Teaching on the book of Acts

Acts 1:1–5 (KJV 1900)

1 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,

2 Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:

3 To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:

4 And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.

5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

Throughout 2023, we are going to utilize our Wednesday nights, for much of the time, to walk through the book of Acts.

We are going to do this in a thought by thought approach. That being that we are going to work through the topical subtitles. These subtitles can be found in various translations of the Bible, with the two most popular being The New American Standard Bible and the English Standard Version.

For our study, we are going to use The subtitles that are used in the English Standard Version. It is important to not that these subtitles are extra-biblical…they are not claiming to be God-inspired. Rather to gather scripture together into a concise and related thoughts.

If your response to that is that you cannot bring yourself to study the scripture according to some exta-biblical division, you should also know that Chapters and verses are also not in the original manuscripts but were added to help us with reading, memorizing and better navigation of the scripture.

Tonight we are going to cover the first topical subtitle, which the English Standard Version selected as the first 5 verses of Acts chapter 1 and 5 and is titled “The promise of the Holy Spirit” or the “promise of the Holy Ghost”.

I would encourage you to get a notebook to take notes throughout this year as we cover the book of Acts.

However, before the move into this first topical Subtitle, I want to do an overview of the book of Acts.

Why does this book exist? If we believe that every Word is inspired, or God-breathed, then we have to believe that every book fulfils a God-ordained purpose.

Who was the author of this book?

Who was the intended audience of the book?

Who was the author?

The first line of the first verse gives us pretty clear understanding as to who the author is, and this understanding is mostly unanimous...

The former treatise (or letter) have I made, O Theophilus...

There is only one other letter, or book of the bible that is addressed to Theophilus, and that is the Gospel of Luke.

Lets read the introduction of the Gospel of Luke

Luke 1:1–4 KJV 1900

1 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, 2 Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; 3 It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, 4 That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.

And in this first letter to Theophilus makes it clear that his purpose in writing, was to ensure that the true account of the life and works of Jesus on this earth would be put into record.

The author of the book of Acts is the same author, writing to the same audience…Theophilus..

we will come back to this address of “Theophilus” in a few minutes.

First, lets look at what we know about this author, Luke.

Luke appears three times in the New Testament:

• (Philemon 24)—Paul lists Luke among his coworkers along with Mark, Aristarchus, and Demas.

• (Col 4:14)—Paul sends a greeting to the Colossians from Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas. As the author states that Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus who is called Justus are his only Jewish coworkers, Luke, Epaphras, and Demas are likely Gentiles (Carson, Moo, Morris, Introduction, 115).

• (2 Tim 4:11)—The author notes that Luke is the only coworker currently with him.

The New Testament documents provide little information concerning Luke. The canonical writings support four points about him:

1. Paul considered him a coworker.

2. He was a physician.

3. He was a Gentile.

4. He was occasionally one of Paul’s traveling companions.

So the Acts was his second book. The two form an obvious pair. In fact, many Theologians refer to his writings as Luke-Acts, our one continuous work.

Both are dedicated to Theophilus and both are written in the same literary Greek style. Further, as Henry J. Cadbury pointed out sixty years ago, Luke regarded the Acts as ‘neither an appendix nor an afterthought’, but as farming with his gospel ‘a single continuous work’. Cadbury went on to suggest that, ‘in order to emphasize the historic unity of the two volumes … the expression “Luke-Acts” is perhaps justifiable’.

Often, we read the book of Luke as the story of Jesus and then the book of Acts as the story of the church.

However, this is not the presentation of Luke.

He does not regard volume one as the story of Jesus Christ from his birth through his sufferings and death to his triumphant resurrection and ascension, and volume two as the story of the church of Jesus Christ from its birth in Jerusalem through its sufferings by persecution to its triumphant conquest of Rome some thirty years later.

For the contrasting parallel he draws between his two volumes was not between Christ and his church, but between two stages of the ministry of the same Christ. In his former book he has written about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until

Again, reaching back to some of the elements that are extra-biblical…the book of Acts is a title that is not God-inspired, but a title that men though would be fitting to summarize the totality of this second letter written to Theophilus.

While it is accurate that the book is indeed record of action...

What, then, is the correct title for Luke’s second volume? Its popular name, especially in the United States, is ‘the Book of Acts’.

This is justified and accurate in its origin…One of the earliest manuscripts of the Bible, having been recorded in the 4th century, has the title of this letter simply the Title Acts.

But this neither tells us whose acts Luke is portraying, nor helps to distinguish his book from the later apocryphal works like the second-century Acts of John, Acts of Paul and Acts of Peter, and the third-century Acts of Andrew and Acts of Thomas. Writings that have been discredited as being inspired of God.

The traditional title since the second century has been ‘The Acts of (the) Apostles’, with or without the definite article. And certainly it is apostles who occupy the centre of Luke’s stage. Yet , Theologian John Stott argues that this title is too man-centred; it omits the divine power by which the apostles spoke and acted.

Many have proposed the correct title should be “the Acts of the Holy Spirit”

for example, Johann Albrecht Bengel in the eighteenth century. He wrote that Luke’s second volume ‘describes not so much the Acts of the Apostles as the Acts of the Holy Spirit, even as the former treatise contains the Acts of Jesus Christ’.

These are not the actions of men on display…rather these are the continued works of Jesus, through his spirit working among men after his ascension.

Arthur T. Pierson closes his commentary on the book of Acts by emphatically declaring:

“Church of Christ! The records of these acts of the Holy Ghost have never reached completeness. This is the one book which has no proper close, because it waits for new chapters to be added so fast and so far as the people of God shall reinstate the blessed Spirit in his holy seat of control.

Luke’s first two verses are, therefore, extremely significant. It is no exaggeration to say that they set Christianity apart from all other religions. These [other religions] regard their founder as having completed his ministry during his lifetime; Luke says Jesus only began his.

True, he finished the work of atonement, yet that end was also a beginning. For after his resurrection, ascension and gift of the Spirit he continued his work, first and foremost through the unique foundation ministry of his chosen apostles and subsequently through the post-apostolic church of every period and place.

This, then, is the kind of Jesus Christ we believe in: he is both the historical Jesus who lived and the contemporary Jesus who lives. The Jesus of history began his ministry on earth; the Christ of glory has been active through his Spirit ever since, according to his promise to be with his people ‘always, to the very end of the age’.

Luke wrote the book of Acts for three reasons:

As a Christian Historian

As a diplomat, representing Christianity to the unchurched

As a Theologian

1. As a Christian Historian

A. N. Sherwin-White, A Oxford University and described himself as ‘a professional Graeco-Roman historian’, strongly affirmed the accuracy of Luke’s background knowledge. He wrote about the Acts:

“The historical framework is exact. In terms of time and place the details are precise and correct. One walks the streets and marketplaces, the theatres and assemblies of first-century Ephesus or Thessalonica, Corinth or Philippi, with the author of Acts.”

i. Imagine what it would be like if the Book of Acts wasn’t in the Bible. You pick up your Bible and see the ministry of Jesus ending in the Gospel of John; next you read about a man named Paul writing to the followers of Jesus in Rome.

Who was Paul? How did the gospel get from Jerusalem to Rome? The Book of Acts answers these questions.

ii. That expansion from Jerusalem to Rome is a remarkable story. “Humanly speaking, [Christianity] had nothing going for it. It had no money, no proven leaders, no technological tools for propagating the gospel. And it faced enormous obstacles. It was utterly new. It taught truths that were incredible to the unregenerate world. It was the subject to the most intense hatreds and persecutions.” (Boice)

Without the book of Acts, we would have no understanding that it is the Holy Ghost that transforms lives. it is the Holy Ghost that transforms churches.

2. As a diplomat, representing Christianity to the unchurched

Luke develops a political apologetic, because he is deeply concerned about the attitude of the Roman authorities towards Christianity. He therefore goes out of his way to defend Christianity against criticism. The authorities, he argues, have nothing to fear from Christians, for they are neither seditious nor subversive, but on the contrary legally innocent and morally harmless. More positively, they exercise a wholesome influence on society.

Luke want those outside of the church to know that the church is not a political or governmental threat.

3. As a Theologian

In particular, then Luke was a theologian of salvation.

Salvation, wrote Howard Marshall, ‘is the central motif in Lucan theology’, both in the Gospel (in which we see it accomplished) and in the Acts (in which we see it applied). Michael Green had drawn attention to this in his The Meaning of Salvation. ‘It is hard to overestimate the importance of salvation in the writings of Luke …’, he wrote. ‘It is astonishing … that in view of the frequency with which Luke uses salvation terminology, more attention has not been paid to it.’

Luke’s theology of salvation is already fortold in the ‘Song of Simeon’ which he records in his Gospel. Three fundamental truths stand out.

First, salvation has been prepared by God. In speaking to God, Simeon referred to ‘your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people’ (Lk. 2:30–31). Far from being an afterthought, it had been planned and promised for centuries. The same emphasis recurs throughout the Acts. In the sermons of Peter and Paul, not to mention Stephen’s defence, Jesus’ death, resurrection, reign and Spirit-gift are all seen as the culmination of centuries of prophetic promise.

Secondly, salvation is bestowed by Christ. When Simeon spoke to God of ‘your salvation’, which he had seen with his own eyes, he was referring to the baby Jesus whom he held in his arms and who had been ‘born a Saviour’ (Lk. 2:11). Jesus himself later made the unequivocal statement that he had come ‘to seek and to save what was lost’ (Lk. 19:10), and he illustrated it by his three famous parables of human lostness (Lk. 15:1–32). Then after his death and resurrection his apostles declared the plan of Salvation (Acts 2:38–39)

Thirdly, salvation is offered to all peoples. As Simeon put it, it has been prepared ‘in the presence of all the peoples’ (literally), to be both a light to the nations and the glory of Israel (Lk. 2:31–32).

Without doubt it is this truth on which Luke lays his major emphasis. In Luke 3:6, in reference to John the Baptist, he continues his quotation from Isaiah 40 beyond where Matthew and Mark stop, in order to include the statement ‘all flesh will see God’s salvation’. In Acts 2:17 he records Peter’s quotation of God’s promise through Joel: ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.’

So then…as we read and study the book of Acts, it is through this paradigm and with this understanding.

It is a continuation of the book of Luke.

It is not the record, merely, of the Actions of Apostles, but is the record of the Holy Ghost, at work through the church to bring the saving Gospel to all mankind.

It is historically accurate and helps us to understand how that, a church with humble and meager beginnings, through the power of the Holy Ghost, came to reach the world

It is an apologetic to show the world that the Christian church is not intended to overthrow government, but to bring salvation.

It is a theological book to show the plan of Salvation to humanity.

I am just very briefly going to touch on the First topic of Acts. This transition in his writing to Theophilus, of the work of Jesus during his time on this earth, to his time working through the Holy Ghost hinges upon his first powerful commandment.

Vs. 4 commanded them, that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father.

Vs. 5…This was the promise of the Father…Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost!

We cannot overemphasize the importance of this command.

We cannot overemphasize the importance of what this command led to…the experience. It was the single most important moment that bridged the Gospel of Salvation to experience of Salvation.

I would be very careful undermining the essentiality of the Holy Ghost.