Living Word

About Living Word

Living Word Reformed Episcopal Church, Courtenay, British Columbia

Publisher

The Rev'd William Klock

Category

religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Aug 2025

Latest episode

18 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

66 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   18 Oct 2026

   The Word of This Salvation

   The Word of This Salvation Acts 13:13-43 by William Klock Last Sunday, in the first twelve verses of Acts 13, we saw the Spirit and the church at Antioch send out Saul and Barnabas with the gospel.  Barnabas took Saul to his home country of Cyprus.  They began preaching the good news about Jesus in the synagogue in Salamis and from there they went deep into Roman territory at Paphos.  Kind of amazingly, the Roman governor asked to hear their message.  Elymas, the Jewish magician and false prophet tried to get in their way, and was struck blind.  The governor, Sergius Paulus, believed—and not so much, Luke stresses, because he saw his court magician struck blind, but because he was astonished at the teaching, at the message that Saul—now Paul—and Barnabas were proclaiming.  And last week I stressed the—perhaps—counter-intuitive way Paul and Barnabas went preaching the gospel.  They didn’t go straight to the market place to confront the pagans.  They went to the synagogues and preaches to their fellow Jews.  And I said that this is because the good news is first and foremost Israel’s good news, and I said that we’d see this as we now get into the rest of Chapter 13. Luke didn’t get into the specifics of Paul’s and Barnabas’ preaching in Cyprus.  There he introduced us to the pattern of their mission: to the Jew first and then to the Greek.  This week Luke shows us why.  So look at Acts 13:13.  [Page 1095 in the pew Bibles]. “Paul and his companions set off from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia.”  Pamphylia is on the southern coast of Turkey, so they’ve taken a ship from Cyprus and sailed north.  “John, however, left them and went back to Jerusalem.”  Luke doesn’t tell us why John Mark left.  Paul described it later as a betrayal and he was upset with him over it.  Maybe he was scared.  Maybe he was homesick.  Whatever the reasons, he abandoned Paul and Barnabas.  And Luke goes on, “But they went on from Perga and arrived in Antioch of Pisidia…”  Pisidian Antioch was inland in the province of Galatia.  And it was very much Roman territory and a city dedicated not just to Rome and Roman culture, but to the cult of Caesar.  But they don’t go to the town square to confront Romans.  Luke says, just as in Cyprus, “they went into the synagogue on the sabbath day and sat down.  After the reading of the law and the prophets, the ruler of the synagogue sent word to them. ‘My brothers,’ he said, ‘if you have any word of exhortation for the people, let us hear it.’” Paul’s reputation as a learned scholar who had studied under Gamaliel probably preceded him.  Barnabas was a Levite.  I suspect that both of them dressed the part.  But good hospitality meant inviting such prestigious guests to speak to the synagogue and, I think, they got more than they bargained for that day.  Verse 16: “So Paul stood up and motioned with his hand for attention. ‘Men of Israel,’ he said, ‘and the god-fearers among you: listen.  The God of this people Israel chose our fathers, and he raised the people up to greatness during their stay in the land of Egypt. Then he led them out from there with his hand lifted high, and for about forty years he put up with them in the desert.  He drove out seven nations from the land of Canaan, and gave them the land as their inheritance for about four hundred and fifty years.  After that, he gave them judges, up until Samuel the prophet.  After that, they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man from the tribe of Benjamin. He ruled for forty years, and after God had removed him he raised up for them David as king.  He is the one to whom God bore witness when he said, ‘I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will accomplish all my purpose.’ So Paul stands up in the synagogue rehearses their history. This was the story they all knew well.  It was the story that defined them as a people—specifically as God’s people.  And Paul rushes through it up to David: From the Patriarchs to Egypt to Caanan to Judges to Saul all very quickly.  But notice what Paul puts all the stress on in the story: God chose.  God made Israel great.  God brought them up out of Egypt.  God was patient with them in the wilderness.  God gave them Canaan.  God gave them judges.  God gave them King Saul.  God raised up King David.  What’s Paul doing?  Brothers and Sisters, he telling Israel’s story as a story of grace.  Long before God send his son, he was establishing his pattern of grace.  We often get the mistaken idea that the religion of the Old Testament was a religion of works and that Jews were trying to earn salvation.  And that’s simply not true.  Paul stresses it here: The old covenant was all about God’s grace.  He chose his people, he saved his people, and he sustained his people.  And in that story we not only see God’s grace at work, but we also see his faithfulness revealed.  Brothers and Sisters, God’s grace has a purpose. Verse 23: “‘From this man’s offspring [that’s from David], in accordance with his promise, God has brought a saviour for Israel: Jesus!  Before he appeared, John had announced a baptism of repentance for the whole people of Israel.  As John was finishing his course, he said, ‘What do you suppose I am? I am not the one.  But look: someone is coming after me, and I am not worthy to untie the sandals on his feet.’” So that question again: Why did Paul first have to preach to Israel?  Here it is: Because you can’t announce Israel’s Messiah without first telling Israel that in him, the God of Israel has kept his promises.  Jesus couldn’t be a Canaanite or a Greek or a Roman or a German or an Egyptian or anything else.  Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s promises to Israel.  Jesus is the climax of Israel’s story.  Jesus is the great proof of God’s gracious faithfulness.  And so Jesus’ mission begins with setting Israel to rights.  That’s why John called the men and women of Israel out to the wilderness, to pass through the waters of the Jordan in baptism as an act of repentance.  The great exodus of which their exodus from Egypt was just a shadow, the new Passover of which the old was just a shadow, the King of whom even the great King David was only a shadow, had come and John was calling the people to a great reset, a great act of national repentance in preparation for what God was about to do—an act that he’d been preparing his people for since the beginning. Verse 16: “‘My brothers,” Paul continued, “sons of Abraham’s family, and the god-fearers among you: it is to us that the word of this salvation has been sent!  The people who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, didn’t recognize him, and they fulfilled the words of the prophets which are read to them every sabbath by condemning him.  Even though they found no reason to condemn him to death, they asked Pilate to have him killed.  When they had completed everything that had been written about him in prophecy, they took him down from the cross and put him in a tomb.  But God raised him from the dead, and he was seen for several days by those who had come with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to the people.’ Luke noted before that there were gentile god-fearers in the synagogue along with the Jews, but Paul makes a point of it here as he addresses them and says, to us this word of salvation has been sent.  It might be a little subtle, but I expect they picked up on it.  Paul’s including these uncircumcised gentiles in the story.  And then he continues with Jesus: The people in Jerusalem and the rulers of Israel refused to recognise him as the true King.  Men who had read the prophets their whole lives, men who believed the prophets, nevertheless were completely oblivious to the prophets even as they fulfilled them by condemning Jesus to death. And the Jews sitting in this synagogue in Pisidian Antioch listening to Paul, they read those same prophets, they know those same prophets, they believe those same prophets, so there’s a warning in Paul’s preaching here.  It’s entirely possible to know God’s word inside-out, backwards and forwards and still fail to understand the story.  The Jews in Jerusalem rejected Jesus.  They ruled that he was a false Messiah and insisted Pilate crucify him.  And then the great reversal—another one of those “But God…” statements.  If you want to sum up all of human history, it’s “But God…”  Human beings did this, human beings did that, but God…”  They killed Jesus, and then Paul says, “But God raised him from the dead.” The Jewish people rendered a verdict against Jesus.  The Jewish rulers rendered a verdict against Jesus.  Pilate, the Roman governor rendered a verdict against Jesus.  And just as everyone thought it was settled, God rendered his own verdict.  God gets the last word and God’s word is resurrection.  And Paul stresses—because now is the moment when these people in the synagogue are going to have to choose whether they will reject Jesus or whether they will repent and believe the gospel—Paul stresses that there were witnesses to God’s verdict. And then, verse 32, this is what it means.  This is why it’s important: “‘We are here now to bring you the good news which was promised to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to us, their children, by raising Jesus. This corresponds, indeed, to what is written in the second psalm: ‘You are my son; this day I have begotten you.’ That he raised him from the dead, never more to return to corruption, conforms to what was written: ‘I will give you the holy and faithful mercies of David.’  Because, as it says in another place, ‘You will not hand over your Holy One to see “corruption.’  Now David served his own generation, and in the purposes of God he fell asleep and was gathered to his fathers.  He did experience corruption.  But the one God raised up did not experience corruption. Brothers and Sisters, this is the good news: The God of Israel has done what he promised.  I ran across this gem written by Tom Wright in his Acts for Everyone, “It is fatally easy for the church to tell the story of Jesus while simply ignoring the entire story of Israel. That is the way to produce a shallow, sub-biblical and ultimately dangerous theology.”  If you ignore or strip out the story, the good news ceases to be the good news.  Paul quotes from Psalm 2, Isaiah 55, and Psalm 16 and he doesn’t just throw these passages out as prooftexts.  They are the story.  They’re what make the good news truly good news.  He quotes from Psalm 2, “You are my son…”  Psalm 2 is one of the royal psalms.  It’s about King David.  The king represented the people and if Israel was God’s beloved son, then so was the king.  In fact, the king became the embodiments of that beloved sonship.  And Paul is now telling these fellow Jews—and the gentiles in their midst—that when he raised Jesus from the dead, he publicly vindicated Jesus as the Messiah and, not only that, he enthroned him as the promised, eternal Davidic King.  I suspect Paul makes an especial point of Jesus as the King here, because this was Pisidian Antioch, also called Colonia Caesarea—Caesar’s colony.  It was a city devoted to Caesar—temples, monuments, the name.  It was all about King Caesar and the Pax Romana he brought.  And in that city Paul announces that the God of Israel raised David’s son from death and installed him as creation’s true King.  God’s promises to David are now being fulfilled in Jesus.  Good news. And then Isaiah 55:3.  “I will give you the holy and faithful mercies of David.”  We can’t unpack all of Isaiah 53-55 this morning, but this is where God promised that one day new life would break out all through creation on the basis of the work of the suffering servant (Isaiah 53) and that he would come and renew his covenant (Isaiah 54).  “Ho, everyone who is thirsty!” shouts Isaiah, “Come to the waters!  Come and drink!  It’s all free!  And it’s for everyone!”  And Paul reminds them of this prophecy—one they surely knew well—to say that these mercies of David are being thrown open, not just to Israel, but to any gentiles who will repent and believe this good news as well.  Because God has been faithful to his promises in and through Jesus, this good news can go out to the entire world.  And in that, the promise of Isaiah 55 is being fulfilled: God’s word is going out into the world to renew and heal and transform—to set all of creation to rights.  Good news. And just in case they’re thinking “No, this Jesus can’t fulfil the prophesies about David, because the Messiah isn’t supposed to die,” Paul reminds them of Psalm 16, “You will not hand over your holy one to corruption.”  And he argues very simply: David served God’s purpose, David died, David was buried, David decayed to dust.  So David cannot be the ultimate fulfilment of the promise.  The greater David has come.  Jesus the Messiah, whom God raised from the dead.  And if Jesus is King, that’s not just some interesting historical fact or theological truth to affirm and file away.  So Paul—I imagine him being pretty animated at this point—he goes on in verse 38: “So let it be known to you therefore, my brothers and sisters, that forgiveness of sins is announced through him, and that everything from which you were unable to be set right by the law of Moses, by him everyone who believes is set right.  Beware, then, lest what the prophets foretold comes true of you: ‘Look out, you scoffers—be amazed, and disappear!  I am doing something in your days, a work which you wouldn’t believe even if someone were to explain it to you.’” This is the great announcement: “Let it be known to you therefore…”  And as they say, when you see the word “therefor”, ask what it’s there for.  Jesus is David’s promised son.  God raised him from the dead.  In him the scriptures, Israel’s story, have been fulfilled.  Therefore, forgiveness is announced through him.  Again, “forgiveness of sins is announced through him, and that everything from which you were unable to be set right by the law of Moses, by him everyone who believes is set right—or we could translate it “set free” or even “justified” or “acquitted”.  Good news. To be clear, what Paul is not saying is that Judaism is a religion of works and Jesus has now, in contrast, established a covenant of grace.  Paul has made it clear that God has been working through grace all along through Israel’s story.  The God who gave the torah is the same God who chose Israel, delivered Israel, gave Israel the promise land, sustained her in it, gave her kings, and promised her David’s son.  Torah was a gift of grace that created a holy people fit for God’s greater gift of grace: his presence.  So what Paul is saying here is that the law of Moses was God’s good gift, but it could only take Israel so far.  It could expose sin, restrain sin, order the life of Israel, and provide a means of forgiveness.  But it could never ultimately solve the problem of sin.  It could not raise the dead.  It could not bring Israel’s story all the way to the promised goal.  It could not create the renewed people through whom Abraham’s blessing would finally go out to the nations.  Because the law was written on tablets of stone.  What the people ultimately needed was the law written on their hearts.  And God has finally done that in Jesus—and in the Spirit, although Paul doesn’t carry the argument quite that far here. Paul says, “Everyone who believes…”  He’s been addressing sons of Abraham, and he’s been addressing the gentile god-fearers in their midst, and now everyone is set to rights in the Messiah.  And this was the astounding thing that Barnabas saw back in Acts 11 when he first went to Antioch and reported back that he saw there the grace of God.  How could uncircumcised gentiles sit at the same table with Jewish believers?  Why would Barnabas look at that and say, “I see the grace of God?”  It’s because the boundary of God’s renewed people is no longer circumcision, no longer torah, but Jesus the Messiah.  Everyone who believes the good news about him is set to rights through him—is made pure and washed clean by his blood to be a dwelling place for God himself in the Holy Spirit.  And in that, God in the Messiah has accomplished the very thing he so gracious promised he would do through Abraham: he would make his name known to the nations and take his blessings to them. But the flip side of this good news is a warning: Paul warns them with the words of Habakkuk 1:5, “Look out, you scoffers—be amazed, and disappear!  I am doing something in your days, a work which you wouldn’t believe even if someone were to explain it to you.”  Habakkuk had warned Judah about the work—the judgement—he was about to accomplish through their conquest by Babylon.  Now Paul applies that same warning to them: The Jewish people and rulers in Jerusalem spent their lives hearing the prophets every sabbath, they knew them inside-out, and yet when God sent Jesus to fulfil them, they refused to recognise or to acknowledge what God was doing.  And Paul’s now saying to these people: Don’t do the same thing.  Don’t be the next people in whom a prophetic warning is fulfilled! And remember, Paul’s speaking from experience.  He was as immersed in those scriptures as anyone ever was.  He was as zealous for Israel’s God as anyone was.  And he still found himself standing in God’s way.  Last Sunday Elymas became a mirror of Paul’s old self.  This Sunday Paul’s warning the synagogue and basically saying, “I know what it is to think that you’re defending God, when you’re actually resisting what he’s doing.  Don’t do what I did! And the people, they seem to have recognised that Paul preached with authority—not unlike Jesus himself—and they heeded his warning.  Luke finishes in verse 42: “As Paul and Barnabas were leaving, they begged them to come back the next sabbath and tell them more about these things.  Many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed them once the synagogue was dismissed. They [that’s Paul and Barnabas] spoke to them some more, and urged them to remain in God’s grace.” They urged them to remain in God’s grace.  Brothers and Sisters, what is grace?  I hope that after hearing Paul’s preaching here we can see that it’s not just God blessing people who don’t deserve it.  That’s kind of the dictionary definition of grace: God’s unmerited favour.  And that’s not wrong, but it doesn’t go far enough.  Paul stresses here that there’s more to it than that.  God’s grace is his covenant faithfulness overflowing.  Not just blessings in general, but the blessings of his covenant overflowing to Jew and gentile alike because his Messiah has dealt with our sin.  This is what Barnabas saw in Antioch as Jews and gentiles became one family in Jesus.  It’s what Paul’s now preaching in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch. God chose, God rescued, God promised, God gave King David, and God gave King Jesus the saviour.  And when sinful, rebellious men and women rejected and crucified him, God raised him from the dead.  And in that, God sets everyone to rights who repents and believes this good news.  That’s the word of salvation and that’s why Paul first went to his fellow Jews.  Because the good news is the fulfilment of God’s promises to his people.  Because God has kept his promises to Israel in Jesus, the promise he made to Abraham can now reach its intended goal: blessing for the nations.  And when we come in faith to this God who is unlike any other, perhaps at first simply out of amazement and to give him glory, he welcomes us to be part of this new people centred in the Messiah.  Brothers and Sisters, this is grace.  The realisation of the covenant faithfulness of the God of Israel.  As Paul says here: Remain in it.  Live in this wonderful thing God has done.  Trust the King whom God has raised from the dead.  Finally, become the people God is creating by his grace: a single people, purified by the blood of Jesus, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and a witness to the nations of God’s amazing grace. Let’s pray: Almighty God, who fulfilled your promises to Israel by raising Jesus the Messiah from the dead, and through him proclaims forgiveness to all who believe: Grant us grace to receive the word of this salvation and to continue steadfastly in your grace; that, set right by your mercy and made one people in your Son, we may bear faithful witness to your faithfulness before the nations; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

2. 

   11 Oct 2026

   Sent by the Holy Spirit

   Sent by the Holy Spirit Acts 13:1-12 by William Klock I read The Hobbit when I was in Fourth Grade, which was probably the perfect time to read it.  Still a pretty little kid, reading about the fantastic adventure of the little hobbit, Bilbo Baggins.  And it seemed like such a big adventure and such a long journey.  Gandalf the wizard pushes Bilbo out the door of his oh-so-comfortable hobbit hole on a grand adventure to another land, to defeat a dragon, and to recover a king’s treasure.  And when I was done I went on to read The Lord of the Rings and it made Bilbo’s grand adventure seem like a trip down the block.  It was truly epic.  And it was in the first chapters of The Lord of the Rings that you realise The Hobbit was just the prelude.  It introduced the One Ring, but having introduced it, there was now a far, far bigger story to tell and far, far greater adventure to have. And I’ve been thinking that Acts feels a lot like that when we get to Chapter 13.  Up this point the church has been on this grand gospel-Holy Spirit adventure as the good news about Jesus has gone out from Jerusalem to Judaea and Samaria and even to a handful of gentiles in the area.  God’s new creation is being born.  And everything we’ve read is pretty astounding.  God is at work in his people.  And at the end of Chapter 12, Herod the king—the devil’s last attempt to recork the gospel bottle—God strikes him down.  And Luke says the word of God grew and multiplied. But now with Chapter 13, Luke starts to make it clear that this was just the prologue.  The real gospel adventure is about to begin—the one that will take his people to the ends of the earth.  And it begins in Antioch—the crossroads of the eastern part of the Roman Empire.  But like The Lord of the Rings begins in a comfortable little hobbit hole, the great adventure of Acts begins in church.  Look at Acts 13 [page 1095 in the pew Bibles]: “In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Symeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen from the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.  As they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”  So they fasted and prayed; and then they laid their hands on them and sent them off. Remember how Barnabas, when he went to check on what the apostles had heard was happening in Antioch, Barnabas declared that he saw the grace of God at work.  That was his response to seeing Jewish and gentile believers living together, worshipping and praying together, taking care of each other, and probably most of all: gathering at one table to share the Lord’s Supper.  Jews and gentiles didn’t do that, but in Jesus God’s new creation was taking shape right there in Antioch.  And now Luke shows us a more detailed picture of this grace in the leadership of the church there.  There’s Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus; Simeon Niger, well he’s got a Jewish first name and a Latin cognomen which might imply he was black; Lucius of Cyrene in North Africa; Manaen, who has somehow connection with the court of Herod, but is now teaching and prophesying in the church; and finally Saul, a Benjaminite.  This group of men foreshadows what’s going to happen in the rest of Acts—not all that unlike the way all those Jews from around the empire did back in Acts 2 at Pentecost. And these men were worshipping and fasting.  Brothers and Sisters, you want to see the church grow?  You want to see mission happen?  Be faithful in the basics.  Worship and fast.  If the contemporary church were more faithful in both, if we actually invested in worship that glorifies God instead of so much experience-oriented worshiptainment, if we fasted and prayed more, I think we would see not only a healthier church, but we’d also see a greater impact of the gospel, of our witness in the world around us. Maybe we’d hear the Holy Spirit speak as he spoke to the church in Antioch.  “Set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”  Notice: Saul and Barnabas are not being called for the first time.  Jesus had called Saul on the road to Damascus.  The church isn’t giving him this vocation.  The Spirit has done that already.  The Spirit calls the church to formally recognise that calling.  Much as the people of Israel laid hands on the Levites to recognise their calling by God to be their priests, now the church lays hands on Saul and Barnabas as a way of recognising their calling and to commission them.  And notice, it’s the Spirit who sends them, not the church.  The job of the church is to release them for the mission the Spirit gave.  Sometimes we get this upside-down in the church.  We develop models of ministry where the church does the calling and the bishops give the empowerment, but in the New Testament it’s the other way round: God calls and the church discerns.  The Spirit sends and the church releases. And in Antioch it meant that the church releases two of its most important leaders.  Saul and Barnabas are not extra staff members that the Antioch church could do without.  They’re probably the church’s two main teachers.  Saul’s been there a while and Barnabas went there to sort of represent the apostles.  Listening to the Spirit on this is going to cost them something.  I think of Bp. Grote, who established a network of churches around Houston.  Any time any of them started getting up to around a hundred people, he’d pull twenty or thirty people out to start a new church.  One church in particular seemed to be the one that had that happen over and over and I remember their rector—who knew it was all well and good—but after a while lamented: Why is it always my church?  But Brothers and Sisters, here’s the thing: God is fulfilling his promise to take Abraham’s blessing to the nations and the attitude of the church should never be, “We can’t afford to lose those people”.  Remember, this is God’s church, not ours.  Our attitude should always be that we’re available for whatever God needs us to do.  We’ll trust him to fill the gaps, whether that’s people or resources or money or whatever. Too often we think we have a mission and we ask God to bless it.  It’s really the other way round: God has a mission, empowered by the gospel and the Spirit, and we’re called into it.  The other mistake we often make is knowing our calling, but then waiting on too many specifics from God before we follow it.  Look at verses 4-6: “So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia. From there they set sail to Cyprus, and when they arrived in Salamis they announced God’s word in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their assistant.  They went through the whole of the island, all the way to Paphos” The Spirit told them what to do.  Where to go?  They went where it made sense.  They set sail for Cyprus, because that’s where Barnabas was from.  They knew there were already believers who ended up there after being scattered by the Jewish authorities in the aftermath of Stephen’s stoning.  The Spirit sent them out.  Practical matters, human relationships, their own judgement told them where to go.  The two aren’t mutually exclusive or contradictory.  In fact, we see both the Spirit and human wisdom working hand in hand all through the New Testament.  Sometimes the Spirit also tells us where to go or how to do what he calls us to, but if he doesn’t, we can miss his calling—we can become disobedient—sitting around waiting for him to reveal the specifics. So Saul and Barnabas arrive in Salamis and notice what they do: The don’t start preaching to gentiles in the market; they immediately proclaim the word of God in the synagogues—to the Jews.  Saul might be called to be the apostle to the gentiles, but that doesn’t mean he stops preaching to his own people.  And there’s a really important reason for that.  It’ll come out pretty explicitly in the later part of Acts 13 next week, but it’s embodied in Saul’s statement in Romans 1: “to the Jews first and also to the Greek”.  Brothers and Sisters, the good news is first and foremost Israel’s good news.  The God of Israel has fulfilled his promises to his people, promises going all the way back to Abraham, in Jesus the Messiah.  And he’s done that so that Abraham’s blessing can now go out to the nations.  The good news is a revelation of God’s faithfulness and through that his glory.  When we see the nations streaming to the God of Israel in John’s vision in Revelation, it is first and foremost because in the God of Israel they see—for the first time—a God who is worthy of their praise, their worship, and their loyalty—a God who has kept his promises to his own people and through that has both welcomed the nations and given them a reason to come to him in faith.  So Saul knew that when his own people hear the good news about Jesus and believe, their belief becomes a witness to the gentiles that the God of Israel keeps his promises.  So Saul and Barnabas began in the heart of the Jewish community on Cyprus, then took the road around the south side all the way to Paphos in the west—into the heart of the gentile community.  Paphos was the Roman administrative centre of the island.  Look at verses 6-8: “There they found a magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus.  He was with the governor, Sergius Paulus, who was an intelligent man.  He [that’s Sergius Paulus] called Barnabas and Saul and asked to hear the word of God.  The magician Elymas (that’s the translation of his name) was opposing them, and doing his best to turn the governor away from the faith.” We might expect the Roman governor to be another Pontius Pilate or maybe another Herod—someone who will immediately and violently oppose the gospel.  But Luke says Sergius Paulus was genuinely interested.  The problem, very ironically, is this Jewish magician who has the governor’s ear.  Luke describes him as magos and false prophet.  A magus was usually someone who claimed to interpret dreams or was an astrologer or otherwise had access to arcane or occult knowledge—which goes right along with the idea that he was also a false prophet.  A prominent Roman might include someone like this in his entourage.  That Sergius Paulus was interested in hearing out Saul and Barnabas says he was probably one of those Romans who was into arcane religious and occult stuff.  If he heard that the gods—or a God—had spoken, he wanted to know what was said.  If the stars were sending a message, he wanted someone around who could tell him what it was.  And Bar Jesus—or Elymas, his Greek name—has claimed to speak for the God of Israel, so Sergius Paulus is interested in these two Jewish missionaries with “good news”.  But Elymas puts himself between the governor and the good news. So this isn’t a showdown between something like “rational Christianity” and “superstition”.  This is a contest over who truly speaks for God.  Verse 9: “But Saul, also named Paul, looked intently at him, filled with the Holy Spirit.  “You’re full of trickery and every kind of villainy!” he said. “You’re a son of the devil! You’re an enemy of everything that’s right!  When are you going to stop twisting the paths that God has made straight?  Now see here: the Lord’s hand will be upon you, and you will be blind for a while; you won’t even be able to see the sun!”  At once mist and darkness fell on him, and he went about looking for someone to lead him by the hand.” This is suddenly the point where Luke decides to tell us that from now on Saul is going to go by Paul.  Why here?  I’m not sure.  I don’t think anyone is.  But it seems clear that Saul has had this other Greek name, Paul, all along.  That wasn’t uncommon.  And in Paul’s case it probably makes sense for a Jew who came from the Greek-speaking world.  Saul was a good Jewish name.  Saul was the first King of Israel, remember, and a Benjaminte like Saul.  But in Greek you’d say Saulos and in classical Greek, saulos described an effeminate sort of walking or dancing and even though no one used the word anymore in the First Century, people were still familiar with it.  One of those unfortunate times when a perfectly good name in one language happens to be the same as a problematic word in another.  But why the change here?  I think probably because up to this point Luke wants us to understand just how thoroughly Jewish Saul was, but this is the point at which Saul, for the first time, really brings the gospel to the gentile world.  So from here on out, as the apostle to the gentiles fulfils his calling, Luke’s going to call him Paul. But more importantly, getting back to the action of the story, Luke says that being filled with the Holy Spirit—empowered, emboldened by God—Paul confronts Elymas.  The Spirit didn’t call Paul here for nothing and he’s going to make sure Paul finished his mission.  The Spirit of truth confronts a false prophet full of lies.  This man called “Bar Jesus—son of Jesus or Joshua turns out to be a “son of the devil”.  Paul calls him out as an “enemy of everything that’s right” and he asks, “When are you going to stop twisting the paths that God has made straight?”  Paul calls out Elymas as doing exactly the opposite of what John the Baptist and what Jesus’ disciples have been doing.  They’ve been making the way straight for the gospel, for the news that in Jesus the God of Israel has come back to dwell with his people.  Elymas, however, by whispering lies into the ear of the governor and trying to turn him away from the gospel, he’s making crooked what God has been making straight.  Salvation for the nations is supposed to come from the Jews, but this particular Jew is twisting and forsaking his calling. That’s not the place you want to be.  The God of Israel has been making a straight road for the good news of forgiveness, redemption, resurrection, new creation to go out to the nations and Elymas has planted himself firmly in the middle of that road and tried to setup a road block.  And the God of Israel confronts him much as he did Paul when he was on the road to Damascus.  Elymas is struck blind.  And Luke makes an obvious and deliberate point of tell us about this in a way that parallels Paul’s experience.  Paul opposed Jesus and the God of Israel.  Elymas opposes Jesus and the God of Israel.  Paul tried to keep people from believing in and following Jesus.  Elymas is trying to keep Sergius Paulus from believing and following Jesus.  Paul was blinded.  Elymas is blinded.  Paul was led by the hand.  Elymas now goes stumbling around looking for someone to lead him by the hand.  Paul used to be like Elymas.  Now Paul is like Jesus.  And so Paul isn’t here thundering judgement against some wicked gentile.  Paul’s really looking at his former self.  And he knows what it means to think that you’re serving God when what you’re really doing is unwittingly putting yourself in God’s way.  Paul knows what it’s like to be blinded by God.  And Paul also knows that just because God has struck you blind doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck in the dark forever.  God’s judgement is real, but so is his grace. I suspect Paul, seeing his past self in Elymas, sincerely hoped—even prayed—that Elymas might see the light because of the blindness God put on him.  Because Paul knew as well as anyone that the same Jesus who confronts his enemies is also the Jesus who can turn those enemies into apostles.  Because Paul knew that the same God who will surely judge the wicked and one day wipe them from creation when he sets all to rights, is also the God who gave his own son as a sacrifice for the sins of the wicked.  The God of Israel is a god who loves and seeks the lost and who rejoices when his enemies, through the blood of Jesus, become his beloved sons and daughters.  And that’s a powerful word.  Luke doesn’t tell us what became of Elymas, but look at verse 12: “When the governor saw what had happened, he believed, since he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.” He believed.  And he wasn’t astonished at Paul’s power.  He wasn’t astonished at the miracle as his court magician suddenly becomes blind.  That simply got the false prophet out of the way.  No, what Luke says is that Sergius Paulus was astonished at the teaching—the didache—of the Lord.  Again, think of this pagan Roman governor who has surrounded himself with an entourage that includes a Jewish prophet. A false prophet, but still someone who claimed to speak for a foreign god.  We might in today’s language, call Sergius Paulus a seeker.  In that time a lot of Romans were drawn to exotic foreign gods and religions.  The governor may have been bored with the Roman pantheon—with gods who were unknowable.  He was looking for something—anything—that would connect him with the divine.  Mystery religions, the occult, whatever.  And now Paul preaches the good news of a God who—unlike any god this Roman had ever heard of—humbled himself to take on our flesh and to die on a cross for our sins.  He heard a message of a God who makes promises and keeps them.  He heard a message of a God who is not only faithful, but who is full love and grace and mercy.  He heard of a God who has submitted himself to the great humility of the cross, all in order to purify his people so that he can live with them.  No other god would do that.  There was and never has been another story, another gospel that even comes close to resembling our good news.  This was astounding in the Roman world.  And Sergius Paulus was astonished.  And he believed.  What “believed” means, Luke doesn’t elaborate.  If Sergius Paulus actually became a Christian it’s odd that Luke says nothing of his baptism.  Maybe that came sometime later after Paul and Barnabas were gone.  But he believed.  At the very least, this Roman governor became a friend of the gospel. Acts 12 showed us the gospel surviving opposition.  Acts 13 shows us the gospel going on the offensive.  Herod tried to put the cork in the bottle and God struck him down.  Now the gospel’s being poured out well beyond Judaea.  And the gospel is spreading, not through violence, conquest, coercion, political manipulation, or magic, but as the Spirit sends gospel witnesses to announce to the nations what the God of Israel has done in Jesus the Messiah.  And it’s truly good news beyond anything anyone in that world could have imagined. And here’s the thing to really take note of in conclusion.  Brothers and Sisters, God uses his people to fulfil his purpose.  He used Israel to take his blessings to the nations and now he’s using his church to further that blessing.  But the success of this mission does not lie with us.  It lies with God.  Paul himself is a witness to the fact that none of is naturally even on God’s side.  We are gospel ministers because the same grace that we proclaim has first conquered us.  And so when the gospel task seems overwhelming, remember that our confidence is never in our own plans or abilities, it’s not in our eloquence, cleverness, discernment, or courage.  God can and will certainly use those things.  But ultimately our confidence is in him.  The Spirit calls.  The Spirit sends.  The Spirit fills.  And the word goes forward in power.  Even the people who stand in the way today, by God’s grace, can become the people carrying it to the world tomorrow.  And in that we see God’s glory—and so will the world. Let’s pray: O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

3. 

   4 Oct 2026

   The Word of God Grew and Multiplied

   The Word of God Grew and Multiplied Acts 12:1-25 by William Klock The book of Acts isn’t just a collection of stories that happened long ago.  It begins long ago, but it’s the story of the church as it carries on the mission and ministry of Jesus and the Spirit.  And Brothers and Sisters, that makes it very much our story.  It makes it the story that should shape who we are, what we do, how we respond to events around us.  It’s that last one—how we respond to events around us—that seems particularly important to me as we come to Acts 12 today.  We’ve seen the early church persecuted, but how does she respond?  Do those brother and sisters panic?  No.  They pray.  And they trust the Lord.  Even when they didn’t fully understand.  They trusted the Lord. Remember that Jesus, before he ascended, told his disciples that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem and Judaea, then in Samaria, and eventually to the ends of the whole earth.  For eleven chapters Luke has shown us this promise unfolding and all along the way he’s also shown us the authorities trying to stop it.  First the priestly authorities. Arrests, threats, and imprisonments.  And the church continued to grow.  Then Saul, the zealous Pharisee, came after the church, breathing threats.  He was going to crush Jesus’ people.  And God did something amazing.  He didn’t defeat Saul; he sent Jesus to meet him on the road to Damascus.  And suddenly Paul believed.  He became an apostle.  The devil, the powers, the principalities of this wicked age had done their worst to stop the gospel and the Spirit and despite their efforts, the message about Jesus has filled Jerusalem, Judaea, and Samaria.  It’s even begun to make inroads into the gentile community.  It’s poised to go out to the ends of the earth.  And so the enemy has one last chance to stop this movement before it’s completely out of the bottle: King Herod. Back in Acts 4, after Peter and John had been released from prison, the disciples had gathered together to talk about what happened, but mostly to pray.  And what strikes me there is how well they knew the story they were living in.  They saw their nation raging against them and they prayed Psalm 2: “Why did the nations fly into a rage…The kings of the earth arose…against the Lord and against his anointed Messiah.”  I wonder if, as they were praying the Psalm the could hear or they could picture the Lord, on his throne, laughing at these raging nations who think they can stop his Messiah.  They prayed Psalm 2 back then and now they see that prayer answered as the King of the Jews—the earthly, corrupt, human one—flies into a rage at Jesus, the real King, and his people.  And Luke kind of asks here: What happens when earthly kings set themselves up against the true Lord of creation?  And how should the Lord’s people respond?  So look at 12:1-5 [Page 1094]: “Around that time, King Herod laid violent hands on some people in the church.  He killed James the brother of John with the sword.  When he saw that it pleased the Judaeans, he proceeded to arrest Peter, too. (This was around the time of the Festival of Unleavened Bread.)  So, when he had seized him, he put him in prison, and gave four squads of soldiers the job of guarding him, with the intention of bringing him out to the people after Passover.  So Peter was kept in prison.  But the church prayed earnestly to God on his behalf.” This is Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, and he’s pretty much just as obsessed with holding onto his throne as is his grandfather was—you know, the guy who had all the baby boys in Bethlehem kills because he heard the King of the Jews had been born there.  So he’s watched as this Jesus movement has grown throughout his kingdom.  He’s listened as they openly proclaimed that Jesus is the King of the Jews.  And even though they weren’t fomenting rebellion or anything close to it, he saw a threat to his position.  And so, says Luke very bluntly, he killed James with a sword.  James the son of Zebedee.  In Mark 10, Jesus had asked him if he and his brother, John, were prepared to drink his cup.  And now Herod kills James with a sword. And he saw it pleased his people, so then he goes after Peter.  He thought that if he could take out the leaders of this movement, he could kill the whole thing off.  But there’s something chillingly political about it all.  Something that feels very contemporary in that way.  He killed James.  I didn’t stop the gospel.  But he went up in the polls, so now he schemes to kill Peter. And Luke tells us twice that this happened around Passover—the feast where Israel remembered God’s deliverance of them from a tyrant.  Luke paints this almost as a mini exodus.  No Jewish reader could hear “Passover”, “king”, “prison”, and “deliverance from his hand” and not have the exodus humming in the back of their minds.  So he arrests Peter.  And he puts him behind iron bars and surrounds him with sixteen soliders. And just as they’d prayed before, the church prays again.  And it’s worth pausing here.  I know, I’m getting a little ahead of the story, but we all know the outcome.  Peter is delivered.  But why not James?  I’m sure the church was praying just as hard when James was arrested.  Imagine being James’ mother and asking, “Why did God deliver Peter and not my son?”  Luke doesn’t give us an answer, but it’s a powerful reminder that prayer doesn’t control providence.  This is where we need to remember that we inhabit the story God is writing.  We don’t write our own stories.  I think we sometimes get the pious idea that we can use prayer to do that—to write our own stories—to get God to do what we want.  We probably wouldn’t say it out loud quite that way, but I know we often think of prayer that way.  And so we need the reminder—the one in Luke’s unspoken words here—that that’s not what prayer is.  That’s not how it works.  God is writing the story and he’s a better story teller than we are, because he—unlike us—he is perfectly wise and perfectly good and perfectly just.  Brothers and Sisters, prayer, instead, is a show of trust.  It’s how we entrust ourselves to the goodness of God—even when things don’t look good from our limited perspective.  Now, continuing with verse 6: “On the night when Herod was intending to bring Peter out, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains.  There were guards on the doors, watching the prison.  Suddenly an angel of the Lord stood there, and a light shone in the cell.  The angel struck Peter on the side and woke him up.  “Get up quickly!” he said.  The chains fell off his hands.  Then the angel spoke again.  “Get dressed and put on your sandals,” he said.  So Peter did.  “Put on your cloak and follow me,” said the angel.” “So he went out, following the angel. He didn’t think all this business with the angel was really happening.  He thought he was seeing a vision.  They went through the first set of guards; then the second; and then they came to the iron gate that led into the city.  It opened all by itself.  They went out and walked along a street.  Suddenly the angel left him.  Then Peter came to his senses. “Now I know it’s true!” he said.  “The Lord sent his angel and snatched me out of the hand of Herod.  He rescued me from all the things the Judaeans were intending to do.” Herod wasn’t messing around.  He had Peter guarded as well as he possible could have.  And suddenly an angel shows up.  And he strikes Peter.  Keep that in mind, because it’s not the only time God is going to strike someone in this story.  But here, I suspect Luke intended this to be funny, the angel strikes Peter to wake him and starts giving him commands: “Get up! Get dressed!  Hey, don’t forget to put your shoes on!  Sheesh, and your coat!”  It’s like trying to wake up your kindergartener and get him out the door to the bus.  And the soldiers, they do nothing.  It’s almost like Daniel in the lions’ den.  The great iron gate opens at the angel’s command.  And the whole time Peter thinks he’s having another vision—like the one he had on that rooftop in Joppa.  It’s not until he’s finally outside, walking down the street, and the angel disappears, and he’s still there outside the prison that Peter finally realises it wasn’t a vision.  It really happened and he’s free.  Herod thought he had Peter safely in his hand, but Herod didn’t account for God.  And then Rhoda.  Look at verse 12: “Once he had realized this, he went to the house of Mary, John Mark’s mother.  Lots of people were gathered there, praying.  Peter knocked at the door in the outer gate, and a maid called Rhoda came to answer it.  When she heard Peter’s voice, she was so excited she didn’t open the gate. Instead, she ran back in and told them that Peter was standing outside the gate. “You’re out of your mind!” they said to her.  But she insisted that it really was true. “It must be his angel!” they said.” Again, I think Luke intends for this to be funny.  The iron gate of the prison opens for Peter, but the maid won’t open the door of Mary’s house and leaves him outside—which is not a good place for a fugitive to be.  It strikes me that maybe one of Luke’s points here is that these aren’t spiritual superheroes.  They’re just ordinary Christians like us.  They were praying for Peter, but when they hear he’s outside, they don’t believe the report.  Consider that they tell the girl it’s Peter’s “angel”—I won’t take the lid off that can of worms this morning—but it sounds like they’re thinking he’s dead—executed like James.  In which case, they were praying for him not so much to be released, but to be steadfast to the end.  I suspect it was a bit of both, but mostly the latter.  They didn’t know what would happen.  They knew they couldn’t write the story themselves.  So they prayed.  They entrust Peter and the whole situation to the God they knew is faithful.  Kings may rage against the Messiah and his people, but as Psalm 2 says, they knew the Lord sits in heaven and laughs.  His Messiah will sit on his holy hill. Verse 16:  “Meanwhile Peter carried on knocking.  They opened the door and saw him, and were astonished.  He made a sign with his hand for them to be quiet.  Then he told them how the Lord had led him out of the prison.  “Tell this to James, and to the other brothers [and sisters],” he said.  Then he left and went somewhere else.  When morning came, there was quite a commotion among the guards as to what had become of Peter.  Herod looked for him but couldn’t find him.  He interrogated the guards and ordered them to be put to death.  Then he left Judaea and went down to Caesarea, and stayed there.” So they finally open the door for Peter and tells them what happened.  It’s not safe for him in Jerusalem, so he takes off.  Luke doesn’t elaborate on that at this point, but it is how he sort of segues things.  From now on, James—not James the son of Zebedee whom Herod killed, but James the brother of Jesus—James is going to be the leader of the church in Jerusalem.  Peter now exits the stage and that’s important.  Acts is not an apostolic biography.  Luke doesn’t even tell us where Peter went.  Because what Acts is actually about it what Jesus is doing through his church.  This is the continuation of Luke’s gospel.  In the gospel Luke reports everything that Jesus began to do and to say.  In Acts he tells us how it all continues.  Yes, Jesus works through his people, but it’s Jesus who’s at the centre of the story. And then morning comes and Herod can’t find Peter and he’s furious—furious enough that he kills Peter’s guards.  Sixteen men.  Luke makes a point of showing us this early king in his raging.  He really is the local embodiment in Judaea of the principalities and powers that stand against Jesus and the gospel.  He is the local embodiment of everything that’s wrong with this fallen world and the systems of the old evil age.  Herod thinks he’s writing his own story. All the evidence should have told him that he was not.  Peter got away.  And, Luke doesn’t tell us what it was, but something that the people in Tyre and Sidon did made Herod angry too.  You’d think that would be a warning that he’s not as in-control of things as he thinks, but apparently not.  That’s something we’d all be wise to heed.  Luke goes on with the third act of this story in verse 20: “Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon.  They all came together to meet him, and they persuaded Blastus, who was in charge of the king’s bedchamber, to seek a reconciliation. (They were, you see, dependent on the king’s country for their food.)  So a day was set, and Herod dressed himself in his royal robes and took his seat on the official platform to make a public address to them.  The people began to shout, “The voice of a god, not of a mortal!” The Jewish historian, Josephus, tells us about this same event.  Herod appeared in Caesarea in a spectacular silver gown meant to catch the morning sunlight.  I doubt anyone there actually thought Herod was a God, but they were dependent on him for their food and he was angry, so they flattered him.  They saw him gleaming on the platform and they hailed him as divine.  Herod—who claimed to be King of the Jews—should have know better than to accept such blasphemous acclaim.  But he took it anyway.  He basked in the glory—glory that should have been reserved only for the living God.  And Luke goes on: “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he didn’t give God the glory.  He was eaten by worms and expired.  But God’s word grew and multiplied.  Barnabas and Saul had by now accomplished their ministry in Jerusalem, and they came back to Antioch, bringing John Mark with them.” In medical terms, what happened to Herod isn’t clear.  Josephus says that when the crowd hailed him as divine, Herod was suddenly struck by a pain in his belly.  His servants carried him home where he was in agony for five days before dying.  Luke states it very simply and connects it directly with the action of God.  Both Luke and Josephus are clear: this was divine punishment.  Luke’s diagnosis is spiritual: Herod stole glory that rightly belonged to God and God struck him down.  That word “struck” bookends the whole story.  God “struck” Peter in prison to wake him up and to rescue him.  Here God strikes Herod and he dies.  And I think Luke tells the story the way he does to deliberately echo Ezekiel 27 and 28.  In that prophecy, the Lord proclaims coming judgement on Tyre and Sidon and specifically declares to the king of Tyre that he will be struck down by pestilence.  Why?  Because God had established his city and given him prosperity and greatness, but instead of giving glory to God, he claimed to be a god himself.  “Will you still say, ‘I am a god,’ in the presence of those who kill you, though you are but a man, and no god.”  Luke shapes the whole scene around Ezekiel’s prophecy to the King of Tyre.  More importantly, Ezekiel’s is another example of a raging king who falls under God’s judgement. In contrast to Herod, Jesus shows us what true kingship looks like.  Herod uses his royal power to crush and to dominate, to threaten whole regions and cities, and on top of it all, he steals God’s glory.  Herod is what’s wrong with fallen creation.  In contrast, as Acts unfolds, we see Jesus first as the King who gives his own life for the sake of his people.  His path to his throne is not through violence or domination, but through humility and sacrifice—even a death he didn’t deserve.  And for that, God exalted him to his throne.  Herod exalts himself.  Jesus, though he died, now lives.  Herod is food for worms.  And so the church proclaims that Jesus is Lord. Brothers and Sisters, the church still proclaims that Jesus is Lord—or at least it’s supposed to and it should.  Sometimes the church has an obligation to speak truth to power more specifically—to confront specific evils.  But still, the church confronts the rulers and powers of this age head on every time we announce that Jesus is Lord.  It may at times seem futile.  It may at times seem dangerous to confront the principalities and powers of the old age.  But what Luke shows us throughout Acts is that God’s verdict about Jesus outranks theirs.  Acts shows us the church speaking truth to power and all these rulers and authorities who think they stand as judges over us end up finding themselves judged by the resurrection and coming of Jesus.  Acts 12 does this without even a speech by Peter or James.  Herod puts the church on trial and by the end of the chapter Herod is himself on trial and ends up worm food.  God’s verdict stands.  That first Easter morning he vindicated Jesus as Messiah and he will continue to vindicate his church on the same grounds—because we are, by faith and baptism, in and one with his Messiah. And in the end Luke says, But God’s word grew and multiplied. James is dead.  Peter is gone.  But the word of God grew and multiplied.  Brothers and Sisters, Jesus never promised that we would escape persecution or even martyrdom.  Just the opposite.  He promised that we would drink the same cup he drank.  Stephen was murdered. James was murdered.  Jesus himself was crucified.  Our victory lies in the fact that not even death can overturn the verdict that God announced when he raised Jesus from the grave.  Neither persecution, nor prison, nor being thrown to lions can stop the thing that God is doing. Luke echoes both Gensis and Isaiah here.  Through Jesus and the Spirit, the church—the new humanity—is doing what humanity failed to do.  We are fulfilling God’s blessing-command given all the way back at the beginning to be fruitful and to multiply.  But Luke also echoes Isaiah 40 and the prophet’s promise that the “word of our God shall stand forever. Barnabas and Saul finish their work in Jerusalem and return to Antioch.  The mother church in Jerusalem plans her first actual mission to the nations, to Jews and gentiles and they do so strategically—at one of the great crossroads of the ancient world.  Up to his point they’ve been trying to catch up to God as he takes his gospel to the world.  And now, finally, they understand what he’s doing.  Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, the ends of the earth.  This time they won’t be dragged along.  Now they’re choosing to be part of the action—to be the people they now understand that God has made them and the mission he’s given them.  And imagine how huge that mission must have seemed.  I get overwhelmed just thinking of reaching our neighbourhood with the gospel.  They were preparing to take the gospel to a dark and hostile world, to challenge gods and kings, even to die in the process.  But they knew God’s promise and they understood that Jesus is truly Lord.  There’s no promise that James will always be rescued.  What the lordship of Jesus does tell us is that Herod will never have the last word.  And Brothers and Sisters, that’s the story we need to inhabit. Let’s pray: Almighty God and Father, the nations rage, the peoples plot in vain, and the kings of the earth plot against your Messiah.  Give us the grace in the midst of them to trust in you and to be faithful stewards of your good news no matter the threats against us.  Remind us always that you sit on your throne and laugh, because you have, already, set your King on your holy mountain.  In his name we pray.  Amen.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.6 / 5

5 ratings

Contact Living Word

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.