Acts 1:1-2, “1Dear Theophilus:In my first book I told you about everything Jesus began to do and teach 2until the day he ascended to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions from the Holy Spirit.”
Luke here is reiterating everything he already said in Luke. It has been said of Acts that it is merely a continuation of the Gospel Luke which is true. These first eleven verses that we will today examine are a continuation of the end of the Gospel of Luke; however it is just another look, a final look at how Jesus empowered the Apostles and us to be His witnesses, to walk by faith so that the world would see our faith and know whom we belong to. More than likely Theophilus was a famous early Christian at this time, although we have not been able to find evidence of this man, the reasoning behind this is very simple. In the times when Acts was written a round 66 AD, it was common practice in order for literature to have a high distribution for it to be addressed to a famous person. This is Luke’s reasoning perhaps but once again we are not exactly certain to who Theophilus and what he was famous for all we are working on here is simply from the other precedents of this usage of address from which Luke here uses.
Acts is a very important book for us for many reasons. Throughout our study of Acts we will begin to see clearly the Spirit’s movement during this time. Its not hard to see it anyway but we will gain more of a historical perspective but also proper application of how to live Acts. We will also examine many issues such as church leadership, discipline, witnessing, evangelism, and lots of other issues as well.
Acts 1:3, “3During the forty days after his crucifixion, he appeared to the apostles from time to time and proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. On these occasions he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.”
Here we encounter a very important theological theme throughout the New Testament. This theme of course would be the Kingdom of God, or the reign of God as it is also known. It carries with it heavy theological significance for us as believers. For the Jews, they expected Jesus to return and set up His earthly Kingdom now when He came to die on the Cross. They did not expect a Savior, but a King. Some have suggested that during these forty days of appearing to the disciples were to teach them secret truth about Himself, but Luke takes out that when he then directs us back to the Kingdom of God. For Jesus the Kingdom of God was both a present and a future reality. It was present in the sense that those who believed in Him and what He did on the Cross would have eternal life. It was also future in the sense that Jesus would be coming back to establish His earthly millennial Kingdom reign. Being that the Apostles were Jewish though the reality was that the Kingdom of God for them was only present. They only thought in terms of Jesus establishing His kingdom now. So here we see the importance for the Apostles and for us as well. Some would like to say that the Kingdom is coming near and Jesus will return. We can view the signs of the times, but none of us know for certain when it will happen.
The Apostles needed strength to fulfill their mission. Jesus appearing to them was significant in the fact that it changed every single Apostle from being fearful and doubting to courageous and willing. You see every believer must come to an end of themselves, being utterly broken before they can be truly used of by the Lord. A broken believer is far more deadly to Satan’s satanic world order here on earth than any weapon, than any nuclear submarine, or the entire armies of the world combined! A believer in Jesus carries the full responsibility to faithfully preach God’s Word through witnessing to others in both the Word and in deed. This is the whole entire point of the forty days that Jesus appearing to the Apostles. Jesus wanted them to live courageously because He knew they knew intellectual and even emotionally who He was, but the truth of who He was had not yet pierced there hearts. This again would show us the need for brokenness. It is in brokenness that we most often truly understand the truth we believe in, for it forms within us a great yearning to be, to serve and to know God’s Word.
Acts 1:4-5, “4In one of these meetings as he was eating a meal with them, he told them, "Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you what he promised. Remember, I have told you about this before. 5John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
The coming of the Holy Spirit is here mentioned and prophesied by our Lord Jesus Christ. Every single believer has the Holy Spirit within them at the moment of salvation and it is a guarantee that comes with conversion through repentance in Christ. The reality of this though is that this is a special instance for the early church. While as believers we are baptized into the Body, the apostles believed already in who Jesus was and what He did, it was hard not to being an eye-witness to the very event itself!
We come back again to the necessity of heart knowledge. The apostles knew the answers and so many of us do as well. We know intellectually of Christ’s sacrifice but have not yet experienced the beauty of that very same Cross in our own hearts. Now why would that be perhaps? There was a man and a woman who would love to go to church and sit in the pews. They would go every Sunday and after church they would take their friends out to eat. After lunch, they would go home and enjoy the day together. Come Monday though the lady would go to her job where she worked downtown at an important law firm, and the husband a traveling speaker for a big auto firm. It so ended up being that whenever the husband went out of town, that he would call ahead to call the hotel to have guests come to his room. This went on for years and years without the wife knowing. The wife when the husband left would do the same except at their home. This went on and on until one day the reality of it smacked them in the face. Someone from church had caught the husband while traveling and not long after that a friend from church had caught the wife as well. These nice church people who sat in the pew and sang the songs had been utterly exposed. Sin does not pay and sin will always be exposed if not here on earth by our Lord in heaven. Sin is not a game it is a reality that faces us all everyday just like the husband and the wife in the story. Sitting in the pew does not make you a Christian, only believing upon His name, upon what He did for you personally.
The Apostles knew well of Christ’s sacrifice having been visited by Him many times after His resurrection. I can see it now in there minds, “Why would Jesus say don’t go outside of Jerusalem?” The reasoning being behind Jesus logic of course that they had not yet received the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit that would empower the Apostles to be strong witnesses yes even to be the living seed from which the church was to be built. It was there blood, sweat and tears that built the church as it is ours today through the operation of the Holy Spirit operating through us. You see very clearly now why Jesus commanded them not to go outside of Jerusalem, for it was for there own good until Acts 2 some two to three weeks away.
Acts 1:6-7, “6When the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, "Lord, are you going to free Israel now and restore our kingdom?" 7"The Father sets those dates," he replied, "and they are not for you to know.”
Here then we confront the issue we addressed in the beginning. The Kingdom of God lies within us by faith in Christ’s sacrifice. This then would be the present Kingdom of God. What the Jews though believed about this though was that Jesus would be the coming King, the victor on the clouds coming down with glory and power; however they had there theology a little mixed up. The Jews believed in Jesus return and still do to this day, but didn’t see the necessity for a Lord and Savior to die for there own sins perhaps because of the traditional nature of the practice of the Torah or the Law. This then caused them to be blinded to the reality that while they were God’s Chosen people, they were not God’s children on account of one simple fact, they had to accept Christ’s sacrifice. This then would lead us to see an important truth. Jesus question exposed them at the very core of their belief about His coming just as He did during His life. Jesus taught them all about the Kingdom of God, and what that meant, but this final question truly characterizes and capitulates the entire Gospel message for us all. It was this question that put Jesus on the Cross in the first place. The Pharisees and the intellectuals of the day thought of Jesus as a blasphemer. They expected the coming Savior not to be meek and mild, but mighty and triumphant. Yet Jesus here then says we will not know the date, a fact that many of us who study prophecy leaves us with a thirst in our mouths.
We long to know when God will return to set up His earthly millennial Kingdom, but the fact is that our Father knows best. There is of course a reasoning behind why theologically God will not tell us His return. The reasoning being motivation. God wants us to be expectant not slouches. Before you can even be a witness for anything, you have to first trust the reason why you are being a witness in the first place. It is simple really and truly. When you go to the store to buy something, you take it to the cash register and you pay for it. They then give you a receipt and let you walk out of the store without setting the security alarms off. It is sort of a permissive security that even has application within our Christian lives as well. God gives us the ability to preach His Word, even though He doesn’t have too. We don’t have to wait in line to pay groceries just trust in His plans and purposes. When it all boils down to it, Acts is a message of trust of trusting God’s power, of trusting Christ’s sacrifice and in declaring salvation to the entire known world at this time. The empowering of the disciples would set the world on fire and change the course of history forever. As we study Acts be ready to be challenged by God. Let Him change you and speak deeply to you, don’t fight with the Holy Spirit but accept what the Holy Spirit is speaking to you today through his very Word, through one of His servants.
Acts 1:8, “But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere--in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
This can best be seen as the known world at this time. Jerusalem of course being the home center for the church at this time, then the spread south towards Judea, east towards Samaria and onwards towards the known world. Part of being a witness is walking in the Holy Spirit’s power. It means coming to an end of self and letting Christ reign freely. It’s not being perfect just coming to the understanding that we are desperately needy and the solution is only to rely and trust in God’s abundant grace. Being a witness today in our world is hard, but it is still needed. Spurgeon said, “We might preach ‘til our tongue rotted, ‘til we exhaust our lungs and die-but never a soul be converted unless the Holy Spirit used the Word to convert that soul. So it is blessed to eat into the very heart of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in scriptural language and your spirit is flavored with the words of the Lord, so that your blood is Bibline and the very essence of the Bible flows from you. (Party cited in Richard Ellsworth Day, The Shadow of the Broad Brim {Philadelphia: Judson, 1943},131).
Here we see that being a witness though is more than just outwards words, it is character, it is integrity. Being a witness is cultivated through the inner life, through the life of mediation on God’s Word through the understanding at the very heart level that what we desire most is for our soul to be fed supremely by God’s Word. Our soul longs as the Israelites ate of the manna, so our soul longs for the Living Bread, the Bread of Life, the Water that streams down from heaven’s gates. It is this water, it is this bread that people long for and it is this water and this bread that we can offer them. If we as believers would eat of the Bread and drink the water that God offers us in His Word and drew closely to the Well and closely to the food He provides us, we could not have enough groups online, we could have ministries or even churches because the people coming in would cause the growth to be massive. Yet this all starts within us, this change of attitude, this end of self and the beginning of Christ’s work within us. It is this present work within us this present reality, the Kingdom of God that is that Luke here is primarily interested in his audience understanding.
Andrew A. Bonar said, “Do not forget the culture of the inner man-I mean of the heart. How diligently the cavalry officer keeps his saber clean and sharp; every stain he rubs off with the greatest care. Remember you are God’s sword, His instrument-I trust a chosen vessel unto Him to bear His name. In great measure according to the purity and perfections of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God. (Andrew A. Bonar, Memoirs of McCheyne {Chicago: Moody, 1978}, 95).
As we desire and dip our head into the streams of Water will naturally experience conflict within us. The old nature loves to die slowly and will not go down without a fight. It is this cultivation of the language of bibline though that we must cultivate through the understanding of who we are presently, that the Kingdom of God dwells within us so that we can verbalize it outwardly through our actions and our words. Some of the greatest preachers of all time were not educated in God’s Word, but they were an awful weapon in the hand of God because they were intimate deeply intimate with God. They knew God’s ways were not man’s ways, and God’s timing not our own,and they declared the Message of the Gospel faithfully. It is that responsibility that every minister has and those ministers who are most dangerous for the Kingdom of God, those believers that are most dangerous for the Kingdom of God are those who have the highest level of intimacy, the time and quality in prayer, the time and quality in study, the time and depth in the Word of God.
Acts 1:9-11, “9It was not long after he said this that he was taken up into the sky while they were watching, and he disappeared into a cloud. 10As they were straining their eyes to see him, two white-robed men suddenly stood there among them. 11They said, "Men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring at the sky? Jesus has been taken away from you into heaven. And someday, just as you saw him go, he will return!"”
This watching here is more of a gawking. If the Apostles were merely watching then the next few verses would not be needed. The angels declared the same message the present and future reality of the Kingdom of God. Verse 11 says, “Jesus has been taken away from you into heaven. And someday, just as you saw him go, he will return!"” So you see, developing intimacy with Christ is important and looking forward to His return is important. If you haven’t accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior then today is the time. The return of our Lord draws near, though we don’t know the day or the hour, don’t be one of those that are left out of His plan and purpose for your life today. God has a special plan and a purpose for you today, to use you and to bless you. Believe upon His holy name and trust in His holy purposes. This is at the heart of what being a witness is all about, intimacy in Christ, and trusting in His plan.
The first section is the Birth of the Church from 1:1-5:42, second persecution and expansion 6:1-9:31, third the Actions of Peter and the beginnings of Gentile Christianity 9:32-12:24, fourth church extension from Antioch and Apostolic decree at Jerusalem 12:25-15:35, fifth Paul leaves Antioch and moves to the Aegean world 15:36-19:20, and sixth Paul plans to visit Rome and gets there by an unforeseen route 19:21-28:31.
God bless you,
Pastor David Jenkins
