June 24: Acts

1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."

6 So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"

7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Acts 1:1-8 TNIV

Luke certainly knew how to engage his audience with the opening of Acts - a direct continuation of the Jesus story, a foreshadowing of something incredible to happen “in a few days,” and a vision of witness “to the ends of the earth.” Right from the beginning, we know to read with high expectations, and Acts certainly delivers.

And we do expect a lot from Acts . . .

• We look to Acts for biblical precedent to guide our church life and Christian practice today. It’s not only a history of the early church, but also serves as a normative model for the church of all times.

• Restoration churches look to the church and Christian experience in the first century as the norm to be restored or the ideal to be approximated.

Often we hear “Acts plainly teaches X or Y” - but it’s obvious that not all of the “plain teaching” is equally plain to everyone. Such diverse practices as infant baptism vs. believers’ baptism, congregational vs. episcopal church governance, frequency of observing the Lord’s Supper, election of deacons by congregational vote, second baptism of the Spirit, speaking in tongues, selling possessions and having all things in common, even snake handling have been supported in whole or in part on the basis of Acts.

Our intent today is not to dive into these arguments or spend a lot of time on specific interpretive principles. We will apply the fundamental principles we’ve discussed to-date, particularly the ideas of paying attention to the overall narrative, and of framing the text in light of the overall story of Scripture. Because we’ve so often spent our time in the trees of Acts, let’s use today to step back and look at the forest.

So, our objectives in discussing Acts include thinking about the “what” and “why” of the text:

1. What has Luke (inspired by the Spirit) done in Acts? What story has he told? So we’ll talk through an overview of the narrative –

2. Why did Luke (and the Spirit) tell it this way? So we’ll talk through some reflections on the purpose of the text –

Hopefully our discussion of “what” and “why” will help us think about “how” - how to understand Acts as precedent for us, and how to apply the text to our lives and the church today.

Please note that while I may refer to “what Luke has done” or “what Luke intended” in the text, I fully mean that behind it all is the inspiration and purpose of the Holy Spirit.

What has Luke written in Acts?

An inspired narrative that is also an excellent example of Hellenistic historiography, a kind of history writing that flourished in the Hellenistic period from about 300 B.C to A.D. 200.

• Such history was not written just to keep records or chronicle the past, but also to encourage, inform, moralize, offer an apologetic, and to “entertain,” to be a good read.

• Luke certainly delivers on the form, filling his history with great detail, wonderful use of language, dramatic descriptions (Paul’s shipwreck, etc.), and the skillful use of speeches throughout the narrative.

At the same time, Luke has been greatly influenced by his immersion in the Old Testament narratives (his Scriptures), so this kind of divinely inspired, religiously motivated history is also evident in Luke’s telling of the early Christian story.

A few points about the OT narratives (Genesis, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, Jonah, Haggai):

• Usually don’t directly teach a doctrine, but illustrate doctrines taught elsewhere
• Record what happened, not necessarily what should have happened or ought to happen
• Not necessarily good examples, and often the opposite. Most of the characters are far from perfect.
• Who is the hero of the OT narratives? God is the ultimate hero of all biblical narratives; they are really about God’s story more than humanity's.
  

Luke is also objective, covering the failures as well as successes, the bad with the good, in the early church. This is not a sanitized narrative. So we learn of the discontent between the Greek-speaking and Aramaic-speaking Jews, and the discord between Paul and Barnabas, and the distinctions and divisions that emerge.

Luke’s interests go beyond informing or entertaining. There is divine activity in this story and Luke is especially concerned that his readers understand this. He sees that the divine activity that began with Jesus and continues through the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the church is in fact a continuation of God’s story that began in the Old Testament.

We can look for what Luke has done in Acts by noting the natural divisions of the book. We’ve often approached Acts with frameworks organized by interest in Peter and then Paul, or in the geographic spread of the gospel. Luke himself gives a clue that seems to tie things together better – brief summary statements in which the narrative seems to pause before taking off in a new direction:

• 6:7 So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

• 9:31 Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.

• 12:24 But the word of God continued to increase and spread.

• 16:4-5 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.

• 19:20 In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.

On the basis of this clue, we can look at the narrative as a series of six sections that each contribute to a forward movement of the story from its Jewish setting in Jerusalem with Peter as its leading figure toward a predominately Gentile church, with Paul as the leading figure and Rome (capital of the Gentile world) as the goal. Once Paul reaches Rome, the narrative comes to an end.

The following outline illustrates key points of this narrative momentum. Click on the image to enlarge.

Our class discussed this outline and some selected readings from each section as noted below.

1:1 – 6:7 - The early church in Jerusalem, its common life, its spread, and its initial opposition. Very Jewish – the sermons, the opposition, the fact that early believers continue association with the temple and the synagogues. This section concludes with a narrative indicating a division had begun between Greek-speaking and Aramaic-speaking believers.

• Speeches: Peter in 2:14-39 to the Pentecost crowd, and in 3:11-26 to onlookers at the temple after healing a cripple
• Read 4:7-12 – before the Sanhedrin

6:8 – 9:31 - The first geographical expansion, carried out by “Hellenists” – Greek speaking Jewish Christians to Greek-speaking Jews in the Diaspora or “nearly Jews” – Samaritans

• Includes conversion of Paul, who was Hellenist, a Jewish opponent of the gospel, and the one who was to lead the specifically Gentile expansion
• Stephen’s martyrdom is key to this expansion
• Speech: Stephen 7:1-53
• Read 7:51-54, portion of Stephen’s speech
• Read 8:1-3, Stephen’s speech and martyrdom as flashpoint for persecution

9:32-12:24 – The first expansion to the Gentiles. Key moment is Cornelius, whose conversion is told twice. Significance of Cornelius is that his conversion is a direct act from God, who carried it out through Peter, the acknowledged leader of the Jewish-Christian mission.

• Also includes story of the church in Antioch, where Gentile conversion is now carried out by the Hellenists in a purposeful way
• Speech: Peter 10:27-43
• Read 10:28-29, 34-47
• Read 11:19-21

12:25-16:5 – Geographical expansion into the Gentile world, with Paul in the leadership. Jews now regularly reject the gospel because it includes Gentiles. The church meets in council and does not reject Gentile brothers and sisters, nor does it impose Jewish religious requirements on them. This serves as the key to full expansion into the Gentile world.

• Speech: Paul 13:16-47
• Read 15:5-11 council at Jerusalem

16:6-19:20 – Further, ever westward expansion into the Gentile world, now into Europe. Repeatedly the Jews reject and the Gentiles welcome the gospel.

• Speech: Paul 17:22-31
• Read 17:22-31 Athens

19:21-28:30 – Events that move Paul and the gospel on to Rome, with a great deal of interest in Paul’s trials, in which three times he’s declared innocent of wrongdoing.

• Speech: Paul 20:17-35
• Read 26:19-29 before Agrippa

The Holy Spirit is the key protagonist moving through this narrative. You’ll notice as you read that at every key juncture, in every key person, the Holy Spirit plays the absolutely leading role. According to Luke, all of this forward movement did not happen by human design; it happened because God willed it and the Holy Spirit carried it out.

“Why?” – Luke’s purpose in telling this story

Clearly Luke’s interested in conveying this movement of the gospel, orchestrated by the Holy Spirit from its Jerusalem-based, Judaism-oriented beginnings to its becoming a worldwide, Gentile predominant phenomenon.

Some clues to Luke’s purpose may be found in what he does not tell us:

• No interest in the biographies of the apostles. James is the only one whose end we know (12:2). Once the Gentile mission gets underway, Peter drops from sight except for Chapter 15, where he certifies the Gentile mission. Apart from John, other apostles are not even mentioned. His interest in Paul is almost completely in terms of the Gentile mission.

• Little or no interest in church organization or structure. The Seven in chapter 6 are not called deacons. Luke never tells us why or how leadership in Jerusalem passed from the leadership of Peter and the apostles to James, brother of Jesus (12:17, 15:13, 21:18). He does not say how any local church was organized in terms of polity or leadership, except to say that elders were appointed.

• No word about other geographical expansion except in the one direction from Jerusalem to Rome. No mention of Crete, Illyricum (modern Croatia & Yugoslavia) or Pontus, Cappadocia, and Bythnia. No mention of the eastward expansion toward Mesopotamia or southward toward Egypt.

• Does not seem interested in standardizing things, bringing things into uniformity.

• When he records conversions there are usually two elements included (gift of the Spirit and water baptism), but these can be in reverse order, with or without the laying on of hands, with or without the mention of tongues, and scarcely ever with a specific mention of repentance.

• Similarly, he neither says nor implies that the Gentile churches experienced a communal life similar to that of Jerusalem in 2:42-47 and 4:32-35.

Such diversity probably means what? That Luke/Holy Spirit have not shaped the narrative to lay out specific, detailed examples as the model for Christian experience or church life.

Now, clearly Luke is speaking to his first readers and all the readers down to us. We believe that much of Acts is intended by Luke to serve as a model. But perhaps the model is not so much in the specifics as in the overall picture.

What is the “big picture” model for us from the Acts narrative?

By the very way God has moved Luke to structure and narrate this history its seems probable that we are to view this

• triumphant, joyful, forward-moving expansion of the gospel
• empowered by the Holy Spirit
• resulting in changed lives and communities

as God’s intent for the continuing church.

And precisely because it is God’s intent, nothing can hinder it – neither Sanhedrin nor synagogue, zealous persecution, dissension nor narrow-mindedness, shipwrecks nor snakes, prison nor plot.

Which brings us to the question of how we read (and by "read," I mean "live") Acts as a church – as an historical record upon which we base details of church practice? Or as a larger story calling us to embrace the power of the Holy Spirit, living the gospel with joy and confidence?

Our closing reading takes us back to the apostles before the Sanhedrin, and Gamaliel’s speech in Acts 5:27-39:

27 The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. 28 "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name," he said. "Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood."

29 Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than human beings! 30 The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. 31 God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. 32 We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him."

33 When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. 34 But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. 35 Then he addressed the Sanhedrin: "Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. 36 Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. 37 After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered. 38 Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. 39 But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God." Acts 5:27-39 TNIV

Next week: The Gospels, “one story – many dimensions”