New Testament · 28 chapters

Acts

• No. 11 Acts 8:14-23

  Acts tells how the young church spread out from Jerusalem into the wider world. After the first believers were scattered by persecution, one of them, Philip, carried the message into Samaria, a region whose...

• No. 35 Acts 22:17-21

  Paul is under arrest in Jerusalem, standing on the steps of the Roman barracks and speaking to a crowd that has just tried to kill him. He tells them his story: how he had persecuted this movement, how he met...

• No. 37 Acts 10:1-6

  Up to this point in Acts, the church is entirely Jewish. The question underneath the whole book is whether Gentiles can come in, and if so on what terms. This passage opens the story that settles it. Cornelius...

• No. 141 Acts 20:25-38

  Paul is on his way to Jerusalem, expecting arrest, and has stopped at Miletus and sent for the elders of the church at Ephesus, where he had worked for three years. This passage is his farewell to them, the...

• No. 150 Acts 6:1-6

  The church in Jerusalem is growing fast, and this passage is its first internal fight. The community had two groups: Hebrew-speaking Jews, and Hellenists, Greek-speaking Jews from the wider empire. The...

• No. 155 Acts 15:30-35

  The first great argument in the church has just been settled. Gentiles were coming to faith, and some insisted they had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. The apostles and elders met in Jerusalem,...

• No. 187 Acts 26:24-32

  Paul is under Roman custody in Caesarea, making his defense before the governor Festus and King Agrippa. He has just described his conversion and argued that the prophets and Moses foretold a suffering and...

• No. 246 Acts 3:17-26

  Peter has just healed a man lame from birth at the temple gate, and a stunned crowd has gathered. He uses the moment to preach, and this passage is where the sermon turns from what happened to what they should...

• No. 276 Acts 21:17-25

  Paul has finally reached Jerusalem after years on the road, and he reports to James and the elders everything God has done among the Gentiles. They praise God for it. Then, in the same conversation, they raise...

• No. 288 Acts 25:1-5

  Paul has been sitting in custody in Caesarea for two years when a new Roman governor, Festus, takes office and goes up to Jerusalem. The Jewish leaders bring Paul's case to him at once, and the scene is short,...

• No. 307 Acts 27:21-26

  Paul is a prisoner on a ship bound for Rome, and the ship has been caught for days in a storm so violent the crew have given up hope and stopped eating. They had ignored Paul's earlier warning not to sail this...

• No. 341 Acts 21:26-34

  This scene is thick with irony. Just before it, Paul had agreed to a humble, peace-making gesture, going through a purification rite in the temple precisely to prove false the rumor that he taught against the...

• No. 393 Acts 8:29-33

  Philip is prompted by the Spirit to run up alongside a chariot on a desert road, and inside it is an important man, a high official of the Ethiopian court, the treasurer of a queen, on his way home from...

• No. 403 Acts 19:8-14

  Paul is at the height of his ministry in Ephesus. He teaches boldly, and when the synagogue turns against him he simply moves to a lecture hall, the school of Tyrannus, and reasons there daily for two years,...

• No. 427 Acts 4:8-12

  Peter is standing on trial before the ruling council, the same body that had condemned Jesus to death, and the man who a few weeks earlier had denied even knowing Jesus to a servant girl now speaks to the...

• No. 466 Acts 15:6-11

  This is the great council at Jerusalem, called to settle a burning question in the early church: did Gentile believers have to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be full members of God's people? After...

• No. 476 Acts 22:22-30

  The scene is violent. Paul has been speaking to a Jerusalem crowd, and the moment he mentions being sent to the Gentiles, they explode, shouting, rid the earth of this fellow, he is not fit to live, tearing...

• No. 490 Acts 26:1-8

  Paul stands in chains before King Agrippa, invited to make his defense, and the way he frames what is happening to him is remarkable. He does not present himself as a victim of injustice, though he is one. He...

• No. 500 Acts 15:12-17

  The Jerusalem council is deciding whether Gentiles can be included in the church without first becoming Jews, and this is the moment it turns. The assembly falls silent to hear Barnabas and Paul report the...

• No. 524 Acts 12:1-6

  King Herod has begun a campaign against the church. He has already executed James, the brother of John, with the sword, and seeing that it pleased the crowds, he arrests Peter too, meaning to bring him out for...

• No. 556 Acts 27:1-8

  Paul is finally on his way to Rome, but as a prisoner, put aboard a ship under a centurion's guard. And it is worth remembering that this voyage is not a detour or an accident; Christ himself had told Paul...

• No. 586 Acts 15:24-29

  This is the letter the Jerusalem council sent to the Gentile believers, and it settles a fierce controversy with remarkable gentleness. Some had been going out and troubling the new converts, telling them they...

• No. 631 Acts 10:44-48

  Peter is in the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, preaching the gospel to a room full of Gentiles, something he had only just been persuaded by a vision that God permitted. And before he can even finish...

• No. 638 Acts 8:34-40

  An Ethiopian official is riding home in his chariot, reading aloud from the scroll of Isaiah, and he is stuck. He has come to the passage about a lamb led to the slaughter, and he does not know who it is...

• No. 692 Acts 5:17-23

  The apostles are drawing crowds in Jerusalem, healing and preaching in Jesus's name, and the temple authorities have had enough. The high priest and his Sadducee party, filled with jealousy, arrest them and...

• No. 752 Acts 6:7-15

  The church in Jerusalem is growing, even priests are joining, and Stephen, one of the seven chosen to serve, is doing wonders and speaking with a wisdom his opponents cannot handle. That is exactly the...

• No. 792 Acts 25:22-27

  Paul has been held for two years by governors who keep finding him innocent and keep failing to release him, and he has finally appealed to Caesar. Now King Agrippa, visiting the governor Festus, says he would...

• No. 826 Acts 21:12-16

  Paul is on the last leg of his journey to Jerusalem, and the warnings have been piling up. A prophet has just tied his own hands and feet with Paul's belt and announced that this is what will happen to Paul in...

• No. 874 Acts 7:9-16

  Stephen is on trial before the council, and instead of defending himself he retells Israel's story. Here he reaches Joseph: the patriarchs, jealous, sold their own brother into Egypt, but God was with him,...

• No. 884 Acts 15:1-5

  The church has its first great controversy, and it is about the door. Men come down from Judea to Antioch teaching that unless the Gentile converts are circumcised according to the law of Moses, they cannot be...

• No. 900 Acts 4:1-7

  Peter and John have just healed a lame man and preached the resurrection at the temple, and the authorities have had enough. The priests, the temple captain, and the Sadducees, annoyed that they are teaching...

• No. 905 Acts 4:32-37

  This is a snapshot of the first Christian community in Jerusalem. They were of one heart and soul; no one claimed his possessions as his own; they held everything in common. The apostles kept testifying to the...

• No. 919 Acts 4:13-18

  The council is stuck. They are looking at Peter and John, plainly uneducated ordinary men, and cannot square their boldness with their lack of credentials. The one thing they can see is that these men had been...

• No. 928 Acts 13:34-41

  Paul is preaching in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia, and this is the climax of his sermon. He argues from the Psalms that the Messiah would not see decay: David, he points out, served his generation,...

• No. 957 Acts 17:16-21

  Paul is waiting in Athens, the intellectual capital of the ancient world, and as he walks around he is deeply troubled to see the city crammed with idols. So he does what he always does: he reasons, in the...

• No. 1007 Acts 13:42-47

  Paul has preached in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia, and the response is electric. The Gentiles beg him to say more the next Sabbath, and many Jews and devout converts follow Paul and Barnabas, who urge...

• No. 1010 Acts 10:30-43

  Cornelius, a Roman centurion, has gathered his household to hear Peter, and he explains how an angel told him to send for this Jewish apostle. Peter, having just learned in a vision that he must not call any...

• No. 1126 Acts 24:9-21

  Paul stands before the Roman governor Felix, accused by the temple authorities of stirring up trouble. His defense is measured and clear. He points out that he had come to Jerusalem only twelve days earlier,...

• No. 1151 Acts 17:22-34

  Standing before the philosophers at the Areopagus in Athens, Paul begins not with condemnation but with a bridge: I see you are very religious; I even found an altar inscribed To an Unknown God, and that God,...

• No. 1153 Acts 5:24-28

  The apostles, jailed for preaching, have been let out of prison by an angel and are back in the temple teaching. The temple authorities, hearing that the men they locked up are standing in the temple courts...

• No. 1155 Acts 2:29-35

  In his Pentecost sermon, Peter is proving that the resurrection was promised long before it happened. He points out that David, in the psalm, spoke of one who would not be abandoned to the grave or see decay,...

• No. 1160 Acts 10:21-29

  Peter goes down to the messengers Cornelius sent, and after hearing that a God-fearing centurion has been directed by an angel to send for him, he takes the unprecedented step of inviting these Gentiles in...

• No. 1168 Acts 13:12-25

  In the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia, invited to give a word, Paul stands and preaches the story of Israel as a single arc leading to Jesus. God chose the fathers, made them great in Egypt, brought them out...

• No. 1202 Acts 23:1-5

  Paul is on trial before the Jewish council. He begins by declaring he has lived his life before God in good conscience, and the high priest Ananias orders him struck on the mouth for it. Paul reacts sharply:...

• No. 1214 Acts 18:1-6

  Paul comes to Corinth and meets a Jewish couple, Aquila and Priscilla, recently expelled from Rome. Because they share the same trade, tentmaking, Paul stays and works with them, supporting himself with his...

• No. 1281 Acts 7:17-25

  In his sermon, Stephen recounts the early life of Moses. As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, Israel multiplied in Egypt under a new Pharaoh who oppressed them and forced them to...

• No. 1285 Acts 23:6-10

  On trial before the Jewish council, Paul, perceiving that the assembly is split between Sadducees and Pharisees, calls out: brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; it is concerning the hope and the...

• No. 1303 Acts 16:1-5

  At Lystra, Paul meets a young disciple named Timothy, the son of a believing Jewish mother and a Greek father, well spoken of by the believers in the area. Paul wants Timothy to join him on his mission, and he...

• No. 1332 Acts 16:36-40

  Paul and Silas have been beaten and jailed in Philippi, and after the earthquake and the jailer's conversion, the magistrates send word in the morning to release them quietly. But Paul refuses to slip away....

• No. 1384 Acts 21:1-6

  Paul and his companions are sailing toward Jerusalem, stopping at Tyre while the ship unloads its cargo. They find the disciples there and stay a week, and these disciples, moved by the Spirit, urge Paul not...

• No. 1393 Acts 5:29-42

  Hauled before the council and ordered to stop preaching, Peter and the apostles answer, we must obey God rather than men, and go on proclaiming the Jesus whom the leaders had killed and God had raised. The...

• No. 1396 Acts 25:12-21

  Festus, the Roman governor, lays out Paul's case to the visiting King Agrippa. Paul had been left in prison by the previous governor; the Jewish leaders wanted him condemned, but Festus explains that Roman...

• No. 1410 Acts 1:6-11

  Just before Jesus ascends, the disciples ask him, Lord, are you at this time restoring the kingdom to Israel? He redirects them: it is not for you to know the times or seasons the Father has fixed by his own...

• No. 1423 Acts 28:23-31

  The book of Acts comes to its close with Paul in Rome, under a loose house arrest, receiving all who come to him. He spends whole days, morning to evening, explaining the kingdom of God and persuading people...

• No. 1483 Acts 20:1-6

  After the uproar in Ephesus subsides, Paul gathers the disciples, encourages them, and sets out for Macedonia. He travels through the region, encouraging the believers there with many words, and comes into...

• No. 1496 Acts 4:27-31

  Peter and John, released after being threatened by the authorities for preaching Jesus, return to the believers, and the whole company lifts up its voice in prayer. They acknowledge God's sovereignty, that...

• No. 1505 Acts 16:13-18

  In Philippi, Paul and his companions go outside the city on the Sabbath to a place of prayer by the river, and speak to the women gathered there. One of them is Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, a worshiper of...

• No. 1515 Acts 3:1-11

  Peter and John are going up to the temple at the hour of prayer when a man lame from birth, carried daily to the temple gate called Beautiful to beg, asks them for money. Peter fixes his eyes on him and says,...

• No. 1521 Acts 1:1-5

  Luke begins his second book, recalling the first, which told of all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up. After his suffering, Jesus presented himself alive by many proofs, appearing...

• No. 1548 Acts 22:1-5

  Arrested in Jerusalem, Paul asks leave to address the hostile crowd, and speaks to them in Hebrew, which quiets them. He tells his story: born in Tarsus, brought up in Jerusalem, educated at the feet of...

• No. 1558 Acts 16:19-24

  In Philippi, Paul has freed a slave girl from a spirit that let her tell fortunes, and her owners, seeing that their source of profit is gone, are enraged. They seize Paul and Silas, drag them before the...

• No. 1598 Acts 5:1-8

  In the early church, believers were selling property and laying the proceeds at the apostles' feet for the common good. Ananias and his wife Sapphira sell a piece of land, but secretly keep back part of the...

• No. 1611 Acts 7:51-60

  Stephen, having preached boldly to the council, ends by rebuking them for resisting the Holy Spirit and betraying the Righteous One, and they are enraged. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazes into...

• No. 1629 Acts 11:17-24

  Peter has defended his going to the Gentiles: if God gave them the same Spirit he gave us, who was I to stand in God's way? The Jerusalem church, hearing it, falls silent and then glorifies God: then God has...

• No. 1645 Acts 9:31-35

  The churches through Judea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoy a season of peace, growing and being built up, walking in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Spirit. As Peter travels among them, he comes to...

• No. 1660 Acts 18:22-28

  Apollos, a learned Jew from Alexandria, comes to Ephesus. He is eloquent, well versed in the Scriptures, fervent in spirit, and teaches accurately about Jesus, though he knows only the baptism of John. He...

• No. 1749 Acts 3:12-16

  A man lame from birth has just been healed at the temple gate, and the crowd rushes to Peter and John in amazement. Peter answers: why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made...

• No. 1756 Acts 28:17-22

  Paul, under house arrest in Rome after years of imprisonment and an unjust legal ordeal, calls together the local Jewish leaders. He explains his situation: though he had done nothing against his people or...

• No. 1763 Acts 11:25-30

  The church at Antioch is growing, and Barnabas goes to Tarsus to look for Saul, the former persecutor whom many still feared. He finds him, brings him to Antioch, and for a whole year the two teach the people...

• No. 1789 Acts 9:22-30

  Newly converted, Saul grows stronger and confounds the skeptics at Damascus, proving that Jesus is the Christ, until a plot to kill him forces his disciples to lower him over the wall in a basket by night. He...

• No. 1797 Acts 24:1-8

  Paul is brought before the governor Felix, and his accusers arrive with a hired orator, Tertullus, to present the case against him. Tertullus opens with polished flattery of Felix, then turns to a sweeping...

• No. 1806 Acts 23:16-21

  More than forty men have bound themselves by oath to kill Paul, planning an ambush. But Paul's nephew, his sister's son, hears of the plot and comes to the barracks to warn him. Paul sends the young man to the...

• No. 1826 Acts 9:1-5

  Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples, is on the road to Damascus with letters authorizing him to arrest believers, when a light from heaven flashes around him. He falls to the ground...

• No. 1852 Acts 2:22-28

  In his sermon at Pentecost, Peter proclaims Jesus of Nazareth, attested by God through the works God did through him, handed over by God's set plan and foreknowledge, and yet crucified and killed by lawless...

• No. 1886 Acts 28:1-6

  Shipwrecked on Malta, Paul and the others are shown kindness by the islanders, who build a fire against the cold and rain. But as Paul gathers sticks, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastens on his hand....

• No. 1911 Acts 7:1-8

  In his defense before the council, Stephen begins with Abraham. The God of glory appeared to him, called him out of his country to a land God would show him, and promised to give that land to him and his...

• No. 2063 Acts 17:10-15

  Driven out of Thessalonica, Paul and Silas come to Beroea and preach in the synagogue there. Luke gives the Bereans a notable commendation: these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, for they received...

• No. 2235 Acts 22:12-16

  Recounting his conversion, Paul tells how Ananias came to him after his blinding encounter with Christ. Ananias restored his sight and told him God's purpose for him: to know his will, to see the Righteous...

• No. 2250 Acts 18:7-13

  Paul is in Corinth, a difficult city, facing opposition, and perhaps tempted to grow afraid or discouraged and to fall silent. But the Lord comes to him in a vision by night with a word of encouragement: do...

• No. 2274 Acts 7:35-43

  In his speech before the council, Stephen recounts the history of Israel, and comes to a sad turn. Moses had led them out of slavery in Egypt with wonders and signs. But the people, Stephen says, would not...

• No. 2318 Acts 27:33-44

  As Paul's ship is driven by a violent storm and about to be wrecked, terror grips the two hundred seventy-six people aboard, who have not eaten for fourteen days. But Paul is calm. He urges them all to take...

• No. 2324 Acts 23:22-26

  When a plot to ambush and kill Paul is uncovered, the Roman commander acts swiftly to protect him. He calls out a large escort, two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen, to take Paul...

• No. 2493 Acts 21:7-11

  As Paul travels toward Jerusalem, he stays at the house of Philip the evangelist, whose four daughters prophesy. Then a prophet named Agabus comes down from Judea, takes Paul's belt, binds his own hands and...

• No. 2497 Acts 2:14-21

  On the day of Pentecost, with the crowd bewildered by the sound and the tongues, Peter stands and explains: this is what the prophet Joel foretold. In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all...

• No. 2538 Acts 25:6-11

  Paul stands trial before the Roman governor Festus. The Jews from Jerusalem crowd around with serious charges they cannot prove, and Paul answers simply that he has done nothing wrong against the law, the...

• No. 2565 Acts 26:15-23

  On trial before King Agrippa, Paul recounts his conversion and the commission Christ gave him: to open people's eyes, to turn them from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they might...

• No. 2622 Acts 5:9-16

  In the early days of the church, after the shocking deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, the text records the atmosphere in a single phrase: great fear came upon the whole church, and upon all who heard. Alongside...

• No. 2697 Acts 14:8-13

  At Lystra a man lame from birth is listening to Paul preach. Paul sees that he has faith to be healed and calls out, "Stand upright on your feet." The man leaps up and walks. It is a genuine wonder.

• No. 2730 Acts 14:14-19

  When the crowd at Lystra tries to offer sacrifice to them as gods, Paul and Barnabas are horrified. They tear their clothes and rush into the mob shouting, we are men of the same nature as you. Turn from these...

• No. 2736 Acts 17:1-9

  In Thessalonica Paul does what he always does: he goes to the synagogue and for three Sabbaths reasons from the Scriptures, explaining that the Christ had to suffer and rise, and that this Jesus is the Christ....

• No. 2800 Acts 19:21-27

  Paul is setting his sights on Jerusalem and then Rome when Ephesus boils over. Demetrius, a silversmith who makes shrines of the goddess Artemis, gathers his fellow craftsmen and lays out the trouble in a...

• No. 2831 Acts 10:7-13

  Cornelius, a devout Gentile officer, has been told by an angel to send for Peter, and his men are already on the road. As they near the city, Peter goes up on the rooftop to pray around noon, gets hungry, and...

• No. 2881 Acts 19:15-20

  In Ephesus, some traveling exorcists try to use the name of Jesus as if it were a magic formula, invoking the Jesus whom Paul preaches. But the evil spirit answers, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are...

• No. 2882 Acts 2:1-13

  On the day of Pentecost the believers are gathered together when suddenly a sound like a rushing wind fills the house, tongues like fire rest on each of them, and they are filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking...

• No. 2955 Acts 26:9-14

  Standing before King Agrippa, Paul does not hide his past. I was convinced, he says, that I ought to oppose the name of Jesus. I locked up many believers, cast my vote for their deaths, tried to force them to...

• No. 2970 Acts 9:6-10

  After the blinding light, the risen Jesus tells Saul to get up and go into the city, where he will be told what to do. Saul rises from the ground, but though his eyes are open he can see nothing, and they lead...

• No. 2972 Acts 1:21-26

  The apostles need to replace Judas, and they set out clear criteria: the replacement must be someone who accompanied them the whole time Jesus went in and out among them, from John's baptism to the ascension,...

• No. 3001 Acts 8:1-8

  After Stephen is killed, a great persecution breaks out against the church in Jerusalem, and Saul ravages it, dragging men and women off to prison. The believers are scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. But...

• No. 3026 Acts 12:20-25

  King Herod, reconciling with the cities of Tyre and Sidon, puts on his royal robes and delivers a grand oration from his throne. The crowd flatters him, shouting, The voice of a god, and not of a man! And...

• No. 3028 Acts 21:35-40

  A mob is trying to kill Paul, and the soldiers have to carry him up the barracks stairs as the crowd screams, Away with him! Battered and about to be taken inside to safety, Paul turns to the commander and...

• No. 3045 Acts 27:9-20

  The voyage has grown dangerous, and Paul, a prisoner, warns that sailing on will bring loss of cargo, ship, and lives. But the centurion trusts the ship's captain and owner over Paul, and when a soft south...

• No. 3055 Acts 19:1-7

  At Ephesus Paul finds some disciples and asks, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? To his surprise, they answer that they have not even heard there is a Holy Spirit; they had known only John's...

• No. 3136 Acts 2:41-47

  After Pentecost, three thousand are baptized, and the young church takes shape. They devote themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Awe comes over...

• No. 3137 Acts 27:27-32

  On the fourteenth night of the storm, the sailors sense they are nearing land; they take soundings and find the water growing shallow, so they drop four anchors from the stern and long for daylight. Then some...

• No. 3143 Acts 16:25-30

  At midnight, beaten and locked in the inner prison, Paul and Silas are praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners are listening. Suddenly an earthquake shakes the foundations, the doors fly...

• No. 3146 Acts 13:48-52

  When the Gentiles hear the gospel, they are glad and glorify the word of God, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believe, and the word spreads through the whole region. But the opponents stir up...

• No. 3150 Acts 8:24-28

  After the apostles preach through the Samaritan villages, an angel sends Philip in a surprising direction: arise and go south, to the desert road that runs down from Jerusalem to Gaza. He goes, and there he...

• No. 3167 Acts 20:7-12

  At Troas, on the first day of the week, the believers gather to break bread, and Paul, leaving the next day, preaches on and on until midnight. A young man named Eutychus, sitting in a third-floor window,...

• No. 3172 Acts 9:17-21

  Ananias goes to the house where the blinded Saul is waiting, and his first word is astonishing: Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road, has sent me that you may see again and be filled...

• No. 3176 Acts 13:1-11

  In the church at Antioch, as the prophets and teachers are worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit says, set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. So, after more fasting...

• No. 3311 Acts 11:1-16

  Peter is criticized by fellow believers for entering a Gentile home and eating with them. His defense is simply to tell the story of what God did: the vision of the sheet let down from heaven, the command to...

• No. 3392 Acts 14:20-28

  After being stoned and left for dead at Lystra, Paul gets up and walks right back into the city, and then continues the work, returning to the very towns where he had been persecuted to strengthen the new...

• No. 3428 Acts 20:13-24

  On his way to Jerusalem, where the Spirit has warned him that imprisonment and affliction await, Paul gathers the elders of Ephesus and speaks words that reveal his whole heart. He reminds them how he served...

• No. 3449 Acts 24:22-27

  Paul reasons with the governor Felix about righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment, and Felix is genuinely shaken: he was terrified. The truth reached him; his conscience stirred. But instead of...

• No. 3462 Acts 2:36-40

  At the end of Peter's Pentecost sermon, the crowd is cut to the heart and asks the urgent question: brothers, what shall we do? The truth about Jesus, crucified but now made both Lord and Christ, has pierced...

• No. 3536 Acts 19:28-34

  A riot erupts in Ephesus, stirred up by silversmiths whose idol-trade the gospel threatened, and the whole city rushes into the theater in an uproar. And Luke gives a telling detail: the assembly was in...

• No. 3538 Acts 22:6-11

  Paul recounts the moment that turned his life around. On the road to Damascus, bent on persecuting Christians, a blinding light stops him, and a voice asks, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? His answer...

• No. 3655 Acts 16:31-35

  The Philippian jailer, trembling after the earthquake, asks the great question: what must I do to be saved? And Paul and Silas give the simplest, clearest answer in all of Scripture: believe in the Lord Jesus,...

• No. 3676 Acts 19:35-41

  After hours of chaos, the town clerk of Ephesus finally quiets the rioting crowd with a voice of reason. He points out that Paul and his companions have neither robbed the temple nor blasphemed the goddess,...

• No. 3686 Acts 13:26-33

  Preaching in the synagogue, Paul tells the story of salvation: though the rulers of Jerusalem condemned Jesus, not recognizing him nor the prophets they read every Sabbath, they actually fulfilled those very...

• No. 3702 Acts 12:7-14

  While the church prays, an angel comes to the imprisoned Peter, wakes him, and his chains fall off; the doors open of themselves, and he walks free, at first thinking it a dream. God answers the church's...

• No. 3714 Acts 28:7-16

  Shipwrecked on Malta, Paul, though a prisoner, becomes a channel of God's healing. He prays for the sick father of the island's chief man, who is cured, and then for many others who come and are healed. Even...

• No. 3739 Acts 23:11-15

  The night after a dangerous confrontation, the Lord stands by Paul and speaks words of comfort and commission: take courage, for as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome....

• No. 3770 Acts 14:1-7

  At Iconium, Paul and Barnabas preach so effectively that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believe. But opposition rises: unbelievers poison the minds of others against them, and the city is split.

• No. 3826 Acts 7:26-34

  In Stephen's retelling, Moses tries to help his own people but is rejected by them, who ask, who made you a ruler and a judge over us? and he flees into the wilderness of Midian, where he spends forty years as...

• No. 3873 Acts 18:14-21

  When Paul's opponents drag him before Gallio, the Roman proconsul, hoping to have him condemned, Gallio refuses to get involved, dismissing the case as a matter of their own religious law, and driving them...

• No. 3927 Acts 9:11-16

  God sends the disciple Ananias to lay hands on Saul, the notorious persecutor of the church, and Ananias understandably protests: Lord, I have heard how much evil this man has done to your people, and he has...

• No. 3942 Acts 23:27-35

  This passage records how Paul, the target of a murderous plot, is moved safely under heavy Roman guard from Jerusalem to Caesarea, escorted by soldiers, protected by the very machinery of the empire. The Roman...

• No. 3972 Acts 10:14-20

  Peter, a devout Jew, receives a startling vision: a sheet let down from heaven full of animals he had always regarded as unclean, and a voice commanding him to kill and eat. Peter protests, I have never eaten...

• No. 4099 Acts 7:44-50

  In his speech before the council, Stephen makes a point about the temple that would have startled his hearers: however precious the temple was, God does not dwell in houses made by human hands. He quotes the...

• No. 4143 Acts 15:18-23

  The early church faced a critical question: should Gentile believers be required to keep the whole law of Moses to be truly Christian? The Jerusalem Council, guided by the apostles and elders, gives a gracious...

• No. 4148 Acts 4:19-26

  Hauled before the authorities and ordered to stop preaching about Jesus, Peter and John give a bold reply: whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we...

• No. 4153 Acts 9:36-43

  At Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha, or Dorcas, of whom Scripture gives a simple but beautiful description: she was full of good works and acts of charity. When she fell sick and died, the whole...

• No. 4242 Acts 1:12-20

  After Jesus ascends, the disciples return to Jerusalem and gather in an upper room, and there they wait for the promised Spirit. And Luke tells us how they waited: they all joined together constantly in...

• No. 4243 Acts 15:36-41

  Paul and Barnabas, partners in the gospel, come to a sharp disagreement. Barnabas wants to take John Mark on their next journey; Paul, remembering that Mark had deserted them before, refuses. The disagreement...

• No. 4276 Acts 8:9-13

  Before the gospel came to Samaria, a man named Simon had held the people spellbound with sorcery, and he encouraged their awe: he made himself out to be someone great, and the people said of him, this man is...

• No. 4290 Acts 12:15-19

  The church is gathered, praying earnestly for Peter, who is in prison awaiting execution. God answers dramatically, sending an angel to free him, and Peter comes and knocks at the door. But when the servant...

• No. 4305 Acts 16:6-12

  As Paul and his companions travel, they meet a series of closed doors: the Holy Spirit forbids them to preach in Asia, and when they try to go into Bithynia, the Spirit does not allow it. Their plans are...