WWUTT 2536 Introduction to the Book of Acts (Acts 1:1-3)

The Great Commission and the Gospel Reaching the Ends of the Earth

Jesus told his disciples, you will be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and even to the end of the earth. And we believe in the gospel today because it made it to the end of the earth, when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it. Visit our website at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you Becky and greetings everyone. Well it is a brand new year, so we come into a brand new study. We just finished up studying through the gospel of Luke. Let's go on to Luke's sequel, the Acts of the Apostles.

If you have a Bible, open up to Acts chapter 1 and hold on there as I'm going to begin by reading verses 1 through 11 to start things off. Now I've already done a study through the book of Acts on this podcast, but the first time I went through it was in the English Standard Version.

Let's switch translations. This is now out of the Legacy Standard Bible that I'm going to open up reading Acts chapter 1 verses 1 through 11. Hear the word of the Lord. The first account, O Theophilus, I composed about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after he had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over forty days and speaking about the things concerning the kingdom of God.

And gathering them together, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, you heard of from me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now.

So when they had come together, they were asking him, saying, Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel? But he said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the end of the earth.

And after he had said these things, he was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while he was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them.

They also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched him go into heaven. And thus begins the book of Acts.

Luke’s Sequel to the Gospel and the Book of Acts as Witness

Now what we're going to do today is mostly an introduction to the book of Acts. We're not going to do a lot of exposition, even of the passage that we have just read here, although I'll certainly talk about that introduction.

Same as we read at the beginning of the gospel of Luke, with Luke addressing this guy Theophilus. Here he is addressing Theophilus again with a sequel to his first letter, so to speak, the account that he had put together of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now he is going to be speaking of the apostles and what they did following Jesus' ministry as he commissioned them to be his witnesses, going out into the world, preaching and doing many great miracles.

Now, witnesses is a very important word here, and in fact, that word, as we find it in Acts 1 .8, is a theme that comes up throughout the book of Acts. And we'll talk about that as we go through an overview of this particular letter.

And I'll probably refer to it a letter several times because that is the way that it starts with Paul addressing Theophilus, putting together an account of those things that have transpired in the works of the apostles for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Why Luke and Acts Belong Together

Now it was three years ago, if memory serves, that I started reading through the gospels. It was in about March of 23, when I started in the book of Matthew and I said I was just going to read straight through the gospels, which we've done three gospels so far, Matthew, Mark and Luke in the New Testament study that we do on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

That leaves John. John is a book that I've already taught through on this podcast. The only two books that I've done twice is John and Romans. So Acts is now the third time or the third book, rather, that I've taught through more than once.

And then when I finish Acts, we'll go back to John. It just seemed appropriate that when we finish Luke, we go on to Acts. I've always wanted to do that anyway. So this is my first time to be able to do it, finishing up the gospel of Luke and going right on into part two, which is the acts of the apostles.

Then we'll swing back around and get John. But the reason why I wanted to read just straight through the gospels and start studying in the gospels is because people don't know them. They think they do.

Because we've got Easter on the calendar and we've got Christmas on the calendar. We talk about this stuff all the time, and we've even got great movies and TV shows that are based on this stuff. The number one show in the country at times, every once in a while, The Chosen pops up as the number one most watched show in the country.

I think by now it is the most translated TV show ever made. No TV show has been put into more languages than The Chosen, because for the people who make it, it's more than just entertainment. They think of it as being evangelistic outreach as well.

The Chosen, Bible Reading, and Added Material

But the thing is, with this show, they embellish a lot. They add all kinds of material that's not in the gospels. Even by creator Dallas Jenkins' own admission, 95 of what is in the show is not what you're going to find in the gospels.

Yet they boast that the show actually increases Bible reading. Jenkins has a video where he talks about how on certain nights where something controversial would happen in the show, I say nights, whatever day it is, I don't guess we're really going by the night that this show aired anymore because it's not on cable television.

So whenever the show had debuted, whatever day it was, he would say that the Bible apps would contact him, YouVersion being one of them, and they would say, you know, when you talked about this controversial subject in your show, we got a spike on that story in our Bible app because of what you had in your show.

And so he's boasting about how The Chosen is making people go to their Bible and read their Bible. I would say, though, for the vast majority of people, the vast majority who are reading their Bible, they're reading their Bible in light of what they see in The Chosen.

I get emails from people who will say, yeah, my wife and I, we watched it together or, you know, my family and I, we would watch it. And then we would go to our Bible and we would find that what's in the Bible is not in the show.

And we realized it was taking us far away from scripture. So we stopped watching the show and we started reading the Bible. I've heard that testimony several times. But for the vast majority of people who are watching the show and reading their Bible, what they read in their Bible, they read through the lens of the show.

And it's not true that the show is trying to preserve exactly what it is that's in the Bible without added commentary or fluff. There isn't in the show. There's not been one account in the show that I can watch in the show.

And it's word for word what we read in scripture, not one time. And I've done, you know, two seasons now of the show. I haven't watched all the way through. What are they on the fifth season now? I haven't watched all the way through the fifth season.

So I can't keep up with everything that they've done. I don't have the time and I'm not even that interested in it to begin with. But of everything that I've watched so far, none of it's word for word.

And those scenes that are in the Bible that they've taken and put in the show, they boast about like, oh, this was such an important scene because it's right here in the Bible and we wanted to make it accurate.

And they don't. It's not accurate at all. They change things. They move things around. And then what lines in the show are what you find in the Bible. The commentary around those lines changes the meaning of the line the way that you would find it in scripture.

It really is a mess and it is not leading people in the truth. It's leading them into myth and speculation. And this is the very thing that the apostle Paul warns Timothy against in first Timothy chapter one to not let anybody teach any different doctrine that leads to myth and speculation.

And so that's what the chosen is doing. It's leading people astray rather than leading them into the truth. And now having gotten close to finishing the Gospels, because I think they just have one season left if memory serves, once they finish the Gospels, they're going on to the book of Acts.

And now this may not be Dallas Jenkins and the same creators behind the chosen. It just may be like the same producers or something like that. I know Angel Studios is is partly behind this. And Angel Studios were the first to be distributing the chosen before they kind of struck out on their own and figured, oh, we can make more money without Angel.

So Angel has a show that they're coming out with. That's the acts of the apostles. So now we're reading the book of Acts ahead of that. And you are studying it and understanding exactly what the Bible says, not through the lens of, you know, all of these creative liberties that are taken by these shows that get made.

Luke as Author, Eyewitness, and the Best Greek Writer

So as I said about acts, let's talk about who the author is. Let's talk about the date of this writing, the main themes that we're going to find here and some of the literary feature, the literary features as well, because it's not just that this is a narrative.

It's easy to say, well, it's a historical narrative. There are certain features about acts that make it unique, even saying it is setting it apart from what we had in the Gospel of Luke. It's written by the same author, and yet Luke does approach some things a little different in acts than the way he did it in Luke.

I think one of the reasons why is because some of the things that Luke writes about in acts, he was actually an eyewitness to, whereas he was not the eyewitness to the things that happened in Luke. He did rely on eyewitness testimony, but that wasn't what he actually experienced here.

Here what we have in acts is something that he is actually a part of, and he will use the collective pronoun we, us. We went to this place together. There is nothing in acts that explicitly says that it is Luke who wrote this, but there is internal evidence that ties us to Luke that we know with greater certainty that Luke is the author.

It really comes from external sources. It's from the tradition, from church tradition. The first of whom, if memory serves, was Irenaeus in the 2nd century who said, I think he was the first one or at least the first one that we have record of writing down that Luke was the author of the Gospel of Luke and acts, but at that time, the Gospel of Luke was already called the Gospel of Luke.

Irenaeus is just the first one that kind of writes down that this was attributed to Luke and acts is his sequel. So the, uh, the, the Luke that we have, who is the author of Luke and acts, though he is not mentioned by name in, uh, in Luke, like he doesn't introduce himself the way that Paul will introduce a letter, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, you know, the way that he starts his letters, Luke doesn't do that with his, but we do have Luke's name come up in Paul's letters.

He's mentioned in Colossians chapter four in second Timothy, chapter four, as being with Paul while he's languishing in prison, waiting to be martyred. And then Luke is also mentioned at the end of Paul's letter to Philemon.

So in those three books, Luke is mentioned though. He doesn't refer to himself in the first person in any way. Well, not in the sense that he introduces himself again, he does mention himself as being part of Luke's group, his entourage or his missionary brethren.

We went to this place. We, uh, we went to Jerusalem when Paul gets arrested in Jerusalem and then sent to Rome. Luke is even with him on that journey. So we, we do see himself identifying in this book, even though he doesn't call himself by name, he just doesn't introduce himself ever in the book, but he is the author.

And, uh, and incidentally, the Greek in Luke and acts is among the best and the most challenging Greek that you have in the new Testament. It's said that, uh, that the easiest Greek to translate is the gospel of John.

So read John's writing. He has the easiest Greek to translate, but then the most challenging is going to be Luke's. So it's evident that he was a very well-educated man. He doesn't speak over your head though.

Like he doesn't use a lot of physician language as you might expect him to do. If he's the physician, Luke, that's the way that, uh, that Paul refers to him. So you might think that he would use like a, uh, what doctor's ease, the, the large medical jargon, and probably even writing and a penmanship you wouldn't be able to read as he's writing prescriptions and stuff like that now, but that wasn't the case with Luke.

So he still writes on a level that people can understand, but he's obviously a very educated man. And he is writing once again, an orderly account, just like he did with the gospel of Luke. He's writing an orderly account to Theophilus, but instead of the things concerning Christ, it's the things that Christ told his apostles to go out and do.

The Theme of Witness in Acts 1:8

And as I said before, the kind of the leading theme in the book of acts is witness. You will be my witnesses. And we have that in acts one, eight, this is the great commission. According to Luke, you will receive power when the Holy spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the end of the earth.

So the way that we, we see this witness carry on through this letter is that we see the witness in Jerusalem. That's the way that we start out. We have the witness that goes beyond Jerusalem. Then once Stephen gets martyred and, and the persecution kind of scatters the Christians abroad, we see the witness then go beyond Jerusalem.

And that includes the conversion of the apostle Paul within that section that will go from chapter six to 12. Then you have the witness in Cyprus and in the region of Galatia in chapters 13 and 14. You have the witness of the Jerusalem council in chapter 15.

You have the witness in Greece, chapters 15 to 18. You have the witness in Ephesus chapters 18 to 21. Then you have Paul's witness in Jerusalem, a witness in Caesarea, and then the witness in Rome at the very conclusion.

And really what Luke is showing us here in, in writing this to Theophilus, he is showing him how the gospel made it to the entire world. So the book of Luke is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then the book of Acts is, here's how that gospel made it to the whole world.

And with Paul's arrival in Rome and teaching from his own, his own home under house arrest in Rome at the end of the book of Acts, the reason why it ends so abruptly that way is because as far as the story goes that Luke was meaning to tell, mission accomplished.

Here's how the gospel made it to the world. It makes it all the way to the capital city of the world at the time, Rome. And it's just going to go out everywhere from there. Now, Paul, of course, is martyred some years after the conclusion of the book of Acts.

And Luke had to have finished Acts. This is what's largely considered by scholars anyway. Luke had to have finished Acts before he was martyred, before Paul was martyred, because otherwise Luke would have included it.

So since Luke's objective is to just show how the gospel made it to the entire world, he completes his, his story at the end with Paul under house arrest in Rome, Paul gets out and probably goes to Spain after that.

And we have internal evidence in scripture that leads us to believe that out of Rome or sorry, out of Romans, and then also out of second Timothy, because second Timothy was obviously an imprisonment that was different than the imprisonment he was under when he wrote like Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians and Philemon.

So there was enough of a period of time that transpired there where Luke has finished his writing of this and having no reason to add an ending to it. It's gone to Theophilus. It's been copied. It's made it to many other places.

And then Paul is martyred sometime after that. So likely the book of Acts is finished writing around 62 or 63 AD. And then Paul may have been martyred about 66 or 67 or somewhere in there. And Peter and Paul were probably martyred close to about the same time.

So neither of their of their martyrdom is included in the book of Acts. Now, Peter has a good chunk of the beginning of the book of Acts, but then Paul, he occupies the story for about the last two thirds of it.

So the first third is focusing mainly on Peter. And then the next two thirds is focusing on Paul. But even with Peter and Paul, there are parallels with the gospel of Jesus Christ as we read it in Luke.

So you can see how Luke thematically keeps some things very much the same, even as he comes into the book of Acts. But like I said, there are some literary differences as well. Speeches play a bigger role in the book of Acts than they played in Luke's gospel.

Now, of course, Luke dedicates a lot of space to to Jesus teachings. But you have bigger speeches that actually come about in the book of Acts than even Luke gave the space to in Jesus teaching in the in the gospel of Luke.

There are something like 32 speeches all together in the book of Acts. But there are 10 main speeches and 10 major ones, I guess you could say three of them are by Peter. The longest one is by Stephen.

And that's the speech of Stephen in Acts chapter seven. He actually has the longest speech in the book of Acts. But then the other six are by Paul. Three of Paul's are defense speeches, which he gives in Jerusalem and in Caesarea.

That's in chapters 22, 24 and 26. And then the other three are. It's a major speech on each one of Paul's three missionary journeys. So three of Paul's missionary journeys are chronicled in the book of Acts.

And we have various kinds of literary features that that sort of detail the narrative. You've got a hero story. There's adventure story. There's travel story. There's conversion story. There's miracle story.

And then, of course, the speeches, the the real estate that that Luke gives to a lot of the teaching that comes up in the book of Acts as well. So there we go. There's my introduction to the book of Acts.

As we get started on this study, we'll come back to it again tomorrow. Hearing once again this introduction as Paul welcomes Theophilus into this narrative and the Holy Spirit welcomes us into hearing once again how the message of the gospel made it from Jerusalem out to the entire world and how we have even borne witness to this and likewise can testify to the miraculous changing power of Jesus Christ upon our hearts.

We heard the message of the gospel that he lived, that he died, that he rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven where he is interceding for us at the right hand of God is coming back again to judge the living and the dead.

We believe that testimony and we have therefore become disciples of Jesus Christ. And so we too may become witnesses of this truth to the world so that others may hear and be saved. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this witness of the gospel that has gone out into every place and has even come to us that we may hear and come to believe and know that Jesus is the Christ who saves all who believe in him.

Bless us as we come into this study of the book of Acts and the things that we're going to find here, the things that we can learn as we grow and understand all the more who Jesus is and the work that he is doing in the gospel in the world, even amongst us today.

Lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake. We ask this in Jesus name, amen.

Closing Prayer and Ministry Sign-Off

Thank you for listening to when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com and click on the give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.

Amen.