| CHAPTER 1 Verses 1-5: The Writer begins
(Verse 1) Most people think that Luke wrote the Book of Acts. The first
book that he had written was Luke’s Gospel. We find Luke’s name in some of
the letters that Paul wrote. You will not find Luke’s name in the Book of
Acts. Yet sometimes Luke is there. If you look at Acts Chapter 16, you will
find that Paul and his friends are ‘they’ in verses 1-8. Luke seems to have
been at the city of Troas. In verse 10, Luke has joined the party with Paul.
So now Luke writes about ‘we’. So we can tell whether or not Luke is with
Paul.
Now in Acts 24 to 26, Paul is in Caesarea. There were several cities with
that name. This one is Caesarea Maritima, the great port on the coast of
Palestine which the Roman ships used. Paul was there for more than two
years: see Acts 24:27. Luke was with Paul in Acts 21 and again in Acts
27:10. Luke may have used the time in between to write his Gospel. In Luke
1:3, he tells us that he did not just write down what other people told him.
He checked what he put down in the Gospel. If he was in Caesarea, he would
be able to find people who had known Jesus.
We shall find, too, that quite a lot of the Book of Acts is to do with
Caesarea. The story of Acts does not end until A.D.62, when Paul was a
prisoner in Rome. See Acts 28:30. So Luke cannot have finished the Book of
Acts before then. Yet if he was with Paul in Rome, he may have been able to
finish it off at that time.
Theophilus is a Greek name and it means ‘one who loves God.’ No one knows
whether this was really a man’s name. No one knows anything about Theophilus
except what Luke tells us.
In Luke 1:3 Luke honours Theophilus when he calls him ‘most excellent’. This
means ‘strongest’ or ‘best’. It is like calling someone ‘My Lord’. This may
mean that Theophilus was an important man. He was most likely rich too. Luke
wrote these two books for Theophilus and gave them to him. Luke ‘dedicated’
them to Theophilus. That meant that Theophilus would have slaves or servants
who would write out copies. Luke must have known that Theophilus was happy
to do this. There would then be copies, which other people could read.
Some people think that Theophilus became a Christian after Luke gave him the
Gospel. You will see that in our verse Acts 1:1, Luke no longer calls him
‘most excellent’. Perhaps, then, Theophilus is now a brother Christian.
[1.1]
We may be sure that Luke was a medical doctor; see Colossians 4:14. He may
have worked as a ship’s doctor at the port of Troas. He seems often to speak
about people’s eyes. If he was an eye doctor he may have trained at Laodicea
in Phrygia. He may have come from the city of Tarsus in Cilicia, like Paul;
and Titus may be Luke’s brother. These are only guesses. What matters far
more is what Luke says now about his first book. It was about what ‘Jesus
began to do and to teach’. (Verse 2) That first book covers the time until
God took Jesus up to heaven. So the second book - that is, ‘Acts’, - will
tell us that Jesus did not stop. He still does things and He still teaches.
Luke tells us in Luke 24:50-52 how God took Jesus up to heaven . See also
Mark 16:19. Luke is a good and careful writer. He will start his new book
where he ended the first one. We call this Book ‘the Acts of the Apostles’.
Yet only two or three of the eleven or twelve ‘apostles’ do anything in
Acts. Paul does more. Some people think about the book as ‘the Acts of the
Holy Spirit’. This is right: but it is better still to think about it as the
Acts of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We can read in the Gospels how Jesus called twelve of the people who
followed Him. See Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:12-16. Verses 18 and
19 will tell us what happened to Judas. But the other eleven became the
apostles. Jesus sent them out to spread the Good News. Jesus chose them.
They did not choose Him. See John 15:16. No one in the church of Jesus
Christ must claim honour for himself. It is never a good sign when people
put themselves forward in God’s work. It is always better if other
Christians see that we are the right people for God’s work. He tells those
whom He chooses what they are to do.
(Verse 3) Jesus had suffered and died on the cross. He rose on the first day
of the week. All four Gospels will tell us about the forty days after that.
Jesus showed the disciples that He was really alive. He ate with them and
taught them.
Jesus spoke to them about ‘the Kingdom of God’. Right at the end of Acts, in
Acts 28:31, we find Paul still preaches the Kingdom of God. We shall come
across the words from time to time in Acts. Jesus taught us to pray: ’Your
kingdom come’. God is our King, and we obey Him. So God’s kingdom is already
in us. But we look forward to the time when God will rule over the entire
world.
Verse 4 tells us about the same time that we read about in Luke 24:45-49.
Jesus told the eleven to stay in the city of Jerusalem. They had good
reasons to want to go back home to Galilee. Most of them came from Galilee.
They had many enemies in Jerusalem. They had many friends in Galilee. So
Jesus tells them why they are to stay in Jerusalem [1.2]. They are to wait
until God the Father gives to them the Holy Spirit. God has promised to do
this. The Holy Spirit was already at work: see verse 2. God promised to give
His Spirit much more fully and in plenty. Jesus had told them about this.
See for example, John 14:15-18 and 25-27.
(Verse 5) The coming of the Spirit would be like a baptism. God would dip
them in the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist had dipped people in water. He did
this to show that they had repented. We can read about this in the four
Gospels. See for example, Matthew 3:1-6. When John the Baptist baptised
Jesus, the Spirit of God came upon Him. See Matthew 3:16. This did not
happen when John baptised other people. The Christians would still baptise
people in water, but God would baptise them with the Holy Spirit. This would
happen ‘after these not many days’. [1.3]
The Sea (or lake) of Galilee was about 120km north of Jerusalem. Galilee
also means the part of Palestine, which is west of the lake. There is a lot
about Galilee in the four Gospels. There must have been many people there
who knew and loved Jesus. Yet there is nothing about Galilee in Acts or the
rest of the New Testament. There is very little about it in the Old
Testament.
Verses 6-11: Jesus goes back to heaven
We have seen that these verses are like Luke 24:50 and 51. In verse 6 here,
it seems that Jesus is with the Eleven in Jerusalem. They walk together to
the east, about a kilometre. The Mount of Olives is a long hill, which runs
north and south. It is east of Jerusalem. Bethany is a village on this hill.
The eleven had a question to which they wanted an answer. They felt sure
that at some time, Israel, that is the Jewish people, would have a king
again. They wanted to know when Jesus would make this happen. If God gave
the Jews a king, they would no longer have to do what the Romans told them
to do. They would feel free.
Now this may have been a bad question. Jesus had spoken to them about the
Kingdom of God. They did not understand what he said to them. This may be
why Luke tells us about this. He wants us to know that the Eleven were not
ready for what God would do. The answer, which Jesus gives in verse 7, is
good teaching for all of us. See also James 4:13. We must get on and do what
Jesus tells us to do. Jesus had spoken like this before: see Matthew 24:36.
Many people waste good time when they try to work out dates for things to
come.
The Greek language had two words for time, ‘chronos’ and ‘kairos’. Luke uses
both of these words here. ‘Chronos’ means the length of a period of time.
‘Kairos’ means what happens at a time to make it special. God has fixed
both. We cannot know what the future holds. It would not be good for us to
know. God never leaves it too late!
Then (verse 8) Jesus gives the Eleven a promise first, and next tells them
what they are to do. Notice in verse 7 the word ‘authority’. That is power
and the right to use it. God has ‘authority’. The Eleven did not have power.
That word is like our word ‘dynamite’. God will give power to the Eleven
when He also gives the Holy Spirit to them.
This power will mean that the Eleven will be able to tell people about
Jesus. They would tell what they had seen and what they knew about Him. They
will ‘testify’. See 1 John 1:1. This is what a man had to do in a court of
law. The word is the one from which we get the word ‘martyr’. In the years
after this, many Christians would die because they told people what they
knew about Jesus. The word ‘martyr’ gained a new meaning in the Early
Church.
These witnesses had to be people who had known Jesus. It was not enough that
someone had risen from the dead. They had to know Jesus well, so that they
could say: ‘Yes! It really is the same Jesus who has risen’.
The work was to begin in Jerusalem. It was to spread to Judea. This was the
country around Jerusalem. Then the work was to go on to Samaria, which was
north of Judea. The Jews and the people in Samaria hated each other. See
Acts 8:2-25. Then the Eleven had to preach the Good News about Jesus ‘to the
ends of the earth’. We still have to do that today! The apostles made a good
start, and seem to have reached India and the Ukraine. The Good News reached
Ethiopia and Rome. In those days, ‘the ends of the earth’ may have meant
Gades in Spain. This was already in those days a great port: it is now
called Cadiz. [1.4]
(Verse 9) By this time, Jesus and the Eleven had reached the Mount of
Olives. The Eleven saw God take Jesus up and a cloud hid Jesus from them.
We do not find much about the Mount of Olives in the Old Testament. See 2
Samuel 15:30 and Ezekiel 11:23. But there is one very wonderful verse. It is
Zechariah 14:4. Zechariah wrote those words hundreds of years before the
time of Jesus. In the Gospels we have verses like Matthew 21:1 and 24:3.
Bethany was on the Mount of Olives: see John 11:1 and 12:1. In Luke
10:38-42, Jesus is in the home of Mary and Martha, so He is at Bethany on
the Mount of Olives.
The ‘two men’ who were dressed in white clothes were, no doubt, angels. The
apostles were too busy looking up into the sky. They did not see where they
came from. What they say (verse 11) is most important. It is ‘this same
Jesus’ who will come again. The apostles were ‘the Men of Galilee’ who had
lived with Jesus for about three years in Galilee. They knew Him well.
There are many people today who teach that Jesus will come again, but that
He will not be the same. The angels said that He would be the same. If they
were wrong about that, then they might be wrong when they said that He would
come again. That Jesus will come again is certain. When He will come, only
God the Father knows. Jesus Himself said that He would come again in the
clouds. See for example, Matthew 24:30 We should be careful about the words
‘sky’ and ‘heaven’. Sometimes the word ‘heaven’ means only ‘the air around
us’. Sometimes it means the sky, which we see when we look up. The heaven
where God lives is not one of these. It is ‘away from here’, but we should
not think of it as ‘up there’.
Verses 12-26: The Church before the Spirit came
These verses tell us how the first followers of Jesus spent the ten days
which followed. They fit in to this, in verses 15-20, the story of Judas
Iscariot and his death. Then in verses 21-26 the church adds Matthias to the
Eleven. This is so that there is a man to take the place of Judas.
So in verse 12, the apostles go back from the Mount of Olives to the city of
Jerusalem. They go up to the guest room on the roof of a house. This may be
the same room where Jesus ate the Passover with them; we do not know. Then
we have (in verse 13) the list of the Eleven, which we also find in the
Gospels. See Matthew 10:2-4, which also includes Judas Iscariot. [1.5]
(Verse 14) Our English Bibles do not seem to be strong enough here. Jesus’
followers met to pray. They did so willingly. When they prayed, they all
knew what to ask God for. They were ‘of one mind’. It was not just that
their words agreed. The ‘women’ here could just be their wives. This is
unlikely. We should think of the women who were at the cross. See John
19:25; Matthew 27:55 and 56; Mark 15:40 and 41 and Luke 23:49 and 55. Mary
the Lord’s mother was one of these women. See also Luke 24:10 and John 19:26
and 27.
Matthew 12:55 gives the names of the brothers of Jesus. We believe that they
were younger than Jesus was. We think that they were the children of Joseph
and Mary but we cannot be sure. Many people think that they were older than
Jesus was; then they would have been the sons of Joseph by a wife who had
died before he married Mary. The word ‘brothers’ here could even just mean
‘cousins’. We guess that the sisters of Jesus had married and that they
lived in Galilee. James and Jude wrote two of the letters in our New
Testament. They were two of our Lord’s brothers. Much of the Letter from
James sounds like the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels. Perhaps it was what
Jesus said in the home in Nazareth; James remembered it. These brothers did
not believe in Jesus until He rose from death. See 1 Corinthians 15:7, where
James is probably James the Lord’s brother. [1.6} James became a great man
of prayer and the leader of the Jerusalem church. In some ways, his task was
harder than that of the apostles. In James 4:1-4, he may well speak about
life in Jerusalem. The Jews killed him about A.D.62, thirty years or so
after this. [1.7]
(Verse 15) Peter now talks to all the group about what he feels that they
should do. He does not act on his own. Nor do the apostles. This is a good
example of the way that things should be done in a church. Peter stands up
among the brothers. Luke says that they were a crowd of 120 names. This
early church no doubt kept a list of names of the people who belonged to it.
Peter then speaks about Judas Iscariot. Matthew 27:2-10 tells us what
happened to Judas, as verses 18 and 19 do here. Judas Iscariot had a bad
heart. He loved money far too much, and he had no real love for Jesus. He
went out and killed himself. Peter said three times over that he did not
know Jesus. He went out and wept. See Mark 14:72. He was weak, but his love
for Jesus was very real.
It is very unusual in Scripture for anyone to take their own life. See Saul
in 1Samuel 31:4, Ahitophel in 2 Samuel 17:23 and perhaps Samson in Judges
17:30.
Peter uses words from two Psalms in verse 20. They are from Psalm 69:25 and
Psalm 109:8. Then he argues that the church most choose someone to take the
place of Judas. Only someone who knew Jesus well before His death on the
cross would do. They had to be able to tell people what Jesus had done and
said. They must know that the same Jesus had risen from death. So the eleven
apostles put two men forward. (Verse 23) The name of one was Joseph
Barsabbas or Justus. Luke says more about him, so he may be the man that
they really wanted. The other was Matthias. They prayed. See verse 24. Then
they ‘cast lots’ - or tossed up! - and they added Matthias to make the
eleven up to 12 again.
No one can ever be quite sure that this was right. Matthias is not heard of
again, although there is an old story that he died for the sake of Jesus in
Ethiopia. God has His own time, and we may feel that His will was that Paul
should be the extra apostle. The two men who were put forward were both well
known to Jesus. Yet He had not chosen them when He chose the twelve. And we
may feel that it was not right to ask God to choose between the two men.
Most of all, the use of lots is never good. There have been other times when
people have used lots and they have gone wrong. [1.8]
So we come to the end of this chapter. These beginnings of the church were
weak. They were not too sure what they should do. Yet they prayed. They did
not want the failure of Judas to stop the witness to the Lord Jesus.
We know that the king, Herod Agrippa I, killed the apostle James about
A.D.40. Acts says nothing at that time about making up the number to twelve
again. In some later references in the New Testament we can translate
‘messenger’ rather than ‘apostle’. In Acts 14:4 and 14 it is clear that Luke
calls Barnabas an apostle. There are still today men of God who do the work
of an apostle. But there are no apostles. There is no one today who had the
rights and the power that the apostles had in the churches. |