Verse 1 Acts 1 and Luke 24 have much overlap between them. “Without the book of Acts the story of Jesus would be incomplete. Afterall, he didn’t come merely to save individuals to get them to heaven, but to create a community that would carry out God’s kingdom.” Luke tells the story of Jesus and Acts tells how Jesus’ ministry comes to a close and begins the work of the Holy Spirit.
Verse 2 With the ascension, Jesus no longer directs the Apostles, the meaning …show more content…
“When John prophesies about this baptism, he seems to promise it to the whole crowd.” Some believers are specifically validated instead of the everyone. The confusion is cleared up by the explanation “‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’ is an umbrella term that Luke uses to describe the two ‘Pentecost’ experience in Acts while Paul and John the Baptist used it more broadly for the universal experience of conversion.”
Verses 6-7 The disciples ask a question about what they previously thought of when they thought of the idea of a savior, “a nationalistic Messianic reign”. Jesus ascends in a dramatic way to get the disciples to focus less on this idea and focus more on the task of universal evangelism. The disciples also need to focus less on when Jesus will return.
Verse …show more content…
Roughly speaking, Acts 1-7 describes the impact of the gospel in Jerusalem. Then Acts 8-12 carries the account forward, depicting the effects of the gospel in several places in Judea and Samaria. Lastly, Acts 13-28 highlights the spread of the gospel to the major cities of the whole Roman Empire, the ends of the civilized world.” There are two references from Isaiah that are important because they relate to the Spirit’s work with Jesus that is now inside the Apostles: Isaiah 11:2, 4 and Isaiah 61:1. “The commission Jesus gives them completes what he started through the anointing of the Holy Spirit.” When Jesus says ends of the earth this means something different to us than it did to the Apostles. The earth was thought to be “a disk surrounded by oceans with its extremities being Spain/Germany (west), Ethiopia (south), India (east), and Scythia (north).” The ends of the earth would have been the outer ring. Though we know the earth to be much more than that we should still continue to complete the great commission in Acts 1:8. When this text is used in Acts 13:47 the ends of the earth is the Gentiles. “Even though Acts 1:8 is phrased with geographic terminology, the heart is for the ethnic groups who inhabit these far-flung lands. In this simple commission, Jesus turned the diaspora on its head. Rather than being a problem to be overcome by ‘ingathering’, it was an opportunity to be exploited by