Acts 1:1-11 deal with the forty days between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His ascension.
These verses emphasize the history of Christianity, the presence of Christ, the great commission, and Christ’s return. Acts is a short name for the Acts of the Apostles; it might more properly be called the continuing words and deeds of Jesus by His Spirit through His apostles
First we find an emphasis on the historical basis of Christianity. Luke tells Theophilus that he is going to continue the history that he began in his gospel. In Luke's earlier book, he said he had very carefully investigated the details of the life of Jesus Christ and had written them down only after this investigation. So Luke wants to continue that procedure and acts; he wants to be very careful and continue to investigate and make sure his facts are correct.
The things he wrote in the first book concerning all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day which He was taken up, as he declares in Acts l:1-2…these things are going to continue in the church by the power of the Holy Spirit. When Luke writes in Acts 1:3 of Jesus’ resurrection, he says that Jesus presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs being seen by them during forty days.
That is a very important sentence because it indicates that Jesus did not merely give His disciples certain ideas that they were then to carry into the world. They knew He had died and then He appeared to them as one who had risen from the dead—much greater impact than just actually seeing the death of Christ.
This and other similar experiences are what Luke had in mind when he wrote of infallible proofs. In essences he was saying, “I am going to chart the spread of Christianity, but I want you to know at the very beginning that this is a religion based on historical facts including the amazing matter of the resurrection.”
There is a second thing to see about theses opening verses; that is the dominate presence of the living Christ.
Did you notice the dominate presence of the living Christ in those verses? Verses 1-3 are all about Jesus, and He speaks about the kingdom of God in reference to God the Father. In verse 4, Jesus states that they heard of the Father's promise from Him. Verse 5 mentions baptism with the Holy Spirit which is done by Christ. Verse 6 refers to Jesus as the Lord. In verses 7-8, Jesus told them that knowledge of the future falls under the Father’s authority, and they shall be witnesses to Christ in Jerusalem. In verses 9-10, Christ was taken up, and the end of this section is especially important. In verse 11, the angels are talking about Jesus. “This same Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will return in like manner.”
It is impossible to separate the Christ of faith from the Jesus of history; the Christ of faith that Christ presented to us in the pages of the New Testament is the Jesus of history, and there is no other. This is what Luke says as he begins both his gospel and Acts.
The Lord Jesus Christ who is and has always been the object of the faith of Christians down through all the Christian centuries is the Jesus who really lived, who was crucified, and who rose from the dead. He is the Messiah who always glorifies God the Father.
The disciples who were with Jesus in the days between the resurrection and the ascension, still had old fashion Jewish ideas, and one of these, as we know from the gospel, was that the kingdom of God was going to be established by political earthly power. This is what the Jews believed, and the disciples still had that in the back of their minds—the idea of the Messiah with the soldier like Judas Maccabeus, also known as Judas the hammer. And in their minds, the Messiah was going to be strong enough to drive out any occupying military forces. The Jews were looking for a Messiah who would expel the Romans and set up an earthly kingdom of David; … . . .
The book of Acts is undoubtedly a continuation of the book of Luke. Now, if you go back to the book of Luke, to the first chapter of the book of Luke and notice the way that it begins. Then we will notice the way the book of Acts begins.
Now both of them are addressed to the same man, Theophilus, and it seems as though the first account, that is, the book of Luke, was written and delivered to the man while the second one was being written, and then it being finished it also was delivered to Theophilus as well in order to continue the account that was established in the first one.
Why the book of Acts was written would be more understandable if we knew who Theophilus was. Now, was he a person who was on his way to conversion? Was he just merely a friend of Luke or maybe one of the other apostles asked Luke to write up this account to help this man on his way to conversion who possibly needed more proof of the origins of the church and the work that it did? Is that what Theophilus was? Well, I guess there is a possibility of that.
There is an interesting speculation which I will pass on to you right now because it seems to be worth considering. And that is that Theophilus was a Roman official of Greek background. That he was somebody in the government, very possibly a magistrate. And maybe he was the magistrate who was going to be presiding at the trial of the apostle Paul and that the book of Acts was written to explain the church's origin, its reason for existing, explaining the work that it did, and also then the apostle Paul's connection to the church and to that work. This helps explain the abrupt way in which it stops. It stopped with Paul in prison. And we will go into a little bit more of that a little bit later.
Now, undoubtedly the book of Acts fulfills more purposes than that. We will explore that a little bit more right now. There are at least four clear purposes that the book of Acts pursues.
First of all, it is a continuation of the proclamation of the gospel that began in the book of Luke. It is the continuation of the good news and of salvation through Jesus Christ. Now in reality, I believe that we ought to look at the book of Luke and Acts as one book with two parts. Their separation is a little bit unnatural because they are structured so similarly. They undoubtedly both have the same author, and it was intended by that author that the structure of one be comparable to the structure of the other in order to give a greater understanding to both as you go through them. So the book, the combination, the two of them together, shows the preaching begun by Jesus of Nazareth. And then of course, His crucifixion and resurrection, and then the continuation of that preaching by the church, beginning at Jerusalem and then beginning to reach the entire world as represented by Rome.
So, the first purpose that is established is it shows the church in action following the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ did not stop the work of Christ. It kept right on going. And as a matter of fact, expanded very greatly over what Christ had been able to accomplish in the area of Palestine.
The second purpose, I feel, is a major reason. It demonstrates that Christianity is not a threat to the Roman Empire as the Jews asserted. Now, when we go through the book of Acts, we are going to see many, many times in which the Jews, because of their antagonism toward the church, stirred up a great deal of trouble. So it is entirely possible that what we are looking at here is a trial document, something that was put together in order to vindicate the apostle Paul, who was being held in prison under the authority of the Romans. This begins to become very clear when we examine some things, that is, that it might very well have been a trial document put out by the church to vindicate the apostle Paul.
Turn with me first to Act 16, verse 20. What we are going to see here is a series of … . . .
We are really expanding what logos means. In the book of Acts, Luke picks up right where he left off in terms of logos:
The word is translated as account. We look at this verse because, in the King James Version, it is translated treatise. A treatise is one side of an argument. It is something one writes to support a thesis. Luke uses it to describe a formal narrative, or a record, of what Jesus did and taught. This is communication by words. But in this case it is not speech (as in my speaking to you) it is the written word. We see that logos can, just as in the Old Testament, refer to written words, oral arguments, reasoning, or sayings. It can even be thought of as providing proof because that is what a treatise does; it provides proof that supports an argument. So logos is not just any kind of speech or expression, but it is purposeful, thoughtful, prepared, designed, and ordered for a specific purpose. It is not babbling. It is something that is clearly, logically, and reasonably presented.
There is so much encapsulated in this word. I may be repeating myself, but I think it important to understand the vast scope of this so as not to get locked in to a one-word definition.
Forty days had passed and the resurrected Christ had been right there before them proclaiming the Kingdom of God and all that He fulfilled in the law and the prophets! But they still did not get it. Their hearts may have burned when He was in front of them, but they still were not fully grasping things.
They merely saw Him as the leader of a physical revolution that fell far short of what the Father and Son actually had in mind—the real change God wanted was to turn the whole world upside down (Acts 17:6).
