing up in verse 32. There finds a man named Ania who's bedridden for eight years and paralyzed and Peter. Causes Anas to be healed, heals in there. And immediately he rose. And we note again that the purpose of the miracle, of the miracle validating the messenger, all the residents of Lida, Lida, Lida, and Sharon saw him and they turned to the Lord.
And so again, the belief that's following this interaction here. And [00:13:00] then we come to the end of chapter nine. And Pastor, I always like to throw this one to you. That's right. 'cause the significance here. So why don't you take us to the rest of the way in chapter nine. We've got a Dorcas in our house.
Her name is Tabitha, which means dork. It's just. Translated word. We chose this name for our daughter because of what's true about her in verse 36 here, that she was full of good works and acts of charity. This is a disciple female, obviously, who is highlighted by scripture as being commendable for the life that she lived before the Lord and before others.
And so I really appreciate this particular woman a disciple in Joa. And so you'll find out here, she becomes ill, she gets sick, she dies, and they begin to prepare her body for burial. And since she's near Peter, they call Peter over and say, Hey, come and help us out here. We have something that you might be able to support us with.
So he goes, he follows them, he sees them all weeping over her and they're showing him her life of faithfulness through her tangible acts of good deeds, which are two nicks and other garments that she made for them while she was with them. So this woman is mented by people far and wide. Her life of faithfulness was lived out and it seems [00:14:00] like she might be a widow.
It's hard to tell here because it doesn't say anything about her family, which is unusual. So it seems like she might be by herself. Peter is then given the lowdown about her life and they beg her or beg him to do something about her, and so he does what only an apostle can do and he bows down to the Lord and he prays and he says, Tabitha arise.
This is fascinating because he, we know he's praying to the Lord and yet he speaks to her. Mm-hmm. This is interesting. I've never prayed for this before. I've never prayed like this before where I'm talking to the person in my prayer. But this is what Peter does. He's an apostle. He's got unique privileges that are connected to his office.
So he speaks to her, says, Tabitha arise. She opens her eyes, and then she sits up amazing. The Lord opens the eyes, raises her from death to life, and she becomes throughout that region for that very purpose, not only for her acts of faithfulness, but also now because she's been resurrected. It's a good name for a kid.
It's a great name for a kid. Yeah, so we would recommend that you name your kid Dorcas. There you go. We've already taken tab though, so that one's off the table now. There you go. Alright.
Peter and Cornelius: The Gospel for Gentiles
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Well in chapter 10 we come to Peter and Cornelius as the [00:15:00] ESV has it headed here. And this is an interesting situation because the Jew gentile relationship here is still formulating, they're still trying to figure this out.
In fact, they're going to be trying to figure this out all the way through Acts chapter 15 even. But here. Peter is on the rooftop and he sees a vision of this sheet with a bunch of different animals in it, and the voice comes and says, rise, kill, and eat. And Peter says, no, because there's unclean animals there.
This happens three times before Peter finally understands. Oh, okay. I see what you're trying to tell me here. That there's not any unclean food anymore. Why this matters is God is calling. The Jewish people away from some of the components of the law, not completely away from the law, but some of the components of the law, the ceremonial components the laws of cleanliness, un cleanliness, those things are no longer in operation here as, as far as what the responsibility for the Christians were.
And so peter at the same time here comes a dispatch from a man named Cornelius who was a Gentile, and it says A God Fearer. And so he knew enough about the God of the Jews, that he was believing in the [00:16:00] God of the Jews and seeking the God of the Jews to the best of his ability. And God responds to that by.
Telling him, Hey, send for this man Peter, who's in Japa. So here comes the dispatch. They get Peter, they take him to where Cornelius is, and Peter meets with them and begins to preach the gospel to them and understands that this whole scene with the sheet was about more than just the animals that God was communicating that the gospel was for the Gentiles as well.
And so he begins to preach and Cornelius and tho those around Cornelius end up coming to faith as well. And this is validated there when the Holy Spirit falls upon them. It says in verse 44, while Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit. Fell on all. Who heard the word? And again, this is to validate this moment, because otherwise the Jews would've looked at the Gentiles and thoughts themselves, Hey, they're outside.
They don't qualify, they don't count. And even if the Gentiles had said, no we've responded in faith to the gospel, they would've said, yeah, but they're gentiles. And so this scene right here is gonna be the scene that Peter's gonna appeal to with the council later on and say, this is what [00:17:00] I saw and this is why this is valid.
So the second half of chapter 10, then what's taking place when we see here in verse 44, while Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all. Who heard the word? What's taking place there? Yeah, I it's a, because this seems a lot like chapter two, right. And I think that's the point is God is saying, I'm blessing the faith of the Gentiles, just like I bless the faith of the Jewish people, which means then that the Gentile inclusion into what was previously at least primarily an Israelite.
Path is now saying the Gentiles are included in this in a new way. That while it was true under the old covenant, under the new covenant, it's like the flood gates are ripped open. Yeah. Everybody who is a human being that is Jew and Gentiles. So Jew and Gentile would be anybody who's not a Jewish person.
They're now available to, to come to the faith in Christ and they're shown that salvation is given to them by their speaking in tongues. Okay. Important question then. Is it true today that when someone gets saved, that they will also be given the gift to speaking in tongues as evidence of their conversion?
No. [00:18:00] No. And this is again, this is one of those moments of description rather than prescription in the gospel. And so we see here that this is something that is, is not is not true today because we're no longer looking at somebody and saying, this person is outside the gospel. This person is beyond the reach of the gospel.
We have the evidence of church history and everything else behind us now to show that the gospel is about more than the Jews and the Gentiles. Remember at this time, they didn't have the rest of the gospel, nor did they really have much access to the Old Testament outside of what they'd memorized at this point at their disposal.
And so this was still very raw. God was developing things and formulating a lot of what became the New Testament through the experiences of the apostles, right, right here, live and in action. So that's why things like the falling of the spirit, the gift of tongues, things like that happened during this time because it was assigned to those that were there.
Okay? This is legitimate. This is not just some. New thing that's popping up that's eventually gonna fizzle out. Yeah. God was authorizing his word and his messengers. Verse 47 is also helpful because I think it at least speaks to two potential errors about [00:19:00] baptism. He says this in verse 47. Can anyone withhold water from baptizing water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit?
Just as we have two potential errors that it could speak to. The first one being baptismal regeneration. Yes. This is the idea that when you get baptized, this is the mode by which God saves you. This is when you're truly born again. And here you see that the being born again happens before baptism. So he says, can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received that is past tense.
They've already received the Holy Spirit just as we have. So baptism came after they received the spirit, and that's the first one. The second error you might. You might find yourself in is believing that children should be baptized, and we would call this an heir. Our brothers who are Pato Baptists would disagree with us, but here's a good case point for us to say, this is why we don't believe it.
Verse 47, the people who are baptized are those who already have the spirit. They're the ones who demonstrate salvation by receiving the spirit, and so they're baptized consequently. Mm-hmm. And not. Not prior to that [00:20:00] event. And so we would see, here's a good example of two errors that we would say are avoided by a verse like this.
Yeah. We'll find more of that in Acts chapter 16 as well, when Paul visits Philippi. That's right.
Conclusion and Prayer
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Well, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, we thank you for your word and for how comforting it is to know that you are a God who is laid out all of this from beginning to end and that this is something that you were doing to confirm your plan to reach the nations, to reach people with the gospel, including the Gentiles, which.
Ultimately applies to us as we sit here today. And so we thank you so much for your plan to save and to save by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And so we are grateful to be part of that family. And we just pray that you would continue to enable us to be your mouthpiece, to see more people come to faith in Christ.
And we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep in your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Invite someone to church. Yep, bye.
Bernard: Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in [00:21:00] north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.
PJ: Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said