🌍 World Missions — Unit 4: Acts 1:8 and the Spreading Gospel

Introduction: The Book That Has No Ending

Open the book of Acts and read its very first sentence: "The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach" (Acts 1:1, NKJV). Notice the word "began." Luke does not say his Gospel told all that Jesus did; it told all that Jesus began to do. Acts is volume two — the record of what the risen, ascended Lord continued to do and teach through His Spirit-filled church. And the book has no formal ending, because the work is not finished. We are living in the long second volume.

If the four Gospels are the vertical dimension of our faith — the Father sending the Son, the Son obeying to the cross — then Acts is the horizontal dimension. It shows the gospel running outward from a small group in Jerusalem to a worldwide community of every nation under heaven. Acts is, in a real sense, the first missions textbook. And the whole of it grows out of a single verse.

I. The Last Command and the Table of Contents

Before He ascended, Jesus gave His disciples one last promise and one last assignment: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8, NKJV). That single verse is the table of contents of the entire book. Chapters 1 through 7 tell of the witness in Jerusalem. Chapters 8 through 12 carry it into Judea and Samaria. Chapters 13 through 28 take it to the end of the earth.

Look closely at the pattern, for it is the pattern of all missions. The gospel begins at home, in Jerusalem. It moves next to the near neighbor — Judea, the surrounding region, and Samaria, the people most despised. And it presses on to the end of the earth, to the peoples who have never heard. Home, near, and far: the rings widen, but not one ring is to be skipped, and not one is to be the stopping place. The same command that sent the apostles is the command that reaches us, for we live at the far edge of those widening circles.

II. Power Before Program

Notice what came first. Before the program of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the end of the earth, there was a power: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you." Jesus had told them plainly, "do not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the Promise of the Father" (Acts 1:4, NKJV). They were not to launch the mission in their own strength. They were to wait for the Holy Spirit. And at Pentecost the Spirit came, the church was born, and the same hundred and twenty who had been hiding behind locked doors went out and turned the city upside down.

Here is a truth we dare not forget: missions is the work of the Holy Spirit through the church. The strategies, the funds, and the training all have their place, but without the power of the Spirit they accomplish nothing. The book of Acts could just as well be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit, for it is He who drives the gospel outward through every chapter.

III. The Church That Would Not Leave Home

And yet, for all that power, there was a problem. Acts 1:8 had been spoken from the Master's own lips. Pentecost had come and gone. Three thousand were saved, and then five thousand. And every one of those new believers was still in Jerusalem. The command to carry the gospel to Judea, Samaria, and the end of the earth was a fine thing — as long as it did not require anyone to leave home.

We must be honest enough to see ourselves here. It is easy to love the Great Commission in the abstract and never cross the city limits of our own comfortable Jerusalem. The first believers had the command, the power, and the message, and still they stayed. God had to move them.

IV. Scattered Means Sown

And move them He did, through the fire of persecution. When Stephen was martyred, a great persecution broke out, and the believers were driven out of Jerusalem. Luke chooses his words with care. The verb he uses in Acts 8:4 comes from the root that means to sow — to fling seed across a plowed field, the very word Jesus used in the parable of the sower. Saul of Tarsus thought he was destroying a movement. He was, in fact, planting a crop. "Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word" (Acts 8:4, NKJV).

Persecution did not dissipate the gospel; it disseminated it. The believers who lost their homes and their livelihoods carried the message into Judea and Samaria as they ran. Philip preached in a Samaritan city, and later to an Ethiopian official on a desert road. The second ring of Acts 1:8 was being filled — not by a comfortable, well-planned campaign, but by ordinary scattered believers who could not stop speaking of Christ.

V. The Barrier Falls

There remained the hardest barrier of all — the wall between Jew and Gentile. God tore it down. He gave the apostle Peter a vision on a rooftop in Joppa and then sent him to the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion. There Peter spoke words that opened the door of the gospel to the whole world: "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him" (Acts 10:34–35, NKJV). The Holy Spirit fell on those Gentiles just as He had on the Jews at Pentecost, and the matter was settled.

It was in the great Gentile city of Antioch that the gospel found its next center of gravity, and there "the disciples were first called Christians" (Acts 11:26, NKJV). The faith of Israel's Messiah had become the faith of the nations.

VI. Antioch, the First Sending Church

Now the third ring opens. Open Acts 13. Antioch has become the cutting edge of the movement, and five men are leading the church there: Barnabas the Cypriot, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been raised in Herod's own palace, and Saul the former persecutor. It was the first multi-ethnic leadership team in the history of the church, and they were together fasting and ministering to the Lord when the Spirit spoke: "Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them" (Acts 13:2, NKJV).

Watch what the church did. "Having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away" (Acts 13:3, NKJV). And watch how Luke describes it in the very next breath: "So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia" (Acts 13:4, NKJV). Antioch sent them. The Holy Spirit sent them. Both are true. Here is the first sending church, and here is the pattern that has never changed: the Spirit calls workers out of a praying, fasting, worshiping congregation, and the church lays hands on them and sends them to the end of the earth. This is the same burden we saw the Lord place on our hearts in the Great Commission.

Conclusion: We Are Acts 29

The book of Acts ends in the middle of the story, with Paul preaching in Rome, because the story was not over. Acts 1:8 is still the program of the church. The same Spirit who came at Pentecost still gives power. The same rings — Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the end of the earth — still widen outward, and they have widened far enough to reach us. The believer in Mexico, the lay person in the pew, the missionary on the field — every one of us stands in the long second volume, writing what we might call Acts chapter 29. The gospel is still spreading, and the only question is whether we will be among those who carry it.

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