Acts 1:1-5
When my daughters were young, in 1989, we bought a Eurail pass and visited friends throughout Europe. As we traveled from city to city on the train, I read to them a book, as I did on every vacation we took. On this trip I read The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I had started reading William Goldman in college and loved this book when I first read it and so it was a treat to read it to my daughters.
Many of you who have not read the book have seen the movie. A boy is home, sick in bed and his grandfather comes in to read him a book. The boy is not excited about this and asks, “Has it got any sports in it?”
“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”
And then the story unfolds and it is a wonderful story. The book of Acts may not have all of the elements of The Princess Bride in it, but it has some of them and it has many more that are not listed. Has it got any sports in it?
Adventure. Travels. Liars. Death. Prison. Torture. Prison escapes. Storms. Shipwrecks. Beatings. Snake bites. Earthquakes. Visions. Greed. Ambition. Weak rulers. Healings. Exorcisms. The dead raised to life. Sorcerers. Truths. Passion. Miracles.
Acts is an exciting book.
Over the next couple months and probably into the summer, I will be working my way through Acts. It is a long book so I plan to preach from Acts like I am preaching from Romans. Romans will be our focus each January up to Lent and then Acts will be our focus after Easter, until we are finished with these two books. It may take us five or more years to complete these sermons but I prefer doing it this way rather than taking one book and preaching from that book each Sunday for a year or more. I believe we need variety in our spiritual diet and preaching from multiple books of the Bible is preferable to focusing on just one book.
Why am I drawn to want to preach from Acts? The adult Sunday School has been looking at Acts for the past several months, but even before that I have wanted to dive into this book. Last summer I finished a series of sermons on the Gospel according to Mark and I think then I wanted to continue on into Acts. I ordered two commentaries to complement the three I already had and began to read through them. I did this again more intensively the past couple weeks and today we are at the introduction to this book of the Bible.
Why have I been drawn to this book? I am hungry for a deeper experience of God in my life and it is in Acts that we see most vividly the picture of how our Christian experience could be.
When we read the Gospels, we see Jesus with his disciples and we see how Jesus ministered to those around him. We see the disciples being sent out by Jesus to minister to others in his name but we do not see much of the disciples apart from Jesus.
If you want to see a model of how we do ministry, Acts is a better place to look than the Gospels. In the Gospels Jesus is physically present, but in Acts, Jesus works through the Holy Spirit. Our own experience more closely mirrors Acts than it does the Gospels. Jesus is not physically present with us, we experience him through the Holy Spirit, as did the new believers we read about in Acts.
In fact, if all we had in the Bible were the Gospels, we probably would not be here this morning. In the Gospels, the good news of Jesus was restricted to the Jews, God’s chosen people, the descendants of Abraham. If all we had in our Bible were the Gospels, Christianity would be a Jewish sect and not have much impact beyond the Jewish community.
It is in the book of Acts that we were brought into the church. And it is in the book of Acts that we observe how it is that God brought men and women into a closer fellowship with himself. The intimacy with God that I long for is modeled for us in the book of Acts. As we work our way through this series of sermons, I pray that we will be encouraged to draw near to God and that the power of God that was at work in the early church will work in us as well.
Why am I drawn to preach from Acts? I sense in the events of the world around us that the church must be renewed or the world will become an increasingly dangerous and unpleasant place to live. I watched a news report of US students on their spring break who went to Cancun in Mexico to party their way through the break. It was a very discouraging, even depressing report. Thousands of these young men and women go to get drunk and have a sexual orgy. King Herod had nothing over these people except that he had absolute power. Reports of life on college campuses are likewise discouraging. It is not just spring break behavior, there is a consistent lifestyle being lived out that works against stable marriages, against stable families, against a stable society. These young people party with no understanding of how their behavior will affect their future lives. The world needs the renewal that we read about in the book of Acts.
When Eric and Alex Mirandette walked into the bazaar in Egypt with their friends to buy jewelry as presents for friends and family, the world was revealed to be a very dangerous place. When a suicide bomber pulled the trigger, Alex was killed and Eric was critically injured. In so many places in the world, people are indiscriminately killed in the name of one cause or another.
Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of the widely watched Al Arabiya satellite television station observed after the Beslan incident in Russia that,
“It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.”
The world is an increasingly unpleasant and dangerous place to live and we desperately need the renewal that we read about in the book of Acts.
It is not that there has been inaction in the church in the 2000 years since the events of the book of Acts. God has renewed his church over and over again, bringing fresh life into the church, stripping away the cultural attachments to the Gospel, replacing the institutional understanding of the church with a fresh, living, personal experience of God.
We are in need of that refreshment once again. We long for God to work powerfully in our midst. We are eager to see society transformed into a place where people are loved and cared for and lust, anger and greed no longer use people for personal self-interest.
May God bless us as we work through this book of the Bible and may he pour out his Spirit on this needy world.
The book of Acts is part of a two-part book written by Luke, a Greek physician. This was common in the ancient world, to organize a longer piece of writing into several shorter books. Luke’s contemporary, Josephus, wrote an apology for the Jews divided into two books, the second of which begins like this:
In the first volume of this work, my most esteemed Epaphroditus, I demonstrated the antiquity of our race … I also challenged the statements of Manetho, Chaeremon, and some others. I shall now proceed to refute the rest of the authors who have attacked us.
In Luke’s second book of his two-part work, he follows a similar form
In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.
Although Luke wrote Luke/Acts as one document, divided into two books, it was almost immediately broken down into two separate documents. By the end of the first century or beginning of the second, very shortly after John’s gospel was written, the four Gospels in our Bible were circulated as the fourfold Gospel. Acts was broken off from Luke.
About the same time, the letters of Paul were gathered into a collection titled The Apostle.
As the canon of Scripture was formed, Acts was inserted after the Gospels and before Paul’s letters to form the bridge that was needed. Acts is what takes us from the Gospels to the ministry of Paul and the other apostles.
To understand the book of Acts, it helps to go back to the introduction of this book, which because it is a two-part work, is found in Luke chapter 1.
Luke 1:1-4
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Of the four Gospels, Luke is the one most concerned with chronology and historicity. There are five stages in Luke’s research.
1. Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,
This is the starting place and reveals Luke’s assumption as he began to write this history of Jesus. He wrote of things that have been fulfilled among us. This indicates that the events about which Luke wrote were not random or unexpected but took place in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Luke wrote of what happened in accord with God’s pre-ordained plan.
2. Handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word
Luke does not include himself among this group. These things were handed down to us. He identifies himself with Theophilus as those who received what was handed down. The ones who handed down what Luke and others received were the apostles who were witnesses of the historic Jesus.
So the apostle John began his letter this way:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
John and the other apostles who had been with Jesus handed down (which is the meaning of tradition) to Luke and others what they had seen and heard.
3. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning,
Luke set out to research everything from the beginning. When Paul was kept prisoner in Caesarea by Felix the governor, Luke had two years in which he was able to travel through Palestine, interviewing people, observing the places Jesus had been, walking the roads Jesus had walked. He interviewed Mary, the now old mother of Jesus, and heard her tell the story of the birth of Jesus. He interviewed many who had been with Jesus.
Luke traveled with Paul on some of his journeys. There are three places in Acts where Luke breaks off from the third person “they” and uses the second person “we”. Luke does this because at those times, he was with Paul so he had ample time to talk with Paul and his companions about their experiences.
4. Many have undertaken to draw up an account of these things
Luke had access to some of the writings already in circulation, among them the gospel Mark had written after the death of Peter in Rome.
5. So that you may have the certainty of the things you have been taught
And finally Luke wrote his two-part book so that those, like himself, who had heard about Jesus and had come to faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Savior of the world, could know more about their faith and grow in conviction of what they believed.
John Stott concludes his observations about the research of Luke with this:
These pre-ordained events that were accomplished, witnessed, transmitted, investigated and written down were and still are to be the ground of Christian faith and assurance.
I pray that as we make our way through the book of Acts, our faith will be become more sure. If you have doubts about Christian faith, then do not be alarmed. You are not the first person in history to have doubts. In fact, I would tell you to be encouraged because you are using the brain God gave you to think and explore. I encourage you to explore with Luke as he reports to us the results of his investigation into the early church that was developing before his eyes.
Why do we call this book the book of Acts? Since the second century, the traditional title has been The Acts of the Apostles. Because of the prominence of the Holy Spirit, others have suggested calling it the Acts of the Holy Spirit.
John Stott and others suggest we look at the introduction to this second part of his work to see what Luke intended to be the theme of this book.
In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.
The phrase, all that Jesus began to do and to teach, infers that the work Jesus began was not yet finished. Jesus began and the inference is that Jesus is continuing his work. The Gospel of Luke is not about Jesus and then the book of Acts about the Holy Spirit. Luke and Acts are one work describing the ministry of Jesus. Luke describes the ministry of Jesus when he was physically present with his disciples and Acts describes the ministry of Jesus through the Holy Spirit who he promised would come after him.
Because Luke intended Acts to be a description of the ministry of Jesus through the Holy Spirit in no way diminishes the role or stature of the Holy Spirit.
Without the Holy Spirit, none of us would have come into a relationship with Christ. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, none of us will see growth in our relationship with Christ. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, none of us would be able to comprehend the truth of what we read in Scripture. We live a life of dependance on the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives but it is the work of Christ that is being performed by the Holy Spirit. We look forward to the day when Christ will be seated on the throne and every knee will bow and every tongue confess his lordship over all. We preach the supremacy of Christ but in our Christian lives, we depend on the work of the Holy Spirit.
Luke begins his second book with the phrase, all that Jesus began to do and to teach, which sets Christianity apart from all other world religions. Other world religions regard the one who founded their religion as having completed his ministry during his lifetime. Here Luke says Jesus only began his ministry and as we read through the book of Acts, we will see how the ministry of Jesus continued.
There are a lot of miraculous events in the book of Acts. There are some who say that these miraculous events ceased to be a part of the history of the church after the apostles. They say these events were exceptional. Others say that these events have continued to be the experience of the church throughout history and that they are normative. How do I view these events?
As a good Presbyterian, I say that there is truth on both sides, although I almost never side with dispensational theology.
Joel prophesied 600 years before Jesus
‘And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
The day of Pentecost was the day prophesied so long ago and with that event the world entered into the Kingdom of God that we experience now in part but one day we will experience in full. This was a one time event and I doubt that we will see an event like Pentecost again.
I also believe that the events we read about in Acts are not everyday experiences. It seems to me as I read church history and observe the church around the world, that the Holy Spirit is poured out to bring new life into the church and that it is in times of revival that the signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit are most clearly seen.
Nevertheless, I believe that the experiences of Acts are for us today. Just because the signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit are most clearly seen in times of revival when God is pouring new life into his church, does not mean we do not experience those works of the Holy Spirit in other times.
In Acts people were healed and today people are healed. In Acts demons were exorcized and today demons are exorcized. Christ drew people to himself in Acts and he is today drawing people to himself. The ministry of the apostles in Acts is our model and so we pray to be open to the work of Jesus in the lives of people around us. We will pray for the blind to see, the lame to walk, the dead to be raised to life so that Jesus can continue to do his work through us. And when Jesus determines that it is time to bring new life into the church, we will see him work in great power by the Holy Spirit through us.
This is my understanding as I approach preaching through the book of Acts. But I know that God will be molding me and shaping me through these sermons and I may have a different understanding when I have come to the end of these sermon on Acts. Pray for me and with me that God will transform us through these sermons.
Theophilus, meaning lover of God, was a Roman official who had converted to Christianity. He did not have a New Testament to read to help him know more about his new faith and so Luke wrote this book to encourage him. We who love God will be blessed if we too read through this book and are encouraged to know more intimately the God who reveals himself in these writings of Luke.
Luke ended his account of the history of the early church before Paul was executed in Rome so his book is an unfinished account. The history he began to record continued because the work of Christ continued and has continued through the ages even up to today. Perhaps in heaven Luke continues to write the account he began and you and I are in his book. You and I would be in this book, if it is being written, because Christ continues to work through us.
It is not your ministry carried out by your strength and power with your creativity and energy. As Stott has suggested, the proper title for this book of the Bible should be, The Continuing Words and Deeds of Jesus by his Spirit through his Apostles. Jesus continues to minister to the world by the Holy Spirit and through you and me.
May God bless us as we are used by Jesus to do his work.
