Tune in as Pastor Ryan preaches from the intros to Dr. Luke’s books: The Gospel According to Luke and Acts of the Apostles.
Transcript
Introduction
Alright, well, this morning we’re kicking off a few sermons through the Book of Acts. Or Acts of the Apostles as it’s sometimes called.
If you’re keen, you can read ahead. We’ll plan to get to chapter 2 next week.
Luke & Acts
First a bit of Bible trivia:
Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)
You’ve heard of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? These are the four Gospels. Gospel means “Good News.” These are the four stories about Jesus’ birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension. Each is names after the human author.
The first three, The Gospel according to Matthew, the Gospel according to Mark, and the Gospel according to Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels because they are all similar – it seems that Matthew and Luke probably used Mark as one of their sources. The Gospel according John is more unique.
So, if you’re reading the story of Jesus’ life, read a couple of the Synoptics to get a bit different view of the same stories. Read John to get some stories that aren’t told in the other three.
Acts
The Acts of the Apostles (usually shortened to just Acts) tells the story of the early church after Jesus had ascended to heaven.
So, if the Gospels tell about what Jesus did, lived, and taught, then Acts tells us about the early outcome of that. What happened next? Did it make any difference?
Acts is useful for us today, because it tells us how the early church lived out it’s calling to be the Body or Community of Jesus.
Luke -> Acts
The Gospel according to Luke and The Acts of the Apostles are both written by the same author. It’s like Luke wrote The Gospel according to Luke as Part I and The Acts of the Apostles as Part II.
Acts 1:1-3 [NIVUK]
So, let’s jump into Acts chapter 1,
Verses 1-3 (Previously on…)
Remember this is Part II of Luke’s book, so these first few verses, verses 1-3 are like a summary of Part I.
Imagine if this was a TV show. Here we are jumping into Episode 2, “Previously on The Good News television series…”
Acts 1:1-3
1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. [Acts 1:1-3 NIVUK]
Verses 4-11 (And now, Part 2…)
After verse 3, the new episode begins, “And now, Part 2…” but it starts a few minutes before the ending of the previous exciting episode. Maybe there was a cliff-hanger at the end of the last episode.
Gospels Ends with:
Check this, here’s how the other three Gospels ended:
Matthew: Ended with Jesus’ instructions to “Go and make disciples…” Finishing with,
…And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. [Matthew 28:20b NIVUK]
Mark: Gives a little summary of what happened next:
[the apostles] went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through accompanying signs. Amen. [Mark 16:20 NKJV]
John: wrote, I could write a ton more, but if I did, there wouldn’t be enough books to contain it all.
Cliff-hanger
Luke: Though, I think is a bit different. At the end of The Gospel According to Luke, he gives a bit of a summary of the following days, “[the apostles] worshipped Jesus and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen.” That’s awesome. In fact, you could say, that’s heaven. But… what else happened? We know there’s more than that… but that’s all we get.
