Bible Studies for Life By Jeffery M. Leonard, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Religion, Samford University
Unstoppable Mission
Acts 1:4–8, 12–14
When we turn to the book of Acts, we are actually turning to the second book of a two-part series. Volume 1 is the Gospel of Luke. The Acts of the Apostles is Volume 2. Although the Gospel of John interrupts this series in the canonical ordering of the New Testament books, we have to transcend this interruption and read Luke and Acts together if we want to understand Luke’s message in its entirety.
Nowhere is this more true than in Luke’s emphasis on reaching out to the nations. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ ministry is focused almost exclusively on Israel (cf. Matt. 10:6; 15:24). Matthew does record Jesus’ famous “Great Commission,” but this commission comes only at the very end of his Gospel (Matt. 28:18–20). In Luke’s Gospel, there is a much stronger and much earlier emphasis on sending the message of Jesus out to the rest of the world.
In the very first sermon Jesus delivers in Luke, He uses Elijah’s helping the widow in Zarephath and Elisha’s healing Naaman the Syrian as examples of reaching out to Gentiles. In Luke 9 we find Jesus preaching to a Samaritan village and in Luke 10, Jesus casts a Samaritan as the good man in His famous parable.
Even Luke’s genealogy of Jesus seems to emphasize Jesus’ availability to Gentiles. Whereas Matthew only traces Jesus’ genealogy back to Abraham, the father of the Hebrews, Luke traces His lineage all the way back to Adam, the father of all people (Luke 3). This emphasis on reaching out to the nations comes into even greater focus as we turn from Luke to Acts.
Jesus has promised to empower us with the Holy Spirit. (4–5)
Although Jesus’ commission to reach out to the nations lies just around the corner, as the book of Acts opens, Jesus and His disciples are still in Jerusalem. The reason for this is that the disciples are not yet ready to take on the task ahead of them.
To be sure, they have heard the message of Jesus. What they lack is the empowering of the Holy Spirit. At one of His last meals with them, Jesus instructs the disciples to stay in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes upon them and gives them the power they need to weather the difficult storms ahead.
The Spirit empowers us to be His witnesses locally and globally. (6–8)
In His many sermons and lessons, Jesus often taught His followers about His coming kingdom. Having witnessed Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples naturally wondered if this was the moment when that kingdom would come. Jesus’ response was to tell the disciples that another job had to be completed first. That job was to take His message to the world as a whole: “You will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
This is just what the disciples do in the rest of Acts, preaching in Jerusalem in Chapters 2–7, to the Samaritans in Chapter 8 and to the Gentiles in Chapter 10. As the book presses on, so do the disciples, taking the gospel farther and farther into the rest of the world.
Prayer unites believers in our focus on Christ and His mission. (12–14)
Although Jesus left the disciples as He ascended to heaven, their continued reliance on Him is evident in their next actions. Walking down from the Mount of Olives and back to Jerusalem, the disciples return to the upper room that had been their headquarters. Here, they join with one another in the act that would sustain them through all the days ahead: they pray.
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