Just an introduction. An introduction. Let me read
the first four verses and then come back and give you an introduction.
The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus
began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken
up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments
unto the apostles whom he had chosen. to whom also he showed
himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being
seen of them 40 days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the
kingdom of God, and being assembled together with them, commanded
them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for
the promise of the Father, which saith he, ye have heard of me. Well we see right at the outset
that this is written by Luke. Luke the physician. Paul called
him Luke the beloved physician. And he traveled with Paul. He's
the one who wrote the book of Acts. He's also the one who wrote
the book of Luke. And when he started out the book
of Luke, he used the same thing. He said, O most excellent Theophilus,
having had perfect understanding of all things, from the beginning. And he began to preach, and he
began to tell him, said, I'm gonna tell you the things most
surely believed among us. So the author of this is Luke.
Luke. And you know, here's what it
is, is the history of the apostles up after the Lord's ascension. And you see the titles there
also. The Acts of the Apostles. The actions, the things that
they did. called the Acts of the Apostles, but it also could
be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit because the Holy Ghost
is mentioned over 50 times in this chapter, I mean in this
book, over 50 times the Holy Ghost is mentioned. So it could
be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit because He comes as a
rushing mighty wind. He just told them to wait until
the Holy Ghost comes upon them, wait until the promise of the
Spirit comes. And it also could be called the
Acts of our Ascended Lord because Christ ascended back to glory
and He told His disciples what He purposed for them to do and
that He would be with them. And so in the history, what we
have in the book of Acts is the history of preaching. The history
of preaching. I heard Ralph Barnard say one
time, if you want to find out what your message is, read what
the preachers in the book of Acts preach, and you'll find
your message. And the message is clear, plain. And it's the
history of the spreading of the gospel into all the world. It
started right here. He said, Jews go start at Jerusalem,
You're going to Judea, you're going to go to Samaria, and then
you're going to go into the outermost parts of the earth. And the Gospel
started spreading right here in the book of Acts. And then
you got the establishing of the Gospel. The Gospels declared
plenty. And then you have these local
assemblies being established. You have Galatians, all the way
to Galatia. went to Antioch, Colossae, Philippi,
Thessalonia, went to all these places and all these local churches
sprung up through this. That's where local churches began
to be established at. It was as these preachers went
around and preached, and you know I read to you the other
day where Paul said, told him and Barth, let's go back and
see where all we've been and see how the brethren are doing
and how the churches are. We're gonna go back and see how
they were doing. And it's also, here in the book of Acts, it's
the history of the early, early church. Early church. Just a handful here and a handful
of there. They met in houses, lots of houses. They met in Gaze's house, Stephanus'
house. They met in Onesimus' house.
So they had a lot of churches and they started out meeting
in people's homes. And so it's the history of the
early church and God using men to be his witnesses in this world. And that's what he said. He said,
you go into the world and be my witnesses. My witness. What are you going to witness
to, Lord? What are we going to tell them about? You're going to witness
me. You're going to tell them about me. You're going to tell
them about me. Ain't that what it says in the
first verse? The former treatise of I have
made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach.
That's the first thing you've got to deal with. First thing. And there's two preachers that
are real prominent, two apostles, real prominent, all the way through
the book of Acts. Peter, the Apostle Peter, and
the Apostle Paul. And Peter, they're the two prominent
ones, and of course John is mentioned, some, not much. And Peter and
Paul. Peter began to preach, and he
was the first preacher you find in the book of Acts. The very
first preacher, the first message preached after the ascension
of our Lord Jesus Christ. After he went to glory, Peter
was the first man to preach, after Christ ascended to glory.
And then the Apostle Paul and their work and their messages
given a detailed account of what they say and what they do and
how they act and why they deal with certain situations. You
got a detailed account of what they said, how they were dealt
with, how they reacted to how they were dealt with. Details,
details, details. And their words were given. And
then you remember Well of course, no of course you don't remember.
But anyway they had to call seven deacons because the apostles
were too busy preaching and praying and preaching the word that somebody
had to take care of the widows, somebody had to take care of
the churches, somebody had to take care of the people that
didn't have anything. So they appointed seven deacons,
seven men full of the Holy Ghost and faith is what they said.
Well there was two deacons, became real, real prominent in the book
of Acts. The first one was Stephen. The whole Acts of chapter 7 is
Stephen preaching. And then he was slain. And then
the second deacon, everybody knows about him, is Philip. Philip. He was the one who went and joined
himself to the Ethiopian eunuch as he was going home from Jerusalem
worship. So you got this going on. And
also in Acts, we see how quickly, quickly the gospel spread. It
started out, I think it's down here in verse 15. Look down here
in verse 15. And in those days, Peter stood
up in the midst of the disciples and said, and the number of the
names together were about 120. So it started out with 120 people. And they was in a big, large
upper room. 120 disciples in there. John
was there, James was there, Peter was there. All these people are
there. Our Lord had just ascended, and
our Lord at the end of His ministry had 120 people. 120 people. Which that'd be a lot now, wouldn't
it? That'd be quite a bit. That'd
be quite a few. I'd sell it for 50 or 60, half
that. But anyway, he got up and preached
in Acts chapter two. And I'll show you how quickly
the gospel spread. 3,000 souls were converted by
the first message that was preached. Went from 120 to 3,000 in one
message. That's a pretty good job, ain't
it? Oh my, he began to preach and
3,000 people, 3,000 people, if the Bible didn't say it, we couldn't
hardly believe it. 3,000 people converted under
one message. One preacher preaching. And it
was a very, very strange thing. And you look at the early church,
and you look at these 12 apostles and these 12 disciples gathered
together. And you know, you look at them, humanly speaking, just
look at these 120 people. Christ is gone. He's gone back
to heaven. And humanly speaking, it had
nothing going for it. Absolutely nothing. It had no
money. It had no money. When Peter went, that poor man
jumped up and asked him for silver and gold and he said, Peter said,
I ain't got neither one of them. I ain't got no silver and I ain't
got no gold. I can't give you no money whatsoever. So here are these fellas, they
ain't got no money. Humanly speaking, how are they
gonna make it? They had nothing going for them. Who's the leader? Who's the leader of this bunch?
Who's leading this hunt? Who's leading these people? Ain't
no great leader stood up yet And all for it to exist it had
great enemies all have enemies of the Pharisees the Jews the
Romans oh How they hated this bunch they had great great enemies
the Roman Empire was their enemy All the Pharisees and the Jews
were their enemy It was new. It was something new. It was
something that was happening. Was you going to sing another
song? I'm sorry. I was wondering why you kept
sitting there. Well, I'll tell you what, I got
excited. It's my time to sing. I sung
that song Sunday morning. Oh, but anyway, I didn't even
think about it until I seen you get up and go, I read scriptures. But anyway, they had great, great
enemies. And it was something that was
new. This is a new group. This is a new message. This is
a new church. This is something that, and then
Christ is not there with them now. And the truth, the truth,
that were being taught. The world looked at them and
said, that's incredible. Who can believe that? Who can believe
that? How many times did they say that?
Who can believe what you're preaching? You're preaching that the Just
One was crucified and we're guilty of crucifying Him. You're preaching
that we, by our wicked hands, done something to this man, and
you say that he is raised from the dead, and you say you saw
him for 40 days and 40 nights, and you say that he's the only
one who knows anything about God and was God, and here you
are telling us to believe that? They just couldn't believe it.
It was incredible to the world, and it still is. It still is. I said to somebody the other
day, I was telling my son Dougie about it today. I mentioned to
somebody I was praying for him. You know what he said? He said,
it ain't doing no good. What he said, it ain't doing
no good. In other words, he want God to jump too. If you're praying
for me, God ought to do something for me. God ought to jump up.
God ought to be here doing something for me. Oh, the truths that were
being taught was incredible to the world. And I'll tell you
what, you remember yourself. You can remember when the truth
was made alive to you. The truth of who Jesus Christ
is. The truth of what Jesus Christ
our Lord did. the truth of what our Lord Jesus
Christ accomplished, and who He is, and what He did, and all
that He did, and His, everything about Him, and all of His power,
and all of His glory, and when we heard about, learned the truth
of election, learned the truth of God's sovereignty, learned
the truth that everything's purposed by God, God you had to stretch
forth this to do, we found out that God rules and reigns in
this universe these blessed truths come to us and they come to us
and they set us free and bring great works in our hearts and
in our soul and that's what these men start out they start out
preaching the truth and the world says oh my goodness who can believe
that who can believe that and they were hated they were hated
and they were persecuted And the more they were hated, and
the more they were persecuted, do you know what happened? The
more they flourished, and the more they grew. First time you
have 3,000. Second time, 5,000. And you know
our Lord fed 4,000 plus men and children, and women, and then
men and women, and then another place He fed 5,000. This is how
many got converted. And all churches were established,
Corinthian Church was, Colossae was, Ephesus was, Galatias was, Philippi, the Thessalonians,
all these churches were established, used of God. And oh my, and God
used these men that He called and to preach and labor in the
gospel of Christ. That's all they did. And I tell
you what, they'd even go into a marketplace. They'd go in where
people bought and sold goods and stuff like that, and they'd
sit down and start talking to people and talking to people.
The next thing you know, a crowd gather around and they'd preach
the gospel to them. That's the way it done. That's
the way Walter Gruber did when he first went to Mexico. He'd
go out in them pueblos, and he'd take a film with him, and he'd
set up a projector out there, and he'd put up a film, and all
these people gather around there, and then he'd cut the film down,
and then he'd start preaching to them. And you know, 20-something
churches was established. It's got good, solid preachers. It's been pastoring now for 25,
23, 25, 26, 27 years. Through a man starting out just
like that going into Pueblo and people gather around him. And
that's what these fellas did. They used whatever means that
they had, you know, when that lame man was sitting at the gate,
beautiful. Peter just said, get up and walk.
And do you believe what a crowd gathered around him after that?
Just two preachers standing there talking to him. Next thing you
know, a multitude's gathered around him to gospel. Oh, they preached and labored
in the gospel of Christ. And here's another thing about
the book of Acts. Every main character in the book
of Acts had been alive during the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even Paul had been alive during
the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Every main character in the book
of Acts had been living during the lifetime of our Lord Jesus
Christ and in 28 chapters in 28 chapters there's 19 sermons
19 sermons the first by Peter on the day of Pentecost many
many by the Apostle Paul the longest message was by Stephen
and they ended up killing him at the end of it And this book
is full of some of the most blessed teaching we'll ever be confronted
with. Glorious teaching. Blessed teaching. And I tell
you, let me tell you some things that's not in this book. Tell
you some things that's not in this book. The love of God's
not mentioned in this book. God's love. God loves you's not
in this book. The love of God's not mentioned
in 28 chapters. Not one of them preachers got
up and told that congregation how much God loved them. How
much God wanted to save them. Not one of them got up and told
them that. Not one of them. The love, God's love is not,
the word of love is not mentioned in the book of Acts. Not once.
And I'll tell you something else, not mentioned in there. Will you accept Jesus? When they
got through preaching, you reckon they said, well listen, We'd
sure love to accept Jesus here now if you would. That's not in there. And another thing, the only place
you find an altar is a heathen altar. No altars for people to
get on and pray before. And you don't find any of these
preachers inviting people to Christ, inviting people to church,
inviting people, no, no, they just stood up and preached. None
of those things are in the book of Acts. The message, the message
we find in this blessed book of Acts is the message of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Who He is? Who He is? And if you don't know who He
is, that's what they start they start out first and foremost
with who Jesus Christ is then they start going to what he did
his obedient blessed glorious sinless life what he accomplished
by his life what he accomplished by his death and they preached
every time they entered a message there he is right up there and
you gotta face him you gotta face him gotta face Him and I'll
tell you that was their message and we'll see that so clearly
through the book of Acts and the book of Acts is a bridge
you take the Gospels you take the four Gospels and the book
of Acts is a bridge between the Gospels and our Lord Jesus Christ
to go and back to glory You know, here you close up John's gospel,
close up Matthew's gospel, Mark's gospel, Luke's gospel, and you
find Christ being buried, but you don't see Him ascending.
Here you see Him coming from all the gospels, and here you
see Him, the book of Acts, He's going back to glory, and everybody
gets to see Him go up. He ascends back to glory. And all you hear in the book
of Acts, we hear His final words. Final words that He gives His
people on this earth. The last words He says to them
on this earth. The last words He says to His
people on this earth. The last words. Last words mean
a lot, you know that? Last words mean a lot. Final
words. And then His commission, what
He told them to do. You're my servants. You're my
preachers. I've chose you. I've called you.
Now you go. You go. And you go be preachers. And now look what he said here.
Look what he said in verse 1. This is the only verse I'm going
to deal with tonight. The former treatise have I made,
O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to both do and teach. Now when you go to the book of
Luke, and you'll find what Luke is talking about. And when he
says here, I began to tell what Jesus both began to do and teach.
He's going back to his gospel. He's going back to say what he
taught about Christ in his gospel. He's telling about the gospel
that he wrote, the gospel of Luke. And first he began to tell
us what Jesus began to do. And what did he do? But you know
where he started out with the Lord Jesus Christ? He started
out with His birth. Started out with His birth. He
started out that this day in the city of David is born unto
us a Savior, Christ the Lord. And He's begotten of the Holy
God Himself. He starts out with Christ being
born and being the Son of God. Oh, then he gets up, and he's
12 years old, and he goes out to about what he done. What else
did he do? Well, his mother and daddy left
him, and three days later they went back, and he's sitting in
the temple 12 years old, confounding the people that think they know
something. 12 years old make them look like a bunch of fools.
And then he began to talk about what Christ went through in his
temptation in the wilderness. So he began to tell what Jesus
began to do, who he is, and what he began to do. He said, well
he went off into the temptation in the wilderness. Then he goes
on to tell us about how he went to his hometown. Went to Nazareth. Got up, started his public ministry,
reading out of the book of Isaiah. And oh my, how he goes to his
hometown, start his ministry. And they run him out of town.
They hate him and despised him and run him out of his own town.
Run him out of his own town. And then he said, not only what
Jesus began to do, began to do, but what he began to teach. Now
let me show you something over here in Luke chapter four. Look
in Luke chapter four, verse 31, I believe it is. Luke 4.31. Look what it says here. This is, you
know, chapter 4 is him being in the wilderness and where he
went into his hometown to preach and they run him out of town.
And then look what he said here at verse 31. And he came down
to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath
days. Listen to this. And they were astonished at his
doctrine. That word doctrine just means
teaching. For his word was with power. Could you imagine the
power that come from our Lord Jesus Christ? His doctrine was
with power and was with wisdom. And you take our Lord Jesus Christ
and all the things that He began to teach in the book of Luke. And that's what He said in the
former treatise. Former treatise. What Jesus began to do and to
teach. He talked about what He did.
And then He began to talk about what He taught. And our Lord
Jesus Christ after He He taught them, he started with the Sermon
on the Mount. Matthew's got three verses dedicated to it. Luke
has one verse, one chapter dedicated to it. Matthew has three chapters. And what he says, blessed are
they, blessed are they, blessed are they, blessed are they, blessed
are they. Who are the blessed? The ones
that he says blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are they that weep. Blessed
are they that hunger. And then he turned around and
said, but woe unto them, woe unto them, woe unto them, woe
unto them. And how many times did our Lord
say, this is the teachings of our Lord. You've heard it said. You've heard what the Pharisees
said. You heard what the doctors said. You heard what the lawyers
said. But he said, I'm telling you what. I'm going to tell you
what I said. That's what I'll tell you about
it. And let me tell you this. I was listening to myself the
other day and I don't know how many times I said that. Let me
tell you this. I'm up here to tell you something. But I'll tell you this. Christianity
cannot exist without the Lord Jesus Christ. Our life cannot
exist without Christ. This church can't exist without
Christ. And here's the thing about it,
Buddhism, it can exist without Buddha. Buddhism continues, and
they've got Buddhist temples and Buddhist statues going to
most Chinese restaurants, and they've got a Buddha sitting
there somewhere. And when I was in Vietnam, Buddha
Pagodas was everywhere. Little fat fellow with his legs
crossed and his arms crossed and listen people They can have
Buddhism without having Buddha because he laid down some rules
he laid down some principles He said and if you follow my
principles and follow my teaching you'll end up being enlightened And you'll know what it means
to have one hand clapping. That's the stuff that they come
up with. Foolishness. And then, you know, there's the
Muslims. Muslim and Mohammedism, it continues
without Mohammed. Mohammed died 600 years after
Christ. But Muslims, they continue on
and on and on and on. But our Lord Jesus Christ died.
He was raised from the dead. He ascended to the right hand
of God. And we have no reasoned existence and no life for Christianity
unless we have Christ. Huh? Oh, but you take Christ
away. Oh, you know, all these other
things are works and morality and ethics and philosophy. But
you take Christ away. And you take it away, and people
do this, people do this. They take Christ away and they
reduce Christianity down to a bunch of ethics and philosophy. They say if we'll just pay attention
to his ideas, pay attention to his teachings, And then we put
them into practice, we'd be a wonderful bunch of people. Oh, the world
would be so much better off if we followed His example, took
His ideas. We don't need Him for salvation. We don't need Him for forgiveness.
We don't need Him to be our Savior. We don't need redeeming. We just
need to know how to live, and if we'll follow His teachings
and His ideas, we'll be really good people. Really good people. Oh my. But I tell you, it doesn't
make any difference if he really was who he said he was. You can't
have Christianity unless you have Christ. Our life, our existence,
as Christians, and I say that in the strictest sense, strictest
sense, as Christians, they were first called Christians at Antioch,
or as believers. Our life, our existence as Christians
and as believers are utterly and absolutely dependent upon
the Lord Jesus Christ and who He is and what He did and where
He is right now. Without Him, we have nothing
to believe. If without Christ, what are we
going to believe? Without Christ, what do we do?
Without Christ, what's the purpose? Without Christ, what is life? Oh my! But oh, I tell you, without
Him, you got nothing but ethics. You got nothing but an idealism. You got nothing but philosophy. They say, oh, we need to follow
the golden rule. But I tell you, our Lord Jesus
not only taught about God, but He was revealing God in His character
and in His nature. If you've seen God, you've seen
Christ. If you found out what God's character
was, you had to see Christ. If you found out what God's nature
is, you have to see Christ. Because He came to reveal those
things. How do we know? How do they know
who God the Father is? Christ told. How do you know
what God intended for us? God Christ told us. And I was reading today, and
we've been reading about back in the 1850s, 1860s, a bunch
of German theologians. And they've done this for a hundred
years. They tried to find the historical Jesus. The historical
Jesus. what he was really like as a
historical person. They wasn't interested in believing
in him. They wasn't interested in his salvation. Wasn't interested
in his blood. Wasn't interested in him being
God. They just wanted to know what
he was as a historical figure. And this is what they come up
with. If the person who was going through
this, they got a documentary on this, Searching for the Historical
Jesus. You need to look at that one
of these times. But anyways, those who were looking for the
Historical Jesus always found Him like they were. Now what
do I mean by that? If that theologian was a socialist,
he came up with the Historical Jesus who was a socialist. He'd
go do everything for everybody. Then if you got another one,
he was a moralist. He believed you had to live an
extremely moral, upright life. Then you got Jesus as a great
moral leader and a moral teacher. So whatever the person's philosophy
was, that's the Jesus they came up with. They didn't care anything
about faith. They said, we're not looking
for the Jesus of faith, we're looking for the historical one.
And he was a fact of history. He's a fact of history. But I
don't care about his history, I care about what he did while
he was here. I care about a Redeemer, a Savior,
a Living Lord, a man who was God, a man who put away sin,
a man who sits at the right hand of God and makes intercession
for us. That's who I want to know. And one of these days, bless
his holy name, them folks have been looking for him and trying
to figure out what he's like. One of these days, we know who
he is, we know what he's like, and we'll see him face to face
one of these blessed days. But oh my, well, look what else
it said here and then I'm done. He says, the former treatise
of our maid, O Theopolis, of all that Jesus began to both
to do and teach. But what Luke is doing, he writes,
wrote and writes about a living, living Lord. A Christ who was
alive. And he viewed him as a living
Lord. And he viewed him as a dying
Lord. And he viewed him as a resurrected
Lord. And then here you see him viewing
him as an ascended Lord. And he concludes that he is sitting
at the right hand of God with all power and glory. This is
what they preached, and this is what men believed, and this
is what God uses to save man. And God saves a multitude through
this. One place it says, as many as were ordained to eternal life,
what did they do? They believed. But they had to
be told what to believe. Somebody got to tell them. That's
what the Acts of the Apostles are about. I hope that's a blessing. We'll start next week. Our Father, in the blessed name
of our Lord Jesus, we bow our hearts before you. Thank you
for allowing us to meet here tonight. Thank you for your blessed
gospel. Thank you for your word. Thank
you for your truth. Oh Lord, this Bible is so big,
so deep, got so much in it, so many words. And Lord, it's impossible for
us to deal with it without you, without the Holy Ghost, without
the Holy Spirit. Impossible to teach from it,
impossible to understand it. And Lord, we want to understand
it. We want to learn from it. We want to know what you have
to say to us. And so Lord, we're going to sit
and wait on you. Pray that you would teach us
and instruct us. Let us sit at your feet and let
us learn. Oh God, we need you. And we bless you and we praise
you. And keep these dear people of God. See them safely home. Meet all the needs of their homes
in their hearts. And Father, we pray for those
who are not with us, who would be if they could, but they're
providentially hindered. God bless them. Thank you for
they watch and they listen. Meet their needs too. We ask
in Christ our Lord's name. Amen. Amen. Turn your eyes upon
Jesus, look fully in His wonderful face, and the things of earth
will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. Good night. God bless you. See
you Sunday, Lord willing.