What the church needs for church planting and missions, God has provided in the book of Acts. Acts records the progress of the Word, and this article shows how this progress happened and what it means for the church today.

Source: Australian Presbyterian, 2001. 3 pages.

Acts Speaks Louder Faithful Planting of the Word always Produces Reaping, Somewhere, Sometime

The Acts of the Apostles is perhaps the most exciting book in the whole Bible. This is because it records the progress of the Word of God as the apostles and early Christians preached it throughout the first-century world (Acts 6:7; 8:4; 12:24; 13:49; 19:20). Luke’s theology in Acts has rightly been called Missionsgeschichte or missions-history.

Biblical Christianity has become a minority movement in the West today, struggling to survive against the resurgent world religions as well as against the pop­ular gods of relativism, materialism, hedo­nism, and selfism. Many of our congrega­tions are struggling and our ministers dis­mayed. How can Acts help us to regain confidence in the Word of the Lord, along with expectations for its growth?

First, the word will progress because it is the Lord’s own Word (Acts 6:7; 12:24; 13:49). It is uniquely the word of his grace (Acts 14:3; 20:32). God’s own presence and power accompany his word when and where it is faithfully proclaimed and lived. In the parable of the sower Jesus spoke of the progress of the word of God (Luke 8:11-15). As well as producing a great har­vest, the seed of the kingdom of God encountered the setbacks of humans, birds, and a harsh environment. In spite of this it took root and grew.

In the same way we may be assured that the spiritual forces of the world, the flesh and the devil will oppose our work but that God’s word will triumph against all its enemies. But the lesson of the para­ble is that faithful planting of God’s word will result in reaping, perhaps by others in another time and place (John 4:35-38).

The word, says Jesus, contains the principle of its own dynamic life and growth. It will make its own progress, through our efforts and apart from our efforts, and certainly without our understanding how it happens (Mark 4:26-28).

Second, the word will progress to the ends of the earth. Jesus promised this at the beginning of the Christian era and his promise remains in place today (Is. 49:6, Mark 13:10, Acts 1:8, 13:47). Although Acts records the spread of the Gospel from Jerusalem to Rome in the first century CE this is meant to be read symboli­cally, as only the first installment of the spread of God’s word around the world, generation after generation, from one people-group and culture to another, until Jesus returns. A multicultural Australia has surely come about in the plan of God, to offer us the rare opportunity and the immense challenge of implementing Jesus’ commission to be his witnesses among all the nations of the world.

Third, the progress of the word can only be explained by the enthronement of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33). Once he had accom­plished the work of sacrificial atonement through suffering and death for us, Jesus was exalted into God’s own presence. As the promised reward for his earthly mis­sion Jesus received the Spirit as his pos­session and poured him out upon all flesh in the last days.

This marked the beginning of the progress of his word (Acts 2:29-41). Among other things, this has meant that behind every successful missionary out­reach in the later history of the church there has always been at work the Christ of the cross, the empty tomb, and the heavenly throne through the agency of his outpoured Spirit. Nothing less is the theology of local and global evangelism.

Often in the background and sometimes in the foreground, the action of God is unmistakable throughout Acts. This has been called “the hidden or spiritual plot in the story of Acts” (Leland Ryken). Thus God liberates Peter (Acts 12) and com­missions Paul (Acts 26:15-18). God is the one who opens a door to the Gentiles and guides his witnesses on to the mainland of Europe (Acts 16:6-10). God it is who opens Lydia’s heart to respond to the Christian message (Acts 16:14), and as many as are ordained by God to eternal life believe (Acts 13:48). God uses human witnesses but he is the one who produces a lasting harvest through their efforts (1 Cor. 3:5-9).

In particular we should notice the presence, activity and freedom of the Holy Spirit in giving impetus to the word. “To trace the activity of the Spirit in Acts is to observe the progress of the word” (Brian Rosner). The Spirit’s main initiative in Acts is not in prophecy or tongues-speaking or even doing miracles — it is rather in guiding the Christian mis­sion, appointing and anointing its mis­sionaries, and giving success to their spo­ken witness (Acts 13:1-3, 49-52; 14:26­ 28; 20:28).

Fourth, the progress of the word is the responsibility and privilege of all the people of God. After the persecution surrounding the martyrdom of Stephen the apostles remained in Jerusalem but the other believers were scattered everywhere “proclaiming the word” (Acts 8:4).

Spreading the word is a people’s movement, as the phenomenal current growth of Christianity in China illustrates. The theme of the Lausanne world conference on evangelism in 1972 was “the preaching of the whole Christ by the whole people of God to the whole world”. Chosen and gifted evangelists and teach­ers spearhead the Gospel in new and established areas but the follow-up remains the ongoing work of the mem­bers of the churches.

Fifth, the progress of the word is the special province of the leaders of the churches. In the early days of the church the apostles were faced with a choice between spending their time and energy serving tables in humanitarian and social action or serving God’s word through preaching and prayer (Acts 6:1-4). They chose the latter, and as a direct result of their concentration on private prayer and public instruction the word spread, the numbers of believers in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and even a large number of the priests were obedient to the faith (Acts 6:7).

The great work of ministers is to make the word of God their priority in their preaching and pastoral programmes.

We must get beyond growth through technology and realise that the gospel doesn’t need to be marketed; it needs to be preached from the pulpit and brought personally to non-Christians in their own environment. Bill Hull

Sixth, we will learn about the progress of the word primarily from the book of Acts. This whole document is a progress report on the advance of Christianity in the first-century world. From slow begin­nings in Jerusalem (chapters 1 to 5), the word progresses from a Jewish to a Hellenistic context (chapters 6 to 15), mainly through the apostolic missionary work of Paul who pursues a vigorous out­reach to Jews and Gentiles, until the word reaches even to Rome, symbolically the heart of the pagan world.

Acts is where we should mine for strategies and methodologies for church growth in the modern world. A biblical and apostolic message demands biblical and apostolic methods to communicate it. Not any method will do but only those methods that harmonise with the apos­tolic pattern in Acts, that is methods that honour prayer, faith, suffering, the Holy Spirit, fellowship, Christ, holiness and the Scriptures (2 Cor 6:3-10). Entertainment forms of evangelism find no support in the book of Acts.

Seventh, the progress of the word will go on. The open ending to the book of Acts has often been noted (Acts 28:30-31). It leaves unfinished the story of the word’s progress from the times of the apostles to our own day and beyond.

Sometimes that progress has been rapid and spectacular, as in times and places of spiritual revival; sometimes it has been slow and almost imperceptible. But the final report is still being written, and that is where we come in as Australians and Presbyterians. The Lord Jesus is inviting us to commit ourselves to his word, trust in its integrity and power, and write its final chapters of actual progress where we live and work, or wherever he sends us.

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