BIRTHING OR SCATTERING?

Acts Introduction
Bob Bonner
November 8, 2009

In the first chapter of the book of James, we are given a purpose statement as to why God gave us His Word. Look at James 1:22-25 with me.  

But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who

delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer,

he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he

has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten

what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect

law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful

hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.

It is clear from this passage that God does not want us to simply study His Word together so as to increase our theological knowledge from the Bible. But rather, He expects that as we study God’s Word, we look intently into it as we would a mirror to see if there are any changes that need to take place in our lives, and we then submit to those changes. Why submit? Because God wants to bless our lives and do good to us as a result of our believing and applying His truth.

Early on in my walk with Christ, I used to think that one could study a verse, a paragraph, a proverb, or maybe even a chapter of Scripture, and from that take away needed lessons to apply to life. It was only later that I realized that I could actually stand back and learn specific lessons and find personal applications for my life by looking at an entire Biblical book as a whole. For instance, in a study of the book of Judges, one can stand back and see the flow of the book and note that there are seven cycles recorded. Those cycles include periods of sin and blessing that find their foundation based upon a principle of cause and effect. The basic lesson is that when a nation seeks God, the nation is blessed. When a nation ignores God, it is the beginning of its downfall. From there, one can personalize that principle even more. When I, as an individual, seek after God with my whole heart, I will not only find Him but I will be blessed. However when I ignore Him, doing “what is right in my own eyes,” I will experience personal destruction.

This morning we come to our introductory message of the study of the book of Acts. Most people see Acts as the history of the early church and consider it a book for us to learn how to “do church” correctly. I believe that Acts has a far greater purpose than that. When we are finished setting the stage for our study and getting the big picture of the entire book, I hope to challenge you to ask some personal questions about your own spiritual pilgrimage rather than having you simply consider the author or structure or general information contained within this book. In addition, I hope to challenge you to make some personal applications to your own life from this broad study and overview of Acts, rather than thinking simply about how the early church reached their world for Christ. To do otherwise would be to encourage the foolishness of which James writes: to have you look into the mirror and walk away, having wasted your time because you did not attend to changes God would have you make from the study of His Word.

As we begin our introductory study of Acts, I want you to note that we are going to approach our study through question and answer. Specifically, we are going to ask and answer five questions about Acts, and then we will stand back and look at the broad themes and major subject breakdowns of the book and examine how the parts of the book relate to the whole.  From this overview, we will come up with some points of application for your lives.

Let’s begin by answering the first question, “Who wrote Acts and where did he come from? Luke has been unanimously ascribed as the author of his Gospel of Jesus Christ as well as the book of Acts. He was called by Paul, “my beloved physician,” and hence, besides being an historian, it is believed that Luke was a doctor. 

We don’t know how Luke, a non-Jew, became a Christian, though it was probably through the ministry of the Apostle Paul. Luke was Paul’s companion through danger, hardship, trial, and endless difficulty up and down the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. According to 2 Timothy 4:11, Luke was in Paul’s company shortly before the Apostle Paul’s death, around AD 66. Most of what we know of Luke comes from his own words about himself and also from those of the apostle Paul. 

According to F.F. Bruce, there is a quote from AD 170, from an ancient introduction to Luke’s Gospel, that supports the idea that Luke was not only a physician by profession but that he came from the town of Antioch on the western coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the province of Syria. From this same extra-Biblical quote, we learn that once saved, Luke served the Lord without distraction, having neither wife nor child, and at the age of eighty-four died “full of the Holy Spirit” in the district of Achaia, somewhere just north of Corinth. Another suggestion from Ramsey, a highly-touted early church historian, is that Titus was Luke’s brother—an attractive suggestion which would help to account for the absence from Luke’s narrative of one who appears from the Epistles to have been a very important member of Paul’s entourage. But this is speculation.

The second question to consider is, “When was Acts written?” The latest event recorded in Acts is the completion of Paul’s two years during his first imprisonment in Rome. Jerome states, “From this we understand that the book was written in the same city.” Hence this would give us a date for both the Gospel of Luke and Acts--somewhere around AD 61-62.

I have mentioned that both the Gospel of Luke and Acts were written by Luke. This raises the question, “Is there any relationship or connection between Luke’s Gospel and Acts?”  The answer is a resounding “Yes!”

Ancient books were generally written on papyrus scrolls. It was practical to have a scroll of about thirty-five feet in length. When it got any longer, it got too bulky to carry around. This physical limitation determined the length of many books of the Bible. A number of them, the Gospels (Matthew, Luke, and John especially), Acts, Romans, and some others, are about this length in ancient script. It would seem that Luke, who set out to write a history of Jesus’ life and the expansion of the church up to his own age, decided to do it on two scrolls. In other words, this was one work of Luke’s, bound in two volumes or scrolls, taking up about one quarter of the New Testament.  

It was the custom of the ancient writers that whenever a work had to be divided into more than one volume due to its length, the author would write a prefix to the first volume’s preface that would cover the introduction to all other volumes that would follow. Then, when one completed one volume and moved to the next, the author would repeat or give a brief review of the last comments of the previous volume in the beginning of the next. Hence, Luke 1:1-4 is the preface to both Luke’s Gospel and Acts. And Acts 1:1-5 is an overlap or repeating of events and ideas that are also found at the end of Luke’s Gospel.

According to F.F. Bruce, the original title of Luke’s single work was The History of Christian Origins. It didn’t take long, just a few decades, for the early church fathers to separate Luke’s volumes, placing his first with the other three Gospels and thus adding their distinguishing caption, “According to Luke.”

The first scroll, the Gospel of Luke, concerned the life of Christianity’s Founder, Jesus Christ, and the second picked up the story and carried it to the arrival of His follower, the apostle Paul, in Rome about thirty years later.

 The two volumes cover the two stages of Christ’s ministry. The gospel deals with all that Jesus began to do and teach up until His ascension.  In the opening words in Acts 1:1, Luke says that it is an “account . . . of all that Jesus began both to do and teach.” The word “began” is emphatic, implying that Luke is now about to tell us what Jesus continued to do after his ascension. The second treatise, the book of Acts, might then be fittingly called, The Acts of the Risen Christ.  Or, to make it simple, the gospel dealt with His earthly ministry while Acts dealt with His heavenly ministry worked out on earth. 

Since we are not going to begin at the beginning of Luke’s work and study the Gospel of Luke and then Acts, let’s see if we can’t come up with our own title for Acts that will help us keep in view the overall scope of this book. So, what would be the best title? The first traditional title of Acts was given it in the second century by the church Fathers: The Acts of the Apostles. But this appears to over-emphasize the human element of the book. Others have proposed, The Acts of the Holy Spirit. However, this title suggests that the Holy Spirit is no longer at work, which He is. Also, it would emphasize the divine element, overlooking the Apostles who are the chief characters of the account. Although lengthy, maybe a good title for Acts would be, The earthly work of Christ accomplished through His apostles by His Spirit.

Now that we understand the relationship between the Gospel of Luke and Acts and the general subject matter covered in Acts, let’s investigate why Luke wrote the book. What motivated Dr. Luke to record the early origins of Christianity?

When you look at Luke 1:3 and Acts 1:1, Luke tells us that the recipient of Luke’s epic was one Theophilus.  It has been suggested that Theophilus was a Roman official who was sympathetic to Christians if not a Christian himself. Some have argued that Theophilus was Paul’s lawyer, because much in Acts could have been used to defend Paul’s innocence of all charges.

Furthermore, since the Apostle Paul was in jail at the moment of the writing of this work on the charge that he and Christianity were a threat to Rome (Acts 24:3; Acts 26:25), Luke wanted to demonstrate that Christians were not a threat but rather they were people of high character and were law-abiding citizens.

An additional purpose behind Luke’s writing, according to the same prologue referred to earlier from that AD 170 source, was Luke’s intent to expound to the Gentile believers the accurate account of how the church came to be, so that they should not be distracted by Jewish fables nor be deceived by heretical and vain imaginations and thus err from the truth. Through Acts, Luke makes it clear to the Jewish people that the gospel was not their exclusive possession. It was for all people. Nor did the Gentiles have to become Jews before becoming Christian.

Other than the fact that the book of Acts is part of the Word of God, what specific value can we point to that will result from studying the book? From Acts we learn principles for disciplining believers, building the church, and evangelizing the world. Acts also teaches us much about the Holy Spirit, who is mentioned more than fifty times. He regenerated, baptized, filled, and sanctified believers, chose missionaries, directed their operations, presided over the first church council in Jerusalem and, in short, directed and controlled all operations of the church.

However, there is a common danger that arises from some studies of Acts, and that is of romanticizing the early church or speaking of the first century church with bated breath as if it had no blemishes. A close study of Acts is profitable because it brings realism and truth to what the early church was like. We will learn that rivalries, hypocrisies, abandonment of believers by their local church, immoralities, and heresies were all a part of the church back then, as they are now.

Our approach to the study of Acts will not be as though it was originally addressed to us, with the idea that we are to copy all of its behavior. Rather, we will study Acts from the vantage point that it was addressed to the original readers of the first century in an attempt to explain one of the most unique transitional periods in Biblical history—that of the moving away from a Jewish life lived under the Law or the Old Covenant to a combined life of Jew and gentile living together under grace and the promised New Covenant. This approach explains that the specific Day of Pentecost mentioned in Acts 2 was unique and is unrepeatable, because the outpouring of the Spirit on that day was the final act of Jesus following those equally unique and unrepeatable events such as his death, resurrection, and ascension. 

It is not wise to approach the study of Acts with the interest being to copy everything they did, and I’m not referring just to the charismatic question like the gifts of the Spirit. For example, are we to make local church elections by drawing lots, because this was what they did when choosing an apostle to replace Judas in Acts 1:16? Are we to hold our possessions in common, sell our goods, and share the proceeds with the needy, as the members of the early church in Jerusalem did? In essence, are Christians to become communists? Are we to expect at our conversion that we will see, as Paul did, a bright light, be blinded, and hear Jesus speak to us? It should be clear from these examples that not everything that is recorded in the Acts is meant to be replicated in our lives. 

So, how do we decide what is normative for the Christian life? That’s where the epistles guide us in evaluating and interpreting these events. Both the epistles and Acts throw considerable light upon each other.  For instance, we understand the references to Apollos in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians better because of our introduction to him in Acts. Likewise, we are better informed about the gentile collection for the Jerusalem believers who were suffering as a result of a famine better by combining the information in Acts and the Epistles.

Having established the basics of who wrote Acts, the date of the writing, and the purpose and value of the book, let’s begin our study of Acts by reading Luke 1:1-4. It may sound strange to some that we would begin our study of Acts by looking at the first four verses of Luke’s Gospel; but as I mentioned earlier, these four verses make up the introduction to Luke’s entire two volume work of the Gospel of Luke and Acts. These verses give us the purpose statement behind all of Luke’s writing. We read:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things

accomplished among us, ²just as they were handed down to us by those

who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, ³it

seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully

from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most

excellent Theophilus; ⁴so that you may know the exact truth about the

things you have been taught.

According to one commentator of Acts and scholar of Greek literature, Luke introduced his Gospel in a classical literary fashion. He states, "It was customary among the great Greek and Hellenistic historians, including the first-century Jewish writer Josephus, to explain and justify their work in a preface. Their object was to assure the reader of their capability, thorough research, and reliability." [Liefeld, Walter L. "Luke." In Matthew-Luke. Vol. 8 of The Expositor's Bible Commentary. 12 vols. Edited by Frank E. Gaebelein and J. D. Douglas. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984. P. 821]

The fact that Luke does not repeat this kind of information at the beginning of Acts also argues for the continuity of the Gospel of Luke and Acts being one intended work of Luke’s, not two.

As we work our way through these verses, we can identify five clear steps to Luke’s finished account of the historical origin of the church. First came the categorizing and the putting together of the historical events which Luke calls the “the things accomplished among us.” These events were “accomplished,” a prophetic term that references the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming of the Messiah. Hence, Luke is telling Theophilus that “these things” were neither random nor unexpected events, but were God-ordained.

Second, Luke mentions the contemporary eyewitnesses to the fulfillment of these prophetic events. Luke does not include himself as an eyewitness, because although he witnessed much, he did not witness all that had occurred from the beginning of Jesus’ conception or John the Baptist’s ministry. 

Then there was Luke’s own personal research. Luke did not accept outrightly everything others said. Like any worthy historian, he did the challenging work of a private investigator. Hence, he states “having investigated everything carefully from the beginning.” When did he do this investigating? He probably didn’t stop his investigating until he finished his work. But the initial personal investigation of the material found in Luke’s gospel probably didn’t take place until the Apostle Paul was imprisoned in Caesarea. However, Luke probably started gathering information about the early church movement as soon as he got saved and began following the Apostle Paul around Asia.

Here’s how I trace Luke’s travels and writings. We first notice Luke traveling with the Apostle Paul in Acts 16:10. Paul was on his second missionary journey, passing through Troas on his way to Macedonia. Luke tells us, “When he [the Apostle Paul] had seen the vision, immediately we [Paul and his companions, including Luke] sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us [Paul, his companions, and Luke] to preach the gospel to them.” This is the first time we read of Luke referencing himself in Paul’s work. From Troas, Luke traveled with Paul and planted the church in Philippi with him. However, when Paul and Silas headed off to Thessalonica, Luke stayed back at Philippi for around three years until Paul invited him to rejoin him in Troas (Acts 20:5-6). From there, Luke finished up with Paul on his third missionary journey, which ended in Jerusalem, according to Acts 21:17.  Luke would later sail with Paul from Caesarea to Rome, according to Acts 27:1. But in between Luke’s arrival in Jerusalem and more than two years later sailing to Rome, Paul was held a prisoner in Caesarea, according to Acts 24:27. I believe that while Paul was a prisoner, Luke was a free man for that two plus years. How did he use this time? It would be reasonable to guess that he traveled the length and breadth of Israel, gathering material for his gospel and for the early Jerusalem-based chapters of Acts. 

For Luke, in his trying to understand the early history of Christ’s ministry, people were even more important than places. Hence, he would surely have interviewed many eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ’s early life and ministry. Some of them would have including perhaps the now elderly Virgin Mary herself. That’s probably how Luke was able to so clearly recount Jesus’ birth and infancy narrative, including the intimacies of the Annunciation, as told from her viewpoint. He must have gone to her directly to get such complete information. Luke probably interviewed others who were still alive at the time, like John Mark, his mother, Philip, the Apostles Peter and John, and James the brother of Christ. All would have been able to give him first-hand information about the ascension, the Day of Pentecost, the early preaching of the gospel, and the stoning of Stephen. 

After having done all of his research, Luke comes to the fourth step, the actual writing down of his findings. He may have begun his work while awaiting Paul’s release to sail to Rome for his trial before Caesar, but it is my guess that he did not finish it until sometime during Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome.

Here is one quick note from verse 3. The words, “In consecutive order,” really are a misleading translation of the Greek word used here. A better translation would be the NIV’s, which says “orderly.” The Greek word does not necessarily imply chronological order. It probably means that Luke wrote according to an orderly plan that God led him to adopt. All the Gospel writers, including Luke, seem to have departed from a strictly chronological arrangement of events, occasionally for thematic purposes. Having said that, we actually see that Luke’s chronological arrangement is probably more consistent with the actual time line than the other gospel accounts.

In conclusion, Luke tells us that these writings were for Theophilus and others to have this foundation of Christian faith and assurance. The Christian faith does not require one to believe things that are contrary to the facts but to believe things that are true. Luke wrote his introduction to assure his readers that there was a factual basis for their faith. The gospel tradition was and is reliable. Luke was the only Gospel writer who stated his purpose at the beginning of his book.

Chart of the Book The Church Birthed Chapters 1-7 The Church Scattered Chapters 8-28 Jerusalem Mainly Jews 2 years City Evangelism Chapters 1-7 Judea / Samaria Jews / Gentiles 13 years Home Missions Chapters 8-12 Remotest Part Mainly Gentiles 15 years Foreign Missions Chapters 13-28 The Apostle Peter Chapters 1-12 The Apostle Paul Chapters 13-28

         
As one can tell from reading the last verse in Acts, this is an unfinished book. This is not all there is to say concerning the history of Christ’s work in building his church. This history is still being written. If Acts is Volume 1, the first century church, we today are writing Volume 21, the 21^st century of the development of Christ’s church.

What can we take away from this overview of Acts? It is quite obvious that, like the book of Judges and its corresponding period, the history of the church resembles our own Christian development. For we, like the church, go through a “birthing,” a period of getting saved and putting down initial roots. But then shortly thereafter pressures, pain, and even persecution can come along, forcing us out of our comfort zones and making us grow. Christ allows trials to wash over our lives. We may face a literal “scattering” because we are forced to move, change jobs, or leave friends. Or it may be an emotional scattering, a deep suffering that comes from broken relationships or topsy-turvy circumstances. Through these times we mature and, according to 2 Corinthians 1, learn to come along side younger Christians and teach them what we have learned through similar circumstances. Each of our lives becomes a book to be read by the world about Christ’ faithfulness to us, almost in spite of ourselves. Our book is not so much about us or our faithfulness or unfaithfulness, but about His work in us.

Like the early church, we go through phases. Which phase do you think you’re in now, birthing or scattering? What characteristics of either of these phases describe your life? Who is reading your life’s version of Acts? What would they say they learned from your life about what it means to grow in Christ?

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