Alex Gomez

← Anchored: Acts: A Plain-Language Study Guide to Scripture - Volume Seven

Anchored · Book 7

Anchored: Acts: A Plain-Language Study Guide to Scripture - Volume Seven

ACTS: Part 1 (Chapter 1)

Volume 7: Acts

(If colors don’t display in your viewer, gold/blue text will just look bold: the [G]/[J] tags still mark who’s talking.)

Meet your teachers: Pastor Eli Grace (warm and relational; focuses on what God has already done for you: grace and faith) and Teacher Naomi Cross (grounded and structured; focuses on how faith shows itself in action: obedience and works). - Pastor Eli Grace : warm, relational, focuses on what God has already done for you - Teacher Naomi Cross : grounded, structured, focuses on how faith shows itself in action

Book Snapshot: Acts

CHAPTER 1: Forty Days, a Cloud, and a Room That Waits

The World Back Then

Jerusalem, in the spring of either AD 30 or AD 33: both years are seriously held and neither can be proved. Pontius Pilate is still Rome’s prefect (AD 26-36), Caiaphas is still high priest, and the city is a garrison town of perhaps forty thousand that swells several times over at festival. The people in this chapter have no building, no money and no legal standing: about a hundred and twenty of them, most from Galilee, with an accent anyone in the city could pick out in a second. Six weeks ago they watched their teacher executed. Since then he has been walking in and out of their rooms.

The Story (Free Paraphrase, verse by verse)

v1-3 In my first book, Theophilus, I wrote about everything Jesus began to do and to teach, right up to the day he was taken up: after he had given his orders, through the Holy Spirit, to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering he showed them he was alive, with proof after proof that could not be argued with. He was seen by them over a period of forty days, and he talked with them about the kingdom of God.

v4-5 And while he was together with them he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, [J] which you heard me talk about. John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

v6-8 So when they were all together they asked him, Lord, is this the moment you give the kingdom back to Israel? He told them, [J] “It isn’t for you to know times or seasons which the Father has set within His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

v9-11 After he said this, while they were watching him, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. They were still staring into the sky as he went when two men in white clothes were suddenly standing next to them. Men of Galilee, why are you standing here looking up? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back the same way you just watched him go.

v12-14 Then they walked back to Jerusalem from the hill called Olivet, which is a Sabbath day’s journey from the city: a little over half a mile. When they got in, they went up to the upstairs room where they were staying: Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas the brother of James. All of them stayed at prayer together, of one mind, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

v15-17 In those days Peter stood up among the believers, the whole group came to about a hundred and twenty, and said: Brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to come true that the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David’s mouth about Judas, the man who guided the party that arrested Jesus. He was counted as one of us, and he was given a share in this work.

v18-19 (This man bought a field with the money he was paid for his crime, and there he fell headlong, his body split open, and everything inside him spilled out. Every resident of Jerusalem heard about it, so in their own language they called that field Akeldama: Field of Blood.)

Deep Dive: Judas dies twice, and the two accounts do not match Teacher Naomi: Say it straight. Matthew 27:3-10 has Judas throwing the silver into the temple and hanging himself, and the priests buying a potter’s field with the money. Luke has Judas buying the field himself, and a fall, not a rope. Two tellings of one man’s death, and the differences are real. Pastor Eli: They are. And look how much they hold in common: thirty pieces of blood money, a field outside the city, a name that stuck in the local dialect, and a man who did not survive what he did. Two memories of a notorious death, agreeing on the outline and differing in the details. Smooth accounts are the ones that should make you suspicious. Teacher Naomi: That is an argument, not a proof. Tidy accounts can be true and clashing ones can both be wrong. What I will grant is that there are honest attempts to fit these two together: ancient law counted a purchase made with a man’s money as his purchase, and a body left hanging can fall. Some readers find that persuasive; others think it is stitching. Pastor Eli: So we will not force it. What neither writer does is gloat. Luke puts the grim paragraph in parentheses and goes straight back to what the church should do next.

Deep Dive: Judas dies twice, and the two accounts do not match

Teacher Naomi: Say it straight. Matthew 27:3-10 has Judas throwing the silver into the temple and hanging himself, and the priests buying a potter’s field with the money. Luke has Judas buying the field himself, and a fall, not a rope. Two tellings of one man’s death, and the differences are real.

Pastor Eli: They are. And look how much they hold in common: thirty pieces of blood money, a field outside the city, a name that stuck in the local dialect, and a man who did not survive what he did. Two memories of a notorious death, agreeing on the outline and differing in the details. Smooth accounts are the ones that should make you suspicious.

Teacher Naomi: That is an argument, not a proof. Tidy accounts can be true and clashing ones can both be wrong. What I will grant is that there are honest attempts to fit these two together: ancient law counted a purchase made with a man’s money as his purchase, and a body left hanging can fall. Some readers find that persuasive; others think it is stitching.

Pastor Eli: So we will not force it. What neither writer does is gloat. Luke puts the grim paragraph in parentheses and goes straight back to what the church should do next.

v20 For it is written in the book of Psalms: ‘Let his home be left empty, with nobody living in it,’ and, ‘Let someone else take over his post.’

v21-22 “Of the men therefore who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, to the day that he was received up from us, of these one must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”

v23-26 They put two men forward: Joseph called Barsabbas, also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed: “Lord, who know the hearts of all men, show which one of these two you have chosen to take part in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas fell away, that he might go to his own place.” Then they drew lots, the lot came out for Matthias, and he was counted in with the eleven apostles.

Deep Dive: Was Matthias a mistake? Pastor Eli: Some readers think this whole scene was the church running ahead of God. Matthias is never mentioned again, nobody in Acts draws lots after the Spirit comes, and a few chapters on God picks an apostle himself, on a road, without a vote, and his name is Paul. Teacher Naomi: That reading has to squint. Luke reports the scene without a hint of criticism, and casting lots was the ordinary, God-given way of settling what argument could not settle, Proverbs 16:33 says the lot falls where the LORD decides. Look at the order, too: qualification from Scripture, two men either of whom would do, prayer, then the draw. That is a congregation refusing to pick on charisma. Pastor Eli: Not squinting, reading forward. I will give you the qualification, though, because it is the striking part: you had to have been there from John’s baptism to the ascension, and you had to have seen him alive. The job title is not “leader.” It is witness . Teacher Naomi: Which is also why the silence about Matthias afterward proves nothing. Eight of the eleven named in verse 13 never appear again either. Acts is not a book about who got the seat. Pastor Eli: Agreed on that, and I still cannot get past the timing. Nobody in this book ever draws lots again once the Spirit arrives. Either the church did the right thing with the light it had, or it did a good thing ten days early, and Luke, who tells us everything else, never says which.

Deep Dive: Was Matthias a mistake?

Pastor Eli: Some readers think this whole scene was the church running ahead of God. Matthias is never mentioned again, nobody in Acts draws lots after the Spirit comes, and a few chapters on God picks an apostle himself, on a road, without a vote, and his name is Paul.

Teacher Naomi: That reading has to squint. Luke reports the scene without a hint of criticism, and casting lots was the ordinary, God-given way of settling what argument could not settle, Proverbs 16:33 says the lot falls where the LORD decides. Look at the order, too: qualification from Scripture, two men either of whom would do, prayer, then the draw. That is a congregation refusing to pick on charisma.

Pastor Eli: Not squinting, reading forward. I will give you the qualification, though, because it is the striking part: you had to have been there from John’s baptism to the ascension, and you had to have seen him alive. The job title is not “leader.” It is witness .

Teacher Naomi: Which is also why the silence about Matthias afterward proves nothing. Eight of the eleven named in verse 13 never appear again either. Acts is not a book about who got the seat.

Pastor Eli: Agreed on that, and I still cannot get past the timing. Nobody in this book ever draws lots again once the Spirit arrives. Either the church did the right thing with the light it had, or it did a good thing ten days early, and Luke, who tells us everything else, never says which.

Key Words

Key Themes

Big Idea

Jesus leaves, and the last thing he does before he goes is refuse to give them a schedule and hand them a job instead. They wanted to know when God would fix everything. He told them they would get power, and that they would be his witnesses to the end of the earth. Everything in the next twenty-seven chapters is that one sentence coming true, mile by mile.

Try It

The disciples asked about timing; Jesus answered about mission. Where in your life are you standing still, waiting for a date God has not given you? Name the one thing you already know you are supposed to be doing, and do that thing this week instead.

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