📖 Acts Intensive — Unit 11: Living Acts 29

I. The Book Without an Ending

We have arrived at the last lecture of this course, and the book of Acts has not arrived at a last sentence. Luke leaves us with Paul under house arrest in Rome, chained to a Roman soldier, receiving anyone who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ "with all confidence, no one forbidding him" (Acts 28:31, NKJV). Then the page just ends. There is no martyrdom recorded. There is no farewell sermon. There is no bow taken. The book stops on two participles — preaching, teaching — as if the writer's pen had been pulled out of his hand mid-sentence and handed to someone else.

That someone else is the Christian church. That someone else is Chapala Theological Seminary. That someone else is each of you. The book of Acts has no doxology, no amen, no closing benediction, no word of how Paul's trial ended. It simply stops. The Holy Spirit, who superintended the writing of every word of Scripture, deliberately chose to leave Luke's second volume open. The reason is simple. The history of the church does not have a closing sentence. It has only a continuing one. We are living in Acts 29.

II. What We Have Walked Through

Look back at the road we have come. Eleven units. Twenty-eight chapters. Thirty years from the upper room to the Roman house. Let me trace the path one last time, because the panorama is part of the lesson.

We started in Unit 1 with the ascension and Pentecost. The risen Christ gave His followers a single mission statement — you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8, NKJV) — and a single Promise to fuel the mission. Ten days later, in the upper room, the Spirit fell with sound and fire and tongues, and Babel was reversed in one morning. Three thousand were saved. The church was born.

In Unit 2 we watched the new movement grow from three thousand to multiple thousands as Peter preached, the lame man danced at the Beautiful Gate, the Sanhedrin tried to silence the apostles, Ananias and Sapphira were struck down for their lies, and the seven deacons were appointed to free the apostles for prayer and the ministry of the word. We saw, in the story of Mitsuo Fuchida and Jacob DeShazer, that the gospel takes a Pearl Harbor pilot and a Doolittle bombardier and turns them into brothers preaching Father, forgive them.

In Unit 3 we watched Stephen die for the gospel under a hail of stones and saw Saul of Tarsus standing at his feet holding the coats. We watched Philip take the gospel to Samaria and out to the Ethiopian eunuch on the desert road. We held the WHY letter Glenn Chambers's mother received the day after his plane crashed, and we let Stephen's Why? stand against the silence of God.

In Unit 4 we watched the Lord knock Saul of Tarsus off his horse, blind him for three days, send Ananias to him with two of the most disarming words in the New Testament — Brother Saul — and convert the persecutor into the apostle. We watched Barnabas vouch for him. We watched the church learn that there are no Sauls beyond the Lord's reach.

In Unit 5 we walked with Peter to Cornelius's house and saw the gospel cross the Jew-Gentile boundary for the first time. We met Cornelius, the centurion who lived as if Christ were already real before he had heard the name. We saw Antioch become the new center of gravity, the church where the disciples were first called Christians. And we let the Welsh Revival of 1904 — Joseph Jenkins, Flory Evans, Evan Roberts crying Bend me, Lord — show us what the hand of the Lord can still do in five months.

In Unit 6 we sat in on the first missionary commissioning service in church history at Antioch. We sailed with Barnabas and Saul to Cyprus, watched Bar-Jesus go blind, watched Sergius Paulus believe, and noticed how Luke quietly dropped Saul's name and started writing Paul. We watched John Mark walk out at Perga and Barnabas refuse to throw him away. We sat in the Jerusalem Council and heard James pronounce the verdict that has anchored every Reformation since — that the gospel saves by faith, not by faith plus circumcision, not by faith plus anything.

In Unit 7 we watched closed doors slam in Asia and Bithynia until the Spirit opened Macedonia. We met Lydia by the riverside, the python-spirit slave girl in Philippi, the jailer with the question every preacher waits a lifetime to be asked. We sat at midnight in the Philippian jail with our backs torn open and listened to Paul and Silas sing — and Itzhak Perlman, eighteen and a half centuries later, played a concerto on three strings to remind us that sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.

In Unit 8 we spent two years in the school of Tyrannus and watched the gospel reach all of Asia from one rented hall. We listened to a demon humiliate the seven sons of Sceva. We watched fifty thousand pieces of silver of magic books burn in a public bonfire. We sat with Paul on the beach at Miletus while he charged the Ephesian elders to feed the flock and warned them that savage wolves would come, some from among themselves. And we remembered D. L. Moody's regret after the Chicago Fire — that pastor's pulpit is wet with tears or it is empty.

In Unit 9 we watched the temple riot, the Antonia barracks stairs, the Hebrew speech that landed perfectly until the word Gentiles, the Roman scourge averted by a quiet question, the Sanhedrin's brawl over the resurrection, the night Christ stood beside Paul's cell and said Be of good cheer, and the unnamed nephew who saved the apostle's life from a forty-man oath.

In Unit 10 we sat through Paul's trials at Caesarea, three of his four hearings (the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, then Felix, Festus and Agrippa at Caesarea) — Felix's convenient time that never came, Festus's confusion, Agrippa's almost — watched the Euroclydon drive the freighter for fourteen days, heard Paul say I believe God on the fourteenth night, watched all two hundred and seventy-six come safely to land, sat by the Maltese fire while Paul shook a viper into the flame, and walked the Appian Way with him to Rome. We watched the chain that the Lord had told Paul about in the Antonia barracks become the road that carried the gospel into Caesar's own household.

That is the road of Acts. Brothers and sisters, you have walked it now from beginning to end. Let me try to gather what we have learned into a few summary observations and then turn the pen over to you.

III. Five Things Acts Insists On

First, the church was born of the Spirit, not of human committee work. The Lord did not begin His church with a planning meeting in Jerusalem. He began it with a hundred and twenty in an upper room and a sudden sound from heaven. Wherever the church across the centuries has reduced itself to organizational machinery, it has weakened. Wherever it has waited again on the Spirit, it has been renewed. Pentecost is not a museum exhibit; it is a permanent template. Pray for the wind to blow.

Second, the gospel is for everyone. Acts works deliberately through the categories the first-century world thought were watertight. The gospel goes from Jerusalem Jews (Acts 2) to Hellenist Jews (Acts 6) to Samaritans (Acts 8) to an Ethiopian (Acts 8) to the Pharisee Saul (Acts 9) to a Roman centurion (Acts 10) to Greeks at Antioch (Acts 11) to a Roman proconsul (Acts 13) to Macedonian women (Acts 16) to Athenian philosophers (Acts 17) to the chief man of Malta (Acts 28) and finally into the palace guard (Philippians 1:13) and Caesar's own household (Philippians 4:22). There is no class of people the Lord cannot reach. The wall between Jew and Gentile, free and slave, male and female, educated and uneducated, has been broken down at the cross. May we never rebuild it.

Third, the gospel travels through ordinary believers. The book of Acts is not a hagiography of twelve professional apostles. It is a record of a movement carried by tentmakers, slaves, riverside women, scattered refugees, Roman jailers, and Maltese islanders. Stephen was not an apostle and preached one of the great sermons. Philip was a deacon and led the Ethiopian eunuch to Christ. Aquila and Priscilla were tentmakers who corrected the most learned preacher in Ephesus. The unnamed Jerusalem refugees who fled the Stephen persecution and ended up at Antioch started the first cross-cultural Gentile mission. The Lord uses ordinary people. He uses you.

Fourth, the gospel costs something. Stephen was stoned. James was beheaded. Peter was jailed. Paul was beaten with rods three times, lashed by the Jews five times, stoned and left for dead at Lystra, shipwrecked three times before Acts 27, and finally chained in Rome to a Roman soldier. The fifty thousand pieces of silver of magic books at Ephesus went up in smoke. The silversmiths of Demetrius's guild lost their pension fund. There is no cheap version of the gospel anywhere in this book. Anywhere a generation of Christians has found a cheap version, the Lord has eventually called us back to the costly one.

Fifth, the gospel cannot be stopped. The Sanhedrin tried in Acts 4 and Acts 5. Saul of Tarsus tried in Acts 9. Herod tried in Acts 12 and was eaten of worms. Demetrius tried in Acts 19. The forty-man oath party tried in Acts 23. The Euroclydon tried in Acts 27. None of them stopped the gospel. They were all turned by the Lord into part of the gospel's itinerary. The chain that the empire put on Paul's wrist became the chain that escorted the gospel into Caesar's palace. There is no force in the universe — political, philosophical, financial, demonic, or atmospheric — that the Lord cannot bend into the road by which His word goes forward.

IV. Living Acts 29

Now what? Now you go and write Acts 29.

I want to put it to you very plainly. Every life of every Christian since the year sixty-two when Luke laid down his pen has been a paragraph in the book that Luke did not finish. Every conversation you have had about Christ has been a paragraph in the book of Acts. Every gospel tract you have left in a public place. Every prayer you have whispered for an unsaved neighbor. Every dollar you have given to a missionary. Every Sunday school lesson you have taught. Every patient hour you have spent with a suffering brother. Every cup of cold water given in His name. Every piece of fellowship at a hospital bed. Every funeral you have preached with the living gospel. Every new birth you have ministered. Every chain you have worn for His sake. Every Be of good cheer you have taken courage from. Every storm you have weathered without losing your faith. Every I believe God you have said in the dark. All of it is part of the story Luke could not finish, because the Holy Spirit did not finish acting in the year sixty-two and has not finished acting yet.

Some of you reading this are pastors. Your pulpit is part of Acts 29. The names of the people you preach to every Sunday are written in the same kind of ledger Luke kept. Names will be added next week. Some of those names will read your sermons in Spanish in towns from Tijuana to Tapachula because of choices you make in your study this week. Preach the whole counsel of God. Warn everyone night and day with tears. Feed the flock of God which He purchased with His own blood. Beware the savage wolves, especially the ones from among yourselves. The book of Acts is not done with you yet.

Some of you reading this are missionaries — or are about to be. Your suitcases and your sailings and your closed doors and your Macedonian visions are part of Acts 29. The Spirit still forbids and the Spirit still permits, and He is just as much in the no as in the yes. Wait at your Troas until the man of Macedonia appears. He will appear. The Lord did not waste Paul's miles, and He is not wasting yours.

Some of you reading this are lay believers, deacons, elders, Sunday school teachers, parents, faithful members in the back row. Do not — please do not — let any pastor or seminary professor convince you that you are spectators in the story. The Roman house at the end of Acts is not a temple, not a synagogue, not a basilica. It is a rented apartment full of common people coming and going. Acts 29 happens in living rooms and kitchens and roadside diners more than it happens in pulpits. Aquila and Priscilla took Apollos aside and discipled him in private. The unnamed nephew saved Paul's life with one whispered conversation. Lydia hosted the first European church in her own house. The Lord still uses kitchens and conversations and unnamed nephews. Be available. Acts 29 is happening at your address tonight.

Some of you reading this are in a storm. Maybe a marriage is breaking up. Maybe a child has walked away from the Lord. Maybe a doctor's report has come back with a word you did not want to read. Maybe a bank balance has run out. Maybe the church you served faithfully has wounded you. Stay on the boat until the Captain releases you. Sing at midnight if you have to. Look up the mountain at the engines you cannot see pulling at the front. The Lord has more pulling than you have pushing. He has been writing storm-sermons since the night Paul stood up on the deck of the Alexandrian freighter and said I believe God. He is writing one through your storm right now.

And some of you reading this are not yet sure you are saved. You have studied the book of Acts cover to cover. You have learned every storyline. You have probably scored well on the exams. Brothers and sisters, knowledge of the book is not the same thing as a place in it. Felix knew the book and trembled and said convenient time. Agrippa knew the book and said almost. Both of them died lost. There is no convenient time. There is no almost. There is only the Lord Jesus Christ who said to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, and who, the moment Saul confessed Him as Lord, sent Ananias with the words Brother Saul. He is still speaking those two words to anyone who will turn to Him today. Brother. Sister. Receive your sight. Today is the accepted time. Today is the day of salvation. Do not let this lecture end without making sure you have made that decision. The Acts 29 you are about to live runs through the Damascus road or it does not run anywhere.

V. Three Final Charges

I will leave you with three sentences from Acts itself. They are the three sentences I have come back to most often in forty years of preaching, and they are the three I will leave on this last page of this last lecture.

The first is from Acts 1:8 — the launching sentence of the whole book. "You shall be witnesses to Me… to the end of the earth." A witness is not a lawyer; a witness is somebody who tells what he has seen and heard. You do not have to be a brilliant theologian to be a witness. You have to have seen. You have to have heard. Then you have to open your mouth. The Lord will do the rest.

The second is from Acts 4:13 — the sentence the Sanhedrin reluctantly wrote about Peter and John. "They realized that they had been with Jesus." That, brothers and sisters, is the only credential that finally matters in ministry. Seminaries can give you Hebrew and Greek and homiletics and church history and systematic theology, and you will need every bit of it, and CTS has tried to give you our share. But none of it can substitute for what people will need to see in your face when they meet you on the street. He has been with Jesus. Stay with Jesus. Everything else flows from there.

The third is from Acts 28:31 — the participle Luke left dangling. "Preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him." That is the closing sentence of the book and it is the opening sentence of the rest of your life. Preach the kingdom. Teach the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. Do it with all confidence. Let no one forbid you.

And when you are old and gray and the day comes when the Lord lays down your pen as He laid down Luke's, may the next generation of believers find your paragraph in the book of Acts open at the bottom of the page, the way Luke's is — without an ending — so that someone else can pick up the pen the Lord will hand them and keep writing.

Until that day, may grace be with you, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, and the favor of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Captain. Amen.

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