Welcome to Studies with Stearman.

Join us as we look deeper into the Bible.

Strengthen your faith with us, even as we see the day approaching.

And now, here's Gary.

The reason we're going through Acts this time is to document the nature, behavior,

and characteristics of the Holy Spirit.

Because in a very special way, Acts is the history of the Holy Spirit.

Last week, we were looking at the situation in Corinth. When Paul was baptizing believers,

he got into some trouble locally, which he did everywhere he went. If you remember the secular

magistrate Gallio, when charges were brought against Paul, essentially kicked him out of court and said,

you guys go do your thing because the Roman court has nothing to do with religion.

And this is a fascinating note, this is in Acts 1817, because it shows that historically,

even though the Roman Empire later came down very, very hard on Christianity,

at this point in time, Roman law actually aided the spread of Christianity because

every time Hellenistic Jews and or Hellenistic philosophers raised up against Christianity,

the Roman courts would say, wait a minute,

they're as free as you are to talk about what they believe. It's not a legal matter for the

Roman Empire. The Roman Empire essentially washed their hands of the whole thing. They didn't want

to have much to do with it. Acts 18,18-22, which is where we concluded last week,

talks about Paul's return to Antioch. He came down sailing from Ephesus, by the way, in

verse 21, back to Caesarea. He went up to Jerusalem. He kept a vow that he had made, and we don't know what the

vow is, but he kept that vow at a particular feast, and we don't know what the feast is either.

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