The Growth Of Christianity

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We are in our fourth week in this Book of Acts series called Neighborhoods to Nations. And that's kind of the way it worked in the Book of Acts. It started with Jerusalem, then went to Samaria, and then it goes to the uttermost parts of the earth. And we're at that point where it's starting to spread to what is considered the uttermost parts of the earth in that day and age. The Jesus movement, and it was a movement at first, in response to his death and resurrection, just had explosive growth for the first three centuries. It's a historical fact. And historians ask questions like, why? Why did it happen? And historians struggle to find a good reason for this. Honestly, how in the world did Christianity basically dominate the known world at the time in the Mediterranean Roman Empire, right? And they question that. They go like, now, wait a minute. The Christians, they were not of the upper class. They were of the lower class to a large extent. There were some middle and upper class people, but they had terrible press, if there was a press in those days. They had terrible PR going on, because the Roman elites criticized them. And you can read some of those criticisms and how they mocked Christianity for centuries. And the Jewish religious leaders also rejected it as a sect, a break off to traditional religions of the day. And on top of that, they had no buildings. They had no media campaign. They had no marketing strategy. They had no socio-political power. They were misunderstood, maligned, and marginalized time and again, and yet it exploded over the entire Roman Empire to become the dominant faith. How did it happen? We're finding that out in the Book of Acts. We're finding that out. And I think if we become more like the early church in the Book of Acts, we too, in our day and age, even with decline in religiosity in the United States, even with the declines and all of the bad press that we can get and all of the issues that are going on and all of those things, we still can see explosive growth of Christianity and a unity that we haven't seen for generations. So today we're finding out what that appeal is. Here as we look at Acts chapter 8, we're going to find that Christianity was both considered inclusive and exclusive. It was both particular and universal at the same time. Because it was both at the same time, there was some power to that. It's coming from an unlikely source, in an unlikely way, in a total setup by the Holy Spirit that this encounter even ever happened. It wasn't something that was planned by the apostles or by Philip, who's involved in it, but it was a plan by God that set this in motion. And so we're going to read this in Acts chapter 8. And when we find out what happens here, we're going to see how this becomes kind of a case study of what can happen time and again, even today. We start, though, in Acts chapter 8, starting at verse 26 and going to 40. And now, an angel of the Lord said to Philip, rise and go toward the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert place. And he rose and went, and there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the spirit said to Philip, go over and join this chariot. So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah, the prophet, and asked, do you understand what you're reading? And he said, how can I unless someone guides me? And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now, this passage of scripture that he was reading was this. Like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth. The eunuch said to Philip, about whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this? About himself or about someone else? Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with the scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, see, here is water. What prevents me from being baptized? And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. So a huge reason why Christianity exploded on the scene in the early church, I think, is found in this passage, that it is both universal and particular, inclusive and exclusi...