Biblestudy: Acts (Part One)

Acts as a Trial Document
#BS-AC01
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 19-Jul-88; 86 minutes

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I have decided to begin going through the book of Acts. I chose it because it also began with an A like Amos. No, not really! I did not even consider that until just a few seconds ago. But I chose it because I have never gone through the book in this manner and I thought that it would be a good idea to go through it, and give me an opportunity to study into something that I have not really studied into very deeply, and we can share that experience.

The same thing occurred with the book of Amos. I had never gone into it either until beginning last February. Would you believe that? We began that book at the beginning of February. And Acts is considerably longer than Amos. I do not know how long it is going to take us to get through the book of Acts, but I really do not believe that it will take really any much longer than it did the book of Amos.

But there is a very great deal of information contained within this book. It is the longest one in the New Testament, and there is a reason for it being here and hopefully we will be able to discover some of those reasons as we go through it, some things that might be very helpful to the church as a whole and also to you individually.

It is interesting in studying into commentaries regarding these books. Any of you who have done that know that there is a great divergency of opinion regarding many things regarding these books. And whenever one runs into a certain amount of agreement, you begin to wonder why. Why do these people all agree? Well, that is the case with one aspect of the book of Acts. I cannot say that there is total agreement on this that we are going to talk about in just a minute here, but there is such unanimity of agreement that it is very unusual and that is, who is the author of the book of Acts?

Now, what they all agree on is that the author of the book of Acts is a man named Luke. But they do not all agree on who the Luke was. So even though there might be some agreement, they can find all kinds of reasons as to why such and such a Luke could not possibly have been the one that wrote the book.

But be that as it may, I personally cannot see any really strong reason why we should not conclude that the Luke who wrote the book of Acts is the one who also wrote the book of Luke and the one who was the companion of the apostle Paul in many of the travels that he made.

In Colossians the 4th chapter, verse 14, just to begin to establish something regarding this particular person, it mentions "Luke the beloved physician and Demas greet you." And also Luke is mentioned in two other places. One of which that I noted in my notes here is in Philemon the 24th verse. There is only one chapter there. He is also mentioned in that book.

Now I do want to go back to the book of Acts this time in Acts the 16th chapter, beginning in verse 10.

Acts 16:10 Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Notice the personal pronouns in that one verse. "Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we" and "us." And you will find several more references to something similar to that down in verse 13.

Acts 16:13 And on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made; and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there.

Let us see another place.

Acts 16:16 Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with the spirit of divination met us.

Acts the 20th chapter, verse 5 is another occasion.

Acts 20:5 These men, going ahead, waited for us at Troas.

If we would go down all the way through verse 13, we would find also a number of occasions when personal pronouns were used.

Acts 20:13 When we went ahead to the ship and sailed to Assos, they are intending to take Paul on board; for so he had given orders, intending himself to go on foot. And when he had met us. . ."

And then verse 15, "we sailed from there."

This is just one of a very large number of passages in the book of Acts, beginning primarily in chapter 16, in which the writer is showing himself to be not only a contemporary, but an eyewitness of the events that he is writing about. Now he did not witness all the events. That is why I said that this begins around chapter 16. Because it is also evident from chapter 1 through chapter 14 and to a lesser degree in chapter 15, that he was not an eyewitness to what was going on. That he was someone who came on the scene somewhere during that period of time, and that the things that he wrote about in chapters 1 through 15 were given from evidence or manuscripts that he received from others. And so the we and the us does not appear in that first part of the book. And so he had to rely upon the eyewitness accounts of others that had been recorded earlier and passed on to him and he put them in the form of what is now the book of Acts.

Now there are three possible dates given for the composition of the book of Acts by most of the commentators. Two of them we are going to dismiss as being, as far as I am concerned, very weak, and based on evidence that is so weak, you have to assume a great deal or suppose a great deal in order for it to apply at all. But I will give them to you just for the sake of your understanding of how widely varied are the opinions of these people who do research into those things.

The first date is from somewhere between 115 AD to 130 AD. Now once one begins to champion such a date, it eliminates the Luke who was a companion of Paul as being an author. And so you have to find a different Luke that would fit the parameters of the story that is written here because he just could not have lived that long. If he had, why he was really the "ancient of days" by the time we get to the 115. Now one of the other evidences that mitigates against that date is the very abrupt ending of the book of Acts. If somebody was writing in 115 to 130, why did not they include more history? It ends just prior to the death of the apostle Paul which took place somewhere around 66 AD. There is not one mention of the writings of the apostle Paul in the book of Acts. If it was written sometime around that time, surely the church had gotten together the writings of the apostle Paul, and surely it would have been included as part of the book of Acts! 115 to 130 AD does not seem to be very strong.

The next is earlier, somewhere between 80 AD and 95 AD. Now assuming (again, you have to start assuming in order to support such a date), it was done by 95 AD and it was done by the Luke of the Bible, he would have been a very old man, assuming that he was somewhere near the age of the apostle Paul or any of the other apostles, for that matter. If they were all, let us say, somewhere near the age of 25, 30, 35 at the time of the crucifixion of Christ, you add another 60, 65 years on top of that, and we are talking about men who are up near 100 years of age near the end of the first century.

Now again, some of the same arguments apply to that date. If indeed that was the time, then why is the book of Acts cut off when it was? Surely there were other things that occurred that one would want to write about, and surely the apostle Paul's writings would have been mentioned, things that would seem natural. I just cannot see anyone in this era of the church writing an account of what the church did beginning, let us say, in 1927 and not including any references to the writings that the church made during that period of time. That just seems to me to be inconceivable. But the book of Acts does not have anything like that, especially when it is talking about two of the main characters in the church through about half of the book, Peter in the first half and Paul in the second half. That date seems to not be very strong either.

The third date is the one that I feel certain is the correct one, and that is that it was written between 64 and 66 AD, with a very heavy leaning toward 64 AD. Now one of the strongest evidences is again the way the book ends. It ends with Paul in Rome. He is in prison in his first imprisonment, and it just stops right there. We will discuss why in just a little bit.

The book of Acts is undoubtedly a continuation of the book of Luke. Now, if you go back to the book of Luke, to the first chapter of the book of Luke and notice the way that it begins. Then we will notice the way the book of Acts begins.

Luke 1:1-4 Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you are instructed.

The book of Acts begins:

Acts 1:1-2 The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen.

Now both of them are addressed to the same man, Theophilus, and it seems as though the first account, that is, the book of Luke, was written and delivered to the man while the second one was being written, and then it being finished it also was delivered to Theophilus as well in order to continue the account that was established in the first one.

Why the book of Acts was written would be more understandable if we knew who Theophilus was. Now, was he a person who was on his way to conversion? Was he just merely a friend of Luke or maybe one of the other apostles asked Luke to write up this account to help this man on his way to conversion who possibly needed more proof of the origins of the church and the work that it did? Is that what Theophilus was? Well, I guess there is a possibility of that.

There is an interesting speculation which I will pass on to you right now because it seems to be worth considering. And that is that Theophilus was a Roman official of Greek background. That he was somebody in the government, very possibly a magistrate. And maybe he was the magistrate who was going to be presiding at the trial of the apostle Paul and that the book of Acts was written to explain the church's origin, its reason for existing, explaining the work that it did, and also then the apostle Paul's connection to the church and to that work. This helps explain the abrupt way in which it stops. It stopped with Paul in prison. And we will go into a little bit more of that a little bit later.

Now, undoubtedly the book of Acts fulfills more purposes than that. We will explore that a little bit more right now. There are at least four clear purposes that the book of Acts pursues.

First of all, it is a continuation of the proclamation of the gospel that began in the book of Luke. It is the continuation of the good news and of salvation through Jesus Christ. Now in reality, I believe that we ought to look at the book of Luke and Acts as one book with two parts. Their separation is a little bit unnatural because they are structured so similarly. They undoubtedly both have the same author, and it was intended by that author that the structure of one be comparable to the structure of the other in order to give a greater understanding to both as you go through them. So the book, the combination, the two of them together, shows the preaching begun by Jesus of Nazareth. And then of course, His crucifixion and resurrection, and then the continuation of that preaching by the church, beginning at Jerusalem and then beginning to reach the entire world as represented by Rome.

So, the first purpose purpose that is established is it shows the church in action following the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ did not stop the work of Christ. It kept right on going. And as a matter of fact, expanded very greatly over what Christ had been able to accomplish in the area of Palestine.

The second purpose, I feel, is a major reason. It demonstrates that Christianity is not a threat to the Roman Empire as the Jews asserted. Now, when we go through the book of Acts, we are going to see many, many times in which the Jews, because of their antagonism toward the church, stirred up a great deal of trouble. So it is entirely possible that what we are looking at here is a trial document, something that was put together in order to vindicate the apostle Paul, who was being held in prison under the authority of the Romans. This begins to become very clear when we examine some things, that is, that it might very well have been a trial document put out by the church to vindicate the apostle Paul.

Turn with me first to Act 16, verse 20. What we are going to see here is a series of charges that were brought by a variety of officials in various cities the apostle Paul was preaching in. And now we find in,

Acts 16:20 They brought them to the magistrates, and said, "These men, being Jews, exceedingly trouble our city; and they teach customs which are not lawful for us, being Romans, to receive or observe."

It might be good to inject right here that the Roman Empire, like many nations on earth today, have religions within them that are established as legal and others that are not. And those that are not are not supposed to be operating within those nations. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had Mr. Locke telling us about Burma (or perhaps Tibet or Nepal), where the official religion is Hindi, and that any other religion is illegal there. And how that God has opened the door and even though we are in a sense illegal because we are a church through the Ambassador Foundation, we are able to do some certain amount of witnessing there. The only religion that is legal is Hindi.

Now the Romans had the same kind of regulations. There were legal or licit religions, and illicit religions, and the Jewish religion was a legal religion—but Christianity was not. And because of the Jews' antagonism toward Christianity, they were frequently trying to bring the church into disrepute legally as well.

In Thessalonica, in chapter 17, verse 5, it says,

Acts 17:5-7 But the Jews who were not persuaded, becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace, and gathering a mob, set all the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, "These who have turned the world upside down have come here too. Jason has harbored them, and these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king—Jesus."

At Corinth in chapter 18, verse 12.

Acts 18:12-13 When Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him to the judgment seat, saying, "This fellow persuades men to worship God contrary to the law."

Paul gave his defense there.

Acts 24:1 Now after five days, Ananias the high priest came down with the elders and a certain orator named Tertullus. These gave evidence to the governor against Paul.

Acts 24:5-9 "For we have found this man a plague, a creator of dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarene. He even tried to profane the temple, and we seized him, and wanted to judge him according to our law, but the commander Lysias came by and with great violence took him out of our hands, commanding his accusers to come to you. By examining him yourself, you may ascertain all these things of which we accuse him." And the Jews also assented, maintaining that these things were so.

Now those were charges that were raised against the church. We only read the charges. Now we are going to read what Luke also included in regard to these charges. We have to go all the way back to the book of Luke chapter 23. We will begin here and go right on through the book of Acts, and we will show you the conclusion of all these charges that were raised against the church. I will tell you, after you read this, I think that you will understand that what we have gone through in this last 50 or 60 years has been mild by comparison. We have not had hardly any persecution from the government by comparison to what these people were going through.

Luke 23:4 Then Pilate said to the chief priests and to the crowd, "I find no fault in this Man."

Here is the representative of the Roman government and he is telling the Jews that there is no illegality in the activity of Jesus of Nazareth.

Luke 23:14 [Pilate] said to them, "You have brought this Man to me, as one who misleads the people. And indeed, having examined Him in your presence, I found no fault in this Man concerning those things of which you accuse Him."

Luke 23:22 Then he said to them the third time, "Why, what evil has He done? I have found no reason for death in Him. I will therefore chastise Him and let Him go."

So Pilate three times declared Jesus innocent; the representative of the Roman government.

And now back to the book of Acts again and we are going to go to Acts the 13th chapter, beginning in verse 6.

Acts 13:6-7 Now when they had gone through the land of Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus, who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus.

I want you to note here. We have a governmental official on the island of Cyprus. He is a proconsul, a pretty high position in the government.

Acts 13:7 Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man. [No dumb bunny.] This man called for Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God.

Acts 13:12 Then the proconsul believed, when he saw what had been done, being astonished at the teaching of the Lord.

I am sure that that was inserted there. There were other people who were converted on the island of Cyprus for sure. But not every one of them was right in the heart of the government and not every one of them, I am sure, was the same level of intelligence. And he examined these things very carefully, and here was this government official who did not fear Christianity.

In chapter 16, here we are back at the occasion in Philippi.

Acts 16:35-40 And when it was day, the magistrate sent the officers saying, "Let those men go." So the keeper of the prison reported these words to Paul, saying, "The magistrates have sent to let you go. Now therefore depart, and go in peace." Paul said to them, "They have beaten us openly, uncondemned Romans, and have thrown us into prison. And now do they put us out secretly? No indeed! Let them come themselves and get us out." And the officers told these words to the magistrate, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Romans. Then they came and pleaded with them and brought them out, and asked them to depart from the city. So they went out of prison and entered the house of Lydia; and when they had seen the brethren, they encouraged them and departed.

The official governmental response to the thing in Philippi was an apology.

Acts 18:12 [Back in Corinth again.] Now when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose against Paul and brought him to the judgment seat, . . .

And we saw the charges there. And let us drop down a little bit further.

Acts 18:15-17 "But if it is a question of words and names in your own law, look to it yourselves; for I do not want to be a judge of such matters." [This is Gallio's judgment:] And he drove them from the judgment seat. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat. But Gallio took no notice of these things.

So they were held to be guiltless.

In chapter 19, verse 31. Now this time they are at Ephesus and another row is underway.

Acts 19:31 Then some of the officials of Asia, who were his friends, sent to him pleading that he would not venture into the theater. [that is, the apostle Paul]

Acts 19:35-39 When the city clerk had quieted the crowd, he said, "Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Zeus? Therefore, since these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly. For you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of your goddess. And therefore, if Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a case against anyone, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you have any other inquiry to make, it shall be determined in the lawful assembly."

In verse 41, he dismissed the assembly, so they were absolved of any guilt.

Chapter 24 again. This is a very long story here and it goes all the way through chapter 24, chapter 25, and on to chapter 26. And beginning in verse 24, this thing began with Felix and Festus, two Roman officials, and then it was taken to King Herod Agrippa. It is all one long unraveling of a trial. Paul was before Agrippa. In verse 27 he is asked by Paul, "Do you believe the prophets?" And then in verse 28, Agrippa said to Paul, "You almost persuade me to become a Christian." In verse 29, Paul said, "I would to God that not you only, but also all who hear me today, might become both almost and altogether such as I am, except for these chains." And then verse 32, Agrippa said to Festus, "This man might have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar." But they found no reason in Paul, that he should be tried as he was being tried.

And then finally, in chapter 28, the last 4 verses there.

Acts 28:28-31 "Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!" [Now Paul was in Rome, and he is in prison.] And when he had said these words, the Jews departed and had a great dispute among themselves. Then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house, and received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concerned the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him.

You have a very clear record here of the clashes, you might say, that were brought against the church by the state, and in each case, the church, in the person of Paul or others, was absolved of any guilt and showed that the church was no threat and the people, that is rulers, governors, magistrates all over the Roman Empire had all come to a similar conclusion. There was a unanimity of agreement that the church was not a threat to the empire.

That is the second purpose of the book of Acts.

The third is something that actually has to be picked up from other books. It is, to a small degree, mentioned in the book of Acts, but it is nonetheless covered by the book of Acts. And that is that there was a conciliatory reason for writing it. That is, to be a unifying factor for the church. Can you remember in I Corinthians the first chapter, that it was obvious that there were some divisions within the church and it seemed as though the church from time to time was in danger of dividing somewhere between Peter and Paul? What the book of Acts shows is that there was no disagreement between Peter and Paul, that they were together.

And so the book of Acts, in the first half of it, very largely shows the works of Peter and the second half of it, it shows the works of Paul, and thereby there is a similarity. It shows both of them doing miracles: one to the Gentiles, the other to the Israelite people. It shows in the book of Acts Paul conceding the primacy of Peter and the other apostles that were in Jerusalem. Oh, he was one, as he said, born out of due season. He was not part of that inner circle, that God had committed to him a work that was on the same level as theirs but not of the same kind because he was going to the Gentiles.

The book also shows Peter conceding to Paul his mission to the Gentiles. So rather than there being any disagreement between Peter and Paul, it shows them being in harmony with one another. And therefore, part of the book's intention is an attempt to heal some of these breaches that may have been growing within the church, being stirred from beneath by people who maybe had the wrong kind of motivations, and there were others who were being caught within it tending to believe the rumors that were floating around. And he is writing here to show that those rumors were not true at all. So that is a third purpose.

Now the fourth one is probably the one that about 99% of us look to the book of Acts for. And that is it has an instructional purpose for the church to show the gospel going out throughout the Roman Empire showing its transforming power, showing the kinds of people who were responding to it, that is, being converted and showing the sacrifices and the triumphs of these people. And so this is somewhat of a continuation of the previous one, the conciliatory purpose, but what it does is it tends to unify and it gives us a sense of history regarding the church, although the book of Acts is not a history per se. It is not written in that mode.

History books tend to go into a great deal of detail. The book of Acts does not go into detail. History books tend to quote all kinds of sources. The book of Acts does not tend to quote all kinds of sources. See, that gives more and more emphasis to that its major purpose was that it was probably a trial document and intended to be something to provide the courts of Rome with an understanding of the whys and wherefores of the church.

Back to the first chapter again in verse 1.

Acts 1:1 The former account I made, Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach.

There is only really two things that I want to pick up here. And one is the word "all." Now we have a tendency in English to use that word as an all-inclusive thing and it does not always fit because Luke did not write all that Jesus did. And there was so much more than He did that the book of John says that all the books in the world could not contain all the things that He did. All is frequently used in the Bible and is restricted to the context in which it appears.

What he means here by this is that he told us all that Jesus did within the context of what he intended to say. That narrows things down a very great deal. I am sure that Luke included specific things in order to fulfill the purpose that he had in mind for the book. And he chose examples out of the life of Christ and just numerous vignettes out of the lives of the other apostles and other people during the book of Acts, and he did that to give depth and meaning and feeling to his purpose for the book. He certainly did not include all that Jesus began to do and to teach.

Now Theophilus means "loved of God" or "friend of God" is maybe a little bit looser meaning of it. Theo meaning God, philo meaning love, a derivative of the word phileo. And in Luke 1:3, he is given the title, "most excellent Theophilus." Now in Acts 23:26, a letter from Claudius Lysias to the governor Felix. And Felix, the governor, is addressed by the same title. "Claudius Lysias, to the most excellent governor Felix." Exactly the same wording as Luke addressed Theophilus in Luke 1:3.

In chapter 24, verse 3 Tertullus is the one who is speaking. He says, "we accept it always and in all places, most noble Felix." That word "noble" is the same word translated excellent in chapters 23, 26, and in Luke 1:3. But they are translated noble. And in chapter 26, verse 25, again, Festus is the one addressed by Paul says, "I am not mad, most noble Festus." So Felix, Festus, and Theophilus, all three of them high governmental officials, and each one of them addressed by the title most excellent or noble.

Now what it seems to suggest is kind of an honorific title for a Roman official, much the same way as we use titles like that for people: his excellency So-and-So. We do that for judges. But that is not quite as strong as it appears in the Bible. In normal Greek usage, it was also used as just a form of polite address. And sorry to tell you that, but it just kind of weakens the approach once you begin to understand that it is not a title that is exclusively used for someone who happened to be an official. So it just kind of clouds the issue, enough that we cannot get a good hard grip on whether or not Theophilus actually was a judge, a magistrate of some kind, perhaps a governor. That is a possibility, and it would have given us a very clear shot at understanding that indeed maybe the book of Acts really was a trial document that was sent to establish the position of the church and the apostle Paul. But there is that possibility.

Acts 1:2 until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen.

Now back in the book of Luke again. These commandments are the instructions that were given in chapter 24, verses 46 and 49.

Luke 24:46-49 Then He said to them, "Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you, but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high."

The instructions or the commandments that are referred to back in Acts 1:2 are very likely those ones that we just read. A brief overview of the purpose of His life, of His death, of His resurrection, of which they were to be witnesses to the entire world beginning in Jerusalem.

In addition to that, they were to wait in the city until they were endued with power from on high. Now that begins to introduce to us a clearer understanding of the purpose of the book of Acts for the church. Certainly it would fulfill that responsibility if it was indeed a trial document, but I think it would have a great deal more impact on the church. That what the church was doing was a direct result of what Jesus did beforehand. You see, His preaching, His death, His resurrection, and the power of the Holy Spirit then is going to be the means through which this is going to be accomplished. So there, in very succinct terms, only one verse, in about 10 or 15 words, he has summed up what the rest of the book is going to be about. We are going to see it repeated several verses later.

Acts 1:3 to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

Here we have again, a recapitulation of events that are crucial to the advance of the gospel. Now the emphasis here is on the living Christ. He did not just die. He died, He is resurrected, He ascended to heaven. What we are supposed to get from that, of course, is that He continued His work from heaven through the apostles using the power of His Holy Spirit.

"He spoke of things pertaining to the kingdom of God" And it is very likely that the Kingdom of God, the entire message is just summarized in those three words. And includes much, much more than just having to do with the re-establishment of the government of God on earth, but rather the whole thing, including the entire story of the Messiah, of His death and resurrection and all things pertaining to that—including the purpose for you and me: the building of character, being born again into the Family of God by means of a resurrection, and becoming a part of that Family and a part of that government. All of those things that pertain to the Kingdom of God are summed up in that one phrase, the Kingdom of God.

Acts 1:4-5 And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, "which," He said, "you have heard of Me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."

You see the emphasis at the very beginning on the coming of the Holy Spirit. And what he is doing, if you know what is in chapter 2, he is building up to chapter 2 because the receiving of the Holy Spirit becomes the central issue that shows why these men were able to do, to accomplish, to be what they were. How they were able to do the miracles, how they were able to withstand the terrible persecution, how they were able to drive and energize and motivate themselves to go to the ends of the earth and do something that was a thankless responsibility as far as men were concerned. How they were able to do the miraculous things they did in regard to healing people, resurrecting people from the dead.

The central issue here right at the very beginning is to establish the coming of God's Holy Spirit. So it became essential that they not leave Jerusalem. That was rather arbitrary because as we can understand God can give His Spirit to anybody anywhere on this earth at any time He good and well pleases. He arbitrarily made them stay in Jerusalem, and I think it was a point of obedience to see whether or not they were going to be willing to carry out something that surely they might have the opportunity to think, "Well, that's rather arbitrary. I don't need to be here. I can go somewhere else."

Acts 1:6-8 Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, "Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" And He said to them, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. [Here it comes again] But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in Judea and in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

Now just in a matter of about 8 verses, he has talked about the Holy Spirit four times, leading up to, of course, this is the prelude to chapter 2. So verses 6 through 8 serve as the theme for the entire book, and they set the stage for everything that is to follow.

The word witness is very prominent in the book of Acts. It appears 39 times and is the leading theme in the book. Now it has to be this way because this is what the church is to do. This is the church's responsibility, to witness to the life, to the death, to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And of course included within that is the purpose for life itself.

So in verse 6 again. It is obvious that the apostles were still looking for the establishment of a political entity in their day. And of course that indicated from the things that Jesus had told them that they would be leaders in that political entity. The hangover from Judaism was still there because that is what the Jews expected. That the Messiah would come and that He would establish the Jews as the leading nation on earth. That is not wrong, but it is not the whole picture. And so this hangover from their former understanding was still there and they were still pressing Christ regarding its imminent, they felt, establishment.

Now, in verse 7, it is really interesting because He did not deny the fact of a political entity; you see, He did not say God is not going to set up a king on earth. He just skimmed right by that because God is going to set up a kingdom on earth. But He is telling them they are going to have to revise their thinking. And the way they are going to have to revise it is, "You let God do His thing and you take care of your thing. Don't you worry about when; that's God's thing. Don't you worry about how, that's God's thing. Don't you worry about who's going to be the leaders in it. That's God's thing. Your thing is to be a witness to Me, beginning in Jerusalem, going out through Samaria and then on to the ends of the earth."

That kind of sets the stage for you and me too, because here we are expecting the return of Christ within a few years and of course it is not wrong for us, I am sure to speculate (it might be in 1991 or it might be in 1992, might be in 1993 or whenever). That it is far better if we just live as though His return is imminent and have enough of a sense of urgency that we do not forget to do our responsibility, which is the witness for Him. Because if we begin to focus in on a date, it becomes very easy to rest on the oars. Or conversely, it becomes very easy, for some anyway, to become zealous in the wrong way. Just looking to a date that is imminent and burning themselves out. That would not be right either.

So God will take care of His affairs, we will take care of ours. And our responsibility is to be urgent because we do not know when our day is coming. The day of our demise may come very quickly and so we are to use the time as best we can.

I do not know whether you know it, but verse 8 was His last words to them. We do not often stop to think of that. But His last words to them were the commission, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses." So it is final and conclusive, the last thing that He leaves this group of men with is His mandate or His commission to them. Now that is important to the entire book because everything that is written after that is to show how the apostles carried out Christ's intent up to at least 64 AD.

The commission, then, He tells us here, involves a person, Christ; a power, the Holy Spirit; and a program go out to the whole world. It is our responsibility to witness to those things.

Now it is interesting, again, making a comparison with the book of Luke. This is just one way in which the structure of both Luke and Acts has a parallel to it. Because he wrote both books with a geographical sense. In the book of Luke, the preaching of the gospel begins in Galilee and it goes through [?] and then on to Jerusalem. In the book of Acts, it just kind of reverses that. It begins in Jerusalem, goes up to Galilee, that is, through Samaria, and then it goes on to the rest of the world. So it is like in and then out again. Sort of an introversion. Begins in one place, ends in another, begins at that other one, and then goes back out and goes far beyond the original starting place.

One more thing before we go on here, just a little aside: the importance of the Holy Spirit to the things that are written in the book of Acts might be illustrated in this manner. In all four gospels, the word spirit only appears 102 times. That is enough. That is as many as God must have intended. And quite a number of those do not refer to the Holy Spirit, but rather to the spirit in man or an attitude of heart, mind, or something like that. In the book of Acts alone, it appears 70 times and in almost every occasion it has to do with the working of God's Spirit through a man enabling them to carry out their function as a witness.

Acts 1:9-11 Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will also come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven."

In a sense, beginning in verse 11 (before going back to verse 9), an indication here that the church's mission, you see, which is to preach the gospel, is not to be paralyzed into inactivity waiting for Christ's return. But rather, that is put there, the way this book is opened is to show you and me that the activity of the church depends on the risen Christ. It is implying that—if you put this together with John 14 beginning there where Jesus began to talk about the Holy Spirit and how Jesus said that it was essential that He go back to the Father or else the Comforter would not come—they would not be empowered with the power that they needed to carry out their responsibility. And so the work of the church hinges upon Christ going to heaven from which He is going to direct the church's activities, and they are going to carry out the function that He did on earth but in a much greater extent and degree and intensity than He ever did, because it is going up through so many different sources, more than than just the one. So He is going to heaven then and He is going to complete the work that He began in the flesh. So the work of the church is not a stopgap measure in any way, that is really the reason for its being.

Back to verse 9. He was taken up in a cloud. In all probability, that was the Shekinah of the Old Testament. After thinking about this, I have always had the picture in my mind from the time that I was a little kid that they watched Christ rising in the air. In other words, He was standing there and then He visibly ascended. And finally He got so high that all I saw was the soles of His feet. But after thinking about it for a while, I do not think that is the way it was. I think that what happened is that the cloud came down and enveloped Him and from that time on He was invisible. And then He went up in the cloud, they did not see Him from the time that He left the ground.

Now if you go back to Exodus the 40th chapter, verse 34, look at the way this says:

Exodus 40:34 Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

That is the Shekinah, the glory of the Lord, the cloud. And Moses was not able to enter the Tabernacle of Meeting because the cloud rested above it and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. You know when you compare that with Mark, back in the ninth chapter, at the transfiguration:

Mark 9:7 And a cloud came and overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!"

I get the impression there that the cloud came over and it was so thick they could not see what was going on. They were affrighted.

If indeed this was the Shekinah back in in Acts 1:9, what they saw was that cloud of Exodus 40 and a visible presence of God, His glory, and also His approval of what had occurred there.

Now verse 10 says that they were looking up steadfastly," intently. They were staring, they were probably awestruck, they were afraid to move, that kind of thing, for fear that if they moved they would break, or if they moved they would wake up, or if they moved something terrible would would occur. Lightning would strike them. But the steadfastly indicates that they were dumbstruck. They did not know what to do, say, or whatever.

Acts 1:12-14 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey. And when they had entered, they went up into the upper room where they were staying: Peter, James, John, and Andrew; Philip and Thomas; Bartholomew and Matthew; James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot; and Judas the son of James. And these all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.

A Sabbath day's journey, according to the Mishna is about 2,000 cubits. Now the length of a cubit varies, but the common length (if you remember the article that was in the Good News) was 25 inches. That would mean that a Sabbath day's journey was about 2/3rds to 3/4ths of a mile. Not a very long distance. About .07 of a mile. Something that you and I could walk in just 10 to 12 minutes without any difficulty at all, just in a leisurely stroll.

It says that they went up into the upper room. Now the upper room was generally the choice room in a house of that period. It was above the noise of the street. It was above the prying eyes of those who were walking up and down the street. And it tended to be used as we would today, for a living room where people gather together and sit down and converse about the things that are going on in their lives. Now the fact that it is the living room rather than a living room or a upper room, seems to indicate that there is one particular upper room that they have in mind.

There is an upper room that is mentioned in Mark the 14th chapter and also in Luke the 24th chapter, and again in Acts the 12th chapter. And the indication is that it is all the same one. Now this particular room must have been fairly large because we are going to find out later that there were about 120 people in that room. (That is just maybe a little bit more than we have here this evening.) And so I would have to say that the upper room that they were in must have been in the neighborhood of no less than about half the size of this room. You could comfortably get about 120 people in that size of room. So it was not just a little thing off to the side of somebody's house somewhere, but probably a particular room that they had become accustomed to going to and perhaps also the one in which they held the Passover service.

Now the women that are mentioned in the 14th verse, again, they are not specified other than Mary. So we do not know for sure who they were. We do not know how many there were. There are some translations that translate that phrase, "with the women," as wives, "with the wives." That is a possibility. It really in a way is neither here nor there. Even if they were wives, they were women.

They are mentioned also again in the book of Luke, chapter 8 and chapter 23. In Luke 23 are the women who accompanied Him to His crucifixion. In Luke 8, it is mentioned that there were a group of women who were supporting Him in His ministry. They supplied Him with cash to keep Him going. And you know how many again that there were, I am not sure, nobody knows.

Now it is interesting to note two things here, just one in passing. This is the last mention of Mary. And also this is the first mention of His brothers being associated with Him. I think it is interesting to to check this one out. In Mark 3, we have quite a turnout by His brothers.

Mark 3:21 But when His own people heard about this [His own people were His family], they said, "He is out of His mind."

That was why the question He was asked a little bit later verse 31.

Mark 3:31-33 Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent to Him, calling Him. And a multitude was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, "Look, Your mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You." But He answered them, saying, "Who is My mother or My brothers?"

And then He goes on to mention that those who were associated with Him in the Family of God were His mother and His brother.

John 7:2-3 Now the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. His brothers therefore said to Him, "Depart from here and go into Judea, that Your disciples may also may see the works that You are doing." [and they give their reasons why]

John 7:5 For even His brothers did not believe in Him.

Now we find in the book of Acts that they are there with Him and it is probably at least partly in response to what we see in I Corinthians 15, verse 7. Paul was giving the account of the appearances of Christ after His resurrection.

I Corinthians 15:7 After that He was seen by James [that is, the Lord's brother], and then by all the apostles.

James undoubtedly let the rest of the family know that indeed their Brother was resurrected and the Messiah.

Back to Acts 1.

Acts 1:15 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples (altogether the number of names was about a hundred and twenty), . . .

One thing just to note here in passing is that Luke consistently shows Peter taking the lead. And this is just the first of a number of occasions. Now is it possible there were more than 120 disciples? Well, I think undoubtedly that there were 120 in Jerusalem, and that is all that matters to the story thread of the book of Acts. There were more disciples because immediately, when the Holy Spirit came and they began preaching, thousands of people were converted in just a matter of days. And it would seem to me just by looking at you and me that these people must have had some background of following Christ for a while for them to have been converted so quickly. They were already familiar with the preaching of John the Baptist and then of course of Christ after him, and with the coming of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the apostles, why they were very quickly convinced and converted.

But there were 120 there at the very beginning, and this was the group that was gathered in Jerusalem and this was to be the nucleus, the foundation of the New Testament church right above Christ there.

Acts 1:16-17 . . . and said, "Men and brethren, this Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus; for he was numbered with us and obtained a part of the ministry."

What Peter is doing is he is quoting Psalm 41:9. And at any rate, it is mentioned by David of how someone who was a close friend of his became one who became a traitor to him, was disloyal to him, and became his enemy. Peter then picks up on that and shows that the real intent of that scripture was Christ and Judas, not David and whoever his friend was who betrayed him, but rather Christ and Judas. Now you have to, I think, kind of understand the perplexity that the disciples must have had going through their minds. If you pick up on the story from the tail end of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you understand that they were puzzled. Especially Luke and John show that very clearly. They did not know what was going on. They did not know what to do.

They had heard the preaching of Christ for 3.5 years but their mind was so conditioned by the things that they had learned earlier that it was hard for them to adjust to the teaching of Christ and apply it to their lives. That is why Peter went fishing. They thought the jig was up, everything was done and over with. They were going to go back and do the things that they had all done. It was a pleasant dream. It was exciting, but now everything had collapsed.

Now their Master had been resurrected, and He had spoken to them. He had told them to stay in Jerusalem, and their minds were somewhat clear, but they still did not understand everything yet. Well, they were beginning to really look to the Scriptures for guidance. And so they picked up on this. What were they supposed to do? Christ had gone back to heaven. The Holy Spirit had not yet come. What were they supposed to do with their time?

Well, a bit of reasoning led them to the understanding that they were to replace Judas with somebody. What we see here is the beginning of that. Now what Peter is doing is he is looking into the Scriptures for authority to do what they are about to do. And so he picked up on Psalm 41:9.

Acts 1:17-18 "He was numbered with us and obtained a part in this ministry." (Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out.

We have to stop here because there is a difficulty with Matthew 27:5 where it says that Judas hanged himself. Now here it says that "he fell headlong and burst open in the middle." His intestines came out. There is also another difficulty and that is that there is no record of Judas having bought a field. How do we reconcile these things? Well, let us go back to Matthew 27. This was after he recognized what he did.

Matthew 27:5-8 Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priest took the silver pieces and said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood." And they consulted together and bought with them [that is, the 30 pieces of silver] the potter's field, to bury strangers in. And therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

Acts 1:19 And it became known to all those dwelling in Jerusalem; so that field is called in their own language Akel Dama, that is, Field of Blood.)

That is very clear. The chief priest then took the money that they had given to Judas and bought the field. Now the reason that it says that this man purchased a field, it is just a figure of speech that indicates that he was the cause or the reason for the field being purchased. If there had been no Judas, if there had been no 30 pieces of silver, if there had been no Jesus to be betrayed, if Judas had not thrown the 30 pieces of silver down, and if the chief priest then had not picked it up and bought, none of this would have occurred. And so Judas was the central figure here in this particular drama, and so he was the reason or the cause even though he did not actually do it. But he was the cause for it being bought. And now it was locals who named it Akel Dama, the Field of Blood.

And then what happened regarding the hanging? Well, the best guess is if you compare the two, you will find that neither account denies the factuality of the other. The Scripture cannot be broken. John 10:35 says that. So both scriptures are correct. Matthew does not deny that Judas fell down and he burst open. Luke does not deny that Judas was hanged. So you put the two of them together and "Eureka!" you have got it. He was hanged. At some time during the hanging—there is no indication as to how long he was there. Was it one day, two days, three days, four days? He undoubtedly began to decompose and gasses began to form in his body. And at some time during that period of time, the rope that was holding him up there broke, parted, the knot slipped or whatever, and Judas fell down from enough of a height that when he hit the ground, he burst open and his entrails fell out. That seems to be the most plausible explanation since the Scripture cannot be broken and there is no contradiction in it.

Acts 1:20 "For it is written in the Book of Psalms: 'Let his habitation be desolate, and let no one live in it'; and, 'Let another take his office.'

Now these are two other psalms, Psalm 69:25 and Psalm 109:8. They are very interesting because if you go and read those psalms and read those verses in their context, they seem to have nothing at all to do with Judas. But here is an apostle of God quoting them, and he is making the application because it fits the circumstances. They are looking around for authority for what they are to do. And this is what they seized upon, seeing in those scriptures the connection to the betrayal by Judas of Christ and in the Psalms how this person was going to lose his office and another person had to take his place. So then that precipitated the appointment of Matthias.

Acts 1:21-22 "Therefore, these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to that day when He was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection."

Now there are two qualifications given for the man who is to replace Judas. He had to be there from the very beginning, "all the time that the Lord went in and out among us." And he had to be a witness of the resurrection.

Were there only two? Well, again, that does not seem right to me. Jesus appointed the 70 apparently at the same time that He appointed the Twelve. Did all 70 of those fall away during the intervening 3.5 years? It hardly seems likely. But apparently there was a general consensus of agreement between these two men: Joseph called Barsabas, which means son of the Sabbath, and surnamed Justus, and then the other man, Matthias. When they finally got down to those two men, then they prayed. Apparently Peter was the one who actually verbally said it.

Acts 1:24 "You, O Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which of these two You have chosen. . .

So Christ actually made the choice of the 12th or 13th, however you want to look at it, even as He made the choice of the other 11 or 12, however you want to look at it.

Acts 1:25-26 . . . to take part in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place." [Where was his place? Well, it was in the grave now.] And they cast their lots, and the lot fell on Matthias. And he was numbered with the eleven apostles.

It is interesting, this phrase "cast their lots." It can also mean to vote. Now we have a tendency to think of it in terms of somebody rolling dice or somebody choosing straws or something similar to that, and that the choice was made that way. That is a possibility. But that was a very common Greek phrase that meant to vote, and the Greeks voted. Did they vote? Did they cast ballots? Did they cast secret ballots? Did they all say aye? I do not know. Did God influence their ballot in order to make the one that He chose win? Or did they actually cast lots in some way, as we would normally think of? And if they did cast lots, how did they do it?

Well, this is kind of interesting. I just did a little study to really satisfy myself. Do you know how they chose the goat on the Day of Atonement? This is the way I understand that they did it. They would have a crock and they would have two stones and the stones would have writing on them. The one was Azazel and the other one was luck something or other. I cannot remember the second part of the word. But of course that was the Lord's goat. The high priest would then put both hands into the crock. He could not see what he was picking up, he had to do it without looking. He would put both hands into the crock and in his left hand would be one, and then in his right hand would be the other stone. And then he would advance toward the goats, you see, and the one that was in his left hand would go on this goat, and the one on the right hand would go to this goat. And then whichever name appeared on the stone or piece of metal or piece of wood, that one was the Lord's goat and the other one was the Azazel. That was simple enough, was it not? You see, that way they felt that God was actually directing the choice as to which stone went into which hand or which piece of wood went into which hand.

Now, if you would look in Joshua 14, they divided the inheritance, the land also by lot. How did they do that? Well, they did it the same way. See, God had already described the lands that He wanted each one of the tribes to be in. The description is given in Genesis 49. They are not named, but they are described. Judah was to be in this area that was going to have such-and-such kind of topography and vegetation, and Manasseh was going to be here, Ephraim was going to be there.

What they probably, I would not say undoubtedly, but they probably did, again, is that this time they made two crocks. And in the one they put the descriptions written out on a piece of wood, a rolled up piece of papyrus, a piece of metal or whatever, and in the other they put the names of the tribes. One man would pull out the name of the tribe and then the other person would pull out the description of the land. And in that way, God was the one who chose which description of land went with each tribe, and in that way it could not be finagled in any way. It was done publicly and no one could say, "You got that because you were Moses' favorite or Joshua's favorite," because it was all pulled out of the hat, you might say, by lot.

We will just close here with one scripture.

Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.

That was another form of casting lots. It was to do something like we would roll dice. But its every decision is from the Lord. Now this is the last time (Acts 1:26) in the Bible that lots are used. From the beginning of the coming of God's Holy Spirit, we are expected to use the reasoning processes that God has given to us, aided and guided by His Word, in order to understand, to know, to find, the will of God and to make choices and build character, even in making mistakes. But lots were no longer cast and God no longer made decision and choice through that means in His people Israel.

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