00:00:00 – 00:00:10
Clint Loveall
Hi, friends. Welcome back. It's been a minute, but it's good to be back with you as we kick off our Bible study for the fall. Looking at the Book of Acts, a unique book,

00:00:12 – 00:02:09
Clint Loveall
not really anything else like it in the New Testament. You could certainly argue that the Gospels, part of what the Gospels are doing is history. But the Book of Acts really endeavors to just do that, to just tell. what it understands the historical story of the development of the church and the proclamation, the early proclamation of the gospel, and that initial period of growth and organization and challenge and conflict for the church, it really is a fascinating look into the life of the church in which most of the conflicts at this point are primarily internal. There's certainly some conflict with Jewish people, Jewish officials, Jewish religious leaders that have carried over from the Gospels. But there's some internal strife. There's some theology to navigate. There's some practical stuff to navigate. There is the whole question that comes up later in the book of Gentiles and their place in this new offshoot of the Judaic faith, and specifically, what does it mean to call oneself a follower of Jesus? Does that make one Jewish? Are non-Jewish people invited to be a part of that? And if so, what are the layers that need to be in place for that to happen? I think, Michael, we often, maybe we think we live in a complicated world with denominations and differences, and I think maybe sometimes we forget how much the early church had going on in those early days that they had to find their way through as well.

00:02:09 – 00:02:25
Michael Gewecke
Some of that is because we have access to information, we have access to different denominations, have different belief statements, and maybe even we have fan. family experiences, right? Like, oh, my mom was a Methodist. My dad was a Baptist and we know something

00:02:25 – 00:02:27
Clint Loveall
else. Church history. Yeah.

00:02:27 – 00:04:23
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. What's different in this case, Clint, is you have all of that diversity. But in some cases, these folks don't even know the other people exist, right? You have a community in Ephesus and they may or may not have any connection to a church in Rome, say. And so in the midst of this quickly growing movement of churches in which there's not books written, They're not distributing through the printing press like we think of as printing, right? They're distributing letters. They're sharing stories. Wow, this is verbal, oral accounts of the story of Jesus Christ, of resurrection. And there's stuff out there that's floating around that's just quite simply not true. And that's mixed in with stuff that is true. It's this great sort that's happening at this period of history. And it's one of the reasons I think that scholars have always been so interested in it is because it is so quick moving and it's so diverse in its expression that it's an endless source of study. Acts is, I think many are surprised to find, really the only authoritative, at least as the church puts together our group of books that we call the Bible or the New Testament, it's the only authoritative historical leaning account of the church's growth. We do get some opportunities to peer behind the veil per se in some of these other letters that are written and we we figure out some things about the community because of things that are said. But in terms of teasing out what happens from the moment of resurrection and ascension to the growth of what we think of as the church, this is the book that does that work. And I think it does that role really importantly for the history of the church, but it's also worth noting. It's one book telling a really big story. And it's only going to tell the amount of words it has to share. There's so much happening.

00:04:24 – 00:06:58
Clint Loveall
The vast majority of offshoots of various religions come and go. And Christianity in the post-Easter story in this early period that Axe is looking at is incredibly vulnerable. It faces opposition from the establishment of Jewish religion. it is going to face growing opposition and animosity from the Roman Empire itself. And yet these men and women of that early period who are making decisions and are living out their faith and are preaching the gospel and sharing with others and taking care of hurting people, the decisions they make really set a foundation for how the church is able to survive this very, this very tricky period. If you were laying odds, you'd have to say that it is not very likely that this very small offshoot that begins under the umbrella of Judaism is going to make it very long, let alone still be here with us looking back on its texts, trying to study what happened. And yet, as we look at the book, we see that amazing, intersection between the guidance of God's spirit and the teachings and presence of Christ and the real work of real men and women who get persecuted and who aren't afraid and who have to, you know, try not to get caught in some instances and who preach the gospel under the threat in other instances. And I think that's what, at least for me, that's a significant part of what makes this book so interesting, Michael, is that these weren't people that started off thinking they were going to build a church or a religion or denomination. They were following what they understood. Christ led them to do and to be. And as that unfolds, it's this incredible look at what God does through them, that there is, I think, much we can learn not only about their circumstances, but we can, I think, learn a great deal about our own period of being the church by watching what they did and revisiting some of these stories.

00:06:58 – 00:09:52
Michael Gewecke
I think that one of the difficult things of studying Acts, Clint, is that it is covering such a generative moment of the church's life. And in order to compress that into words that are digestible, it has to sort of root it on a larger set of tracks. And, you know, there's some really important points about the development of the church that are going to be made throughout the book of Acts. And scholarship is going to talk to us about how Luke and Acts are often connected as part one and part two. There's a lot of debates about authorship. Traditionally, the church has talked about Luke as being the author of both of these books. And historically, whether or not you land on what side of scholarship, the idea is that it's telling a concurrent story of Jesus' life in Luke. And then you have the church's life that is beginning in Acts. And both of them are rooted in Southern than Christ. In fact, in this very book, Jesus is going to make an appearance. So make no mistake that it's not as if Jesus is somehow now a background character. I would argue that Jesus is a foreground character, even if he's not the exact sort of character walking throughout the book. All of this is waves that have followed after Jesus's life. But I want to be clear about this. This book is detailing not just the growth of a thing, but also substantial self-identity transformation happening amidst it. Because you do have these Jew and Gentile transformations that are happening in this book. You have even economic transformation happening early in the book. You have communities that are wrestling with what this gospel and what the advancing of grace appears to mean in the midst of their world. This is a shocking time in the lives of those people who are believers in Jesus Christ. And we're able to, in a way, be spectators of what's happening in their midst. And I think that's one of the things that makes this book so compelling is because it captures the vibrancy. It captures the life. It captures the action that's happening in this moment. And in a way, Acts does us a service, Clint, because it doesn't gloss over the conflicts. It doesn't gloss over the disagreements. Doesn't gloss over the persecution. All of that is happening, both within the church, outside the church. God is taking the chief persecutor of the church and turning him into an apostle or God is using one of the preeminent Jewish leaders to make this argument that Gentiles are welcome into the church. All of these reversals are happening in this book, and it's a spectacular view of how the Holy Spirit is working in that time.

00:09:53 – 00:12:19
Clint Loveall
I think one of the interesting navigational challenges for the church in any generation is what do we keep the same and what do we change? And I think as we go through this book, we get a fascinating look at how those challenges played out in the earliest evolution, the first generation of Christians, as they had to navigate how much of their Jewish background they were going to bring forward. Are we going to continue to circumcise people? Are we going to continue to follow dietary restrictions? And particularly once Paul is in that conversation and the emphasis of reaching out beyond Judaism to Gentiles and the wisdom that it takes to make those decisions about what ultimately do we need to hold on as non-negotiable in Christ and what do we feel led or called to move away from as no longer binding and then there's that middle ground, which we may not get as into as acts as you would in some of Paul's letters, but those things in the middle where Christians might disagree, and it might not be a right or wrong per se, but it might be a, for some, they do it this way, and for others, they do it this way, and that's okay, let's have patience with one another. And the early church has to, they have to surf all of those waters. They have to do that, as you said earlier, Michael, without a handbook, there's no guidebook. They don't have what we call the New Testament. They have the remembered and told stories of Jesus. They have the wisdom of Peter and Paul and others who, in some cases, don't agree and are trying to sort out what is the right way forward. It is, I think it's, I love this book. I think it's a fascinating gift to the church. I think there's so much we can learn from it about how to be church in our own time, really, whenever that time is. I mean, we obviously live in a very different time and place than the setting of the Book of Acts, but in its own way, it's incredibly modern and I think incredibly helpful.

00:12:19 – 00:15:06
Michael Gewecke
I think one helpful visual, Clint, for folks to see where we're at is to look here at the way that the New Testament's laid out, and I'm sure you know this, but you've got the four Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then my green spot there is on Axe. So you see, you have the four tellings of Jesus' life. You have Acts and then immediately following Acts. You have Romans and these epistle letters that follow. And the reason why, or one of the reasons why are Bibles laid out the way that is, is just Acts sits in between the tellings of Jesus' life and Romans. And, you know, there is conversation. Why is John before Acts? Why isn't it Luke Acts in that order? How's a different conversation for another day. The reason I just point that out is to say we might make a mistake, Clint, to come to ax and to read it like it's a high school or college 101 history book. And I think that that is a mistake because this is in the vein of a gospel telling that this is God's story. And instead of being told as it is in the book of Luke or Matthew Mark and John, instead of that being told in the stories of Jesus, the miracles, the teachings, instead of that being the core through line, what you have here is the impact of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God's coming upon Peter, upon Paul, upon this whole cohort of other ministry leaders that are either working with them or local people who are against them, whatever that particular story you're hearing, each and every one of these has a purpose. It's not just cold history. It's not just these individuals did this thing, and this is how this thing happened. It's about how Jesus changed something in these people's lives, how the coming of the Holy Spirit, the advocate made a real difference in their life, and then how that difference then overflows to this kind of abounding and moving and changing gospel transformation that's happening in the world. The whole point of this is just simply to say that acts as a not trying to tell history from a cold historical point of view, is trying to tell it from a missional point of view, from a gospel-centered point of view. If Jesus Christ is who he says he is, and if he's made the difference that he claims to have made, then look at the difference that that's made in the lives of the people that follow him. And that's where this book starts to open itself to preaching and not just learning. It gives us an invitation to ask ourselves some of those deep discipleship questions like, am I spreading the gospel? Does my life reflect the coming of the Holy Spirit? That's where this book starts to become more like the Gospels that came before it than the history that we think of in our modern world.

00:15:06 – 00:15:24
Clint Loveall
You made the point, Michael, that Acts is the second volume. Luke is the first. That is what we are very confident that it is an author, a shared author between them. Luke is part one and Acts is part two.

00:15:26 – 00:16:55
Clint Loveall
You have to be a little careful with this, but there is a sense in which the gospel tells the faith story of Jesus, the person, and the book of Acts tells the unfolding faith story of Jesus, the message. in other words, the gospel, not that the spirit of Jesus is not present, not that Jesus is still not personally encountered in the book of Acts, but as the church now becomes the entity which will do the things of Christ, as Jesus, the person has ascended to heaven, it is now the church's mission, the church's calling to go and preach and teach and baptize and proclaim and stand against and deal with evil and all of those various things that Jesus did now fall on the empowered church, the spirit empowered church. And the Book of Acts really looks there. That's where it focuses. That's its, I think that's its centerpiece as we continue to just see these early believers live out their faith together and seek to do that to which they've been called, some of which they're up to and some of which they have to then figure out.

00:16:56 – 00:18:52
Michael Gewecke
So, Clint, I think a thing that some people might be surprised by coming into the book of Acts is you might think that this first telling of the story of the church would be really focused on its institutions about the structures of it. That would be a natural thing for a book to do to tell you, well, you know, this is who's in charge and these are their lieutenants, and this is who makes the decision. And this is kind of your contract, your governing order. This is the way it should work. That's one of the things about this book. I think that's so fascinating is it doesn't, we get some indirect hints of some of how those things worked in the early church. But this book isn't concerned with giving us a roadman. for how they did their organizing. It's rather a handbook for how Jesus made a difference in the lives of people and how they were compelled to share that difference in the world in which they lived. And then these things were materializing, these structures were coming around it. We would be very, very wise to not enter into this book asking the question, okay, what are the literal translations of how they did that particular thing in the world in which we live now? other words, what's the correct single word translation from, you know, that kind of leader to this kind of leader? The book of Acts as a whole is uninterested in teasing out that level of detail. What this book is not going to let you miss on your way out the door is the fact that if the gospel seed has been planted, something is going to grow. If there's something a live network in the midst of the community of faith, it will automatically have motion behind it. And that this book is, I think, in a way, a telling of that core truth, that there's always motion in the gospel. A living church is always going to be looking outside of its walls, and we're going to see that time and time again.

00:18:52 – 00:20:05
Clint Loveall
Yeah, the Gospels bring us to that point of resurrection and what has happened. I think now the Gospel of Act or the book of Acts sits between the communication with individual churches or Christians and the Gospels as a. kind of bridge toward what now? In other words, for these believers, for the world, for this thing called Christian community, at first not even called church, just people of Jesus together, what has changed? What is different and what isn't different? And as they have to sort that out and live that out through various challenges and trials and some of oppression and some enemies, some pushback from both the world and the established religion of Judaism, really just a fascinating story. Truly, truly one of my favorite books. And I think one of the most helpful in regard to thinking about what it means to call ourselves part of the church, the body of Christ.

00:20:06 – 00:20:56
Michael Gewecke
Where you ended there, Clint, I think, is so we to remember that the conditions that the early church grew and thrived were difficult situations. They were not planted in a perfect greenhouse where everything was controlled and nice. It was in the midst of conflict, geopolitical, military, religious, even financial. There's a significant amount of headwind that the early church had to address, and they thrived. That, I think, gives us a unique opportunity. to see what that means, not just for them, but for the church that will continue to live in a world with headwind for all time. And it's an amazing reminder that God is with God's people wherever and whenever they are. And hope you'll go on this journey discovering that together.

00:20:56 – 00:21:09
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I hope we've maybe said something that makes the book of Acts sound interesting, because I think it is, and hope that you'll continue to join us as we move into the text and try to get deeper into that story.

00:21:10 – 00:21:14
Michael Gewecke
We will kick off in earnest next Monday. So until then, be blessed. Thanks, everybody.