Acts Of The Apostles (1 Of 39)

The church that wants to please the Lord needs to look frequently into the pages of this marvelous, exciting book!

The Lord promised that the “Gates of hell” should not prevail against His church, and the Book of Acts reveals that to be true.

Illus: J. B. Phillips says this about those exciting Christians, "The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters is that to us it is primarily a performance, to them it was real experience ... To these men it is quite plainly the invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether. They do not hesitate to describe this as Christ "living in" them."

The book is called "Acts" because it very vividly describes the ACTS of those tremendous Christians.

Illus: We often hear of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and other catastrophes referred to as "acts of God," and they are, but the book of "Acts" is filled with God's working through and with people.

There are times when the lifestyles of people are completely altered due to an "act of God", such as an earthquake, or a hurricane, or a flood. In the Book of Acts, we find that through coming to know Christ as their Savior and Lord, sinner's live’s were completely altered.

Illus: Dr. Jerry Falwell says, "Acts continues the life of Christ as He lives through His church: the Acts depicts the actual birth, development, and feeding of that church."

For example: In Acts we see...

I. THE PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION

Look at Acts 1:1-7, we read, “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.”

In the Book of Acts, Luke was writing to his good friend, Theophilus, about the Lord Jesus.

He wasted no time letting him know that the Savior he was writing about was no myth.

Luke wanted him to know that the Christian faith was not in some dead man, who had claimed to be something he was not.

Notice, concerning the reality of the resurrection, he said there were “Many infallible proofs”.

The Lord knew it would not be fair to ask these disciples to represent him, unless they knew for sure He was who He said he was. The Lord Jesus presented Himself alive on ten different occasions to the disciples, after His resurrection. They: SAW HIM, TALKED TO HIM AND EVEN ATE WITH HIM.

Luke tells us there were "many infallible proofs" of the things Jesus had said and had done, during the forty days on earth after the resurrection, and before His ascension.

Illus: When I think of proof, I think of the defense lawyer in a robbery case, who was cross-examining a witness. He asked, "When did the robbery take place?" The witness on the stand said, "I think...” The lawyer interrupted, "We do not care what you think, sir, we want to know what you know." The witness said, "If you don't want to know what I think, then I might as well leave the stand: I can't talk without thinking, I am not a lawyer.”

Luke gives us some things to really think about. Let us at what he has for us to think about in these verses:

A. THE PERSON

Look at verses 1-2. We read, “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen.”

Luke said he had systematically written down many of the things "...that Jesus began both to do, and teach, until the day in which he was taken up…”

Illus: Many women keep a diary. Something we need to understand about these women, is, there are two books that we do not argue with, the Bible and a woman’s diary. These women sometime will go to their husbands and say, "Do you know what we were doing ten years ago at two O’clock on this date?" The husband might say “No, tell me” and all of a sudden she tells him in great detail exactly what they were doing.