Jesus’ last words before He left were a clear assignment: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
That single verse sketches the whole book of Acts. First the Spirit comes on Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). Then the message takes root in Jerusalem—thousands believe (Acts 2:41, 47; 4:4; 5:14; 6:7). Persecution drives believers out, and the gospel moves into Judea and Samaria (Acts 8:1–4). From there it keeps going, carried by ordinary people and by Paul, across the Roman world.
The order matters. Jerusalem first. Then Judea—the surrounding Jewish territory. Then Samaria. Samaria was the hard one.
After Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom, they deported many Jews and brought in foreigners to settle the land. Those groups intermarried with the Jews who remained, and a new people emerged—the Samaritans. They developed their own version of the faith, mixing Jewish practices with pagan ones (2 Kings 17:22–41). They built a temple on Mount Gerizim and claimed it as the proper place to worship (John 4:20–23). Jews saw them as half-breeds who had corrupted both the bloodline and the religion. The hostility ran deep (Ezra 4:1–3; Luke 9:51–55; John 4:9). Jews would walk the long way around rather than set foot in Samaritan territory.
Early in His ministry Jesus told the disciples not to go to Gentile or Samaritan towns (Matthew 10:5–6). His focus at that time was the lost sheep of Israel. But after the cross and resurrection, everything changed. The command in Acts 1:8 deliberately includes Samaria. It was no longer optional.
Jesus had already shown the way. He sat by a well in Sychar and offered living water to a woman with a complicated past (John 4:4–42). He stayed two days. Many Samaritans believed. He told her that true worshipers would soon worship the Father in spirit and truth, because the Father is seeking such people (John 4:23). The lost sheep would come home (Luke 15:4). Acts 1:8 is the follow-through on that promise.
The disciples still didn’t fully grasp it. Right before Jesus spoke these words, they asked if He was about to restore the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6). They were thinking national restoration, David’s throne, political freedom. That will come in the millennial kingdom (Revelation 20:1–6). But first they had a different job. They would be His witnesses.
The Greek word for “witness” is martys. It means someone who can testify to what they have seen—legal, historical, personal. Peter, James, and John saw the Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16–18). Hundreds saw the risen Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:6). That more than meets the requirement of two or three witnesses under the Law (Deuteronomy 17:6). But martys also became the root of our word “martyr.” Most of the apostles eventually died for what they had seen and believed. Their testimony cost them everything.
Jesus’ work of salvation was finished on the cross (John 19:30). He had to leave so the Spirit could come and empower the church (Luke 24:49; John 16:7–15). The Spirit’s work is to take the finished message of Jesus and spread it. As people believe, they form local churches that belong to the one body of Christ.
The story in Acts moves outward just as Jesus said. Philip meets an Ethiopian official on a desert road (Acts 8:26–40). Peter watches a Gentile household receive the Spirit (Acts 10:34–48). Believers from Cyprus and Cyrene start preaching to Greeks in Antioch (Acts 11:19–21). When the Jerusalem church finally accepts that God is saving Gentiles too (Acts 11:1–18, 22–26), the doors swing wide. Paul and Barnabas take the gospel through Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece (Acts 13–28). To the first disciples, “the end of the earth” meant the farthest edges of the empire. Paul hoped to reach Spain (Romans 15:24). Tradition says other apostles went farther east. The message has since gone to places they never imagined—including a microfiche Bible carried to the moon.
The pattern still holds. Start where you are. Move outward. Don’t skip the hard places.
For most of us the hard place isn’t a region on a map. It’s a person. Someone whose background, politics, personality, or past makes us want to take the long way around. We have our reasons. They may even be valid. The Jews had reasons to distrust Samaritans. Jesus still sent His people there.
The question is the same one the original devotion asked: Does Jesus matter more to us than the grievances we carry? The only way to answer is to love the person we would rather avoid. Not by pretending the history doesn’t exist. Not by ignoring real wounds. By refusing to let those things stop the gospel from moving through us to them.
That’s what Acts 1:8 still requires. Power from the Spirit. Witness that starts close to home and refuses to skip the places—and the people—we find most difficult.
By: Nathan Reynolds