In addition to the miracle of the birth of the Church we’ll also see the presentation of the Gospel as central to the Church and a central concern of Luke the author of Acts. This is in fact the second volume of the works of Luke with his gospel being the first volume. The two books are similar in length and were limited in length by the weight of a scroll and the will of God. The Acts of the Apostles has 28 chapters and 19 sermons or at least formal addresses. These include messages by Paul and Peter while the longest is from Stephen the first martyr.
John Stott lists nineteen significant Christian speeches in Acts. He says that “there are eight by Peter (in chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11 and 15), one each by Stephen and James (in chapters 7 and 15), and nine by Paul (five sermons in chapters 13, 14, 17, 20 and 28, and four defense speeches in chapters 22 to 26). Approximately 20% of Luke’s text is devoted to addresses by Peter and Paul; if Stephen’s speech is added, the percentage rises to about 25%.” See John R. W. Stott, The Message of Acts: To the Ends of the Earth (Leicester, England: InterVarsity, 1990).
My primary resource material will come from James Montgomery Boice’s book titled, “Acts: An Expositional Commentary”.
Luke was known as “Luke the physician” (Luke the Beloved Physician to Paul; Col 4:14) and both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts indicate that Luke was probably an educated Gentile (according to the flesh). He traveled with Paul and so much of the work is first hand and not second hand material. However, Luke had no problem using other sources.
It appears that an early date before A.D. 70 for Luke and Acts is appropriate. Since Acts ends with Paul under house arrest waiting to see Caesar you would need to admit that it was prior to A.D. 64 when Rome burned and Nero began a persecution of Christians. While the Jewish persecution had been strong the Romans had not been too bad before Nero. In addition, Paul was killed in A.D. 68 and Luke would have mentioned that so an early date is the natural conclusion.
Luke was a tremendous historian and we benefit from that. You can see a bit of his personality come out when he discusses something related to disease or medicine. He is a tremendous historian because he wrote a history of a small group of individuals that were scattered over a wide area and kept it within the context of the various cities that were impacted. He let us see what God was doing in history and showed how it was His Story. He did this without a library and without Google or Wikipedia. However, to be fair, he did have the Holy Spirit breathing through him.
Acts 1:1-3 … In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
We have 40 days from the Resurrection to the Ascension. Then after the Ascension they waited 10 days until Pentecost before the Holy Spirit was poured out. So Pentecost is 50 days after Passover.
Both the Gospel of Luke and Acts are addressed to Theophilus. It is likely that Theophilus supported Luke as he wrote his gospel and Acts. The name means “lover of God” and is a great name to have at the head of each of these books. In a way it personalizes the books for each believer who approaches the books as a lover of God.
John Stott says that the title of the book shouldn’t be “Acts” or even the “Acts of the Apostles” but rather “The Continuing Words and Deeds of Jesus by His Spirit through His Apostles.” I think that is a bit long but it gets the point across that Jesus is still acting by the Holy Spirit to do things through the Apostles. It even implies that He is working today and will continue to work on earth until the second coming.
The other reason we need to mention Luke as a historian is because of the historical nature of our faith. When we discuss the Cross then we mean that if you were present in A.D. 33 then you could have gotten a splinter from the Cross and that the Blood of Christ may have fallen directly upon you. He was fully God but He was fully man without mixture, separation, or confusion.
He was busy doing and teaching as Luke says but Luke also indicates that Jesus spent a substantial period of time proving to his disciples that He was really alive. They had seen Him die and He was patient to prove His resurrection to them. It was a necessary proof because the Gospel hangs on the resurrection of Christ. This wasn’t something that Jesus did as frosting for the cake. The whole cake rests on this.
Here is the logic of what Jesus was establishing for the foundation of the Church.
1) The resurrection is a fact.
2) The resurrection proves the deity of Christ
a. He claimed His deity before the resurrection
b. He claimed God the Father would raise Him
c. Resurrection confirms claims “a” and “b”
3) Christ must speak the truth because God can’t lie
4) We can trust all of Christ’s teaching and the Scriptures
5) God will forgive our sins because Christ said so
You can see that a historical resurrection is a necessity for our faith. Look at the following verses and see how Paul viewed the resurrection.
1 Corinthians 15:12-19 … Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
The German Scholars spent 100 years looking for the historical Jesus and trying to move away from the Christ of faith. After about 100 years Albert Schweitzer pointed out that all they each had done was hit a dead end by creating a Jesus in their own image. The Christ of faith and the historical Christ presented in the New Testament are the same. Luke works to make sure we realize that he was creating a fictional character but rather than he is reporting on the works of a historical character as accurately as he knows how.
Acts 1:4-5 … And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
They only had to wait 10 days after the Ascension but they had to wait because apart from the empowering of the Holy Spirit they were not qualified to fulfill the Great Commission. But apart from qualification or ability to preach … they were not directed by the Holy Spirit yet. Their activities would not have been ordained they would have simply been their ideas of what Jesus would have them do. The WWJD bracelet is fine and dandy if you are asking God to direct you and empower you to work out your salvation with fear and trembling because it is God within you willing and doing what He wants. The WWJD bracelet is not a good idea if you are trying to think up what Jesus might be happy with or worse simply doing what you think is right and asking God to bless the mess.
You can ask why God made them wait 10 days. Well it was the Feast of Pentecost or Shabhu’oth. That is the Feast of Weeks (counting the time until the Torah is given) and a celebration of the wheat harvest (Festival of Reaping) and a celebration of the gift of the Torah or the Word of God to Israel. Well that works for why as well as it being a Holy Day in which no work is done and for being a day that is a “pilgrimage festival” and brought many into Jerusalem (as we will see).
So it is a beautiful fulfillment of Shabhu’oth and gives the full meaning to Passover and the Feast of Pentecost. However, you can still ask way Jesus ascended 10 days earlier and I don’t know but it did give the disciples time to pray and prepare their hearts for receiving the ingrafted Word via the medium of the Holy Spirit. This is the time of the events of Ruth and Boaz. The kinsman redeemer story with a picture of Christ and a picture of the Church.
I remember that during the revival out west in the 70s that people were very careful not to move ahead of the Holy Spirit. The phrase “don’t strive” was common because there was an emphasis on doing what God said and not more than God said and not less than God said. These days it seems that we expect the 20% to serve the 80% with the view that if you aren’t striving then you’re in sin rather than vice versa. We are bad about ignoring the leading of the Holy Spirit to action but ignoring the leading of the Holy Spirit to inaction is a sin too.
I like the contrast of John’s baptism with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We’ll discuss various aspects of baptism as we proceed through the book of Acts but here we see the repentance from sins in the baptism of John contrasted with the motivation and enabling action in the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
James 1:19-22 … Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
James covers both aspects of turning from sin and from striving and turning to a submission to the word that is implanted by the Holy Spirit within you. You must be a doer of the word but you must not just be a doer. It isn’t an easy thing to learn. You will make mistakes but that is no excuse for ignoring the many commands of God on the topic of submission to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
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