When does Acts end? - 28 September 2025

This Sunday we have the privilege of having YAV’s premier award winning female voice choir Aurora helping us with worship. It promises to be a time of musical beauty that will lift our hearts to God. We will sing songs that have been prayers of the church that God in his infinite grace keeps answering. We see answered prayers throughout the book of Acts also, all the way through to the last sentence. In the final chapter of Acts we continue to follow the journey of Paul and his friends. He finally arrives in Rome after a seafaring journey worthy of a book by itself. He is met by others and then teaches freely and boldly under house arrest at Rome for two years and then… the bible starts a new book with Paul’s letter to the Romans. Perhaps you were like me and kept turning the pages back and forth wondering if there were pages missing? Did Paul get to confront Cesar? Did the church grow in Rome? Did Paul get to go to Spain like he said he wanted? What happened to the church in Jerusalem? What about the rest of the disciples? Where’s Peter? Where’s Mary? What about the country I was born in? Why isn’t that mentioned? How is the Holy Spirit active after that? Why have a long chapter detailing a ships journey from the Middle East to Italy but not give details we really want to hear?Today’s movie industry is all about the franchise. If it is popular the first time then let's keep making movies in that world until it stops making money. We are tempted to want the trilogy of Luke/Acts and then the fourth and fifth instalments. Yet it’s not there. The message of the Good News has gone to the capital of the largest pagan empire the world had seen. The next chapters belong to you and me. Right here in Adelaide or wherever you are reading this. The very same Holy Spirit that worked in Acts lives and works in us, the mission is the same, the blueprint of what to do is in Acts. Let’s get on with making the sequel!Your Brother in ChristBenji