Transcript
Well it’s good to be back tonight. My watch tells me it’s 9:15 Dallas time, but my body tells me it’s 7:15 Oregon time. And so I’ve adjusted to that and we should be a little bit sharper tonight. If I’m not, I don’t know what to blame it on.
Tonight before getting into our material I think I should say how impressed I am with the staff work here at Northland Bible Fellowship. I mean how many churches are there who have someone on staff who can color overheads? And since there are going to be thirty screaming children in here tomorrow night, as indicated you are welcome to come, but I will not be here. I used to teach kids way back in the old days, but it’s beyond my capacity now. So two screaming kids drive me out of the room. Thirty would drive me probably across the road.
All right let’s return to the book of Acts tonight. And let’s begin by looking at something that will refresh our memory from last night. Remember that we suggested that the structure of the book of Acts can be subdivided into what we have called six panels. The suggestion that the book can be structured in this way is of course not original with me. And as I indicated last night it originated with a man named C. H. Turner who was primarily interested in the chronology of the divisions of the book. But this doesn’t really concern me. I think these panels can stand up under scrutiny. And that as we study our way through the book we will discover that each panel is a discrete unit which has its own message and which contributes to the building of the purpose of the writer in the book of Acts.
Just to review this quickly, remember that each of these panels is concluded by a summary statement of some kind. And so we are calling panel 1 chapter 1 verse 4 through chapter 6 verse 7. And here, without giving exactly the purpose of the panel, I’m giving the contents of the panel. In this panel the church is founded at Jerusalem. The second panel extends I think from 6:8 to 9:31. And here the content basically is that the church is expanded from Jerusalem. In 9:32 to 12:24, which is the third panel, we have what I have called the climax of Peter’s apostleship. That does not mean that historically speaking this was the climax of Peter’s apostleship. He was far from finished as a leading figure in the early church. But in terms of the presentation of the book of Acts this unit is the climax of his apostleship. And once this unit is completed the only appearance that Peter makes later is, as we mentioned last night, chapter 15 where he has a cameo role defending the message of Paul and Barnabas.
Panel 4, which extends I believe from 12:25 to 16:5, could be called the establishment of the Pauline apostleship. Panel 5, which is 16:6 to 19:20, the content can be described I believe as the Lord Jesus Christ glorified among the Gentiles. But the agent of His glorification of course is the Apostle Paul. And here we see the way in which the Apostle Paul contributed to the glorification of the Lord Jesus. We will find this to be a very interesting and instructive section of the book.
The final panel of the book, and by far the longest of the units, is 19:21 to 28:31. And here I’ve given a plain vanilla description of this unit in terms of the testimony of Christ carried to Rome. But there’s a lot more going on in this unit than is indicated by that heading. And we hope to show you the way in which this unit rounds off the presentation that the writer wishes to make in this book and is in fact indispensable to the fundamental point that He is trying to get across.
But once again this is mainly review. We are looking at the fundamental structure of the book. We have chosen to call chapter 1 verses 1 to 3 the prologue for the entire book. If you wish to regard the prologue as a unit in its own, we have how many units in the book? I leave that to your discretion.
One word about the panel structure that we have articulated here. Needless to say there are a number of people who have raised objections to it. One of the objections that has been raised is kind of like this: that no one would be more surprised to see the structure in the book of Acts than Luke himself. Behind that kind of an objection lies the idea that somehow or other the biblical writers did not plan their books. I don’t know how you think about the process of an author. But any author who just sits down and begins to write without any sense of where he’s going and what the divisions of his presentation are is in big trouble. And he will have to go back and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and probably won’t ever get it right until he has a real ground plan on which he is working.
One of the most important books that I think has been written on the book of Acts is a book by Charles H. Talbert entitled Literary Patterns, Theological Themes, and the Genre of Luke-Acts. Don’t try to take this down. If any of you are interested in this I can give you the information afterwards. This is a technical book. And this is not the kind of book you should take to your fireside and read late at night unless you are anxious to go to sleep. But this is an important book. And when I was teaching at the seminary I often found that the seminary student was somewhat skeptical of the idea that ancient authors had a ground plan off of which they worked.
Talbert has done an excellent job in showing that ancient authors planned their works, not just biblical authors but secular writers both Greek and Roman. And he further argues that one of the major features of structural division in works was the principle of balance and duality, balance and duality. There is a balance in the material and oftentimes there is a duality in the information here. It is very interesting. For those who wish to pursue this type of thing let me just point out to you from the overhead that we both can’t hear the handwritten overhead. That panel one, two, three go together. And panel four, five, six go together. In other words we have one unit of the book consisting of three panels which basically covers the career of Peter in the book of Acts. Then we have another unit of the book covering three panels that basically covers the career of Paul. There’s a little overlap here but that’s the primary thrust.
Let me say that in Greek architecture and poetry and so on, although there was a love for duality and balance, there was an importance of exact symmetry. Things could not be and should not be exactly symmetrical. But they should be balanced and they should weigh off against each other. So even in the overall structure that we’ve looked at here it seems to move. We can see this organizing principle. There are two major units of the book each of which is subdivided into three subunits. And these two stand beside each other in a very balanced kind of way.
Now before I go any further with anything let me ask if there are any questions regarding this introductory information. I’d like to clear the ground so that we can move immediately into the first panel. But how about any questions that you had left over the organizational structure of the book of Acts? Anything that you’d like to ask? I either made everything perfectly clear or totally obscure. That was the conclusion I always drew in class when there were no hands raised on questions. I always gave myself the benefit of the doubt. Of course I assumed that I had made everything perfectly clear. Is that right? Oh good, very good.
That brings us then to panel one. It seems to me that we could regard the remainder of chapter 1, namely chapter 1 verse 4 to verse 26, as a kind of prologue to the panel. As we have suggested right down here at the bottom of the overhead. Even here in what amounts to a prologue we can see duality in balance. We have two subdivisions. The first subdivision obviously is verses 4 to 11 which gives us the final encounter between the apostles and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And this of course is climaxed by His ascension.
Now there is one very important issue that is raised in this first unit of the prologue. You remember that the Lord promises to send the Holy Spirit upon them. And this prompts immediately a question from the apostles: “Will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Nothing is done in this book by chance. The inclusion of this question in the very first unit of the prologue to the first panel is very critical. “Will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus does not say yes I will. Neither does Jesus say no I won’t. What Jesus does say is it’s not for you to know the times or the seasons. Your job is to be my witnesses. And the coming of the Holy Spirit will enable you to be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem but Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. But as far as whether or not I will restore the kingdom to Israel at this time it’s not for you to know. Or if Luke had been writing a footnote here you might have put the footnote: we’ll see, we’ll see. That is a very important issue. And as we develop the study of the book of Acts we will be referring back to this fundamental and critical question for the book of Acts.
The second subunit of the introduction to panel 1 is verses 12 to 26. The thrust of this particular section is known to all of us. This is the unit in which Peter, in the midst of the prayer gathering, stands up. And basing his conclusions on Scripture he says that it is necessary to fill the slot in the twelvefold apostleship which Judas has vacated. It is necessary to fill that slot with somebody.
Now I’d like you to take your Bibles here and let’s look at what is said here about this issue. Acts chapter 1. Peter has just stood up. He has quoted from the Book of Psalms in verse 20: “Let his dwelling be desolate, and let no one live in it.” And he combines with this a text from another Psalm. And God: “Let another take his office.” Luke is very concerned at every juncture in his book that the actions taken have some precedent or basis in Scripture. And then he draws this conclusion as it is expressed in verses 21 and 22:
Therefore of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to that day when He was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.
Notice the word witness. This is the same word of course that occurs in Acts 1:8: “You shall be my witnesses.” And Peter says here we need one more man to be a witness. What must his qualifications be? He must be someone who has been with us starting with the baptism of John right up until the time that Jesus was taken up.
Let me throw out a little hole here at the very beginning. In the English language the word witness in religious settings has come to mean something like share one’s faith. And I have no objection to using the word witness in that way. But the Greek word for witness that is used here probably did not have that connotation at all. It was the term witness as we might use it in the courtroom. Someone gets up on the witness stand and he tells what he has seen or what he has heard about the issue at hand. And it is very clear from this text in Acts chapter 1 that the witnesses, the original twelve witnesses if you will, must be men who have experienced firsthand the Lord Jesus Christ all through His public ministry and right up until the time that He is taken up into heaven. This is all very important. And this lays the groundwork for panel 1.
Now let’s look at the first of our more artistic overheads. All of the overheads that you will begin to see from this point on were made for me many years ago by the visual education department of the seminary. Their technology has improved greatly. The design is mine and the execution is theirs. So whatever is faulty here is probably my fault. But they have done a good job with a lot of these visuals.
You are probably taken aback by the fact that this visual has a lot of Greek on it. And please do not feel that I’m expecting you to read the Greek. Let me try to explain what this visual is about. Obviously this is a visual designed to interpret for us the day of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. This arrow coming down here and its top has words: a rushing wind from heaven. And so the arrow represents that rushing wind. The rushing wind came into the house where the 120 were assembled. And the Greek here says it filled the house. And then you remember that when that had happened tongues of fire, the New King James Version says divided tongues of fire. I would prefer to translate that dividing tongues of fire. You’ve watched a fire at a campfire for example. And you notice how the flames constantly split. Little things coming off this way. That is the way I visualize this picture. These tongues of flame were constantly dividing. This flame up here and a flame up here and a flame up here and a flame up here.
Now this is what happens physically. What happens spiritually as a result of this event? Well according to the text here, and let’s look at it in Acts chapter 2 and verse 4:
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now the Greek below the nine here is supposed to represent the spiritual counterpart. Here obviously the wind filled the house. And this little Greek phrase says they were filled with the Holy Spirit. So the house was filled with the wind. And the people in the house were filled with the Holy Spirit. Here we have the dividing tongues of fire that sat on each of them. And tongues immediately suggest tongues. So they spake with tongues. Their tongues now became divided. They didn’t just speak their own language. They spoke other languages which were understood when they moved out to the audience outside of the upper room. So that corresponds to this. This is a long Greek word which is translated in Acts 2:4 by the word utterance. And seems to have been used especially of divinely inspired utterances. That is very interesting.
That in describing the wind it is a violent wind from heaven. When you get over to 2 Peter the last verse of 2 Peter chapter 1 you have this statement: “No prophecy of Scripture is of its own interpretation, but holy men of God spake as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” And the word is this word here: spake as they were carried, as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
I think what is suggested here in the picture of the Pentecostal experience is that the Spirit of God, He is of course engaged in His work of baptizing, but that is not made explicit here at this point. That’s mentioned earlier in chapter 1. The Spirit of God comes in His inspiring power. He fills the 120 men and women who are in the upper room. And then they speak what they are inspired to speak with other tongues.
Now this is not the last thing that we will say about tongues. But I just want to get you thinking and get your appetite whetted a little bit here. As far as I can tell in the book of Acts, wherever we are told that people are filled with the Holy Spirit right then and there, it is always the case where apparently the Holy Spirit takes control of the person and speaks through them. The earliest instances of this of course are Elizabeth and Zacharias in Luke chapter 1. And when Mary goes in to Zacharias and Elizabeth’s house and Elizabeth sees the mother of the Messiah coming to her she is filled with the Holy Spirit. And then she speaks the long, I would say inspired, poem.
And I want to suggest something that is not often suggested about the filling of the Spirit in the book of Acts. That it is functionally equivalent to inspiration. That God speaks through the individual who is filled. Now we will also meet in the book of Acts later on another phrase that might be more suitable to describe the person whose life is under the guidance and control of the Holy Spirit. But as far as the instances where the person is filled on the spot I suggest to you that all of these are instances where the Spirit takes control of the vessel in order to speak the words of God through that vessel.
Now after the event of Pentecost we come to what I think is a major subunit of the book of Acts or at least of the panel that we’re considering. And I want you to notice the balance that is involved here. For the moment we will ignore Acts 1:8 which is written up here in the Greek. And the first half of 2a is in English. What we have in chapter 2 is first of all the advent of the Holy Spirit in chapter 2 verses 1 to 4 and inspiration as I have suggested. What happens next is the assembling of a crowd. And what happens next is that Peter preaches an explanatory sermon in which he tells them what is going on and what the implications are of what is going on for them. Following the speech of Peter there is a unit, Acts 2:42 to 47, that I would regard as a bridge unit. It describes the state of the church after the events of the day of Pentecost.
Then we come to chapter 3. The Spirit has already come. But now what we have in chapter 3 is a miracle wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit on the man sitting at the gate called Beautiful. So now we have the Spirit’s power, the miracle, as exhibited in 3:1 to 8. What happens? Same thing as on the day of Pentecost. A crowd assembles and wonders, chapter 3 verses 9 to 11. Then what happens? Peter preaches an explanatory sermon, 3:12 to 26.
Now we notice that in both of these passages the term witness is used. Will you take your books of Acts and turn to 2:32? Keep your finger on 2:32 and just flip back to verse 14. Notice that in Acts 2:14 “But Peter, standing up with the eleven,” that’s not, no that’s not in the majority text. Our first ad will back that up for me. That’s not here. Standing up with the eleven. We have the twelve witnesses here right? They are standing before the crowd.
Now let’s look at verse 32: “This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses.” Who? Peter and the eleven. Now look at 3:15. Let’s read 14 also. 3:14 and 15a, Peter speaking in the second sermon:
But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses.
Notice that both of these passages comport with chapter 1. The reason for choosing the twelfth man was that he might, through his firsthand experience with the Lord Jesus Christ, be a witness of the resurrection. This is not going to be somebody who just met the Lord Jesus Christ the day before He was crucified. This is going to be somebody who knew Him firsthand over an extended period of time. And when they saw Him in resurrection they knew it was Jesus Christ. And now what is happening? The twelve appointed witnesses are in fact bearing witness to the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from their firsthand knowledge of that.
Let me talk a little bit more about the use of the word witness in both Luke and Acts. Did you know that the only place where this word is used in the Gospel of Luke is in chapter 24 verse 48? And there it refers to the post-resurrection ministry of the apostles as we have already seen. It’s used in 1:22. Makes clear that there are certain qualifications for a man to fill the office of the witness. We also find that the word is used in contexts following 1:22. And we’ve looked at two of them: 2:32 and 3:15. Another one is 5:32. Another one is 10:39 and 41. And let me ask you to turn to that please. This is a very telling passage about the role and function of the witness in Acts. And of course you will remember that this is Peter’s sermon to Cornelius. So this is Peter, one of the witnesses, talking. Let’s read it. Verse 38, Peter speaking:
How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. And we are witnesses of all things which He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they killed by hanging on a tree. Him God raised up on the third day and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead.
Isn’t it clear from this passage that the witness is a man with extensive experience with Jesus Christ personally, one-on-one, in the group of the apostles? Another reference is in 13:31. And you will be interested to know, we won’t comment on this now, but the term witness is also used later of the Apostle Paul in 22:15 and in 26:16. It is used of Stephen in 22:20. And elsewhere it is only used of the witnesses against Stephen at his execution. The twelve are described as witnesses of what they had seen. How does Stephen become a witness? Well as He’s dying He sees the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. How does Paul become a witness? He meets Jesus Christ in person on the road to Damascus. The witnesses in the book of Acts are men who have actually seen Jesus Christ.
And I think that exegetically and from a standpoint of sound interpretation Acts 1:8 does not refer to the general process of Christian witness. I hasten to add I believe in witnessing in the normal sense of that word. I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ called His disciples to be fishers of men. And in the book of Acts the term disciple is broadened beyond the range of the apostles to all Christians who are in fellowship in the early church. So I firmly believe in sharing my faith. But I do not put myself in Acts 1:8 because Acts 1:8 involves an exclusive category of men who were chosen to bear witness to the things that they had seen and observed and heard. And that’s a very important understanding. If we get this understanding we are on the right track into the book of Acts.
Now I want to take about five minutes for questions and then I want to give you a 10-minute break. And then we’ll come back and do some more. But let me at this point open it for your questions.
Yes sir? Well as we were indicating last night this is an instruction to the twelve. And if we had just read up to 1:8 at this point we might expect the content of the book of Acts to relate how these twelve men spread the gospel all over the Roman world. The ends of the world, if we were talking about the Roman Empire, would be something like Spain. And what I was indicating last night was that in fact if that’s the way we were expecting the book of Acts to unfold that is exactly how it does not unfold. And that the reality is that we only really learn about the career of Peter in a very limited and I would even say truncated way. For Peter drops out of the story and is replaced by the Apostle Paul. With regard to the other witnesses the only one who appears by name after chapter 1 is John. And he has nothing to say or do that is independent of Peter. He is, as I mentioned, probably there because the Jewish law of witnesses required a minimum of two. But functionally the only thing that’s going on in the first three panels, we don’t have the panels up anymore, the function, the only thing that’s going on in the first three panels is that we’re looking at the apostleship of Peter himself. And when Luke is finished with that presentation he moves to the apostleship of Paul.
Many years ago an older writer on the book of Acts by the name of Rackham was the first expositor of Acts to notice a large number of parallels in the presentation of Peter that are paralleled in the presentation of Paul. And that was a very important discovery. And one of the things that indicates to us is that the real function of the Petrine section is to show that Paul is an apostle in the same sense that Peter was. And that Paul is God’s man in the same sense that Peter is obviously God’s man. So 1:8 is not a thematic statement. It’s a statement made in the historical context. I have no doubt that it was fulfilled by the twelve themselves because we do not know all that they did. But we have some traditions, whether true or false. And the likelihood is that they fulfill this commission by traveling all over the world. But that is not the purpose for which the book of Acts was written.
The book of Acts was written, as I suggested last night, for the purpose of affirming that the Pauline mission is a legitimate extension of the ministry that was begun by the Lord Jesus Christ. And that the risen Christ is working through the Apostle Paul on the mission field. I have more to say about that after the break in terms of the relationship between Israel and the Gentiles. But basically 1:8 does not give us that thematic statement even though we have heard over and over again that it does. So I think it’s important to realize that the expectations we might have had just reading up to 1:8 are not fulfilled. And that Luke, like all good authors, has some surprises in mind.
Yeah Mark asks what would get in most parts. You can say that it means it went to the very end of the earth even though it’s not recorded. Max, when Jesus said that to the apostles that’s exactly what happened. That’s right. And so the tradition of Thomas going to India could be true. That that happened. We just don’t know. It’s just not important. That’s right. And that isn’t the major purpose of Acts to report that. Only to have it so. The major purpose of Acts is showing up Paul’s ministry so that he was part of that process. Yeah this is the mission that the twelve have. But Luke is not interested in following that mission out. You know this is a historical fact that Jesus gave them this mission. But Luke’s purpose is not to trace that mission but rather to trace the rise of the apostleship of Paul. So that becomes a historically important statement. But it’s not a topic for the book. As you know from studying Colossians there is a statement in the first chapter of Colossians by Paul that the gospel has gone into all the world and is bearing fruit. That’s a surprising statement. But if we allow for the fact that the twelve did in fact carry this out we might be very surprised where they wound up. I don’t have any problem with thinking that Thomas could well have gone to India. But that was beyond the confines of the Roman world. So as far as the historical information of the fulfillment of Acts 1:8 is concerned we don’t have it. And it was not Luke’s purpose to give it to us.
Well we have these traditions that have come down to us. But as is so true of the most extrabiblical traditions sometimes questions are raised as to how accurate they are. And I haven’t tried to track down these traditions to make a judgment as to how accurate they are. We have of course a tradition that Paul eventually got to Spain. He was planning to go to Spain at the end of Romans. And so that would not be surprising. And who knows where else they went. Somebody may have gone to China. But that’s not the purpose of Acts. That’s my main point. The twelve witnesses undoubtedly carried out this commission. But it’s not within the framework of Luke’s goal to tell us about it.
Yes sir? That’s partly yet what I’m going to be talking about as soon as we get back from the break. We’ll also give a, I think a further understanding of his role. But yes on one level Peter is there. We see everybody. Anyone who thought that Christianity was legitimate thought that Peter was a legitimate leader because he was someone who had been with Christ. He became the leader of the apostles. And anyone who claims apostleship the best thing you could possibly say about them is that they have all the qualifications that Peter had. Maybe some he didn’t have. One of the things that happens here of course is that whereas Peter gets his last glimpse of Jesus as He’s going up and the cloud receives Him out of His sight, Paul sees Him in risen glory. And that was a higher form of witness in some respects than even Peter’s.
Yes sir? Verify his authorship? No I don’t think it’s so much that. That’s an appropriate question at this point. Remember we were talking last night about Theophilus. And there is every possibility that Theophilus was a Pauline convert. Now Paul was under siege. Christianity was under siege by the Jews. But especially Paul because Paul was regarded as a renegade and a heretic as far as the Jewish religion was concerned. He was the one who told that you’re not under law. You don’t have to offer the sacrifices. And as we shall see later in Acts there are all sorts of false rumors about Paul that are circulating even in Jerusalem. That he taught the Jews on the mission field to give up their Jewish heritage which he did no such thing. And so there’s this controversy swirling around him. He is one of the most controversial figures in Christian history.
Now Theophilus may wonder, I thought that our Christian faith was a legitimate extension of the Jewish faith and that Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the promises made to the Jews. While I was converted by a man that they’re all calling a Jewish heretic. How could my faith in Christ be a legitimate extension of the Jewish faith when most of the Jews hate this man? Doubt, uncertainty. Remember the prologue: “I have written you these things so that you might know the certainty of the things in which you have been instructed.” Luke is not finished with this just by telling us that yes the Lord Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Israel’s prophecies. He does tell us that in volume one. But now he must also tell us that Paul, the supposed heretic from the Jewish faith, is the actual agent of the risen Christ who fulfills the promises to Israel. That’s a big order. And it took two volumes to get it done. But he does it with great skill.
We’ll take this one as the last and then we’ll have our little break. Yes sir? No I do feel it’s appropriate for people to bear witness to their faith. And I would argue strongly that when Jesus said “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men” the original apostles were then models for all of the disciples. And the Great Commission was remembered: to go into all the world and make disciples. And a disciple is a fisher of men. I don’t believe that we can really follow the Lord Jesus Christ in full-fledged discipleship without sharing our faith with others. But I don’t use Acts 1:8 to support that.
Let’s take about 10 minutes and we’ll come right back.
I’m no longer a teacher at seminary and I can no longer give demerits if people don’t listen to me. I couldn’t even give them at seminary. They didn’t have any such thing. They assumed that seminary men were gracious and courteous and they would listen to you hanging on the edge of their seat or sleeping through the lecture, whichever the case might be.
Let’s return to our consideration of panel 1. Now what I’m going to do right at the beginning of this session is to carry you as quickly as possible through a series of overheads. Bear with me. And then we’ll try to pull some of this stuff together after we’ve shown you several of our overhead transparencies.
So far we have considered chapter 1 verse 4 through 26 as a kind of an introduction to panel 1. Right now this particular overhead carries us from 2:1 to 3:26. Meaning chapters 2 and 3. And what do we see here? Well we see the witnesses in action through their spokesman the Apostle Peter. And we also see that the witness is effective in that men and women are coming to personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
What do we see next in panel 1? Well here it is. We see opposition and trouble. A very familiar pattern. God is working. Souls are being saved and built up in the faith. And who steps into the picture? The devil. And he attacks the work of God both from the inside and from the outside.
And what we really have in the remainder of the first panel is a series of problems. First of all attack number one. It comes from the outside with the arrest of Peter and John. But they give a bold testimony in front of their judges. And the aftermath of this trouble is a fresh filling of the church by the Holy Spirit, Acts 4:23 to 31. And then although we are not told in so many words, if you read carefully Acts 4:32 and the surrounding verses we get the impression that there is continuing growth.
That was an external attack. Where does the next attack come from? Inside. Inside through Ananias and Sapphira. Was the devil operative here? Yes explicitly so in the text. “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” And once again the witnesses are triumphant. Spiritually judgment, discipline falls upon these two Christians who have tried to pretend that they were exactly as generous as the other Christians. But they were in fact motivated by selfish perspectives. And they lied to the church and to the Holy Spirit. And they are struck down for that. And the aftermath is a very positive aftermath. There is the fear of God falling upon not only the church but other people outside of it. And there is growth.
Attack number three from the outside. This time all twelve of the apostles are arrested. And when they are summoned before the Sanhedrin the guards can’t get them because they’re already free. And in one of the notable statements of the book of Acts the Sanhedrin wonders what this thing might come to be. They had every reason to wonder because they were fighting against God as Gamaliel shortly tells them. And the aftermath of this attack is joy and continued witness and growth.
The next attack is from inside. Notice this alternating pattern here which is very interesting. Just when I think I’ve fought off the opposition from outside, sometimes inside the church I solve that problem. And somebody outside is causing more trouble. All right we finally get that one solved. Something happens inside the church. Anybody who’s been in the pastorate for any number of years knows that’s the way it works. Maybe not in that rhythmical way. But our problems are both external and internal. Satan seeks. If he can’t get us one way he’ll try to get us another. The same girl goes for our personal lives. Surprising how many Christians I’ve met over the years who have had one problem after another. Maybe they’ve gone for a long time without any serious problems. All of a sudden the roof caves in and they lose their job and one of the kids goes wild and somebody gets sick. And I think in many of these cases they are under satanic attack. And by aiming at the individual from all directions Satan multiplies the possibility of scoring a victory. If we just could fight a one-front battle wouldn’t that be nice? I don’t dare turn my back for a minute because something’s going on back there. And if not back there over here or over here. That’s the way it works.
And so there is a new problem. Every pastor has had this one. Contention. Somebody in the church complaining. In this case we’ve got the widows of the Greek-speaking Jews complaining that they’re not being taken care of at the same level that the Hebrew-speaking Jews are being taken care of. Boy is that ever familiar. Why don’t you do for us what you do for so-and-so? Why do you spend so much time with the youth when you’re neglecting the older folks? Why do you spend so much time with the older folks that neglect the youth? Why do you spend so much time with the older folks and the youth and neglect those of us who are in the middle range? You can’t win. And that’s the way it goes.
And notice therefore then what we have in the remainder of panel 1 is a series of satanic assaults from within and without. But each time the Spirit of God working through the leadership of the apostles, particularly Peter, is triumphant. And the attacks are turned back. And there is continued growth in numbers and in spiritual quality within the church.
Now that carried us through panel 1. Believe it or not. And now we’re going to backtrack a minute. We’re going to backtrack to Acts chapter 2. Take your Bibles for a moment if you will and turn to Acts 2. You will notice that in Acts chapter 2 Peter stands up in front of the multitude in verse 14. He directly confronts the charge that these people are drunk. And he immediately supports his interpretation of the scene by an appeal to Scripture. And this is the famous prophecy from the book of Joel.
Now I want to point out something about this prophecy which is significant. Peter quotes a long section of Joel here. And it is clear that he intends us to understand that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was predicted by Joel. But then he moves on beyond the outpouring of the Spirit. Let’s pick up the reading in verse 18:
And on my menservants and on my maidservants I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy.
All of this is coming to pass right before the eyes of the audience that Peter is addressing. But now notice there is a swift change of tone in the Joel prophecy. And the passage continues:
I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath: blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
I will show signs and wonders. The sun shall be turned to darkness. The moon shall be turned to blood. Vapors of smoke. Is that in the book of Acts? No. A few people have tried to find it somewhere but it’s not there. Down to verse 18 the prophecy has taken place. There is fulfillment. From 19 to 21 no fulfillment within the book of Acts.
Now we look back at this and what do we know about this? Well we know that in between verses 18 and 19 there is a long period of time, a parenthesis. Doctor Ironside wrote his great book The Great Parenthesis to show that many prophecies in the Old Testament have a gap between them. They leap from the first advent to the second advent. And within this gap we now know is a predominantly Gentile church whose central figure by the way is the Apostle Paul. The other apostles are important. But for Gentile Christianity the chief figure is unquestionably Paul. And just look at the number of epistles you’ve got in your New Testament by him.
So what happens here is in accord with the question that is raised in Acts chapter 1: “Will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Maybe yeah. If so no. Parenthesis here. And we move on to the final fulfillment. These signs that are given here of course are well known from the prophetic teaching of our Lord to be the signs that immediately precede His returning in glory. But maybe no. In which case there comes this intervening period. And these will be fulfilled later. Of the two options we now know the answer to the question don’t we? The answer is no. But at that time, and this is important, the disciples did not know the answer to that question because Jesus did not give it to them.
What then do we find in early Christianity in the opening section of the book of Acts? Well this is one of my more cluttered overheads. And hopefully if I were redoing this it would be with more sophistication and clarity. Here let me try to explain what I’m getting at. Notice that the early church continues to associate with the Jewish temple. Am I right? They meet in the temple in chapter 3. They are gathered together in Solomon’s porch. They do not feel any separation from the temple. By the time you pick up the writer of Hebrews he says the sacrificial system is over with. No consciousness of this at this point. But also a new kind of meeting is taking place because they are breaking bread from house to house. They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and breaking of bread and in prayers.
So side by side with each other what we have is continued connection with the religion of Judaism and the Christian observance without any consciousness that somehow or other these two don’t go together. Now as I understand it there were three hours of prayer in the Jewish temple. One at 9:00 a.m. at which time the morning sacrifice was offered. Another occurs at 3:00 p.m. when the evening sacrifice is offered. Another occurred at sunset. The Jewish people again as I understand it basically two meals a day not three meals a day. Maybe I can improve my overall appearance if I only ate two meals a day. But in any case they ate their first meal as breakfast somewhere around 10:00 or 11:00 so I’ve read. And their supper might have been in the late afternoon. It seems to me that it is possible in terms of the early Christian experience that the Christians went to two hours of prayer, had their Lord’s Supper, and maybe went back to the third hour of prayer. Or they went to all three and had their supper at night. I favor this one somewhat but we can’t prove what was actually happening in Jerusalem. But we do know in Acts 20 that Paul meets with those who are gathered together at Troas apparently at night. So if I had to guess I would say probably the Lord’s Supper occurred after the hours of prayer were over.
Now at this point therefore Jewish and Christian activities are going hand in hand. They’re part and parcel of the experience of the early church. What happens however in the book of Acts? A wedge is driven into the church and persecution begins. And eventually the church is really driven away from Jerusalem. This doesn’t happen completely in Jerusalem even in the book of Acts. But already what we would call the schism between Judaism and Christianity begins to emerge plainly in all the pages of Acts.
We noticed a moment ago in the overhead that I showed you that at the end of panel 1 we begin to get opposition. Right? We begin to see the resistance of the unbelieving portion of the Jewish nation to the Christian message. And in panel 2 which we will consider the Lord willing on Thursday...