Acts 2:42-3:26: Stand and Deliver

The Rev. Thomas Eckstein, pastor of Concordia Lutheran Church in Jamestown, ND, joins the Rev. Dr. Phil Booe to study Acts 2:42-3:26.

Luke details the dedication of the earliest Christians to worshiping the Lord in unity. On their way to the temple, Peter and John encounter a beggar who cannot walk. He asks them for alms, or anything! Gold and silver they don’t have. But what they gave him he could never have anticipated: he’s able to stand and walk again! Peter again delivers a sermon to the people. The people are amazed, but the religious authorities are not pleased.

The Book of Acts takes us back to the earliest days of Christianity, unveiling the incredible acts of the apostles and the growth of the early church. Acts offers a firsthand account how the Apostles and Jesus’ disciples respond to his death and resurrection. It makes us witnesses to the beginning of fulfilling Jesus’s command to spread the Gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. We encounter miracles and wonders, we see the church struggling to organize itself in the absence of Jesus, and we learn of the trials and tribulations the early Christians faced in a world that rejected them.