August 30th

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Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is the 365 Bible Reading Plan. Today is August the 30th, and we're beginning a brand new book, the Book of Acts, chapter one. The former account, the former treatise, the former letter, I made O Theopolis of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up, after he, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many irrefutable, infallible proofs, being seen by them during the forty days and speaking of things pertaining to the kingdom of God. The former letter have I written, O Theophilus. Luke is the author, the writer of the book of Acts, and the former letter is the gospel of Luke. It is the same person that he wrote to when he wrote the gospel narrative of Luke. Now Theophilus was a disciple of Jesus. Yes, his name means lover of God, but almost all the names have significance in the Bible. If you were to take each one of them specifically, then all you would do is say that the Bible was written to anonymous people. Theophilus means a lover of God, and he was probably in the royal court and a servant of Caesar. Luke wanted to help him to understand who Jesus really was, what he had done, and to do that in an orderly account. So he took the writings of Matthew, no doubt, and Mark, and John's gospel was written after Luke's, and so he took those two accounts and he did an orderly account of the birth, the life, the substitutionary death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Now not that the others did not, but they had a different purpose. Luke, as you remember, was to show the humanity of Jesus, and it emphasizes that. And he told events that no one else knew about. Now he did that from eyewitnesses, from the other disciples and apostles, and no doubt from what Paul had heard as well. And then the book of Acts was the sequel to the Gospel of Luke. And so that's what that is all about. Now notice he says what Jesus began to both to do and to teach. Why did he say that? Well, it's because the work of Jesus is not complete. You say, wait just a minute, I thought Jesus said it was finished. Well, our atonement is, but you understand that we are now in the process of being saved. We have been saved from the penalty of sin. Yes, when Jesus died on the cross and he said to Telesti, it is finished, then he paid the sin debt. But that does not mean that our salvation is finished. No, we are in the process of being saved now from the power of sin, and one day we will be saved from the presence of sin and we will have glorified bodies. But that's not complete yet. We're still wrestling with sin. What we have been saved from is the penalty of sin, that is, we will never stand before God to pay for our sins as to whether we're going to enter heaven or anything along those lines, simply because the Apostle Paul, for instance, said in Romans chapter 8 and verse 1, There is right now at this very hour no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. No judgment, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. So we are saved by the grace of God from the penalty of sin, but we're being saved from the power of sin on a daily moment by moment basis. But one day we'll be saved from the very presence of sin and will have glorified bodies and never be tempted again. But that's when we're with the Lord. And so Jesus began both to do and teach. In other words, the work of Jesus has gone on, and the Holy Spirit was sent to dwell within us to enable us to do the work of God. This is the way it works. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, but he is with us by his Spirit who lives within every believer, the weakest believer, the most carnal believer, still has the Spirit of God resident in their lives. That's the great miracle of Pentecost that we will talk about in tomorrow's podcast. Jesus and the ministry of Jesus goes on through his church, through all of us, and through the expression of that in the local body. And that's really what the book of Acts is about. It's the acts of the Holy Spirit through the called-out assembly called the church. Now the emphasis on the church in the New Testament is not the great body of Christ that's everywhere and all of us tied together. The emphasis is on the local assembly. Out of 116 times that the word ecclesia is mentioned in the New Testament, about 109, 110 of those deal with the local assembly without equivocation. I mean, there's no arguing about that. And so this is where the emphasis is, it's on the local body. Now you say, well, I don't believe I need to belong to a local body. Well, honestly, you don't get a vote on that because God has already said you don't need to forsake the assembling of yourselves together, especially as we need encouragement and we need to exercise the gifts of service that God's given us to build up the body of Christ. You see, it's not about you, it's about Jesus, it's about the body of Christ. And so you're very selfish if you say, Well, I'm going to keep what I've got and what God's given me to myself because I don't want to get along with people. Well, that's just a Western culturalized Christianity. That's not the New Testament Christianity. And I'm not saying you have to go every time the church doors are open, but if you say, I love Jesus, but I don't love his bride, and the bride is the church of Jesus, which expresses itself in a local way. And so if you say with all the excuses, well, there's I don't like these people, and I can't find the right kind of church, well, the fact is you're never going to find a perfect church, and if you do, don't join it because you'll mess it up, because you're not perfect. And the fact is we do have to get along with people. We don't even like people in our own family sometimes, but we don't just cut them off, or you shouldn't. If you do, you need to get right with God because that's not the way God does us. And we don't need to do others like that, but certainly in the Church of Jesus, that's true. So the work and ministry of Jesus goes on in the local assembly and throughout the world through the body of Christ. Now he was with them until the day was taken up. That's his ascension that you go on and read in the book of Acts, and you'll read about in the following verses. Jesus met with these men and women for forty days, and he talked with them and showed them that indeed he was alive. Now this was very important because when he ascended, they were going to have to carry on the work, they were going to have to proclaim the gospel. Now, this is a big deal because they were going to have to give their lives, many of them, for this, and they needed to know that indeed this same Jesus that died was raised from the dead and ascended back to heaven. So he allowed them to see that. And so verse 3 says, He showed himself, presented himself alive after his death, after his suffering, by many irrefutable proofs. In other words, he ate with them. They touched him. They saw that indeed he was alive and they watched him die. They he still had the scars where they put the spear through his lungs and his heart. He had the nail prints in his hands and his feet. Remember Thomas. And so they needed to know that indeed this was a bodily resurrection, a physical resurrection. By the way, there's no such thing as a spiritual resurrection. The word for resurrection is anastasio. Anna means again. Stasio comes from Tithemi, which means to stand. It means to stand again. That's a physical term. And so there is only a physical resurrection, a bodily resurrection. There is no spiritual soul resurrection or spirit resurrection. That's New Age Hinduism, Buddhism, all of these new age teachings. No, no, no, there's no such thing as reincarnation. The force is not with us. That's from the pit of hell. And sheer Hinduism. Hinduism is not based upon the word of God. And so if you say this is the way it is, then you've mistaken the Bible. And so Jesus showed himself alive after many days with them, and he was seen, and for forty days he spoke to them pertaining to the kingdom of God. Now the kingdom of God in the Bible, yes, it is the reign of Jesus in the hearts of his believers, but that's only the spiritual manifestation of it. There will be a time when Messiah will reign upon the earth. Now in our day we call that the Millennial Kingdom because of John chapter 20, where he says that the reign of Jesus will be for a thousand years. Now the word in the Greek New Testament is Kileah, which is the word for one thousand. But in Latin, in the Latin Vulgate, which Pastor Jerome, Bishop Jerome, the pastor of the church at Bethlehem, in the three hundreds and four hundreds, Latin was the key language, and so he translated that into the common language of the people, and it was called the Vulgar or Vulgate translation. So this is where you get the idea of a meal. A meal in Latin is a thousand. So it's called the Millennium, the Millennial Reign, when Jesus will reign for a thousand years. After the tribulation period, it's called by the prophets the Messianic age. And so Jesus talked with them about that. And being assembled together, this is verse four, with them he commanded that they not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father. You see, he had promised the Holy Spirit, and he said, If you'll wait, just tarry here, wait until the Holy Spirit has come, I will send him, and indeed he did at Pentecost in chapter two. And he said, You have heard from me, for John truly baptized with water, and he did, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. In other words, they were going to be dipped in the Holy Spirit. They were going to be immersed in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit would place them into the body of Christ, and the body of Christ would be formed called the church. The church is called a body, it's called a bride, and it's called a building in the New Testament. And each one of those metaphors and analogy for the church relates to some aspect of the church, and we will cover that as we go through the New Testament. The bride talks about the commitment of the church to the Lord Jesus, our groom. The building talks about the foundation and the superstructure. The body talks about the relations between the head and each member and how each member is important and has a particular function that it is difficult to do without. And so all of these various aspects of the church, which is a local assembly, a body that has met together with all of its hang ups to do the work of God. And the goal is that they don't continue to have, that we don't continue to have, that whoever doesn't continue to have all the hang-ups, but we follow the Lord and grow in maturity. But he said, You're going to be baptized by the Spirit of God not many days from now. Therefore, when they had come together, they were on the Mount of Olives. This is where he ascended while he was talking with them. He had been talking with them for forty days in the Galilee and in Jerusalem about all that was going to happen, what was going to happen with his ascension, and after he left, the coming of the Holy Spirit, how that he was going to reign, and so forth. So there they were on the Mount of Olives, where the prophet Zechariah said the Messiah's feet would touch down on the Mount of Olives, and he would begin his reign. And so there they were on the Mount of Olives, and so it was the very natural question for them to ask in verse six, therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Now why would they ask that? Remember, for the first eight to ten years, it was only Jews that were part of the church. Thousands upon thousands became followers of Jesus. It was then as it is now about restoring the kingdom to Israel. Why? Because God promised Abraham and then David that they would be a blessing to all the earth, and David's seed would rule over all the earth. So there are promises that God has made to Abraham and David that have not been fulfilled, and God will be faithful to his word. He will fulfill every promise that he made. And so part of those promises have to do with the messianic rule, with Jesus ruling from Jerusalem and restoring the kingdom to Israel. That's correct. Restoring the kingdom to Israel. And so this is what we need to understand about the context of what was going on. They were saying, Lord, is this going to be the time when you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? And Jesus immediately, this would have been a great time for him to say, Well, guys, there's not going to be a kingdom, a literal kingdom, when I reign. I'm just reigning in your hearts from now on. But he didn't do that. No, as a matter of fact, he said in essence that it would happen, but it's not for them to know the times and the seasons. In other words, God has all of that taken care of, but instead, he has a work for them to do. And he said, That's in the Father's authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my martyrs. That's the word witness. You will be my martyrs, and it will start here in Jerusalem, and then into the Roman province of Judea, where Jerusalem was located, then Samaria, which was the next province north that went all the way from north of Jerusalem to the Jezreel Valley, and then the part after that is the Galilee and to the ends of the earth. And so Jesus said you start where you are in these concentric circles, you branch out. Why? Because the goal is not to go, the goal is to be, is to be what God wants you to be, for me to be what God wants me to be. And as we love God with everything that's within us, and we love other people, we share the gospel, the good news of Jesus, and that spreads then to the people that are in their sphere of influence. And wherever we go, Jesus said in Matthew 28, wherever you go, whenever you go, as you're going, share the good news, make disciples. You're to do that by baptizing them and then teaching them obedience. So we have just gotten into the first eight verses, but time is already up. But Jesus ascends to heaven, and then the disciples go back and wait for ten days while this is going on. They elect an apostle that would take the place of Judas, who hung himself and who betrayed the Lord Jesus, and it was Matthias, and he is numbered with the twelve. That's why it says he's numbered with the twelve. The twelfth apostle is not the apostle Paul. He was a special apostle that was commissioned for a particular purpose, and that is to be the apostle to the Gentiles. But uh Matthias was numbered with the eleven. In other words, he is one of the twelve apostles now, according to Acts chapter one, and you can read through the chapter and see that. Now tomorrow we're going to deal with Acts chapter two, and the great miracle of Pentecost. The great miracle of Pentecost is that God came to live in the life of every believer forevermore. Dr. Adrian Rogers used to say the Spirit of God comes to live in every believer's life. Just because he is in the believer's life does not mean he's controlling the believer. That's what it means to be filled with the Spirits, to be controlled. So he used to say it like this the Holy Spirit is resident in every believer's life, but he may not be present in every believer's life. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.