Join us as we delve into the fascinating narrative of the Book of Acts, a pivotal text in the New Testament that charts the early days of the church. Discover the ‘we passages’ that reveal when Luke himself joined the apostolic journey, offering a unique firsthand account of the events. We explore Paul’s vision of Macedonia, the miracles in Philippi, and the relentless spread of Christianity beyond the Jewish community, highlighting the significant ‘turning points’ that propelled the faith into new territories.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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The book of Acts sits in a pivotal position in the New Testament. The early church fathers, when they spoke of the New Testament, tended to think in terms of Gospels and Epistles. I don’t know why they didn’t mention Acts, unless perhaps they thought Acts was the second volume of Luke’s one-volume thing. But nevertheless, it seems to be in a different category. The Gospels anticipate the church. The epistles presuppose the church. Only Acts tells the story of the development, the propagation of the faith, and the development of the church. Luke seems to look himself at Acts as volume two of a two-volume work. There’s a surprising amount of detail in the book of Acts, a lot of which the casual reader will pass over without even noticing it. But candidates for advanced degrees in biblical studies have to write about something, so they mine the pages of this book, looking for clues like an English detective. You may have noticed, for example, in your own reading, that there are passages in Acts where Luke seems to be present as a participant and observer. In other places, he is not. These are called the we passages. Luke, on those occasions, was not present or a witness to many of the events he records. It poses no problem because he was obviously very close to Paul, and he gleaned these stories from him, no doubt in long conversations on shipboard and elsewhere. Take, though, as an example the narrative that begins in Acts chapter 16. Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, and there was a certain disciple there named Timothy. He was the son of a certain woman who was a Jewess and believed. His father was a Greek. He was well reported of by all the brethren at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted to take him with him on his journeys. So he circumcised him because of all the Jews in those quarters, because they all knew his father was a Greek. And then he says, “…as they went through the cities…” they delivered to them the decrees for to keep that were ordained of the apostles and elders at Jerusalem. This follows on the heels of the Jerusalem conference when some important decisions had been made and had to be taken out to the churches. So were the churches established in faith and increased in number daily. Now when they had gone through Phrygia, the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia, After they were come into Mysia, they attempted to go to Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not. And they, passing by Mysia, came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. There stood a man of Macedonia and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us. Now, as you read your way through this, you probably catch the fact, and I emphasize it enough, I hope you didn’t, that Luke is standing off to one side and talking about what they are doing. Now listen to how the narrative changes. Acts 16, verse 10. After Paul had seen this vision of the man from Macedonia, immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel to them. Therefore, loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Samothracia, the next day to Neapolis. From there we went on to Philippi, the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony.” And we were in that city abiding for certain days. Now, and we don’t know exactly when he arrived or how he got joined up to Paul’s company, we just all of a sudden realize Luke is there. Up until this point, Luke was not with them. He kept writing about they did this and they did that. Now he keeps saying, we are doing these things. So somehow in Philippi, Paul picked up Luke. Well, they worked there for a while. They were in the city certain days. And on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city by a riverside where prayer was wont to be made. This would be, I presume, Paul, Barnabas, perhaps Timothy, and Luke. And we sat down and spoke to the women who resorted there. A certain woman named Lydia, she was a seller of purple in the city of Thyatira. She worshipped God, heard us, whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended to the things which were spoken by Paul.” Then she was baptized and her household, and she begged us, saying, If you have judged me faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay there. And she constrained us. Now, at this point, they encounter a pretty serious crisis on this occasion. It came to pass, as they went to prayer, there was a damsel who was possessed with a spirit of divination. She brought her masters much gain by her soothsaying. Now, what this means in any kind of precision, we don’t know. We just know that she was owned by some men who were using her to make a lot of money because she had some sort of a spirit of divination. She was a fortune teller. The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are servants of the Most High God, which show to us the way of salvation. Again and again. She did this for several days, and finally Paul just got tired of her, and he turned to say to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her. He came out the same hour. Now, you can really write an interesting story about this. Her masters saw that the hope of their gain was gone, so they caught Paul and Silas. They drew them to the marketplace, to the rulers. They brought them before the magistrates, and they said, These men, being Jews, which was almost enough in some quarters to get them in jail anyway, do exceedingly trouble our city, and they teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe being Romans. Now, that was not entirely true, really not true at all. But the multitude rose up against them. The magistrates ran off their clothes and commanded to beat them. Now, at this point, Luke is not among those who are being beaten up. It’s really Paul and Barnabas. And when they had laid many stripes on them, they cast him into prison, charged the jailer to keep him safe, who having received this charge, put him in the inner prisons, made their feast fast in the stocks. Oh, good grief. You’re beaten, your back is bloody and miserable and hurting and in pain, and there is absolutely no way to get comfortable. Anyhow, they stayed in that prison, and that night they began to sing hymns. And there was an earthquake of sorts. The door to the prison was open. Their shackles were broken off. And they were ready to get up and leave, but they didn’t. The prison keeper, when he saw what happened, was ready to kill himself because he didn’t want to have to face the inquisition that would come upon him when they realized he had lost his prisoners. But to make a long story short, they preached the gospel to the man. He was baptized in his whole house. The next day, they refused to just be let go privately. They wanted those men to come down there and apologize to them before they were willing to go out. Well, in verse 40, it says, they went out of the prison, entered in the house of Lydia when they had seen their brother, and they comforted them and departed. Then begins Acts 17 by saying, And when they had passed through Amphipolis, Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Now Luke escaped jail, and it sounds like he stayed in Philippi when Paul and Silas left. Now, there are at least three major we sections in the book of Acts, and I’ll let you entertain yourself by finding them in your next reading. Looking for these things on your own will tend to draw you into the story and make you more aware of the very real hand of the physician that wrote this remarkable book. Another way of reading Acts is to look for the turning points. Acts is such a remarkable story. It deserves careful study. There are five major turning points that stand out in my own reading of Acts. You don’t have to be a scholar to immediately know which of these events comes first. It was on that day of Pentecost when all the disciples were all with one accord in one place. They did not know what was coming. They had been told to wait until they were endued with power from on high, so they expected something. But they can’t possibly have imagined what actually happened. Suddenly there was a sound from heaven like a tornado. It filled the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them distributed tongues of fire that went across the ceiling and descended upon each one of them as they sat there. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to speak with other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, at this time, when all this began to develop, there were at Jerusalem Jews who were devout men out of every nation under heaven. They had come for the Feast of Pentecost. Now, when this got noised abroad, the whole crowd came together, and they were confounded because every man heard them speak in his own language. They were all amazed and marveled at this. They thought, how can this be? These guys, obviously, I can tell by their clothes and their style, they’re Galileans. How is it that we hear every man in our own language wherein we were born? Jews across the empire spoke the language of the country where they were born. What were these languages? Well, there are 12 of them, and they are all named here. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Lullers in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia in Egypt, the parts of Libya around Cyrene, a regional dialect, strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians. We hear them speak in our languages the wonderful works of God. What a huge event this was. And it’s really important to understand something here. They were speaking not unknown tongues. They were speaking in known tongues that are named, and not only that, the people who heard them knew the message. They were hearing them speak in their own tongues the wonderful works of God. 3,000 people were baptized on this one day. It was, in a very real sense, the launching of the church. But there was something else. This gift of 12 known languages is highly suggestive of where the disciples were supposed to go with this power. There were both Jews and proselytes there. The proselytes were Gentiles who had been circumcised, fully accepted into the Jewish community. Another category of Gentiles are called God-fearers, people who believed in God, the God of the Jews, but had never been circumcised. They had never been accepted into the Jewish community. This, then, necessitated the next move of the Holy Spirit to reach out to the God-fearers.
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Stay with me through this brief message, and when I come back, we’ll talk about that. This series of radio programs is available in album form. If you would like to get in on this story from the very beginning, write or call and ask for your free introductory CD titled, Introduction to the New Testament. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Now, there’s a developing theme in Acts that you can easily overlook unless it’s called to your attention. So trust me, I’m going to call it to your attention. We start out by giving the gift of the Holy Spirit to a group of Jews and proselytes, proselytes being circumcised Gentiles who believed in God and had come to the worship of God and were a part of the Jewish community. But we have another category of people hanging out here. They are the uncircumcised Gentiles who believe in God and who worship God as far as they’re able, but who are not accepted into the community of disciples. This leads us to the second step the Holy Spirit takes to begin to change things among Christ’s disciples. The story is in the 10th chapter of Acts. There’s this man in Caesarea. His name is Cornelius. He’s a Roman centurion. He leads the Italian band. He’s a devout man. He feared God with all his house, gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God constantly. Now, that expression, one that feared God, is really meaningful in a first century context. These people were what are—there was a term for them. They were God-fearers as opposed to proselytes. So this fellow saw a vision. He was praying and saw this vision. An angel came in and spoke to him, called him by name. And he looked at him and was quite naturally afraid and said, What is it, Lord? And the angel said, Your prayers in your alms are come up for a memorial before God. Now I want you to send some men to Joppa. Ask for one Simon Peter. He lodges with another Simon, who is a tanner, by the seaside. He will tell you what you ought to do. So when the angel was gone, Cornelius got two of his household servants and a devout soldier among those that were with him continually. And he told them all that happened and sent them to Joppa. Now on the morrow, as they were on their journey, they got close to Joppa. About this time, Peter went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour. It was a regular habit of his. Now, Peter on the housetop has his own vision, a vision in which animals are let down in a sheet. And a voice says, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. And he refuses because there are unclean animals among them. And the answer comes back to him, What I have cleansed you are not to call unclean. Now, when Peter doubted himself what the vision should mean, and it doesn’t mean what a lot of people seem to think it does, you have to come to the account itself to find out what it meant. While he was doubting, these men showed up and stood at the gate of the house, and they called and asked whether Simon Peter lodged there. Well, Peter, while he thought on the vision, the Spirit spoke to him and said, Hey, three men downstairs are seeking you. Get up and get down and go with them. Don’t doubt anything, because I have sent them. So Peter, what else could he do? He went down to the men and he said, I’m the man you’re looking for. What do you come here for? And they explained to him about the centurion, about the angel. And so Peter called them in the house and lodged them. And the next day he went away with them. The next day they entered into Caesarea. Cornelius waited for them. And he had called together all of his kinsmen and his near friends. There’s a considerable audience here that he has put together to listen to Peter. Well, Peter walks in the door. Cornelius fell at his feet. And Peter picked him up and said, Don’t know. Stand up. I am a man just like you are. And he talked with him and went in and found all these people had come together. And he said to them, what he says at this point is fascinating. He said, you know that it’s unlawful for a man that is a Jew to keep company or come unto one of another nation. But God has showed me. Now, if you want to understand what Peter’s vision was all about, here’s what Peter says. It showed him. that I should not call any man common or unclean. Now, this is a lot bigger than it appears to us. It is so big that Peter still hasn’t absorbed all the implications of this. God seems to take him through this step by step so he can’t get it wrong. Well, finally, after all this happens, Peter says, it opened his mouth and said, Of a truth I perceive, that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that fears him and works righteousness is accepted by God. Wow! That is an incredible statement that he makes here. God is not a respecter of persons. He isn’t just the God of the Jews. But in every nation the men that fear him and work righteousness are accepted to him. Now, this is one thing I can see here. This is the lesson that Peter is supposed to take away. So then he proceeds to proclaim the gospel to them. And while he was speaking the words, in order that there not be any misunderstanding about this, the Holy Spirit fell on all of them that heard the word. And the circumcised Jews who had come down there with Peter were astonished, because upon the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit. They had seen it on Pentecost, on the Jews. Now they were seeing exactly the same thing among the Gentiles. They heard them speak in languages and magnify God. And then Peter said something, I guess it’s pretty logical. Is there anybody here that’s going to forbid water that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we? And I gather nobody argued with him. He commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord, and he stayed with them for certain days. Now, you understand what’s happened here. First of all, we begin to break the gospel out among the Jewish population, wherever they may be, in all nations on the face of the earth. Now we break the gospel out, not merely among the Jews, but among the Gentiles who fear God and work righteousness wherever they may be. Well, when Peter went back to Jerusalem and everybody up there heard what had happened, there were people of the circumcision who wanted to argue with him about it, saying, You went in to men who were uncircumcised. You ate with these people. But Peter rehearsed the matter from the beginning. and told them exactly what happened in great detail, and when he got through, there really wasn’t much of anything anyone could say about it. So, it’s very plain, Peter said, God has granted the Gentiles repentance unto life, and all the Jews recognized that as well. Now, you would think that this would have permanently resolved the issue, but it did not. there are a couple more steps that God is going to take to get this issue fully clarified. Now stay with me through this short break, and I’ll take you to the next step.
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For a free CD of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled, Introduction to the New Testament, No.
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12.
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Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44. That’s 1-888-242-5344. For your information, this particular program will be the last in the album.
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Introduction to the New Testament Someday, when time permits, I’ll come back and do some program or maybe one program of introductions to the rest of the New Testament books. Meanwhile, I’ve got another series I want to do and a couple of books to write. But just get in touch with us, and you can get information on how to get those other albums. Now, as I pointed out, we are beginning to make steps. And what’s happening here is that God, in a sense, is saying, I am not going to be merely the God of the Jews. I am the God of the whole world, and I want to gather the whole world together in one. And for some reason, the Jews in the Jerusalem church had a great deal of difficulty in working their way through this. You would think, as I said, that the situation with Peter would have resolved the issue, but it didn’t. And so, God makes one more move. There is a man named Saul. He comes from the city of Tarsus. He is engaged in outright, vicious persecution of of the Christians at that time. He is so vehement that he goes to the high priest, get letters of introduction, so he can go all the way to the city of Damascus, and if he finds anybody there who are Christians, he can arrest them and bring them bound all the way back to Jerusalem. I mean, how could they do this? It’s hard to figure, but that’s what he had in mind. And so here’s Saul on his way to Damascus to do his dirty deeds again. But on the way… he encounters Christ. He has a vision. He’s knocked to the ground. He’s blinded by a light from heaven, and a voice thunders down, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And Saul, trembling, says, who are you? And the voice answered, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Get on to Damascus, and I’ll tell you what you’re to do. And so he went three days, three nights. Paul fasted, ate nothing, was blind as a bat, and all he could do was lie there and replay in his mind all of the dastardly deeds he had done. And finally, he saw a vision about a man named Ananias. And the man named Ananias had a vision from God and says, get on down to Paul and see him and put your hands on him. He said, and Ananias was afraid. He was no fool. He’d heard about Saul. And he objected. And God says, no, go on down there. He is a chosen vessel to me to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake. That last verse. It’s just, I guess, one of those old sayings about what goes around comes around. The Apostle Paul had so created so much suffering in the church that he himself was going to have to learn what it meant to suffer for Christ’s name’s sake. But the important thing in this is Saul will carry God’s name before the Gentiles. We have still got that problem that God is breaking his faith, the faith of Jesus Christ, the worship of Jehovah, breaking it out from being merely Jewish into being something for the whole world. Saul is the man to do the job. And that takes me to the fourth step. Fourth big step that was taken, because Saul had to have some time. He had to have some time with God. He had to have some time to sort his thoughts out before he was ready. In Acts 13, we have in the church at Antioch certain prophets and teachers, and they’re named. One of them was Saul. They ministered to the Lord, and they fasted. And at that time the Holy Spirit said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. You’ll find this story beginning in the 13th chapter of Acts. Why is it so important? This is the first time that the gospel will go in very large measure to the Gentiles. Because what happened is, when Paul would go into a new town, he would go to the synagogue. And he would preach there. And the Jews would all but throw him out and reject it. But the Gentiles, the God-fearers who came to those synagogues, believed Paul. And they came back to him again and again. And they were being baptized in numbers. According to the way some Jews looked at things at that time, that should not have been happening, and the church had still not got to come to grips with all this. But anyway, they went about from town to town, and they baptized Gentiles wherever they went. Well, they came back, told the Antioch church how wonderful this was and all the great things God had done with them. And when all was said and done, we come to the fifth step. Some men came up from Jerusalem and said, you can’t do that. You’ve been baptizing these Gentiles. This has got to stop. They have to be circumcised and keep all of the law of Moses, or they can’t be saved. And they certainly can’t enter the community of Christians. Then follows this great Jerusalem conference when this question is indeed answered once and for all. The gospel will be allowed to go to the Gentiles. And so, the overriding theme in the book of Acts, as it works its way through all the great events of the book of Acts, is the breakout of the faith of God to the world.
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You have heard Ronald L. Dart. If you would like more information, or if you have any questions, write to BornToWin.com. Post Office Box 560. White House, Texas 75791. In the U.S. and Canada, call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And visit our website at borntowin.net.
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