& Luke 1:1-4 Introduction to the book of Acts
Acts 1:1-2 · Vern Peterman · Jan 8, 2017
Acts (2017-18), No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926545293568

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning and a blessed New Year to you all. I'm really excited to be able to start this study of the book of Acts, Acts of the Apostles, as it's often called. And one of the things to begin with there is just to say it was written about 60 to 61 AD by Dr. Luke. who was a companion of the Apostle Paul.

Very likely, Dr. Luke had become a believer under Paul's evangelistic ministry. He appears to have been a God-fearing Gentile. That is, a God-fearing Gentile, which is a phrase actually used in the book of Acts, and we'll take a look at that after a bit, were Gentiles who had come to regard the God of the Jews as this is the one true God. And Dr. Luke had likely been one of those.

The book of Acts is among the longest books in the New Testament, not the longest. The book begins with Christ's ascension and then focuses mostly on Peter initially for a number of chapters, and then eventually on Paul with Paul's conversion and then his missionary journeys.

So as we look at it, that's the big picture in the outline. Dr. Luke, just looking at his character, he was a man of keen skills of observation. It may have come partly as a result of his being a physician and knowing to look very carefully for symptoms and conditions and whatnot. He was also a man of deep compassion. As one reads through the Gospel of Luke and through Acts, One of the things that Dr. Luke does, he does a very good job of looking at what is the, for example, political title of one leader versus the next.

Throughout the Roman Empire, there was no system of, here's how we name different ones. In the United States, we say, okay, the fellow who's the head political guy in each of the states is called a governor. There was no consistent system throughout the Roman Empire. It basically varied not only from one locality to the next, but also from time to time.

Here's a for instance, Acts 28 7, Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the leading man of the island, or as the King James has it, the chief man of the island. named Publius, who welcomed us and entertained us courteously three days."

Now one, you notice the us, and so that includes Dr. Luke. He was there. But the other thing to confirm is when you look at the records, the leading man of the island, or the chief man of the island, was in fact the title that they called this particular fellow Publius. That name was in use. Other places they'd call someone a king, they'd call someone a prefect, they'd call someone a governor.

Varying terms, Luke gets it right every time. In addition to that, however, Dr. Luke is also one who shows a lot of compassion and care about people and individuals. We noticed three chapters in a row in the Gospel of Luke where Dr. Luke would notice that this was the only son or the only daughter or the only child of a person. And he noted those things and paid attention to it. An example that we're going to see in the book of Acts as we proceed through it is shown with Eutychus.

Now, this is the big picture showing Paul's third missionary journey. I don't expect you to look at all the details, but right here is Troas. They spent about a week in the city of Troas. And that, by the way, is the city right nearby is Troy. This is where the Trojan horse story came from. And so here's Troas.

And it was there that a young man named Eutychus fell out of a third story window. And by the way, Dr. Luke makes note of that. Here's the boy's name. And it didn't just say he fell out of a window, it fell out of the third story. And it's also in an account where he is present. So he pays attention to detail, but he also shows personal concern. And we'll see that as we go through the book of Acts, that he continues to pay attention to a lot of detail, and he also continues to show personal concern for people.

He himself shows up in the New Testament, certainly here in the book of Acts, in Acts 16, 10-11, is one of those first places where he actually shows up. He uses we or us in the midst of those contexts. 20, 5-15 is another one, and 21, 1-18, and then finally he uses we or us as Paul heads by ship towards Rome. And here is the Appian Way, the ancient road towards Rome, and he makes note of those geographical details. As we go along, we'll point these things out where Dr. Luke is looking at particular details. He's very specific about things and spells things out very well. Now, Dr. Luke shows up by name in Paul's New Testament letters, not that Luke, this one.

So, Colossians 4.14 is one where it's mentioned that Luke is the beloved physician.

2 Timothy 4.11, it says that Dr. Luke is the only one with Paul in that letter. And in Philemon 24, he is among the fellow workers. And so we find that out.

So we find out his occupation, a physician, there in Colossians 4.14. We find that he is not a Jew, so therefore likely the only Gentile author of the New Testament.

He wrote about 28%. I thought of showing a pie chart, but anything about pies this close to lunchtime, not a good idea. But we'll get there. Okay. So here's Luke 1, 1-4, Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order. most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the exact truth about the things that you've been taught."

Now one of the things that we note here is that he is very careful in his process of going through and gathering the information. So this is not haphazardly or casually gathered. He doesn't take hearsay. It seems, especially with his attention to detail, he asks questions of the people who are telling him things in order to get everything down correctly.

And while he starts the Book of Acts, this is kind of the sequel, while he starts the Book of Acts, he doesn't spell out this, but I think as we go through it, what we'll find is the same kind of care and the same kind of attention to detail that he used in the Gospel of Luke was also used as he prepared the Book of Acts.

And some of them, even with the sense from his writing that he was present for the last part of it from chapter 16 on. So here's Acts 1, 1 and 2 and I think as we read it we need to see it's the same fellow that he wrote to regarding the gospel of Luke.

This is Theophilus. and that it carries with it that same attention to detail and care for the truth. So the first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up to heaven after he had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen. Next week we'll step from there into his account with more detail than he had at the end of the Gospel of Luke of Christ's ascension. Alright, so who is this Theophilus guy?

You might wonder. He wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. We find his name at the beginning of each, but no explanation. The fact is, we have no other information on this guy. We don't have, oh, he did this, or he was this fellow, or Luke met him there, so we really have no direct information. But we do have a good clue. He is called Most Excellent. And this was a title that was used in several places, as we'll see in Acts, when the apostle Paul is in front of the governors Felix and Festus. He refers to them that way.

Theophilus was apparently then either of higher legal or socioeconomic standing among those in the Roman Empire. A couple of possibilities are out there, and we don't know which one is the case. He may have been the one who paid Dr. Luke to write, hey, I'll pay you to write this account. It may also have been a government official For instance, John Mock, in studying this, has written a book in which he proposed that Theophilus was actually a government official and Luke was submitting these documents, the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, on behalf of Paul as a legal defense.

So that's a possibility out there. At this point in time, we don't have enough information to confirm which one of these it is, but all those are viable. Now, one way we can learn from this is to imagine what would happen if we had all of the New Testament documents except for Acts. So if we look at things that way, I think we'll learn something from it. Imagine, if you will, the book of Acts goes away.

All you've got is the Gospels and then the rest of the letters, okay? Getting with Romans and continuing on the rest of the letters. You would wonder how the Gospel was spread after Jesus had ascended. You'd have nothing to tell you very directly about what happened. You'd be asking the questions, well, wait a minute, who's Paul? He's written 13 letters as far as I can tell. He's writing all these letters to people in the Gentile land. How did that happen? And so you'd wonder that.

You'd say, who is Timothy? He shows up in Acts 16, but of course you wouldn't have that. You would have a couple letters to Timothy, and then Timothy would either be named as a co-author, or he would be named inside the letter for almost all of the letters of Paul. But you'd say, who was Timothy?

I have no idea. Where did he come from? What can we tell about him? Not much. Except for what's in Paul's letters. We would even ask, who was Luke? Who wrote the gospel of Luke? How did he get involved here? But we wouldn't have an answer really. We just know this guy named Luke, who was a beloved physician, and worked with Paul, whoever he is, right? Wrote this gospel. We would ask, who is Apollos? Who is Achilla and Priscilla?

And we'd have other things we'd look at. We would know nothing of a guy named Stephen who gave his life as the first Christian martyr. We'd know nothing of him, right? We could go through the book of Acts and say, I have no idea how the gospel went from the Jews over to these Gentiles. Except all of a sudden Paul shows up, whoever he is, right? We would have no idea how this Paul guy, who actually claims when he writes Timothy, whoever he is, right?

When he writes to Timothy, he said, I'm guilty of persecuting the church to death. But we'd have no idea how that happened, or how he came to be writing all these, almost half the letters of the New Testament. So we'd lack a lot of information. So the book of Acts, this is a backbone connecting us from the Gospels into the rest of the New Testament.

What's interesting is that Dr. Luke didn't write about, then Paul wrote this one, and then Paul wrote this one, and then Paul wrote this one. But we can put a lot of things together even without Dr. Luke writing who wrote what when. because of the information that's in the book of Acts.

One more thing, and we've been making this point here in recent weeks, the evidence is mounting that Jesus was crucified specifically on April 3rd, 33 AD. That's multiple lines of historical evidence, multiple lines of evidence within the Gospels, multiple lines of evidence, even geological evidence. that Jesus was crucified on April 3rd, 33 AD, specifically that day. This means that Jesus was resurrected on April 5th, 33 AD, and he ascended on May 14th, 33 AD. The day at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was given, the church begun. When Peter preached to the Jews who were gathered from places within and around the Roman Empire, and even places outside the Roman Empire, and 3,000 were saved that day, that day was May 24, 33 AD.

That specific date. Given the dates of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection and ascension, And the Day of Pentecost, the rest of the Book of Acts, is a clear time frame such that we know the timing of events, sometimes generally and sometimes specifically.

We have a supplement, if you'd like to take advantage of it, that lays all of this out. Dates, months, seasons, for everything in the Book of Acts. And so you can take advantage of that in the cabinet on the right if you would like and follow along with this. I'll be making a point of those dates when we have them as we go along.

In some cases, the timing of events is within a particular season or a month. In other cases, we know down to specific days or even a specific day according to our modern calendar. The chronology says that Stephen was martyred in April of 35 AD, that Saul, who later became Paul, became a believer in the summer of 35 AD, just a few months after he stood by at Stephen's stoning. The day that Paul returned from his third missionary journey and met with Jesus' half-brother James was exactly on May 28, 57 AD. in Jerusalem.

So we know that very specifically. The Book of Acts is then not a collection of legends and myths and embellished memories, but rather a precise account of what actually took place in real time and in historical sequence. It's the real deal. It really happened. at a specific time, a specific place, with specific people. It's real history.

The other thing that is spelled out is the location of things. We'll just give you a brief sampling here, but as we go along we'll lay those things out. Not only is there good chronology for the people and events and acts, We're often, I would say most often, quite certain of the location for most of the places that Dr. Luke describes throughout the book of Acts. Here, for example, is Straight Street in Damascus.

That's where Paul was taken after the Lord met him on the road to Damascus, and that's Acts 9.11. I'll show you a picture. I don't recommend you go to Damascus right now for a visit. Bad thing to do.

We know for example with certainty the location of the temple that was in Jerusalem and how it was constructed. Here is an aerial of the old city of Jerusalem and you see labeled and marked out in yellow, that's the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock.

That is the temple site. If we look there, here is the Dome of the Rock. It is most likely right over where the Holy of Holies was located in the Jewish temple. That courtyard that you see there, though it's been modified over the years, is the same courtyard where Jesus twice cleared the temple, right? Cleansed the temple. Same place. This would be how it looked during the time of Christ. The temple was under reconstruction from about 20 BC all the way up to about 63 AD.

And so this is the place, we know where Jesus was at different points in the accounts in the gospel, and where the apostles were at different points in this very same temple. So we'll be taking a look at that as we proceed through the book of Acts. We know where the amphitheater in Ephesus was, where they had essentially a riot, where the pagans there were saying, great is Artemis of the Ephesians, for two hours. Here is the amphitheater, and this is where they all rushed from the Agora, which is the marketplace, which is right nearby, and we know where that was too. And we'll point out different things as we step our way through the Book of Acts.

By the way, the Agora had a fake tree of life there at Ephesus. So anyway, real interesting as we go through, there's a lot that we know about these places. It's real history, real time, real people, real events. This actually happened. Here's an aerial of the theater at Ephesus. This is one of the larger and better preserved theaters that were constructed around the Roman Empire. We also know where the Agora, that's the marketplace, was at Philippi. and very definitely know where that is.

Here is an aerial view taken from the mountain up above it. The mountain up above it was used for gold mining, and it was also their cemetery. So this is up on the mountainside looking down, and this more distant structure is a bathhouse and gymnasium. The nearer structures are pagan temples, temples to Greek gods and to Egyptian gods.

And right in the middle here, this rectangle, is the agora, or marketplace, and this is where Paul and Silas were beaten with rods. That's the place right there. So we have, for a lot of these places, as we go through the book of Acts, we have very definite understanding of where things took place, locations, even as specific as right in that piece of real estate there, that's where the Apostle Paul and Silas were beaten. And where Paul was in prison in Caesarea is also something very well known.

Caesarea was excavated back in the early 60s, and they did a good job of leaving things as much as possible in place. Here's an artist's rendering of Caesarea built by Herod the Not-So-Great. This was back in 25 to 13 BC. He made a harbor that was essentially a military installation. And so that allowed them to go out of there by ship and bring in military personnel, supplies, et cetera, via ship, and then also to have a land connection.

This is the place also where, for example, Pilate lived most of the time before he would travel over to Jerusalem for judging and various kinds of governmental functions. So this is a place we know where it is. It was the place where Philip, the deacon lived. It was the place where Peter went to when he went to the house of Cornelius and introduced the gospel to the first Gentile household. It was a revolutionary thought. Here is believed to be the location of Paul's prison at Caesarea. So you can imagine, you know, spending two years in this very confined area right next to the palace so you could be brought in to speak to the governor, and anybody else that he had brought in. But we know where these things are. So the timing is known, sometimes very specifically, and sometimes more generally. The timing is known, the people are known, we have some good confirmation.

For political and religious figures, there is great confirmation of people from other historical sources, sometimes multiple historical sources. The reason to point this out is to underscore that Dr. Luke is telling us the truth. This is historical reality, not just a story, not just a collection of myths and legends.

All of the Roman political figures mentioned in Acts regarding Paul while he was at Caesarea are also mentioned by Josephus. We have an independent record of those specific rulers and what they did in the years that they were in office. We have also Gamaliel, for instance.

We're going to see his name show up twice in the book of Acts, in Acts 5.24 and 22.3. He was Paul's rabbi.

Acts 5.24 is where Gamaliel is going to stand up before the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jewish council, And he is going to tell them, be careful what you do with these men, right? And so he's going to be influential that way.

In 22.3 we're going to find out Paul then claims to have been one of Gamaliel's disciples. We know quite a bit about Gamaliel from the Talmud, by the way, also the Mishnah, two Jewish writings. So we have a great deal of confirmation. We know, for instance, that he had about a thousand disciples all totaled during his time as a rabbi. We know that he was very highly regarded among those in the Sanhedrin.

That fits with Acts 5.24. We know that he got married later in life. Matter of fact, he was asked about that. He was asked, why are you not married? You're supposed to get married. And he said, it's because I'm so in love with the law. That was his answer, right?

So we have a great deal of confirmation about these guys, but it gets even better than that. Not only do we have excellent confirmation of the chronology of the events and the people and places and acts, but this book, more than all the others that are out there, different from all the others that are out there that give us confirmation, this book is inspired by God. Not only is Acts presenting historical truth, we have the assurance that our study of the book of Acts will impact us deeply and richly as we go through the book step by step. 2nd Timothy 3, 16 and 17, all scripture, including Acts, is profitable, right? Ah, it's profitable.

So, and we have from Hebrews 4.12 that the Word of God is alive and active, right? Including the book of Acts, and guess what?

It goes deep. It is inspired scripture so that it goes to the dividing line between soul and spirit. Nothing goes deep like that. Isn't that amazing? So the book of Acts is also going to be something that God's going to use in our lives to impact us deeply and spiritually. That would be one of the great reasons for going through it. It is a book of transitions. That's something we have to deal with and wrestle with as we go through the book. The inclination on the part of some folks is to see something in Acts and not realize this is a book of transitions, and that, oh, we need to do that, we need to do that. Well, maybe not. Maybe not.

The gift of tongues, for example, is one we'll look at. Tongues shows up in chapter 2, chapter 10, and chapter 19. Once with Jews in a Jewish land, once with Gentiles in a Jewish land, once with Jews in a Gentile land. Three times. In each case, it's in an evangelistic context. There are always Jews present.

So we'll be taking a look at the gift of tongues, too, among other gifts. It begins in Jerusalem and it ends in Rome. So it starts way over here on the eastern part of the Roman Empire, in Jerusalem, and then through a superlative path ends in Rome, right? So it goes the distance, right? It goes the distance.

It begins with Peter. Peter is the primary focus through much of the early chapters of the book of Acts. It ends with a focus upon the apostle Paul. We call it the book of Acts of the Apostles, but most of it is focused on the Acts of two apostles, Peter and Paul. We will see that there is a listing of all of the apostles, and we will talk about what happened to all those apostles. Acts begins with the Jews exclusively, almost, and it ends with the Jews and the Gentiles. Increasingly, there's a focus more and more on the Gentiles.

Jesus is resurrected and physically present in the first part of chapter 1 and then leaves. He departs. The Holy Spirit is given in chapter 2 never to depart from the church again until the church departs. Now, you have in your handout, or I sure hope you do, this color-coded one page. I'd like us to step through it. One of the things that I've found is that when I put a chart together, there are those who say, oh, this is great. I can see all this stuff in it. And there are other people who go, huh? Right. And so I don't want anybody going, huh? So let's step our way through it and try to make some sense out of it here.

All right, so what this presents is from the time of the Gospels, and even before the ministry of Christ, on into the time just after the book of Acts closes, which is around 60 or 61 A.D. So the first thing here is to look, it's down here that you have a timeline. Down there is a timeline. It starts with 20 A.D. and goes on to about 68 A.D. And it marks off about every five years there with a line. So that's part one. So the timeline is down there towards the bottom. Next, you'll notice that this red line says here's Acts 2 when the church starts. That's that 33 AD, May 24, 33 AD specifically. This is where the church begins.

You have Acts 9, the Apostle Paul becomes saved, and then Peter, the gospel to the Gentiles, and then the Apostle Paul actually preaches the gospel of the kingdom and the gospel of substitution, that is, Christ died for my sins, was buried and rose again, all the way to the last two verses in the book of Acts. And, so let's take a look at this, you'll have the gospel of the kingdom gets preached off and on, but continuously, essentially, through the book of Acts all the way to the last verses. It is the gospel of the kingdom, that is, Christ is the Messiah who will come again. The gospel of the kingdom and the gospel of substitution. Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again. Do you believe it? That's the gospel of substitution. Both gospels are preached in parallel. Both gospels preached in parallel all the way through the book of Acts.

One more thing, and this is also something that is often not recognized. The principle of law expressed through the law of Moses is what you see through the Gospels. From the Old Testament, starting with Moses there, all the way into the Gospels. As Christ was crucified and the church began, the principle, the stewardship principle of grace is then implemented. That transition there as the church begins is critical. Recognizing the stewardship principle of grace begins and continues from then on. Many of those who call themselves Christians try to hold on to both. It doesn't work. The principles of grace began there with the institution of the church at the very beginning. Next, one more thing. You'll see here the identification truths.

That is, we are in Christ, we are baptized into Christ, identified with his crucifixion, burial, resurrection. Those things were begun with the book of Galatians. And you notice there are some Bible books that are listed up there towards the upper right. Not all the Bible books, but particularly ones focusing on identification and So what was presented with the book of Galatians, which was 49 AD, what was presented was the first statement that we've been identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, continuing on with the book of Romans particularly, chapter 6. Been identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. Galatians was written 16 years after Christ had died, been buried, and resurrected. It's the first indication of our being in Christ and having been crucified with Him, having been buried with Him, and having been raised with Him.

So far as we have any indication, the Apostle Paul did not yet know we've been identified with Him in His ascension and seeding. Not yet. What you see is there's another column there with the blue arrow in the blue vertical, that's about 25 years after Paul had become a believer. He reveals, ah, we've been seated with Christ. We have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. We have a heavenly citizenship. Set your mind on things above.

He didn't write that to the church at Rome. He didn't write that to the churches in Galatia. He didn't reveal that until about 60 A.D. Now, one of the things that we're going to see as we go through the book of Acts is we're going to see that the apostles, starting in Acts chapter 1 and on into chapter 28, they're going to go through decades of aha moments, realizing astounding new truths again and again and again.

Imagine learning seven years after Christ was crucified and buried and resurrected and ascended, seven years, learning that the Gentiles are also supposed to hear and believe the gospel. Really? Yeah, what an astounding revelation. Can you imagine going on seven years before finding out, oh, they're supposed to get the gospel too. Imagine learning that you are identified with Christ's death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. Can you imagine what this was like? Put yourself in the place of the disciples and imagine a conversation as they begin discovering some things. What were the disciples going through in terms of their perspective and their emotions when Christ was crucified?

They were in shock. They were in great despair. They were thrust into being despondent. And their hearts failed them. They were shoved into hopelessness. Just absolutely stunning turn of events. Aside from which they didn't get any sleep the night before, right? All the disciples, men and women, everyone was just feeling horrible. They had no idea. Can you imagine the conversations?

Oh, we just felt awful. We felt terrible. It was really, really, really awful. We had no idea that He was accomplishing so much that day. We just thought it was the end of everything and a big waste. And instead, He was doing so much that day. We had no idea that while He was up there, we were identified with Him. We didn't know.

But how wonderful that is. Here's the Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians, we preach Christ and Christ crucified. How stunning a thought that would be. Because when the disciples were there watching it, that wasn't their sentiment at all. That you've been identified with Christ in this, that was mind-boggling. Imagine coming to that realization that that Friday that you thought was really, really, really horrible was actually the best Friday that ever was.

Imagine as Jesus is being buried, and his body looks terrible, and he's wrapped up with a hundred pounds of burial materials, cloth and aloes and spices. They put him there in the tomb and seal it up. The sentiment, the feeling was, oh no, everything's ruined. This is horrible. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen. And now that I see him buried and the stone is rolled over the tomb, now it's really, really, really bad. I've lost all hope.

And then imagine as they slowly begin to discover, wow, that means he really died. We had no idea that we died with him and were buried there in that tomb with him. We had just not the slightest idea. Imagine as Jesus began to appear to the various disciples, the twelve, or rather the eleven, and the others as well. And how hard a time, because they had no concept that he was going to be resurrected. That just hadn't even entered their mind at all. As a matter of fact, after a week of appearances to others, Thomas finally came around. He still didn't understand the significance of it all. The idea that we were identified with Christ as he was resurrected.

That would take years to come about, at least 16, if not more. Imagine as the disciples were there and Christ was ascended, the first thing they were doing was, is now the time you're going to establish the kingdom for Israel? Can you imagine their mindset thinking, okay, this death, burial, and resurrection stuff, that was real confusing and really, really hard to go through. But if you're going to start now to establish the kingdom for Israel, yeah, that's cool. I mean, we can get over this weird bunch of things that happen. finally to discover, oh, He's not going to answer all of our questions, because that's the Holy Spirit's job from here on out. And He has to leave, and it's a good thing.

And to realize that I was identified with Him in that ascension. I had no idea. Do you know, it was about 25 years after the Apostle Paul had become a believer that they realized, oh, I was identified with him in this ascension. Can you imagine learning that decades later? Oh, we thought he was leaving and we weren't getting any answers and he was just departing from us.

All the while, it was just one of the best things that could ever happen. Because we've seen what the Holy Spirit has done. Imagine finally discovering, 27 years after Christ had ascended, oh, not only was He seated at the right hand of the Father, but I am seated there with Him. What an astounding thing to discover. Whoa!

His leaving us, His going through all those things was just the best thing ever. It couldn't possibly be better. And while we were thrust into the depths of despair, the Lord was doing a wonderful, awesome thing. So great that forever we will praise Him for it. Imagine not only are we seated next to Him, but He is serving now as our Heavenly High Priest. We had no idea. We just thought He was leaving us.

To discover over time, over decades of time, I was identified with Christ and his crucifixion, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, and his seating. How great is that? Imagine learning that over time. Well, guess what? We, like the apostles, are intended to have decades of aha moments. Decades of aha moments.

One of the things that I kind of subjectively have come to in Bible study is if I'm not amazed and astounded with every single passage, I don't understand it yet. Every single passage is amazing. To learn what God had already done back at the beginning, that He chose us, you and me, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, before he said, let there be light. He said, wait a minute, before we say let there be light, let's choose each believer at Holly Hills, each one.

Yeah, you. Let's pick them. He doesn't explain how that goes along with us making a choice. And that must mean that we just trust him for that. But let's choose each one. To learn what God is doing in our lives all the way up to the moment that we see Him face to face. That's exciting stuff. That's really cool. So we too can have those aha moments for decades. Years and years of time.

Up until the time we see the Lord face to face. We can all hope that He comes for us before we finish our study of Acts. even today. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for what you've revealed in this marvelous book of Acts. We thank you for the hope that we have. We thank you, too, that we see the huge transition that these disciples turned apostles go through. And we can look at that and say, yeah, that's for me, too. That we, through the years and through the decades, can learn more and more of what you already did and what you already accomplished, and where you're taking us, not only in this life, but forever. Thank you for what you've revealed here, because you love us and you care for us so very, very much. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.