Continuing His Work
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2022 · 29 May 2022
Verse 1, “The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach.” Luke is the writer, the historian. He is referring to his gospel, the Gospel of Luke. The first volume of history was about all that Jesus began to do and teach. The Book of Acts is Volume 2 about the continued doing and teaching of Jesus. All the other gospel writers tell us of the finished work of Christ.
He offered the long awaited sacrifice for sin that satisfied God fully. He saved forever those who believed, and He secured their redemption by his resurrection from the dead. It was satisfactory to God, and so God raised Him from the dead to validate his satisfaction, and then God gave Him a name above every name, exalted Him to his right hand, and restored Him to heavenly glory.
And added a new dimension now as the Savior because He had offered personally the sacrifice. And so He then purchase with that work all the redeemed people throughout human history who would forever praise, honor and glorify Him. This is the work that Jesus finished, but there also was the work that Jesus began. The work of doing and teaching the gospel He just began.
So Acts, as Luke continues to write, is the story of what Jesus continues to do and teach. Acts continues the story of completing God’s redemptive work through Christ. The Old Testament gives the prophecies of the coming of Messiah, and the Gospels give the record of the realization of those prophecies. Let’s go back to Luke 1 for a moment, and let me read the first four verses.
Verse 1-4, “Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us. 3 it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus.
“4 that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.” Luke is a meticulous historian. And he’s inspired by the Holy Spirit, and he sets off to write, and he doesn’t know this will be called Luke. As Luke signs off, Jesus said, “Thus it is written that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem.”
As in the Old Testament, all that is going on in Luke and Acts is being done by God. God is the sovereign power behind all of redemptive history, and the Holy Spirit works the will of the father, and the Son does the will of the Father. God is at work redeeming his people in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Luke records this in his Gospel because the Old Testament prophet said it.
So what is this book? Some have said it should be called The Acts of the Father because if anybody is at work unfolding His redemptive plan it is God, the Father. Some call it The Acts of the Holy Spirit because He is working to separate these men to send them on the missionary trip out of Antioch. But the best is the Acts of the Risen Lord because the theme of the preaching is the resurrection.
You begin to see that in Acts 2:47, “And the Lord was adding to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.” The one who is the Lord of the church, He is still at work. He is adding people to the church. In Acts 11, there were some men of Cypress and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began preaching the Lord Jesus, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord.
If you go to Acts 8, you find Paul persecuting the church. Who stopped Paul? Jesus did on the Damascus Road in Acts 9. Jesus is engaged both in the growth of his church and in stopping the destruction of his church. Jesus appears in Acts 18 in a vision to Paul and says, “Don’t be afraid any longer. Go on speaking, and don’t be silent, for I am with you, no man will attack you, for I have many people in the city.”
Jesus, the head of the church, says, “I’m going to reach people in this city who belong to me, and I will protect you. Go on preaching.” In Acts 23 things are getting very difficult for Paul. Persecution increased with a conspiracy to kill him. Verse 11, the Lord stood at his side and said, “Take courage, for as you have witnessed to my cause at Jerusalem, so you must witness at Rome also.”
So the Lord Jesus reigns over His kingdom from heaven. The Lord Jesus is engaged in building his church by adding people to the list of redeemed, saved souls. He is fulfilling the Father’s plan, and He’s doing it by the preaching of the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit working through the preaching. But make no mistake, it is the Lord continuing the work He began on earth.
Now Luke is not an apostle, but he is a close associate of the apostles for 30 years from 30 to 60 AD. And he knows the history, from the death of Christ on. He was part of it. So he knows what happened in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and beyond because he was there. The Book of Acts is descriptive history for the sake of information, and it is theology for the sake of edification.
The Jews were convinced that the promises of God belonging to them, but the Book of Acts just blows that to pieces. In the Old Testament there were passages where the messianic promises related to the world and all the nations. Somehow the Jews missed that. In the Book of Acts you realize that Philip is preaching to the gentiles, and a gentile eunuch is converted.
So there was an important message to proclaim to the Jews through the Book of Acts, and it starts in Acts 1:8, “Go preach in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the world, that Christianity is global.” You could divide the Book of Acts into six sections. Section 1 ends at Acts 6:7 which tells the story of the church in Jerusalem and the preaching of Peter which increased greatly the number of disciples.
From Acts 6:8 through Acts 9:31, the gospel spreads throughout Israel, Judea, all the way to the martyrdom of Stephen, and all the way to the preaching in Samaria by Philip. So the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up, and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. It continued to increase the church greatly.
That would be from Acts 9:32 till Acts 12:24. That section includes the extension of the church to the gentiles, Antioch, and that ends with these words. “Let the word of the Lord continue to grow and be multiplied.” This is the story of the development of the church, the addition of the church from the beginnings of Jerusalem then to Judea and Samaria, and then into the gentile world as far as Antioch.
The next section is Acts 12:25 till Acts 16:5, and this tells the story of the church going way beyond Antioch, jumping into Asia Minor, and the preaching tour through Galatia by the Apostle Paul. And that section ends where the churches were being strengthened in the faith and were increasing in number daily. These sections all end with the same summary of the development of the growing church.
Acts 16:6 begins to tell the story of Paul reaching the great gentile cities, like Ephesus and beyond Asia Minor even into Corinth, and this ministry goes on all the way into Acts 19:20. So the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing. The final section is Acts 10:21, it goes to the end. It tells the story of the final years of Paul’s ministry before his imprisonment in Rome.
Jesus continued his work ordained by the Father, energized by the Holy Spirit, and brought it to fruition through the means of apostolic preaching of the gospel. Let’s go back to Acts 1 where we have some essential foundational elements given here because the father’s plan has requirements. Let us read verses 1-11, “The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,
2 until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, 3 to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. 4 And being assembled together with them,
He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; 5 For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. 6 Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
7 And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. 8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 9 Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
10 And while they looked toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, 11 who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” Six things appear in those 11 verses that I read to you. He reminds them of all that is essential.
Verse 1 says you have to have the proper message. Secondly, you have to have also the right confidence. Thirdly, you have to have the right power. And then, interestingly enough, you have to have the right mission, and you have to have the right motive. The message has to be right. It all starts with the words of Jesus. Plenty of people are preaching the wrong message.
When you hear powerful preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, you know one thing for sure: here is a preacher who believes in scripture because he boldly proclaims it. That’s where the ministry has to start. Faith comes by hearing the truth concerning Christ, the words of Christ, Romans 10. But the preacher has to preach the message concerning Christ. If anybody preaches another gospel, let them be cursed.
Pretty hard to make the gospel believable unless it’s believable when somebody looks at you. Not that you have to be perfect, but you have to demonstrably be committed to the truth you teach. Verse 2, Jesus continued to live the message and teach the message until the ascension. He was the personification, the incarnation of everything He preached and taught. This was His priority.
Verse 3 says that for 40 days, Jesus was speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. And this is where all of our work should begin with the right message. We need to understand the truth of the gospel, and live it as we proclaim it. So that from the time that Jesus arose for the next 40 days, He had those chosen apostles with Him, instructing them in the things concerning the kingdom of God.
They’re going to be instructing others. When the 40 days were over, it was over. Even with the right message, they weren’t ready to go yet. That’s why He had previously said, “Stay in Jerusalem until you’re empowered from on high.” Spurgeon said, “We might preach until we exhaust our lungs, but not a soul would be converted unless the Holy Spirit converts that soul.”
A second point, you have to have the proper confidence. They knew now because they had the gospels that the prophecies of the Old Testament had been fulfilled. And the early apostolic preaching in Acts was the Old Testament. They didn’t know that the Old Testament was being fulfilled until now. So they did have confidence now for the first time that scripture was fulfilled in Christ.
Where did their confidence come from? The resurrection. Over a period of 40 days Jesus appeared to them. He appeared to them alive after his suffering with the wounds by many convincing proofs. That’s a critical reality. What it does for you is it gives you the same confidence because the record of those proofs and appearances are given in holy infallible Scripture. So you have the same experience.
The only difference is that you have not seen Jesus. Is there ample proof in the New Testament for the resurrection? Yes. The proofs of the resurrection are all recorded in the gospels, written down for us. That’s what separated them from the despondency and the fears and the doubts and the questions and all the wondering about whether Jesus was the Messiah that they have been waiting for.
So if you’re going to be effective in carrying on the work that Jesus began on his own and then passed onto the first generation and every other generation until we got to the 21 century, you start with knowing the right message, which is the word of God and the gospel, and having the right confidence that Christ is alive. And He is building his church, and he wants to use you to do that.
That’s how the history goes. Well, that leads us to the next and really the most compelling point. You have to have the right power. We’ll keep that discussion for next Sunday. We’re so blessed to be a part of what You’re continuing to do of Your unfinished work. We thank You that you finished the redemptive work, but You’re not finished with the redeeming work. Let us pray.