I am pretty sure that the best way of preaching is not to preach something while you are still trying to grasp it for yourself. Because what is inevitably going to happen is that you will begin to see something more clearly or differently than you did before and therefore you will have to say, “What I am saying tonight is a bit different than what I’ve said before.” That is what I have done and, therefore, I begin tonight’s message saying that very thing.
So, tonight might be a bit different than what I’ve said in the past, but over the past month to five weeks, God has been teaching me a more understandable way to read the Scripture and as I have done it, I have found some things come into a clearer focus for me. Therefore, what I am going to point out tonight may be different than what I’ve preached through this book, it may be different than what some of you believe, but it is the position where I have found myself most comfortable as I have waded through Acts (and Scripture as a whole). Therefore, this will be my final message on the book of Acts. You could call it my last minute reflections.
So, tonight might be a bit different than what I’ve said in the past, but over the past month to five weeks, God has been teaching me a more understandable way to read the Scripture and as I have done it, I have found some things come into a clearer focus for me. Therefore, what I am going to point out tonight may be different than what I’ve preached through this book, it may be different than what some of you believe, but it is the position where I have found myself most comfortable as I have waded through Acts (and Scripture as a whole). Therefore, this will be my final message on the book of Acts. You could call it my last minute reflections.
Therefore, this is what I want you to see before we depart from the book of Acts and go into another study:
That is to say after Adam sinned in the garden and mankind had fallen in Genesis chapter 3, God could have sent Jesus Christ into the world and redeemed man through the cross and resurrection right there. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he stretched out the time that Christ would come over 4000 years and we still await the ultimate reality of the work of his atonement in the coming New Creation.
I am not sure why God did it this way except to say that he did and as a result, we see a progress of redemption in the Scripture. We see God’s plan of redemption become more and more clear as time passes throughout Scripture. For example, in 1 Peter 1:10, Peter writes, “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful search and inquiry, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven – things into which the angels long to look.”
Therefore, Peter is saying that as the prophets wrote of the sufferings of Christ, they did not fully understand what they were writing about. They were making a “careful inquiry” into the person through which this would happen or the time at which it would happen. But what they ultimately were shown is that they were describing something that they would not witness, but that we would.
This then sets the stage for Matthew 11 when Jesus makes his tribute to John the Baptist. Jesus says of John, “Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force. For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John” (11:10-13).
What Jesus is saying here is that the Law and the Old Testament prophets all prophesied that the Messiah would come. They all had the privilege of being the special spokesmen of God, declaring that redemption would come through the seed of Abraham, through David’s greater Son. John the Baptist, however, is the last of the Old Testament prophets. He is where the buck stops. The story of redemption had become clearer and clearer. The law and the prophets were able to say more and more about the person and time through which redemption would come. But John says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2 – emphasis added). He is able to say, “This is the time and this is the person through whom redemption will come. This is the one of whom the law and the prophets prophesied.”
Such is why Jesus can say, “For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John” (11:13 – emphasis added). John is the last of the Old Testament prophets. He is the one who gets to point directly to the man who is the one of whom the Law and prophets spoke. What a privilege! That’s why Jesus can say that there has been none born greater than John the Baptist. But then he can tell us that those in the kingdom (i.e. us, now) are greater than he because we are able to describe the plan of redemption even more accurately than John knew, for we know of the death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and pouring forth of the Spirit by Christ. We’ve been able to see redemption unfold more than John had.
The Old Testament contained things that were shadows of what was to come (e.g. Colossians 2:16-17, Hebrews 10:1-2), but we get to understand that to which the shadows pointed.
For unless you understand where each part of Scripture falls in the storyline of redemption, you’ll misinterpret the Scripture and be confused as to the blessings that now fall to you. Let me give an example of this. Why don’t we make animal sacrifices as God told his people to do in Leviticus? All Scripture is profitable and teaches us, doesn’t it? Of course it does, but the main lesson that the animal sacrifices taught us is that man needed atonement for his sins and because the fact that you had to repeat the sacrifice of animals meant that atonement would need to be made by something greater. It was to point us forward to Christ. We are to look to the sacrifices of animals and follow the shadows until we get to the cross (Hebrews 10:1-2). We don’t sacrifice animals anymore because the ultimate sacrifice that puts away the need for any others has come.
Therefore, we are not to obey the commands and rituals of animal sacrifice, but the Jews in that day and time were most definitely to do that. Why the difference? It is different because we are at a different point in the unfolding story of redemption.
I could give example after example, but I will only give one more. In Luke chapter 2 we read that there was a righteous and devout man named Simeon and that the Holy Spirit was upon him. Now, let’s stop for a second. If we read of a man like this in the Scripture, don’t we want to emulate his actions? It would seem so. But what is this righteous man doing? He is waiting around at the temple for God to bring Jesus to him. He wanted to see the Messiah, the King of Israel, before he died. And he did as Luke records the story in this chapter.
Well then, if this man was righteous and devout and we find such things desirable features of someone, why aren’t we waiting somewhere to see Jesus and hold the Christ child in our arms before we die? Obviously we aren’t doing that because Christ has already come in redemptive history and we are at a point where we no longer wait for the Savior to come to redeem his people; we wait for him to come to judge the world.1
So we must read Scripture in light of where each part of it falls in the redemptive storyline.2
For example, I think it is reading the Scripture incorrectly to say that just as the believers in Acts 1-2 were Christians who had to wait for the experience of Pentecost before they could leave Jerusalem and be empowered to labor to the glory of God, so should we as Christians wait for that same experience before we can powerfully labor to God’s glory. It is simply missing the fact that Pentecost was the giving of the Spirit to the church. It misses the fact that this was a historical moment in the story of redemption. Therefore, we should not put ourselves back where these first believers were. We no longer wait for the giving of the Spirit.
Jesus told of this in John 7. John writes, “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water’’ (7:37-38). Then John adds, “But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (7:39).
If you follow John’s gospel, you will understand that Jesus being glorified is wrapped up in the cross. Therefore, John is saying that Jesus must finish his work before his believers would receive the Holy Spirit. The time had yet to come. Therefore, Pentecost cannot be recreated because we no longer are waiting for Christ to finish the work which he came to do. We are on the other side of Pentecost in redemptive history (thus Paul can write Romans 8:9). To think we should all go back and experience what the apostles experienced at Pentecost is along the same lines as saying we should all go back and experience what Simeon experienced in the temple. It is to misunderstand that this was a particular moment in salvation-historical time.
However, with that said, we cannot ignore that there are other occasions when groups receive the Spirit and speak in tongues, praising God. This happens in Acts 8 (it is assumed that they spoke in tongues here because Simon realized something of power), 10-11, and 19 as well. But looking closely at these times, we see that there are special allowances as the groups in Acts 8 and 10-11 are the Samaritans and Gentiles, from whom God withheld the Spirit (Acts 8) or gave it only after the preaching of the apostles (Acts 10). Therefore, it appears to be an attestation.
Then in Acts 19, you have a situation where these “disciples” are in a salvation-historical warp, if you will. Thus they are different from the Jews who were familiar with John’s baptism but don’t know of the finished work of Christ and they are different than the Gentiles and Samaritans, for they are Jews. Therefore, the Lord allows them to receive the Spirit as Paul lays hands on them, having unfolded to them the finished work of redemption.
But even in this conversation between Paul and the “disciples,” Paul is already presupposing that reception of the Spirit at conversion is normal and expected. And that is why he can later write in Romans 8:9 that unless one has the Spirit, he is not a believer. He is simply reiterating Christ’s teaching in John 7 (mentioned above).
Therefore, these experiences in Acts seem to be Luke “introducing a new group, until as the gospel expands throughout the empire there are no new groups left.”3 For after this Paul can write Romans 8:9 and assume the Spirit is received at conversion.
However, the other thing you don’t want to do is miss the fact that we live in the “already/not yet” tension of the kingdom and the most privileged time in history. Noncharismatics do this, apparently thinking that the Spirit begins the age in which we live and then disappears, but this is in contradiction to Acts, wherein Luke shows that he characterizes the new age. Again, Carson writes, “It has been shown in some detail that for Luke the coming of the Spirit is not associated merely with the dawning of the new age but with its presence, not merely with Pentecost but with the entire period from Pentecost to the return of Jesus the Messiah.4
Therefore, though I believe that all believers have received the Spirit and have been baptized in the Spirit (i.e. Romans 8:9 and 1 Cor. 12:13), I do believe that the Spirit can come upon us in greater quantity (if you can use quantity when talking about the Spirit), for this appears to be characteristic of the new age, the time in the “already/not yet” of the kingdom. I believe that spiritual gifts (even the more miraculous ones) characterize this time and therefore we should earnestly desire them.
Therefore, my encouragement in reading and studying the book of Acts is to read with the realization of the unfolding storyline of redemption in mind. We should not put ourselves back where the first believers were, feeling paralyzed until we receive the Spirit, for the Spirit is in all those who are believers. However, we should also not ignore the fact that the point of redemptive history in which we find ourselves is one where the Spirit equips the church of Christ with gifts, fills us, and empowers us for greater degrees of joy, boldness, unction, blessing, and power as we seek to labor to the glory of our Lord. We should in fact long for this over and over as we do all things to the glory of God.
May we marvel at the privilege we have to live at this point in redemptive history. Amen.