Big Picture Christianity: Last Five Chapters of Acts

The two narrative passages from Acts that I am covering today are some you are familiar with.  There are two ways of approaching these:  To take every detail and make a personal application about it, which I call allegorical, or “big picture.”  I’m taking the big picture view.  My plan

Overview of the chapters

Why did God include this in the book of Acts?

What does this add to the gospel story?

What does it mean to us as the church (not so much individuals)?

What does it mean to us personally?

What is the purpose of the book of Acts? “It is history in that it narrates the birth and growth of the early church from Jerusalem to Rome, spanning a period of thirty years (so to about 60 AD). It is theology . . . shows God’s plan of salvation through Jesus and the establishment and growth of the Kingdom of God.” (This from the notes in Believer’s Study Bible). 

Notice Acts 1:3 and last verse of book.  We tend to think it’s about Peter, first half, and Paul, second half, but no.  We tend to think it’s about the early church, but it’s more.  The Kingdom of God is eternal, and bigger.  So when we read the book of Acts we need to see the bigger picture. As interesting as the characters and their stories are, their stories are not included because they are interesting, but because they contribute to the story of the Kingdom of God, especially that it is for everyone and not just Jews in Israel.  It is the fulfillment of the Great Commision and Acts 1:8. It is about a universal church and Kingdom of God, not a tribal group of people of the same ethnic background. 

I think we Americans just plain have trouble with this idea of “Kingdom of God.”  I know I do.  I don’t care about the royal family in England, or any discussion of “American Royalty” like the Kennedys.  I do recommend the TV show The Crown, though, on Netflix.  Not entirely accurate, but pretty close.   The Kingdom includes the church, but is bigger than the church alone.  It is the rule and reign of Christ. 

So, in reading Acts, step back and get the whole thing in view, with each chapter an episode in the expansion of the gospel kingdom, rather than particular actions of particular characters.

In these two lessons we have Paul’s three trials in Jerusalem and Caesarea and his heroism and leadership in a shipwreck so that he can get to Rome to be on trial before Nero.  That’s the short version.  He is sustained by his overwhelming faith that he is going to get to Rome and testify before the emperor. This process takes over two and a half years, maybe longer.  So over three years of his life are “wasted” here in this house imprisonment in Israel, trials, voyage, and house imprisonment again in Rome.  Why?  Well, remember in a lesson three weeks ago, he is before the Pharisees and Sadducees. He says “I’m here because of preaching the resurrection of the dead,” and that starts a big ruckus. (Acts 23).  There is a plot to kill him.  He is rescued by the Romans and goes on trial before government officials rather than Jews.  He sees Agrippa, then Felix, then Festus.  He then says that as a Roman citizen he wants to appeal to Caesar, and the officials decide to do that.   This takes up three chapters and gets pretty confusing, because all these men are different political officials in Rome.  Rome had a very extensive bureaucracy all over the Empire, and at this time it was the height of the extensiveness of the Empire—Spain to almost Scotland, to almost India, Northern Africa, parts of France and southern Germany. 

It is interesting that the last one says, Acts 26:32 “If he hadn’t appealed to Caesar, he could be let go” because the previous one wrote to his superior “I don’t really know what to tell you about this fellow, because he didn’t do anything wrong.”

So, from a human perspective, this is a waste.  He could have been doing something else more useful. My takeaway from this is that even if it seems like a waste of three years, it’s not. He was protected from the Jewish plot to kill him; he got to preach to people he otherwise would not have; he did get to Rome; he saved the lives of soldiers on the ship; he connected with believers in Rome (meaning that the gospel had reached Italy already without Paul!)

We might say, “But he didn’t get to plant churches in such and such a place.” That wasn’t what he was supposed to do.  That wasn’t God’s plan.  We tend to think that Paul was the only one responsible for getting the gospel to the Gentiles, but he wasn’t.  God is not dependent on one person to fulfill his kingdom.  He does not prize us because of our evangelical numbers, the size of our Life Group class, our bank account, our degrees, or any of those things.

This mentality comes from a Western view that our usefulness comes from utility. I read a great article about suicide this week.  Here’s a quote from it:

In a meritocratic age, we are valued for our usefulness. Whether in the rich precincts of Palo Alto, where children face high pressure to perform, or the forgotten stretches of West Virginia, Americans are increasingly told that they are valuable only insofar as they contribute to a productive economy. Old sources of meaning—­fatherhood, fraternity, civic involvement, church membership—have receded in significance before the SAT and future earning power. When the useful replaces the good and efficiency becomes the highest value, human beings are instrumentalized. This happens at a personal level when freedom is seen as doing what you want, making life a mere means of gaining pleasure. Rather than opening up new vistas of freedom, economic and social liberation has made men subject to a logic of utility. Among the dreary death works produced by today’s culture industry, there are T-shirts that proclaim, “I’m not saying I hate you, but I would unplug your life support to charge my phone.” (Aaron Kheriaty, 2017)

God does not value us for our supposed usefulness.  He values us because he created us; he loves us enough to sacrifice himself; he is pleased when we live obediently; he gives us hope.  God was not concerned with how “productive” Paul was, but with a bigger picture of the eternal kingdom.

So we come to the story of the shipwreck, which is great literature and a good adventure story.  One thing I get out of this is that Paul is a better leader than the Roman centurion who is supposed to be running the show.  For example: 27:10-11; 21-26; 31-37; (Luke is writing first person, so he is there, firsthand witness!); 42-44.

After landing on Malta, he made good relationships with the governor there by healing his father, and three months later he and Luke sailed to an area around Naples, Italy, finding Christians there already, then to Rome.  He spoke to the synagogue of Jews.  Let’s look at 28:17-end.

Some have erroneously taken this to mean that the gospel would not go to the Jews anymore, something called hyperdispensationalism, but that is not true.  It’s just a way of closing the book.  The last two verses don’t say that he eventually spoke before Nero, was let go, went on a fourth missionary journey, and a few years later was arrested again and martyred. 

What about Nero?  Wasn’t he crazy?  Not at this time, 62 AD.  It was 64 AD that he decided to start blaming Christians for a fire that destroyed part of Rome and it was after that Peter and Paul were both martyred in 66 AD, Peter by crucifixion and Paul by beheading (he was a Roman citizen and they weren’t crucified except for desertion from the army).

So, where does this leave us?

Why did God include this in the book of Acts? I don’t know.  He could have told other stories.  This focuses on the gospel getting to Rome, on one character’s preservation to preach the gospel of the Kingdom.  Rome represented the “Empire of the Gentiles” and 1:8 say “take the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth.”  It could have gone on; God decided to stop it there.  I don’t think we get to question what God does include or not include in the Bible.  Just like John ends the Gospel of John 21, “²⁵ Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

What does this add to the gospel story? The gospel is for everyone, even the evil Roman emperor.  God protects the way of the gospel. 

What does it mean to us as the church (not so much individuals)? The gospel is bigger than the color of the carpet in the sanctuary.  Be on mission.

What does it mean to us personally? Well, you could say God takes us through a storm.  He does.  To me it says that God fulfills His purpose for us in our obedience and that purpose is not what the world expects.  Paul did not waste these 3-5 years of his life being in prison.  From a 21^st century perspective, Paul probably only evangelized full-time as a missionary less than 20 years.  Our society is interested in how much it can wring out of people.  Businesses and employers will take everything they can out of people.  As a society, we think inconvenient seemingly unproductive people, no matter their character and worth, need to be discarded.

I was listening to a speaker talk about Eric Liddell, the Scottish runner in Chariots of Fire.  He went to China as a missionary and was killed in a concentration camp at the end of WWII.  This was not a mistake. For me, personally, I want my writing to be read by many people.  It might never be.  But I will keep writing for God’s glory. More, I will be faithful to the people around me. 

The end of Acts is a call to think in a radically different way about what God wants you to do with your time and your purpose in life. 

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