INTRODUCTION TO ACTS

That's good news, isn't it?

Christ is mine forevermore, and we have a sure and steady hope that is founded in the finished work of the cross. You know, the world would have us believe that our faith, and what we just sang is a blind faith, that we as Christians have to believe what we believe with a willful ignorance.

And I will concede that much of today's American Christianity probably fits that bill, but not true Christianity. They would think that we choose to have faith in spite of overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary, such as their onslaught of attacks on the reliability of Scripture, their so-called scientific findings, which, by the way, I must say, I am pro-science and you should be too, true science, not pseudoscience, true, repeatable, observable science, not theories and distortions.

Because every ounce of observable science that they have ever come in contact with has only pointed to and confirmed the reliability of Scripture every single time. Yet this gets right to the heart of the problem, not being enough evidence to the facts.

For the evidence of truth, of the faith, and who Jesus was, and who Jesus is, and what Jesus accomplished is overwhelming. However, the majority of humanity fundamentally rejects it still. We see that reality all around us.

The majority of our neighbors, our friends, our coworkers, the people that we live with reject that truth. And over the next few months, we will see in great detail, and in Luke's second letter of historical evidence, the New Testament book of Acts, we will see this very same thing.

So please turn with me in your copy of God's Word, if you have a copy with you, to Acts chapter 1 as we get ready to start our series through this letter. If you're not familiar where that is, go to the New Testament.

You know where the four Gospels are at the beginning of the New Testament? Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. There's Acts right there. This letter is known as the Acts of the Apostles, as you can see on the screen.

But we will see that I think it would better be referred to as the Acts of the Holy Spirit through the apostles. And let's read the opening statement to this letter. There in chapter 1 of Acts, starting in verse 1, Luke says, in the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.

He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you heard from me for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

This is God's holy inspired word. And usually if you are regular here, you know that I stop and I ask that we pray, and then I pray that God would illuminate our hearts and minds. But since we're starting a new series today and a new study through the book of Acts, I would like for each of us to take a moment.

Take a moment right where you're sitting and pray. To pray that the Holy Spirit would do his sanctifying surgery on you through this series, that he would help you to see these truths and be changed by them.

So please bow your heads. I'm going to give you a moment to seek the Lord in this. Now, would you pray for the person next to you, that God would work in and through them as we make our way through Acts.

Now, let's pray for us as a church. If you would, pray that we would be unified and strengthened through his truth over these next few months. Lastly, pray for this community, that he would work through us to reveal his mighty, gracious, sovereign saving power to a lost and dying world as our faith is strengthened through the account of what he accomplished through the apostles.

Father, your word is true. Your word is everything that we need for life and godliness. It is sufficient. It is bread for us, for our hearts hunger for it, for it is the only place we can find truth. May our hearts be driven to passion as our minds are renewed by this truth.

Father, I pray as we start this study, as we look at the account of the apostles and how you worked in and through them in the early church to bring us to this here today, that we would be driven to be more Christ-like as a people, that we would be driven to trust and rest in the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us, that you would mold us together on mission, that we would be refreshed in what it is that you've left us here to accomplish.

Give us boldness, equip and mold us as you will. Christ name we pray all this and all God's people said. The first thing that I would like for us to understand about this letter that I think will be helpful for us in the study moving forward is that it is meant for the purpose of evidence.

The book of Acts is meant for the purpose of evidence. I think Pastor Jeremiah has hit on this before. We do not come up with doctrine in letters like Acts. We do not build our theology and our understanding of how salvation works and how baptism works and all of those things through this narrative.

This narrative is for the purpose of evidence. And in order to understand the scope of that, we need some historical context. Firstly, who is the author of this letter? There's some debate about this, but I think that is very fruitless.

That seems to be just lofty ivory tower minds just trying to find things to argue about. Even though he did not name himself in the letter, which leads them to argue about it, it is quite obvious to scholars that this was penned by Luke somewhere in the early 60 AD timeframe.

And so that would be roughly about 30 years after the resurrection of Christ. So who was Luke? When Philemon, Paul names him as one of his fellow workers, meaning one of the men that followed and served with the apostle Paul himself.

And Luke is unique in that unlike many of the other disciples who were, as you know, fairly uneducated, this was a Gentile who was highly educated, was well-traveled, well-rounded, probably a bit of an overachiever, as you will see as we walk through his writings.

For we know that he was a physician, as Paul pointed out in Colossians 4. So we're dealing with Dr. Luke here. Luke is a very intelligent, level-headed, detail-oriented man of precision. I love this, as a side note, because it shows how God uses all types, right?

He uses the roughneck fisherman like Peter, he uses the religious zealot like Paul, and he uses the educated doctor like Luke, and everything and everyone in between. And see, here's the beauty of it.

This is more confirmation for us. Every one of them uniformly congruent and consistent with the very same message. The book of Acts is, of course, not the only letter written by Luke. Can anyone guess the other one?

The gospel according to Luke, of course. So Acts is actually basically part two of that letter. You know, our scriptures are not set up in a way that is in any kind of specific order of writing because you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then you have John in between Luke 1 and Luke 2.

I'm referring to Acts as Luke 2, as you will see. Now, verse 1, he says, in the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach. Well, that first book he is referring to here is his letter detailing Jesus's earthly ministry, his gospel account.

These two letters are addressed to the same person. In Luke 1, in verse 3, he addresses his very first letter. His gospel account is a letter, a detailed historical breakdown of events of Jesus's earthly ministry, and he writes this letter to who he calls most excellent Theophilus.

Again, there's much discussion as to who he is referring to here. This name Theophilus, it simply means lover of God. You know, names back then had meaning and there was purpose behind a name, and this is what his name meant.

But this is leading some to speculate that Luke is not actually writing this letter, either the gospel of Luke or Acts, to a single person that goes by this name, but addressing everyone who is a lover of God, right?

Because of the meaning of the name. However, the evidence seems to point to a specific person in this case, and not just anyone, most likely a high-ranking government, probably Roman official. In that, he refers to him in Luke as most excellent Theophilus.

You see, this is a title commonly used for Roman officials. As a matter of fact, Luke will later use this title for those who we know are Roman officials, specifically in the same way later on in Acts.

Yet even though we believe that Theophilus was a specific person, don't you find it interesting that God sovereignly chose someone with that name, meaning lover of God? Think about that for a second. A number of letters in the New Testament are specifically written by the author to a specific person, right, to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon.

Yet all of those letters are meant by the Holy Spirit for all the saints, otherwise we wouldn't have them in our scriptures today. And in this case, Luke is writing to Theophilus while the Holy Spirit is writing to you, a lover of God.

I just love that. As a matter of fact, Pastor Jeremiah pointed that out to me this week, and I thought it was an excellent observation that I thought we would look at here for a moment. We believe that this Theophilus had come to faith.

In Luke chapter 1 and verse 4, he says that you, Theophilus, may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught, okay? And this is why I said this letter or these letters were written for the purpose of evidence.

Luke, this educated doctor with an outstanding command of the Greek language, with a rich, extensive vocabulary, unlike what many of the writings of that day would have been. We see hints of classical Greek in times of his writing, and then at other times we see very Semitic thought interwoven into his letters.

And this is pointing to the fact of how well-rounded and educated this individual was. He was well-traveled with a passion for recording geographical details. He's very specific. He wants to be precise, so much so that historians have looked at his letters and tried to find loopholes and, oh, there's no way this person could have gotten here, and there's no way this could have gotten.

This wouldn't have worked out, but yet when they go back and they trace, everything is so precise, they're like, oh, yeah, that is absolutely how it could have gone and probably would have gone. He's writing a historical account to another well-educated believer who is looking for the details.

So Theophilus, as we said, we believe he is a saint, probably a fairly new saint that wants the details. But because of his position, he is probably a very intelligent man who is looking for the specifics.

So turn back with me. We need to look at the first letter. Turn back to me to Luke chapter 1, the gospel according to Luke. And I want us to see these first four verses so that we can build upon this in preparation for our study of his second letter.

In Luke chapter 1, starting in verse 1, he says, and as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, right? He's compiling, he's gathering a narrative of these things.

Verse 2, he says, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

So what is Luke doing? Luke is writing an orderly account, an accurate, educated, well-thought-out account of actual events, as he says in verse 3, confirmed and attested to him, not from rumor, hearsay or secondhand knowledge, but from, as he says in verse 2, eyewitnesses who delivered these things directly to him.

Here's what that means for us today. These two letters and the whole of the rest of Scripture are not like other ancient writings. These are not old ancient stories or legends. Ideas that were passed down from word of mouth, as would have been common in that day and in that culture, changed, exaggerated, embellished, until someone finally decides to write them.

Out.

Luke is getting his information from the very people that sat at the foot of Jesus and heard his audible teaching. You get that, right? These very same people who walked with Jesus, those who watched him speak life into their friend Lazarus' dead body.

When Jesus says, Lazarus, come forth, they were present in that moment, knowing that their friend Lazarus is dead, but yet here he is walking out of the tomb. They were present when they watched him heal a lame beggar.

They were present when he brought the sight to the blind, those that were blind from birth. They were witnesses of his crucifixion. They themselves heard him declare, it is finished, entered into his empty tomb, fellowshiped with him in his resurrected body.

As Luke would point out in Acts 1, he presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. These eyewitnesses were really there.

They lived it, and it changed them forever. These people would not play fast and loose with the details of what they had seen. This was so beyond miraculous, what they had experienced, that there would be no reason to exaggerate it.

You do understand that in order for Luke to have fabricated his account of what took place, both in his gospel account and the gospel of Luke and in Acts, it would have demanded generations of separation.

This is where scholars get tripped up. They really, the earthly scholars, they want to look at this and they want to discredit it. But they desperately wish that they could pull the time frame of this written letter further back.

Why?

Because if you can get generations of separation, things can become fabricated. Information can become exaggerated. Every single eyewitness, though, of those they were close to would have to be long gone in order to get away with that.

You see, people could have fact-checked his letters. If Luke is going to such detail to give an orderly account of what actually took place, and he's doing it while the people who actually lived it are alive and can read this account, they would have called him to task.

We would have known that what he wrote was an exaggeration or was not the truth in some fashion. Not only that, not only the saints that had walked with Jesus and loved him and were truly in the faith, but even the unbelievers who lived through it were around during that time.

And they could have, and you can rest assured would have, called him out on any contradictions or inaccuracies. Because they saw with their own eyes what had happened and what had taken place. Even down to the resurrection.

You do realize, I think Paul over in one of his letters to Corinth, I think he actually numbered roughly 500 people. 500 people he appeared to before his ascension. A resurrected Jesus. There's a lot of eyewitnesses involved in this.

So not only can we trust that these letters are true, and that they are Holy Spirit wrought by faith, and we do, and we should, we can trust that they are accurate and true with empirical, observable fact.

You see that, right? This faith is not a merely blind faith. These truths are here for us as actual evidence that we can test. Through historical accuracy of God-gifted men like Luke and direct eyewitness accounts that are consistent and uniform with the rest of the writers of Scripture, both the Old and New Testament spanning over thousands of years.

What are the chances? If this is true, and it is, why does the rest of the world not concede to it? Why are there so many highly intelligent, well-educated scholars and people who have all the same information we have, and look into it probably more than most of us, but yet can't see the facts?

You ever wonder that? It just seems so obvious. It's like, why can't they see it? If our faith, if the reality of Christ the King is the one truth that is confirmable, historical, and undeniable, then why can most people not see it?

Because, just as Paul said, they suppress the truth in their unrighteousness. Mankind is dead in their trespass and in their sins, as Paul said. They are thoroughly, completely, and undeniably enslaved to sin and to unrighteousness, and are therefore blind.

You can show a dead man the overwhelming evidence of truth, and he is fully and completely incapable of hearing it, much less believing it. And that is why all of the evidence of fact is meant for us to gird us up in strength and in our faith.

This is why Luke said the reason that he wrote this account in Luke in verse 4 is that you, Theophilus, you, lover of God, you, saint, 2 ,000 years later, who love God, I wrote this that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught.

Why don't you think about that for a second. Luke didn't say, I'm writing this letter so that the lost and pagan world will know the truth. He's writing this letter to saints to confirm the truth that they know and to strengthen that faith so that you and I will be equipped to go and share this good news with certainty to those who are perishing.

And you may say, well, wait a second, Pastor. Didn't you just say they're incapable of believing? If they're not going to believe Luke, they're not going to believe all the overwhelming evidence. Why are they going to believe me?

But that's where the second letter comes in. That's why this second letter of Acts from Luke is so important. If his first letter is the detailed account of Jesus's earthly ministry, then his second letter, Acts, is the detailed account of Jesus's heavenly ministry and the role of the Holy Spirit to accomplish that work that Jesus had started.

You see, yes, we declare the facts about Christ's certain life, his historical indisputable death, his absolute undeniable resurrection, and his irrefutable reign as king with boldness, faith, and certainty.

But just as with the apostles, it will take the power of the Holy Spirit to strengthen, embolden, and lead us to walk in those good works that he prepared beforehand that he will use as the gospel truth is proclaimed to breathe life into those who are his so that they too may see this glorious truth.

They can see all the evidence that you can tell them of everything. You can lay it out in a systematic way to those that are perishing. You can tell them everything, and you can actually corner them into having to verbally attest, yes, you're right, those are true facts, but they still will reject it unless the Holy Spirit breathes life into them and gives them the ability to see it because they are dead in their trespasses and sins.

And that is why we needed to see this account of the church being built in the book of Acts so we have the account of Jesus, the facts, the truth, strengthens our faith, allows us to stand firm with certainty of the thing that we believe that we've been brought into light to, and now we can see him building the church and we see the power of the Holy Spirit that we ourselves must depend greatly on in this work.

Today is merely an introduction. I'm going to be dealing with the five first verses of Acts in greater detail over the next couple of weeks, but I want us to be primed for the big picture here. The work of the Holy Spirit through the apostles.

There's a lot of misunderstanding about the work of the Holy Spirit in today's church. There are those who maybe exaggerate his work, distort it. There are those who thoroughly ignore it, maybe deny it.

Others who just deny it through the fact that they really just don't have a well-thought-through understanding of what the Holy Spirit does. But we believe that the Reformed tradition, particularly Reformed Baptist tradition, that we have the most replete honor and understanding of the third person of the Godheads, miraculous, abounding, and essential work within the world, both in the time of the apostles in Acts and today.

For us to fully understand his work today, we must look back at the foundation of the church and see his work in and through them. My prayer is exactly how we started this out today, is that we as a church would be molded by this truth.

That we, as Luke wrote, would have certainty. That we would see that this is not a blind faith. I may have been brought into it by the power of the Holy Spirit and believe, but I can rest assured on a firm foundation, just as Pastor Jeremiah read this morning of Jesus' own words.

That sure foundation of Christ, the only truth, the only foundation. But we must be careful. Be careful, church. I want to encourage you as we go through this study. Don't get so lost in the weeds as we exegete the text over the next few months and maybe a couple of years.

Don't get so lost in the details that you lose the heart of the purpose of the details. Don't get so lost in the fact that, yes, we have a sure faith. These are all facts. These are truths. Now I'm going to go plow over the lost world with all this data and fact, and I'm going to force them to submit.

You don't have the power to do that.

They're not going to submit. They can't.

They're dead.

What you want to do is you want to push into these truths. Dig into the weeds with us. Dive in and grow and be sanctified through it. Have your minds renewed and stand firm on that foundation and then see it in the big picture of what it is, the work of the kingdom of God accomplishing what Christ set out in His life.

And then in His ascension, He said, men, wait, we're going to look at that in more detail, but notice He says, wait. You sat here and you wait for the promise of the Father, for the Father sending the Holy Spirit, and He is going to continue this work in and through you.

That is going to change us when we fully understand that and when we rest in it and when we press into that truth. And so my prayer, as I said, is that we as a people would become more aware of and more reliant on the work of the Holy Spirit within us, not only individually, which we all.

If you're in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit indwelling in you, but corporately as a people, that we would press into that truth just as the apostles did and as they taught and as they gathered together and as they lived life together and as the church was growing at the very foundation at the beginning so that we are built up 2 ,000 years later to this point and who knows how much longer that goes on.

Hopefully it doesn't tarry much longer, but Christ will find every last one of His sheep before He returns and He will bring them into the fold through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so it's not on us.

We just get to walk in, be being filled by the Spirit. So please, church, pray with me for that over the next few weeks. Pray that God, change me. Help me to see this truth for what it is. Help me not to get lost in the weeds for just knowledge sake, but help me to get lost in the weeds so that I can see the forest, so that I see the whole big picture of what it is that you're doing and that we may unify as a church and that God would use us just as He did the early church.

I mean, think about it. Just a handful, just a few of them sitting there in fear waiting for the Holy Spirit to arrive. And here 30 years later as He's writing this, they basically took over Jerusalem and Rome and they basically just spread all over the whole world.

I want to see that here in Jonesboro, don't you? I want to see it in northeast Arkansas, the state of Arkansas, this country, the world. And the Holy Spirit will and can do as He sees fit. We're along for the ride.

Amen? Amen.

So pray with me about that. Please bow with me as we pray now. Lord, we thank You for Your goodness. We thank You for Your Word. We thank You for Your truth. May we, as we prepare to dig into Your Word over the next few weeks and ask that we would see it for what it is, that we would be encouraged and challenged by the facts and the truth, but that those truths would do the work that they're meant to do in us, which is to cause us to rely more on the great glorious work of the Holy Spirit within us and amongst us.

That You would make us a church that is fully aware of their inability to accomplish anything outside of Your work. That You would make us a people who are fully dependent on continually, day by day, being filled by the Holy Spirit in our lives.

That we would be a Spirit-filled, God-honoring, Christ-exalting church. Oh, Lord, we ask that this is where You bring us. Your will be done, for this is Your kingdom, and we thank You for letting us be a part of it.

Mold us as a people. Help us to see the truth. In Christ's name, amen. Each week, as we prepare, that was the shortest sermon I've probably ever preached, isn't it? All of you are shocked, like, what are we doing now?

Let's now prepare our hearts.