We're looking forward to Raising the Bar conference in Arusha, Tanzania later this month. One of the things we'll be looking at with the pastors and Bible college students is the book of Acts - as a model of preaching the Old Testament, as a model of ministry as suffering preachers, and as a book to preach through in its own right. Just a few thoughts here (all second hand) on that last one:
- It’s already preaching! A large proportion of Acts is sermons and in fact the whole thing is Luke preaching to us. So our job is really just to let it preach.
- It’s Part 2 (see Acts 1:1) so you need to remember Part 1 (Luke) – all about Jesus who came to seek and save the lost, about a historical narrative, the unstoppable power of the Word, and coming to certainty, about reversals, about the climax of salvation history, about repentance, about The Way, about suffering and joy.
- As Sammy has pointed out to us, David Cook sees Luke 24:46 as a summary of Luke’s Gospel and Luke 24:47 as a summary of the Book of Acts: Repentance and forgiveness of sins proclaimed in Christ’s name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem (in fulfilment of the Scriptures – Luke 24:45-46). Another summary I have heard is: The Word of Christ (or the Word of Grace) preached in the power of the Spirit to the ends of the earth. That doesn’t mean that we preach this same Big Idea every time we open Acts but our message each time should be in line with (or nest inside) that theme.
There’s a great book by Chris Green called ‘The Word of His Grace: A guide to teaching and preaching from Acts’. You can read the introduction here including his eight (very useful) principles for handling Acts. There’s a thoughtful review of Green’s book here with a bit more of a taster of the content.
- As Green notes, structure is very important. Just as Luke wrote an ‘orderly account’ in Part 1 he writes a very orderly account in Part 2 (Acts). The basic (geographical) structure is given by Acts 1:8. On top of this there are also loads of doublets and triplets where the same thing happens more than once: a healing, an arrest, a trial, a speech, a conversion account. Sometimes the point is that there is an intensification the second time; sometimes it is to make the point that Peter and Paul are united in doing the same thing, preaching the same gospel; sometimes it’s just to beat these things into our heads!
- Just to underline – it’s all about Jesus from first to last (Acts 1:1; 28:31). If we go to Acts primarily for patterns or promises for ministry, if we look first for ourselves in the narrative, we’ll go astray. If we fix our eyes on Jesus and who he is and what he is doing in the narrative and how his gospel takes the world by storm then we’ll find great treasures and great encouragements to keep proclaiming Him.
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