Acts 11

This class continues with the expansion of the early church. In the wake of Cornelius’ conversion, early Christians (who are mostly converted Jews or converted Jewish proselytes) are learning that the gospel is meant for

Gentiles as well. This episode focuses on why that was news, how the book of Acts continues to telegraph the reclamation of the nations in the Deuteronomy 32 worldview,

Acts 11:1–18 ESV

Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” But Peter began and explained it to them in order: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me. Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’ As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

So park on this whole incident just a little bit, in verse 1, again, we see the reference to Gentiles. Gentiles also received the word of God, pointing back to Cornelius and his household; we have a reference to the circumcision party who were critical of Peter. If you remember last time in our last episode, there were certain categories of the way you Jews viewed Gentiles, and that's going to spill over into the church. Again, we’re seeing it right here in chapter 11 when we get into Paul's travels, and he runs into the people at the synagogues. You’re going to see it even Jewish people who believe, and I think it's clear that the circumcision party here in verse 1 are Jewish believers. They are people who've accepted the Messiah, Jews who have accepted the message of Jesus as Messiah and that's because of verse 18. When they hear Peter's explanation, they don't continue their criticism. They said, well, then, to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life. So I think it's pretty fair to say these are Jewish believers. Later on, I think, not these particular ones necessarily but just in general, this segment within the church, Jews who have come to embrace the gospel message, the identity of Jesus Messiah as the Christ, some of them, whether based on their own misunderstanding of the gospel in part or maybe more self-serving reasons or maybe because they're fearful of non-believers in the Jewish community, we don’t necessarily know. It's probably going to be varied as far as explanation but later, we’re going to see this group, or at least this kind of group, be referred to as Judaizers.

Judaizers

These are the Judaizers. So you’re going to have a significant element within the church because frankly up until this point, up until Cornelius chapter go, the identity of the early church is Jewish believers. Now we've run into proselytes before, people who were Gentiles who converted to Judaism and then converted to be believers, followers of Jesus. So we’ve seen that party as well. We've seen references to the Hellenists where the Hellenistic Jews, Jews again but who were more accepting of Gentile culture, so there's a number of parties, a number of sects within the early church. But it’s going to be dominated, at least initially, by Jewish converts or proselytes, who had converted to Judaism and then later, follow the Lord. So you get a little bit of the dynamic coming out here. But I think it's fair to say when you see verse 18, they realize, okay, this is linked back to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Peter references this, what happened at Pentecost, and if it's the same thing, then we have to abide by that, then this is the will of God. Then to Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life. So they're fine with it, but you run into different settings, different situations, later on either with Peter or especially with Paul, where it's not going to work so smoothly. Another question to ask is, when you read verse 18, they shut up. They quit criticizing Peter, and they say, okay, I guess Gentiles can be part of the people of God. Why was that such a surprise you might wonder? I think the answer is partly a little obvious but may be partly not so obvious. It's a surprise because for Jews, think back to the whole Deuteronomy 32 worldview, this Divine Council worldview that we should be familiar with from the Old Testament. For Jews, who understood their Bible, the nations were something that needed judgment. Now granted, there was this hint in the covenant with Abraham that they would be brought back into the fold, but a lot of Jews presumed that they would sort of be brought back kicking and screaming. In other words, in the context of a judgment because they had worshiped other gods. They had followed other gods and so they needed to be dealt with harshly, and then brought back. It’s sort of the same dynamic as the American Civil War. What do we do with the Confederacy? What we do with people who were loyal to the south to unite the nation? Well, there was a lot of difference of opinion. Basically, they need to get kicked in the butt first and then brought back in the fold, or they need to be completely forgiven and then brought back to the fold. There was just a spectrum of approaches. For a lot of Jews in their context, they are thinking, yeah, God ultimately is going to use us to bring you back into relationship with him, but you’re going to get what you deserve. And the thinking was that this judgment was supposed to happen at the hand of God and his military Messiah. Remember, the Jewish conception of Messiah was a person in the line of King David, someone ruling, someone with political and military authority, sort of aligning the vision of Messiah with the divine warrior of the Old Testament because you do get a number of passages that talk about of the day of the Lord, when the nations bow down to Yahweh, when they worship the Lord as the true God. Those are in the context of the day Lord judgments. And so these ideas were sort of conglomerated in the Jewish mind. And so when a Jew thinks about the nations, it's almost like it shouldn’t be this easy. You just sort of repent and believe and your good? What happened to spanking you a little bit for worshiping other gods? What happened to that? It should be harder. There should be more of a cost. And still thinking about the Messiah in terms of this military deliverer, when that's not what you get with Jesus, for those of you who have been listening, you'll remember when we started in Acts 1 and 2, we talked about this, about how even after the resurrection that Jesus had to open the minds of the apostles to understand that, hey, the Messiah was actually supposed to suffer and die and be raised from the dead, all these ideas that we, as Christians, think are so elementary and so obvious. They’re not obvious in the Old Testament, if you remember our discussions way back when, because all of the elements of the Messiah, especially when it comes to suffering and dying and the resurrection and all that sort of thing, none of those elements are in one place. You don’t have a verse that links the Messiah to a death and a resurrection.

Messiah Mosiac

Well, what about Isaiah 53? Well guess what? The word Messiah is not in that passage. So the portrait, the profile is the word I like to use, the profile of the Messiah is a mosaic. It's scattered all over the place, and you can see it, in hindsight. But again, we have that advantage. You’re looking at the apostles here at the beginning of the book of Acts, and this isn’t far removed from the crucifixion, the resurrection. What in the world is going on? The Lord appeared to us in the upper room or the road to Emmaus. They still don't get it, and the text literally says he had to open their minds so they could discern what really was going on. So if you didn't have that event, lots of Jews who come to embrace Jesus at the Pentecost, they go back in the nations or the gospel spreading in Judea into the rest of Canaan, they didn’t have that event, that clarification moment. They didn’t have the Lord directly opening their minds to understand this. This is still a tough thing because they're just thinking about the Messiah in one way. They're thinking about the Gentiles in one way. And so they have to be taught in here in Acts 11 and back into Acts 10. These supernatural events confirm for people that there's a connection between what's happening here with the Gentiles and what happened at Pentecost, and that’s connected to things that Jesus taught. And it just takes a little bit of time for the picture to unfold. And here in verse 18, you have the circumcision parties say, okay, I guess were good. To the Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life. They don’t need a butt kicking first. This doesn't have to wait until the day of the Lord when there’s upheaval and punishment and violence and all this other stuff when wickedness is judged in this sort of this final, it has this feel of finality. We don’t have to wait until then for the nations to be drawn back. It’s happening now. Again, these were new thoughts to them, and they have to be pieced together. So if we keep going in Acts 11 in verse 19, we read

Acts 11:19 ESV

Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.

So here again you have believers who have to get out of town because Stephen had been executed or stoned. So there were lots of people who had accepted the Messiahship of Jesus and the gospel and they’re getting out of town. And here it mentions Phoenicia Cyprus and Antioch, and what were they doing? They were speaking the word to no one except Jews. That’s not because they’re racist or biased. This was normal because, hey, it's the Jewish Messiah. Who else would we talk to? Again, they haven't had these revelatory events in their life. They're still thinking this is for us. It's our Messiah. We’re Jews. We need to accept this now and that’s who we’re going to talk to , because those are the people who are going to understand. Verse 20

Acts 11:20–26 ESV

But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

Now let’s just stop there. We've got another reference to other places. And I've said before in Acts and just generally on the blog and in other contexts, when place names show up, it is often worth your while to go in and look at some of those things. What's the history there? Here we have Phoenicia Antioch and Cyprus. Now this is the first reference to Phoenicia in the New Testament, so this is not a territory specifically mentioned in Acts 2. So we’re picking up more of the nations that were not specifically listed in Acts 2, saying God as is reclaiming this territory as well. Antioch, we would have run into proselytes from Antioch before in Acts chapter 6, specifically verse 5. That's the first reference there. But, again, proselytes being people who had converted to Judaism and then being confronted with the gospel, have to believe that, or reject it. And then Cyprus was also mentioned earlier in Acts 4, again, in connection with Barnabas, who was a Levite. So in those initial mentions of Antioch and Cyprus, these are places that weren’t part of the picture in Acts 2, so we get more confirmation that what is happening here can indeed be connected back to the events of Pentecost, Peter says that here in chapter 11. He said it in chapter 10. And the reader, knowing that, can look at these place names and think, okay, I see what's going on now. This is part of the reclamation of the nations. And the writer wants us to know that these places weren't skipped, that it's not haphazard. There’s a thoroughness to it and so these place names are being gobbled up in a narrative or doled out in the narrative to get us to think about what's happening here in all its fullness, rather than restricting it to just of the names in Acts chapter 2. I'll say one more thing about Phoenicia, and I have an article by a guy named Zecharia Kallai entitled the Patriarchal Boundaries, Canaan and the land of Israel: Patterns and Applications in Biblical Historiography.It's a scholarly article from the Israel Exploration Journal, and you'll have access to that as soon as I can post it. But the question is, were Tyre and Sidon, who are the two major Phoenician cities in the Old Testament. Were they within the boundaries of the Promised Land? This is somewhat of an important question I think and I’ll try to capture why. I think an obsession with prophecy is a waste of time, you might recall the importance of Tyre and Sidon. Specifically, if you look at, and they’re not all the same, the descriptions of the boundaries of the Promised Land are not always the same. So there's this questionable of what is the Promised Land? With respect to Tyre and Sidon, they become important because, if you use the boundary descriptions in Genesis 15, this is when God is making his covenant with Abram, Abraham, and he splits the animals, lays then side-by-side, and then you have the deep sleep fall upon Abraham, and we talked about that last week, too, and the theophany passes through to make the covenant, if you take those parameters and then align them to the historical events of the time of David and especially Solomon, the north and south borders of the “promised land” do fall under Solomon's kingdom, his control, except for one thing. I’m going to mention it here in a second. But if you look at that, there are some people who would conclude, again, this is part of the discussion prophecy, there are some people who would look at that and say look, the land promised to the Abrahamic covenant was fulfilled during the days of Solomon. The northern and southern boundaries here are met. What more could we ask for? This is what’s described. In Genesis, we see the fulfillment of this, in the descriptions of Solomon's kingdom. What's the big deal? This would explain, therefore, why Paul in Galatians 3, when he explicitly says that Gentiles have inherited, they are the heirs of the Abrahamic covenant, which means that the church is Israel in some sense, the church is the people of God, and so are Jews. There's no Israel church distinction anymore, at least in some sense, because Paul is very explicit there in Galatians 3, specifically verses 26 to 29

Galatians 3:26–29 ESV

for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

This would make sense then that Paul doesn't mention the land in Galatians 3 because the land was already fulfilled, and then Israel's later history, when they become apostate, the sent it away. They lose it because Leviticus 26 and lots of passages in Deuteronomy had specifically said that the condition for being in the land, the condition for possessing the land, is absolute loyalty to Yahweh. You can't go worship other gods or else you’re going to get sent into exile. That’s exactly what happened. So the side who would look at all this and say, the kingdom was fulfilled. It was sent away, and that's why Paul doesn’t mention it. And what Paul does mention in Galatians 3 is that the Gentiles are heirs of Abrahamic covenant. We’re all the children of Abraham now. The church is Israel. We don't need to look for any sort of physical earthly kingdom like a millennium out there anymore because the promises have been fulfilled. It's just too bad that Israel sinned the land element away but who cares anyway, because now, if all the Gentiles are part of the people of God and the church is in some sense Israel, hey, the globe, the entire planet is kingdom turf, not just this little strip the size of New Jersey, so what what's the big deal? Of course the other side, sort of in popular evangelicalism, you see this a lot, the left behind view, if you want to call it that, to be more charitable, a pre-millennial view traditionally would say well, the land element has not been fulfilled yet and it's still out there. We can’t expect this until we see the return of the Lord and we get a millennium. Well, here’s where Tyre and Sidon become important. Kallai’s article will give you the reasons why the answer is yes. Tyre and Sidon fell within the boundaries of the Promised Land and, here's the kicker, if you go back and look at the dimensions of Solomon's kingdom, they do not include Tyre and Sidon. So Tyre and Sidon, Phoenicia, was outstanding. It was not turf brought under the kingship of Solomon. In fact, Solomon had a good relationship with Hiram of Tyre. Hiram of Tyre was the guy who’d given materials and personnel to build the temple. So they were not under the dominion of Solomon's kingdom, and so somebody could look at that and say, well, look, the kingdom really wasn't fulfilled in the Old Testament. Therefore, it should still be out there. It doesn't really address to the question why Paul doesn’t bring it up. There would be an argument from silence. Paul doesn’t bring it up because it still hasn't been fulfill yet, even though Israel and the church are in some sense six of one half dozen of the other. The land promise is still out there and there we go. So your two views of eschatology are actually linked to this question, and here with this reference to Phoenicia, it's interesting and important that Luke in Acts specifically mentions Phoenicia as being part of the immediate landmass, being absorbed into and by the kingdom of God. So you have to deal with that, too, in your discussion of prophecy and your understanding of, is it a millennium or not, or something else. Phoenicia very specifically here is being reclaimed. This is why it’s mentioned. It’s linked back to what exploded back in Acts chapter 2. So that it's a good illustration, too, that there's a lot to think about when it comes to this whole prophecy discussion. The whole question of the Promised Land, what is it with the boundaries, is so complicated that's why I like to say anybody who tells you they've got this all figured out and they put it in a neat box and tie little bow on it and say give money to my TV ministry now and whatever, just ignore them, because it's amazingly complicated. It is not an easy thing to unravel.

Ambiguity

And there are ambiguities, there are things that could go either way when it comes to how we understand if the covenant was fulfilled or sent away or still in effect and how it's tied to the land, how that's tied to the second coming. It's just complicated, so don't be deceived by easy answers to things. So have a look at that article. It's a technical article but I think if you are into this question, the whole issue of the promise land and what that means in the New Testament context, you'll find that article interesting. Let's move on to, I’m going to skip the last few verses of chapter 11. It’s the first mention of Agabus.He gives a prophecy about a famine in the world that does happen, so I think that's in there because that confirms that Agabus is speaking for God and he’s going to show up later in Paul's life in a pretty important way, but we’ll wait until we get to that portion of Paul's life, to get back to him, to get back to Agabus. So let's go to, I should comment on, before I leave that, let’s go back here to verse 18. This comment about ‘then to the Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life’ and this whole thing about verse 26, ‘in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians.’ For those of you who are language geeks, there's actually a controversial verb form going on here in that little line, the disciples were first called Christians. The word called there is an aorist active form. But if you look at the translation, and the translation makes sense, the disciples were called, it's translated as a passive. And so Greek scholars love to bicker over this. They say, well, that's not a good translation. We can't really, what's the line trying to say? If it was a passive form, it would be obvious. They were called by someone else outside Christians, someone external to them. This is kind of for the language geeks, like I said. There is something in language called an intransitive active and you can translate those passively. Josephus actually has this same verb form in relationship to people being called something, and even he also mentions Christians in his writing. So a passive translation is legitimate but here’s the one thing I want to add. There are those who think, and if you know a little bit of Greek or English grammar really well, who think that the form could also be a middle and you would translate it this way, if that's the case. ‘In Antioch, the disciples first called themselves Christians,” in other words, representatives of the messiah. What does it really matter? Well, it doesn't really matter a whole lot for interpretation. The reason it’s brought up here is that apparently Christians are becoming so numerous, and, again, most of them up to this point are Jews, that either they themselves were someone else, the larger community has to invent the term, has to coin a term to distinguish Jews who followed Jesus, we’re going to call them Christians now. They have to be distinguished from the rest of the Jews because the numbers are swelling to such an extent that a label is needed. Whether that label comes from inside the community, they called themselves that, or outside, not a great deal of importance there, but again, it's a good illustration of how language, it is tricky.. It's another little interesting thing to sort of park on and see what the options are and if it matters or not.

Kallai: Patriarchal Boundaries Canaan and Land of Israel Patterns

Application Biblical Historigraphy ANE Pagan Divination Practices