Summary of Acts, The Holy Spirit and Church Growth. Acts 1 – 12
The key verse is Acts 1:8 NASB "but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." It gives us the basic outline for the book of Acts. It starts off in Jerusalem where they are to wait until the Holy Spirit comes, who is the promise. The promise of the Father is clearly articulated by John the Baptist: "He will come and baptize by the Spirit and by fire." The promise is the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus clearly spelled that out in the upper room discourse in John 14 and again as He left on the way to the garden of Gethsemane in John 15 & 16. The promise is that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came. This is what makes the difference between a church age believer and a pre-church age believer. Nobody up to this point has had the kind of relationship with God the Holy Spirit that comes into effect on that day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is poured out upon the church and the foundational ministry is the baptism by means of the Holy Spirit. That was what was predicted by John the Baptist and recorded in each of the Gospels, and that is what was brought to fulfilment in Acts chapter two.
In Acts 1:5 Jesus said, NASB "for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." When Jesus a phrase to summarize what happens on the day of Pentecost He doesn't says indwelling, He doesn't say filling, He says baptism. That is the foundational event. This is what makes the difference between a church age believer and a non-church age believer. In the Old Testament there was an enduement, a term which refers to a temporary giving of power for a specific purpose. It wasn't permanent and it wasn't related to the spiritual life, to an individual's relationship to God. The Holy Spirit was given to key leaders and individuals—prophets in the writing of Scripture, kings in leading Israel, the judges in leading Israel, Aholiab and Bezaleel as they are the lead craftsmen in overseeing the production for the tabernacle. All that is done by the power of the Holy Spirit; He comes upon people but He doesn't indwell them or fill them. It was not a spiritual life function. There were probably fewer than one hundred people who had any impact from God the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. In the church age every believer is indwelt and filled by the Holy Spirit. Every believer is baptized by the Holy Spirit, every believer is given a spiritual gift, every believer is sealed by the Spirit.
But in the Tribulation period in the future none of that is going to be there for the believers. If they were there it would be the church. These are the things that distinguish church age believers from non-church age believers. At the end of the Tribulation there is going to be this giving, this establishment of the new covenant when God the Holy Spirit is going to indwell and fill in a different way—especially every Jewish believer—going into the Millennial kingdom.
Jesus said they would receive power after the Holy Spirit had come upon them. That coming upon them has been specifically defined by Him as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The result of this and all that is related to this is going to be that they will be witnesses. He is speaking specifically to the eleven apostles in front of Him, but by inference to all church age believers. Acts 1:8 is the outline of the book of Acts. They are in Jerusalem in acts 1-7, the focus shifts to Judea and Samaria in Acts chapter 8-12, then "to the uttermost parts of the earth" in Acts 13 to the end of the book.
What the Holy Spirit brought new was first of all a new organism. This is a brand new organism. Nothing like this has been in existence before. The Greek word ekklesia [e)kklhsia] is the word translated "church," it also meant assembling. In any kind of gathering of people there was a word that was used, and that was ekklesia. The counterpart to that word that was used in the Hebrew was "synagogue." So there was this assembly of people. So ekklesia doesn't have that technical Holy Spirit kind of meaning but it is a word that is taken over at this point in the Scripture and given a technical meaning. It refers to those who are called Christians. Then what unites this are these new ministries of the Holy Spirit, fundamentally the baptism by the Holy Spirit which unites us in Christ. So what every person has in common who has believed in Jesus Christ is that at that instant God the Holy Spirit is used by Jesus Christ to identify them with His death, burial, and resurrection, and they are brought into the body of Christ. At that same instant they become part of the new people, the new family, the royal family of God. They are part of the new identity because they are now Christians, distinct from Israel as a people of God. They have new spiritual resources, a new spiritual destiny—to rule and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ—and they are the recipients of new ministries of God the Holy Spirit. And they are given a new objective, and that objective is to be a witness throughout the world.
The first chapter of Acts is the prelude to the book. This is where we get the transition coming out of the life of Christ. Jesus is going to leave the earth now in the ascension and His physical body which has now been resurrected from the dead is going to be replaced by a new body, the church. So there is this replacement that comes into effect. Jesus ascends and then ten days later there is a new body on the earth. The first chapter focuses on this promise of the Father, the promise of the Holy Spirit. That is the prelude, the foundation for the rest of Acts.
The first major section then goes from 2:1 to 7:60 which is their witness in Jerusalem. We see the progress of the church, the birth and the progress of the church that focuses on the Jews. The church is exclusively Jewish, Peter is the key leader, everything takes place in Jerusalem, and it covers a period of approximately two years. Then the next section is from 8:1 to 12:25. In 8:1 we see Saul breathing threats against the church and being deputised by the Sanhedrin to arrest and to persecute those who are followers of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. There is now this forced persecution, specifically in Jerusalem, which causes the Christians to go out of Jerusalem. This is called motivation for witnessing. We won't go out and do it on our own so we are going to turn the heat up a little bit, God says, and now we are going to be forced to leave. All the Christians had to leave Jerusalem except for the apostles. They stayed but all the other Christians were forced to flee this persecution. This forces them out into the surrounding territories. The focal point of the next five chapters is on how the gospel spread in Judea and Samaria. This section covers a period of approximately thirteen years.
Who is responsible for the growth and expansion of the church? It is God. That doesn't mean the pastors shouldn't be involved, or anybody else, but they should be involved in witnessing. The command is to witness. But God is the one who establishes and builds the church, it is not based on getting the right methodology. The focal point of the growth starts at the temple; the birth of the church starts on the temple mount and explodes outward. So the temple mount is ground zero for the birth of the church. It goes out from there.
God authenticates, empowers and directs the apostles' witness in Jerusalem. Two basic things happen. First, the Lord Jesus Christ promises the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter one. They are to wait until the Holy Spirit comes and so we have the focus on the promise and the ascension of the Lord, and then the selection of Matthias to replace Judas. The second division, 2:1-7:60, the Lord gives birth to and the Holy Spirit expands the church in Jerusalem. It is the Holy Spirit who is the real expander of the church. Some who have studied this in detail have estimated that as many as 20 to 30 per cent of the Jews living in Israel in the first century trusted in Jesus Christ, and believed that He was the Messiah. But it did not involved the leadership, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Even though there were a number of Sadducees, priests, and a number of Pharisees, like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who believed Jesus was the Messiah, it did not impact the leadership; they maintained their rejection, and this is a major theme in these first six chapters.
What happened? Peter preaches in Acts chapter two. We don't see much of a response from the Pharisees except that they come out because they are really interested to see what in the world is going on with them. But they don't really do anything. Then a couple of days later Peter and John come back to heal the lame man and they are preaching in Solomon's portico. They are preaching the gospel and the Sanhedrin sends the temple guard to arrest them. They bring them and in and they are told to stop. There is an escalation of opposition. First they are told to stop; then they are told to stop and are beaten. Later they are arrested and then Stephen is going to be martyred. So there is an escalation of violence against them and an escalation of opposition.
In chapter six we have the selection of the seven, and then the next part deals with Stephen and his witness. What are they supposed to do? Acts 1:8, "You will be my witnesses." So the focus for Luke is their fulfilling of the mandate of Acts 1:8 to be a witness. Stephen is the witness in Acts 7 and then Philip is going to be a witness in Acts 8 as the gospel moves out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria. There are a number of progress reports given by Luke to help us understand how rapidly the church expanded. There are progress reports in the first chapter, progress reports of the response of the people to Peter's sermon in chapter two, and we are told that when he gives the command in Acts 2:38 to repent there is a response. About 3000 souls that day were added to them. They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers, and fear came upon every soul. Then we see in verse 44 that all who believed were together and had all things in common. That really shows the Jewish thinking that is in this early church because they are not thinking of themselves as individuals, they think of themselves as a collective group. They are group oriented and team oriented and are not focused on just how each individual player is being taken care of, that Old Testament background and that Jewish background affecting their thinking where they come together as a team. Then we have the second sermon from Peter is Acts chapter three, and again we are given a progress report in terms of the response. We are told that 5000 men responded.
In Acts 4:32 to 5:16 we basically have an extended progress report, and that focuses again on how God the Holy Spirit is working behind the scenes. The Holy Spirit isn't mentioned but that is the thrust of the whole book. God the Holy Spirit is working through the apostles as they are obedient to their prime directive, so to speak, which is to be a witness. Then we see the expansion problems with Ananias and Sapphira and the administration of aid to the widows.
Then we come to Acts chapter seven and Stephen's witness. Really he is indicting the Sanhedrin and the Jewish leadership for their failure to accept Jesus as the Messiah, and that this is a sign of a consistent failure as they rejected God and went into idolatry in the Old Testament. They rejected Moses and his commands. Even while Moses is up on Mount Sinai they are down there telling Aaron to build a calf for them to worship. They consistently defiled the temple, and he is answering all of their accusations that he has blasphemed God and Moses, the Torah and the temple, and he shows that no indeed it has been the Jewish leadership consistently—the people not necessarily in many cases. But especially in this generation it is the leadership that is guilty, though there were a lot of individuals who responded. In the meddle of that section there was an interesting progress report in Acts 6:7 NASB "The word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith." That shows that from the ranks of the priesthood impressed with the lives and the teaching of the apostles studying the Torah to see that Jesus indeed fitted the pattern of the prophecies of the Messiah there were hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of priests who became believers in Jesus as the Messiah.
That is what we have covered so far in the first part of Acts. Then we get into the second division which shows from 8:1-12:25 there are six divisions. This covers God's work in expanding the church into Judea and Samaria. The first six verses show how God allows persecution to drive the church out of Jerusalem. This is important. So often we look at negative events in our life and we ask how God can let this happen. Rather than looking at a negative event and say God allowed this to happen because he is moving me in a certain direction, He is going to open up, other avenues, other directions in our life that we didn't anticipate. We tend to look at the negative and say there is going to be change, this can't be good. God is saying you are really not fulfilling your ministry at this point and He needs to rattle out cage a little bit and get us pointed in the right direction so that we will get out of our comfort zone and grow spiritually and fulfil His plan. So God allows this persecution to develop for probably a number of reasons since God is the original multi-tasker and is allowing this to come in order to move them out. But it has an individual impact because they are also having to trust God. When they looked around to see who was persecuting them some were friends and neighbours and relatives who had not accepted Jesus as the Messiah. So they had to make a decision as to whether they were going to faithfully follow Jesus even though it would cost them life-long friendships and relationships with their loved ones and members of their own families.
Now geography comes into place and over the next five chapters we see a lot of geographical change. It starts off in Jerusalem with the persecution and then it shifts to Samaria. There is focus on an expansion into Samaria in Acts 8:4-25 and the key person here is Philip. He is going to have a key role to play in the expansion, first to Samaria and then he will be lifted by God the Holy Spirit down to Gaza where he is going to meet the Ethiopian servant of Queen Candice of Ethiopia. He is a Gentile and that is interesting. We usually don't think of the first expansion of the church to the Gentiles until Peter goes to Cornelius in Acts 10. But this Ethiopian eunuch is a Gentile. But he is a proselyte, he has become Jewish. He is very interested and is reading through Isaiah. Philip is brought there by God the Holy Spirit. Then he will come back up to Caesarea which is on the border between Judea and Samaria, right on the coast, the site of many events in the book of Acts. Then the scene will shift from Samaria and Judea to Damascus in chapter none where the apostle Paul has been headed. He is saved on the road to Damascus, so the 9th chapter focuses on Saul of Tarsus. In 9:26-31 we are back in Jerusalem, and then the scene shifts to Lydda which is just outside of Joppa. It is at Joppa that God appears in a dream to Peter he is going to be asked to take the gospel to Gentiles. He has this vision of the table cloth coming down with all these unclean foods on it and God says to take and eat. Peter is slow to get the message, there is a knock on the door and it is some men who have been sent down to get Peter by this Roman centurion named Cornelius who is classified not as a proselyte but as a God-fearer—a sort of first step on the way to becoming a proselyte. So Peter goes to him, preaches the gospel, they are saved, and the same kinds of things happen to them as happened on the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit comes and they are baptized by the Holy Spirit. There are different "Pentecosts": one on the day of Pentecost, one in chapter eight with the Samaritans when John and Peter come, and then there will be another one with the Gentiles.
Then the scene shifts up north. Now we are out of Israel to Antioch of Syria. This shows the expansion and the beginning of laying the groundwork for the last part of the book. Then it is back to Jerusalem and the section begins with them back in Antioch.
So the first thing that we see in this section is the persecution to drive the believers out of Jerusalem. The second is that God sends Philip to the Samaritans, and he goes to the city of Samaria and demonstrates the unity of these new believers in Samaria with the work in Jerusalem by having a follow-up action by the two key apostles, Peter and John. It is under their hand and leadership that the Holy Spirit comes upon these new believers. It is interesting that when Philip goes they trust in Jesus as Messiah but nothing happens. There is no baptism by the Holy Spirit, no indwelling, they don't speak in tongues, nothing happens. Then Peter and John come, and Peter is the one who prays for them and they receive the Holy Spirit. Luke tells us, Acts 8:16 NASB "For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. [17] Then they {began} laying their hands on them, and they were receiving the Holy Spirit." That is when they are brought into the organism of the church. Why did that happen? Because the Jews hated the Samaritans and didn't want to have anything to do with them. They were a kind of mixed breed of people who had been resettled there from the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, and the Jews so hated the Samaritans that instead of walking straight from Jerusalem to Nazareth they would cross over to the east side of the Jordan river and go up through the area that was known as Perea, and then cross back over when they got up to the Sea of Galilee so that they wouldn't even have to set foot on soil of Samaria. So it would be very simple to see a division in the early church occur between Jewish Christians and Samaritan Christians if Philip had gone up there, preached the gospel, they had received the Holy Spirit and all of that had happened independently of Peter and John. They are not brought into the church until Peter is there. This establishes the unity of the body of Christ at the very beginning. There aren't going to be ethnic distinctions in the body of Christ. God establishes that from the very beginning.
There is also the episode with Simon the sorcerer—he is actually saved. Probably ninety per cent of the people we will hear teach on this will say he wasn't. But in Acts 8:13 NASB "Even Simon himself believed; and after being baptized, he continued on with Philip, and as he observed signs and great miracles taking place, he was constantly amazed." If he was not saved then that terminology that he believed—the same terminology as used everywhere else when someone becomes a Christian—is meaningless, and none of us knows whether or not we are saved. So he is saved but he is just screwed up in the head. Being saved doesn't mean one's thinking is suddenly straightened out, it just means that we have a different destiny than we had before, and we have the potential to straightened out our muddled thinking. Simon is still operating like he always did and thinking: Well how can I make some money off of this? He hasn't changed at all, other than he is now saved. There has to be some teaching before there is going to be change. He hasn't had the teaching yet or the opportunity.
At the conclusion of this section we read: Acts 8:25 NASB "So, when they had solemnly testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they started back to Jerusalem, and were preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans." So we see the expansion that takes place. Then Philip is taken to meet the Ethiopian and he gives him the gospel. The Ethiopian is reading from Isaiah 53:7, 8 and Philip asks the Ethiopian what he thinks it means. Acts 8:35 NASB "Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him." The translation "preach" is not equivalent to the Greek word, it is the Greek word euaggelizo [e)uaggelizw]. It is "he explained the gospel." [36] "As they went along the road they came to some water; and the eunuch said, 'Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?'" Verse 37 is not in the original. It is in the Textus Receptus only. It is not in the Majority Text, not in the Critical Text; it is not in the majority of MSS and it is not in the oldest MSS. "If you believe with all your heart" doesn't fit with anything else in Scripture. It you believe like a mustard seed is what Jesus said. How much is enough? That verse is not consistent with anything else and it is not in the majority of the MSS or the oldest MSS.
Acts 8:39 NASB "When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing." He is transported instantly to the north west part of Judea. He goes through this area preaching and all the cities until he came to Caesarea. We stop the action there. He is preaching in all the cities but the word that we keep seeing translated "preach" in the KJV is euaggelizo—proclaiming the gospel, giving the good news. He was evangelizing in all the cities until he came to Caesarea.
Then the scene shifts to Saul in chapter nine—Saul of Tarsus who becomes Paul. He has been commissioned by the Sanhedrin to arrest and to persecute the Christians. He has a letter of authentication from the Sanhedrin to the synagogues in Damascus now. Acts 9:2 NASB "and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem." While he is on the way the Lord Jesus Christ appears to him and challenges him. This is the point of Saul of Tarsus' conversion. It is not an interior event; he is not having an hallucination. The men with him see a light and hear the sound of the voice. They don't see Jesus specifically and they don't hear the words, because they are not meant to. But the fact that they see the light and hear Jesus speaking (even though they can't distinguish the words) shows that it is an external event. And it is an objective event, not a subjective psychological event motivated by Paul's guilt over killing all of these Christians.
Paul is blinded from this vision, he goes to Damascus and he has three days to sit and think. Then the Lord commissions a believer name Ananias to go to find Paul and to heal him of his blindness. Saul stays for a while in Damascus, but he is pretty smart and has already rethought a lot of his Old Testament theology and figured out that Jesus us definitely the Messiah. He starts going out and engaging people and witnessing to them. Acts 9:20 NASB "and immediately he {began} to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, 'He is the Son of God.'" Again it is euaggelizo—he evangelized. He is arguing effectively that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. He so angered the leaders in the synagogues that they conspired together to kill him, so he had to escape in the night.
Then he heads for Jerusalem. They in the church there don't want to have anything to do with him, except for Barnabas. This is the one whose name means "Son of encouragement." He is the one who looks out there and sees the man nobody else wants to talk to, and he sees the potential. Barnabas is the man behind the scenes. Then we are told that the church continued to grow. But there were a lot of things that were upset because of Paul, and he is finally sent away back home to Tarsus for about 12-14 years. After he leaves we are told that all the churches throughout the area had peace and were edified. The juxtaposition with Paul leaving is taken as amusing. The point is that we started in 8:1 with persecution and by the end of chapter nine there is going to be peace in all of these churches. The persecution has ended.
Then the shift comes back to Peter. We see Peter's minstry to Aeneas who is healed from his paralysis, and then he is going to raise a young woman from the dead. As a result of these miracles performed by Peter we are told in Acts 9:42 NASB "It became known all over Joppa, and many believed in the Lord." There is where he receives the messengers from Cornelius, and chapters 10 and the first part of 11 are all about this inclusion of the Gentiles. There is a different order of events when they come. The Samaritans didn't speak in tongues but the Gentiles do.
Then we move to the last part which focuses on Barnabas and Paul in Antioch—11:19-30. Barnabas decides to go pull Saul out of obscurity. A number of years have gone by in this transition. Barnabas goes to get Saul and brings him to Antioch, and he becomes a key leader and preacher-evangelist in the church at Antioch. Acts 11:21 NASB "And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord." This is the spring of 44, so it is nine years after the outbreak of the persecution. They are going to be there about four years before they go out on the first missionary journey. During that time they are going to participate in the church at Antioch. He is going to participate in sending money down to Jerusalem because there is a tremendous famine that occurs.
The scene shifts in chapter twelve back to Jerusalem. Persecution arises again in the church. Herod the Tetrarch has James, the brother of John, executed. This is the first martyr among the original apostles. This made the Jews so happy that he seized Peter. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. So we see another echo of what happened with Jesus. Stephen's martyrdom was an echo of what happened with Jesus, and the point of all this was to show that the leadership doesn't repent. There is no repentance, there is a hardening of their heart, and we have to watch that all the way to the end where there is a riot and they try to kill Paul. This is designed to show that the leadership of the Jews in Israel get more hostile to the church; they are hardening their opposition to the gospel, though there are thousands and thousands of Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
In chapter twelve Herod is filled with arrogance. The people are chanting that he is like a god and, of course, the Holy Spirit is not going to put up with any competition and we are told, Acts 12:22 NASB "The people kept crying out, 'The voice of a god and not of a man!' [23] And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died." This is historically verified. [24] "But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied." So we continue to see the church grow and expand but they didn't have any idea of what the purpose for the church was.