April 25th, 2020

For the entire season of Easter, with the three-year series, the first reading is from the book of Acts, instead of the Old Testament. That is not a bad idea, since it makes for a good transition to the season of Pentecost, when the main text for that festival is from Acts 2.
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As was mentioned last week, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus certainly changed things. The early Christians started meeting on Sunday instead of Saturday. And there were starting to be some even more significant differences between the Jews of Jesus’ day and the followers of Jesus.

Jesus is certainly the focus in Acts 2, but it will take a little before you hear a phrase like ‘we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus’. When they finally get to Acts 15, you hear that ‘we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved (verse 11).’ That will certainly be a time to rejoice. But there are some significant joyful moments in the first fourteen chapters as well.

This Sunday is the Third Sunday of Easter, but with both the third and the fourth Sundays, the first reading is from Acts 2. (This Sunday, the text is verses 14a and 36-41.) It is obviously an important chapter.

It is not a bad thing to see the bigger picture of the text, especially since we will be in this book for a few weeks. Can you imagine the decisions that Luke had to make when writing this account, what to include and what to leave out? Lots of things happened after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was about twenty years between the death of Jesus and the Apostolic Council of Acts 15. What would you include?

Speeches especially took a lot of space, but they also had an important purpose. The story is not about information, but SALVATION. Why are some speeches included and some left out? They slow things down so that we can enjoy the moment, and they help to put us look at some of the important details. Below are all the speeches in Acts that are ten verses long or more (and are without interruption; I also have included the speeches after the Apostolic Council, so that you could have a kind of comparison of what happened before and after that ‘central’ event; the number of verses after each description is the length of that speech):

Acts 2              Peter Addresses the Crowd on Pentecost       23 vs
Acts 3              Peter Speaks to the Temple Onlookers           15 vs
Acts 7              Stephen’s Speech to the Sanhedrin                52 vs
Acts 10            Peter Speaks to Gentiles in Caesarea            10 vs
Acts 13            Paul Speaks a Message of Encouragement    25 vs
[The Apostolic Council … a half-way point]
Acts 17            Paul’s Speech on the Areopagus                    10 vs
Acts 20            Paul’s Farewell to the Ephesian Elders           18 vs
Acts 22            Paul Speaks to the Crowd in Jerusalem         19 vs
Acts 24            The Trial Before Governor Felix                      12 vs
Acts 26            The Trial Before King Agrippa                         22 vs

The first five speeches have an interesting progression, and hopefully you can see a pattern emerging. Below is a partial description of the audience (A:) for each of the first five, as well as some of the response (R:).

Acts 2
A: ‘God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven (verse 5).’
R: They were ‘stung to the heart’ (verse 37)… three thousand were baptized.
Acts 3
A: ‘All the people’ (verse 11) ran together at the temple porch called Solomon
R: The priests, the commandant of the temple, and the Sadducees interrupted them and ‘laid their hands on them’ (chapter 4, verse 3) and put them away … many of the ones hearing the word believed, and the number of men was now about five thousand.
Acts 7
A: People were ‘stirred up’ (chapter 6, verse 12), and they seized Stephen and led him to the Sanhedrin.
R: They were ‘cut to the heart’ and stoned Stephen, but he ‘fell asleep’ (verses 54-60).
Acts 10
A: Cornelius was expecting Peter and called together his friends and relatives.
R: The Holy Spirit interrupted and came upon all who heard the message.
Acts 13
A: Paul and his companions are at the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch.
R: They are invited to speak again. When the crowds became big, the Jews became jealous, and Paul says that the Gentiles may also hear the good news. ‘As many who were appointed for eternal life believed (verse 48)’.

This is just a quick summary of just some of the details, but hopefully you can see what is going on. There is a positive outcome in all the speeches except the middle one (although the text does not specifically say that the stoning killed Stephen). The first two speeches were primarily toward the Jews. Then there is the turning point with the middle speech, and the last two speeches ultimately focus more on the Gentiles. The first and the fourth speeches are normally connected to a Jewish and a Gentile ‘Pentecost’ respectively. It is also interesting that the second speech to the Jews has an interruption, and the first speech to the Gentiles has an interruption—and both interruptions are significantly different.

For a bible study idea, you might want to look more closely at these five chapters. I left out some of the descriptions of both audience and response that you might find helpful. I also left out some of the verse references, to help simplify things. Hopefully you will enjoy this larger view.