“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:16-20
You might think it odd that I titled this weekly thought, The Acts of the Apostles,and then I printed the end of Matthew’s Gospel. That was on purpose. It is hard to imagine that just about a year ago we finished Matthew’s Gospel in our Sunday School class and we barely started into the book of Acts before things were shut down.
Because we only went a little beyond the first chapter of Acts, I am going to start over in Acts chapter 1 when we restart our Sunday School class on March 21st.
At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we read of the commission given to the eleven disciples as listed above. This commission was given to these leaders of the church to take the Gospel out and to make disciples of all nations. In the book of Acts, we see that commission being lived out as the Apostles did take that message to the ends of the earth.
In fact Acts 1:8 states, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” This is what we see in the book of Acts. We shorten the title of the book to ACTS, but if you look in your Bible the title of the book is, The Acts of the Apostles. It is the account of how the apostles spread Christianity as Jesus told them to do in Acts 1:8.
I hope that many of you are able to join us on the 21stas we begin our study of Acts. We will meet at 10am at the church building in the fellowship hall for our study. Audio of the class will also be posted on the church’s sermon audio page after the class.
In preparation for our study I encourage you to do a couple of things. First, read through the book of Acts in one setting if you are able. Try and get the big picture as we often go verse by verse or section by section in class. Second, you might want to go back and listen to some of our study in Matthew as a preparation for this study as well. Those audio files are on sermon audio.