Text Comment
v.18
This is the third recital of the conversion of Paul in Acts, remarkable given Luke’s compression and the thoughtfulness with which he makes decisions about what and what not to include in his narrative. Indeed, the co…
Text Comment
v.2
A courtesy call, but an opportunity for the Jews to bring up the case they wanted resolved.
v.5
Festus not ready so soon in his governorship to alter procedure at the request of the Jews, suggests the more norm…
Text Comment
v.1
The world is not so different. The Jews came to present their charges but they needed a lawyer to be sure they were framed and presented in the right way.
v.2
This was flattery, not honesty. Jewish/Roman relati…
Text Comments
v.12
Oops! That was a vow they could not have kept. But, in those days, even strict Jews had ways and means of escaping the consequences of an unfulfilled vow.
v.14
That is, they went to those certain to be favora…
Text Comment
v.23
Commentators discuss whether their flinging dust in the air was an action tantamount to shaking the dust of one’s feet off against someone — in this case, then, it would amount to their publicly saying that they did …
A longer reading than customary this evening. You should consider yourselves fortunate. My first Sunday evening at Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen the service lasted two and a half hours and Mr. Still made it through some 13 chapters of Jerem…
Text Comment
v.1
“…torn ourselves…” Affection on both sides and, all the more, in light of Paul’s prediction that they would not see one another again.
v.3
An eyewitness touch. That journey across the open sea, instead of…
Text Comment
v.13
An interesting historical detail, the kind of thing a participant in the history would remember and all the more interesting a demonstration of historicity because no reason is given for Paul taking a different route…
Text Comment
v.1
Left Ephesus after the troubles had died down.
v.3
The three winter months when sea travel ceased. During this time, most of which was spent at Corinth, he wrote Romans. In other words, he took a different rout…
Text Comment
v.9
By now we are used to this as the usual pattern of events upon Paul’s entrance into a new city. Paul’s boldness and persuasiveness produced converts and that produced a strong reaction from the Jews.
The lecture ha…
Text Comment
v.2
There is a question about the translation of the men’s reply. In earliest edition of the NIV that statement is rendered, “No, we have not even heard that the Holy Spirit has been given.” In printings after 1974 the NI…
Text Comment
v.1
Corinth, with Ephesus, was the most important city Paul visited on his missionary tours (at least those covered in Acts), so it is not surprising that he spent a substantial period of time in each, a year and a half i…
Text Comment
v.16
Athens was not on Paul's missionary agenda, but while waiting there, he took maximum advantage of the opportunity. He was not a man for the vacation. Here he is an example of both that sensitivity to the lostness a…
2 Timothy 3:10-17 There can be no doubt as to the core issue separating Protestants from Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians. It is the sufficiency of Holy Scripture. Roman Catholics and the Orthodox both impute to the church an authority that lies, at least beside, if not underneath the authority of Holy Scripture. It is, […]
Matthew 23:25-39 Text Comment We pick up our text in the middle of the Lord Jesus’ terrible accusation of the teachers of the law and Pharisees, who are identified as his subject in v. 2. One thing becomes very clear if you listen carefully to the Protestant evangelicals who have converted to Roman Catholicism. They […]
Text Comment
v.3
The primitive preaching was, in the terms of the modern alternative, transactional more than interpersonal, that is, it focused more on the objective realities of sin, guilt, Christ's atonement, and the eschatological…
1 John 4:1-3 Today we begin a series of Lord’s Day morning sermons unlike our usual fare. As you know, it is the custom of this pulpit, for reasons I have given you from time to time, to preach consecutively through books or parts of the Bible. I deviate from that plan from time to […]
Text Comment
v.10
The first “we section” begins: Luke is present as an eyewitness. This manner of speaking extends to the middle of our passage (16:17) and then resumes again in 20:5. One of the genuinely important evidences both of L…
Text Comment
v.36
Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch long enough apparently to ensure that the controversy had been laid to rest. Then they planned a follow-up visit to Galatia and the new churches they had planted on their first mi…
Text Comment
v.1
A fuller report of this general development is apparently to be found in Galatians 2:11-14. There is a debate about the relationship between the material in Acts and that in Galatians, but all in all it seems that thes…
Text Comment
Paul and Barnabas had left Antioch and made their way to Iconium, the modern town of Konya, which lay 90 miles east on the Roman road.
v.2
The same story to be repeated many times. A number of Jews believed immediately an…
Text Comment
v.5
This is John Mark, the daughter of the Mary in whose house the church had met for prayer when Peter was imprisoned (12:12). He is called here their “helper,” the same word Luke uses in his Gospel (1:2) in the phrase “s…
Text Comment
Chapters 13-14 relate the first extensive missionary activity conducted by Paul, in the company of Barnabas, or the first of Paul's famous “missionary journeys,” of which you typically find three on a map in the back of your Bibl…
Text Comment
v.2
A cryptic account of what was, perhaps, a great incident. Nothing in this is at all inconsistent with what is known of this Herod, also known as Herod Agrippa. He was the grandson of Herod the Great, the Herod who was …
Text Comment
Verses 1-18 repeat the account of Peter's vision and what transpired subsequently in the house of Cornelius in Caesarea. Repetition is a typical means of emphasis in the Bible. Luke had a primitive word processor and had no way of …
Text Comment
I have titled this message in my own files “The Reception of Cornelius” for even everything that happens to Peter at first in our text is with a view to this Gentile man and all the Gentiles that are going to follow him into the Ch…
Text Comment:
v.2
“God-fearer” a Gentile who had embraced the Jewish faith but had not become a practicing Jew because he had not yet submitted to circumcision (as was the case here with Cornelius, cf. 11:3).
v.4
While we ten…
Text Comment
Luke returns now to Peter for three and a half more chapters before Paul takes center stage for the remainder of the book. Very different men used in different ways by the King of the Church.
v.32
Apparently, Peter had …
Text Comment
v.23
The story here needs to be filled in from Paul's autobiographical remarks in Galatians 1:17-18.
“…I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and …
Text Comment
v.1
The chapter has sometimes been titled “How Paul lost his bad breath.” Paul later describes himself to have been in a kind of raging fury against the Christians. 26:11: “Many a time I went from one synagogue to another…
Text Comment
At several points in the narrative of Acts we detect the hand of the God of Israel at work. This narrative is strongly reminiscent of that of Elijah — directed by an angel into the desert, his running, his being snatched way by t…
Text Comment
v.1
The church now learns in earnest that God's people in this world are counted as “sheep to be slaughtered.” What is described here is a studied, determined effort — what will be the first of many — to eradicate the c…
Text Comment
v.9
"Cilicia" Is this the synagogue attended by Saul of Tarsus, with Saul himself as the chief instigator of the opposition to the Christians?
v.14
Jesus did, of course, say such things, and Stephen was n…
Text Comment
v.3
Once again some form of popular election, as with the vacancy in the apostolate in chapter 1. Though this is not made a shibboleth in the NT. It is mostly inferred and understated.
v.4
” the prayer”? That is…
Text Comment
v.12
The section begins with a statement summarizing the situation and telling us what was happening (as at 2:43-47; 4:32-35). Luke has neither time nor space to give a full account of events. But it is enough to indicat…
Read Acts 4:32-5:11
The chapter division is not well placed. It ought to be between 4:31 and 4:32, for, though 4:32-36 summarizes again the spirit of these early Christians — repeating in greater detail the information already given in 2:44-45 …
Read: 4:23-31
The disciples, Peter and John in particular, had been jailed over night, hauled before the authorities, ordered not to preach in the name of Jesus, and threatened with further reprisal if they did. Their response to this intimidation…
As I said last Lord's Day evening, I want to return to the text we read last time to consider the statement Peter makes in v. 12. It is the ground of Peter's appeal to submit to Jesus Christ:
“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no …
Text Comment
v.2
The Sadducees were particularly annoyed by the message, for they denied the doctrine of the resurrection. That this teaching should have been spread in the Temple would have only infuriated them the more as they thought…
Text Comment
Luke is now going to give a particular instance of those miracles he said in 2:43 the Apostles were performing. And its setting is in the temple courts where we have already read (2:46) the Christians were meeting daily.
v.1
…
Text Comment
v.42
“They” = 3,000 + 120 or thereabouts; so almost all the church believers of but a few days. Not meeting in one place all at once, of course, but in many different congregations, as v. 46 indicates. The only place they may…
Text Comment
v.38
A troublesome introduction of baptism for Protestant Christians. Seeing that baptism does not save someone, why muddy the waters so early on? We don't deny, of course, that baptism does not have the same place in salva…
I do not intend to spend 12 years in the Book of Acts as Martin Lloyd-Jones did in Romans. Consequently, some points will receive attention and others will not. If I pass by something you wonder about, please do ask me about it afterwards. But, fact …
Text Comment
v.1
Pentecost from the Greek word for “50” because this feast occurred fifty days after Passover. It was the OT's Feast of Weeks, a late Spring harvest festival.
v.2
You know that the Greek word pneuma can be trans…
Text Comment
v.12
"A Sabbath's days walk" does not mean that the Ascension took place on a Sabbath, but only that it happened near Jerusalem. This is a bit of rabbinic legalism arrived at by comparing Exodus 16:29 (no one is to…
Text Comment
“The Acts of the Apostles” is the name given since at least the middle of the second century to the second volume of Luke's two volume history of Christian origins. Originally the two works would have circulated together, but as soon …
I have long looked forward to studying the Book of Acts with you. Over many years of Sunday evening services we made our way through the historical books of the OT, from Joshua to Esther. It is high time we made our way through the great book of earl…
Audio:
Download Text “The Ethics of the Kingdom of God” 1 Thess. 5:12-15 Sept. 17, 1995 Text Comment v. 14 “warn” is the same word as “admonish” in v. 12 ____________________________________ Verses 14 and 15 contain the kind of statements we tend to pass over with little thought or reflection. A series of exhortations to practice […]
Audio: Download Audio