Well, as I said, this is lecture 38, and this is really, we're going to call it part two of Peter's ministry, dividing up Acts of the Apostles into the ministry of Peter and taking a couple of hours to look at that, a couple of lectures, and then at the second half it would be Saint Paul's ministry and taking two lectures to look at that. Again, just the highlights the overview of all of these things. And so we left off last lecture with chapter seven and the martyrdom of Saint Stephen. This is a very significant moment here in Acts of the Apostles, Stephen being the first martyr, and we ended up talking about that quote from Tertilian, the blood of the martyrs is the seat of the church.
So where we leave off here is Saul being one of the leaders, presumably I think it's very fair to argue that he's one of the leaders here in the martyrdom of Stephen and the stoning of Stephen. It then, verse one, opens up to describe how Saul was consenting to his death on that day a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria except the Apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him, but Saul laid waste of the church and entering house after house he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Okay, that's chapter eight verses one through three.
So what we're seeing here is that God is going to use and is using the evil of persecution, the persecution of his beloved saints to advance his goodwill. He brings about a greater good from this evil, and it's going to be the evangelization of more people. Remember Jesus said back in chapter one verse eight, we're going to come back to this many times, we have come back to this many times. In chapter one verse eight he says, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
So the persecution that occurs here after Stephen and the persecution under the leadership of Saul, he's breathing threats and murder, right? He's laying waste of the church is going to bring about, we can call it phase two of Operation Evangelization. So it's phase two, they're going to go into Judea and they're going to go into Samaria and bring the gospel to all these different towns. So this is also a continuation of the ministry of Jesus.
Jesus went into Samaria to bring the good news on a number of occasions. The most famous is in John chapter four when he meets the Samaritan woman at the well, and that whole symbolism, we don't have time to get into it with a symbolism that she represents all of Samaria. And yet Jesus wants to woo her, woo her people back into his church. It's a beautiful scene.
So now this is beginning to take place where through persecution and evil and suffering and death and martyrdom, other people are going to find the gospel. Now the first person who goes, or at least it's recorded is Philip. Philip is one of the seven ordained deacons that we saw back in chapter six. And it says in verse four here, now those who were scattered went about preaching the word and Philip went down to a city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.
And it goes on to describe how he performed many signs. Again, the whole repetition of signs and wonders, all consistently referencing the whole Exodus theme. I don't want you to forget about that. This is all a perpetual new Exodus from slavery, right?
So now Philip, just like Stephen and the Apostles here are performing many signs, casting out demons, healing the land or the paralyzed. So he's doing a lot of amazing work here. Now before we move on, just we've talked about this before back in lesson 26, who are the Samaritans? Let me just take a couple of minutes here to recap this and why this is such a big deal here.
Now, Samaria, if you remember, if you've been with me this entire time, this is going to be a quick review, that Samaria was originally the capital city of the northern kingdom after the kingdom of David split after Solomon's death. The kingdom had split into the northern kingdom of 10 tribes and then the southern kingdom of Judah had the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. Over the time, Samaria became the capital city of the north. And after the northern kingdom was destroyed in the year 722 BC by Assyria, if you remember, Assyria had brought in all these imported all these different nations and their gods and their religions to dwell amongst and with the those who remain of the 10 northern tribes.
So in time, those 10 northern tribes, anybody who survived the captivity there, they began to intermarry in with these other nations and they began to worship their gods. So the Jews, after they returned from their captivity, really saw the Samaritans as these half-breed idolatrous. They worshiping God away, but not as well, they wanted to be worship, not according to the law of Moses, and they're worshiping all these other pagan gods as well. By the time of Christ, the idolatry was more or less gone.
However, you still had big problems with the Samaritans because they had no interaction with the Jews in any way, shape or form. The only accepted the Torah's scripture. They didn't accept the prophets or the wisdom literature or historical books or anything like this, just the Torah, the Law of Moses, and they rejected the temple sacrificial system in Jerusalem. They had their own temple and mountain gereseem.
So because of all these hundreds of years of just tension and antagonism between the two of them, the Jews despised the Samaritans and vice versa. And yet Jesus knows that the Samaritans are descendants of Israel. He wants to bring them back into the kingdom as well. And so that's why he goes to the willmen at the will, for example, and he goes into their territory a couple of different times.
Now, the apostles are going to continue this mission, right? Okay, so that's just a really quick recap on who the Samaritans are. Let's get back here to the story of Philip. When Philip is preaching in Samaria, many, many people who had converted and they're beginning to worship God because of his ministry, and there was an interesting individual named Simon the magician.
So Simon is called the father of heretics, but church fathers, he practiced magic very, very well, but he couldn't perform actual miracles. And this is what it says right here in verses 9 and following. There was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the nation of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great and clearly see the hubris of this man. They all listened to him from the least of the greatest, saying this man has that power of God which is called great, and they listened to him for a long time because he had amazed them with his magic.
So, whether it was like, you know, pick a card in a card, he pulls a rabbit out of hat or whatever it is, he truly amazes them, but it's all just kind of like trick of the eye and slide of hand type of stuff here. Although they attribute to him the power of God, and that's what's so ironic here, because they think he has the Dunamis, the dynamis, however you want to pronounce it of God, but he really doesn't. So when Philip and the apostles come into town later on, you see the contrast between his piddly magic, magic tricks, versus the true power of the apostles through the Holy Spirit. So, he does seem to convert here in verses 12 and following.
When Philip came and preached the good news of the kingdom, again there's that Keregma we talked about in the last lecture, he's preaching the good news of the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, they were all baptized. Notice again, baptism is not just a symbol here, it is the means of salvation, everybody's getting baptized when they believe the gospel, including solids we're going to see here pretty soon. And it says, even Simon believed after being baptized, continue with Philip. So, he did convert, you can see that he did believe he was baptized, but clearly with self is a motives.
I'm going to skip ahead just to prove my point here. Now, later on in verse 18 and following, when he saw that the spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles hands, he offered the money saying, give me also this power that anyone whom I lay my hands on might receive the Holy Spirit. So, then Peter gets really upset with him, and you can't buy the gift of God with money, you know, you're still to perish with you. This is the origin of the expression, Simon, the sin of Simon, that comes from this story right here, Simon the magician here in Samaria.
The buying and the selling of spiritual graces and gifts is forbidden in the church, you can't do that. Now, there is a legitimate acceptance of alms and getting alms to the church, and I referenced a couple of catechism points here if you want to look into that a little bit more, but this is an interesting story because Simon, the selling of spiritual goods and graces and gifts, you can't do that, you can't go to a priest and say, hey, father, I'll give you 20 bucks if you hear my confession, you can't do that, he's supposed to hear your confession no matter what, okay? All right, so that kind of summarizes a little bit Simon the magician here, but getting back to the story here, Philip is going around Samaria and converting everybody, including even imperfectly Simon the magician. He's performing many signs and miracles and baptizing a ton of people, but if you read in verse 14, you notice something pretty interesting here.
Now, when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid on their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. Now, this is really, really interesting. So first the apostles are specifically Peter and John.
Peter and John are always kind of pal enough together. Peter and John go up to Samaria to confirm the work done by Philip. They are the ones who have the final authority the apostles do that's really interesting. It's not like you have all these independent churches popping up and wherever it might be, Judea, Samaria, Macedonia, you know, corn and all these Greek cities, you have legitimate hierarchy going on where Peter and John go to see what and make sure that the that the word that has been planted is actually bearing fruit.
And so the apostles here as the first bishops go and lay their hands on the baptized. What is that? This, my friends, is the biblical distinction, one of the many biblical passages that supports the distinction between the sacraments of baptism and confirmation. These folks here are baptized by Philip, but they're only confirmed by the apostles, by the bishops.
Okay. So this is important baptism. So baptism, of course, is the doorway to salvation and the sacrament of confirmation strengthens those gifts and the grace is given at baptism. So the Christian is matured and strengthened to really be a warrior for Christ and to proclaim the word of God boldly.
And so in the church today, it's interesting, you know, the deacons and priests can baptize and in state and emergency, anybody can baptize, but only the bishops give confirmation. Our inverture the fullness of their holy orders, only the bishops give confirmation. Now, there are exceptions to this word rule. A bishop can deputize an individual priest, specifically a priest who go and confirm at the parish, if the diocese is too large or he's incapacitated or whatever, then the bishop can give permission to a priest to confirm.
And that's all great. But you see this distinction right here in the story when Peter and John go and lay their hands on those who have been baptized already and the spirit comes upon them. That is the sacrament of confirmation. Okay.
So a great story here. But before we move on, I really love the rich irony, the beautiful spiritual irony of John, what John's doing here. Because if you remember back in Luke chapter nine, Jesus and the apostles are going through the territory of Samaria and they're not being welcomed at this particular point. They're not being welcomed at all.
And I have here a reference for you in your notes unless you want to flip there in your Bibles really quickly, Luke 9 verse 53, they said that the Samaritans would not receive Jesus because his face was set toward Jerusalem. So you can see the tension that I was talking about a moment ago. The Samaritans didn't look too favorably on the Jews and vice versa. So the fact that Jesus, the Jew, with his Jewish apostles are going through Samaria, they don't have anything to do with him, right?
So the apostles feel quite slighted and offended by this. They're like, how dare you? This is Jesus, right? He's the Messiah.
And he's come to heal your sick and proclaim the words. So they're really, you can just see the offense taken here with this. And what they say in response is, Lord, do you want us to bid fire to come down from heaven and consume them? This is pretty, there are signs of thunder for a reason, right?
This is pretty intense. Now there's some Old Testament references, but this is kind of fulfilling here with Elijah and the prophets of Baal. We talked about this before in a previous lecture. And so they're kind of seeing themselves as new Elijah's here, calling down fire from heaven to consume, to consume these, these baddies.
But Jesus, of course, is calm down, boys. You know, we're not going to be doing that. No bringing down fire from heaven on the Samaritans today. Thank you very much.
But here's the super fun, ironic thing. Now you've got John, the same guy. John goes to the Samaritans and instead of calling down fire to consume them and bring them death, John calls down the fire of the Holy Spirit to give them life. I love that reversal.
I love that twist. So John's a new man like Peter and all the apostles, they're all new men. But I just love how he wants an anger, wanted to bring down fire from heaven. But now here in Sheraton and love, he brings down the fire of the Holy Spirit upon the Samaritans.
I think that's really, really beautiful.