Introduction Part 3, Acts in the Flow of Biblical
Thought
All of these different main points
are not normally gone through in some Bible studies that are taken on Acts and
where the introductory material is gone through pretty quickly, but Acts is one
of those battleground books, not in the same sense that Hebrews, 1 John and
James are battlegrounds, and there are other battlegrounds that are fought in
terms of the book of Acts. And it is because the book has the unique nature to
it being a history book, the only book of its type in the New Testament, and
because of the way it straddles two dispensations and we see this transitional
flow. So it is important to go into a number of different aspects that are
related to the interpretation of Acts—the background, the history, the
theology—so that as we go through it these ideas will be expanded a
little more.
Acts in the flow of Biblical thought
If we look at the map we see the
area around the Mediterranean Sea. To the south is North Africa, to the east is
the area we refer to as Syria-Palestine, to the north is modern Turkey, Greece
and then the boot of Italy. Looking at the map we see that where the focal
point of the expansion of the gospel from Jerusalem is north and west. The book
of Acts does not focus on what goes on south other than a very brief hint
related to the Ethiopian eunuch whose salvation occurs and, of course, he is
going to go back to Ethiopia taking the gospel with him. We don’t see Peter
going east to Babylon, although based on 1 Peter that is exactly what he did
because Babylon had the second largest population of Jews in the ancient world
and he is the apostle to the Jews. We don’t hear anything about that in Acts,
Acts goes north and west. Why did God ignore these other areas? Why is it so
important that the gospel went north and west? Why is it that God’s sovereign,
directive will through the apostle Paul took the gospel north and west into
Europe and not into these other places?
Some people might say it was more
logical because of the Roman empire and because of the existence of the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome that existed for about 300
years and made it possible for the gospel to expand throughout the Roman empire
because everyone in the empire spoke Latin, because of the highways, the roads,
transportation and it was easy for the gospel to expand. But why couldn’t God
have raised up a different empire? Why did He have this empire raise up in western Europe? Previous empires expanded
throughout the Middle East, for example, under Alexander the expansion of the
Greek empire there was not only Greece in the west but also the empire moving
across into Persia and all the way to the Hindu Kush. Why didn’t God send the
Lord Jesus Christ during that particular era?
To understand this we have to go
back into the Old Testament to Genesis chapter Nine. In Genesis 9 we have the
interesting episode between the drunk Noah and his
sons. As a result of that Noah gives a prophetic announcement that is basically
a structure of the history of the world in terms of his descendants. We have to
look at the Bible, all 66 books, as being what they claim to be and that is a
revelation from God to us, and that they all fit together and complement each
other and intersect so that we can’t really understand one part without fitting
it into the other parts that make up the whole. And at the every beginning of
history in the book of Genesis we have two or three events that come one right
after another in the unfolding of revelation in Genesis that set the stage for
the rest of human history. Without these three events we really can’t make
sense of human history, it just becomes a lot of details. Without having that
overview it is easy for people to misunderstand and misinterpret the details
and also many people will come in and take those details and reconstruct them
and fit them into different frameworks.
In this episode with Noah the first picture we see is of Ham. Ham is the
father of Canaan. The text makes an important point to emphasize who Ham is in
relation to his son. To understand why the text says “the father of Canaan” we
have to remember that Genesis through Deuteronomy was written by Moses to give
the Jews in the wilderness so that they have an understanding of who they are,
why they are, and what God’s purpose is for them before they go into the land.
They are standing there in 1406 BC ready to go
into the land and God tells them to go in and completely annihilate man, woman
and child and in some cases all of their animals, and it would be very common
for the Jews to say, why do we need to kill everybody? It goes back to this
episode, it gives us a foreshadowing of that, and so Moses says
“Ham the father of Canaan.” The important part of that isn’t Ham,
it is Canaan because in Ham we see the foreshadowing of the sexual deviancy and
perversion of the Canaanites. Genesis 9:22 NASB “Ham,
the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two
brothers outside.” Rather than treating his father with respect what he does is
he laughs about it and makes his father the brunt of his jokes. In contrast to
Ham Shem and Japheth take a garment and pay it on both of their shoulders and
walk backward into the tent so that they are not looking at the shameful
behavior of their father and then they cover up his nakedness. They are showing
respect and deference for their father. Genesis 9:24,
25 NASB “When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest
son had done to him. So he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan; A
servant of servants He shall be to his brothers.’” So this is this little
prophecy.
There are a lot of people who say
this happened or that happened between Ham and his father but there is no
mention of that in the text. There is just the nuance there that this is
disrespect, and there is something going on here that foreshadows the sexual
perversion of the Canaanites. So there is going to be a curse or a judgment
statement made about Canaan, not Ham; because it is
not related to all the descendants of Ham, it is just related to Canaan
as a precursor to the contemporary Canaanites of Moses’ day.
In contrast there is a blessing
statement made to Shem and to Japheth. Notice there is no blessing or curse
related to the rest of the Hamites. So low man on the
totem pole is the descendants of Canaan.
One step up is the Hamites who are neither blessed
nor cursed. Next level up is the Shemites, Genesis 9:26 NASB
“He also said, ‘Blessed be the LORD,
The God of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant. [27]
May God enlarge [make prosperous] Japheth, And let him dwell in the tents of
Shem; And let Canaan be his servant.’” The focal
point here, the one who gets the lion’s share of the blessing, is Japheth. He
and his descendants are going to be the focal point of God’s blessing in
history. Japheth is the father of all of the western European peoples, and it
is why western Europe is what it is. Dwelling in then
tents of Shem is a reference to the religion of the Old Testament and that
Japheth is going to be blessed by association with the Judeo-Christian
religion. So where God is putting the emphasis from the very beginning is on
Japheth because it is through Japheth that the world is going to be enlarged
via their missionary endeavors in taking the gospel throughout the world. That
is why the focal point in Acts drives us to western
Europe and the Japhetic peoples. That prophecy becomes a framework for
understanding all of history and this division between the Japhetic, Hamitic and Semite peoples.
The next event is in Genesis chapter
eleven with the tower of Babel
and the division of languages, and as a result of that division and the failure
of humanity as a whole to be the vehicle through whom God would communicate His
Word to mankind God calls out Abram in Genesis chapter twelve. This is the next
significant event.
Gen 12:2 And
I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing…” “You shall be a blessing” is a command to Israel.
[3] “And I will bless those who bless you, And the one
who curses you I will curse…” The first word for “curse” is different from the
second word for “curse.” The first “curse” means to show disrespect to someone,
it is a light kind of disrespect, to treat someone lightly, to not esteem them
very highly. So the ones who treat
Israel lightly and with disrespect are the ones God
will judge harshly. “… And in you all the families of the earth will be
blessed.” Abram becomes the fountain of blessing to the entire world. He is a
descendant of Shem, so that fulfills that Shemitic
blessing aspect that comes out of the Noahic
prophecy. Japheth will dwell within that tent, within that covering of the
religion of Abraham.
The next key passage that we have to
address to see how Acts fits in the flow of biblical thought is in Deuteronomy
chapter thirty.
Deuteronomy 30:1 NASB “So it shall be when all of
these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set
before you, and you call {them} to mind in all nations where the LORD
your God has banished you, [2] and you return to the LORD
your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I
command you today, you and your sons.” The key phrase there is to “return” back
to God, and this is going the be the message that we
hear in the first part of Acts to the Jews. It is to repent and it is based on
this word, to turn back to God. So in terms of how Acts fits in biblical
thought, first of all in terms of the Noahic
prophecy, the prophecy is that eventually it will be the descendants of
Japheth, those European nations, that are going to be the focal point of the
blessing that takes the gospel throughout the world. That is why Acts focuses
on Europe. The Abrahamic
promise of blessing is still significant because even though Israel
as a nation formally rejects the gospel there are still hundreds of thousands
of Jews who accept Jesus as Mess9iah in the first century, and there is no
reason for anti-Semitism. There is a distinction in the Scripture between Israel
and the church, and that distinction was lost by the end of the second and into
the third century AD, then there were the seeds developed for what has been
called on modern times “replacement theology.” It is the idea that God just got
Israel and wiped them away and replaced them in His
plan with the church. But that would negate the promises of both the Abrahamic promise of blessing and the Mosaic covenant
promises of a future return and future blessing by God.
So when we look at the book of Acts
we see how it fits within this flow history that God has a plan and a purpose
to bring about a world-wide blessing through the descendants of Abraham. Paul
is going to pick up on this in both Romans and in Galatians, and we see elements
of this in some of his messages in the book of Acts: that through Israel,
through the rejection of the gospel by Israel God then takes the gospel and
blessing to all the nations of the world.
The Davidic covenant
Psalm 89 is a meditation on the Davidic
covenant and 2 Samuel chapter seven is the precise passage that deals with the
Davidic covenant. The reason this is important is because Jesus is identified
as the son of David several times in the book of Acts. The Davidic covenant is
an unconditional covenant just as the Abrahamic
covenant is unconditional; it is a permanent covenant, it is not going to be
taken away and it is a promise that God gave to the house of David.
2 Samuel 7:9 NASB “I have
been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from
before you; and I will make you a great name, like the names of the great men
who are on the earth. [10] “I will also appoint a place for My people Israel
and will plant them, that they may live in their own place and not be disturbed
again, nor will the wicked afflict them any more as formerly…” That never has
happened in history, so it refers to a future time. [11] “even
from the day that I commanded judges to be over My people Israel;
and I will give you rest from all your enemies. The LORD
also declares to you that the LORD
will make a house for you. [12] When your days are complete and you lie down
with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant
after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. [13]
“He shall build a house for My name, and I will
establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” So through Solomon the kingdom is
going to be developed and eventually the only one who can fulfill that in terms
of eternality is going to be one who is eternal. [16] “Your house and your
kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne
shall be established forever.”
So the Davidic covenant is also a
background. There are a couple of places in Acts where the message is to
reflect back on to the promises of the Davidic covenant.
The New covenant
Then the new covenant, which is
stated in Jeremiah 31-33 the only passage where the new covenant is
specifically identified as the new covenant. Jeremiah 31:31 NASB “Behold, days are coming,”
declares the LORD, “when I will
make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, [32]
not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by
the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke,
although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
[33] “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel
after those days,” declares the LORD,
“I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will
be their God, and they shall be My people.”
The new covenant is what gets
instituted, goes into effect, when Jesus Christ returns and establishes the
kingdom. The new covenant becomes the rule of the Messianic or Millennial
kingdom. The reason it is important to understand these covenants is because
when Jesus came He was proclaiming the kingdom. He was sending out His
disciples as John the Baptist had before Him to announce the message, “Repent
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Then when He is rejected, is crucified,
put in the grave for three days, rises from the dead, then in the interim
period when He is talking to His disciples and teaching them before the
ascension the main topic of instruction is the kingdom. Acts 1:3 NASB
“To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many
convincing proofs, appearing to them over {a period of} forty days and speaking
of the things concerning the kingdom of God.”
In Acts chapter two we hear Peter in the famous sermon on Pentecost quote from
Joel chapter two which is related to the establishment of the kingdom and the
new covenant.
Acts 2:17 NASB “AND IT SHALL BE
IN THE LAST DAYS,” God says, “THAT I WILL POUR
FORTH OF MY SPIRIT ON ALL MANKIND; AND YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL
PROPHESY…” He never mentions the new covenant in Acts 2 but
the description of what happens at that time is identical to what is described
in the new covenant. So understanding these covenants and their background in
terms of God’s message to Israel is critical to
understand what is going to happen in the initial transition period, especially
in the first nine or ten chapters in Acts. By the time we get to chapter ten
the emphasis goes off of Israel and begins to shift
to the Gentiles. But in the first nine chapters the message is still “Repent
and the kingdom will come,” the times of refreshing will come. A lot of these
passages that we have been programmed to think of as justification passages in
Acts 1-8 we will find out aren’t really justification passages at all; they are
passages that are addressed to Israel to turn back
and accept Jesus as the Messiah. In a broad sense we can say that they are
justification passages but in a strict interpretive framework they are not
really talking about getting saved in terms of phase one, they are talking more
in terms about Israel turning back to God to experience the fullness of
blessing that God promised with the coming of the Messiah and the establishment
of the kingdom.
The transition between Peter and Paul
We see this transition taking place
in Acts as we see the transition between Peter and then Paul. There are
similarities between Paul and Peter and what God the Holy Spirit is showing us
is what authenticated Peter in his ministry as the representative of the
disciples in the first part of the book of Acts are duplicated by the Holy
Spirit in the apostle Paul in the second part of Acts, showing that Peter and
Paul imitated each other in terms of the miracles that they performed, in terms
of the various ministries that they performed, and in terms of the messages
that they proclaimed. There is not a competition or a debate, as it were,
between Peter and Paul. Peter is primarily the apostle to the Jews but in that
ministry there is a rejection by most of the Jews of Jesus as Messiah and so
there is a shift to the Gentiles and God brings out a new person to be the
point man for the ministry to the Gentiles. That is the apostle Paul. So the
book pretty much ignores all of the other apostles, the only two that are
emphasized are Peter and Paul, even though there is slight mention of John and
James.
Peter is the major figure in the
first twelve chapters. Paul is introduced at the end of chapter seven and then
he has his conversion but Peter is still the major figure in the first twelve
chapters. There is a major sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two, there is a second event in chapter three when he,
accompanied by John, commands a lame man to walk. Then there is another sermon.
It is Peter who addresses the Sanhedrin in Acts chapter four,
it is Peter who explains why Ananias and Saphira are
disciplined with the immediate sin unto death by God the Holy Spirit in chapter
five. He performs many miracles. People who needed to be healed, if they just
got into his shadow expressing faith, were healed—chapter nine. It is
through Peter and John that the Samaritan believers are initiated into the
church, it is not a separate, distinct act. The Holy Spirit doesn’t come upon
the Samaritan believers until Peter and John are present to show a unity
between that beginning and the events on the day of Pentecost. Peter heals
paralyzed Aeneas in chapter nine and raises Dorcas
from the dead in chapter nine, and then he is the one who initiates taking the
gospel to Cornelius (the first to take the gospel to the Gentiles) in chapter
ten. Then he goes back to Jerusalem, gives a report
to the church there and that laid the ground work for
taking the gospel to the Gentiles.
Paul in his miracles mirrors the
events in the life of Peter. He also heals a cripple is chapter fourteen. Like
Peter strange means happen, Peter through his shadow, Paul with his
clothes—someone just touches his garment and is healed. Paul has an
encounter with a sorcerer as Peter did with Simon the sorcerer. He is also
involved in the restoration of the ministry to the Gentiles through his three
missionary journeys, and he is miraculously released from prison in Philippi
in chapter sixteen. All of these events demonstrate the credentials of Paul as
an apostle and that he is the one who takes the ministry from Peter; so we see
this transition again.
Understanding dispensations and the book of Acts
The first thing we have to address
is the question: what is a dispensation? We may not realize, it but dispensationalists
are sort of the whipping boys in the theological community out there, and even
in the political community.
Dispensationalism is
a theological system that derives from the specific, consistent, literal
interpretation of Scripture. The word “dispensation” isn’t used that much in
the more modern translations—NIV, ESV,
and so on. Usually they translate the Greek word oikodomeo [o)kodomew]
or its equivalents with the word “administration” or “stewardship.” They don’t
use the word “dispensation,” which had these same ideas but it is more of an
old English word. The root meaning of the Greek word is an economy or a period
of administration. So it looks at history as God administering history, or the
way in which God rules over history is through various administrations that are
defined by Him.
A dispensation is a distinct and
identifiable administration in the development of God’s plan and purposes in
history. In other words, there are certain characteristics of each period of
time based on what God told man, how God told man to worship Him and various
things that were a part of revelation. Even many covenantalists
and those in replacement theology believe to some degree in dispensations. They
realize that something is different between the Old Testament way in which
people came to God and the way people come to God after Jesus Christ.
Dispensationalists, i.e. scholars
within dispensationalism, have defined it in
different ways. Dispensational theology didn’t begin to get focused and clearly
articulated until the early nineteenth century. We might say the father of
modern dispensational theology was John Nelson Darby. He influenced a number of
people via his writings, one of whom was C.I. Scofield
who had been a highly decorated soldier in the Confederate Army, afterwards
became a lawyer and a drunk, and then heard the gospel and was saved. He
entered into the ministry and was finally influenced by a Presbyterian pastor
in St. Louis by the name of Brookes, one of the early
dispensationalists. Scofield was famous because he
wrote a study Bible which was very popular, and through his study Bible people
came to understand dispensationalism. He defined a
dispensation as a period of time during which man is tested in respect of
obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God.
A dispensation is distinct and
identifiable, there are certain characteristics, and things God says to do. For
example, under the Mosaic law there are specific
instructions on how to worship God, what kind of sacrifices to bring, dietary
laws, things of that nature. Then after Jesus dies on the cross Peter then has
a vision ion Acts 10 where God lowers a table cloth from heaven where all these
unclean animals and food are laid out because all of that was forbidden under
the Mosaic law as unclean. Peter got the message that what God declared to be
clean was now clean. So there was obviously a shift in what could be done, what
God mandated in the Old Testament and what was now legitimate and admissible in
the New Testament. That is why these adm9inikstrations are distinct, but there
are tests in terms of the revelation that God gives.
Another British man who was highly
influential in the early 19th century was Graham Scroggie,
and he defined “dispensation” in terms of the Greek word oikonomia – it “bears one
significance and means an administration, whether of a house, or property, a
state or a nation; or, as in the present study, the administration of the human
race or any part of it at any given time.” Notice “any part of it.” There’s a
shift that occurs in Genesis 12 with Abraham. What if you were a believer like
Job was living before Abraham and he is living somewhere else? Or what God is
telling Abraham didn’t get to Job? How do we factor that in? These are
differences. For most of the population during the time of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob they don’t have any idea what God is doing through these three guys. They
are living off in Europe or down in Africa
or over in India or China
and have no idea God has called this wandering shepherd over in the Middle
East to be the one through whom He is going to bless all the
nations of the earth. It is really important to understand that aspect of the
definition he provides, or any part of it at any given time. “Just as any parent would
govern his household in different ways according to varying necessity, yet ever
for one good end, so God has at different times dealt with men in different
ways according to the necessity of the case, but throughout for one great,
grand end.”
Chares Ryrie wrote a book called “Dispensationalism” and it is probably the best single
volume work in dispensational theology out there today. He identified a
dispensation as “a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God’s
purposes.”
A closely-connected
but not interchangeable word is “age.” Age picks up a time factor.
Dispensation itself doesn’t mean
time, it just means administration.
God manages the entirety of human history as a household, moving humanity
through sequential stages of His administration, determined by the level of
revelation He has provided up to that time in history. That is important
because we have to understand that there is a progress in revelation. Abraham
knew more than Noah did; David knew more than Abraham; Paul knew more than
David did; John knew more than Paul did, especially in the area of eschatology.
So there is a progress in revelation down through time until the canon is
closed. Especially each time there is a covenant shift or an additional
covenant there is something new required and expected by God by a particular
part of humanity.
In conclusion, each administering
period is characterized by revelation that specifies responsibilities, a test
in relation to those responsibilities, failure to pass the test (which happens
in every dispensation) and God’s gracious solution when failure occurs.
A dispensationalist is not simply
someone who believes that God operates in different ways at different time
periods in history. So what makes a dispensationalist a dispensationalist? What
is the key element that makes a person a dispensationalist as opposed to
replacement theology? That’s really all there is.
What happens to day is that people
want to create a boogey-monster out of the Roman Catholic Church and their
extreme Christian anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages and
say that is real replacement theology. But the guys down at the Reformed
Baptist Church who are into covenant theology and the guys who are reconstructionists and preterists are just as just as much into replacement
theology as anybody else, they just try to disavow the bad side. The issue is
if you believe that God’s promises to Israel in the Old Testament are not going
to0 be fulfilled in the future to Israel then you have replaced Israel with the
church and what the Jews are doing really doesn’t matter; what is going on in
Israel really doesn’t matter.
Ryrie asked the question: what makes
a dispensationalist a dispensationalist? He came up with three things: a) a
consistent, literal interpretation [the normal plain meaning of language]
applied equally to all Scripture against spiritualizing or allegorizing
portions of the text, especially in relation to prophecy, Israel and the
church; b) there is a consistent distinction in the Scriptures between God’s
plan and purposes for Israel and the physical ethnic descendants of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, and God’s plan and purposes for the church—which is
something that is new, something which comes into existence in Acts 2 on the
day of Pentecost; that is the church, the body of Christ; it comes into effect
only after the cross. It does not replace Israel, the church will be removed
from history at some point in the future and God will finish out His plan for
the nation Israel; c) the overriding purpose of history is to bring glory to
God.
In covenantal theology God’s purpose
is salvation. The problem with that is, what do you do
with the angels? That is why in Reformed theology, in Calvinistic theology,
very little was said up until the 20th century, about spiritual warfare,
about the angels or about demons. Because they don’t get saved so they don’t
fit into God’s plan and purpose for the earth. This is a big flaw in their
theology. Another problem is that they don’t really understand the ministry of
God the Holy Spirit. Up until the 20th century and the pressure of
the Pentecostal movement—which finally forced Reformed theologians to
wake up and realize, Golly gee, there is a third person mentioned all
throughout the New Testament and He does seem to have something to do with the
spiritual life (and they still don’t know what). For them the church existed
from Adam, it didn’t start in Acts 2.
The essence of dispensationalism,
then, is the distinction between Israel and the
church which grows out of a consistent, plain interpretation, and reflects the
basic purpose of God in His dealings with man in ultimate gory.