Acts

The First Forty Days

Monday: God’s Plan for History

Acts is the second volume of a two-volume history. The first volume is the Gospel according to Luke, written by the companion of the apostle Paul, and this is the second volume. Sometimes scholars refer to these books as “Luke/Acts.” We know they belong together, because the introductions link them. Luke begins by a dedication to a man whom he calls “most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:1-4), and Acts mentions Theophilus again, referring also to Luke’s “former book” (Acts 1:1).

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The First Forty Days

Tuesday: Historical Facts

We begin with Acts 1:1-11, verses that deal with the forty days between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His ascension. These were important days, and Luke emphasizes important things as he reviews them. First, there is an emphasis upon the historical basis of Christianity. Luke tells Theophilus, to whom he is writing, that he is a historian and that he is going to continue the history that he began in his Gospel. In that earlier book he said that he had investigated the details of the life of Jesus Christ quite carefully and had written them down only after this investigation. Luke wants to continue that procedure in this volume. The things he wrote concern “all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven” (Acts 1:1). These things obviously are going to continue in the church by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

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The First Forty Days

Wednesday: The Living Christ

Thomas was the greatest of the skeptics. Even after the resurrection, when the other disciples had seen Christ and had come to Thomas to proclaim the resurrection, Thomas said, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it” (John 20:25). But when Jesus appeared to Thomas this alone was sufficient to dispel all this doubter’s doubt. He fell before him with the confession, “My Lord and my God” (v. 28). This and other similar experiences are what Luke had in mind when he wrote of “convincing proofs.” He was saying, “I am going to chart the spread of Christianity. But I want you to know at the very beginning that this is a religion based upon historical facts, including even the amazing matter of the resurrection. The resurrection has been demonstrated by many convincing proofs, and it is proof of everything else that needs proving.”

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The First Forty Days

Thursday: Our Missionary Mandate

The disciples who were with Jesus in the days between His resurrection and ascension still had old-fashioned ideas, and one of these, as we know from the Gospels, was that the Kingdom of God was going to be established by political, earthly power. Their idea of the Messiah was a soldier like Judas Maccabeus (Judas the Hammer), who was going to be strong enough to drive out any occupying military forces. In these days, the land was occupied by Romans. So they were looking for a Messiah who would expel the Romans and set up the earthly kingdom of David. 

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The First Forty Days

Friday: Working Until the Lord’s Return

t the end of these verses we find a fourth principle for Christian living in this age. It is the expectation of the return of the Lord. This is the passage that tells of Christ’s ascension into heaven. During these days He had been appearing to the disciples on unanticipated occasions to teach them spiritual things. If that had continued, they might have thought, “Well, that’s the way it’s going to be forever. Every so often, Jesus will just be here to give us the kind of instruction we need.” That would have been their mentality. Jesus had to teach them that this phase of His work was ending. So there came the moment when Jesus bid them good-bye and then ascended visibly into heaven and disappeared from sight. 

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World Christians

Monday: To the Ends of the Earth

There are four geographical references in verse 8: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. In the New International Version, the middle terms are combined by the verse’s punctuation so that there is a three-part progression: Jerusalem (comma), Judea and Samaria (comma), and the ends of the earth. This is because in the Greek text, the word “Samaria” does not have a definite article before it. The article occurs before “Judea,” which suggests that Judea and Samaria belong together, and this makes a three-part outline for the book. Acts 1-11 deals with the preaching of the Gospel in Jerusalem. In Acts 8-12 the gospel expands beyond Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria. Acts 13-28 records the expansion of the Gospel throughout the Roman world. 

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World Christians

Tuesday: The Kingdom Misunderstood

Acts 1:7-8 also corrects a misconception of the Lord’s plan by the disciples. Jesus told them that they would be empowered by the Holy Spirit, but the disciples were not thinking about spiritual things at this time. They were thinking about earthly kingdoms, and they asked Jesus, apparently just before His ascension, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (v. 6). Their country was occupied by the Romans, and their chief desire was for a Messiah who would drive the Romans out.

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World Christians

Wednesday: A Spiritually Powerful Kingdom

We concluded yesterday’s study with our present task: We are to go out into the world and proclaim a kingdom that Jesus established by His death and resurrection. We need to examine this a bit further. I have already pointed out that the kingdom the disciples were expecting was a political kingdom that was ethnically and geographically restricted. Against that background, notice what Jesus Christ taught about the nature of the kingdom. 

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World Christians

Thursday: A Kingdom of Truth

Several years ago, the brilliant French writer Jacques Ellul wrote a book called The Political Illusion. It is a brilliant book, because it examines and exposes the mystique of political power. Ellul calls political power an illusion created by politicians, because they want to be thought powerful, and by the media, who feed on it. This is not the same thing as saying that the state is unimportant. God established the state to protect the innocent, secure the just punishment of the guilty, and defend its citizens against oppression—both from within and without. This involves power. But there is an illusion surrounding the political process, and it is this illusion of power which Ellul is debunking: the illusion that because a person possesses political office, somehow he or she can control events, change things and produce reformation in the world. Many people believe that, but it is not where true significant power is located. Otherwise, politicians would not be so sensitive to public opinion. 

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World Christians

Friday: Worldwide Kingdom

There is another error into which some are falling today, and this is the error of thinking that the kingdom of God is advanced by the “miraculous” or by what those who argue for it sometimes call “signs and wonders.” The argument is that where the Holy Spirit is active, there signs and wonders follow. According to exponents of this view, we should seek healings and miraculous demonstrations of God’s power in the church today. If that is what we are looking for, we are in error, because that is not what Jesus taught. Jesus taught that when we receive the power of the Holy Spirit, the result will not be miracles, signs or healings, but witnessing. 

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Preparing for Growth

Monday: Learning to Wait

The second half of Acts 1 deals with a period of waiting on the part of the disciples prior to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which is described in chapter 2. It lasted ten days. We know that it was ten days because the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. Pentecost refers to the Feast of Weeks, which was held fifty days after Passover. Since the Lord was taken back to heaven forty days after the resurrection, there must have been a ten-day period in which the disciples waited in Jerusalem. 

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Preparing for Growth

Tuesday: Practicing Obedience

The first thing we see for the early Christians is that this ten-day period was a time to practice obedience. If we compare verse 12 with verse 4, we find that what the disciples did in verse 12 was a direct response to what the Lord Jesus Christ told them they were to do earlier. Earlier Jesus had said, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.” In verse 12, we find that this is precisely what they were doing. 

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Preparing for Growth

Wednesday: Being Constant in Prayer

What do you suppose they prayed for? We sometimes talk about prayer in terms of the “ACTS” acrostic: “A” for adoration, “C” for confession, “T” for thanksgiving and “S” for supplication. I can imagine that they did each of these four things, certainly adoration. After all, God had worked among them in a great way. God had sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for their sins and then rise again from the dead. When they prayed in those days, they must have praised God for the wisdom, love, power and grace by which He had accomplished such a great plan of salvation in their time. 

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Preparing for Growth

Thursday: The Necessity of Bible Study

I notice that when Peter spoke about the need to replace Judas, he began to quote Scripture: “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David concerning Judas….” (v. 16). Later he quoted two specific passages: Psalm 69:25 (“May his place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in it”) and Psalm 109:8 (“May another take his place of leadership”). This must mean that Peter was studying the Bible in those days and, probably, that the other disciples had been studying it too. 

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Preparing for Growth

Friday: Praying for Revival

The last thing the disciples did which is mentioned in these verses is that they recognized the need for leadership and took steps to supply it. In their case, it involved the election of Matthias to fill Judas’ place. 

Some people have been critical of the disciples at this point. They have suggested that because the disciples chose Matthias by lot—that is, as we would say, by drawing straws—they were acting like pagans, since this was a pagan way of doing things. Others have argued that since we never hear of Matthias again, he must not have been God’s choice to fill the vacancy. Some have looked at Paul and have concluded that he, rather than this relatively unknown man, must have been God’s choice to be the twelfth apostle.1

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Fellowship

Monday: Wind and Fire

Acts is short for “The Acts of the Apostles.” Yet when we look at the book closely, as we are doing—thinking not just of the historical flow of events and those through whom the Gospel was preached, but also about what was happening theologically—it is evident that Acts is actually a record of the activity of the Holy Spirit in spreading the Gospel through men and women of His choice, so that it could more properly be called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit through the Church.”

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Fellowship

Tuesday: The Breath of God

With yesterday’s discussion of “spirit” in mind we can go back to the Old Testament and find some interesting things. For example, at the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1:1-2 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” In English the choice of words does not mean a whole lot. We think perhaps of the Holy Spirit as a dove somehow skimming over the waters that were covering the earth at that time. But that is not the idea at all. Rather the Holy Spirit of God is portrayed as God’s breath—as the creative, moving, dynamic breath of God. This breath—this divine, life-giving wind—is what is blowing across the waters at the beginning.

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Fellowship

Wednesday: Filled with the Spirit

When we put our previous discussions of “spirit” together we begin to get a sense of why the image of wind is so important in Acts 2. The text says, “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting” (v. 2). That sounds very much like the story of the Spirit of God hovering over the waters of the earth at creation. So the suggestion is that here, in Acts, we have a new creation as important (more important in many ways) than the original creation of the heavens and the earth. That heaven and earth are destined to pass away, but what is done by the Spirit at Pentecost is eternal and will thereafter last forever.

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Fellowship

Thursday: Fire’s Light

Apart from God’s self-revelation men and women have no more than a faint idea of who God is. But when the Gospel comes there is light. People can see as they could not see before. They can see who God is and what the Gospel is. Perhaps as significant as anything, they can see what they are apart from Jesus Christ and what they can be in Him.

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Fellowship

Friday: Fire’s Warmth

The point is that, when the Holy Spirit comes in power, what we are to have is not some particularly intense experience—speaking in tongues, for example, so that in a miraculous way everybody will hear our words in his or her language—but rather a widespread speaking about Jesus. The point is that everyone will hear as the Gospel spreads through the testimony of those who are obeying the Great Commission. That is what you and I are called upon to do. That is the task to which the Lord Jesus Christ sends us.

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The Seromn that Won 3000 souls

Monday: Peter’s Model Sermon

Jesus had told His disciples that they were going to receive power and that after they had received it they were going to be His witnesses. They were going to begin at Jerusalem, and then they were going to go out from there into all the known world. This is what happened as the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and Peter preached in Jerusalem.

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The Seromn that Won 3000 souls

Wednesday: A Christ-Centered Sermon

Second, the sermon is Christ-centered. This follows from the first point. If the sermon is biblical and if the Bible is about Jesus Christ, if He is its heart and substance, then a biblical sermon is inevitably a Christ-centered sermon.

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The Seromn that Won 3000 souls

Thursday: The Heart of Apostolic Preaching

It is interesting to notice what Peter had to say about Jesus. This part of the sermon begins at verse 22, after he has cited the text about Pentecost, and it continues to nearly the end. What is missing in these words, that we might have expected Peter as one who had accompanied Jesus through the three years of his active earthly ministry to have included, is Christ’s teachings. We might have expected Peter to have said, “The Lord Jesus Christ taught this or that or this other thing.” But Peter does not do it. He does not include the teachings.

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The Seromn that Won 3000 souls

Friday: Fearless and Reasonable

I have spent a great deal of time on the first two points of Peter’s sermon, that it was centered on the Bible and centered on Christ. They are of great importance. But let me mention two more things about Peter’s preaching.

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A Model Church

Monday: The Apostles Teaching

In this chapter we need to look at some of the things that are said about this model church. The key verse is verse 42: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

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A Model Church

Tuesday: A Bible-Studying Church

How is it possible for us to focus on the apostolic teaching? The answer is obvious. These men gave us the New Testament. This is the deposit of their teaching. When it came time to collect the books that were to become our New Testament, the criterion by which that was done was whether they came from the apostles or bore the apostolic blessing. Moreover, the fact that we have our New Testament is a fulfillment of what Jesus Christ said He would do through these apostles. In order for us to copy the New Testament church at this point, as we should, we are to study the book these men have left us. It is in the New Testament that the authentic teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is to be found.

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A Model Church

Wednesday: Devoted to Fellowship

As we saw in yesterday’s study, an evangelical, Spirit-filled, Bible-oriented church should offer many ways for people to get to know the Bible, but primarily through preaching. The second thing we need is fellowship. Not only did they devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching, the early church also devoted itself to fellowship at many levels.

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A Model Church

Thursday: A Worshiping Church

But if we are followers of Jesus Christ, if we have learned from Him, then we know that “a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15), and that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). The standard set before us is the standard not of being served, but of serving. So our obligation is to use what we have for others, which is what the early church did. It is one measure of a Christian’s sanctification and maturity.

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A Model Church

Friday: A Witnessing Church

There is one other characteristic of the church mentioned in this paragraph. It was a witnessing or evangelizing church. That is why we find as we get to the end of the paragraph that the Lord added “to their number daily those who [were] being saved” (v. 47). This does not say specifically that they were out witnessing. But we know that the way God reaches people is through the spoken word and that when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, what happened is that those who received the Spirit immediately began to speak about Jesus.

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Monday: A Miraculous Sign

At the beginning we have some miracles, the first in Acts 3. There is a bridge here to what we were told in the previous chapter, because there Luke described the early fellowship of believers by saying, “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles” (v. 43). In that chapter Luke does not give us any indication as to what those miraculous signs may have been. But now, when we come to chapter 3, we have the account of at least one of them.

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Tuesday: A Christ-Centered Sermon

It is worth studying this sermon carefully, just as we did the sermon in Acts 2. When we compare that sermon with this, we find that there are some differences. Yet there are similarities too, because, regardless of the circumstances, Peter was trying to do the same thing here as on the earlier occasion. That is, he was trying to point his listeners to Jesus as the Savior of the world.

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Wednesday: Pointing Out Sin

When you think about Christianity, do you think primarily about Jesus Christ? And do you understand who Jesus is by the words and doctrines of the Bible? There is a lot more that Christians talk about, of course. But properly understood, those other things all relate to Jesus in some measure. Without Jesus you do not have Christianity, and the Jesus of Christianity is the Bible’s Jesus. To be a Christian is to have a personal relationship with Him. Therefore Peter was preaching about Him in this sermon.

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Thursday: Making an Appeal

We need to realize that we are all to blame for the death of Christ in one way or another. Even though we were not there at the time Jesus was arrested, tried, and crucified, it was our sins that took Him there. And if Jesus were here today, we would spurn Him today just as the masses of Israel spurned Him in Jerusalem long ago.

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No Other Name

Monday: Opposition

In the fourth chapter of Acts we have a record of the first persecution. I do not know if, on this occasion, Peter remembered what the Lord Jesus Christ had said about persecution. But it might be that when he was dragged before the Sanhedrin he recalled that Jesus had prophesied persecution for all who followed Him.

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No Other Name

Tuesday: The Apostles’ Teaching

In opposition to the early Christians we know that the priests and their families, the police force, and the Sadducees were all part of the opposition. But it is not only these who were involved. In verse 5, Luke lists other people as well, three more categories: 1) “the rulers,” 2) “the elders,” and 3) “the teachers of the law.”

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No Other Name

Wednesday: The World’s Methods

It is interesting to notice the methods the authorities used in their offensive against the disciples. They used the world’s methods. That is, they used force or power, because naked power is the only weapon the world really has.

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No Other Name

Friday: Jesus, the Only Way

As we have already seen, at Peter’s arrest he did not merely try to defend himself. He used the opportunity to witness to Jesus Christ. There were four points to his sermon. We have already looked in detail at the first two points: 1) their guilt in crucifying Jesus, and 2) the fact of Jesus’ resurrection. In today’s study we continue with the second two.

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Civil Disobedience

Monday: In Jesus’ Name

God had used Peter and John to heal a crippled beggar, and the leaders of Israel were unhappy with the miracle. So they arrested the disciples and brought them before the Sanhedrin. “By what power or what name did you do this?” they demanded. “Name” stands for authority. So they were actually asking, “By what authority did you accomplish this miracle?” The disciples answered, “It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified.” This sentence is the theme of the chapter, and it carries us into this new section. There is a fourfold sequence.

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Civil Disobedience

Tuesday: The Sanhedrin’s Authority

The only thing that ever really changes the world is not laws enforced by arms, but moral renewal in the lives of normal citizens. And that comes from God alone. That is why the only profound changes that come into the world are in periods of revival, as God works in His people in such a powerful way that they are changed. Then because they have been changed, the moral climate of the country is changed, too, and good laws follow. Change must come first, then laws. You never achieve change merely by passing laws, because laws do not change people.

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Civil Disobedience

Wednesday: God and Caesar

We tend to rebel easily. We rebel when we should clearly submit. But this is not the same thing as saying that we must obey the state at all times and in all circumstances.

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