Week 27 Study Page - Acts 1-20
Week # 27 Study Page
Acts 1-20
Suggested Daily Reading Breakdown:
Sunday: Acts 1-3
Monday: Acts 4-6
Tuesday: Acts 7-9
Wednesday: Acts 10-11
Thursday: Acts 12-14
Friday: Acts 15-17
Saturday: Acts 18-20
Degree of Difficulty: 3 out of 10 (explanation). This week's reading is 90% narrative with just a sprinkle of teaching in the accounts of the sermons of Peter, Stephen, and Paul. The book of Acts follows certain characters around in episodic accounts of the spread of the Gospel from Jerusalem to the very ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The book of Acts divides into two major parts. The account of Peter is the focus in most of the section from chapters 1-12 (exempting the brief story of Phillip the Evangelist), while Paul is the main character of chapters 13-28. Notice how Luke (the author of Acts) will sometimes introduce you to a character briefly before returning to tell their story at length. Luke introduces us to Barnabas, Paul, and Phillip all before chapter eight, despite them not being featured characters in his story until later. Acts will have us following the apostles all around Palestine and then out into the rest of the Roman world. You would be well-served to read this book with a map to get a sense for where all these dozens of cities are located.
About the Book(s)
Acts
Date of Authorship: Luke does not give us a clear indication of when Acts is being written, and there is considerable amount of disagreement about when to date this book. However, I think Acts is written very shortly after the Gospel of Luke in the mid-to-late 60's AD for the following reasons:
Luke does not seem to recognize the importance of Paul's letters which were written during their missionary journeys. You can see the timeline below for when these letters or epistles were written. Paul's letters were quickly recognized as important and revered as inspired by the early Church thus Luke's failure to mention them in his account of Paul indicates a very early date.
Luke seems ignorant of the Jewish rebellion against the Roman empire in 66 AD
Luke includes an extremely detailed account of Paul's shipwreck while on his way to Rome. this suggests that Luke is writing this account very shortly after this event occurs in ~ 60 AD.
Luke seems to regard the Roman government positively. so positively, that he seems unaware of the Roman persecution of Christians under Nero which occurred in the late 60's AD.
Author: Luke is the author of Acts. Luke was a companion of Paul on his second and third missionary Journey as indicated by the first-person pronouns that we start encountering during the account of those journeys of Paul in this book (16:8-10, 16:17, 20:5-15, 21:1-18, and 27:1-28). Importantly, Silas was also along on these journeys after he had been an important part of the Jerusalem Church (Acts 15:22, 32) and would have been able to recount many of the events of Acts 1-12 to Luke so that he could write this account.
Purpose: Like the Gospel of Luke, this volume is also addressed to "Theophilus." The primary purpose of Acts is to give account to the spread of the Church from Jerusalem to the very ends of the earth as made clear by Jesus' words to his disciples which serve as a thesis for the book of Acts in Acts:1:8: "and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Luke's aim is to edify Christians by recounting how God's plan, coming to fulfillment in Jesus, had continued to unfold in the history of the early Church. His account ends with Paul freely proclaiming the Gospel of Christ in Rome, the very center of his world, right under the emperor's nose.
As You Read Notes
The Ministries of Peter and Philip
Jesus tells the disciples that they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the very ends of the earth. the first three of these destinations, in Luke's account of Acts, are ministered to by Peter, the apostle, and Philip, the deacon of Acts 7:5 and evangelist. you can see the maps of their ministry to the right as they spread the gospel out from the location of Jesus crucifixion and resurrection to the regions that he had indicated.
Acts 2:1: Pentecost
The word "Pentecost" is a Greek word signifying the fiftieth part of a thing. The word had come to have a technical meaning, referring to one of the feasts of the Jews that was also called "the feast of weeks" because of the seven weeks that intervened between it and the Passover. Additionally, because the wheat harvest would fall sometime in those intervening seven weeks, this festival was often also called "the feast of harvest," or "the feast of first fruits." This celebration was a kind of thanksgiving day for the Jews. Because the Passover was celebrated on a Saturday, and the feast of weeks was celebrated on the 50th day after Passover, the events of Acts 2:1-41 almost certainly occurred on a Sunday (Acts 2:15 - Sunday morning, to be specific). This celebration would have brought thousands of ethnic Jews from all over the world to Jerusalem as indicated by verses 9-11. It is here at Pentecost where Jesus' promised gift of the Holy Spirit arrives and gives power to the disciples of the early Church.
Baptism
At that festival of Pentecost, on the very same day that the apostles themselves first receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, as promised by Jesus, Peter tells the crowd in 2:38 that they too* can receive the gift of the holy spirit if they repent and are "baptized." The English word "baptize" is simply a transliteration of the Greek verb "baptizo" which means "to immerse" or "to dip." We'll talk more about baptism when we discuss the relevant passages in our reading plan (we already have one major passage on baptism under our belts - Romans 6). In Acts, you'll notice that converts are immediately baptized. In the cases of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:38) and the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:33), it is clear that only a matter of hours passed in between them hearing the Gospel for the first time, and the occasion of their baptism. Also from the story of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), we learn that the mode of Baptism practiced was immersion (not sprinkling or pouring) because Philip and the Eunuch "go down into the water" (v. 38) and come up out of the water (v. 39) - this mode is also affirmed in the connection between baptism and burial-resurrection that we've already read in Romans 6. God picked this special sacrament where there is an intersection between the spiritual reality of the forgiveness of our sins and the reception of God's grace, and our physical behavior as we are submerged beneath the baptismal water, and each believer should be obedient to the call of God's word to partake in it, as soon as they put their faith in God.
Acts 3:19 & 5:17 An Evangelistic Appeal
Have you ever tried to convince someone that they should become a Christian? When you ask them to repent of their sins, put their faith in God, and be reborn, you'll inevitably have to tell them why they should do that. If you're like me, in the course of such an invitation, you'll appeal to the prospect of an eternity in Heaven with God after death. That is not a bad thing to bring up. but just look with me at the earliest evangelistic appeals made by the apostles:
"Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord," (Acts 3:19)
But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people all about this new life.” (Acts 5:19-20)
Its clear that a major, even the primary, part of the Apostles' evangelistic appeal was the immediate benefit that comes to the believers' lives when their sins are forgiven and they're given the gift of the Holy Spirit. The obvious ramification of these passages is that we too should emphasize the immediate* benefits of the new life which the believer will receive when we invite someone to become a Christ follower. However, there is also a serious and challenging secondary implication. We, ourselves, need to be experiencing and showcasing just how wonderful and different life with Christ is, compared to a life without Him, in order to effectively make this appeal. Are you ready to tell someone how much better your life is with Jesus?
Literary Indications of an Expanding Church
Luke's account of the Church starts in Jerusalem at Pentecost, but there are some important literary markers in our reading to show that it is growing. When we get to chapter 9, Luke writes the following:
Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. (Acts 9:31)
These places are all outside of Jerusalem (technically Jerusalem is inside Judea) but still in the region of Palestine, and they are all places that Jesus ministered. Very soon after Luke includes this editorial comment, he tells us the story of Peter and Cornelius which happens all the way up in Caesarea (see map above), and then in chapter 11 we get this from Luke:
Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. (Acts 11:19-21)
Now the Church has expanded beyond the promised land to Phoenicia in the northwest, Antioch in the northeast, and even to Cyprus - an island in the Mediterranean Sea. By this point in Acts, we're nearly ready to take off with Paul across the roman world.
Paul's first Missionary Journey
Below is a map of Paul's first and second missionary journeys (the third is very similar to the second), as you read along, follow the map so you can make sense of where he's at. You'll notice that the second missionary journey takes him much farther west, into Greece. In Acts, Paul is intending to go further north and northeast, but he is given a vision of a Macedonian (Greek) man by God (Acts 16:9) so he takes off across the Aegean sea.
Paul is the author of 13 books of the New Testament, many of which we're written during the travels that we're reading about him making this week. It is really enlightening to read the epistles in light of the story of Acts and vise versa. For example, Imagine Paul writing the harsh words of Galatians which condemn the Judaizers who require circumcision and feast days of gentile converts during his first missionary journey, only to return to Antioch and find that some have come to Jerusalem to teach that at his home church (Acts 15:1). Here is a timeline of Paul that I'm bringing back from our week #14 study page so that you can see the dates of Paul's journeys and which books of the Bible coincide with each trip:
