Jesus’ statement in Acts 1:8, that his disciples would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth; created reader expections that we have been following throughout the book of Acts. So far, everything has happened just as Jesus said it would happen. And now we’ve come to the final element of that programmatic statement–the ends of the earth.
In Jesus’ programmatic statement of Acts 1:8 he says that his disciples will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. We’ve already looked at their witness in Jerusalem, to the Jews and in this post we look at Judea and Samaria. Of course, as I mentioned in The Beginning of Acts, this is more than just a geographical statement. Samaria is home to the Samaritans.
After the Pentecost we read in the book of Acts about the beginning of the apostles’ ministry which takes place in Jerusalem, to the Jews. In this post we’ll look at four key elements or themes that are important for the whole book and at the same time we’ll look at the fulfillment of the first stage of Jesus’ programmatic statement in Acts 1:8.
Luke set our expectations for the book of Acts in 1:8. That’s where he indicated that the disciples are going to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. But first, Jesus told the disciples they would be baptized by the Holy Spirit. That happens in Acts 2 and it is crucial for the rest of the book. In this post we look at one of the reasons for its importance.
Warming UpAs we begin to read the book of Acts along the lines of story we want to continually keep in mind that we are reading from expectation to fulfillment (or from tension to resolution). There are two aspects to that kind of reading
In the introductory post of this series on The Story of Acts I tried to explain how plots work, that is, that they move from expectation to fulfillment or from tension to resolution. In the second post I used Gen 2:18-25 as an example of How to Read a Story. In this post we’re back in the book of Acts
In the last post I introduced this series on reading the book of Acts as a story, or, according to its plot. Even though everyone knows how to read a story we’re not used to reading the Bible that way and so in this post I’m going to offer Genesis 2:18-25 as an example of a short narrative text that has its own beginning, middle, and end. When we read the story of the creation of Eve according to its plot then we begin to see the connections between the events in the story. When we see the connections between the events we understand the significance of the story.
Starting this Sunday and lasting until the middle of July I will be teaching three Sunday school classes on the Book of Acts. With each class I only have four weeks to go through the whole book so I thought maybe I could supplement the classes with some blog posts on the same theme. The big idea behind this series is to uncover the broad sweeping sense of the book and, in the meantime, to learn more about what it means to read according to the plot of a book. |   |
| |
