Survey of the Book of Acts

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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October 2, 2020

Sovereign Grace Academy NT100 Survey of the New Testament Dr. M. Keith Foskey

00:00: Alright, everybody take out a piece of paper.
00:04: We're going to start with a short quiz.
00:09: No, week 5 has the long quiz.
00:12: This is your pre-quiz quiz to get you ready for week 5.
00:18: This is really not a quiz, I don't want everybody to answer the questions out loud, so write your answers and then we'll talk about it.
00:25: I'm going to give you three questions.
00:26: These are similar to questions that are on next week's quiz, but I'm just wanting to make sure that I've covered these things and that there's no questions, because it's not fair if I give you the quiz and you don't know the information, I'd rather today clear anything up, that way you know a little bit of what to expect.
00:41: I think next week's quiz has 10 to 12 questions, so the three of them, three questions.
00:47: Number one, on your paper, which books make up the Synoptic Gospels? Which of the Gospels, which ones do we call the Synoptic Gospels? According to church history and tradition, because we don't know for certain, but church history and tradition, we've mentioned in the last few classes, which gospel do we believe was written last? According to church history and tradition, which gospel do we think was written last? That's the second question.
01:30: Yeah, that's the second question.
01:31: So the first question is, which ones are the Synoptic Gospels, and the next question is, which one do we think was written last? Okay.
01:41: Third question, who are the traditional authors of the Gospels, and with whom, with which apostles are they associated? So if it's Matthew, Matthew is the apostle.
01:58: You don't have to put he's associated with Matthew, because we're pretty clear on that, but two of them are not apostles, so which apostles would those two be associated with? We know Matthew and John are apostles, you don't have to put it for them.
02:10: So who are the four traditional writers, and of the two that are not apostles, which apostles are they traditionally associated with? Again, this is going to be on, a form of this question will be on next week's quiz, so getting you ready, doing you right as a professor.
02:31: And for those who aren't here, they're not going to do so good on the quiz, well they can always watch the video I guess.
02:40: You guys okay? Is everybody as tired as I am? You know this is week four, what did I say, we start out big, everybody's excited, by week four everybody's, oh it's work, it's work, I forgot it's work.
02:52: Alright, number one, which books are the synoptic gospels? Jackie what's the answer? Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
02:59: Alright, thank you, she is right, it's Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
03:02: Which gospel was written last, Miss Daisy? Revelation.
03:07: No, the four gospels, you weren't here, I'm sorry, I forgot, you weren't here last week, okay.
03:15: Alright, anybody want to take that one? Brother? John.
03:19: John, yeah, we believe John was written last, we talked about that, last week we did an entire class on John, and we talked about why we think his gospel was last, but in part, who remembers part of the reason why? Yes sir? Because he lived the longest? Because he lived the longest, that's one.
03:36: That, and his reference was the oldest.
03:40: There's argument for that, I'll accept that, but there was another reason why we think his was last, yes.
03:46: Well that's why I would say it's before AD 70, but you guys may have missed what I said about this.
03:55: Remember, there's tradition that says he wrote his gospel as a request to give more information that wasn't in the synoptic gospels, that it was the church that had asked him to write because he was personally involved with Jesus, and that's why his gospel gives us more variant, various information, rather than what the synoptics tend to be, similar information.
04:23: He gives us, what's one thing we know about Jesus' ministry that we wouldn't know if we only had the other three gospels? One major thing.
04:31: The deity.
04:31: Three years.
04:32: Three years.
04:32: The fact that it was three years, right? Because John tells us about the annual feasts, and we see three year ministry in John's gospel that we wouldn't have known about if all we had was the synoptics, so yes.
04:48: All right, so third question, who are the traditional authors? Yep.
05:06: Okay, very good, very good, and of course Matthew and John, so yes, and who they're associated with does matter.
05:16: Next week on the podcast, if I have a chance, I'm going to do a lesson on the Gospel of Thomas, so if you don't already listen to the podcast, I'm going to do either one or two days on the Gospel of Thomas because the argument, what's interesting about hierarchical scholars is they all want to try to push the dating of the four genuine gospels as late as possible, but they want to push the Gospel of Thomas as early as possible because they want to try to fit the Gospel of Thomas into the first century, but there is no evidence that the Gospel of Thomas comes from the first century, and there's no evidence that the writer of the Gospel of Thomas was in any way associated with the apostles.
06:02: We know it wasn't Thomas who wrote it, and we, not the Thomas that we think of, in fact it doesn't even claim to be, it claims to be, well, it does, the Gospel of Thomas claims to be written by the twin brother of Jesus.
06:17: Very strange argument right out of gate.
06:20: So next week when I do the podcast, if you get a chance to listen to it, but my point is the Gospels, the four canonical Gospels all have legitimate association with the twelve apostles, Luke through, as you said, through Paul and Mark through Peter.
06:44: Now who was Mark? John Mark, who went on the missionary journey with Paul and Barnabas, got tired of it, went home.
06:55: Paul didn't like that.
06:56: I mean, that's the key standard version, but that's basically what happened.
07:00: He got tired, went home, and the next time Paul went out, says I'm not taking him, and that caused a division between him and Barnabas.
07:08: Also tradition says that John Mark was the man who ran away naked the night Jesus was in the garden.
07:17: Remember there was one who was watching and they grabbed him by his clothes and he broke away because, and the reason why that tradition is, is because tradition says that the upper room was in Mark's home.
07:31: It was his mother's home.
07:33: And so John Mark was associated with the ministry of Christ while he was alive, or while he was on the earth.
07:40: And it was John Mark who followed them to the garden and was watching.
07:45: And again, this is all tradition.
07:48: This is all speculation.
07:49: The text doesn't say it was John Mark, but it's interesting that we had that little tidbit that there was a person watching who was, there's some kind of emergency going on with 9-1-1 and that everybody's phones are probably going to buzz at some point because it's, apparently 9-1-1 for Jacksonville is not working right now, which is a pretty big deal.
08:09: Let everybody know, right? Yeah, exactly.
08:11: Yeah, exactly.
08:13: All right criminals, if you were looking for, if you were looking for, this is your window.
08:22: So, so anyway, all that, I, you know, these are all things that I think about after I'm done with the lesson.
08:28: I'm thinking about things I didn't say.
08:30: And that little tidbit about John Mark, I always thought was an interesting piece of church tradition and history.
08:35: And so we're going to move tonight into the history book of the New Testament.
08:41: Which book, which book do we call the history book of the New Testament? Acts.
08:45: It's Acts.
08:46: We could, we could say that the four gospels are all history because they are in a sense historical in nature, but they also would fall under the category of biography because they are history of one man particular, that is Jesus Christ.
09:03: But even still, the gospels tend to fall under a unique category of gospel that they're not usually identified as biography or history.
09:15: They're usually, it's just like, think about the writings of Moses.
09:20: Those are history, but we don't call them history, we call them the Torah or the law or the Pentateuch.
09:26: You know, we say that's the books of Moses, right? And so when we refer to the gospels, they're such a unique blend of history and biography and because of who it's about, we say they're unique, they're the gospels, the four, the one gospel according to four different men.
09:46: And then we have this book of Acts, which is the, really the only book like it in the New Testament.
09:53: Acts is a history book, but it's more than just a history book.
09:59: It tells us about the, as it were, the birth of the church.
10:06: And tonight we're going to examine this and you could title this lesson a study of Acts or you could title it Luke part two because Luke is the author of Acts and we know that partially because he tells us in the beginning that he's writing a second book.
10:27: In fact, everybody turn to Luke or to Acts one and we'll read and you'll remember who was Luke written to? Theophilus, right? Well, we get the same introduction in the book of Acts and he references his gospel.
10:46: Says in Acts chapter one, verse one, 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.
11:00: He presented them alive to them after his suffering by many proofs appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom.
11:08: So there is reference to the first book, reference to what it was about.
11:13: He said that was about Jesus.
11:15: And now we're going to look at, as it were, part two.
11:22: And what's interesting is he begins with Jesus still on the earth in this.
11:28: Notice look at verse six.
11:30: So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
11:46: I would say that that verse, verse eight, is the thesis verse of the whole book, because what we see in verse eight is we see the outline that the rest of the book is going to take.
12:00: God is going to give the spirit to his church.
12:04: He's going to empower them.
12:05: And they're going to become his witnesses first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, which is the surrounding area, then in Samaria, which is the next surrounding area, and then to the ends of the earth.
12:16: And that's literally the way Acts is laid out.
12:19: Jerusalem first, then Judea, then Samaria, then then on to into Asia Minor and Macedonia and the ends of the earth, right, all the way to Rome.
12:30: Right.
12:30: So.
12:31: So.
12:31: So literally, verse eight becomes sort of the thesis outline that Jesus is prophesying.
12:37: This is what's going to happen.
12:38: Spirit's going to give you power and this is how it's going to all work out.
12:41: So so don't lose the importance of that verse as a as a outline for basically for the whole book.
12:49: And so our outline, our outline, getting back to the lesson for tonight, is going to be the same thing we have done for the last few weeks.
12:56: We're going to first look at authorship and purpose.
12:59: We're going to look then at theological insights, and then we're going to look at difficulties and controversies.
13:06: That will be the three part outline of tonight's lesson.
13:11: And does anybody have any questions before we begin? You all read your introduction, right? Any questions about that? One thing I do want to mention, your textbook, the Believer's Bible Commentary that I had everybody purchase, that particular book comes from what could be called a dispensational perspective.
13:37: So as we get into certain aspects of interpretation, there may be times where I will disagree with the commentary as to the direction that it goes.
13:49: But most of you have probably at least been some way influenced by dispensationalism, especially if you have been part of a Southern Baptist church.
13:58: And this will become very apparent when we get to books like Revelation, because Revelation, dispensational theology, makes a big part of how you understand end times stuff.
14:12: But there's also some things in Acts that will possibly come up in the interpretation may be slightly different.
14:18: And I did have one ask me, well why would you give a commentary that you disagree with? Well, I don't disagree with everything in the commentary.
14:27: This is one area that I would say I would disagree, but also I want you to be as students exposed to these different concepts.
14:37: And if I have to correct something in class, I will.
14:39: But ultimately this is, you know, hopefully your benefit.
14:43: I think it's a good commentary.
14:45: I mean, John MacArthur is a dispensationalist.
14:48: If you don't know, if you have no idea what I'm talking about by dispensationalist, it's usually contrasted with covenant theology.
14:58: And it simply is a hermeneutic for how to understand Israel and the church.
15:04: The distinction, or lack of distinction, between Israel and the church.
15:11: And why would that be important in Acts? Because...
15:22: Yeah? Acts is the, yeah, if you will, the birth of the church.
15:28: But see, even that language, because I said it already, even the language, birth of the church, from a covenantal perspective, the church has always been.
15:40: It was in Israel and now is in the new covenant church.
15:45: So I did say birth of the church earlier, but typically I qualify that by saying I believe the church was in seed form in Israel and was by the coming of the Spirit to indwell the individual believers.
16:00: I think there's a unique, excuse the expression, a unique dispensation that we now enjoy of the Spirit that was not enjoyed in the same way in the old covenant.
16:11: I had this conversation, I think, this morning with the guys at Set Free.
16:14: I said, you know, in the old covenant, the Spirit of God regenerated the believer, but I don't believe the Spirit of God indwelled the believer.
16:22: In the new covenant, the Spirit both regenerates and indwells, and the distinction is in the Old Testament, God dwelt among His people.
16:31: In the new covenant, God dwells within His people.
16:34: That's the promise of the new covenant, is that He will make His home in your heart and you will be the temple of God, rather than the temple being in your midst, it'll be in your heart.
16:45: And so there's a major distinction there.
16:48: And so I can still say there is something unique, there is something new about the new covenant, and there's something unique about the birth of this new covenant body.
16:57: So that's why when I say birth of the church, I don't have a problem saying it as long as I'm able to qualify and say I think the church did exist in seed form in Israel, whereas dispensationalists would say no.
17:07: They would say Israel was Israel and the church is the church, and never the twain shall meet.
17:12: And that's where I have my biggest problem with dispensationalism, because they would make the argument that the church and Israel have two different plans from God, two different, essentially two different paradigms.
17:26: You have the paradigm of Israel and the paradigm of the church, and they are not one.
17:31: And I think so many passages of the New Testament would disqualify that as an interpretation.
17:37: Most specifically, Paul who said there is now neither Jew nor Greek, but we are all one in Christ Jesus, Galatians chapter 3.
17:45: So anyway, as you're reading your commentary, if you come across things that make a hard distinction between the church and Israel, and to the point that you feel like you have a question about that, please message me.
17:59: Or ask it in class.
18:00: I'd love to have that conversation.
18:02: Remember, this is supposed to be dialogical.
18:03: We're supposed to be interacting with one another.
18:06: If this weren't nothing but, and that was great English, right? This weren't nothing.
18:09: You can always tell I'm a country fellow.
18:15: If this was only me preaching, this is why I didn't like doing this in the sanctuary back during COVID.
18:21: Because it just felt like an hour long sermon.
18:23: This is supposed to be, you ask, we interact, dialogical study.
18:28: Not just monologue.
18:29: It was just me.
18:30: I could record it and send it to you if that's all it was.
18:33: Yes sir.
18:40: Again, that actually goes to another issue.
18:50: That goes to the issue of how did the world in the first century view the church? And I do think that there is a legitimate argument to be made that people outside of Judaism would have saw Christians as another form of Judaism.
19:12: Just a, and that's why I'm saying a sect of Judaism.
19:15: I think they would have seen the church, and they would have said, okay, those guys are, excuse the expression, they're like a cult.
19:21: They're not Jews, but they're not Romans or Greeks.
19:26: They're some kind of an odd offshoot.
19:29: I don't think the church ever saw itself as that.
19:33: In fact, I would say the church saw itself as the true Israel.
19:38: What do we see in Acts? Where were they going? They were going to the temple.
19:43: They were still, in the first few chapters, I think they saw themselves as the true Israel.
19:49: The Messiah had come, and we have not, we're not the cult.
19:55: We're the true believers.
19:57: We're the ones, we're the inheritors of the promise of all those old covenant promises.
20:03: And you guys who are still sacrificing bulls and goats just don't understand that's over.
20:10: You guys who are still looking for something to come have missed it.
20:16: Think about the first few sermons of Peter.
20:18: You by wicked hands took the Lord Jesus and crucified him.
20:23: His sermons are attacking them for what they did, for not recognizing the parousia, their visitation.
20:29: They had had the Lord in their midst.
20:32: And instead of saying, welcome King, they said crucify him.
20:41: So yeah, how the world would have saw the church I think is different than how the church saw itself.
20:47: So you're saying...
21:01: Am I saying the church was the plan of God? Yeah.
21:04: Oh yeah, absolutely.
21:06: The Bible says in Galatians that when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he would redeem those who were under the law and give them the adoption of sons.
21:18: The fullness of time tells us that God had planned from the beginning to send his son at a certain time in history.
21:26: And when that time came, God sent Jesus.
21:29: So Jesus is not a second plan or a backup plan.
21:34: Jesus isn't drop back and punt.
21:38: Israel didn't do what they were supposed to do, so we're going to drop back and punt and Jesus is going to come in and he's going to run the ball.
21:43: That's not the plan.
21:43: Jesus is the plan from the beginning.
21:45: How do we know this? Because the Bible tells us he was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
21:51: So the plan to send Christ was never a second option.
21:55: It was always the primary.
21:56: In him, all things hold together, Colossians tells us.
22:00: Yes, sir.
22:01: You had your hand up? Yeah.
22:18: In fact, I would argue, in fact, I will be arguing this Sunday in my sermon that Christ is the true Israel.
22:26: Hosea 11.1, out of Egypt, I call my son, you know, that whole passage is about Jesus.
22:33: We know that because Matthew cites that passage in relation to Jesus.
22:38: Jesus is the seed of the woman, Genesis 3.15, that's my sermon this Sunday.
22:43: Jesus is the seed of the woman who crushed the head of the serpent.
22:45: Jesus is the blessing promised to Abraham, and you, all the nations of the world will be blessed.
22:49: Paul tells us in Galatians that's directly about Jesus.
22:52: It's not about all the descendants of Abraham.
22:54: It's about one seed.
22:56: Paul makes the point to say it's not seeds plural, but it's seeds singular, and the one seed that matters is Jesus Christ.
23:02: In him, it's all about him.
23:04: All of the things of the Old Testament point to him.
23:07: The fulfillment, this is, again, this is where I have my biggest issue with dispensationalism because it seems as if they have a secondary set of promises that they want to make sure Israel receives when all of the promises are yes and amen in Christ.
23:20: And so, yeah, I take issue with that for sure.
23:25: The Old Testament says, I will plant amen here in the New Testament.
23:30: Yeah, Christ is the true vine.
23:32: I'm the true vine.
23:33: I'm the bread come down from heaven.
23:34: I am the gate.
23:35: I am the way, the truth, and the life.
23:36: I am, I am, I am.
23:37: That's what we talked about last week in John.
23:39: All right.
23:40: Well, let's move on to our study of Acts.
23:43: Several years ago, I preached through the book of Acts.
23:45: The title of my message was Beyond Our Borders, and I did that.
23:50: I think I did, I don't even remember how many sermons I did to get through the book of Acts, but the subject of it was that one of the things that we see in the book of Acts is that the gospel did not have borders.
24:05: It wasn't kept in the one location of Jerusalem among the one people of Israel, but it was for every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.
24:15: Now Acts follows the ministry of Peter first and then the ministry of Paul throughout the latter part, but there are other apostles going other places, and that is important.
24:27: There are churches being established in Alexandria.
24:31: There's churches being established in India.
24:33: There's churches being established all around.
24:36: We just happen to have the, we happen to have the inspired text of what happened with Paul, but that should not eliminate our reminder that there was no borders.
24:48: It wasn't as if they only went to Asia Minor, which is Turkey now, or they only went to Macedonia, which is, you know, in areas around Greece.
24:58: No.
24:58: They went everywhere.
25:00: What was the first languages? The Bible was translated into Coptic, which is Egyptian, Syriac, Arabic.
25:10: These are the earliest translations of the New Testament.
25:13: In fact, we have, we have about 5,700 Greek manuscripts that are available to us to study and look at now, but if you combine also all the other languages, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, and then you get to the fourth century, you have Latin.
25:28: There are so many, there are more manuscripts that can be counted because now you've gotten away from the original language, but you're looking at the original translations of those languages.
25:39: No borders.
25:40: It was going everywhere.
25:43: The good thing about that, the blessing of that is when you have such widespread and massive proliferation of an idea, then there's no one who can change it without that change being part of the history and we see the change.
26:03: You see, if you only had five guys in a room who know the story, and they're the only ones who know, then that story can be changed, but when that story's been told to 5,000 people and they go every direction, well, if somebody comes along and says, no, no, no, here's what the real story is, somebody says, no, no, I'm part of the 5,000 that heard the true story.
26:25: You are wrong.
26:28: You see, this is the blessing of the copious amounts of manuscripts that we have.
26:32: Nobody could come along and collect all the manuscripts and change them all.
26:37: You see, it was expansion and the proliferation of the information that was a blessing.
26:48: Now, it comes with a difficulty, too, because there are manuscripts that have mistakes.
26:53: In fact, there's a lot of mistakes in the manuscripts.
26:55: But see, we can trace those mistakes back to a source.
27:01: In fact, I'm preaching next Monday at the FIRE Conference, Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, and I'm preaching on Romans 828.
27:08: What's Romans 828? Yep.
27:14: All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
27:18: Did you know there's a major textual variant in that passage? It says in ESV, all things work together for the good of those who are called according to His purpose.
27:29: In the New American Standard Bible, it takes the variant reading and it says God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him.
27:37: And you say, that's not much of a difference.
27:40: It's not much of a difference, but it is a variant in the manuscript tradition.
27:45: And so part of what I'm going to be teaching on is why do I think that variant exists.
27:51: I don't want to get into it right now, but the point of the matter is this is, we can, we can, huh? I wanted to hear it.
27:58: You want to, oh well.
28:01: I'll be honest with you.
28:02: I think that there's a very good chance that that was what we call a scribal emendation.
28:10: See there are times when scribes will include information in their copies to clarify things.
28:17: We do it with our translations.
28:18: Sometimes they're dynamic translations.
28:21: Like the commentaries.
28:22: Yes.
28:22: And sometimes we see those commentaries get introduced into the text.
28:26: And I think that it's very possible that the phrase God caused all things to work together is an attempt by a scribe to clarify what is being said.
28:38: It's the longer reading, but I can't tell you it's not the actual reading.
28:43: I prefer that actually.
28:45: I think it's nice.
28:48: Yeah.
28:48: But either way, God's sovereign, right? No matter how you, no matter which version you think is the correct one, God's sovereign.
28:55: By the way, would anybody in here be interested in a seminar class on textual variation in the history of the New Testament? That'd be cool.
29:03: Okay, because that's something I thought about maybe doing.
29:05: Because we take two months off around Christmas time, and I thought about maybe doing one class on textual variation.
29:12: Textual variation is a very important subject that so few people have ever done any study on.
29:18: And if you never have, it's very useful.
29:21: Because it answers a lot of the questions that people have about the reliability of the text.
29:28: The text is reliable.
29:31: But that doesn't mean that there aren't questions that we have about certain passages.
29:37: And so the whole class would just be going through the major variants of the New Testament.
29:42: So if you're interested, let me know, and maybe we'll do something.
29:45: All right, so I've kind of gotten off the subject.
29:47: Let me get back to Acts.
29:51: Actually, this is from the Introduction to the New Testament by Doug Moo and D.A.
29:58: Carson.
29:58: They say, Acts is a whirlwind tour of three decades of church history.
30:04: The story moves through various areas, including Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Rome, and it focuses on two main figures.
30:10: Who are the two main figures in the Book of Acts, other than the Holy Spirit? Paul and Peter.
30:17: I would say Peter, chapters 1 to 12, focus mainly on the ministry of Peter.
30:24: Chapters 13 to 28, primarily on the ministry of Paul.
30:29: Are there others? Yes.
30:30: There's a chapter where Philip is sort of the main focus, and then there's other chapters.
30:34: But the first 12 chapters deal primarily with the ministry of Peter.
30:39: In fact, there was a film about Peter and Paul.
30:43: I don't know what the name of it was, but it was a film about those two men.
30:49: Peter was working on a boat, and John went to him and was like, Peter, why aren't you preaching anymore? And he said, Jesus took it away from me, and he gave it to Paul.
30:58: This was like some random thing that the movie creator came up with.
31:01: As if, when Paul came on the scene, Peter just went away.
31:06: And I was like, I don't know where that idea came from.
31:08: But I can understand, I guess, if you don't really know anything about church history, that there is a point in Acts where the focus shifts.
31:14: You go from the focus of Peter, who is, of course, the mouthpiece of the apostles.
31:20: I would say he's the big mouth of the apostles.
31:22: I love Peter because we are a lot alike.
31:24: Don't know when to be quiet.
31:26: But he was a big mouth, and then along comes Paul, and the latter part of Acts is about him.
31:35: What's interesting is Paul has a mission, according to his own words.
31:44: This is in Galatians 2, 7, and 8.
31:47: His mission is to the Gentiles.
31:51: And Peter's mission, I'll read it to you, Acts 2, 7.
31:54: When they saw that I was entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles.
32:08: So that's Paul writing, and he's saying Peter has a unique ministry to the circumcised, to the Jews.
32:15: I have a unique ministry to the Gentiles.
32:17: Now that doesn't mean that Paul never preached to a Jew, and it doesn't mean that Peter never preached to a Gentile, because Peter preached to Cornelius, and Paul, every time he went to a new city, where did he go? To the synagogue, because it was to the Jews first, and then to the Greeks.
32:30: So he's not saying there was not some crossover, but his point is there's a unique ministry given to Peter for the Jews, and a unique ministry given to Paul.
32:43: And one of the things about that, when we get to the book of Galatians, which will be actually next week, the first part of Paul's letters, and most of our time next week is going to be on Romans and Galatians, because those two books, a lot of hinges on those.
32:57: We'll look at the others, but the primary focus and our first night on Paul, Galatians, this is what I consider to be his first book, and it's more biographical, it's a very important book, and then of course Romans, this is Magnum Opus theological work.
33:10: But in Galatians, there's that little biographical piece about him and Peter having an issue.
33:15: What was the issue between Peter and Paul? That's right, it says when certain men came from James, who is James? James is the pastor of the church of Jerusalem.
33:29: Brother of Jesus.
33:31: And it says when certain men came from James, Peter would stop eating with Gentiles and he would separate himself.
33:37: And a lot of people give Peter a hard time for that, one of those being Paul.
33:42: He said you're wrong, and he was wrong, but have you ever wondered why he did it? Some people think he was afraid of what they would say about him.
33:52: But I think there's also a more, I want to say gracious way of understanding it.
34:02: I think Peter understood his role as a minister to the Gentiles, and he did not want to interrupt that relationship.
34:11: So when they came, he's like no, I'm not going to do what's going to offend them.
34:17: Because eating with Gentiles would have offended these Jews.
34:21: But Paul comes in and says, even if you're really gracious with Peter, which I'm trying to be, he was still wrong, and Paul totally publicly called him out on it.
34:35: But no matter his motivation, whether it was better or worse, it was the wrong thing to do.
34:41: Because he was making a division where there shouldn't have been, and a distinction where there shouldn't have been.
34:49: So when we look at the book of Acts and getting back to what we're talking about here, we see Paul has the latter half, Peter has the first half, but the primary focus of the whole book, the person who is the focus of the whole book is the Holy Spirit.
35:07: If you could say we have four gospels of Jesus Christ, you could say we also have one gospel of the Spirit.
35:16: Because the book of Acts provides for us the Spirit being unleashed on the world, and providing what Jesus said he would.
35:27: He will come and convict the world of sin and righteousness, and the Spirit comes and does that.
35:35: Alright, let's move, that was all introduction, let's look now very quickly, Authorship of Purpose, I've already explained, I believe Luke is the author based on Acts chapter 1.
35:44: It also, in chapter 16, 20, 21, and 27, there is a switch to the first person, I and we, and Luke is the one apparently in that group in all four chapters.
36:01: So that's another reason why, what's that? Yeah, it's Acts 16, there is a reference to I and we, Acts 20, Acts 21, and Acts 27.
36:17: He talks about we and us, and again, there are several companions there, but there's one that sort of is in all four, and that's Luke.
36:27: So that's part of where we're getting that, and other external evidence says it's Luke as well.
36:31: Yes? Yeah, yes, that's what I'm saying.
36:55: When we read through, he's the only one that seems to make sense as the one.
37:00: Yep, absolutely.
37:02: So again, that's what we would call internal evidence for authorship, and then we have external evidence, which is church tradition, says Luke wrote it.
37:09: So when you have two pieces of internal and external evidence that fit together so well, there's really no reason to argue.
37:20: Okay, next is the dating of the writing.
37:24: We know that it was after Paul's house arrest in Rome.
37:28: How do we know that? Because it's mentioned.
37:33: It's like in there.
37:34: So it could have been written before that because that's when it was written.
37:38: And so we know that that happened, and that would have put it somewhere after 62, 63, and I would say definitely before 70, definitely before 70.
38:03: What is one thing that absolutely you would think it would have but it doesn't? The destruction of the temple, that's true, and that's usually the answer, but that's not the answer this time.
38:16: That was a good answer.
38:17: What's another thing that you would think that it would have? Go ahead.
38:24: Okay.
38:25: Well, the answer I'm looking for is the death of Peter and Paul.
38:28: I would not say that.
38:30: Next time, go for it.
38:31: You can only be wrong.
38:33: It won't hurt.
38:34: The death of Paul.
38:35: Well, yeah.
38:36: We don't see the death of the two men that the book was primarily about.
38:40: The first 12 chapters is about Peter.
38:43: The last latter half is about Paul.
38:45: Neither one of them mention their death, which tells me it was probably written before they died.
38:51: That, again, is a helpful indicator of dating, right? Yes? Were there any significant dates proving when they were murdered? No, before AD 70.
39:02: Certainly would have probably been under the persecution of Nero, so this would put the Book of Acts prior to that.
39:08: You said AD, right? Before AD 70.
39:12: AD.
39:12: Before AD 70, yes.
39:13: I'm sorry.
39:14: I said AD.
39:14: It sounded like 80.
39:15: Yes.
39:16: Before AD 70.
39:18: I want to read from Adam Clark's commentary.
39:21: He says this.
39:22: He said, It is commonly believed that when a general persecution was raised against the Christians by Nero, both St.
39:28: Paul and St.
39:29: Peter sealed the truth with their blood.
39:32: So that is one commentary opinion, but certainly it makes sense that under the Neronic persecution, which you guys are familiar with that little bit of history, Nero claiming the Christians had been responsible for the burning of Rome, and therefore he was it? Huh? Well, yeah, we think so.
39:54: Again, most likely he did it.
39:57: There was a lot of evidence that said he did it, but he needed a fall person.
40:00: Christianity was a sort of new kid on the block.
40:03: You can blame them and get away with it, and everybody hates them anyway.
40:06: The first Christians were thought to be atheists, and that's an interesting point, because if you think of yourself as a first century Roman, you believed in the gods.
40:20: The Christians said, no, we don't believe in the gods.
40:26: We believe in one god.
40:29: So Romans were based on Greek mythology? Oh, yes.
40:33: Well, the Roman pantheon, you had the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon.
40:36: There's a lot of crossover there.
40:38: Sometimes a Roman god and a Greek god will have different names, but they're looking to the same god.
40:46: So you have the Christians.
40:50: They won't worship those gods.
40:52: They won't go to the temples.
40:53: They won't go and pray.
40:54: They're not Jews, and they're not Romans or Greeks, so they're different.
41:02: And, again, one of the terms, one of the ideas was that they don't worship the gods, therefore they're atheistic.
41:09: Christians were accused of a lot of weird things.
41:11: Christians were accused of sexual orgies.
41:13: It wasn't true.
41:15: But think about it.
41:17: What would they call their feasts? Love feasts, agape feasts, right? So they were accused of sexual orgies.
41:24: They were accused of cannibalism because, well, but think about their, what do they eat? The body and blood of Christ.
41:32: So their enemies, they're atheists, they're cannibals, they're sexual deviants, right? And so the enemies of the church used all that in regard to the persecution.
41:47: This is why it's always dangerous when you're studying history to only study history from the side of the victorious because often if the victorious one writes the history of the defeated, they write it in the worst possible way that they can.
42:07: It doesn't mean they're wrong always, but, for instance, the Gnostics.
42:12: The Gnostics was a 2nd century group that was, well, they were in the 1st century too because I think 1 John, we get to 1, 2, and 3 John.
42:22: I think there's some references to the Gnostics there.
42:24: But they were a group that tried to abscond with Christianity, tried to use Christian language.
42:32: This is where the Gospel of Thomas and others, I believe, came from.
42:35: And their point was that they didn't believe.
42:42: They believed matter was bad.
42:43: They believed the body was bad and only spiritual things are good.
42:47: They had a dualistic view.
42:51: But we really know very little about them because what little we do know about them was written by their enemies.
43:00: And so it's hard to know exactly what the Gnostics believed because we don't have their writing.
43:06: We have some, the Nag Hammadi Library and things like that.
43:10: We have enough to be able to draft some conclusions.
43:15: But if you only look at the enemies of the Church, you would think the Church was sexual deviants, cannibals, and atheists.
43:23: Which is, of course, none of those things are true.
43:26: All right, so, moving on.
43:31: Oh, well, I didn't finish this.
43:32: We talked about the death of Peter and Paul.
43:34: It happened under Nero, we believe.
43:37: Tradition says that Peter was crucified upside down, but we don't know that.
43:48: You've probably all seen paintings of that, though, right? The paintings of Peter being crucified upside down.
43:53: Church tradition says Peter was crucified upside down because he was not willing to be killed in the same way that his master was killed.
43:59: So when they went to crucify him, he said, No, crucify me upside down.
44:02: So not only was it a request that he made, I don't know that that's true.
44:08: There's very little history.
44:11: Sounds good.
44:12: I'll go with it, but we don't know.
44:15: Paul is more likely accurate.
44:18: Paul was likely beheaded because Paul was a Roman citizen.
44:21: Roman citizens were not subject to crucifixion.
44:23: It was considered to be an ignoble death, and therefore if you were a Roman citizen, you escaped crucifixion, and they simply lopped off your head.
44:32: So the most likely scenario, Peter probably was crucified because that is how insurrectionists and a lot of Christians were crucified in the first century.
44:42: So there's a good chance Peter was crucified, but not much chance Paul was because of his Roman citizenship.
44:48: And that's one thing Paul liked to do.
44:51: He liked to hold it.
44:52: I mean, you know, he pointed out.
44:54: This is why there are times when I think it's okay if we talk about our rights as Americans.
45:01: I think sometimes it's all right to point out that we have some rights.
45:04: I mean, Paul pointed out his rights.
45:05: I mean, you know, we have to be good citizens and not be jerks, but we do have rights that are afforded us by the fact that we are Americans, and Paul certainly made use of his rights.
45:19: You beat me! Not supposed to do that when they found out he was a Roman citizen.
45:23: They're like, uh-oh, we're in trouble.
45:26: Let him go.
45:27: No, no, no.
45:28: We're going to stay right here.
45:30: You know, so there's a lot to that.
45:34: I hope I'm not being...
45:35: I'm being a little more relaxed than I hope you guys are enjoying.
45:38: Are you learning something? Enjoying it? There's a lot.
45:41: There's so much in Acts to get through in one class.
45:46: But let's quickly now, let's move from the authorship and the dating to the purpose.
45:53: What is the purpose of Acts? Well, I think the purpose of Acts is similar to the purpose of Luke in that when Luke wrote his gospel, he was giving a biography of Christ, a gospel biography.
46:10: And in Acts, he's giving a biography of the birth of this new covenant church.
46:18: And I'll read to you from introducing the New Testament.
46:20: It says, Perhaps Luke's most fundamental purpose in Acts is to help Christians answer the question, Who are we? I'll go on.
46:31: Two thousand years of church history sometimes prevent us from seeing just how basic that question was for first believers.
46:37: As long as only Jews were among the faithful, others could think that this new group was just another sect of Jews with a crazy idea about who the Messiah was.
46:45: But as soon as Samaritans and Gentiles began entering the picture, it was impossible to identify Christianity as a subset of Judaism.
46:52: Christianity was now something new, in continuity with the old, of course, but distinct from it as well.
46:58: Thus, a new name had to be coined for this group.
47:01: The Way.
47:02: It was first called The Way.
47:04: But what was it called in Acts 11.26? It was in Antioch that they were first called Christians.
47:13: What verse was that? Acts 11.26.
47:18: So, Luke's purpose is identity, in one sense.
47:24: Who are we? We are Christians.
47:31: Acts begins the historical record of two thousand years of church history.
47:35: When I teach church history, those of you who took it a year and a half, two years ago, whenever we started, what did we start? First night.
47:42: Book of Acts.
47:43: We started with Pentecost.
47:46: Moving from Pentecost to the expansion.
47:50: Don't remember? It was a long time.
47:53: But church history, a good church history, begins there.
47:59: And it expands for two thousand years.
48:01: All right.
48:04: Let's move now to theological insights.
48:12: Your commentary says this in the introduction to Acts.
48:15: It says, Acts is a bridge, not only between the life of Christ and the Christ life taught in the epistles, but it's also a transitional link between Judaism and Christianity, between law and grace.
48:30: Acts is the transition between Judaism and Christianity.
48:35: I think I showed you this already, but for the sake of, just in case I didn't, this is a brand new marker.
48:49: How do I do this? It's brand new.
48:53: Not today, Satan.
48:54: Yeah, not today, Satan.
48:55: That's right.
48:56: I brought two.
48:57: This one ain't great either.
48:58: It might be the board.
49:00: Okay.
49:00: If we think of time as a line, and I'm not going to go into all the creation.
49:07: We go creation all the way up to, we did that in the last class.
49:11: All right.
49:11: So we say, let's start with the cross as the introduction to the new covenant, right? Jesus said the new covenant is in his blood, right? So the new covenant is ratified in the cross, and it is vindicated in the resurrection, right? He dies for our sins.
49:32: He's raised for our vindication, right? So we see this.
49:36: The new covenant has begun.
49:38: Now, some people don't believe that.
49:41: Some people believe that we're not part of the new covenant.
49:45: Dispensationalists believe that it's only for the Jews.
49:48: It's a new covenant with the house of Israel.
49:50: It doesn't involve the church.
49:51: The church is something else.
49:52: There's a Greek word for that.
49:54: It's baloney.
49:56: Go ahead.
49:56: That Holy Ghost seal there, correct? Yes.
50:00: Sealed for the day of redemption.
50:01: That's Ephesians, I think Ephesians 1.
50:07: But my point is this.
50:10: Here's where the new covenant begins, and one could argue here's where the old covenant ends.
50:19: But there is a moment of grace which ends with the destruction of Jerusalem in 80-70.
50:32: So this is somewhere around, we'll just say around 30-ish.
50:37: So we have a 40-year period of transition where the new covenant has come, therefore the old covenant is functionally over, but there's a gracious, if you will, a grace period where they will still have the temple in their midst.
51:04: But Jesus did say not one stone is going to be left upon another.
51:08: He made that prophecy very clear.
51:11: This is going to end, and it did.
51:15: And since 80-70, there's been no sacrifices, there's been no temple, there's one wall left, and to call it a wall is being a little generous.
51:26: It's just a bunch of stones laid up on top of each other and it's being held together with prayer.
51:30: Literally, they write prayers and they stick them in the holes.
51:33: And so that's called the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall.
51:36: So this 40-year period, this is the period of Acts.
51:43: Because it begins with Jesus' ascension, right? And it ends with Paul in Rome, and so it's the history of the transitional point.
51:56: It's the history of the transition.
51:59: And so if somebody said, what's Acts about? It's the transitional history of the church, moving from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant.
52:16: And because it is historical in nature, it does not provide us with as many direct theological propositions as do some other books.
52:26: If you compare the direct theological propositions in Acts with those in Romans, it's not even close.
52:32: If you compare the direct theological propositions in Acts with Hebrews, it doesn't even touch it, as far as the propositional statements of truth.
52:45: Because what we have in Acts is descriptive.
52:50: And you need to understand the distinction between what in the Bible is prescriptive and what is descriptive.
53:01: Prescriptive is a command.
53:06: Descriptive is this is what happened.
53:10: Not everything that happens is a command.
53:14: It's one of the things I have to explain to my Pentecostal friends.
53:17: Because they read the book of Acts as it is a manual for church behavior.
53:22: And this is the way the church is supposed to look in all ages and for all times.
53:28: And thus they take the descriptive and they make it prescriptive.
53:35: And it's not.
53:38: And one of the reasons why we need to understand this is because Acts rests within a transitional moment in history.
53:46: Therefore, things happened in that 40 year period that would not be for all time.
53:51: And were not intended to be for all time.
54:01: Prescriptive is a command to prescribe.
54:06: And descriptive is describing what happened.
54:10: It's telling what happened.
54:16: If we look at Acts in the transitional period, we are actually watching Hebrews 8.13 come about.
54:28: Hebrews 8.13 says this.
54:31: In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete, and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
54:42: I'll say it again.
54:43: In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first covenant obsolete, and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
54:55: Why does the writer of Hebrews say it's ready to vanish away? Because Hebrews is being written right around here.
55:02: And when is it going to vanish away? Right here.
55:07: I had an argument with a guy at Set Free about this.
55:10: There was a guy at Set Free who was a Torah observant.
55:15: And he caught me after one of my lessons one day, and he said, I want to talk to you.
55:21: Okay.
55:21: So we stopped and talked, and he said, I want to know your view on keeping of the dietary laws and all that.
55:30: We went back and forth for a few minutes, and I finally just said, I said, stop.
55:35: I said, your biggest problem is you don't understand Hebrews.
55:38: I said, really don't understand the New Testament.
55:41: You don't understand the new covenant.
55:42: I said, but primarily you don't understand Hebrews.
55:45: I said, because everything you're saying Hebrews says is wrong.
55:49: And the biggest issue is you don't understand the distinction between the new covenant and the old covenant.
55:54: And I said, everything you're telling me to do, Hebrews tells me has passed away.
56:00: And he says, no, it's about to pass away, but it hasn't passed away yet.
56:05: I said, say what? He said, that passage says it's ready to vanish away.
56:11: It doesn't say it has vanished away.
56:12: I said, well, this just tells me you don't understand history.
56:16: I said, because when it says it's ready to vanish away, it meant within two years, not 2,000.
56:29: The writer's writing about something that's just about to happen, not 2,000 years later or more.
56:38: Hebrews is all about this, guys.
56:40: When we get to our study of the general epistles, we're going to spend some time in Hebrews and see that Hebrews is the book you must understand to really understand what we have in Christ.
56:55: We have a better covenant.
57:00: Everything is better.
57:06: So, looking at Acts, because I'll give you an example.
57:09: We had a lady at our church.
57:11: She ended up leaving our church years ago to go to the Seventh-day Adventist movement.
57:17: And the reason why she went was because she became convinced that she should worship on Saturday.
57:26: And you all know my position on the Sabbath.
57:28: That's another conversation.
57:30: But the issue for her was, I want to do it the way the apostles did.
57:35: And the apostles went to the temple on the Sabbath, so I want to do it like the apostles did it.
57:40: And I said, well, if that's your argument, where is your temple? If you want to do it like the apostles did it, you can't! Because that time has passed.
57:56: That moment in time was a very particular moment, and it begun.
58:03: I didn't say it like that.
58:13: Yeah, good point.
58:15: That we won't worship on that mountain or this mountain.
58:21: So, understanding Acts as a transitional period in time is very important.
58:25: When we get to our study of Revelation, put your seatbelt on, because that's going to be a busy night.
58:32: But I'm going to argue that the whole book of Revelation, I think, is about what happened in AD 70, because it's a closing the door on the Old Covenant.
58:45: It is closing the door on what Christ came to fulfill.
58:50: And therefore, we now live on this side of the finished work of Christ.
58:56: And we don't have to go back under the law.
58:58: What is Hebrews all about? And I know we're in Acts tonight, but what's Hebrews all about? Don't go back under that! Don't abandon the New Covenant to go back to a dead, unusable covenant.
59:12: It doesn't work anymore.
59:15: Sorry, I get excited.
59:19: Once we recognize Acts occupies a transitional moment in history, certain things become evident.
59:26: Number one, the signs and wonders which accompanied the ministry of the apostles were not meant for all times.
59:32: I think that that's part of the argument for the transitional period.
59:35: Now, not everybody agrees with me on that, but I take a cessationist position, which means I believe that at the death of the last apostle, that the sign gifts that were intended to accompany the work of the giving of Scripture, similar to the signs that were given to Moses and to others who gave Scripture, I think that that was a transitional period not meant for all time.
59:57: That period is often referred to as the apostolic age.
01:00:05: Why do we call it the apostolic age? Because it's the time of the apostles.
01:00:10: Yeah, it's not a hard one.
01:00:12: So it would have ended not with AD 70, but it would have ended with the death of the last apostle, which would have been John, who lived into the 90s.
01:00:20: So there's no more apostles today? I would say...
01:00:25: I'll say this, brother, and I know you're ribbing me, but I'll...
01:00:30: No, no, no, I'm glad you asked.
01:00:33: I would say there's no more capital A apostles, and that's where I think the distinction has been made.
01:00:38: There are a few people who are called apostle that are not given the designation of apostle.
01:00:44: James, the pastor of the Church of Jerusalem, is called an apostle, but he was not one of the twelve.
01:00:51: Barnabas is called an apostle, but he was not one of the twelve.
01:00:54: And so we can see a distinction between the apostles, capital A, twelve, and what we would say is simply of the generic term of the word, which means ones who are sent.
01:01:10: And so if a man today said he wanted to be called apostle, I don't like it personally because I think that it's from...
01:01:17: I think that you're...
01:01:18: Because I think that they think that they're part of that apostolic group.
01:01:21: And that's the...
01:01:22: You know, like the New Apostolic Reformation, I think is dangerous because they really believe they're the new part of the twelve.
01:01:29: But if a person just sees it as the generic little A apostle and they understand the meaning but they like that title, I still wouldn't like it, but it wouldn't be as big a deal as someone who was saying I have the apostolic gifts and I'm...
01:01:40: I have the authority of the apostles.
01:01:42: The big issue, though, the big issue for a lot of people is the question of Paul because Paul is an apostle, capital A, but he's not one of the twelve unless you accept the theory that the church was wrong in choosing Matthias and they were presumptive because God had chosen Saul of Tarsus.
01:02:07: I don't take that position, but that is a position some people take that Matthias was not the twelfth disciple but it was...
01:02:13: or twelfth apostle, but it was Paul.
01:02:20: Actually, in the upper room, it was to have been with him from the beginning.
01:02:23: And so Paul would not have qualified for that, but that was the qualification given within the church.
01:02:31: We want to choose men who have been with Christ from the beginning.
01:02:35: As far as we do, we know Paul saw Christ risen.
01:02:40: And so in that sense, Paul calls himself something, though, very interesting.
01:02:44: He calls himself one born out of season.
01:02:47: Remember that in 1 Corinthians 15? He says, you know, Jesus appeared to the 500 and he appeared to Peter and he appeared to me as one born out of season.
01:02:57: So he refers to himself as a unique specimen in the church.
01:03:03: Maybe not one of the twelve, but as this unique form of apostle.
01:03:07: And so I think in that, there's almost a recognition of the unique character of his apostolic ministry.
01:03:16: But some people do believe he's the twelfth and that Matthias was a mistake.
01:03:19: I don't believe that.
01:03:20: Yes? You got my 1 Corinthians 15 and the born out of season.
01:03:37: I think the context would bear out.
01:03:39: He's referring to his regeneration, not his physical birth.
01:03:43: I think he's talking.
01:03:44: I think he's talking about when he was when he was born again.
01:03:57: Well, I'm not saying you're wrong.
01:03:58: I'm saying we would need to sit down and look at the text more.
01:04:01: I think.
01:04:01: So are you saying it's his physical birth? No.
01:04:04: OK, then maybe we still agree.
01:04:06: Then, yeah, that's why.
01:04:13: Yeah, I think.
01:04:13: Yeah, that's.
01:04:14: Yeah, that's.
01:04:15: That's what I'm saying is he didn't come to Christ when the rest of the apostles did.
01:04:19: He was born out of season, but that puts him in a unique place.
01:04:22: That's what I'm saying is by by Christ coming to him on the road to Damascus, which is something we don't.
01:04:28: We don't know of Christ doing that for anybody else.
01:04:31: All right.
01:04:31: There's nobody else that we know of that Christ appears to in a unique way to save the way he did Paul.
01:04:39: And so, Paul, not only it's the timing, but it's the circumstance of his coming to Christ.
01:04:48: And so I think his out of season is not just referring to timing.
01:04:51: I think it's referring to the whole the whole fullness of the way that he came.
01:04:56: He had a unique.
01:04:57: He had a unique, you know, he didn't have somebody witness to him.
01:05:01: Jesus witnessed to him.
01:05:02: Right.
01:05:03: He had a unique coming and a unique ministry.
01:05:07: And and so.
01:05:08: So I'm not saying you're wrong.
01:05:09: I'm just saying I think there's more than just the timing.
01:05:11: I think it's is all that.
01:05:14: OK.
01:05:17: We talked about the transitional period.
01:05:27: Yeah.
01:05:27: Well, I said there were signs and wonders that were specific to that time.
01:05:33: We call that the apostolic age.
01:05:38: And what I have in my notes is I have a little that I don't have time to do.
01:05:42: I was going to do a little lesson, a quick lesson on the tongues.
01:05:45: Let me just say this.
01:05:45: And because we need to take about three minute break.
01:05:48: And then we're going to come back and we're going to look at we're going to look at the difficulties and controversies for the last 15 minutes.
01:05:55: Very quickly, though, when he talks about the tongues, there are only three times in the Bible the gift of tongues is mentioned.
01:06:03: Book of Acts, Book of First Corinthians and possibly the Book of Mark, depending on how you read the latter chapter of Mark.
01:06:10: The Book of Acts tells us something about the tongues that the other ones don't.
01:06:15: It tells us what the tongues did.
01:06:17: They enabled the people to speak in a language that they did not know.
01:06:21: And the people heard them in their own native tongue.
01:06:25: First Corinthians, people use First Corinthians to argue for a different kind of tongues, an ecstatic speech that only God understands.
01:06:34: But I think that is I think that that is an unnecessary reading of First Corinthians.
01:06:38: I think that the the method and the purpose of tongues is given to us in Acts.
01:06:44: And then the practice of tongues is given to us in First Corinthians.
01:06:47: And I think seeing it two different types of tongues creates somewhat of a problem.
01:06:54: Ultimately, though, there is no doubt what tongues was in Acts.
01:06:58: Because when they spoke with tongues, the people heard them in their own language.
01:07:02: It was a real human language.
01:07:05: And when I've taught on tongues, and if you're interested, I can post some of my lessons on this because I've taught several times on this subject why I would argue that the tongues in First Corinthians 14 is the same tongues in Acts 2.
01:07:18: That it's not two different gifts.
01:07:20: Because Pentecostals have to argue it's two different gifts.
01:07:22: Because nobody is getting Pentecostal blessings and going to Spain and talking in Spanish who ain't never studied Spanish.
01:07:30: But see, this is the thing.
01:07:31: When the Pentecostal church was birthed, it was birthed on that promise.
01:07:37: The man who was responsible, the earliest man who was responsible, the Kansas City prophets, and then it went into the Azusa Street mission and all that.
01:07:47: He argued that they would speak in languages they had never studied.
01:07:53: And he even had people say they were writing in Chinese, never studied Chinese.
01:07:58: And later, those writings were looked at and it wasn't nothing but a bunch of scratches on the paper.
01:08:03: There was no...
01:08:05: And they said, oh, but that's the Holy Spirit's language.
01:08:07: See? Even the answer to the question of what it is is a response based on we can't do what we said we could do.
01:08:17: And that's speaking other languages.
01:08:20: If somebody came to me and never studied French and started speaking in French, you know what I'd say? That's a miracle of God.
01:08:27: But it does not take a miracle to make a repetitive monosyllabic sound.
01:08:33: And that's what...
01:08:35: Or writing chicken scratch.
01:08:36: Yes, Sir, Brother Tim.
01:08:39: So, it's interesting you said that they...
01:08:46: Well, I think that that came later.
01:08:52: I think they always thought it was...
01:08:54: until they couldn't do it.
01:08:56: So, in 14, in Corinthians, it tells us that it's for a sign of judgment as well.
01:09:02: So how do they...
01:09:04: I don't know the argument, so I was saying how would they put that together? Oh, I'm not sure.
01:09:08: I'd have to go back and look at how they would interpret that phrase.
01:09:11: They say...
01:09:12: The sign of judgment on Israel, you know, isn't that what it says in 1 Corinthians 14 that it's a sign of judgment? I tell you what.
01:09:19: Let's take our break.
01:09:20: We'll talk about it over the break.
01:09:21: Everybody take two minutes.
01:09:22: Alright.
01:09:24: We have very little time left.
01:09:31: Maybe you can give me an extra five minutes tonight.
01:09:35: But I want to ask this question before we get to the difficulties and controversies because there are a few.
01:09:44: Do you have any questions about Acts that you were hoping I would answer tonight and I haven't dealt with? Did you come in with tonight saying, boy, I hope he talks about this and I didn't deal with it? When the Holy Spirit came and everybody...
01:10:05: You mean just to explain it? Well, I mean just what your outtake was on it.
01:10:09: I mean...
01:10:11: Well, the coming of the Spirit and the falling as it were divided tongues of fire.
01:10:19: I talked about the fact that I think that was the birth of that promise.
01:10:24: The promise of the new covenant was that every believer would have the Holy Spirit within him.
01:10:30: You will not have to tell everyone know the Lord because they will know Him.
01:10:35: Why? Because everybody...
01:10:36: See, in the old covenant, you could be in the covenant and not be a believer because you were born into the covenant.
01:10:44: This is my big issue with Presbyterian theology because they believe you're born into the covenant now.
01:10:50: And I say, oh, nay, nay.
01:10:51: Because in this covenant, everyone is a believer because the promise of the new covenant...
01:10:56: Oh, nay, nay, you like that? The promise of the new covenant is you don't have to tell the other person know the Lord.
01:11:04: Right? Because they already know the Lord.
01:11:07: If you're in the covenant, it's because you know the Lord.
01:11:11: And so it's...
01:11:13: That doesn't mean you don't have to proselytize or evangelize outside.
01:11:18: But if you're in the covenant, it's because you know the Lord.
01:11:21: That's there.
01:11:22: All right.
01:11:23: So I think that's one of the important things about the coming of the Spirit.
01:11:29: All right, let's look at a few difficulties.
01:11:32: Because Acts is a historical work with no other books containing the same exact material, we don't have the same issues of harmonization that we do with the Gospels.
01:11:42: We don't have four different stories that we have to harmonize.
01:11:46: We have the one written by Luke.
01:11:49: But there is some extra-biblical history that has to be harmonized.
01:11:54: But the most important piece of harmony, I think, that we must understand is the harmony between Galatians and Acts.
01:12:01: Because Galatians is the most autobiographical of Paul's letters.
01:12:07: And in Galatians, we read about something that is never mentioned in Acts.
01:12:12: In fact, turn in your Bibles to Galatians.
01:12:14: I did want to point this out tonight because I think it's important for you to understand as a survey of Acts, Paul gives us a bit of information in Galatians that we don't have in Acts.
01:12:25: And it's in Galatians 1, verse 15.
01:12:33: It says, But when He who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by His grace was pleased to reveal His Son to me in order that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.
01:12:48: But I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus.
01:12:52: Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days.
01:12:58: But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother.
01:13:01: Alright, so right there, we have Paul saying that there was a three year period that Acts never mentions.
01:13:14: In fact, the corresponding passage is Acts 9.
01:13:17: Turn to Acts 9.
01:13:24: In Acts 9, verse 18, this is after Paul is converted.
01:13:38: He's at the house of Ananias.
01:13:40: No, this isn't the Ananias who died in chapter 5.
01:13:43: This is a different Ananias, of course.
01:13:47: He's at the house of Ananias.
01:13:49: It says, And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight.
01:13:54: Then he rose and was baptized and taking food he was strengthened.
01:13:57: For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus.
01:14:00: And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue, saying, He is the Son of God.
01:14:04: And all who heard him were amazed and said, Is this not the man who made havoc in Jerusalem and those who were called upon his name? And has he not come here for a purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests? But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.
01:14:20: When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul.
01:14:24: They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him.
01:14:27: But his disciples took him by night, led him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.
01:14:33: And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple.
01:14:40: But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord who spoke to him and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus.
01:14:52: So he went in and out among Jerusalem preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.
01:14:59: All right, so right there, go back with me to back to verse 20.
01:15:07: It says, Immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, He is the Son of God.
01:15:13: Verse 19 says, For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus.
01:15:17: And then later in that same paragraph, it says, But Saul increased all the more in strength.
01:15:22: This is verse 22.
01:15:24: And confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.
01:15:28: And then verse 23, When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him.
01:15:31: That's probably the three years.
01:15:34: The many days.
01:15:36: That's just weird that Luke would describe three years as many days.
01:15:41: But if you follow the order of events that Paul gives us in Galatians, he says, I was in Damascus.
01:15:51: I went to Arabia.
01:15:52: Came back to Damascus.
01:15:54: Spent three years.
01:15:55: Then I went to Jerusalem.
01:15:57: In this story, it doesn't mention Arabia.
01:16:00: It says, He was in Damascus for many days.
01:16:04: And then he went to Jerusalem.
01:16:06: So the comparative thing is that we have another example of not necessarily telescoping, but it's similar to telescoping, just condensing.
01:16:18: Telescoping is literally almost truncating the story.
01:16:23: This is just leaving a part out completely.
01:16:26: He's just left out a part.
01:16:27: Like I did this a few weeks ago, but for those who weren't here, I don't remember.
01:16:32: What did I do today? I went to set free.
01:16:36: Then I went to get my hair cut.
01:16:39: And then I went home.
01:16:41: Is that true? Yes.
01:16:43: But in the middle of all that, I came here to the church.
01:16:45: I picked up my paycheck.
01:16:46: I went to Best Buy.
01:16:47: I bought some speakers for an interview I'm doing tomorrow.
01:16:50: I went home.
01:16:51: Those speakers didn't work, so I had to go back to Best Buy.
01:16:54: And now I'm trying to figure out how to make the second set of speakers work.
01:16:56: I didn't tell you anything about the speakers because it didn't matter.
01:16:59: What matters is, the part I wanted to tell you was, I went and got my hair cut, and I went home.
01:17:05: So I didn't tell you a lie the first time.
01:17:07: I just didn't tell you everything.
01:17:10: That's the point of understanding harmonization.
01:17:13: Paul is being autobiographical in Galatians.
01:17:16: So when he says, I went to Arabia, we don't know how long he was in Arabia.
01:17:21: People say he was in Arabia three years.
01:17:22: That's not what it says.
01:17:23: It says he went to Arabia and came back to Damascus then after three years.
01:17:29: So it was likely, and we don't know how long it was, but we know from the time of his conversion to the time of his Jerusalem interaction, which is in Acts.
01:17:40: He goes to Jerusalem.
01:17:41: They're scared of him.
01:17:43: It was a three-year period.
01:17:45: Whereas if you only had Acts, it would seem like it was only a few days.
01:17:53: So Galatians provides us a more autobiographical view of Paul's story.
01:18:03: So that's the first one.
01:18:04: It's not a controversy.
01:18:06: It's a difficulty if you read Galatians and you say, well, that's not in Acts.
01:18:09: Why is it not in Acts? Because Luke didn't put it in Acts.
01:18:12: It was his choice to not include that.
01:18:16: It doesn't make it wrong.
01:18:17: It's just not there.
01:18:20: The one that is a little more difficult, and when I say difficult, it's only a little bit difficult, but it is more difficult, is when Paul retells his conversion story several times in the book of Acts, he varies his amount of detail and there seems to be a contradiction.
01:18:42: There's not, but I'm just giving you the reason for the argument.
01:18:46: There seems to be a contradiction in what he says in Acts chapter 9 and Acts chapter 22.
01:18:52: Now for a moment, I just want to throw this out there.
01:18:57: I don't believe there's a contradiction, but even if there were a contradiction, and don't you dare throw anything, don't you get your tomatoes ready, it wouldn't be a contradiction in the Bible.
01:19:14: It would be Paul telling the story wrong.
01:19:18: It would be an accurate account of a mistake that he made.
01:19:23: Do you understand that that's still, the Bible's not wrong, Paul was wrong.
01:19:26: I don't believe that's what happened, but there are some who make that argument.
01:19:30: It's not that the Bible's wrong, Paul's just wrong.
01:19:32: He just forgot what happened.
01:19:34: I don't think Paul forgot what happened, but there are some who make that argument.
01:19:38: Here's what happens.
01:19:39: In chapter 9, in fact, let's go there.
01:19:43: I'll show you what the issue is.
01:19:46: In Acts chapter 9, verse 7, you're already in 9, we were just there.
01:19:50: Go back to verse 7.
01:19:52: It says, The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.
01:19:57: Notice that it says, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.
01:20:04: Now go to chapter 22.
01:20:08: This is Paul recounting his conversion experience.
01:20:18: Acts chapter 22.
01:20:21: And he's recounting his conversion experience.
01:20:24: Verse 9.
01:20:26: Now those who were with me saw the light, but not...
01:20:29: Well, I hate when the ESV does this.
01:20:34: The ESV tries to fix it, but it doesn't need to be fixed.
01:20:38: It says, Now those who were with me saw the light, but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking.
01:20:47: That's what it says in the Greek, and that's why I don't like the ESV.
01:20:49: It makes that change.
01:20:52: Because the text in the Greek says, They heard not the voice.
01:20:56: And that's where the issue comes of the accusation of conflict.
01:21:03: Because in chapter 9, they heard the voice.
01:21:05: In chapter 22, they didn't hear the voice.
01:21:08: Right? And so, now you have an issue of harmonization in the same book.
01:21:13: Did they or did they not hear the voice? Now, the ESV translators are trying to fix the problem by saying they did not understand.
01:21:20: The word Akuo, in the Greek, means to hear.
01:21:26: But just like in the English language, the word to hear can have a variety of semantic meanings.
01:21:34: So like, if I get my daughter...
01:21:37: My daughter has this terrible thing that she's been doing.
01:21:41: She runs and jumps on the couch.
01:21:43: And I say, Don't do that.
01:21:47: And she'll...
01:21:48: She runs and jumps on the couch.
01:21:50: So now we have to discipline, right? But what's the first thing I say? Did you hear me? Right? What do I mean by that? I know she heard me.
01:22:00: Did you understand what I said to you? Did you understand what that meant when I said...
01:22:06: And she goes, Yeah.
01:22:08: But you did it anyway.
01:22:09: Yeah.
01:22:10: So, so, so, we understand Akuo, in the Greek, has a similar semantic range as here in English to understand.
01:22:21: And I do believe what Paul was saying in this particular instance was that the men who were with me did not understand the words that they heard.
01:22:30: Now, why wouldn't they have understood? Well, maybe Paul heard it clearly and they heard some form of an echo or a sound.
01:22:38: Or maybe Jesus was speaking to Paul in Hebrew and the ones who were accompanying him would not have understood his native language.
01:22:48: We don't know.
01:22:49: We don't know.
01:22:50: But, there's not a contradiction and I don't think Paul's misund...
01:22:55: I don't think Paul's misremembering.
01:22:57: I think Paul's making a point.
01:22:59: They heard something but they did not know what they heard.
01:23:03: Whereas in chapter 9 it just says they didn't hear.
01:23:07: And I think when it says they didn't hear I think it means they did not understand what they heard.
01:23:11: So, that is the...
01:23:14: Or in chapter 9 it says they did hear.
01:23:16: In chapter 22 it says they heard but I think it means they didn't understand.
01:23:21: Such a small thing but I tell you what.
01:23:23: Atheists have a field day with it.
01:23:25: Anybody who's trying to attack the Bible they use little things like that and they'll say, Oh, do you know about this great contradiction in Acts? And I say, Nah.
01:23:35: This is not a contradiction.
01:23:38: Words have meanings.
01:23:39: Words have to be understood in their context.
01:23:43: And context is king.
01:23:44: So, that is one of the ones, if you ever look at difficulties in Acts that's one that'll come up.
01:23:51: As I conclude, I want us to remember that Acts is the major transitional work of the Bible.
01:23:57: It takes us from the Old Covenant into the New Covenant.
01:24:00: We see this modeled in the transitions made by people involved.
01:24:04: Common men became empowered evangelists.
01:24:07: Fishermen became apostles.
01:24:09: And a hater of the church became its most powerful ally.
01:24:13: Acts is all about transition.
01:24:17: Jesus told his disciples this transition would come.
01:24:20: In John chapter 16, verse 7.
01:24:22: He said, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away for if I do not go away the helper will not come to you.
01:24:27: But if I go, I will send him to you.
01:24:32: And Acts recounts the fulfillment of that promise by Jesus.
01:24:37: Alright, everybody.
01:24:38: This ends tonight's lesson.
01:24:41: Next week, we go into the first part of the Pauline writings.
01:24:48: And be prepared.
01:24:50: Got a lot to talk about.
01:24:52: Let's pray.
01:24:53: Father, thank you for your word.
01:24:55: And may it be that your word continues to remind us every day of how much you love us that you would give us your word.
01:25:02: We thank you for it in Jesus' name.