By Tyson Thorne
Here at Think-Biblically.com we’ve provided a number of topical studies that have, hopefully, been teaching you how to think biblically and grow in your relationship with God. We’re about to make a dramatic turn and start a series not on any particular topic, but on the book of Acts. The series will be broken up from time to time as current events dictate, but for the next several weeks we’ll be spending most of our time in studying The Acts of the Apostles.
The year is 61 AD and, shortly after finishing his first historical account of the life of Jesus, Luke begins to pen the chronicles of the early church. This second book will maintain the historic record began in his gospel though his audience will be vastly different. Instead of writing an orderly account for Theophilus, this book would be written to Jews first, so that they might relent from hardening their hearts against the Christ and the Holy Spirits work amongst the Gentiles, and then to those Gentiles so that they might stop viewing themselves as something less than the people of God. As he began to write, he had no notion the impact The Acts of the Apostles would have in the dawning church age.
Throughout history Luke’s second book became one of the most mishandled and misunderstood tomes. It was claimed by some that they had discovered “New Testament Christianity”, and others found the model for what the Church should be, and still others declared the power of the Apostles was to be claimed and practiced by all true believers. Is it true? Did Luke intend to lay down a model for all future church practices and a pattern of power that would be normative for all true believers?
As we study the writing we will see that Luke had very different intentions indeed. In fact, it should become clear in the coming weeks that his Big Idea is expressed as an orderly and progressive account of the Spirit-empowered witness of the early church as obedience to the Great Commission was carried out in order to persuade all peoples of the legitimacy of the church and its mandate to reach the ends of the earth.
Luke divided the book into seven sections, each section concluding with a “progress report” regarding the acceptance of the gospel. These progress reports are found in the passages listed below and we will study the book according to these divisions, beginning tomorrow.
First: 2.41-.47
Second: 6.7
Third: 9.31
Fourth: 12.24
Fifth: 16.5
Sixth: 19.20
Seventh: 28.31
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