How to Study the Bible III - New Testament History
Craig Kaes · Jun 26, 2016
How to Study Bible (2016), No. 25
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926535213672

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

This morning we are going to cover New Testament history. We are going to see how well I can blaze through this. What I've done is taken three of Verne's New Testament related history classes. and mash them into one. And we know that Vern likes to keep his classes light without a lot of content. So compressing into three into one should be no problem, but you never know. So we'll see how that goes. So it's kind of like a mashup. It's a mashup.

All right, so let's talk timeline of the New Testament. We'll kick it off with the birth of Jesus, and by the time we get done, we'll be out about 100 AD. So Jesus, when he was 12, visited the temple, and then he had his three year of ministry right around 30 AD. Crucifixion at 33. Now, we'll spend probably most of our time walking through the Book of Acts materials, which takes us from about 40 to about 61, and then we'll look at what happened to all of the apostles thereafter.

It doesn't end well. But then, it does end well. So Mary and Joseph were married while living in Nazareth. They had to go down to Bethlehem for the census. And we covered that last week, that Romans like money. In order to extract money, you need to know what you've got that you can count that is worth money. And so they had a census. Everybody had to go back to their hometown And so this shows a likely reasonable route for them to have taken to go down to Bethlehem, because they traditionally did not travel through Samaria. So it would have been a longer route.

Mary, of course, quite pregnant. And any accounts that have Mary on a donkey are not likely accounts. As a carpenter, Jesus was not likely to be able to afford a donkey. Most likely she was walking, which is great. Crystal was pregnant toward the end and decided, you know what, we just need to have a baby. We went downtown and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked. So probably that long walk helped induce labor. Why not? So, yep. I think he meant Joseph. He said Jesus was a carpenter so he couldn't afford a dog. Yes, Joseph was a carpenter. Jesus was a carpenter after him, being the son of a carpenter.

Thank you very much. And given the measure of sleep deprivation I'm functioning at right now, feel free to chime in with, that doesn't sound quite right, Greg. Thank you for the correction. So here's a Roman census declaration. I mentioned last week that we found all sorts of tax receipts and stuff from the era. Well, here's a census declaration. Bethlehem, 1894. I love that you found some old pictures that aren't so built up so you can get more of a sense of what but it may have looked like they built directly into that hillside going up.

So let's talk Herod. We introduced Herod last week. Herod was a wicked and paranoid man who was put into place by the Romans to keep the Parthians from coming down and attacking Jerusalem again. He was cruel and, as I said, paranoid. He was worried that there's this kid who's going to grow up and be a king, and so he orders, you know what, I want to be able to get my hands on any such creature. So when the Magi come down from Parthia and say, hey, we're looking for this king. He's like, you know what? I am too. So once you find him, just let me know. I would love to say hey to that guy. So, the Magi come down and end up visiting Jesus, but somehow don't seem to make their way back to Herod. So, poor fella didn't find out about Jesus and where to find him.

Jesus and Mary and Joseph end up migrating down to Alexandria. And you guys remember why Alexandria was just such a great target for that? Yes, exactly right. So when Alexander the Great came down, made it all the way down to Alexandria, and realized, ooh, I need some way of maintaining control and understanding what's going on down here, remembering the positive experience he had with the Jewish population just up in Jerusalem, he said, let me go grab some of those guys. And he brought them down to Alexandria and formed a colony.

So there was a place down there where they could come and be completely welcome. So fast forward about 12 years. And there's a pilgrimage back up to Jerusalem. So Jesus, Joseph, and Mary land at the temple. Everything just sort of fits the historical account super well, except Jesus had way more of an understanding than would have been reasonable for somebody who was 12 years old.

Of course, we know where that came from. So Jesus was a carpenter in Nazareth, just like his father. It could have been done in the family home with a shop next door. Something that's interesting about carpentry at that time, so today When we want to build something, we run to Home Depot and get some pre-milled wood, maybe even some plywood so everything is straight and we can put things together. ironed a nice veneer on there. That's not how carpentry was done back in this time. It starts with, go find a tree, and then all the milling, all of the straightening, that is done by hand. And consequently, carpenters, they were beefy individuals, so I just kind of picture Jesus ripped.

All right, so with that backdrop, understanding a little bit about the history, great opportunity to remind all y'all why we're looking at history, why we're looking at culture. If we can understand the time step, then when we get to a portion of scripture that doesn't make it chronic sense in our reading, it's good to be able to have that backdrop to interpret it within. So when Jesus talks about, don't worry about the speck in the other person's eye, worry about the beam in yours, the beam was actually Visible everybody had seen them. They were shaped by hand took a lot of work to produce these things and they were overhead in Housing structures, and so we know it's a pretty decent support beam We have we have to use two by twelves a lot of wood so these beams are pretty decent beams and And just kind of think about, OK, speck in their eye, beam in mine. The beam is bigger than my eye. So maybe I ought to be looking at myself if I have those sorts of issues. So being able to understand what's going on historically and culturally gives us a deeper appreciation for scripture. That might be the last such example we do today.

So Jesus enters into his ministry, he waits until about 30. Interesting hypothesis about why waiting until he's 30. Joseph pretty much disappears from the scene scripturally. So we don't know at what point he dropped out of the picture. The last I think we see of him is when they're moving back up to Jerusalem and go through the temple when Jesus is about 12. It's about the last time we see him.

And so it may be that there was some care required for his mom. He was the oldest, and so there would have been some of that. Anyway, speculation. So he focused primarily up by Galilee and down in Jerusalem and focused on the Jews. That was it. So his disciples were all Jewish men, mostly from Galilee. They were fishermen. That's where he found them.

In the workplace, we worry about diversity and inclusion. And whenever you hear those magic words, that means we need to hire more women. So he does. And he finds that only Jewish men, where is his diversity coming from, might get in trouble with the people ops group. Well, it turns out there was a lot of cultural and personality diversity. So you've got, here's one great example.

You've got Matthew, who's a tax collector. So he's a Jew, and he's extracting money from the Jews to get to the Romans. And then you've got Simon, who's a zealot, who is a Jew who absolutely hates the Romans. And the zealots would later go on to weed a revolt against them, ultimately lose, and result in the sacking of Jerusalem.

So you just kind of have to wonder, late nights under the stars, what conversations between them look like. I think it's super interesting. And Judas Iscariot. of all the people to make your treasure. I think he went to the Enron School of Treasury. So I wonder what the conversations there look like as well. OK, Jesus's ministry focused mostly, like I said, on the temple area down in Jerusalem, in and around Jerusalem, and then also up in the Sea of Galilee, which is up in the middle at the top of this picture. And again, toward the Jews. Did we get that picture? Yes. Sea of Galilee. And again. So the character and nature of Christ's ministry. So he and his disciples focused on Israel.

So for example, the Matthew 10.6 passage, he gets These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions, do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the house of Israel. So that's their focus.

But Jesus clearly had a heart for those who were at the law sheet, for those who were the tax collectors and the sinners, and so had a special ministry there. It's interesting, the perspective that he would have brought coming from a heavenly citizenship like we ourselves have. He would have been completely divorced from the world system, and as such, would have offended just about everybody at some point during his stay here, because his focus was not on pleasing men and pleasing this particular political agenda, but it was all about pleasing God So he did, and he found himself at odds often with religious and political groups. And then he encountered these groups most often as he set things straight. So for example, when he chased out the moneylenders from the temple, direct conflict. Clearly they're not using the temple in the way that the Lord had desired.

It was offensive, he was angry, and he chases them out. So he was absolutely not shy. One thing that is super interesting to see, when we get to Paul's missionary journeys, just seeing how the Holy Spirit empowered these men to stand firm, be bold, it's pretty fantastic to see. So in one of these passages, for example, we've got, the teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. So there's conflict already.

But they were afraid of the people. which is also interesting because it ends up going both ways. So a number of the Jewish leaders came to believe, but they were afraid of the other Jewish leaders, and they liked having their popularity. They feared man more than they feared God, and wanted to please man more than God. And so they went along with the crucifixion. But it works both ways. So now you've got Jewish leaders who want to go after Christ, but they're afraid of the people. Christ was never afraid of the people.

So we've got four Gospels, and they tell roughly the same story. So why in the world do we have four? And the answer is because they're each written from a different perspective. So Matthew wrote from a Jewish perspective, talked about the scriptures, history, culture, traditions.

Mark, like we talked about last week, went about things with a very Roman mindset so that the Romans would understand. Well, talked about how Jesus would do things immediately, and everything is just sequenced. He did this, and then he did that, and then he did that, and then he did that. The Romans were all about sequence and just the facts. We just want the facts. So we just gave them the facts. Luke, he wrote to the Greek mind, often writing from his own medical background. The writing style is completely different. It's super easy to read for the Gentiles.

And then John wrote to the Protestant audience. And he was very clear as he was doing it, I am writing so that you will believe, full stop. John ends up being our love disciple, our love apostle. If you ever do a word search on gape, which is this godly, sacrificial love, what does John like to talk about that?

It's just pretty cool. His language is super simple, easy to read, easy to translate. Paul's highfalutin in the way that he talks, clearly very educated and educated within a system where he learned the Greek super well. John, it's much, much simpler. So if you ever feel compelled to take your knowledge of Greek and then try translating and diagramming scripture, go for John, not for Paul for your first endeavor. Definitely don't go straight for Hebrews. That would be a bad idea. OK, so let's.

So let's talk about Jesus' triumphal entry. We get to the end of his three year ministry, he's got a week left, and he enters into the city, and Hosanna and praise him, and we're all super excited, but five days later we're actually going to be yelling, let's crucify this guy. Definitely turned as the Pharisees turned up the volume on some of the anti-Jesus talk. Skip forward just a little bit, so we get to Thursday. So we're four days later, and four days later we've got preparation for the Passover.

So this picture here You've been there now yesterday. And I've stood in this room. It's pretty cool to see. So this is the traditional site of the Last Supper. So they had their time. And then we end up, again, a few days later, we've got the resurrection and then those initial conversations. Oh, hey, I'm here.

Jesus with his, I like to think of it as playfulness, walking along with his disciples and not letting them know who he was right off the bat. Just like, oh, I'm sorry to hear that they crucified him. That's tough. Okay, so Mount of Olives. Again, love the historical picture. At the top of the Mount of Olives today, there is a run-down, crummy-looking travel shop. So I like being able to see something that looks a little bit more like what Jesus might have been looking at.

Okay, let us jump into the Book of Acts. So the Book of Acts pretty much picks up right at Jesus' ascension. Peter is on the scene for the first maybe 20 years of that. Paul is the focus throughout all of that. And the Book of Acts ends with Paul's imprisonment in Rome, house arrest, in Rome in 61 AD. The Book of Acts was written by Luke.

He was a Greek medical doctor. So here you've got this Gentile who somehow ends up writing a fourth of the New Testament. So that's pretty cool. And what's important to know about Acts is that it's a transitional document. So it's talking about a time in which the Jews were under law and needed to be law-focused and sacrifice-focused to the Church. And so some things get dropped along the way, some things are there for just a short time.

A lot of screwy denominations get their doctrine from Acts, which is ill-advised because it is a transitional book that's talking about as we move from one system to another system. So it's a transition to the first three decades of the Church. So AXIS is actually going to take us from Jerusalem up to Rome. And so the focus of the Christian gospel, by the end of AXIS, we're going to be centered in Rome. Like I said, in a transitional book, some things come up that are not long-lasting. They're not going to be going on and not to be typical of the entire church age. So hopefully y'all can see that. Okay, I don't believe I've got the handout. I can print one out. I should have done so already. So this is super interesting. What this does is it It's a comparison between the introduction of the law to Israel and the introduction of grace to the church. And some things that you note is that in both cases you start off with the selection of a sacrifice.

So on day one, the Passover lamb was chosen. On day one, Jesus enters into Jerusalem with a triumphal entry. Four days later, you have the Passover feast in the time of Moses, and you've got the Last Supper with Jesus. You have this crossing through the parting of the Red Sea, in one and you have the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the other, each one of those again four days later. And what you end up with is at that point you've got either baptism into Moses, so the first Corinthians passage says they were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

And then you've got baptism into Christ, so Romans 6.3, or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? And then you've got some events in one case where you're leading up to the giving of the Torah. And in the other case, you've got events that are leading up to Pentecost, where the Church received the Holy Spirit. And then finally, the giving of the law and also the giving of the Holy Spirit. And that span in each case is 50 days. So pretty interesting parallels. You were digging frantically. Did you have a comment?

The initial part of the book of Acts starts in Jerusalem and stays there for the first eight chapters. In Acts 1.8, the disciples are told, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria. and to all the world.

So when the Holy Spirit does come upon them and they're talking in tongues, these are all the different areas where people were from. In Jerusalem, listening to that first presentation of soup to nuts, here's the gospel. A lot of languages involved. across this whole region. And so speaking in tongues, simply speaking in the language that was native to them, so that everybody could hear. And the cool thing is, so everybody converges on Jerusalem, they hear this amazing news, they end up believing, they're baptized, and then they go back home, already we've got that tremendous spread of information out, which is super cool. If you look at the two that are sort of clustered right in the green. Go X to Jerusalem, straight down, you see two that are clustered in the green there. That's right around Antioch. That was the end of the Silk Road.

So some of the very first people to hear and understand the gospel message are from that region. And so now you've got gospel going out across all the different countries. So Acts 3-7 takes place in and around the Temple. One of the stories that's told inside these chapters is that Peter is proudly proclaiming the Lord his death, burial, his resurrection, and continually they're telling him Now, you should not do that.

You should be very quiet. It's like, I can't. I've got to listen to God, not to you. So they cycle and cycle on this sort of process and finally they decide, you know what, we're compelled to let you go. And the argument, interestingly, that won the day was, well, if what they're talking about is of man, it's just going to die out. Don't worry about that. If what they're talking about is from God, we don't want to get in the way. They're like, OK, good idea. So let's just beat him mercilessly for a while, tell him to stop it, and then send him out. So that's what they do.

And the disciples' reaction, the apostles' reaction to this, Acts 6.41, the apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name. So they're like, yes, we got beaten too. Pretty common theme, just how bold these folks were.

So Acts 8.4 to 8.40 is focused on Philip. Fringe groups indeed, so he tended to focus on the possessed. When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. for with shrieks impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed." So this was his ministry.

So now we've got Peter. Peter's going to preach the gospel to the Gentiles up in Caesarea, and this is the first set of Gentiles that are brought to the church. Back in Jerusalem, Peter ends up with a lot of explaining to do, so he has to come back and account for what he's been doing, which ends up not being super pleasant. Around about this time, the shift in believers starts to move up from Jerusalem up to Antioch. This is when Paul migrates out of Barnabas and gets sent up for a year.

And also, right about this time, we end up with the martyrdom of James. I was actually reading this one just this morning. So Herod decides, you know what, I don't like these Christians. And so he has James put to death by the sword. So we know about that one. And people react very favorably. They're like, yes, we have been waiting for that to happen. These people just keep preaching. They're annoying. We want them gone. And so Herod thinks, ah, cool. So I'll do the same thing to Peter. And so he grabs Peter, puts Peter in jail.

And these believers who are At this point, I mean just passionate, engaged believers hold an all-night prayer vigil. They're like, God, please let Peter go. So an angel comes to the jail, gets Peter out. He's like, wow, I'm going to go talk to these people who have been praying for me. So he goes and he knocks at the door. And somebody says, that might be Peter. OK, the purpose of their praying right now is, Lord, please let Peter go. And somebody says, well, that might be Peter at the door. And one of them says, that's crazy talk. There's no way it's Peter. They get the door.

Turns out it actually is Peter, because they were praying that he'd be released, and he got released. And they're making such a commotion, and Peter's got all this stuff to tell them. And he finally just has to tell them, like, be quiet. I need to talk to you. So pretty cool.

Paul's missionary journey is so interesting that he noted it as four missionary journeys. So typically, we think of three missionary journeys. But the fourth, when he's actually being conveyed to do his jail time, his house arrest up in Rome, is indeed a fourth mission trip, because he certainly met a lot of folks along the way. got to witness to them.

OK, so let's talk about these. And you should have blow-up pictures. So I believe in all cases, we start out from the Antioch. And so Paul starts at Antioch, heads out for Cyprus. And when he gets to Papua, he manages to convince the proconsul that the gospel is right. And so this is a pretty significant event.

And when I talked earlier about how Christ was not nervous whatsoever around people, well, it turns out the Holy Spirit working within Paul wasn't either. But Alimas, the sorcerer, For that is what his name means. Oppose them and try to turn the proconsul from the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight out at Oimas and said, you are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right. You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.

So when Paul was going through his missionary journey, he knew he was standing on stable ground and emboldened by the Holy Spirit. There was no fear. It was just Paul preaching all the time. This is my horrible eyesight, and I'm looking at a teen picture that's on my screen.

So from there, they head up into Perga, and then further. The Jewish leaders stirred up persecution against Column, and Barnabas expelled them from up there. Maybe I'll read that whole passage. The word of the Lord spread through the whole region, but the Jewish leaders incited the God-fearing women of high standing. and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from their region."

So this, man, you've got to be bummed, right? Like, I want to preach. These guys got whipped into a frenzy, and now I've been given the boot. And instead, the reaction was, so they shook the dust off their feet as a warning to them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy. So they know that the mission that they are on is exactly what God has them doing. They get booted. Okay, I guess we're going to Iconium. It's a good day.

So they make it all the way over to and Paul and Barnabas end up getting called gods. But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up other Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there. speaking boldly for the Lord who confirmed the message of His grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders. Again, emboldened by the Holy Spirit, knowing they are on a mission from God, the Jews say, no, we don't buy it, and by the way, we're going to go get the Gentiles angry at you too, and we're going to whip everybody into a frenzy, and we are going to come after you.

So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there. They're like, this is a great place for us. We love this. All right. So then Peter comes down for the council in Jerusalem. We have a conversation about, OK, so under In the church age, we live under grace, we used to live under law. What does all of that mean? Do people still need to get circumcised? Do we still need to worry about what we're eating, what we're touching, what our clothes are made out of, and all of that sort of stuff? Jews had different reactions to the gospel. They could either end up going full Judaizers, so they embrace the law.

They love the law. They're going to keep trying to keep the law. So think there, Saul or Gamaliel. So just staunch, the law is the law is the law. That's what we want. And then on the far extreme, on the grace side, Paul. polar opposites in the same individual, which is pretty cool. Now we've decided we don't need circumcision anymore. What we eat doesn't matter too terribly much. There are still some rules around animal stranglings and stuff like that. Let me start on Paul's second missionary journey, and maybe I'll just read a couple highlights from this.

So when Paul makes it up to Philippi, So you see he ends up going around in Lystra. He picks up Timothy. And so now Timothy is part of the gang. They're headed up. Oh, actually, that one's super interesting, too. When they took off from Antioch, it was originally going to be Paul and Barnabas on this missionary trip. Barnabas said, hey, got a great idea. We should bring Mark. Paul said, hey, we've got a great idea. We should leave him at home, because he bailed the last time we tried this. And they end up getting into a disagreement strong enough that Barnabas decides to go off with Mark and Paul. I think they're at Silas, and they went on this missionary trip. So they pick up Timothy and Lystra. And when they make it up to Philippi, This is the first real introduction of the Gospel into what is now Europe.

And while there, I believe, so this is in Acts 16, Paul encounters a woman who is possessed, and she is making money for others. When I talk about the Word of God just being rich, when you understand and really look at it, This is a great example because when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, ìThese men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved. She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the Spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her. And at that moment, the Spirit left her.

And of course, everybody gets completely infuriated because she was a moneymaker. Now she's not a moneymaker. And people like money. But what is rich about this to me is just picturing. So Paul is there. And there's this woman, this slave girl, saying, these men are servants of the Most High God. For days! She's following them around for days! Saying, these men are servants of the Most High God. These men are servants of the Most High God. These men? These men are servants of the Most High God.

Days! Apparently Paul's just like, demons out. So yeah, wow. So they make it, they end up leaving Philippi, they make it down into Athens. Athens is where they have the platform erected to the unknown God. Paul gets into some dispute with folks there who want to worship him as God. He says, no, no, no. I actually worship the unknown God. You've actually got a pillar to that God. Let me tell you about him.

So incorporating the things of the day. When he gets back down to Ephesus, so he picked up Priscilla and Akiah, I think in Corinth, is that right? Anyway, in that general area, he picked up Priscilla and Akiah, and he drops them off in Ephesus. And they really want him to stay and teach. And he's like, you know what?

If that's what the Lord's got, that's what I'll do, but not this time. And so Apollos ends up coming up and we learn that Apollos, he rightly divides the word, he teaches effectively and boldly and correctly about Jesus. So you get Apollos in Ephesus starting to grow the church there. And so later on, when Paul's talking about, you say, you're of Apollos and I'm of somebody else, you've got the wrong perspective. We're all of the Lord's. It's that Apollos. He was rightly dividing the Word.

And also along this path, They end up in jail. There's an earthquake, it breaks open the jail, and so they get to walk out. The jailer, terrified he's going to be put to death, says, what must I do to be saved? They find out, you know, with no Lord Jesus Christ, you and your whole household will be saved.

In this era, we talk about the Gentiles needing to believe. We talk about the Jews needing to repent. The difference being, the Gentiles have no clue. They don't know what they don't know. The Jews absolutely did. So with the Gentiles, it's, what do I need to believe? Believe this. Got it. That's great. With the Jews, they had this whole perspective that then had to shift. So that's why we talk about those differently. I'm not going to go into this slide a ton. I just think it's a little bit interesting.

So there are those, mostly the Catholics, who say that Peter was the bishop to Rome So if you go through and you look at scripture, what you end up with is the red areas, the are confirmed that Peter was absolutely in Jerusalem at those times. The green areas, he's extremely likely not to be in Rome, just based on scripture and references are there. Two little blue dots toward the very end of this era, he might have been there, could have been there. So the position that he was the bishop to Rome, the case is not obvious for that.

OK, some pictures of some of the things that Paul got to visit. So we've got Philippi, Antioch, Ephesus, Big thing in the middle is the theater where we had the riot in Our Greatest Artemis at the Ephesians. Okay, so Paul's third missionary journey. I think we will hop through this given the time constraints that we've got, and we will go to his journey to Rome. So he went on another missionary journey, and this time he is being conveyed up to Rome to stand trial before Caesar.

Oh, that's interesting. I pasted that twice. And the thing that's interesting to me on this one is, number one, we have a number of seagulling voyages that each sort of go pear-shaped and finally land with him stranded in Malta for three months with the folks there. And you can imagine that Paul, given three months and people who are absolutely astounded at his snakebite resistance, would make use of those three months to preach and teach. But the thing that's most interesting to me about this is just a little cultural insight.

So when he gets up to Puteoli, he's being transported to stand trial. And he's very warmly welcomed by other believers in the town. And since there really wasn't a trial date set for this date at this time in this courtroom, the guards who are escorting him up to Rome. He's like, cool, just hang out with your buddies for a week, have a good time. So he gets this wonderful time of just sort of replenishing after this very arduous trip up to this point. He gets to hang out with believers and just chat about the Lord.

So that's cool. All right. This is the Mammertine prison. This is likely where Paul spent his last hours before being, I think, beheaded. You see the hole at the top? That's the entrance. So what they did is they made this wonderful sort of cushioned feather pillow structure and gently lowered the prisoners into the... No, that's actually not what happened. They just chucked them in there and if you break your ankle in the fall, well, too bad for you. You shouldn't have been messing up that badly.

So we get to tumultuous times. So we're now past the book of Acts, and things are not going well in Jerusalem. So Paul writes in his last letter, for I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the corpse. I have kept the faith. So he is spent, just spent. doesn't prevent him from saying, in the future, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me, and on that day, and not only me, but also all who have loved his appearing.

So he's spent, he's burnt, but he's encouraging. Peter finishes his last New Testament letter with, you, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, Be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness." So he's experienced struggle. He gets struggle. But he also is quite encouraging. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. In this time, the persecution toward the Christians shifts from the Jews to the Romans. Tacitus wrote of the Christians in Rome And perishing, they were additionally made into sports.

They were killed by dogs by having a hide of beasts attached to them, or they were nailed to crosses or set aflame, and they were used as nighttime lamps. So, not good. So we get the zealots. The zealots decide to go and raise Cain against the Romans. They have an outright rebellion. Then there's a war.

The war ends in something that looks approximately like this, which would be the end of the temple. So at this point, like I said last week, Pharisees get to keep carrying on. The Sadducees really are sad at this point. because there's no temple, and everything that they've done has been centered around the temple. So that's pretty much it. Okay, what happened to all the apostles? We're going to do this as a stupid rapid fire. Okay, so we know what happened to Judas.

Intestines spewed out all over some field spot with ill-gotten gain. James died by the sword. In John 21, the Lord talks about Peter's death and says, but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you and bring you to where you do not wish to go. Now this, he said, signifying the kind of death that would glorify God. So this is crucifixion.

So that's how Peter got it. We know that, where do we find truth? In the Bible. We find truth in the Bible. So a lot of what we know about the Apostle's demise comes from outside the Bible. It's interesting. Some of it is likely. We can't rest on it like we can what we see in Scripture.

Crucified upside down is the most common understanding of Peter. Paul beheaded about the same time as Peter. Andrew, reportedly crucified, spread the gospel to a number of different places. Thomas, the doubter, ended up teaching in a number of places, ended up likely also being crucified.

Philip, one of them who was instrumental in the salvation of that proconsul, Oh, no, I'm sorry. Philip was instrumental in the wife of a proconsul coming to know the Lord. If you're not a godly man and your wife becomes a godly woman, that's frustrating. And so he ended up putting Philip to death. So a few of these places. This is possibly Philip's tomb.

Matthew ended up making his way over into Africa. As the story goes, while wooden stakes were being pounded into his body, he was screaming out the gospel. Bartholomew spread the gospel. Accounts of his death vary by location, so we don't know how well to trust them. They are consistent in that he did not have a natural death. James clubbed and stoned to death. Simon the Zealot killed in Parthia, because he wouldn't worship the sun gods. Matthias, the one who replaced Judas, burned to death. John died a natural death, but only because boiling him in oil was ineffective. Boiling in oil doesn't kill you, Why don't you just go hang out on that island? And so here's a view from what is believed to be his cave on Patmos. So ended up with a beautiful view where he could create revelations. And I wanted to get to those because I came to be a believer when I was 32-ish. And the martyrdom of all of the apostles was one brick in the foundation of what ended up leading me to the Lord. So pretty cool to think that we're coming up on 2,000 years after they died, still that death and the way that they died has an impact to bring others to the Lord. I'll beat the drum before we close.

God used greed to get the gospel all the way over to China. He used violence and hatred to get the gospel to me. So he really does work all things together for good for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose. With that, let's close. Father, thank you for your love and just your intense sovereignty that you are able to use every last day for your glory. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.