Impartial: A Journey Through the Acts of the Apostles 1-10

Copyright © 2017 Audrey Lupisella.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-6841-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-6842-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-6840-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016920513

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/30/2016

Contents

Introduction

Week 1

Commentary: An Introduction to Acts

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Week 2

Commentary: The Miracle of the Holy Spirit

Week 2: Day 1

Week 2: Day 2

Week 2: Day 3

Week 2: Day 4

Week 2: Day 5

Week 3

Commentary: The Miracle of Healing

Week 3: Day 1

Week 3: Day 2

Week 3: Day 3

Week 3: Day 4

Week 3: Day 5

Week 4

Commentary: The Miracle of Freedom

Week 4: Day 1

Week 4: Day 2

Week 4: Day 3

Week 4: Day 4

Week 4: Day 5

Week 5

Commentary: The Miracle of Being Chosen

Week 5: Day 1

Week 5: Day 2

Week 5: Day 3

Week 5: Day 4

Week 5: Day 5

Week 6

Commentary: A Lesson in Refinement

Week 6: Day 1

Week 6: Day 2

Week 6: Day 3

Week 6: Day 4

Week 6: Day 5

Week 7

Commentary: The Miracle of Grace

Week 7: Day 1

Week 7: Day 2

Week 7: Day 3

Week 7: Day 4

Week 7: Day 5

Week 8

Commentary: The Miracle of the Cross

Appendix 1: Prophecies Christ Fulfilled

Appendix 2: The Holy Spirit …

Appendix 3: Scriptures of Healing

Appendix 4: Set Free

Appendix 5: You are Chosen

Appendix 6: Unveiled Faces

Appendix 7: The Throne of Grace

Appendix 8: Crucified with Christ

Works Cited

Introduction

Hello, beloved! How I praise God for you—how you are seeking to know Him and deepen your relationship with your Savior. I have been a Christian for most of my life, but I haven’t always lived as a Christian should. I grew up in church, did confirmation in fifth grade, and was baptized in my preacher’s backyard pool. But sometime in middle school, things went very wayward. I became hard and rebellious. I took all the anger that was inside me out on my family and decided that God had never done me any favors. Why should I listen to Him?

I kept going farther and farther down the wrong path, despite the numerous signs and warnings given by God. Eventually, I got pregnant at sixteen years of age. I had a beautiful baby boy and had to grow up and take care of him before I even knew how to take care of myself. However, I still did not turn to God. I chose to be a single mother and put myself through college all on my own.

Driven by pride, I went straight off a cliff. It was many more years filled with many more mistakes before I finally shattered. I hit rock bottom and simply could not put myself back together. During this time, I kept hearing the words of Psalm 6:2–3 running through my brain: My bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord? How long?

I finally cried these words of the psalmist out to Go. I just could not take it anymore. I could not hold up under the stress and the heartbreak. It took someone more than me to put me back together. It took my Creator, my Savior. I just had to give myself over to Him let Him stitch me back together, and let Him fill me with His peace, His joy, His strength, and His endurance.

For the next six years, I felt like God had placed a specific calling on my life, but for the life of me, I had no idea what it was. I prayed and prayed and prayed. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in exercise science, had a great career in the fitness industry, and married an amazing man.

Finally, after six years of praying and waiting, God spoke to me. I was driving to work, and I audibly heard Him tell me to go to seminary. So I did! Within two months, I was enrolled in seminary. I was studying toward a master’s degree in biblical studies and had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with it. People thought I was plain crazy. Half the time, I thought I was crazy!

God proved Himself faithful, as He is wont to do, and in a couple years, I graduated with a master’s degree in biblical studies from Regent University. During this time, God was fostering an outrageous love for His Word and the One who breathed it into existence in my heart. At last, He showed me what He wanted me to do in this life: teach, write, and help others understand God through His Word. His incredible plan for humanity stretches from the beginning of time until the return of Christ and beyond. This is my first attempt at doing that. I pray God speaks to you as you discover Him who made you, who loves you outrageously, and who works miracles on your behalf.

The opportunity to write and teach this Bible study was born through a strong desire not to do a thesis. The last semester of seminary, I had to choose between a practicum and a thesis. So, practicum it was!

My journey toward writing studies began in the spring of 2009, when I took a Bible study class on David, and I fell in love. I fell in love with the God who would choose a shepherd boy who had a sincere love and desire for God. He made some very serious mistakes with very hard consequences, but God made him king over His chosen people, and He would call him a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22).

I so identified with this man who had such a passionate love for God but somehow kept making the wrong choices. I became hungry to know more about God and how He would accept and rejoice in such a man as David. I was ravenous to know more of Him. I devoured study after study, everything I could get my hands on.

In seminary, God finally began to show me that my hunger for the Word was the cornerstone of the ministry he was developing in my life. So, when the choice of practicum or thesis was upon me, God placed it in my heart to write and teach a Bible study. My pastor at the time was supportive enough to allow me to teach it at church, and this study of Acts 1–10 was born.

In this study, we are going to journey through the beginnings of the Christian church. As you will hear me harp on over and over and over, this is the story of the early Jewish Christians. These men and women were Jews who believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. They did not yet understand that Jesus was for the world. It is a beautiful look at how God cherished this special time with His covenant people, how He reveled in the salvation of the sons and daughters of Abraham, and how He used them to reach the ends of the earth.

One of the main themes examines how God used miracles to spread His gospel and how He is still using miracles today (you can’t study Acts and not talk about miracles!). If you learn anything by studying the first ten chapters of Acts with me, I pray you learn that God is still a God of miracles. He is working in your life in ways you could never know or suspect. I pray that God blows our faith wide open and that we become men and women of such outrageous faith that we ask huge things of God just to watch Him work! I urge you to keep a prayer journal through this time, and like Paul says in Philippians 4:6–7, Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And more than that—believe that He is a good, good Father who answers according to your good.

The second, and most important, theme that this study is working toward is that God is using every situation in these first ten chapters of Acts to open the apostles’ minds to sharing the gospel message with every nation and every tongue, every kind of peoples, both Jew and Gentile. God is truly an impartial God. He does not conform to social standards, but welcomes every single person into His family. Praise You, Jesus!

This study was written to be utilized in a three-part format. Each week, you will find a commentary and five days of homework—complete with questions. Please begin each week by reading the commentary, which focuses on a very important part of the week’s passage. Then proceed to the homework for the day (for each day of the week). Though this study can be used as a personal study, optimally, you will end the week’s study with a small group, discussing the questions together as a group.

During the group time, opinions are challenged, understanding is fostered, and faith grows. It will provide you with a safe environment to share your testimony of God’s work in your life. It is my sincere hope that you will utilize this study within a group setting and that God will bless your fellowship with increased understanding of His Word, increased faith in His faithfulness and power, and growth of healthy, God-centered relationships.

With so much love and so many blessings,

Audrey

WEEK 1

Commentary: An Introduction to Acts

Welcome, beloved! How excited I am to begin this journey with you. Before we dig into the book of Acts, we need to get the introductory information out of the way so we have a bit of context to help our understanding. So bear with me for today, and then we will get to the good stuff tomorrow!

Unlike some of the books of the Bible, the author of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts) does not name himself. However, we have a very early church father, Irenaeus (ca. AD 130–202), who named the author as Luke in his work Against Heresies III. Irenaeus studied under Polycarp, who was a disciple of the apostle John. Therefore, it is assumed that Irenaeus knew that the author’s name was Luke, and the name has never been challenged. The author of Acts, henceforth referred to as Luke, is regarded to be a man of substantial learning who is not part of but is in contact with the elite of society. Most believe he was a doctor who was very close with the apostle Paul, and he most likely occasionally traveled with Paul on his missionary journeys.

The Acts of the Apostles was most likely written during the first century (ca. AD 80), and it is written as historiography, which is a factual accounting of chronological events with a focused purpose. It is not scientific in accounting or verbatim; the speeches are condensed into summaries because of their lengths. Because it is written in this manner, Luke salts the historical accounts with his own points of view. We get to see his views on gender roles, theology, Christology, and the purpose of Christianity. I really want you to understand that Luke is deeply convinced that Christianity is inclusive to all ethnicities, all social strata, and both genders. We will examine this in much more detail as we move through the book of Acts, but even as we begin this journey, I want you to know to the depths of your spirit that God excludes no one.

Luke wrote the book of Acts as a second volume in a two-part series that was meant to be read together, beginning with the gospel of Luke and followed by the book of Acts. Themes that begin in Luke are further explored in Acts, and themes that begin in Acts are built upon foundations laid in Luke. Each covers a span of about thirty years, and they are both about the same number of words; each fills up a single papyrus. Because this is a two-part series, the purpose Luke states in the gospel of Luke 1:1 is applicable to Acts, and it is there that we will find his intended purposes for writing these historical narratives:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and minister of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1–4; emphasis added)

Please write the emphasized words here:

Luke’s one reason for writing these volumes is that we might have certainty about the unarguable conclusion of the gospel. This phrase speaks to unquestionable fact. It means that there is so much evidence that one cannot argue with Luke’s conclusion. This means that we can have certainty in the unarguable fact of the gospel message—of the events that occur in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, as well as the events and miracles done by the Holy Spirit through the apostles.

We can rest with certainty in the truth of the life and resurrection of Jesus, and we can have security against the lies of the enemy. Satan twists the truth, and the lies of the world tell us that the gospel message can’t possibly be true. The purpose of these books is to give us security against all the lies that try to steal the blessings of the truth of salvation in Christ.

Luke addresses a person in the first verses of both Luke and Acts; please look up both Luke 1:1 and Acts 1:1, and write this person’s name here:

If you found the name, you noticed that both volumes of Luke’s works are written specifically to a man named Theophilus. Most likely, this man provided the funding for Luke’s travels and research for this historical project. I like to think of Luke as a reporter and Theophilus as his employer. Luke had two purposes: to record and report the events as truthfully as possible and to convey to Theophilus that the gospel message was true and that it crossed all social strata. This was and is a message for all peoples, and it even attracted the social elite—those with whom Theophilus associated.

Before we get into Acts, I want to point out that neither Luke nor Acts is an eyewitness account. They are reports of historical research taken from eyewitness accounts. Luke’s main objective was to record events as accurately as possible, but we see evidence of his own theology and Christology within his narratives. For instance, the examples he gives regarding conversion almost always involved the rich and the poor and both a man and a woman. Luke is exceptionally good at conveying the idea that gender is of no matter to Christ. He is also certain to include many examples of rich and poor men and women converting to the gospel so Theophilus understands that this is not a poor man’s religion. It is a religion for all humankind.

Tomorrow, you begin your study through Acts—and I cannot even handle the excitement! I hope you are ready for an incredible journey! We are going to learn about God, about His church, and hopefully even a little bit about ourselves. My prayer is that God fills you with a supernatural love for Himself and a supernatural desire for His Word and His presence—that you hunger for Him daily. I pray that you fall in love all over again with the miraculous God you serve, and I pray that your faith in Him expands exponentially. Above all, remember that the God who performed incredible miracles during the time of the apostles is the same incredible, miraculous God today.

Week 1: Day 1

Now, we finally get to dig into Acts. I can hardly bear the excitement! Please begin every single day with prayer for an open heart and an open mind, such that God may fill it with His truth, and then turn with me in your Bibles and read Acts 1:1–11.

What we find in this section is the proper rhetoric of the time for introducing a second volume in a series; its purpose is to provide context for the early church beginnings. It reminds the hearer of the message