00:00:00 – 00:02:53
Clint Loveall
Hey, friends, welcome back. Thanks for being with us as we close out the week. Making slow progress into the book of Acts as we continue here in the first chapter. I'm not sure where we'll get to today, but I'm going to read just a couple verses here starting at 12. I'll read through 14. This is interesting from a standpoint of the book itself. Luke kind of paints a background picture here for us. So let me just read. this quick and we'll come back and have some discussion. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying. Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, son of Alpheus, and Simon the zealot, and Judas, son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves. to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers. So Luke pauses for a moment to kind of focus on the core of the story that's going to unfold. And at that core, we find these 11 men, what is left of the 12 disciples. Here, Luke gives us a listing of all of their names. I think this is one of, I want to say two places, Michael, where we get a full listing, but there might be three. And those listings are interesting because they have different versions of some of the names. For instance, you'll notice that in this listing there's no Thaddeus and there's other slight differences. As some of the disciples, it seems, in one context, were known by one name and maybe in another by another name. And then Luke tells us that there were women with them, certain women who the early church would have likely known, including Mary the mother of Jesus as well as his brothers. We've had some conversation about the idea of Jesus' brothers before in our studies over the gospel, but from a Protestant perspective, we have generally been. believed that this is a literal reference. Jesus had brothers, half brothers, and half siblings. And our Catholic friends would spin that a little differently. They would have a different take on that. But in our tradition, we've generally seen that those are brothers. And these people, these mostly men and some women, Michael, set the stage for the outbreaking or the outmoving of the church.

00:02:56 – 00:03:22
Clint Loveall
I think, you know, it's an obvious point, but I think it can sometimes be forgotten in all the stories that are going to come next, that those men who were with Jesus for those three years and a few women who were also in that circle are now the ones tasked with carrying the gospel forward, proclaiming the message, and beginning to build whatever this thing is going to become. Yeah,

00:03:23 – 00:05:04
Michael Gewecke
there is a real human face behind the growth and the organic kind of distribution of the church from the very beginning. And I think there's some very Lucan notes that really we see already in the beginning of this story. The first is a very sophisticated use of the list. For us, I think Clint, this is true for pretty much all of these texts where we have long lists of names. The modern reader tends to struggle with that because we don't know these people. And maybe we know of them, but the Bible doesn't give a whole lot of details about them. And so here we come. We have this list of individuals. What's fascinating is the gap in the list. The one who is, we're going to see that the disciples are going to need to fill the 12th spot because, excuse me, Jesus was betrayed, right? well, that's already set up by the nature of the list. And then you continue on. Remember Luke in the very beginning of Luke's gospel, Luke presents the story. In fact, with the Magnificat, you have an unbelievable telling of the story from Mary's perspective. Well, once again, the book of Acts, Mary gets named. And so there's an emphasis of connection, both the previous writings. Excuse me, there's also foreshadowing to the story that is going to lie. ahead because the organizational structure is not set at the beginning of acts. There's work to be done. There's decisions to be made. There's organization that needs put together, and much of that's going to land on this early group of believers who are going to do the work together.

00:05:05 – 00:05:29
Clint Loveall
Some interesting just sort of things to point out in this short text. We get told here that they return to Jerusalem from Olivet, which is nearby a Sabbath's day journey. So there was a restriction of how far one could walk or travel on the Sabbath. And that was about, oh,

00:05:32 – 00:07:54
Clint Loveall
about 3,000 meters. So what would we be looking at maybe a mile and a half, two miles perhaps? But one's walking was limited. So when it says that it was a Sabbath's day journey, the Jews of Jesus' Day would have known how far that was. Also here, just a couple of things that Luke does. So we have Jerusalem. We have Olivet, which we've seen in the story before. And then we have this very interesting note. When they went to the city, they go to a room upstairs. And again, having written the gospel, we should have some resonance with the idea of the upper room because we know that that's where the Last Supper took place. And then we have the listing of these disciples. And then Luke tells us they constantly devoted themselves to prayer together with the women and the other family, the brothers, the whoever this represents, the others who were there. This is important, I think, for Luke, Michael, in that whatever Jesus did, we often saw him in the Gospels preparing by prayer. There were seasons of prayer that came before his work, the temptations. Jesus would often pray at the beginning of the day or the end of the day. He would often pray. Even in the crucifixion story, he takes the disciples out with him to pray first before he faces the cross. Certainly an important teaching moment for all of us as Christians that prayer should undergird and proceed whatever we attempt or seek to do in Jesus' name. And so here, as they wait for this thing Jesus has told them will happen, they aren't just waiting passively. They're praying together. They're nurturing relationships. they're encouraging one another. And even in this pre-Pentecost period, we begin to see some of the marks of how the early church will conduct itself and what will be important to them. Well, yeah, and pay attention because we're going

00:07:54 – 00:09:55
Michael Gewecke
to see this language of being constantly devoted again in the book, and it is going to be paired not just with the devotion that they have together, but the way that that is bringing into their midst other people who share the same devotion. So this is a linchpin to hold on to because it's going to come back around. I just want to very, very, very briefly touch on the disciples you mentioned this, Clint. But I just, we don't do this very often, but I just kind of wanted to show all of you, just a sense. If you look at a Bible commentary, and you're not going to read this, but this whole note section here on verse 13, there's entire paragraphs here trying to explore which disciple being named here in Luke maps onto the disciples in the other Gospels. And there's actually a lot of translation. And while we think that this disciple might have been known as this person in a different place and because of their contribution to the church, I'm not going to get into the details of it. I just found it really interesting when I learned Clint that there's actually a little bit of messiness in relating what the gospel character's name was to this person who is serving in the Book of Acts. And I don't mean anything by that other than to say this is an incredibly life-filled, vibrant, full of movement time in the church, and that there's also tradition and there's also where these individuals go and what the early church knew about them that we don't know in our own time, but they did. It actually, I think, adds a lot of color and some mystery and some vibrancy to this story that it's not just a cold textbook where, well, this maps onto this, and it is just abundantly clear. No, there's actual connecting and trying to figure out, well, how is this relate to this? And maybe this is a different person, or maybe that's just what they were called. And I think that's really interesting.

00:09:56 – 00:11:26
Clint Loveall
So we have this little, we have this experience in our family. My son-in-law is, we know him as Peter. His full name is John Peter, but his father is also John. So in the family circle, he tends to be Peter. The people that he works with call him John. John, and he has some friends that call him Pete. And so imagine if we were to tell the story of having done something that day with him, and I said, we went with John, we went with Peter, and they said we went with John. And I think it surprises people to know that even something as core to the story as the 12 disciples is not just a neat, clean list, but it would appear that there are things like that happening. Well, my sources called him this. Well, yeah, but we use this other name because that's what he went. And we don't know exactly the ins and outs of that, but it adds a kind of dynamic to the story that, you know, I suppose you can be troubled by it, but I think it gives it a layer of interesting and just reality,

00:11:28 – 00:11:54
Clint Loveall
because had it been ultra-important, somebody could have cleaned up the names along the way, somebody could have said, we can't have these different lists with different names, and they didn't do that because they knew who they were talking about. By this name or that name, they understood that, and some of that information is maybe lost to us now, but I think it gives it an interesting dynamic. You also mentioned

00:11:54 – 00:13:54
Michael Gewecke
the women, Clint, but I just want to pause for just a second because we lifted this up when we went through the book of Luke, and now we're going to see it again here in the book of Acts. The fact that Luke wants to once again pause to recognize that we know that the women are an integral part of the story is an essential part of the way that the story is told. I just notice what the women are together doing. They are constantly devoting themselves to prayer, right? And they are with this body, and then this is where Mary, the mother of Jesus, gets named. I do think the historic church, Clint, and there's been all of this controversy between Protestant versus Roman Catholic about what we do with Mary, I think you can, if you can, put that on your shelf for a moment and just recognize that Luke wants us to know in the devotion and prayer and constant work that's happening in the early church, women have a place at that table. This is an astonishing, maybe it's not astonishing to a modern person. Maybe you take that as a fact. I think that we would be remiss if we just read past that and didn't see a really spectacular and unique signal that is not common in ancient writings. We're talking 2,000 years ago. women having a place in the genesis story of the Christian church is an amazing inclusion, and it should be a thing that takes us by surprise and that we can celebrate, that these women were there. Now, the cast is going to be largely men, named men in the midst of this story, right? You're going to have Paul, you're going to have Peter, you're going to have several of these folks that circle around them. But that does not mean that we should detract from the inclusions of women in this, because I think they're telling of Luke's purpose and his heart and what he wants us to know about the church. I think that's

00:13:54 – 00:14:57
Clint Loveall
a good insight, Michael, and I think one ought to pay attention as we go through the book of acts where and when female characters show up, because they are in all the various parts of the story, women are included. And we've said that we believe one of Luke's tasks in the book of Acts is showing how the gospel moves out to include people and how it calls people to oneness in Christ. And so the division of Jew and Gentile is an obvious one, but the division of male and female is another, slave and free in this world is going to be of importance. And so this is a glimpse, again, a glimpse of the sort of unifying work of the church and of the gospel and of God in the world. And it will show up again. We'll have some opportunities to look at it.

00:14:57 – 00:15:25
Michael Gewecke
I don't want to spend too much time digging into what may seem like a legitimate. part of the story. But there's often more here than what we like to think, Clint. And I think if this has seemed maybe wrote understandable, maybe at its farthest end boring, we're going to get some twists in next study. So I certainly hope you'll join us for what might not be an expected part of the story leading up to Pentecost. And there'll certainly

00:15:25 – 00:15:35
Clint Loveall
be much to talk about there. I think the next chapter and a half or so does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of moving the story.

00:15:36 – 00:15:39
Michael Gewecke
Don't miss it. We'll be back with you on Monday. Thanks, everybody.