Acts Archives - Page 23 of 25

Pentecostal Boldness (Pentecost 2015)

Joe Harby on May 24, 2015

Introduction

On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God was poured out in abundance. That initial baptism of the Holy Spirit was followed, throughout the book of Acts, and throughout church history, with repeated fillings of the Spirit. When the Spirit fills a man already Spirit-baptized, the result is power, authority, logic on fire, and boldness.

The Text

“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel, If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole; Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:8–13).

Summary of the Text

Peter is the spokesman. He is the one who, just a few weeks before, had denied the Lord repeatedly. Christ not only forgave him, but had also empowered him. Peter was naturally impetuous, but this was something else entirely. So here Peter is filled with the Spirit. When filled with the Spirit, he stands up and he reasons with them (v. 9ff). If they wanted to know how a lame man was healed, Peter would tell them. Remember that Peter is here speaking to Annas, Caiaphas, et al. The last time they had an opportunity to hear Peter speak, he was cursing and swearing. Do you want to know how the lame man was healed (v. 9)? He was healed by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth (v. 10). Lest there be any mistake, Peter adds, “whom ye crucified” and whom God raised from the dead. This man was healed in the name of the man whom they had murdered, and whom God had vindicated through resurrection. What a message! What a congregation! What a preacher! This is the stone the (you) builders rejected, and which is now the cornerstone (v. 11). There is no salvation anywhere else, there is no other name (v. 12). This is the sign of the Spirit’s presence—the name of Jesus is being honored. But there is more. This is the signature of the Spirit’s presence—the name of Jesus is proclaimed with boldness (v. 13).

Boldness Hungers for More Boldness

They had healed a lame man. There was a commotion, and they were hauled in to give an account before the bloodiest men in Jerusalem. Peter preached straight up the middle. The authorities were stymied, and so they threatened them and let them go. When they were let go, they returned to their company and prayed. What did they pray for? “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word” (Acts 4:29 ). And when they prayed for this, what did God give them? It wasn’t the day of Pentecost any longer, but nevertheless what He gave them was a mini-Pentecost. “And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31). Having just faced down the chief criminals of all human history, they concluded that what they needed was more boldness.

Boldness is not a trick or a technique. It is not a homiletical style. Boldness is more than waving your arms when you preach. Boldness is what happens when the Spirit signs His name to the message. It is His signature. It means that He is present and active. When the gospel is preached, we should want far more than for the Spirit to be fifty miles away, murmuring that what we just said was technically accurate. We should want the Spirit to be present, close, and in motion.

More Than a Local Excitement

“According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, butthat with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death” (Phil. 1:20).

Whatever happens, this should always be our longing. Decades later, the apostle Paul still includes it among his prayer requests. “And for me, that utterance may be given unto me,that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel” (Eph. 6:19). The apostle is not here asking to have his stage fright taken away, or to have the Spirit remove his butterflies.

Boldness is not something that can only happen when there are enemies and adversaries. Boldness is what attracts the enemies and adversaries. If a preacher on the north coast of Alaska were given boldness, the entire machinery of the secular establishment would be deployed to shut that man down.

Vertical and Horizontal

Now the only possible way for us to have a Pentecostal boldness before the world is for us to have a justified boldness in the heavenly places. Before we can have boldness about God in the presence of man, we must have boldness as men in the presence of God. And that is not possible apart from the blood of Jesus Christ, and the free grace of justification in His resurrection. Consider these truths.

“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus . . . Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:19–22).

We can only go out to our fellow man when we are able to come into the presence of God.

The apostle John tells us the same thing.

“Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17).

Those who have boldness in the day of judgment are able to “be” in this world. This is what enables us to bear witness, to testify. And not only to testify, but to do so with boldness.

On Christian Disobedience #2

Joe Harby on April 26, 2015

Introduction

With regard to our duties of civil obedience and submission, we have to consider the express teaching of the Bible. But we must do this in context, which means we have to set a contextual stage. This context is important in two respects—the broader context of doctrine and theology, and the second is the context of express examples.

The Text

“And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard’” (Acts 4:18-20).

The Idea of Covenant

Apart from an understanding of the concept of covenant, no sane understanding of the relationship between church and state is possible. The covenant is the theme which ties all Scripture together, and so if one does not understand how to think covenantally, the Bible will always remain a disjointed series of inspirational passages, or a monstrosity jerry-rigged into an alien system. Understanding the covenant is central to an understanding of our civil duties for obvious reasons. For example, the word federal in the phrase federal government comes from the Latin word foedus, which means covenant. How did this happen? The reason this is crucial is that covenants have stipulations and terms. (There is also a Latin homonym foedus which means stinky, but that is another sermon for another day.

Under the Old Covenant

The examples of Scripture on this subject are manifold, and we do not have time to consider all of them. But before considering any, however, we must remember what the Bible tells us what such examples are for. We are sometimes too glib in telling some of our hermeneutically loose brethren that we should not make doctrine from narrative. Actually, we should not make doctrine from narrative lightly (Rom. 15:4). While we may not do it foolishly, we are required to do it. Consider . . . Ehud—in the days of Ehud, the people had been oppressed by the Moabites for eighteen years. But the Lord raised up a deliverer for them ( Judg. 3:15-25). Deborah—this godly woman was raised up as a judge during the time when Jabin, king of the Canaanites, had ruled over Israel for twenty years ( Judg. 4:1-7). At her command, an army was gathered to revolt. Gideon—the Israelites had been oppressed by the Midianites for seven years. Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress in order to hide his livelihood from oppressive taxation. The angel of the Lord appeared to him there and hailed him as a mighty man of valor ( Judg. 6:11), showing that angels can have a sense of humor.

David—this mighty man refused to raise his hand against the Lord’s anointed (1 Sam. 24:5-7). But he also refused to do what the Lord’s anointed wanted him to do (1 Sam. 19:16). Jehoida—an evil woman Athaliah had made herself queen by murderous means. But Jehoida was a godly priest and he defied her de facto rule. He secretly raised the surviving heir and in a coup d’etat had the boy Joash crowned (2 Kings 11:13- 16). Of course the tyrant called his behavior treasonous.

Under the New Covenant

But too many Christians are still infected with the idea that the Old Testament has nothing to do with New Testament saints. But this is infection, not biblical doctrine, and besides, nothing changes in the New Testament. God rather than men—great issues are involved in all of this. Obedience to men must be first and foremost obedience to God. If it is not, then obedience to authority is defiance of Authority (Acts 4:19). And this is where we find the principle so well-articulated in the American War for Independence. Resistance to tyrants is submission to God. Peter’s jailbreak—nor are we bound to just simply take whatever punishment is meted out (Acts 12:5-8). Evading arrest and running road blocks—we also have the freedom, under Christ, to resist by hiding (Matt. 10:23; 2 Cor. 11:32-33).

The Sovereignty of God

This issue is too important for us to approach in a piecemeal fashion. We must understand all our duties in the light of God’s revelation to us. Exhaustive sovereignty—nothing occurs outside God’s purposes, plans, and authority. No ultimate earthly authority— certain things follow from this. If God is immanent in His authority (and He most certainly is), then no human authority or sovereign is ultimate. All are under covenantal constraints. The immediacy of our duties—it also follows that we must render obedience to God directly in every aspect of our lives. We obey the authorities over us because He says to, not because they do. We always are to obey, when we obey, in the Lord.

Surveying the Text: Acts

Joe Harby on January 11, 2015

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Introduction

After the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, this book represents the pivot of God. In this book, we move from the world of the Jewish to the world of the
Gentile church. We move from a largely agrarian world to an urban world. We move from God’s work in one nation to a cosmopolitan work among all nations. The book begins at the Ascension of Christ (c. 30 A.D.) and ends with Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome (c. 60-61 A.D.) The book begins in Jerusalem, and ends in Rome, and that is a fact filled with metaphorical significance.

The Text

“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Summary

In this text we see two important things identified—the ruler, and the realm. First, the ruler is Jesus Christ, working in the power of His Spirit, poured out at the beginning of the book. The realm is the entire world. This verse contains, in effect, a table of contents for the expansion of the gospel through the rest of the book of Acts. First Jerusalem (Acts 2:14), then Judea (Acts 2:14), then Samaria (Acts 8:5), and then out to uttermost part of the earth (Acts 28:16).

In the previous book, Luke tells us that we had read about all that Jesus had begun to do and to teach (Acts 1:1). The implication is that here, in this second book, we will see what Jesus will continue to do and to teach by means of His body in the world. We see this reality also in the words that Jesus speaks to Saul on the Damascus road. Saul is persecuting Christians, and Jesus asks why he is persecuting Jesus (Acts 9:4). By means of His Spirit, Jesus is identified with His people, and continues His ministry on the earth. And in a very real way, we can find additional encouragement in the way the book ends so inconclusively. It is almost as though Luke said to be continued . . . And it has been, down to the present day.

Exoneration

The book of Acts is filled with prisons. There are about twenty references to them, and in addition we find references to gates, doors, and guards. Because of the hostility of those who hated the gospel, trouble was stirred up everywhere the disciples (particularly Paul) went. The goal was to make it look as though they were the troublemakers. But Luke has a corresponding goal—he fills this book with exonerations, angelic and otherwise. The praetors of Philippi arrest Paul and Silas, but have to apologize for it (Acts 16:19ff ).

Gallio throws a case against the Christians out of court (Acts 18:12ff ). Paul is friends with the pagan Asiarchs at Ephesus, and the town clerk vindicates Paul against the charge of insulting Diana (Acts 19:31). Festus and Agrippa II agree together that Paul deserves neither death nor imprisonment (Acts 26:32). Luke wants to show, and does show, that the Christians are not that kind of threat to the empire.

A Question of Timing

As you are trying to arrange the books of the New Testament in some kind of order, one question that will arise is the placement of Galatians in the chronology of Acts. A problem is created by the fact that there were two Galatias, one ethnic and the other administrative. Are we talking about Dakota, a sub-tribe of the Sioux, or Dakota, as in North and South? So when Paul writes to the “Galatians,” who is he writing to? If he is writing to the Galatians of the Roman province, then this places his book in the chronology of Acts. If he is writing to the ethnic Galatians up north, then we don’t quite know how and when Paul got acquainted with them.

This is important for several reasons. One is that an early date for Galatians gives us a mature statement of justification by faith alone very early on in the history of the church. It was not a late “add-on,” a Pauline afterthought. Second, the details in Galatians blend very nicely with Acts on this view. For example, the “famine relief visit” (Acts 11:28-29) is the visit that was in response to a revelation (Gal. 2:2). And third, it explains why Paul didn’t appeal to the decision of the Jerusalem council in a letter dedicated to the very same controversy. He didn’t appeal to it because it had not yet happened. It also explains the heat of Galatians.

Stephen, the One Who Saw

At the very end of Stephen’s life, he saw a vision of the Lord Jesus in Heaven (Acts 7:55). At the very beginning of Saul’s Christian life, he saw a vision of the same Lord Jesus, shining like the sun (Acts 26:13). One of the central reasons why Saul came to see Jesus is because he had had an earlier encounter with Stephen. Stephen is actually one of the most important figures in church history. He was the first disciple to actually “get” the big picture. And his impact on Saul was enormous.

Stephen was ordained as a deacon, but had the power of working miracles and was a marvelous preacher. He came into a dispute with certain men who were
from the synagogue of the freedmen. They were from, among other places, Cilicia. The principal city in Cilicia was Tarsus, Saul’s home town. Stephen shut them all down, so they arranged for some men to falsely testify against him. The charge was that he was blaspheming Moses and the holy place (Acts 6:11,13). This, after Stephen was doing miracles, just like Moses had. And when they hauled him in, his face was shining like an angel’s—just like Moses’ face had. He defends himself masterfully—God was with Abraham in Mesopotamia (Acts 7:2), with Joseph in Egypt (Acts 7:9), and with Moses in Midian (Acts 7:33). Wherever God is, that is holy ground.

Now imagine an unregenerate Saul, seething with hostility and genius, losing an argument with a Christian deacon. It is hard to imagine him taking it well. But he would also be smart enough to know that killing a man is not the same thing as refuting him. The first appearance that Saul makes in the Bible is when he is holding the cloaks of the men that “others” had suborned, while they killed Stephen. He then went off in a fury, trying to shut up the voices in his head. In this relay race, Stephen had been struck down, and the baton clattered to the track. But in the wisdom and providence of God, the next man to pick it up—in order to run the good race—was an unlikely convert named Saul.

Surveying the Text: Luke

Joe Harby on November 2, 2014

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Introduction

If Mark is the shortest and punchiest of the gospels, Luke is the most detailed and meticulous. Luke claims to have done very careful research (Luke 1:1-4), and everything about this book bears that claim out.

The Texts

“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. And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them” (Acts 16:9–10).

Some Background on Luke

It may seem odd, in a message summarizing the gospel of Luke, to have the text be from Acts. But when we consider that we are dealing with the collected works of Luke in two volumes, the picture changes somewhat. In this passage, the gospel has not yet come to Europe. Paul was in Troas, and had a dream. In that dream a Macedonian man appeared to him, and summoned him to come over into Macedonia. At that moment, the narrative of Acts suddenly adds the first person plural—we. Luke joins them there, and it is quite possible that he was the Macedonian man in the dream.

Luke was almost certainly a classically educated Gentile. His preface to the gospel of Luke followed the classical style, and his care shows up in many ways and in many details. An educated guess places the composition of Luke at around 60 A.D. and the book of Acts shortly after that. In Col. 4:14, Paul calls Luke the beloved physician, and says that Luke was with him when he wrote Philemon (Phile. v. 24). Paul wrote both those letters in his first imprisonment in Rome, and this agrees with the last two chapters of Acts. At the end of his life, Paul wrote “only Luke is with me” (2 Tim. 4:11). According to an early prologue to his gospel, Luke lived until he was 84, and died in Boeotia in Greece.

Unique Details

There are a number of details about Christ’s life that we would not know if it were not for Luke. These would include the annunciation (1:26-38), the angels appearing to the shepherds (2:1-20), the visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve (2:41-52). These instances would indicate that one of Luke’s sources was Mary, the mother of the Lord. Other unique details would include the raising of the son of the widow of Nain (7:11-17), the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30-37), the story of the ten lepers (17:11-19), the story of Zacchaeus (19:1-10), and Jesus before Herod (23:6-16).

Marked Emphases of Luke

Luke contains a number of emphases that we do not find in the other gospels. Note that these are not contradictions or disagreements. But they are emphasized and given to us for a reason.

Luke emphasizes the Lord’s ministry to the outcasts of pious society. Not only did Jesus come for the lepers and other losers (Luke 14:12-24), but also for the rich and compromised—tax collectors, soldiers and courtesans. Zacchaeus was not a homeless bum. Never forget that there is more than one way to be an outcast from pious society. One is to be a meth dealer, of course, but the other is to work for the IRS, or to be a Marine colonel in the Pentagon.

In Luke, we see the marked beginning of the very Christian impetus to elevate the status of women, bring them both privilege and respect. There were the women who financed the ministry (Luke 8:1-3). The women were the last at the cross (Luke 23:55) and the first at the tomb (Luke 24:1). And after His resurrection, the Lord appeared to the women first (Luke 24:5-8).

Luke balances, in a wonderful way, the corporate and the individual. He alternates between crowd scenes and individuals in quite a striking way. For example, right after the feeding of the five thousand, we are told of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ (Luke 9:10-22). Another thing he does is “zoom in on” an individual in the midst of a huge crowd, as he does in the Zacchaeus story.

If you remember to include the book of Acts, it is easy to see that Luke has a particular emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit empowers individuals to speak God’s words throughout both Luke and Acts. This emphasis on the Spirit is likely the reason that Luke’s two volumes are characterized by songs in a way that the other gospel are not.

The Great Quest

The gospel moves in a very straightforward way, left to right, and in literary form, it is a quest. Jesus has a mission to complete, and the importance of the mission is apparent from His infancy on. The word must be fulfilled, the mission must be completed.

There is a long middle section in Luke that the other gospels do not have (Luke 9:51-19:27). “And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,” (Luke 9:51). Of course, in the subsequent chapters, He teaches and He heals as He goes, but He is resolutely determined to make it to Jerusalem. The reason for this is that His death and resurrection are the whole point. He goes there in order to fulfill the will of His Father, the will of the Jews, the will of Judas, the will of Herod, the will of the mob, and, of course, His own will. He does this because He is the appointed one, He is the anointed one.

As an aside, note that in the book of Acts we have the same kind of quest—Paul sets his face to go to the same city, Jerusalem, with the full expectation that bad things will happen to him there.

Back to the gospel—the Lord explains all of this after the fact to the disciples He met on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:27), and then again in His appearance at Bethany (Luke 24:44-47). The story is set in motion as the shining angels sing to the shepherds (Luke 2:9), and the story is completed with shining angels in the tomb (Luke 24:4).

That same story is continued as the Lord’s disciples fan out across the map in order to tell the story. And as the book of Acts is completed, we are heartened to realize that there is no place in the story where the Spirit is taken up into Heaven. That does not happen, and cannot happen. Everywhere the words of this story are spoken, the Spirit rests upon them. Everywhere we tell people that the Lord fulfilled His mission, we are fulfilling ours.

Concentric Circles (Advent 2012)

Joe Harby on December 2, 2012

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Introduction

This might seem an odd Advent text, a text more in keeping with Ascension. But as we remember the Lord’s life, we want to remember the beginning at the end, and the end at the beginning. In the blessing of Simeon, Mary was told that her heart would be pierced through, and here, when Jesus departed, He told them that they would be witnesses “unto me”—witnesses of the whole story, as we can tell from the story these men went out and told. When they served as these witnesses, they started with the Lord’s birth.

The Text

“And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:7-11).

Summary of the Text

When Jesus came to earth, the shepherds were on the ground, the angels were in the sky, and the Lord Jesus was in a manger. When He left this earth, the angels were on the ground, the future shepherds of the Church were on the ground, and the Lord Jesus was ascending into the sky.

The disciples asked when the kingdom was going to be established, and the Lord told them that it was not for them to know the times and seasons, which the Father kept in His own power (v. 7). At the same time, they were going to receive power when the Spirit was poured out upon them (v. 8). They were going to receive power, not talking points. When they received power, the gospel was going to spread in concentric circles outward, as when you throw a large rock in a pond—the splash was Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, and then out to the rest of the globe (v. 8). After He spoke this, He was taken up (v. 9). As the disciples were gazing skyward, two men in white appeared next to them (v. 10) and asked why they were doing that (v. 11). Jesus is going to come again, the same way that He left (v. 11).

You can take this passage as almost a table of contents for the book of Acts. The Spirit falls in the next chapter, in Jerusalem (Acts 1:12; 2:1ff). That initial splash reached the men of Judea (Acts 2:14). We see by the ninth chapter that there were churches throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria (Acts 9:31). The rest of the book takes us out through the rest of the Roman world, with intimations of more to come after that—and here we are, on the other side of the world entirely.

Power and Place

The angels didn’t tell the disciples to hit the road as soon as Jesus left. They were to wait for His divine replacement, the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit of God, when He manifests Himself, is not shy and withdrawn. In the Christmas story, He overshadows Mary so that she conceives, and here He overshadows the 120 in the upper room in Jerusalem, so that the world might conceive. The power and Spirit of God came upon Mary (Luke 1:35), and the power and Spirit of God came upon the disciples (Acts 2:1-2).

Places don’t give you power. Power takes you places. Your spirituality is not a function of your GPS coordinates. The first place it takes you is right where you already are, the way you are. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that becoming a missionary will fix your problems—in many cases, it will only amplify them. Mission-heartedness will address your selfishness problem to the extent that such a heart gives itself away to people here. The power falls where you are first, you see the results of it there first, and then you take the show on the road. Power is in the drive train. Place is just the steering wheel.

The Church and Mission

The church does not do missions; the church is missions. So what is the assigned task? Think about this for a moment. Jesus did not say to go out into the world and get a representative sampling. He did not say to get a smidge from here and a smidge from there. He said to disciple the nations (Matt. 28:18-20). How discipled is discipled? Well, how wet is the ocean floor under the Pacific (Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14)?

Mission Accomplished?

One of the dangers in sending out church planters and missionaries to Judea and Samaria is that this might make you think you can check Jerusalem off the list. But it doesn’t work this way.

You send out church planters and missionaries to establish a foothold or a beachhead in a new place as soon as you have consolidated a foothold or a beachhead in the old place. The fact that we are ministering in places like the Ivory Coast, or are involved in planting churches in other places in the Pacific Northwest does not mean that we have become a sending church in distinction from a mission church. We remain a mission church (as well as a sending church), and we must remain a mission church so long as a mission remains.

Resisting Mission Drift

Mission drift occurs in different ways. One of them is when the mission is redefined. Why are we here? What is the point? The point of the church is two-fold—birth and growth. But if we get our building (as we may in the foreseeable future), how easy would it be for the mission to change, and turn into “pay for upkeep on the building,” “keep attendance at acceptable levels,” and “become a community fixture?” No—building are staging areas for the next offensive. The mission is not done here until there are only three unbelievers left in town, and they are acting pretty worried.