The Advancement of the Kingdom of God:
An Introduction to the Book of Acts
A Sermon by the Rev. S. Randall Toms, Ph.D.
St. Paul’s Anglican Church Baton Rouge, LA
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 shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God (Acts 1:1-3)
In the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers,” there are the words, “Like a mighty army/Moves the Church of God.” As we look at the condition of the church in the 21st century, I don’t believe we can say the Church is like a powerful military force advancing throughout the world. It appears that the world, the flesh, and the devil have stopped the progress of the Church. If anything, it seems that the Church is in retreat; we are losing our soldiers, especially our youth, at an alarming rate. It is said that there are over 2 billion Christians in the world. If those numbers are accurate, then why are we having so little impact? When I was a boy, our church used to sing so hopefully:
The sunlight is glancing
O’er armies advancing
To conquer the kingdoms of sin;
Our Lord shall possess them,
His presence shall bless them,
His beauty shall enter them in.
The kingdom is coming, O tell ye the story,
God’s banner exalted shall be!
The earth shall be full of His knowledge and glory,
As waters that cover the sea!
We need to confess that at present, Christians are not conquering the kingdoms of sin. The kingdoms of sin are conquering us. We don’t see evidence that the earth is drawing nearer to the time when it shall be filled with God’s knowledge and glory, as waters cover the sea. Instead, it seems that the knowledge of God is vanishing from the peoples of the world. There is something dreadfully wrong with the Church, and we need to discover the cause of our weakness and why we seem so irrelevant that most people ignore the true message of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
To discover how the Church lost her power and how we might regain it, I suggest we turn to the book of Acts and study it in great detail. The book of Acts tells the story of how 11 apostles and a little over a hundred more followers of Jesus gathered in an upper room, turned the world upside down, and became the most potent force for good the world has ever known. Acts is the story of how the kingdom of God actually advanced, even as everything in the world was determined to stop its progress and destroy it.
Luke, the beloved physician, begins this story by retracing the period between the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and his ascension, and then gives us an account of how the Church expands from Jerusalem to Rome. It also tells the story of how the Church expands from being composed primarily of Jews to include Samaritans and even Gentiles. The entire book of Acts will describe the attempts of the Church to convert both Jews and Gentiles and make them members of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. After Paul experiences so much opposition from the Jews that he shakes the dust off his feet, he doesn’t abandon the Jews and speak strictly to Gentiles. He still goes to synagogues, and even in the last chapter of Acts, he continues to preach to Jews.
In the course I teach on Introduction to the New Testament at our seminary, I like to emphasize that the writers of Scripture were, in a way, literary artists, and I like how some of them use bookends. Luke is one of those writers who uses bookends; by that, I mean he ends the book the same way he begins it, suggesting that everything that happened in between was about what he started with and what he finished with.
At the beginning of the book of Acts, we see that he is writing to the same person to whom he wrote what is called the Gospel according to Luke. This man, Theophilus, a person who was being catechized, was instructed about who Jesus was and what he came into the world to do. The gospel of Luke tells the story of Jesus' life up to his ascension. Now, Luke is going to tell us the story of the Church. But before he does that, he backs up a little and retells part of the story of Jesus that he had already covered in the gospel of Luke—those 40 days between the resurrection and his ascension. What happened during those 40 days?
Some years ago, at our church in Baton Rouge, we lost our oldest member. He was 96. Just a few months before he died, he was admitted to a rehab facility, so I was visiting him almost every day. Each time I visited him, he wanted to discuss a different theological subject, usually a brain teaser that led us down deep rabbit holes. The last theological discussion we had was about what Jesus was doing with his disciples during those 40 days between the resurrection and the ascension. We don’t know everything that happened during those 40 days, but we do have a pretty good summary in the opening verses of the book of Acts. We are told here in Acts 1:3 that Jesus spent his time “speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. “
There are many ways that Luke could have described what Jesus taught his disciples during those 40 days between the resurrection and ascension, but Luke summarizes all of that teaching under the heading of “the kingdom of God.” Let’s think about the importance of that statement. These are the last days the disciples will see him in the flesh until he returns. No doubt they had many questions, and when you know that you only have 40 days to teach them, you would want to make those days count. So what do you teach them—"things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”
Now, as I said earlier, Luke uses this technique of framing his story as bookends; that is, he begins and ends with the same theme. So, the book of Acts begins with Jesus teaching them about things pertaining to the kingdom of God. How does the book of Acts end? Let’s go to the last chapter and read Acts 28. You remember how Paul appealed to Caesar, and he has made it to Rome and is under house arrest. Some of the Jews in Rome come to him, and they want to hear about this sect that Paul seems to be a leader of. So what does Paul tell them? Well, in Acts 28:23-31, we find this description of the teaching of the apostle:
And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening. And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not. And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it. And when he had said these words, the Jews departed and had great reasoning among themselves. And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.
I remember when I was a boy, and I read the book of Acts for the first time: how disappointed I was with how it ended. I was like, What? That’s it? What happened to Paul? I wanted to know about his trial before Caesar. I had heard that Paul had been beheaded, but there is nothing about that here. But you see, this is another proof of the inspiration of Scripture. The book of Acts is not a biography about the Apostle Paul or the Apostle Peter, for that matter. As a matter of fact, even though we call the book The Acts of the Apostles, it’s really only about two of the Apostles—Peter and Paul. There is a little about John and James. But after chapter 2, the others seem to disappear. Mary, the mother of Jesus, disappears after chapter 1. What about Andrew, Thomas, and the others? The point is that the Book of Acts is not about them. It’s about the kingdom of God, preaching the kingdom of God, and the advance of the kingdom of God. When the book of Acts ends, it ends appropriately, with the world’s greatest missionary doing what Christ called him to do—preaching the kingdom of God. So, if the book of Acts begins with Jesus teaching his disciples things that pertain to the kingdom of God, and if it ends with Paul preaching the kingdom of God, I think it would be very important to know exactly what the kingdom of God is and what it means to preach the kingdom of God.
I’m not sure this is how people typically describe preaching in our day. Do you hear people say that their pastors are men who preach the kingdom of God? And yet, this is what Jesus and the apostles preached. Please mark that word “preach,” because this word is so important in connection with the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is preached.
St. Mark records that after Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness we find this description of his ministry: Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,[15] And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14). When Jesus begins preaching, what is he preaching? The gospel—the good news of the kingdom of God. Luke begins the book of Acts by saying, “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach.” In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus begins to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. But just before his ascension, he is still preaching the kingdom of God. But Jesus has never stopped preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He continues to preach it now, but through his Church. In Matthew 9:35, we find this same description of the preaching of Jesus: “And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.” Notice again—he is preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Luke returns to this description of the preaching of Jesus in Luke 4:42-43: “And when it was day, he departed and went into a desert place: and the people sought him, and came unto him, and stayed him, that he should not depart from them. And he said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent. Jesus says that he was sent to preach the kingdom of God. So then, the message, the good news, whatever it was that Jesus was preaching, it was summarized as “the good news of the kingdom of God.”
Then, when we come to the book of Acts, what do we find the early preachers in the book of Acts doing? When Philip is preaching in Samaria, his preaching is characterized this way: “But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12). When Paul was in Corinth, his ministry was described in this manner in Acts 19:8: And he went into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God”.
When Paul was taking his leave of the elders at Ephesus, he said in Acts 20:25: “And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.”
So, I don’t think it is stretching things to say that one of the unifying themes of the book of Acts is that the message the apostles took into the whole world was about the kingdom of God. This is so important because it helps to keep us on track about what the book of Acts is all about. It is so easy to get off on tangents when we are studying this book, especially when we look at the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is so important in this book, and the miraculous is so prevalent, we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the book of Acts is about miracles and nothing more. The book of Acts sparks endless arguments about things like speaking in tongues. Do all true Christians speak in tongues? Do they start speaking in tongues right after their baptisms? Do Christians receive the Holy Spirit before or after they are baptized? Can you be a Christian and not be filled with the Spirit, or is the filling of the Holy Spirit something that comes later in the Christian life? These are just some of the endless debates that are stirred up by a reading of the book of Acts. But one thing I wish to point out is that Luke was not writing a systematic theology about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. He was describing how the Holy Spirit worked through the Church to advance the kingdom of God. Realizing this truth helps us clarify some of the seeming discrepancies in the book of Acts regarding how people receive the Holy Spirit.
Let me give just a few examples of things that don’t seem to mesh. As far as we know, the only baptism the disciples ever received was the baptism of John. They were not “re-baptized” in the name of Jesus Christ on the day of Pentecost. Yet when Paul met those disciples of John the Baptist, they hadn’t yet received the Holy Spirit. Paul insisted that they be baptized in the name of Jesus, and then they received the Holy Spirit. People have trouble with that passage and usually say things like “Well, they weren’t really followers of Jesus, but just disciples of John. Strangely, they had received John's baptism, but they had to be baptized in the name of Jesus. Yet, the disciples of Jesus on the day of Pentecost didn’t have to be baptized in the name of Jesus. Why did these disciples of John have be baptized again? Was it because they were just disciples of John? Weren’t they genuine believers in Jesus Christ? Paul acknowledges that they have believed. He asks: “Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?” Was that belief an authentic, saving faith in Christ? If so, why did they have to be baptized in the name of Jesus when the disciples of Jesus were not required to do so?
Another issue that comes up in the book of Acts is this: What is the proper order for receiving the Holy Spirit? Is it believe, be baptized, and then receive the Holy Spirit? That seems to be what Peter taught on the day of Pentecost. We read in Acts 2:38: “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” But when we compare what Peter said with what happens when the people in Samaria come to faith in Christ, something different seems to have occurred. In Acts 8:14-17, we read, “Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.” So, here we have people who have believed and been baptized, yet they still haven’t received the Holy Spirit. Peter and John come down, lay their hands on them, and they receive the Holy Spirit. What is going on there? We Anglicans like that passage because we see it as an example of confirmation by a Bishop. But why didn’t these Samaritans receive the Holy Spirit when they were baptized as Peter had taught on the day of Pentecost? And why was it necessary for the apostles to lay their hands on them to receive the Holy Spirit? On the day of Pentecost, Peter doesn’t say, “Repent and be baptized and have an apostle lay his hands on you, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
And then there are the cases of the household of Cornelius. When did they receive the Holy Spirit? Luke records their reception of the Holy Spirit in this way in Acts 10:44-48:
While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord and then prayed they him to tarry certain days.
Now, we have a real problem. I thought Peter said the order was repent and be baptized, and then you would receive the Holy Ghost. These people receive the Holy Ghost, believe, and then they are baptized. When Peter later describes what happened at the household of Cornelius, he says in Acts 11:15-18:
And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning. Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God? When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.
Peter says that what happened to the household of Cornelius was like what had happened to them on the day of Pentecost. Still, the order of faith, repentance, baptism, and the reception of the Holy Spirit appears to differ. In the case of Cornelius, they receive the Holy Spirit, they believe, and then they are baptized.
I gave this as one illustration: when we get meticulous about certain things in the book of Acts, we run into problems. But if we keep in mind that the main thrust of the book of Acts is the expansion of the kingdom, it helps us to clear up some of these difficulties and keeps us on track. There are explanations for these differences in how people received the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, and they all relate to the expansion of the kingdom of God. Every one of these instances in the book of Acts of people receiving the Holy Spirit was unique in the history of the Church. What happened to the apostles on the day of Pentecost was unique. They were kind of in that in-between stage. They had already believed in Jesus, but the Holy Spirit had not yet been poured out. So, there were people who had already believed in Christ before the Holy Spirit came to the Church. But the 3,000 on the day of Pentecost had not been believers. When they believed on the day of Pentecost, they became the typical pattern for these New Testament times. They believed, were baptized, received the Holy Spirit, and were united to the Church. From this point on, all the baptized are baptized by the Holy Spirit into this new realm, the kingdom of God.
When we get to the Samaritans and the Gentiles, something different is happening. To understand this, we need to go back to the commission that Jesus gave his disciples as it is recorded for us in Acts 1:8: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Now, let us look at the different groups that are described here. The disciples will be witnesses to the people in Jerusalem and all Judea. The people who heard the gospel in these places would be Jews. So, the converts on the day of Pentecost and those that we read about until we get to Acts 8 and the Samaritans would be primarily Jews. So, Jews would be a part of the kingdom. But there would be no problem accepting that truth. They were the chosen people to begin with. Of course, they would be part of the kingdom of God. But when we get to the Samaritans, we have a different group of people altogether. The Samaritans were heterodox in their theology at best and heretics at worst. They had a rival form of worship and a rival place of worship. Even Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, “You don’t know what you worship. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews.” The Samaritans weren’t pure Jews, racially, ethnically, or religiously. That they would be included in the kingdom of God would have been something of a surprise. But they had received the message about the kingdom of God from Philip and had been baptized. Many people think that the reason they had not yet received the Holy Spirit was that the apostles had to see for themselves that God was indeed including the Samaritans in the kingdom of God.
And then, the last group that would be included in the kingdom of God would be the Gentiles, “the uttermost part of the earth” group. This part of the story reveals how much of God’s plan for the salvation of the world the disciples still did not understand. Even after Jesus had taught them for forty days, there were still so many things they didn’t know about the kingdom of God and who would be included in it. The question they asked before his ascension revealed how little they understood. They asked, “Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Did they still not understand what kind of kingdom this kingdom of God would be? Did they still not realize that the role of Israel in the world would not be the same as what it once was? Did they still not understand that the Gentiles would be part of this plan of the salvation of the world? One thing is for sure: by the time we get to Acts 10, it doesn’t seem that the apostles have understood God’s plan for the Gentiles, even though he had told them to go into the world and preach the gospel to everyone. So much of the book of Acts is taken up with Jewish Christians arguing about, “What do we do with the Gentiles?” It takes nothing less than a miraculous vision to get Peter to go to a Gentile house and preach the gospel to him. He is still under the impression that even to enter the home of a Gentile would make him automatically unclean. So, why does the Holy Spirit fall on the household of Cornelius in this miraculous way, the same miraculous way that it happened to the apostles? These Jewish Christians had to be shown. Peter had to be shown, visibly shown, that the Gentiles were now just as much a part of the kingdom of God as any Jew. Peter had to be demonstrated so that then he could go back to the Jews and tell them—it’s true—they have received the Holy Spirit just the same as we have. So, the differences we have about the order and manner in which the Holy Spirit was received in the book of Acts were for the benefit of those receiving the Holy Spirit and for those who were witnessing their reception of the Holy Spirit. These were unique situations, designed to show that the kingdom of God was advancing among all people worldwide. The Holy Spirit is given in these unique ways to demonstrate that the Holy Spirit has the power to gather people as different as Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles into the kingdom of God.
That is what is important about the book of Acts, and that is what is important about the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. The book of Acts is about the advancement of the kingdom of God. All the signs and miracles performed in the power of the Holy Spirit are designed for one purpose—to advance the kingdom of God around the world. The miracle of the disciples speaking foreign languages they did not know was for one purpose: to advance the kingdom of God. From a handful of people in the upper room to the capital of the Roman Empire, the kingdom of God was advancing, and it was for that reason that the Holy Spirit was given to the Church—to advance the kingdom of God.
If we go back and read the conclusion of the gospel of Luke, we see this emphasis on the need for power so that the kingdom of God would advance.
In Luke 24:44-49, we find this account of our Lord’s last words to his disciples before his ascension:
And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, And said unto them, Thus it is written. Thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.
Notice that just before our Lord ascends, he tells his disciples that he is sending them to preach repentance and remission of sins all over the world. But he tells them not to go just yet. They don’t have the power to overcome a world that will be hostile to their message. They must wait for the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon them so that they can have that power Then, as Luke retells the story in Acts 1, our Lord says, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” The Holy Spirit is given to the church for power--specifically, for power in preaching. They are going into the world to preach the gospel of the kingdom, and they will need the power of the Holy Spirit, or they will fall flat on their faces.
In all our debates about the work of the Holy Spirit, we forget the primary reason He was given to the Church from the beginning: to provide the Church with power—power to persuade people to become members of the kingdom of God. Without that power, no one could be persuaded to enter the kingdom of God, but with that power, even Samaritans, even Gentiles, even people like the Corinthians whom Paul described as fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves with humanity, thieves, the covetous, r drunkards, revilers, and extortioners can be persuaded to repent of their sins and become members of the kingdom of God.
The Church must seriously ask herself the question: Where is the power of the Holy Spirit in our time? As we look back over the centuries, we can see how the Holy Spirit worked so powerfully that even nations bowed before the gospel's power. Still, if we are honest with ourselves, we seem to lack the power of the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel. We must confess that we are not reaching the unchurched masses. Churches are just swapping members. We must ask ourselves if we have grieved the Holy Spirit. Have we sinned against the Holy Spirit in some way that has caused him to remove his power from us? Look at everything we have in our American churches. We have large, beautiful buildings. We have churches with massive youth centers and gymnasiums. We have every form of entertainment that we can use to attract people to our churches. And yet, few people come, and statistics show that the back doors of our churches are as wide open as the front doors—people come and then leave. Why? On the day of Pentecost, the church had so much less than we have, and the whole world was opposed to them. Yet the kingdom of God advanced without any advertisements or marketing tools. As I heard a preacher say years ago, “If you have to advertise your church, you are already confessing your spiritual powerlessness.” The disciples didn’t have to advertise their church on the day of Pentecost. They preached the kingdom of God, and 3,000 people were converted.
I began this message by asking a question. Why is the kingdom of God no longer advancing? The answer is simple. We stopped preaching the kingdom of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. We must rediscover what it means to preach the kingdom of God, and once we fully realize what the kingdom of God is, we must plead with God for the power of the Holy Spirit to preach it. Only then will Jews and all the nations come like a flood into the glorious kingdom of God. As Anglicans, we must try to bring people to the Biblical teaching about who the Holy Spirit is, what he does, and the impact he has when his power is truly present among a people. A proper understanding of the book of Acts will help us deal with many errors and, at the same time, show what the Holy Spirit genuinely does when he is in the midst of a people. Let us repent and seek the power of the Holy Spirit, so that the Church might once again be able to sing a hymn that we sang when I was a boy,
On to victory! On to victory!
Cries our great commander, “On!”
We’ll move at his command,
We’ll soon possess the land.
We no longer have that confidence, and with good reason. We lack the power of the Holy Spirit to possess the land. Let us plead with God earnestly day in and day out that the power of the Holy Spirit would be given to his church so that we can preach the kingdom of God, and nations will flow into it. Amen.