📖 New Testament Survey — Unit 6: Acts: The Expansion of the Kingdom

I. The Book Without an Ending

The most unusual feature of the book of Acts is the way it ends. It closes with no benediction, no prayer, no doxology, no "Amen." Acts ends in the middle of the story. The last verse leaves the apostle Paul in a rented house in Rome, "preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him" (Acts 28:31). And then the manuscript simply stops. No farewell. No final word. The ink dries on the page with the work still going on.

That is no accident. Luke deliberately ended his second volume without an ending because the story he was telling was not over. It is still not over. The Acts of the Apostles is a book whose pen Luke laid down so that you could pick it up. Chapter 28 is the last chapter Luke wrote. Chapter 29 is the chapter you are writing. Your life — the choices you make today, the people you tell, the prayers you pray, the love you spend — is a continuation of the same book. The Holy Spirit is still expanding the kingdom. And He is doing it through you.

II. From the Gospels to the Acts

Luke opens his second volume by tying it to his first. "The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up" (Acts 1:1–2). Look carefully at that opening phrase: all that Jesus began to do and teach. The Gospel of Luke is what Jesus began. The book of Acts is what Jesus continued. It can be put this way: the four Gospels give us the foundation; the Acts gives us the framing on that foundation. The four Gospels close with the resurrection; Acts opens with the ascension. The four Gospels show us Christ in the flesh; Acts shows us Christ in the Church.

The same Author, the physician Luke, wrote both books, and they were almost certainly delivered together as a single two-part work to Theophilus. If you read Luke 24 straight into Acts 1, the seam is invisible. The Lord Jesus is teaching the disciples about the kingdom on the day of His ascension, and then a cloud receives Him out of their sight, and two men in white announce that this same Jesus will come back the same way. The Gospel-to-Acts transition is, in literary terms, a relay race. The baton has been passed. The Church is now the runner.

III. The Key Verse

If Luke 19:10 is the key verse of Luke's Gospel, Acts 1:8 is the key verse of Acts. Pencil it in the margin of your Bible: "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" (Acts 1:8). One sentence. The whole book is the outworking of that one sentence.

Read it twice and notice three things. First, the power — dunamis in Greek, the root of our word dynamite. The disciples were not commanded to drum up courage. They were commanded to wait for power that would come from outside themselves. Second, the witness — the Greek word is martus. In Luke's day it meant simply one who testifies to what he has seen. But it is also the root of our word martyr, and that is no accident: so many of these witnesses were killed for their testimony — Stephen first, only six chapters from here — that the word came to carry the weight of dying for what one has seen. A witness tells what he saw; a martyr is a witness who would not stop telling it. Third, the geography — Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, then to the end of the earth. Read those three locations against the table of contents of Acts: Jerusalem fills chapters 1 through 7. Judea and Samaria fill chapters 8 through 12. The end of the earth fills chapters 13 through 28. Luke wrote his book around the very verse that opens it. Acts 1:8 is not a verse in Acts; it is the outline of Acts.

IV. Jerusalem (Acts 1–7) — The Spark

The book opens with one hundred and twenty believers in an upper room, praying. They are an unlikely army. They have no money, no buildings, no political power, no recognition from any institution. They have an empty tomb, a risen Lord, a promise of power, and one another. That is all they have. And in the very next chapter the Holy Spirit falls at Pentecost, three thousand are converted in a single sermon, and the Jerusalem church is born.

From there the spark catches. Lame men leap. Tongues are loosed. Prison doors open in the middle of the night. Ananias and Sapphira drop dead in the same room for lying to the Holy Spirit. Seven deacons are appointed so the apostles can give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. And then — at the end of chapter 7 — a young deacon named Stephen is stoned to death just outside the city walls. "And Saul was consenting to his death" (Acts 8:1). The first martyr falls in chapter 7, and from that moment the kingdom is no longer contained inside the city of Jerusalem. Persecution scatters the believers like sparks blown across a dry hillside, and every spark catches.

V. Judea and Samaria (Acts 8–12) — The Spread

There is a paradox of church history that runs straight through every century from Acts to today: The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. The second-century writer Tertullian said it plainly: Plures efficimur quotiens metimur a vobis — "The more you mow us down, the more we grow." Acts 8 makes the case. The very chapter that begins with the church being scattered by persecution ends with a Samaritan revival, an Ethiopian treasurer converted on a desert road, and the gospel moving into Africa. The very chapter that began with Saul of Tarsus dragging believers out of their houses to prison ends one chapter later with Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, flat on the ground, blinded by the glory of the very Christ he had been persecuting.

Acts 9 gives us the conversion of Saul. Acts 10 gives us the conversion of Cornelius and the opening of the door to the Gentiles. Acts 11 gives us the founding of the church at Antioch — the first multiethnic congregation in history, and the first place where the disciples were called Christians (Acts 11:26). Acts 12 gives us James the brother of John executed by Herod, Peter rescued from prison by an angel, and Herod himself struck down by an angel for accepting worship that belonged only to God. By the end of chapter 12 the Church has cleared the threshold of Jerusalem and is spreading across the eastern Mediterranean. And the Antioch church — not Jerusalem — is about to send out the first missionary team.

VI. The Uttermost (Acts 13–28) — The Surge

The center of gravity shifts at Acts 13. Up until that point the lead character had been Peter. From that point the lead character is Paul. Up until that point the home base had been Jerusalem. From that point the home base is Antioch. And from Antioch Paul makes three missionary journeys that plant churches across Asia Minor, jump the Aegean into Europe, and march across Greece to Athens and Corinth. Then he goes back to Jerusalem one last time, is arrested in the temple, is held two years in Caesarea, is shipwrecked on Malta on the way to Rome, and arrives at last in the capital of the empire — a prisoner in chains, but a prisoner preaching.

Look at the geography of Acts 13 through 28 against the geography of Acts 1:8. Jerusalem — done by chapter 7. Judea and Samaria — done by chapter 12. The end of the earth — by chapter 28 Paul stands in Rome, the political capital of the world Luke knew. The kingdom has reached the heart of the empire. And from Rome it would reach into Spain (according to early tradition), into North Africa, into Britain, and within three centuries into the throne room of Constantine. From an upper room of 120 to the throne of the Caesars in 300 years, without armies, without money, without organization at the start, without any human explanation. "You shall receive power."

VII. The Three Mighty Acts of the Spirit

Across the book, the Holy Spirit performs three foundational acts of expansion — the three "pillar moments" of Acts. Each one is a Pentecost — a moment when the door of the gospel opens wider than it has ever opened before. (1) The Jewish Pentecost in Acts 2, when three thousand devout Jews from every nation under heaven are saved at the Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem. (2) The Samaritan Pentecost in Acts 8, when Philip preaches in Samaria and the Holy Spirit falls on a people the Jews had despised for nine hundred years. (3) The Gentile Pentecost in Acts 10, when Peter preaches in the house of Cornelius the Roman centurion, and "the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word" (Acts 10:44). Three Pentecosts. Three concentric circles. The same Spirit, the same power, the same gospel, knocking down one wall at a time until there is no wall left.

There is a story told of a small village high in the Andes, in a valley so remote that for centuries no road reached it. The people inside the valley believed they were the only people on earth. When at last a missionary arrived over the mountain pass, the elder of the village asked him: "How many of you are there, on the other side of the mountains?" The missionary told him about cities and nations and continents. The elder was silent a long time. At last he said: "Then we must build a road." That is Acts. Each chapter is the building of another stretch of road. Each Pentecost is the breaking of another mountain pass. Jerusalem, Samaria, Caesarea, Antioch, Philippi, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Rome — every dot a fresh stretch of road. To the end of the earth.

VIII. The Three Great Sermons

Luke includes the texts of more than two dozen sermons and speeches in Acts. Three in particular form the structural sermons of the book. Peter's Pentecost sermon in Acts 2 is preached to Jews, and Peter argues from the Hebrew Scriptures — from Joel, from David, from the Psalms — that this Jesus is the promised Messiah. Three thousand are saved. Stephen's defense in Acts 7 is also preached to Jews — to the Sanhedrin itself — and Stephen sweeps from Abraham to Moses to Solomon, demonstrating that God has never been confined to one temple or one city. Stephen is martyred. Paul's Areopagus sermon in Acts 17 is preached to Greek philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens, and Paul argues from a Greek altar and a Greek poet that the Unknown God of the Athenians has now made Himself known in the resurrection of Jesus. A few mock; a few delay; a man named Dionysius and a woman named Damaris and certain others believe.

Three sermons, three audiences, three approaches, one Christ. Peter quotes Scripture for the Jew. Stephen retells redemptive history for the religious establishment. Paul stands among the Greeks and quotes one of their own poets. The gospel does not change. The method changes to meet the hearer where the hearer is.

IX. Where Acts Leaves You

One good question to close a study of Acts is this: "Acts ends without an Amen. What does your chapter say?" The book of Acts is not a museum of completed history. It is an open manuscript with a fountain pen lying on the page, and the pen is in your hand. The same Spirit who fell at Pentecost still falls. The same gospel that crossed three continents in thirty years still crosses kitchen tables and prison cells and hospital rooms and university classrooms today. The same power that took 120 frightened disciples in an upper room and turned them into the engine of world history is the power that turns ordinary believers into witnesses still.

The kingdom is expanding. It expanded in Jerusalem under fire. It expanded in Samaria over old hatreds. It expanded in Caesarea across racial walls. It expanded in Antioch through the first multiethnic worship service in history. It expanded in Rome from a rented house under house arrest. And it is expanding today, in places Luke could not have named on the map, in languages Luke never heard spoken, through people who have never set foot in Jerusalem but who carry Jerusalem in their hearts. You shall be My witnesses — to your Jerusalem, to your Judea and Samaria, to the end of your earth. The story is not over. The pen is in your hand. Press on, my friend, into the rest of the New Testament with the same Lord and the same Spirit who walked with the first apostles, who walks with the last, and who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Amen.

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