Sunday School | The Summary of Acts

Introduction

Okay. So here's what we're doing, you guys. A couple of things. First of all, I would like to welcome the high school kids. Youth, you're welcome here. We're glad you're here. They're camping out in the back. We're delighted that they are here, so thanks for coming and being with us.

You should have received a thing that looks like this. In the top, it says the Acts of the Apostles. Do you have that? If you don't have that, are there stacks anywhere left? Doug. So if you guys can chase down anybody that doesn't have it, you need one of these. It's gonna be helpful to you. If you're missing it, Doug will get you. Bob might have a couple extras. So get these out. Okay? Up here, Ruth. Alright. Lily's passing some out. Yes. Okay. So there's those.

And then check it out. We're gonna make this even harder. Last week, I taught on the book of Luke. This week, we're doing Acts. So if you didn't get last week's notes, that's this. I get anybody need Luke from last week? Alright. Bob, you mind doing that? Pass those out. And we'll get you up to speed.

Purpose and Overview

So my plan here, we'll see if this works, is that I hope to create a document like this for every book in the New Testament that will give you a great overview of what's going on. And what our hope here as we do this, the plan is not that you will have this collection of these little booklets, so that that would be lovely, but rather that this collection of these little booklets will incentivize you to read the real thing. And that when you read the real thing, real Luke, real Acts, real Romans, real whatever we're gonna get into, all of them actually, it's gonna help you. It'll be like a key. This will be a guide to the thing that when you read it, you'll be like, oh, I see it now. Or now that it's kind of been shown to me in this format, then I can discover it in the richer and realer format of God's word.

It's like, you remember in high school? Do you remember the Cliff Notes, which were probably most of us who didn't read the books, they just read the Cliff Notes? Do you remember that whole thing? Well, Cliff Notes are not meant to be a substitute — don't read the Cliff Notes of David Copperfield. Read David Copperfield. Right? But maybe somebody that's done a little bit of work will help you so you'll get more out of it when you do. That's what we're trying to accomplish here.

We'll scatter them around. Hopefully, you're getting them. Anybody still need Luke up front? We've got a couple up here. Bob, come up this way if you don't mind. And we're good.

Connecting Luke and Acts

So we looked at the book of Luke, and then next week, we're not going to look at anything new. We're going to talk about both of them. So how many of you — and you just tell me the truth — how many of you read a substantial portion of Luke this week? Anybody jump into it? Alright. Let's go. Okay. That's fantastic.

Your assignment this week would be to read Acts. Luke was 24 chapters. Acts is 28. So you got to like turn it up a little bit. What is that? 28 divided by, as I say, six is a number. What is that? Five pages a day. Okay, that wouldn't kill you.

So and then next week, we're gonna pause and I want to hear from you. You read Luke and Acts. You got this two-part series, and we're going to say, did you notice? Did any of these things be like, well, you said this, but that wasn't true because I discovered that. That's fine. We'll just talk it through, and I want to see what you find.

So we'll do Acts this week, and we'll talk about Luke and Acts next week after you've had a chance to read. We're gonna kind of — I'll let this be our guide here. I'll give you some insights, we'll kind of roam around.

The Purpose of Luke and Acts

Here’s the first thing: Luke and Acts is a two-part series. It's really obvious if you read the first couple of paragraphs of Luke and the first couple of paragraphs of Acts. This does not take a seminary degree. You just read it.

Luke says, Since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. And then in Acts, he says, In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven. And after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles, he had chosen.

This is a pretty easy case. You feel good about this that they both wrote it? Okay. Or that Luke wrote both, rather.

Oftentimes, people will make assertions, and sometimes they're just making stuff up. This is completely warrantless. When we say that Luke wrote both Luke's Gospel and Acts, we're not making that up. It's reasonable. It's true.

Similarly, you may have heard that Luke was a physician. We talked about this briefly last week, but it would be very reasonable for you to say, like, How do you know that Luke was a physician? Do you know? Physician. Because Colossians 4 says he was.

Take a look. I'll put it in here for you. So right up at the top. Who was Luke? He was a doctor. Paul says, Our dear friend Luke, the doctor. And in fact, it is the case. That's where we build the case on that Luke identified himself as a doctor. Mean, Paul identified him as a doctor, and Paul would know.

Hang on a second, John — Paul would know because they were super close. This is kind of an interesting thing. Paul wasn't involved in the writing of any of the Gospels. Right? Mark is probably Peter's Gospel. Matthew is — you know, Matthew was one of the disciples. He was there. John is Jesus' buddy. But Paul's fingerprints aren't there, except if they are, they would be in Luke's Gospel because Luke was Paul's travel companion.

In fact, one of the ways that we can see this, it's kind of a subtle clue. You might notice it when you read through the book of Acts. Watch the pronouns. Okay? When you read through Acts, you'll find it begins and the pronouns are all about they and them. What those other people that are not me did. And then you'll see this very subtle but sudden shift, and the pronouns change to we. And then there's this brief little season where they're back to they, and then it's back to we for the rest of the book, essentially.

What does that indicate? What's going on with the we's and the they's in the Book of Acts, you guys? That's when Luke shows up. So Paul's doing a bunch of stuff or Peter's doing a bunch of stuff, and then Luke shows up, and while he's with them, it's we, and then he leaves a little bit, and then he comes back a little bit, and it's back to we. So Paul knew Luke. Luke knew Paul. Paul mentions him a handful of times. In fact, at the very end of 2 Timothy, when everyone has deserted him, he says, Only Luke is with me. So Luke and Paul were buddies. They were tight.

And if there's any influence of Paul's understanding of the Gospel, you're most likely to see that in Luke because they were tight. Make sense? Okay? So again, we're not just speculating. We're not making it up. There's good reason to say that they were friends. There's good reason to say that he was a physician. There's good reason to say that these two books come together.

When you read through it, you'll notice some of those things.

Organization and Pattern in Acts

John? Go a little louder, I'm barely hearing you. That's so funny. Luke apparently, I've never noticed this, but Mark throws an elbow at physicians being kind of criminals, and Luke's like, You know what? We don't need to talk about that right now. So that's pretty funny.

So when you go through Acts, there's a couple of ways I've offered you a few different ways that you could organize Acts. You can watch it as you read through it, things that you're looking for, what's the organizing principle? By the way, this function of learning to read things not just word by word but to kind of zoom out and see the organization, I think, is a really helpful habit.

You might begin if you develop this habit as we go through this. I'll always try to give you kind of the organizing principle of the book. You'll find things like when we get to Ephesians, it's very clear that the first three chapters are different than the last three chapters. The first three are all theology, all doctrine, all things that are true about God. But there's no verbs, no commands, no instructions. And then there's this pivot point in Ephesians with what we would call the indicative. It's instructional.

Let me tell you, he begins with what we would call the indicative. He's indicating things that are so. And then he moves into the imperative: You've got to do this. Right? So if you learn to read the Bible, if it's like, I don't know if this is true, there's something about hitting a diamond just right and it just splits right or something. That's why we want to learn to do this with the Scriptures. Like, how do I look at this and see it?

Romans has the same thing. If you read through Romans, it begins all doctrine and there's this pivot point. We move into this weird section that's kind of special. And then there's this application section. And if you read through Romans, you can take it up through chapter eight, and there's a break. And then nine, ten, eleven, and then there's a break. And then twelve — there's a break. You want to learn to see how does this thing work?

And if you do that with Acts, there's a couple of places where you might stick your little hammer thing and crack the book open. Anybody have any thoughts on — or have you heard how to understand the organization of Acts? Where would you see principle-driven or any kind of divisions in the book? And the answers are on your sheet if you want to cheat, but I'm curious if you actually knew before you got here.

Yeah, well, you heard Acts divided up? Well, the first part talks about Peter and the ministry of the other apostles. Excellent. And then the second half is where Paul is called in his ministry. Absolutely. Okay, this is a very legitimate way to divide Acts — that the beginning of it is about Peter and then the end of it is about Paul. And then right there in the middle, there's Philip. Right? You get this little Philip gives just a little bit. So you get the three P's of Acts: it's the book about Peter, it's the book about Philip, it's the book about Paul. That's a legitimate way that you can look at it for sure.

What else? Other ways that you've divided Acts up? You kind of get — you may not know it, but Acts 1:8, which is the passage I put across the top of the page, Acts 1:8 is kind of the table of contents to the book. He's going to say that Jesus says, You'll be my witnesses. Where is it? Jerusalem. Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And that is the flow of Acts. It's actually pretty interesting because Jesus tells the disciples, I want you to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, which means right here. It's like in Roanoke. And then in Judea and Samaria, that's like all of Virginia and all those hicks over in West Virginia, right? And then to the ends of the earth. And what the Church says is, Got it! We will be your witnesses in Jerusalem. And they don't go anywhere. They stay right there until we can watch it happen.

Around chapter eight, God begins to turn up the heat, and Jerusalem becomes a lot less comfortable. And then, and only then, are they like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Judea, Samaria, the ends, and they finally scatter. But the church doesn't scatter. Really, the modern — well, not modern, the missionary movement — doesn't start until it's too painful to stay where they are. Can we just be honest? That little phenomena has been playing out for hundreds and hundreds of years in the lives of millions and millions of people.

God says, Be my witnesses here, there, and everywhere, and we're like, how about here? Right? You feel this? Right? It's hard to go someplace else. It's hard to talk to somebody else. And the ends of the earth, they don't even have food that I like, and so thank you, but no. That phenomenon has been playing out for a very long time. You can read through Acts, and you can see it through the lens of Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria, and then the ends of the earth. At every new stage, the Gospel spreads.

Or you can get one more. I'll give you one more in a minute while we turn the page.

Patterns and Organization

But look here at the bottom of this, some things that I want you to notice. The author of Acts, who of course is Luke, is incredibly organized. Remember he said back up originally in Luke, he said, It seemed good to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus. Acts is orderly. He's incredibly organized. He's incredibly intentional. And once you see it, I want you to have that experience where once you see it, you can't unsee it.

He loves, loves, loves creating parallelisms. And there are a couple that I think are really important. One I'll get to in a little bit that's even more important than this. But take a look at the bottom here of the page. He's going to show you this first half. If we accept the Peter and Paul framework and we kind of give Philip the short shift here, in the beginning it's led by Peter. The second is led by Paul. The first one is centered in Jerusalem. The second one is centered in Antioch. More on that in a minute.

They go out to Samaria. Then they go out to Rome. The Gospel is rejected by the Jews. The Gospel is rejected by the Jews. That's hugely important. We'll come back to that in a little bit. Peter goes to jail. Paul goes to jail. There's a judgment cast down, in this case on Herod, and then there's a judgment cast down on the Jews. He's doing this on purpose. He's showing a pattern.

So you want to think about Acts in terms of pattern. This — this is what the Christian life looks like, and we're seeing this happen. We're seeing this happen. When you see these redundancies, you're supposed to be like, Oh, I get it. This is how it works. And what happens to Peter, and then it happens to Paul, and then you're supposed to think, Oh, maybe that's going to happen to me. Maybe what Peter does and what Paul does is what I'm supposed to do. It's an example. It's a picture. It's a pattern.

And then we're supposed to — have you guys ever noticed there's a church-planting organization that is called Acts what? Acts no, Acts 29. Okay. Have you ever wondered why they did that? How many chapters are there in the Book of Acts? 28. So what are they trying to say? We're still doing it. Right? We are chapter 29. Maybe we're up to chapter 47 by now. What they did, we are supposed to see ourselves as a pattern. Peter did it. Paul did it. And you're learning the dance steps by watching the wind. That's what he's trying to show us here.

It starts here, moves here, and it has come from Jerusalem to Antioch to Roanoke. We are to do it. And again, you see all — I won't go through all of these, but Peter and Paul, you see all of these parallels. It's on purpose. It's intentional. They're telling you there’s a pattern. And the implication is, are you in the pattern? Are you joining in to this great dance?

This book is meant to be a prescription, not a prescription, but a description, but not merely a description of them, but a description of us, that with the same Holy Spirit that alivens Peter and that alivens Paul is alive in you. Are you in the dance? Are you living the game?

The Tale of Two Cities

Make sense? Okay. That's what's going on there. Now, if you open it up, you could say this. This would be a fair way to frame it: that the Book of Acts — we've got, you could do the three P's, Peter, Philip, Paul. You could do Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. Those are great frameworks. But you could also say this: that the book of Acts is a tale of two cities. That's your second Dickens illusion of the morning if you're keeping track.

What's the first city? Jerusalem. Okay. Now, let's stop here. What does that represent? In the book of Acts, who is in Jerusalem? What is in Jerusalem? What happens in Jerusalem? How are we to think about the Jerusalemness of the church, you guys?

Jewish.
The center of Israel.
Very good. What else?
I just said the center of Jewish worship. The apostles. The apostles are there. Jesus Christ is the it. Okay. There are or I'm in the ascent. Yeah, near there.

Jerusalem is unmistakably home base, right? It's where the Jewish temple is, it's the center of Jewish worship life, it is where the apostles are, and it becomes where the church is headquartered.

So if you think about the church as the gathered people of God, kind of like this right here, that's all Jerusalem. And if you read through the book of Acts, no question. I listed a ton of Scripture for you, especially in the first half.

Don’t leave Jerusalem in chapter one. All of you who live in Jerusalem — Acts 2:14. Everybody living in Jerusalem — chapter four. You fill Jerusalem — chapter five. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly in chapter six. You see it? Okay. It's Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. This is where the church is headquartered. This is where the party starts.

But by the middle of the book, we're going to watch the number of allusions to Jerusalem, Peter, Peter, Peter out. I shouldn’t say Peter, that means something. It dwindles down, right? And then it begins to be replaced. Which is kind of stunning.

What is the new — I should be careful with this too; you don't want to say "new Jerusalem." That means something else. What is the new primary city for the Church? Antioch. Right? And let's stop there. Now, maybe some of you came in today knowing Jerusalem was a place, but maybe some of you have never really given more than one second thought to Antioch. What the heck is Antioch?

But what you gotta know, in the Book of Acts, Antioch is huge. Now whereas Jerusalem is the heart of Jewish worship, where Jerusalem is the headquarters, the church, where Jerusalem is where the council is, where the decisions are being made, it's headquarters, it's home base, it's the corporate center.

Do you know what Antioch becomes? Can you guess? What it becomes, John? In Acts, it records that the disciples were first called Christians. That’s exactly right. The first language — so that's one of those little notes about Antioch — is where Christians are called. They were followers of the Way, and then it becomes Christianity.

Very good. What else? Do you know what Antioch becomes? It might not be obvious to you. Do you have a guess? Antioch is the center missionary outpost. Okay. Now, I don't know if it will play out this way or not, but Earth, okay, you live on Earth. Earth is the home base. Earth is headquarters. If we ever colonize the rest of the world — meaning, like, the rest of the solar system — I think the way it’s supposed to play out is that we set up an outpost on the moon because it's easier to launch stuff off the moon. Right? There’s less gravity. We can figure out how to get water up there. Then we're going to go from Earth to the moon and then from the moon to everywhere else. Maybe that will never happen or maybe it will. Who knows? But Antioch's the moon. Antioch is the missionary outpost.

Just look at it. Look at all this text about Antioch. So we've been in Jerusalem, but here, look at it on that top right column. Those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch, telling the message only to the Jews.

Some of them, however, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also. That's a nuclear bomb. Antioch is where it begins. This is a Jewish — we're in Jerusalem for the Jews because the Jewish Messiah has come. When the Gospel goes to Antioch, somebody's like, You know what? Let's invite all those dirty pagans in and see how that goes. Antioch is where the world begins to change.

If you go through, just look at this. News of this reached the ears of the church of Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch because something was happening in Antioch. During the time prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, and the church at Antioch had prophets. From Attalia, they sailed back to Antioch.

Paul's missionary journeys often loop around Antioch. Antioch, Antioch, Antioch. And what this is telling us is something radical is happening. Something as fundamental is changing. That this Jewish Messiah who came to the Jewish people to fulfill the Jewish Scriptures, it's leaking to the rest of the world. And this phenomenon of the transition of the Gospel from the Jews to the Greeks is an absolute nuclear bomb. It is massive.

And we’ll see this — how much time do I have? — we'll see this as we finish today. The transition of the Gospel, of gathered community of believers from a predominantly Jewish mass to some Gentiles, to holy moly, the Jews are rejecting it. The Jews are rejecting it. The Jews are rejecting it. And the Gentiles are accepting it. The Gentiles are accepting it. And the way the church goes from entirely Jewish to some Gentiles, to majority Gentiles, and very few Jews is largely what the book of Acts is written to explain.

The book of Acts has throughout it, if you read through it, this tension of like everywhere Paul goes — I'll show you this in a second — but everywhere Paul goes, there's a revival and a riot. Everywhere. He goes in, and some receive the message with gladness, and they're happy. And then some are oppositional and abusive and rejecting. And by and large, the believers are a mix of Jews and Gentiles, but the abusers and the rejecters and the opposition party is almost entirely Jewish over and over again.

What Luke is doing is a mystery. It’s incredibly bewildering that when Jesus comes — when the Jewish Messiah comes and the Jews don't want to have anything to do with him — Luke's like, we're gonna have to explain this to the historians because this is strange. Okay? So you'll see this multiple times. The move from Jerusalem to Antioch is part of Luke's attempt to help you make sense of this transition.

There's a lot of things he's going to do that are going to show you this. There's a couple more things I want you to hit before we're done today. But when you read it, just notice who's responding, how is it working, and notice how much it tears Paul apart.

There is no sense — zero — if there exists in any heart here some kind of racist or anti-Semitic smugness to say, Yeah, them. Those rejecters. Forget them. The parties come over. There is nothing like that in this book. Paul is grieved. He's heartbroken. He is like — there's even a point, it's a fascinating point — if you read Acts 18, where Paul says he's so tired of being abused. He's so tired of being literally stoned to death. They stone him and drag him outside the city, leave him as dead. Then he revives and comes back. Whether he was resurrected or not, I don't know. But he's so weary of all of the rejection, all of the opposition from the Jews in Acts 18. You get there. Note it when you get there. He's like, That's it. We're done. No more. I'm going to the Gentiles. And he's like, I’ve had it. And that resolve lasts one verse. And in the next verse, he leads the Jewish synagogue ruler to faith in Christ because he can't quit them. He loves them.

This, by the way, is the emotional heart of Romans. We'll get there in a couple of weeks. I love to think of Romans as this logician's story. It's just logical, and it's this legal case and it's question and answer, as if it's this detached robot — click, click, click, click — but it's not. It is not that. I'll show you when we get to Romans. Romans is Paul working out his unbelievable angst over the rejection of the Jews. You see it in Romans 8:1, Romans 9:1, Romans 10:1, Romans 11:1. He's like he's desperate to see his own countrymen recognize Christ as Messiah.

So when we see this trend, if you read through Acts, you're going to see the church grow from one random couple of Gentiles to majority Gentile, but there's no glee. There's grief and there’s worry and concern, and it gets worked out in multiple places in the New Testament. Because when Jesus came — he didn't just come for the Jews, and he didn't just come for the Gentiles. He came to create one new man out of the two. It's what Ephesians is about, as Paul is working this out.

So it's a major theme. Paul is troubled by it, Luke is troubled by it, and yet it happens, and is trying to help us get our head around it. Okay? It's a tale of two cities — Jerusalem to Antioch — and the theological implications of this movement. Groovy? Alright.

Conclusion

Scotty? Oh, yes. Okay. Then that's gonna be yes. Yes. West. Okay, so I didn't know that. I don't have the significance of Antioch in later history, but it's certainly true that there's going to be this massive change as the church becomes the official church of Rome under Constantine, for better or worse, it's a fair bit of both.

But some of those things — I don't have a lot of knowledge of the geography or the later history of Antioch — so that could all be true. It's in Syria, in that critical, like, local spot.

What would make sense then, it would make sense if Antioch is geographically well situated to be a launching pad to the rest of the world because that's what it becomes. It becomes the missionary outpost, which, by the way, it also relates to Peter, who is the guy running the church back at home. Paul is the one taking the Gospel to new places. Jerusalem is the headquarters. Antioch is the launching pad to the world.

And so finally, by the time Antioch is rising in supremacy here, it's Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. They're doing it. It took them a while, but they get there and they go.

Patterns of Opposition and Response

Now, if you look at the bottom of this kind of middle page thing, you're going to see a whole bunch of examples of believing in opposition. That's the revival and the riot. When you read through Acts, don't fail to notice how — and really, this is Paul because Paul's the missionary — you'll see this more in the second half, but it's true under Peter's message too.

Everywhere they go, some believe and some do not. Everywhere they go. If Paul stopped because some people didn't like his message, everything would have stopped, and no one in this room would be a Christian. Right? Paul had to play through the opposition. Not just opposition but overt physical abuse. And he was willing to take the hit and take the hit.

If you get to Acts 18, there's this critical moment where Paul doesn’t want to keep going. That's where the Lord shows up and speaks to him, saying, Do not be afraid. Keep on speaking. Do not be silent. This is a beautiful story. We don't have time to fully unpack it. But there's opposition and there's pain and difficulty, but right there with it, there is belief.

I think this is what inspired Paul to write in 2 Corinthians, Everywhere we go, we smell like Jesus. And to some, we are the fragrance of life. And to others, we are the stench of death. And then he's like, who is equal to such a task?

What a stretch, what a spread — to have some respond to the message with joy, gladness, and others want to kill you. Right? But that was Paul's experience day after day everywhere he went.

And you guys, if you accept that what happens to Peter and then happens to Paul, if it's a pattern that it should happen to us, you shouldn't be shocked that some respond positively when you speak about Jesus.

Do it again. And you shouldn't be shocked and you shouldn't be dismayed when some people hate you for it. That's just normal Christianity. That's just the pattern all along. Some people love the Gospel of grace, and they see it. Some people hate it and feel condemned by it.

So we say it again. And then we say it again. And then we go somewhere else, and we say it again. This is normal Christianity. Strap in. That's just the way it works.

The Holy Spirit Presence

Now I want to show you this because this probably is my favorite jewel of an insight. I learned this from my good friend Nick Nowak. Nick and I were on staff together at a campus ministry that worked in the Ivies, and I think Nick Nowak is the greatest Bible teacher alive today, actually. I love him. He's brilliant, and he showed me something I’d never seen that I just thought was so stunning.

We have it categorized here as the unity of Luke and Acts. Here's the crazy thing, which when Nick pointed this out to me, I was equal parts delight, no, mostly delight, but a little bit embarrassment that I never saw this before. Okay?

You guys, everything — everything that happens in the book of Acts already happened in the Gospels. Most of it in the Gospel of Luke. It's uncanny how many things find their root in Luke, sometimes in the other Gospels, but usually in Luke, and then you see a duplication of it in the book of Acts.

I'll just give you a — I'll give you one example because I think it's so uncanny. Do you remember last week we made a big scene that this — remember what the pivot point in Luke's Gospel is? Do you remember we talked about this? Something happens in Luke 9:51. Does this ring a bell?

Jerusalem. Jerusalem. — Luke 9:51

What about it? I mean, what about it? That's it. Okay. In Luke 9:51, Luke says that Jesus set his face like flint for Jerusalem, and he begins this march. And then over and over again from 9:51 through 19, I think 15, Jesus marches to Jerusalem, and Luke constantly says, "We're on the way to Jerusalem. We're nearing Jerusalem." As we get closer to Jerusalem. And then Jesus finally gets to Jerusalem because we're driving to the cross. It is the central event in Luke. And then Jesus finally gets to Jerusalem, weeps over the city, is crucified for us, and the whole world is changed.

It's a massive drive. Well, did you ever notice that in the middle of Acts, Paul sets his face for Jerusalem? And everybody's like, no, no, no, Paul. Don't go to Jerusalem. And this prophet takes off his belt and ties up his hands and says, "Dude, you go to Jerusalem. Gentiles are going to tie you up." It's going to go very badly for you. And he's like, why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I'm content to die for Jesus. Who cares? Right? Let's go. And Paul, just exactly like Jesus, drives and marches and continues all the way to Jerusalem. That's on purpose.

Not only that, do you remember that when Jesus gets to Jerusalem finally, he has this trial that's here, and then he gets bounced over to here. He goes like, he's before Herod, he's before Pilate, and they're bouncing around in all these stupid trials, this big kangaroo court. Remember that? What happens to Paul when he gets to Jerusalem? Bouncing back as once. Right? You remember this? He goes to Herod, he goes to Festus, he goes to Agrippa. That's weird. Yeah, it is weird. You know why that's happening? What Luke is showing us — and by the way, Luke's not creating this reality, he's just recording this reality — what's happening is that what Paul does is exactly what Jesus did.

This happens — oh, I'll give you a list of them. This happens over and over and over again. Jesus once healed a little girl, and he said to her, Talitha kume, which means little girl, get up. Peter heals a little girl whose name is Tabitha, and he says to her, Tabitha kume. Talitha kume. Tabitha kume. That's on purpose. What they're showing us is that whatever Jesus did, we are to do. It's not merely Peter does it, Paul does it, I do it. But the real pattern is Jesus does it, so Peter does it, so Paul does it, so Helen does it.

This is what we are to see: that the life of Jesus, the unchangeable pattern, the life we are to conform to — his life is the pattern. That the things that I'm doing today, the way that I spend my time, my money, my energy, my substance, myself — should be patterned after not just the Book of Acts, but the Gospel of Luke. Acts is the bridge that connects me. This is how mortal human beings, depending on the Spirit, that are not divine creatures, live the life of the divine one who depended on the Spirit.

Make sense? That's what this book is about. So when you read it, we'll sometimes make a distinction between books that are descriptive and prescriptive, meaning: are they describing what happened or are they telling us what we should do? And the answer is that the book of Acts is descriptive, not prescriptive. But it's still kind of prescriptive, right? Because the point of the description is — this is what he did, this is how he did it, and you can join in. You can be Acts 29. You can be part of the pattern.

And so when you read it, here's a list, but look for these. This is like an Easter egg hunt for me. Look for these things that will show you what is going on in this book, and how connected it is to the life of Christ. And then you might, you just might, I see it in Jesus — I see it in Peter — I see it in Paul. And then you might just ask the question, Am I continuing the pattern? Do I see it in me? If not, then like, I don't know. Maybe do something different. Right? Maybe jump into the picture. Join in this great pattern as the Gospel came to you on the way to somebody else. What are you doing to participate in this thrilling, exciting adventure? I warn you, there will be revivals, and there will be riots, but we play the game and we do it.

Rejection and Opposition

Okay? Good enough? Okay. A couple more things. Right here, this little pivotal moment of Jewish rejection.

I want to say one more thing about the Jewish rejection. If you look through, I listed for you Acts 7, Acts 22, Acts 28. Let me just show you the last of those. I probably should’ve included Acts 18, so maybe with a pen, write in there, Acts 18, between 7 and 22, because I think that one's probably important. Should have included that.

But here’s what he does at the very end. This is troubling. Just go to the very end of Acts 28. He says this. This is how it ends. This should give you a clue on what Luke was driving for. We’ll pick it up in verse 24. This is Acts 28:24.

Some were convinced by what he said, but others would not believe. They disagreed among themselves and began to leave. After Paul had made this final statement — he’s talking to the Jews — the Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through Isaiah the prophet, "Go to these people and say, you will be ever hearing but never understanding. You will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused. They hardly hear with their ears. They’ve closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them."

Verse 28. Check it out.

Therefore, I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen.

It's a massive part of Luke's argument that from this point on, the Gospel is for the Gentiles. It's still for the Jews. And in fact, Paul is going to frame it in Romans that there's something happening that's mysterious to him. His best chance to work it out is to say that there's some season where the Jews have rejected, and it's not over for them, but they're on pause. And we're in this time of the Gentiles.

He expects that when the time of the Gentiles has been fulfilled, there will be a new revival among the Jews. Their rejection — when they rejected the Gospel, it was good for the Gentiles. But when they accept Christ at the end of all things, it's going to signal the end of the world, and Jesus will come back. That's the way Paul is working. He's like, I don't know what’s going on here, but I think what it means is that they’re put on pause so we can get the rest of the world, and when the thing comes back around, we'll involve them again, and God will bring about a great revival.*

He warns the Jews. I mean, warns the Gentiles, don't be arrogant as if you have replaced them. You've been grafted in. Right? We're not to be cocky. We have to make sense of this, but it's not in any sense a gleeful way, and we long for the restoration of the nation of Israel — that they would come to see Christ as Messiah. Because when that happens, bang, bang — Jesus comes back and the world gets a whole lot better. That's the message of the Book of Acts. Dig it?

The Holy Spirit and Empowerment

Final, final thing. Just briefly. It would be ridiculous not to observe this. Go to the very back. The hero, the undisputed hero of the Book of Acts is who? He's everywhere. I mean, this is like a sample. Jean and I were like, which ones do we cut? The Holy Spirit is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Everything that happens in the book of Acts is empowered by the Spirit.

And I think that we are — what we are to take from that, this is Luke, remember. What we are to take from that is that Jesus Christ, the human being, lived a supernatural life empowered by the Spirit. And then he sent that Spirit to these non-divine people, but human beings, that they would be empowered to live this life.

And then that same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, that was alive in his apostles, is alive in us. That if you are hidden in Christ, it is necessarily the case that the Holy Spirit is alive in you. Part of the deal. It's just a gift: that the indwelling Holy Spirit — he lives in you — but it doesn't follow from that that he is empowering you every moment. He's like the, I’ve used this illustration before: he's like the chocolate syrup in the bottom of the glass, and he doesn't permeate the milk unless you stir up the glass. Right?

He is the wind that is blowing by your sail unless your sail is yielded. And if you will yield your sail, right, open it up, that his wind will fill your sail, give power and direction to change your life, that your life can be like their lives even as their lives were like his life. And the Holy Spirit is the continuous source for all of these persons, that we might live lives that would please him in every way as the Holy Spirit of God is alive in us.

Conclusion and Reflection

Dig it? Okay. Catherine? You know, when Jesus said, "I go, I will send the Holy Spirit to you," yep, I have always just sat here in puzzles in a way. Right now, what you're saying, it's just making me see clearly — Jesus, well, I say, had to, but he had to come and live our life down here in the Spirit so that when he —

Yeah. And then so when he goes up, then it's like he's our model with that. Dude, aren't he? That's exactly right. Yes.

Jesus came to do a number of things, including die on the cross for us, model for us, all these things. But one of the things he was doing was showing us what does a Spirit-filled life look like. And we miss it because we think he's just like, he's just God. He's just cheating. But he is a human being filled with the Spirit to pattern to us what Paul and Peter are also patterning to us, what we can be yielded to his Spirit, empowered by him. Absolutely. That's what's going on. He, the Spirit. That's right. Absolutely. He sends the Spirit.

Wrap-up

Okay. That’s the Book of Acts. So if you want to, read five pages a day, you'll bang through Acts, and then next week we'll get together and we'll talk about Luke and Acts as a set and see what other discoveries you've made. Groovy?