"Sacred Roots: The Book of Acts: The Kingdom of God Fills the Earth" by Finny Kuruvilla

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. This is Strength to Strength, and it's good to be here together with you again today. We're continuing another installment of the series that we call Sacred Roots: Rediscovering the Ancient Faith. And our vision for this series goes like this: to humbly and lovingly rediscover the history of God's people in order to reground, renew, and re-tether our faith and practice.

And our talk today, actually two talks we brought here for Brother Finney Coravilla from Boston. And the one this morning, the title this morning is called The Book of Acts. The Kingdom of God fills the earth. And the description for that is one of the themes of Jesus' preaching was the Kingdom of God. In the Book of Acts, as we watch as the Kingdom of God expands throughout the Roman Empire, this talk will explore the biblical theology, the Book of Acts, and practical principles of the Kingdom. And Brother Finney, thank you for being on here this morning. We're anticipating two talks by you today, so may God bless you with strength and the time to do that today.

I know that's quite a commitment. I'll read Finney's bio here. Finney Coravilla works for Eventide Investment Management, a values-based and faith-based investing firm. He's a physician who works at the intersection of business, investing, and healthcare. Finney, you're also the father of, is it eight children, I believe? Yep, it's eight. All right.

Finney is a founder and current board member of Sattler College, a Christian college based in downtown Boston. He has a keen interest in biblical interpretation and church history for the purpose of fostering a strong and vibrant church today. He writes about this topic in his book, King Jesus Claims His Church. His interests also included Anthonizing Christianity, Reformation, and Anabaptist history, and the Great Awakening of the 18th and 19th century.

Finney lives with his wife, Laura, and six sons and two daughters in the greater Boston area and is part of the church followers of the way. I had not seen that you had that on the end of your bio. So, all right. And so this is Finney's book right here, King Jesus Claims His Church. I believe this book came out in 2013. It was very impactful for me. And I believe, Brother Finney, that you are in the process of doing a second edition of that that'll be coming out here in 2025. We do have this on our bookstore, that book. By the way, for the month of December, we have a 10% discount on our store, so on our bookstore, so check that out.

We also have free shipping for orders of $45 or more. So that book is on there. Also, and also this book is part of our recommended reading for this series. And as we've mentioned in the past here, I'll just do it again. One of our main source materials for this series is the book, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Crider. So if you haven't got the book or listened to the interview on that book, we would encourage you to do that as we begin this series here. We'll probably be working on this series throughout 2025. Of course, here in 2025 is a 500-year anniversary of Anabaptism, and we'll be getting to that at some point in 2025 and continuing on up through church history.

So again, welcome here. It's good to have you here. One of the quotes that really is what's inspiring us to do this series or a quote maybe that kind of captures our burden is given by Stephen Brubaker from Faith Builders. He said this: "That a violently resourced organism for withstanding tsunamis of moral derogation is the Church of Jesus Christ.

A church anchored in 2,000 years of faithful doctrine and practice, a church receiving with gratitude the wisdom that precedes it, a church building on the grace of the past is in the best position to not only withstand but turn back the shadow of evil and injustice to prevail against the very gates of hell."

Stephen Brubaker quote. So I'm excited here today to again be meeting here to mine out the truth of the church history and specifically the Apostolic Church, the church where the apostles who gave the faith to us, the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, as it says there in Jude. And so I'm so excited to be here for these two talks and mine out these foundational things. And the church is so needed for our day today. So just to pause for a second, just to share several verses from Scripture, then we'll have prayer, then move right into your talk here, Finney. So yesterday I was struck with these verses in Psalm 6.

I'm sorry, Psalm 20, verse 6. And it goes like this: "Now this I know. The Lord, or Yahweh, gives victory to his anointed. He answers him from his heavenly sanctuary with the victorious power of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God."

And may this series, may these talks here today be one of those that just leads us towards God, that we can trust in him and what he is doing in the world through his church and not put trust in anything else.

So before we get started, let's just bow our heads for prayer. Father, we thank you today for giving us this opportunity to be together in this way. Thank you for all the ones who are on this call. We also ask a special blessing on the ones who will listen to this later. We know that many will. And Father, there's a desire in our day to understand who we are and our purpose as the body of Christ. And how can we be faithful? What does it look like to be part of your church and faithful to your commands from Scripture in our day? And Father, I've asked a special blessing on Finney as he minds out the truths of Scripture, as he teaches us on the Kingdom of God and other teachings here today.

Father, pray that you'll bless him in a special way, give him clarity of mind and strength for this, Father. Father, we thank you for salvation. We thank you for cleansing us from our sins, for adopting us into your family through reconciling us. We thank you for your kingdom that is here for us today that we can just put all our energies into. And Father, we also are so honored to be your partners in this work. And so be merciful to us today, Lord. Bless us in a special way and empower us by your Holy Spirit. And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen.

Again, thank you, Brother Finney, for being on here today. And it's all yours. All right. Well, thank you, Brother Bryant. And thanks for everyone who's joining here. It's great to be with Strength to Strength again. And it's been a real joy to watch how Strength to Strength has grown so much. And its influence is certainly something that is very encouraging to me. And I know a blessing to many people. And I often recommend it. So yeah, with that, let's begin our topic of the day here. So this is going to be a two-part talk. So in the morning, I'll be giving this talk. And then later on in the afternoon, the second part we'll be on is the Book of Acts intended to be descriptive or prescriptive.

But this first talk is really extremely foundational. And it's a talk that I'm glad you're here for because I think it's one that often when I hear people describe the Book of Acts, I hear various elements that are missing in their understanding.

So the Book of Acts, I've titled this talk as being about the Kingdom of God filling the earth. And I want to start by sharing a quote from Edgar Goodspeed. And it's a nice quote to open us up here. And it captures how exciting of a book Acts is.

He says this: "Where within 80 pages will be found such a varied series of exciting events: trials, riots, persecutions, escapes, martyrdoms, voyages, shipwrecks, rescues, set in that amazing panorama of the ancient world: Jerusalem, Antioch, Philippi, Corinth, Athens, Ephesus, Rome.

And with such scenery and settings: temples, courts, prisons, deserts, ships, barracks, theaters, has any opera such variety? A bewildering range of scenes and actions and of speeches passes before the eye of the historian. And in all of them, he sees the providential hand that has made and guided this great movement for the salvation of mankind."

Acts really is a remarkable book. And sometimes we read it so many times, we forget how dynamic and exciting of a story it is. It is more engaging than Moby Dick or Tale of Two Cities or some of these other epic novels that many people have read.

And of course, it's even more significant that embedded in Acts is the story of the Kingdom of God that comes to blossom. The author here, Goodspeed, points out how many exciting events and locales that Acts occurs. He doesn't even mention snake bites and famines and things like that that he could have added that make this a particularly compelling book just from a literary perspective. But of course, we're interested in this from a theological and sociological perspective as well.

Most of us know this, but in case you don't, Acts is Luke's second volume. So of course, volume one is the Gospel according to Luke, which is the third book of the New Testament. And he opens up in Acts 1:1 by saying, "The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and teach." And so right in the beginning, in this first verse here, he's alluding to the fact that this is part two. There was a former account, which was the Gospel that Luke had written.

We don't know hardly anything about who this Theophilus person is. Potentially, he's a patron. We don't know. So it's probably not especially profitable to speculate too much here. But nonetheless, it's written to this individual named Theophilus. And I want to point out something that a lot of people can miss, which is that it says here that the former account is that what Jesus began both to do and teach. And I think the implication of this is he's saying in this second volume that I'm writing, you're going to see what Jesus continued to do and teach. So volume one was the beginning of Jesus doing and teaching. Volume two is Jesus' continuation of that.

And I think this is very important here as we set the stage for what Acts is all about. And we're going to talk about even how we think about the title in a moment. But really, we need to think of this as being unified with volume one, the Gospel according to Acts, where Jesus has this earthly ministry. And as we move into volume two, we're going to see Jesus' heavenly ministry.

I also want to point out that because it is volume two, we can think of Acts as being as the similar or even the same genre as the Gospel according to Luke, as is always the case if you have a two-part series.

There is a similar genre between the two elements in the volumes. Okay. This is a quote from John Stott, which I think is really helpful, that reinforces some of this. He says, "Here, Luke tells us how he thinks of his two-volume work on the origins of Christianity, which constitutes approximately one quarter of the New Testament. He does not regard volume one as the—sorry, volume one is the typo there. Volume one is the story of Jesus Christ from his birth through his sufferings and death to his triumphant resurrection and ascension. And volume two is the story of the Church of Jesus Christ from its birth in Jerusalem through its sufferings by persecution to its triumphant conquest of Rome some 30 years later.

For the contrasting parallel he draws between his two volumes was not between Christ and his church, but between two stages of the ministry of the same Christ." So again, to reiterate, volume one, the Gospel according to Luke, is Jesus' earthly ministry. And volume two is Jesus' heavenly ministry that is being expressed through the church.

Stott goes on to say, "In his former book, he has written about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, since he was powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.

In this, his second book," he implies, "he will write about what Jesus continued to do and to teach after his ascension, especially through the apostles whose sermons and authenticating signs and wonders Luke will faithfully record. Thus, Jesus' ministry on earth, exercised personally and publicly, was followed by his ministry from heaven, exercised through his Holy Spirit by his apostles.

Moreover, the watershed between the two was the ascension. Not only did it conclude Luke's first book and introduce his second, but it terminated Jesus' earthly ministry and inaugurated his heavenly ministry." Okay. So again, I think this is a very helpful way to begin our journey through the Book of Acts here. Amen. Is to understand that this is Jesus expressing his ministry from heaven through the Holy Spirit by his apostles. And the dividing line between volume one and volume two is the ascension, where Jesus ascends into heaven.

Okay. So what is the book titled? And most of us in our English Bible will see Acts in big letters and then in little letters, it'll say, of the apostles. That's typical. In fact, that's actually very historically well attested. If you can go back and look at some of the early codices, codex is the word for the primitive form of a book where they were bound together, leaves were bound together. And even in the fourth century, Codex Sinaiticus calls the book by the title Acts of the Apostles, praxis apostolon in Greek. So those words, Acts of the Apostles, are very ancient. And there's a good reason why many of our Bibles today use that title, Acts of the Apostles, or we sometimes abbreviate that as Acts.

So that's good to know that this is something that has some historic support. I remember I used to work in Christian radio in the 1990s. And in the 90s, I remember hearing a sermon very well where the preacher said, "Actually, the book should be titled The Acts of the Holy Spirit."

And I remember that very vividly because it was somewhat of a paradigm shift for me to think about how so much of the Book of Acts is dependent on the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that it's not simply the powers of the apostles, their eloquence, their own natural gifts, but so much of Acts is dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit to empower and give the apostles the ability to do what they otherwise could not. And you will often hear, I'm sure many of you have heard, that Peter, when you read him in the Gospels, is a more halting character. He's a person who seems like he makes great statements, but often doesn't follow through.

Whereas you see him in the Book of Acts, and he's a much more commanding figure and in many ways more impressive. And that change is not because he's much older. It's because of the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so I think that that's a good help for us is to think about, okay, there is a significant role of the Holy Spirit. I track this down a little bit. And actually, John Chrysostom in the late fourth century, early fifth, says something very similar here. He says, "The Gospels are a history of what Christ did and said, but the acts of what that other comforter, John 14:16, in brackets here, said and did." So he's also pointing to the role of the Holy Spirit in Acts. I do think there's actually an even better way to bring this together, given that it is Jesus who is the primary actor in the Book of Acts. And I'm going to show you one more quote from John Stott, which I think is really helpful.

He says this, "Nevertheless, if the title, The Acts of the Apostles, overemphasizes the human element, the Acts of the Holy Spirit overemphasizes the divine, since it overlooks the apostles as the chief characters through whom the Spirit worked. It is also inconsistent with Luke's first verse, which implies that the acts and words he reports are those of the ascended Christ working through the Holy Spirit, who, as Luke knows, is the Spirit of Jesus, Acts 16:7.

The most accurate, though cumbersome title then, which does justice to Luke's own statement in verses one and two, would be something like the continuing words and deeds of Jesus by his Spirit through his apostles." Okay. So I know that's a lot, but I think it is very important for us to get this right as we begin here.

So there is good historic precedent for the title, Acts of the Apostles. Acts of the Holy Spirit reminds us that this is not mere human effort or flesh-driven effort here, but it is empowered by the Spirit. But just to use that title alone is also somewhat deficient in what we want to really capture here.

And I think this long mouthful of a title, even though it is long, is much more accurate here. The continuing words and deeds of Jesus by his Spirit through his apostles. So that's really the best way to think about the Book of Acts from the perspective of what should the most accurate title be. It's Jesus who is enacting his heavenly ministry by the Holy Spirit, whom he sends as the Spirit of Jesus, who acts through the apostles.

Okay. Let's now point out just one observation here that I think a lot of us know, but again, in case we don't, it's good to remember this. Luke himself has firsthand experience in what he writes. There are portions where he will simply use the third person, he, they, those kinds of words. But there are sections where he switches from third person to we. And the overwhelming understanding, both ancient and modern, is that when we encounter these we sections of the book, this is where Luke becomes present in that section. And he is a travel companion of Paul. I didn't put the verses up here, but we know from some of Paul's epistles that Luke is a person who is with him when he is in prison, when he is composing letters.

Apparently, Luke is visiting him. And so Luke, as his travel companion, pops up from time to time in Acts. And it's quite interesting to see when the account switches from third person into we.

Okay. Let's go now into the substance of the book and the content of the book. And the very first sentence lays out a theme. Now, Luke, he's a physician. He writes in very polished, quite fancy Greek. And his sentences tend to be quite long. But this is here an English translation of the first sentence in Acts. It spans three verses here. And I read a portion of it already, but I want to read the rest of it because it's very important how Luke lays it out.

He says this, "The former account I made oath theophilus of all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up, after he, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during 40 days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God."

Okay. So he's saying, "I wrote this former account to you, theophilus, about what Jesus began to do and teach." And then he had this period after the resurrection, before he was taken up, when he was with the apostles. And what's he doing during this period? He's giving them commandments. He's giving them instructions. He's presenting himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs.

We know the story of him appearing in the room and asking Thomas to touch his hands and his side. What is the speech content described as? It's described as speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. So in these 40 days where Jesus is with the apostles, there's something that's on his heart that he wants to talk to them about. And that topic is the kingdom of God. So right at the beginning, Luke is telling us that in these 40 days, Jesus is convincing them of his resurrection, giving them commands, and talking to them about the kingdom of God. Now, I find it fascinating, absolutely fascinating that the very first sentence has this expression, the kingdom of God.

And the very last sentence does the same expression, the kingdom of God. So the very last sentence in the whole book of Acts, it says this, "He," it's talking about Paul here, "lived there two whole years, lived in Rome at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance."

Okay. So hopefully you can see here that Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God in this period when he's with the disciples while he's on the earth for these 40 days after the resurrection, before the ascension. And that carries on through his apostles who are speaking about, surprise, surprise, the kingdom of God. So from the first verse to the last verse, this is how Luke is structuring the theme of what Jesus is speaking about and what Paul is speaking about there, which is obviously significant. First and last are very important.

Now, when Jesus says and talks to the disciples about the kingdom, the account goes on. And I want you to pay attention to what Jesus says here. So Luke says, "After being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, 'You have heard from me, for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.'

Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, 'Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?' And he said to them, 'It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth."

Okay. So he says, "I want you to wait in Jerusalem." And this promise that John the Baptist had mentioned, that there was water baptism, and now there's going to be this Holy Spirit baptism. So he says, "Wait for that." And the disciples have a question. Their question is, "Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" Now, that's a perfectly reasonable question because he had been talking for these 40 days about the kingdom. So I would probably ask that same question as well.

But I want you to notice what Jesus does not say in response. He does not chide them, and he doesn't say something like, "Oh, slow of heart. Oh, you of little faith." He doesn't say that. He doesn't say, "Don't you get it? I was just talking about a spiritual kingdom or going to heaven, or I'm not talking about Israel." He doesn't say any of those kinds of things.

He says, "You can't know the timing here. You're not going to understand the timing, but you're going to get this power from the Holy Spirit." So he's talking about the kingdom during these 40 days. The disciples naturally have this question about when this is all going to be happening. The kingdom Jesus described as being at hand in the Gospels.

And it's pretty clear that he's building an anticipation about this kingdom. And so they're like, "When are we going to see all this?" And again, he doesn't chide them for how they understand this restoration of the kingdom being. He says, "The timing, that's not for them to understand." And I want to go more into this deeply here because, again, I think this is very important to understand what's going on in Acts here.

Okay. So what we're going to see through the book of Acts is a lot of principles on how the kingdom functions. And when I was preparing this talk, I quickly ran out of space and time because there's just so much that can be said here on how the kingdom functions. I can only grab some highlights about how the kingdom is functioning. But hopefully, these are some of the more prominent highlights and ones that can serve us and the church well.

Okay. So I'm going to walk through some of these principles of the kingdom. And this will be intrinsically helpful to understand Acts. And it'll also, again, help us for later on this afternoon. So first, participation in the kingdom begins by waiting and praying. We saw that already. We saw that Jesus said that they need to wait in Jerusalem. And in fact, they have a 10-day prayer meeting that they have in the so-called upper room there in Jerusalem.

And after that meeting, then the Holy Spirit descends after those 10 days. But he says, "Wait." And I'll say here, I think this is a very difficult thing for us to do today. We're in a very busy, go-go society. It's hard for anyone to wait. We're naturally people who want to go out and do. But Jesus says, "Don't go out and evangelize. Don't go out and feed the poor. Don't go out and take care of the widows." He says, "No. Just sit and wait and pray."

And I think this is a very important principle that the kingdom in general is something that operates differently than the kingdoms of this world. The kingdoms of this world are more founded in activity than they are on waiting on God or waiting in general.

They're much more based on production and sometimes a frenetic production that idolizes the doing. And I think this is a very important principle that the kingdom often comes in ways that are contra our nature. And Jesus tells the disciples to wait and to pray. And this is a good challenge for all of us to remember here that this is how the kingdom comes, how it begins by waiting and by praying.

It's fascinating. And we could spend probably several sessions just on this topic. Prayer appears throughout Acts. In fact, it's found in 14 of the first 15 chapters of the book. There is no mistaking how vital the bringing down and the participation in the kingdom is on their knees. When the disciples and the apostles are confronted with challenge, they have learned that the fight is not with other people. The fight is on their knees as they wrestle with principalities and powers.

And so this participation is something that Jesus early on wants them to understand is that waiting and prayer are how the kingdom is brought to the earth. And of course, the kingdom's power comes with the Holy Spirit. This is something we alluded to earlier. It's found all throughout the book of Acts.

And it's so interesting when you look at the sweep of the Holy Spirit from Old Testament to New. The Spirit moves from wish to prophecy to reality. So there's a famous line from Moses when he's particularly discouraged. And he says, "Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them."

He is tired of the Israelites complaining and how they seemingly need to be flogged to move forward as they journey from Egypt into the promised land. And he would rather that all of God's people be prophets who have this internal drive, this internal animation that comes from the Holy Spirit inside of them. And so this is, at least at this stage in Numbers, this is Moses expressing a wish. In Joel 2:28, there's a description that God's Spirit will indeed be poured out on all people at some point in the future. And we don't have time to look at this in detail in the interest of time. But of course, in Acts 2, this is finally fulfilled where the Spirit is given to, and it's very explicit, to men, to women, to young, to old.

This is not reserved for the elite, but it is for all the members of the kingdom of God. And so this progression from wish, Moses's wish, to prophecy, to reality is something that is a great theme, a tremendous theme that Luke stresses again and again. Even in the Gospel according to Luke in volume one, he talks about the Holy Spirit more so than the other Gospel writers do.

We don't have time to talk too much about this. I just want to throw this out here. And maybe this can be a topic of future conversations. But the Spirit is not given in just one great event, but there are stages of the Spirit being given. So of course, first we see the Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism in volume one. And then there's a fascinating event where in John chapter 20, Jesus breathes on the apostles and he says, "Receive the Spirit."

This confuses people because they think that it's all just a one-time giving that happens in Acts 2, but that's not the case. Pentecost is the most well-known and most famous example of the Spirit descending on the people. But then there's also a miniature Pentecost that happens in Acts 10 with Cornelius and those who obey the word that Peter proclaims. And so we need to be nuanced here and careful. I'll probably develop some of this later on in how we think about the Holy Spirit. But certainly, the Holy Spirit, he is a vital player in the book of Acts and even in the Gospels. Of course, Jesus is conceived with the Holy Spirit. But we see the Spirit progress through these different stages.

After prayer and the giving of the Spirit, we see the kingdom going on the move. This is one of the great features of the authentic kingdom of God is that it is not stationary. It is on the move. The real kingdom is moving. It is conquering. It is expanding. It is very dynamic. And of course, I read this verse earlier. Many people have proposed that if you had to pick one verse to summarize the whole of the book of Acts, you'd probably pick this verse. I think that's right. Where Jesus says, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth."

And in fact, this is almost programmatic for how the book of Acts is structured. Chapters 1 to 7 of Acts is about Jerusalem. 8 to 12 is Judea and Samaria. And then 13 and beyond is the ends of the earth.

So this is a way, in a sense, that Jesus kind of gives the Great Commission again. Of course, the Great Commission is what people normally describe as Matthew 28. He gives that in fresh language in Acts 1, and we get to actually watch the Great Commission be fulfilled in these stages here in the book of Acts. So the kingdom is on the move. And it's a good challenge for us to ask, is the kingdom that we're experiencing on the move?

The kingdom encounters opposition. If we are living a life of comfort or ease and not experiencing opposition and hostility, there is something wrong. Jesus promised it, and we see it lived out in Acts. From the very beginning, the kingdom is opposed.

It is especially opposed by religious leaders. It's that case in the Gospel accounts where it's the Pharisees and the scribes. There is still opposition from them, of course, in Acts as well. But there's a new group, the Judaizers, that introduce new opposition in Acts.

It is very difficult. There is opposition that comes on all sides. It comes from secular authorities as well. There's beatings. There's death. This is from Herod, who kills Herod Agrippa I. Kills the Apostle James. Imprisonment. Paul's imprisoned in Philippi. He's imprisoned in Rome.

A defining characteristic of the kingdom is the opposition that it incurs. And if we are, as I said, living lives of ease, comparative of lack of opposition, there's something wrong.

In the face of all of this opposition, the kingdom holds together in unity. And this is a theme that I think is an underappreciated theme that Luke stresses at key moments in the book. He emphasizes how the church maintains unity. So Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council, there is this threat of division and this threat of basically there being a partitioning between how circumcision is understood and matters like that. And we see this so-called Jerusalem Council come together and establish a common doctrine and maintain unity in a very careful and purposeful way.

It is not okay for Jesus to be having his kingdom divided. Jesus said very clearly that a kingdom divided will not stand. And what we watch in real time in Acts is how the apostles fight for unity. And Paul as well, we won't get into this. He also attempts to bring unity in Acts 21 shortly before he is captured in Jerusalem.

We definitely don't have time to talk about this. I've been giving a lot of talks on this recently over the last couple of months. But the leadership structure that we see in Acts is especially conducive of unity. Again, this is beyond our scope today. But there is so much to be said here about how Luke wants us to understand that this is not a nice-to-have, but this is something worth fighting for, something that Jesus prayed for, of course, in the high priestly prayer in John 17.

We see that the kingdom is multi-ethnic. And this is something that becomes a point of difficulty even for the apostles where they wrestle with this. Ethnic division, tribalism, racism, whatever you want to call it, these are very typical human problems. These are undone. These are issues that we see the church prevail and triumph over. And the multi-ethnic nature of the kingdom is something that stretches way back even into the Old Testament, particularly the prophecies of Isaiah, where God says through Isaiah that the nations will come together and participate in the kingdom that is going to be established at Zion.

The curse of Babel is reversed by the blessing of Pentecost. We know at Babel, of course, this height of human pride that God curses that effort and divides them because he doesn't want all their sinful efforts to lead to a situation like happened before Noah's flood. And so they're unable to communicate because of these language differences that God introduces.

When we see a Pentecost, we see the reversal of that. We see people who could not communicate now able to communicate. So here, God is facilitating communication instead of thwarting communication. And so it is a beautiful example of how those first 11 chapters of Genesis where it's seemingly this downward spiral, we see the blessing of the Spirit and the blessing of Pentecost be reversed where now we have people of different languages, different tongues, different backgrounds, all integrated into this Jerusalem church.

So we should be asking ourselves about how we are doing with a multi-ethnic kingdom, which has been God's heart from the beginning. I also want to point this out that in Acts 11:26, we see a very striking account of how most of the missions activity moves from the center of Jerusalem to Antioch. Antioch is in Syria, which is in the news a lot these days. And it is here that the disciples are first called Christians. Before this event, the Christians or the followers of Jesus, I should say, were just a sect of Jews. But in Antioch, we know it was a very multi-ethnic city, and many people of different backgrounds were incorporated into the church.

And so it didn't work anymore to call these people Jews. And so they had to invent a new word. And so they invent this word Christian because you had people from Antioch of all different kinds of backgrounds.

Actually, I have it on my shelf here. There's a great book. If you haven't read this book, it's definitely worth reading. It's called The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark. And he has an excellent section in here about Antioch.

It is fascinating to read about how diverse and how hard life was in Syrian Antioch and how this was the fertile ground that made the Christians succeed, where we know from early Antioch that there were basically sections of the city that different ethnic groups would live in. So kind of like how if you go to a big city, it'll be Chinatown, and there'll be a section where it's more Hispanic, something like that. And what happens in Antioch is that these Christians come in, and where there was ethnic strife, there now is peace between these groups. And so you have people streaming into the church of all different ethnicities. And this is, as I said, why the disciples are given this name Christian here.

Okay. So I want to talk here about what's Christianity's relationship to Israel. And I mentioned this earlier in Acts 1 when the disciples are asking about when Jesus is going to restore the kingdom to Israel. And so this is in the Jerusalem Council, and it says this: "After they had become silent, James answered, saying, 'Men and brethren, listen to me.' Simon declared how God at the first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name. And with this, the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, 'After this, I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down. I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who are called by my name,' says the Lord who does all these things."

Such an amazing insight that James has here where he quotes from the book of Amos here. And he says that basically the tabernacle of David is in this ruinous state. You can picture the tabernacle that is knocked over, and it's in disrepair and falling down. And he says that what is happening now is this tabernacle is being rebuilt. And it is being rebuilt so that the rest of mankind, even the Gentiles, can participate here in this coming to God. And so this is why he concludes, James concludes, that the Gentiles can be incorporated into the church without having to become Jews, that there is now a pathway, and described here in verse 17, where the Gentiles can be fully incorporated in the church.

I'm going to share with you some quotes that I think you're joining here is worth the price of just these quotes. I mean, these quotes I'm going to share are just incredibly valuable on understanding the relationship between the church and Israel.

Christianity is restored true Israel. I'm going to read you from three different authors here. Christopher Wright says this: "In all of this, then, it is not a case of abolishing and replacing the realities of Israel in the Old Testament, but of taking them up into a greater reality in the Messiah.

Christ does not deprive the believing Jew of anything that belonged to Israel as God's people, nor does he give to the believing Gentile anything less than the full covenantal blessing and promise that was Israel. On the contrary, we share together in all of it and more in him and forever." So I like this concept that it's not that tabernacle of David is just being swept away. It's being rebuilt. And in this new structure here, in this true structure here, we have Jew and Gentile sharing together. Ben Wutherington says this: "Luke then is trying to show that Jew and Gentile united in Christ is the true Israel, not the new Israel." And he's trying to get at this idea that we don't want to say that God has abandoned what he said he would do in the Old Testament.

And it's not as if the church is this wholly new entity here. And in fact, the church is the true Israel, Jew and Gentile united together in the commonwealth under Jesus. A third quote, which I also find really helpful, this is from Samuel Waldron: "As the butterfly surpasses the caterpillar from which it emerges, so the church as the new Israel surpasses the old Israel. The butterfly does not exactly replace the caterpillar. It is the caterpillar in a new phase of existence. It is the same in the same way to speak of the church replacing Israel is to forget that the church is Israel in a newly reformed and expanded phase of existence. In a word, terminology like replacement theology or supercessionism disguises the biblical fact that the church is really the continuation of Israel."

I'm giving you these three different perspectives here, three different quotes that all hopefully capture the same or similar ideas here that Luke is portraying the church here articulated by James as this rebuilt tabernacle of David.

So because of this, the kingdom fulfills the promises of the Old Testament. Okay. And I think this is a very underappreciated and major theme of Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, and John, that the kingdom is fulfilling these promises of the Old Testament. Okay. So let's look through this and let's see how Luke does this in Acts. Okay. This is in Ezekiel 37. It says this: "The word of the Lord came to me, Son of Man," this is in Ezekiel, "take a stick and write on it for Judah and the people of Israel associated with him. Then take another stick and write on it for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and all the house of Israel associated with him.

And join them one to another into one stick that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, 'Will you not tell us what you mean by these?' say to them, 'Thus says the Lord God, behold, I'm about to take the stick of Joseph,' that is the hand of Ephraim, which is the northern tribes, and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah and make them one stick that they may be one in my hand. When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, 'Thus says the Lord God, behold, I will take the people of Israel from among the nations, sorry, from the nations among which they have gone and will gather them from all around and bring them to their own land.

And I will make them one nation in the land on the mountain of Israel. And one king shall be over them all. And they shall be no longer two nations and no longer divided into two kingdoms." So there's that kingdom language again.

One king, not over two kingdoms, but over one. And it is Israel and Judah reunited.

We have to go quickly here, but the Samaritans are what remain of the northern tribes. So if you know your Old Testament, you know that the northern tribes were exiled under Assyria. A small population of them, most of them were lost and are forever gone, but some were resettled back in Samaria, and they interbred with other people. So they were partly Israel, partly non-Israeli.

And what happens in Acts 8 is we know that Philip goes down to the Samaritans, and they are brought into the kingdom. The two sticks are joined in Acts chapter 8. And the Spirit is given to them as well as another sign of this unity that they have. In Isaiah 56, it describes the inclusion of foreigners and eunuchs. Very interesting. It says, "Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, 'The Lord will surely separate me from his people.' And let not the eunuch say, 'Behold, I'm a dry tree.' For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant.

I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off." Hopefully, you know where I'm going with this. Eunuch and foreigner, is that described as happening in the book of Acts that they're brought into the household of God? Of course, it is. That happens with the Ethiopian eunuch. So really important fulfillment here of these passages in Ezekiel and in Isaiah as the kingdom is incorporating the nations.