Acts Introduction | Bible Study

Introduction to Acts | Group Bible Study

Acts Series Introduction: The Story Continues

Throughout this series we will split the teaching between our Thursday morning Bible study and our Sunday morning Services.  Thursdays we will slow down and see the beauty of this book, and Sunday mornings we will experience the power.

As we begin our study through the Book of Acts, we start by laying a foundation for understanding what this book is, and why it matters for the life of the Church today.

The Book of Acts, written by Luke, is the second volume of a two-part work that begins with the Gospel of Luke. In his Gospel, Luke records all that Jesus began to do and teach. In Acts, he shows us what Jesus continues to do after His resurrection and ascension.

This means Acts is not simply a history of the early Church.
It is the ongoing work of Christ, carried out through His people by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In this introductory study, we consider:

The connection between Luke and Acts
Luke’s role as a careful and credible historian
The reliability of the biblical account
The broader story of Scripture leading into Acts
The central theme of Jesus continuing His work through His Church

We also begin to see how Acts connects to God’s promises in the Old Testament, including the promise that He would give His people a new heart and place His Spirit within them.

As we move forward in this series, our aim is not only to understand what happened in the early Church, but to recognize how Christ is still at work today.

The Church does not create the mission of God.
The Church participates in the life and work of God.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

So the author of the book of Acts is um a man named Luke, and he was a very highly educated man. He was a physician, and he actually wrote two of the books. It was Luke, the Gospel of Luke, and the Book of Acts. And he gave us his purpose for writing them. Now, um, some cool things about Luke and Acts is for the scholars who are translating the Bible, they tell us, and I did take Greek in seminary, but um I'm not good enough with it to tell the difference. But they say that Luke's Greek is some of the uh most articulate, his vocabulary is extensive, that he actually sounds like an educated person compared to some of the other ones who wrote in the New Testament and their Greek. You know, you've got to think that John, you know, Mark, these were just regular people, um, you know, everyday common people, but Luke was educated. And so he wrote, uh, Luke and Acts, um, and he wrote his purpose in Luke chapter 1. He begins by a prologue saying, Inasmuch as we have, as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you've been taught. And so there's several things here, and you can see them. I made a list for us to try to make it easy, that Luke gives us as the reason for writing the narratives that he wrote. And so, first he says that it was delivered to him by eyewitnesses. Now, Luke spent a lot of time with the apostle Paul. So he was actually a traveling companion of Paul, and there's a certain point in the book of Acts where he's writing in the second person, and then he begins to write in the first person. Okay, so he's telling the story about this is what happened then, and this is what happened with them, and he's saying they, and he's saying him and her, and he's saying this, and then suddenly he starts saying we. And so this is the point where he's traveling with Paul on some of his missionary journeys or certain legs of his journeys, and so he was with him for an extensive part of the book of Acts. And even as Paul went back to Jerusalem to bring an offering from all the churches because Jerusalem and the area of Palestine was undergoing a famine, um, Luke went with Paul. Paul ended up being arrested while he was there and was in prison there for like two years, about two years. And Luke was there in Palestine, around Jerusalem the whole time. And so he had lots of time to talk to eyewitnesses, the apostles, the mother of Jesus, Mary, you know, these key people in the story in order to compile his gospel and the book of Acts.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

And so Luke never met with Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

No, Luke probably never met Jesus in person, no. And that's why he's identifying others as eyewitnesses of the things that happened. But he was around for eyewitnesses who were yes, so he's a contemporary of those who were eyewitnesses. He he's there with people who actually lived through it. So he's right there with the early church, you know, and the apostles who were in Jerusalem, Peter's there, Mary's there, James, you know, is there. So key people. Okay. So uh now I wrote here Acts is one of the most comprehensive histories of its time. Um as far as understanding things that happened in the world and in these locations, so this would have happened in, you know, uh the area of Palestine, it would have happened in Galatia, in Asia Minor, in Rome, in Athens. These are the events that all happened here. There's not, you know, there's certain historians that did histories of these times in these places, um, but there's not tons of them. Josephus did some, there's others that did some. But um, Luke's, you know, when you when ancient historians, even secular, are looking back at how to study this time period, Luke's gospel and especially the book of Acts is really interesting to them. Um, and I think it's funny because a lot of people outside the church who are hostile to the church will talk about our faith as if we're believing in a mythology, as if the Bible is all fables and fairy tales and mythology, as if it's no different than you know, Zeus and Hermes and these things like this. But the difference between mythology and the Bible that we study is that the mythology literally is fictional characters, fictional places, fictional events. When you're talking about the Bible and the book of Acts, which we're talking about now, you're talking about real places, real events, real people. And when you study the book of Acts alongside other history, other historical documents and histories of the time, the people and places and the events and the timelines, everything is very, very, very well done. So it's very accurate. So geography, uh, political figures, the officials that were in different cities and provinces and towns and times, they all line up with what we know from history. Um, and the reason that this matters is that our faith is not built on myths and fables. That our faith is built on actual events in history. The idea that people like Jesus didn't actually exist is something that's out there in secular culture, and yet it has nothing to do with reality. There's plenty of documented evidence from even outside of Christian scholars of that time period that a man named Jesus lived, and the events that describe in the Gospels happened. Um, and that the apostles and the original movement that's described in Acts happened. Josephus records a lot of that stuff, and you can read that. And Josephus, if you ever have a chance, is kind of fun to read because he's a really good writer. Um, and it's interesting to read like The War of the Jews, um, which describes kind of before Jesus, through Jesus' time, and after, and the war with the Romans and all that kind of stuff. He he writes almost like a novel, so it's kind of fun to read. It's like watching TMZ, but first century. And so he says he wanted to write an orderly account for Theophilus. The word for God, I put Theo, it's not Theo, it's Theos in Greek. The word for God is Theos, and then Philo is love, like brotherly love. Okay, and so this name is really put together. It's like a lover of God or beloved of God, is what that name means. And so people have different ideas about who he was writing to in this. Um, some people think this was a particular Christian believer, you know, in a certain location, he's writing it to a friend or something like this. Other people say, no, this was written, you know, because he says most excellent. Let's see. Yeah, and in the book of Luke, he says most excellent, Theophilus. And so this is sort of like saying how people would talk to a ruler. It's how they talked to Felix later when Paul's on trial before Felix and Festus. Um, they would use these kind of frilly ways of talking to them. And so that it was possibly even Luke could have been compiling Paul's defense before Caesar. And so he's recording everything that happened in the time of Jesus leading up to the church being born, and then all the way through the expansion outside of Jerusalem and Paul's ministry. And so it just becomes this sort of defense that look, the Christian culture is not a threat to Rome. We're not against the authorities, we're not against Rome, we're not trying to overthrow anybody. Um, and so it could be something like that. Um, and also Theophilus could just be a general description to us. Those who love God or are loved by God. And so in the beginning of Acts, I say all that because in the beginning of Acts, he starts with another prologue. He says, In the first book, he's talking about Luke, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day that he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles who he had chosen. And so it's addressed to the same person. It acknowledges the first book. And he says, In the first book, I've dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach. So what do you think he could have meant by that? Hello, Evangelist Saria. Sorry. Well, yeah, I mean, that's part of it. There was more work to be done. So he says, in my first book, so that's the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke covers all the way from before John the Baptist is born all the way till Jesus ascends. Okay, so that's a lot of things that happened in that time. And so he's saying all that he began to do and to teach. So I kind of wrote some things down here. So yeah, that there's more work to do. That's for sure one of them. I think what he's saying is we have a tendency to think of, at the end of, when we get to the end of the gospel, okay, that's the end of Jesus' ministry. And then he went to heaven, and now it's our ministry. You know? It's like Jesus', the end of the gospel is the end of Jesus' story. And yet what Luke says is in that whole gospel that covers the time of the angel Gabriel announcing the birth of John the Baptist to Zacharias in the temple, all the way until Jesus tells them, don't leave Jerusalem, stay in Jerusalem until you receive the power of the Holy Spirit, and then he ascends to heaven. That all that time was only the beginning of the things that Jesus began to do and to teach. And so the book of Acts is the record of how the work of Jesus continued to advance, only now, through his church, empowered by his spirit. And so I think that's important in just the way that we frame what it is we're reading. Even in the past, I've read the book of Acts as sort of like a blueprint. You know, this is how we do church, this is how church is supposed to go. You know, it's like this. And so we we use it sort of as a strategy. Let's try to make our churches look exactly like what we see here. But it's not necessarily strategy, it's a record of what Jesus just did in his people. And so it becomes what what we begin to emulate is not exactly what they did, but exactly how it happened. So they're empowered by the Holy Spirit, and then Jesus does his work through them. So and then I put a little um reference here to Ezekiel, chapter 36. So Ezekiel was a prophet. He would have been around for the exile when the people of Judah and Jerusalem were taken captive by the Babylonians and taken into exile, and he was prophesying to God's people in that time. And he prophesied in chapter 36, verses 35 to 37. He said, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean, and I'll give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove your heart of stone, and put in its place a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and obey my rules. So up to the up to the time of Jesus coming and the filling of the Holy Spirit, how how did people interact with God? What was the process for interacting with God? Yeah. So part of it was going to the temple. What other things did they do? The Sabbath was one. So every seven days was the Sabbath. The sacrifices, that's temple stuff. What about the feasts and you know, um the feast of booths, and they had Passover and they had so they had their regular um religious feasts and holidays and celebrations, and those were something that you were supposed to practice. What about the food they ate? It had to be uh the kosher because certain things had to be maybe made certain ways, certain foods were off limits. In other words, was the way that they practiced their faith in God internal or was it external? It is a lot of work.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Right?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Yeah, that would be a lot of work, yeah. Well yes. It's based on work. And where did the motivation for obedience and all that come from? Do you remember when Jesus told the Pharisees they were whitewashed tombs? What do you think he meant by that? You got Tom? Coffee out the nose and everything, huh, Tom?

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Yeah, that wasn't fair. I took that personal.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

So, yeah. The problem with the way that the Jews were practicing their religion and their faith back in that time was that it really was external. And it's just all about, you know, many of them really did. Um, you know, Jesus even acknowledged that the Pharisees, they they really did. They followed every single jot and tittle. They really externally fully lived it out. So they were doing their best. Externally, they were righteous. The problem was their heart was still stone. And so God's promise to the people was there's gonna come a day when I'm gonna sprinkle you with clean water, maybe living water, and you're gonna be clean. That's like John 15, John's the second verse, he Jesus tells them, You're already you're clean because of the word that I've spoken to you. So someday I'm gonna sprinkle you with clean water, and you're gonna be clean, and I'm gonna give you a new heart. I'm gonna remove that old heart of stone you have in you, and I'm actually gonna put a new heart in you, a heart of flesh that actually feels and is sensitive. You know, because right now your heart of stone, it's like it doesn't, it can't even really sense God. It can't hear Him, it can't feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. But I'm gonna give you a heart of flesh that's actually sensitive to me, that desires the things I desire. He says, I'm gonna put a new spirit within you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put my spirit within you, and I'm gonna cause you to walk in my statutes and obey my commands. In other words, the motivation for obedience to me, the motivation for doing what I say, living how I want, being a witness to the nations is gonna come from within you, not from external fear, you know? And this is what we begin to see played out in the book of Acts. It's when this fulfillment begins to take place. Because Jesus tells them, we're gonna talk about it more on Sunday, but Jesus tells them don't go anywhere, don't leave Jerusalem. Don't start trying to fulfill my commission until you receive the Holy Spirit. Don't do it. Don't leave. And what I wrote here was the important principle in this is that the church isn't built on religious observance and experience and practices. It's not built on traditions and doing things a certain way to make it real. The church is built on an internal transformation that happens by the Spirit of God. And that's something only God can do. And so we'll talk about, I think the 19th, we'll talk about what happened when the Spirit actually did come. And that they were gathered together in one place. They were all praying of one accord. It's like they're all in one accord, they're focused on the same thing. Just, okay, Lord, we're focused on you and we're waiting on you to actually do the thing you want to do. Rather than we're gonna make all these plans and strategies, and we're gonna read a book and we're gonna get some consultants from outside to come in and tell us what we need to do. No, it's something that God does, and he starts it at the heart of the people there, right? And so the roadmap for Acts is really spelled out in just the first couple of verses in verse 7 and 8. He says, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and he will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And this is really how the entire book of Acts ends up rolling out. He says, You're gonna go to Jerusalem, you're gonna wait for the Spirit. Acts chapter 2, God pours out his spirit, and immediately the people are changed. Right? They're one way before, and now they're suddenly empowered. And you can tell the difference just by reading. You can just see it. It's instant. Okay, and then the church becomes empowered, and then the church is born. That very moment, Peter stands up to preach, and the people are like, What's going on? And he preaches, and 3,000 people are saved. So it's like immediately Jesus begins to do his work in his people in the middle of Jerusalem. From that point on, it starts to grow out from there. So Jerusalem, the church begins to grow here. But as it grows and as Jesus is moving in Jerusalem, the same thing that happened during Jesus' earthly ministry begins to happen now to them. And so there's persecution, and now the church gets scattered. But that's what Jesus told them. You're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And so as it scatters, as the persecution happens, the persecution doesn't stop the church. It actually strengthens and grows the church. Which is what we see in the world now. In the places of the world where you okay, Al? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But I maybe uh need some water, some water over there. I got a bottled water. Okay, thank you. Here, I'll give it to you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

So, in the places of the world where the church is persecuted, where you go to jail if you're a Christian, or if you have a Bible, or if you read it, or if you preach it, those places, you don't say you're a Christian unless you're a Christian, because it'll cost you your life. And so you are going to fully, you need Jesus in those places to be a Christian. And so, where do you think it's the most pure? The most like this is in those places. And so you see in China, you see in North Korea, you see in Iran, you see in these countries like this that the church that's there is is alive. It's vibrant, the spirit is moving, people are being miraculously saved, miraculously healed. You know, you hear of people just having visions. Yesterday I sent a story to Clarissa and my mother-in-law that I saw, and it was a man that said him and his brother were little boys. His dad was a pastor, and his dad was preaching in the church, and these Muslim guys didn't like what he was saying, and I don't even know what country it was. But they said, We're going to teach this pastoral lesson, we're going to kidnap his boys, and one was five and one was seven at the time. When they come out of school, we're going to kidnap them, we're going to behead them and send the dad the heads in a sack to teach him that he shouldn't be preaching the Bible in our town. And so they went to his school, the kids' school, and they were waiting in a van, and the boys came out, and they said that the men couldn't do it. They couldn't like move and come out of their van. And the boys just got on the bus and went home. So the next day he brought other guys with him. And he said, The boys came out, they got ready to jump out of the van, and then they felt like their hands got pulled behind them and like they were just they couldn't do anything. And the boys got on the bus and went home. And the next Sunday, the man was in church and came up to the pastor and said, I was gonna kidnap your sons and I was gonna behead them and I was gonna teach you a lesson, but your God didn't let me. And I see that your God is the one. True God, and I want to worship your God. And you see things like this happen where the church is under pressure and persecution because you know Jesus told Paul, he said, I received a thorn in the flesh and I prayed three times that God would take it from me. And he said, No, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in your weakness. So when you're weak, he's strong in you. And this is what we see. As the persecution grows, the church begins to just move outward and spread, and then Christ begins to reach Judea and he reaches Samaria, and then he reaches the nations of Galatia and Macedonia and Asia Minor, and then he goes all the way to Athens, and then eventually the end of the book of Acts, Paul's in Rome, and he's about to meet Caesar, and he's determined to preach the gospel to Caesar. Which we think that the last time he went before Caesar that it was Nero. And some people even say, and I don't know if there's any validity or truth to it, but that Nero originally was sort of reasonable. He wasn't a wacko that would burn down his own city. But that when he Paul preached the gospel to him and he denied it, that instead of salvation, he went the other way and kind of went mad. That it was like a demonic kind of a thing. And that's why he went so crazy that the fire in Rome, persecuting Christians, putting them as torches in his garden to light his chariot races and all the crazy things they did. But yeah, I mean, the gospel spread by the blood of the saints. And so the lessons from Acts that we're gonna get over the next several months will be that the church is empowered by the Spirit, that God doesn't use the rich and famous and mighty, he uses ordinary people, that opposition doesn't stop God's work, in fact, it makes it more powerful, and that Jesus is still the one leading his church. His ministry didn't stop at the end of Luke. It continues today. And so the questions that I um gave us here today, so this wasn't just informational, would be to ask ourselves, where in my life am I relying on myself, my own ability or power rather than the spirit? And is there a is there a sacred and secular? So we think, well, I need the spirit to do Christiany things, but I just use my mind and my abilities to do non-Christian-y things, but is that actually true? Or is every part of our life offered up to the Lord and made holy by him? Is every part of our life actually mission? Because this is not the mission field. He says, pray for laborers to go out into the fields because they're white for harvest, right? And then the other question is to think about the things that we're doing, that we're giving our energy and our attention to. Am I staying busy doing stuff? You know, sorry, I don't mean to look at you, Marie. I'm not I'm not judging you. She's looking at me, I'm looking at her. Are we busy doing stuff? Or are we truly being led by the Spirit of God? So it's why it's important, even for us, as we're gonna begin planning what are the things we're gonna do as a church. That what is actually God telling us to do? What's he saying to do? What's he putting in our hearts? What's he leading us toward? What's already here for us to do? Because he said, You're my workmanship, and you've been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand, that you should walk in them. And so it's not something we have to go find, it's something that if we just are staying in his presence, in his spirit, we're staying in the body, we're walking with him day by day, that we almost just stumble into the things that he's already actually prepared for us to do. And am I open to where God is leading? You know? And maybe we don't have those answers yet because we don't actually know exactly where it's leading, but um, as we as we step into the next season or whatever, you know, and whatever God brings to us or before us or whatever we stumble into, are we open to it? That'll be a heart check later, maybe. And then the final thought was this the exact same Holy Spirit promised in Ezekiel and poured out in Acts chapter 2 on his church is still actively at work in his church today. So that's the thing we need to remember too.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

The power.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

The power. I know, Lori, I definitely thought about you. Lori said a few weeks ago, um, why don't we see the power anymore? And I don't know that we don't, Lori, because I'm looking at I'm looking at you and the fact that you have a lot of challenges in your health, and you just keep getting up and you keep going and you still love Jesus, and you faced a lot of challenges in your life, and yet you still love Jesus, and you're still coming, and you're still showing up and saying, Lord, use me and submitting your life to him. That's power. That's power. And Marie, your back hurts. You got all these things on your plate, and you just keep showing up, and every time you do something for him, you do it amazing, and it comes out awesome. I mean, it's spectacular. So those are evidences of his power. I mean, right there in the midst of us. And so let's pray for more and more and more and more of the power.