Dispersion 1/3/10
Sermon Series: Acts – Faith Explosion
Title: Dispersion
Text: Acts 8:1-4
“And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.”
Introduction: Chickens are totally without character. When I was a kid we bought a ranch that had an egg laying operation on it which included about 3000 white leghorn chickens. I learned a lot about chickens over the next few years but mainly I learned that they are nasty creatures without any positive character whatsoever.
When you drop a chicken that looks different into a population of 2000 all white chickens it is not a pretty sight. The chickens gang up like a swarm of piranhas and kill the chicken in minutes.
Transition: As much as I hate to say it a lot of times we people seem to demonstrate about the same character as those chickens. People who are out of the norm for a society can quickly be deemed dangerous and subversive. In today’s passage we will study the dispersion which took place because the Jews in Jerusalem began a wide spread persecution of the Christ believers there.
