Impartial

Week 1: Day 1 Today 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, 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 into a series; its purpose is to provide context for the early church beginnings. It reminds the hearer of the Gospel of Luke and recaps message of the Gospel, which sets the stage for the early church as it summarizes the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Each week we will see and discuss a new miracle in each chapter of Acts. What I love about Acts is that these miracles do not stay on the pages of history: each miracle is something that God is doing in and through our lives and the lives of people around us every single day. My hope and my prayer is that your faith will be strengthened and you will see the power of God in a new and incredible way: one that comes to life, one that is not just located in history, but that is still empowering the people of God today to do miraculous things through Jesus Christ. Therefore, as we look at the introduction of Acts 1, Luke is showing us the miracle of Jesus Christ. I think we begin to take for granted the Christ story. I know I do anyways. My prayer for us today is that it hits us anew – it grips us to the depths of our beings that we have a God who planned from the beginning of time that he would send his son to save us. All the way from Genesis 12:3, God reveals his plan for the world. He calls Abram to leave his home and his family and says “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and by you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Again God restates this promise to King David in 2 Samuel 7:12-13: “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” God very well may begin by speaking literally of Solomon, who does indeed build God’s physical temple, but through the sons of Solomon, son of David, Jesus is born. And it is he, Jesus, Son of David, who reigns on the throne for eternity. As I began researching evidence that God’s plan always included Jesus and salvation of the whole earth, I found so many incredible prophecies. Some say there are as many as 337 Old Testament prophecies that look forward to the Messiah, but I was not about to verify all those. However, I did put together a chart that is located in Appendix 1. Please pull out this chart and look over all these prophecies. How does it make you feel that Jesus was foreshadowed from the beginning of Jewish history: What does it tell you about God? As I was awestruck at God’s foreshadowing and foretelling of the coming of His son, it hit me that every event from the beginning of history was molded by God to bring forth the person and life of Jesus. Really, the person of Jesus and his place in history is, in itself, a miracle. The idea that he would come from heaven, leave his throne, to live amongst us only to die a horrible death, astounds me. Please summarize or list the prophecies listed in numbers 14, 25, 27-34, 37, 39 on the chart: None of these things were surprises to him! He KNEW of the horrible tragedies that would befall him, and still he came. Why on earth would he come, knowing all these things he would have to endure? He came to be a sacrifice for our sin. Please fill in the blanks found in Isaiah 53:4-6 ESV: Surely he has borne our ___________ and carried our _____________; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our ___________________________; he was crushed for our _________________________; upon him was the chastisement that brought us _____________, and with his wounds we are ___________. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Even though He knew he would be persecuted, betrayed, tortured, and murdered, Jesus came because he loves you more than you can ever comprehend. Now, go back through the Scripture listed above and mark out every “our” or “we” you can find and replace it with “me,” “my” or “I.” There is no greater miracle than the love of Christ. He is our own personal miracle that we live every single day. He is the miracle that brings every good thing into our lives; he is the miracle that breaks our chains and sets us free from any guilt, any shame. Through the miracle of Christ, our days are full of peace and joy and our future full of hope and excitement. As we begin our journey through Acts, we look first to Christ because without him, without his sacrifice, there is nothing worth studying.