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Podcast: 5 Strange Stories in the Book of Acts (Nancy Guthrie)

July 01, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Amazing but Confusing

In this episode, Nancy Guthrie answers a series of questions about some of the amazing but at times confusing stories in the book of Acts. What exactly happened at Pentecost and why was that so important? What was so bad about what Ananias and Sapphira did that led God to put them both to death? What was up with Peter's vision of a bunch of animals on a sheet coming down from heaven? And who was that Macedonian man who called to Paul in a dream and asked him to come to help him?

Saved

Saved

Nancy Guthrie

Saved, by bestselling author Nancy Guthrie, gives individuals and small groups a friendly, theologically reliable, and robust guide to understanding the book of Acts.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:23 - What You Should Know about Acts before Reading It

Matt Tully
Nancy, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Nancy Guthrie
So happy to be with you.

Matt Tully
Today we’re going to spend some time walking through some of maybe the most confusing or odd stories or scenes from the book of Acts. It’s this incredible book of the Bible that is so foundational for who we are as the church, the people of God, and we see the story of Jesus extended beyond his actual earthly life and ministry. But before we get into some of those really interesting stories, I wonder if you could help us orient a little bit around the book as a whole. What are some of the major things that you would say we should know about Acts before we jump in?

Nancy Guthrie
Ah, so many things. And by the way, this is the longest book in the New Testament, so you’ve got to be really ready to dive in and stay there for a while.

Matt Tully
Would you go so far as to say that we really should think of Luke and Acts as one book?

Nancy Guthrie
Oh, definitely. Think of Luke’s two-part work, and the first part would be the Gospel of Luke, and then the second part would be the book of Acts. It’s such a unique book. The Gospels have a lot of historical narrative. The book of Acts is primarily historical narrative, and it’s telling us about such a unique time in redemptive history. Jesus has come; we see him ascend in the very first chapter. We read about him, from heaven, pouring out the Holy Spirit on his people in chapter two. And then he is at work through his apostles in so many interesting ways. And I think that actually brings up one of the challenges as we read the book of Acts because most of us have a tendency with the Bible where we read something that happens in the Bible, and we want to jump immediately to applying that to ourselves.

Matt Tully
Practical application.

Nancy Guthrie
Practical application. Which is not a terrible instinct because we want to apply it to us, but I think it’s important, when we’re in the book of Acts, to recognize this was a very unique time in redemptive history, as these twelve witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus, the apostles, were at work preaching the word, and the church is being established. It was also a unique time in redemptive history in that as most of these first converts are Jewish, they’re taking hold of Christ as being the fulfillment of everything in the Old Testament—that he’s fulfilled the law in his righteous life. But he’s also fulfilled all of the ceremonial law and so many other Old Testament things that are so much a part of their life. Things like circumcision or the festivals that they have throughout the year or their diet. There are so many things that are a big part of the Jewish way of life that we see come to the fore in the book of Acts as they are working out whether or not it is okay to still do these things.

Matt Tully
What just happened? And how does that change everything for us?

Nancy Guthrie
Exactly. And we actually see a mix. We see Paul affirm continuing to do some of these things from the Old Testament time, but then also wanting to be very clear that circumcision is no longer required to become joined to Chris and to be one of his people. So Acts is unique in that way. We can’t just take everything we read in the book of Acts, things that they do, and then say that’s the way we should do it. For example, in the very beginning when they cast lots to pick a replacement for Judas. You can’t just go, Okay, so this is how I’m going to start making decisions. I’m going to roll the die. Yes, it’s how they did it. But as is the case, actually, many times in this book, we see things and we cannot necessarily say, Okay, then that’s the way we should do it. And as we see the church take shape in the way they do things, we can’t necessarily say, Okay, then that’s the way we should do things. We just have a record of the way they did that. And so we can’t immediately make that jump.

Matt Tully
Acts is this unique pivot point, it seems like, in salvation history. There’s so much transition happening as we go from old covenant to new covenant.

Nancy Guthrie
And it’s so centered on this foundational verse. If there’s one verse that’s going to help us make sense of the book of Acts, it’s Acts 1:8. First of all, we have to understand who he’s saying it to; he’s saying it to these twelve apostles. He says that the Holy Spirit’s going to come upon them and give them power, and he says, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when we have that verse, we essentially have an outline of the whole book. The book is going to follow that outline.

06:30 - The Structure of the Book of Acts

Matt Tully
I wanted to get to that—the structure, the progression of the stories of the book of Acts actually reflect something about the gospel itself.

Nancy Guthrie
It totally does. And when we read that—“you will be my witnesses”—this is a good example of reading something and maybe we want to immediately make that about us. But he’s speaking uniquely to the apostles. By witnesses, we think of the way I would have used the word witness growing up in church. We’re all witnesses, we give our testimony about Christ changing our life. But I think we should think when we read that in Acts 1:8, we should think more about a witness in a courtroom.

Matt Tully
These were actual witnesses.

Nancy Guthrie
What does a witness in a courtroom do? A witness in a courtroom says, This is what I saw. And that’s the case for these apostles. That’s part of what was required to be an apostle, that they had been with Jesus, and particularly that they had seen the risen Jesus. And that’s at the heart in the book of Acts of what they are witnesses to. We’re not just making this up. We actually saw the resurrected Jesus, and that is the testimony that they’re taking out into the world. And they’ve got a particular progression that taking that message is going to take. It’s going to begin there in Jerusalem, and then it’s going to expand, and we see that in chapters 8 through 11. And then they take the gospel into Samaria, and then they take the gospel to Antioch. And they’re beginning to share the gospel not just with Jews, not just with Samaritans, not just with God-fearing Gentiles, but at that point they’re taking the gospel to pagan Gentiles. And when we read in Acts when it says “to the end of the earth,” I think that’s another thing that maybe sometimes we think, Okay, that’s still a call for us to take the gospel to the end of the earth. But actually, when we get to the end of the book of Acts, that’s been accomplished. Paul takes the gospel to Rome, which would have been considered the end of the earth—the far, outreaching area. And from Rome it’s going to go so many places. And so that one verse gives us a way to think about the structure of the book of Acts, it helps to make sense of it, and it helps us to see the apostles that are at the heart of the story of Acts. This statement that Jesus says, notice he doesn’t say, Here’s what I need you to do, guys, like he’s asking them to do this, or even instructing them to do this. His statement is, “you will be my witnesses.” And that is exactly what happens. And when we say that we can’t immediately apply it to ourselves, maybe we don’t want to go too quickly to ourselves, but we can get to ourselves because here’s the import of that verse for us. The apostles were witnesses to the risen Lord Jesus. And what we have in our Bibles—in the Gospels and in the Epistles and the rest of the New Testament—is their written record as eyewitnesses. They heard Jesus teaching. They witnessed his death and resurrection. And so what does that mean for us? If we aren’t witnesses that are meant to be taking the gospel to the end of the earth, what are we? Well, we are proclaimers. We are proclaimers of the apostolic witness. They have recorded for us what we most need to know. They have provided us with a sound record.

Matt Tully
A divinely inspired record.

Nancy Guthrie
A divinely inspired record, yes, through them of what we need most to know about the person and work of Christ. And we’re so grateful for it. And so what are we? We’re proclaimers. And we do want to take that to every person, every nation.

10:32 - The Acts of the Enthroned Lord Jesus

Matt Tully
Traditionally with the book of Acts, the name that we’ve given to this book is The Acts of the Apostles. And others have said that maybe a better name for this book would be The Acts of the Holy Spirit. But you argue that maybe it would be even be better to call it The Acts of the Enthroned Lord Jesus. I wonder if you could just briefly unpack that. Why would you argue that maybe is perhaps the best way to think about this?

Nancy Guthrie
And I can’t take complete credit for that. There are a number of people I get that from. I’ve been helped by Patrick Schreiner, by Richard Gaffin, and by Alan Thompson. All of them have suggested that maybe The Acts of the Apostles might not be the best title for this book, but that it might actually be more about what Jesus is doing from the throne. And a reason for that is we’ve got the book of Luke—we talked about how it’s really a two-part book, a two-part work, certainly—and the way Acts begins is he says, “In my earlier book, I talked about what Jesus began to do and to teach.” And so there’s a sense by implication that now in the book of Acts, he’s going to tell us not Now I’m going to tell you what the apostles did and taught, but rather what Jesus continued to do through his apostles by his Holy Spirit, through the preached word in those early years of the ministry of the apostles.

12:00 - What Happened at Pentecost?

Matt Tully
So the first scene that I wanted to discuss with you is actually the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. So this is recorded in Acts 2, right at the very beginning of the book. And I wonder if you could just kind of set the stage for us. What’s going on in the early church at this time? And then help us understand what we’re seeing when we read about these flames of fire that come on people’s heads, and even the speaking in tongues that becomes dominant in this story.

Nancy Guthrie
Well, I think one thing that really helps us to get at what’s really happening at Pentecost is to even consider when it happens.

Matt Tully
What is Pentecost?

Nancy Guthrie
Pentecost was this festival or feast that the Israelites had celebrated ever since the instruction was given from it when Moses came down the mountain. And so at this feast they were celebrating. Another name for it is the Feast of Harvest. They’re celebrating the first fruits of a great harvest to come. We’ve already heard it. Now we’ve got a sense of what Pentecost is really about. Because what happens on this Pentecost? It’s like the fulfillment of what they have always been celebrating—a great harvest to come. Because what we witness on this Pentecost day is the Holy Spirit is poured out, which when Peter explains what’s happening, he goes back to Joel and—

Matt Tully
Peter preaches a sermon right after this happens.

Nancy Guthrie
Peter preaches a sermon to explain it. It’s really great because he’s saying, You’re wondering what’s happening here. No, they’re not drunk.

Matt Tully
That’s what they first assume.

Nancy Guthrie
Let me tell you What is happening here. And he goes to the book of Joel, and he quotes his prophecy and he says, This is exactly what’s happening! Joel had just said in the last day God was going to pour out his Spirit on all flesh. And toward what purpose did Joel say that was going to happen? “So that your sons and daughters will prophesy.” In other words, so that all of God’s people, not just those individuals called prophets, like in the Old Testament, but that all of God’s people would be able to articulate the gospel of Jesus Christ so that there would be a great harvest of souls becoming joined to Christ. And that’s exactly what happens on Pentecost. Peter stands up and he gives this sermon. He uses several Old Testament passages and explains that this is what’s happening. He’s explaining, This Jesus, whom you crucified, it actually happened as part of the plans and purposes of God.

Matt Tully
There are some incredible lines in there about God’s sovereign plan coming to fruition through the insane, sinful actions of humans.

Nancy Guthrie
The beautiful mystery of God’s sovereignty is articulated both in Acts 2 and Acts 4 that honestly, over my lifetime and the struggles I’ve had to try to understand God’s sovereignty in the midst of difficulties in my life, those two passages have been so significant. He’s saying cruel, evil men put him to death on the cross. But then in the same breath he says, “But this happened to fulfill the plan of God.” And you kind of scratch your head and go, Which was it? Because we want it to be one or the other. It was either something people did or it was something God did. No. What you have to understand is these evil men are responsible for it, and yet it’s all happened in the sovereign hand of God. And let me tell you why that matters, especially for those who may be listening who are suffering. As we try to make sense of suffering in our lives, this is one of the things we have to struggle through. We have to say, Okay, God, did you cause this? Did you allow this? We just have to wrangle with the sovereignty of God. And there are so many things in this world that happen that are so hard and so dark. We cannot imagine that anything good could come out of them. And this is where we need to see the cross. And we need to see that God actually intended the cross. Because on the cross, what we see is the greatest evil in the world. There’s nothing more evil than to take the pure and holy Son of God and to nail him to a Roman cross. That’s the most evil deed that ever happened. And yet these two passages in Acts show us that actually, this was fully in the plan of God, and it was actually maybe the best thing that ever happened in the world. It accomplished the greatest good in the world, which was the salvation of sinners. And the reason that matters for people who are suffering is we can look to the cross and we can say, *Okay, if God could not only use but intend something as hard and dark as the suffering and death of his own Son on the cross to accomplish his sovereign and good purposes in the world, then maybe I can begin to believe that this thing in my life that I can’t see anything good could ever come from it, but maybe I can begin to believe that actually in God’s sovereign plan and purpose he could accomplish something good out of that.

Matt Tully
The truth of Good Friday can be the truth for all of us for all of our days.

Nancy Guthrie
That’s a great way to say it.

17:51 - Ananias and Sapphira

Matt Tully
Let’s just go to another scene in this incredible book. Jumping ahead to Acts 5, where we hear the story of Ananias and Sapphira. How would you describe this couple? Are they scoundrels? Are they misunderstood? Are they just unwise and foolish? How would you characterize them?

Nancy Guthrie
Well, the first thing I have to say is to me the fact that this story—imagine all of the things that must have been happening in the church. At the end of chapter 2, we read that on that Pentecost Sunday 3,000 souls.

Matt Tully
Yeah. There’s a lot of people all over the place.

Nancy Guthrie
A lot of people. And yet Luke is going to take time to tell us here about this particular couple.

Matt Tully
And not in the best way.

Nancy Guthrie
Not in the best way. But see, that’s where I think to myself, This authenticates the record. If somebody’s going to make up a story or write a book to try to convince people that Jesus was the Christ and these are his people and you must become a part of these people, why would you ever put this right up front—the story of these two people? So I appreciate that. I also think Luke’s doing a couple of things. Actually, I think it was Patrick Schreiner in one of his books on the book of Acts that he pointed out that, actually, if we look at the book of Luke and Acts together, we see Luke is often very concerned about how money is handled. He writes a lot about the rich and money. And once I saw that, then it made me think, Okay, that’s part of what he has here. We’re going to see later that there’s going to be those people who are making money on this girl who has an evil spirit. Remember that in Ephesus? And they’re like, Hey, you’re ruining our silver idol-making business. Or then we’re going to see this Jewish magician who’s basically selling himself as some great truth teller. He's a magician, but he’s making money off of it.

Matt Tully
It’s a theme that he has an interest in.

Nancy Guthrie
I think so. But I think specifically about these two, think about that we’re reading about the establishment of the church, and we read some incredible things right there at the end of chapter 2 of Acts. They’ve got everything in common.

Matt Tully
It’s almost a kind of idyllic presentation right there at the end of 2, but then quickly things start to deteriorate.

Nancy Guthrie
I think we should see this in the context of threats, that there are both external threats and internal threats to this newborn church. There’s the external threats of the Romans, the external threats of the religious leaders. Because right before this story, we see Peter and John, and they are arrested and then let go. Then, they’re arrested and beaten, let go, and given these strict instructions: Don’t be teaching. And then they say, Well, we can’t help it. We cannot but speak of Jesus. So there are all these external threats, but I think what Ananias and Sapphira show us is there’s also the internal threat, which we probably shouldn’t be surprised because yes, these people have taken hold of Christ, but there is so much sanctifying work to be done.

Matt Tully
So would you say that we should see Ananias and Sapphira as true believers who just made a very bad decision?

Nancy Guthrie
I think what we would have to say is, and I think this is the case in numerous stories we read in the book of Acts, there are some things about people’s personal state of being in or out, of whether or not they have been made alive or not, I think sometimes we can’t exactly see. I can think of several characters throughout the story. It’s not immediately obvious. And so I just think a general thing, as we study the Bible, is that you and I want to nail that down. And if the Bible doesn’t go to great pains to make that clear, maybe that’s not the main thing. And so we look at the text and we say, Well, what is the main thing? And I think an issue here is hypocrisy, because that’s really the deal. There’s some greed there, I think, but it’s hypocrisy.

Matt Tully
Remind us of the story.

Nancy Guthrie
So all these people are selling their possessions and throwing the money in the pool to meet their needs. And nobody has to. It’s all voluntary. In the previous chapter, we read that Barnabas is doing this. He’s got this piece of land, and he sells it and he puts it in the pot, so it meets the needs of others. But then here, Ananias and Sapphira sell off a piece of land, and they bring just part of the money. And here’s the thing: nobody told them they had to bring all of it. It wasn’t insisted that they bring it all. The issue was that they misrepresented their gift. They’re asked specifically, Did you get such and such a price? And they lie.

Matt Tully
They must have portrayed it as, Hey, here’s all the proceeds from this land. When really, they had held some back.

Nancy Guthrie
They misrepresented. Which, I don’t know, I think to myself, Don’t we all do that all the time to try to appear more spiritual than we really are?

Matt Tully
It’s all about appearances. It’s like they’re trying to impress the Christian community that they’re in. And when you kind of see it in that view—they’re trying to be something in someone’s mind that they’re not in a spiritual way—that is a temptation for all of us.

Nancy Guthrie
And so let’s think about this new church. What are they going to take away and learn from this? I think the writer of Hebrews would say it this way: it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Matt Tully
Because God strikes them dead, in case you didn’t know the end of the story. One at a time in this really intense, dramatic way.

Nancy Guthrie
I think we’re meant to see, with where we are in the story, that God takes the integrity of his people and the integrity of those who take on his name very seriously. So this would have gotten everyone’s attention very quickly how seriously God takes the integrity of his people.

24:03 - Peter’s Vision of a Sheet and Animals

Matt Tully
It kind of gives a lot more weight to the idea of counting the cost. If you say you’re going to follow Christ, understand what that means. Don’t do that lightly, thinking that we can just claim his name flippantly. Let’s jump ahead to Acts 10, where Peter has this vision of a sheet coming down from the sky that has a bunch of animals in it. It’s again, probably the most perplexing, the most odd story that we might read in the book of Acts. Visions, in general, in the Bible can be a little bit perplexing, but I think one thing that you do so well, that we maybe all experience to some extent when we actually take time to slow down and study what’s going on and understand maybe with the help from other Christians who have studied these books more than we have, you start to understand why it is that we’re reading about these things. So help us understand the sheet and the animals.

Nancy Guthrie
Matt, I think the reason it’s weird to us is maybe when we were reading through the Bible earlier in that one-year effort to read through the Bible, we kind of remember Leviticus.

Matt Tully
Those are the chapters that might tend to be skipped.

Nancy Guthrie
We might have skimmed those because we were reading about all these things that made a person unclean. We read it way back there in Leviticus, and I think we kind of forget that throughout the rest of the Old Testament story and then into the New Testament story, those laws of what made a person ceremonially unclean and then how to become clean, those were all still in effect.

Matt Tully
Those mattered.

Nancy Guthrie
And in fact, the Pharisees had kind of intensified some of them. They had taken some things that were intended only for priests and made those laws for everyone. I think you and I can hardly imagine what it was like to live under those laws in regard to what we could eat, who we ate it with, and what we’ve been doing and what we’ve touched and just all of those things—the heavy weight of clean and unclean. And I think we also have a really hard time grasping how deeply ingrained those things were in these first Jewish believers.

Matt Tully
Their identities were so wrapped up in that.

Nancy Guthrie
They just never gave a thought to having a bacon and lettuce and tomato sandwich. I mean, they just had never done it. No shrimp cocktail. No. They just would never think of it. In fact, you can really see that in the way that Peter responds. So he has this vision of this sheet coming down, and on the sheet are all of the animals he can’t eat.

Matt Tully
All of the unclean animals.

Nancy Guthrie
All of the unclean animals.

Matt Tully
To even touch them would make him ceremonially unclean.

Nancy Guthrie
Yes. And he’s told, “Take and eat what God has made clean.” And he has to be told that three times, which I think is significant.

Matt Tully
Help us get into his mind. What do you think he felt in that moment when he wakes up from this vision?

Nancy Guthrie
We know what he felt. I think he felt pride, because he says, “By no means, Lord, for I never eat what is unclean.” And so you hear his pride: Are you kidding? I would never do that! And so God has to say it three times. Actually, we’ve heard that a lot of times in the Scriptures, haven’t we? When things are repeated three times, there’s a sense there. But I also think it’s just repeated three times because it is so deeply ingrained in him that these things are an offense to God. He has to be told three times to really hear it. But here’s one of the most interesting things I think about this story. So he’s told three times, and I think he'd been thinking in his mind that it’s all about food, because that’s what’s on the sheet.

Matt Tully
Right. That’s what we get stumped with, but it’s the next part that’s actually the most important part.

Nancy Guthrie
And here’s what’s amazing. This is so significant. God has broken from heaven to earth to make sure he understands this. And at the same time, God has broken the barrier between heaven and earth to speak to this man, Cornelius—this God-fearing Gentile who lives a little ways away. He has sent for Peter, and these people show up at the door and they ask him to go with them. And the thing is, Peter probably would’ve come up with some way to say no if he hadn’t just had that dream. But he’s just had that dream.

Matt Tully
Because this is a Gentile. He’s a centurion, so he’s an oppressor, essentially, of Israel.

Nancy Guthrie
Yeah, he’s got a lot of power. He’s over an Italian cohort, which would have been like 100 soldiers. But what we’re told specifically about him is he’s a devout man who feared God, with all his household. He gave alms generously to the people, and he prayed continually to God. So here is a man who’s honorable, but there’s a problem. InPeter’s view, he would still consider him unclean. So like, I still can’t like go to his house and have a meal with him. But it’s amazing. He’s had this dream, and so they invite him to go. He probably never would have gone, except he’s had the dream. And he goes with them. But what I found so amazing is when he gets there, he describes what happened to him, how he has had this vision. And what he says he has learned, he says, *God has shown me that I can call no person unclean. And I just think that’s so interesting. It just shows he’s interpreting the dream, because the dream’s actually all about food, but he’s putting two and two together because immediately as the dream ends, immediately they show up and they ask him to go to this Gentile’s house.

Matt Tully
He makes that connection.

Nancy Guthrie
He makes that connection: I can’t call this person unclean anymore. And then just all the little details. It says he stays there for several days. And as I think about that, I just think, well, that had to be new, to stay in the home of a Gentile for several days and eat their food. And how must this have been for those Gentiles? They’re actually being treated with love and respect by these Jews. I just think we really have to try to step into this scene. We have a hard time imagining that solid barrier between Jews and Gentiles. And so what we’re reading in this passage is really quite stunning and a huge turning point that honestly means everything. Unless you’re a Jewish person, this matters to you. This turn that the gospel is going out now to the Gentiles and that we’re welcome in and we don’t have to jump through any hoops except just repent and believe and we can get in on becoming joined to Jesus Christ, what good news.

Matt Tully
One other amazing thing about this story that always stands out to me is if you think about Peter here, he succeeds in this story. He hears what Jesus is telling him through this vision, and then he opens up to this Gentile. But then later we read from Paul that Paul has to confront Peter because he draws away from the Gentiles and he goes towards the circumcision party at this other context. He’s maybe forgotten the lesson that he should have learned here.

Nancy Guthrie
Well, once again here we have a credible story because I don’t know about you, Matt, maybe you’re always consistent in living out what you know to be true. Maybe you’re never influenced by who you’re around. But I think I have been, and so I just appreciate the honest record in the Bible about people we rightly hold in esteem, but we recognize they have feet of clay and that God is still at work in them. They still have something to learn. I still have a lot to learn. And I still have a lot of ways I need to change and a lot of ways that I need to actually live out what God has shown me, which was the case there for Peter.

32:08 - Human Strategy vs. God’s Plan

Matt Tully
Let’s turn to Acts 16. We have this little scene often referred to as the Macedonian call, and it’s a little bit confusing. We read of God preventing Paul and his companions from going to various places. Verse 7, for example, says, “And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them” (Acts 16:7). And so again, what’s happening here? Why would he prevent them from going to certain places? They’re trying to proclaim the gospel. And then we get this vision of a man from Macedonia that Paul has, where he’s pleading with Paul to come to him and preach the gospel to him. What’s that all about?

Nancy Guthrie
Well, I think one thing we need to see about the whole book of Acts is that Paul and Barnabas and Silas, they have a human strategy. They have a strategy.

Matt Tully
They’re thinking about how they’re going to do this.

Nancy Guthrie
They’re thinking about this, right? They’ve been instructed, they’re saying, We’re going to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, and they’ve got a strategy. They’re going from town to town. They’re actually picking out major population centers. They’re not just sharing the gospel; they’re planting churches with the intent that then those churches would send people out. So they’ve got this strategy of covering all of these major cities. And I think simply here at this point, they want to get to this certain territory. And this is good evidence for what I said earlier, how we read in Luke about what Jesus began to do, and we’re reading here about what he continued to do. What’s clear is Jesus is directing the mission. And you ask, Why does he not allow them? I don’t know. And they didn’t know. But what we do know is it was clear to them. We don’t even know, when it says “did not allow them,” you just kind of wonder, What does that mean? Was the road obstructed? We don’t know exactly how they determined it had been forbidden, because there was actually a second time. There was a previous time that said they were forbidden by the Holy spirit to speak the word in Asia. And then we get prevented by the Spirit of Jesus who doesn’t allow them. And so we don’t really know. Maybe the Spirit spoke to them directly. He does speak a lot in the book of Acts. Maybe it’s a less direct but unmistakable sense they have of what the Spirit’s desire is. Or maybe it’s just circumstances that are processed in light of God’s sovereignty, and they’re able to see, *Oh look, we can’t go that way. That must be the Spirit directing us. But then, yes, he has this supernatural dream about this man from Macedonia. He wasn’t planning on heading that direction.

Matt Tully
Where is Macedonia, for those of us living in the world today?

Nancy Guthrie
Are you asking me to describe the map?

Matt Tully
Isn’t modern day Greece?

Nancy Guthrie
Yes. And so here’s this man from Macedonia in his dream, and the man says, “Come help us.” And I wonder if Paul heard pleading, desperation in his voice when he says that. But what’s evident is he realizes it’s not simply a person bidding him to come, but that the way he receives this vision is that it is God calling him to go. And so he has this fresh clarity for where they’re going to head next with the gospel. And so this is when they go to Philippi and Thessalonica and Corinth and Athens. But what’s amazing then is they head to Ephesus, which is in Asia. The first one we heard where they wanted to go to Asia, and they were prevented from going. And so that’s kind of interesting because we see it wasn’t that they could never go there; it was actually just not yet. And evidently, God has a different plan in mind.

36:07 - The Snake Bite on Malta

Matt Tully
The last story I wanted to talk about with you is from Acts 28, near the end of the book of Acts. Paul’s on the island of Malta, he’s gathering firewood, and he gets bitten by this snake. He’s just come off of this shipwreck, so he’s been going through a lot recently.

Nancy Guthrie
That’s an understatement, but okay. I mean, the ship he was on fell apart. So you end up in the cold waters of the Mediterranean, hanging on to a piece of wood. That’s a bad day.

Matt Tully bad day.
Yeah, a real bad day. And then to be followed up by getting bitten by a snake while you’re trying to get warm.

Nancy Guthrie
So it’s bad, and then it gets worse.

Matt Tully
And the text actually emphasizes that the snake fastened on his hand. So you get this picture of just this thing hanging off of him, his fangs sunk deep within him, and everyone around him expects him to swell up and die. That’s what the text says. He’s going to swell up, fall to the ground, and probably die. But he doesn’t do that. He’s fine. Why does Luke include this seemingly kind of random story, but that is also very dramatic?

Nancy Guthrie
I don’t think you’d think it was so random if it was a viper that hooked onto your hand, Matt! Well, first of all, it includes it because it’s what happened. And I think with all of the detail we get here, maybe Luke is with them and maybe he’s actually witnessing all of this, because we get a lot of detail in all of this story. But I think what’s significantly happening here is, first of all, this viper comes out. They immediately think, Okay, this guy must have really been bad because like nobody survives a shipwreck only to be bitten by a snake—

Matt Tully
This is the people of Malta, right?

Nancy Guthrie
Yes, the people of Malta who are on the island—unless they have committed some terrible crime. And if you notice in the text in Acts 28:4, when it says “justice has not allowed him to live,” Justice is actually capitalized. And so they’re thinking about the Roman goddess, Justice, who ensured that criminals got what they deserved. And so this goddess has struck Paul through the means of this Viper. But what does Paul do? He shakes it off.

Matt Tully
A new meaning to the words “shake it off.”

Nancy Guthrie
Exactly. And then he’s fine, and so talk about a shift. They go from thinking he must be terrible and he’s being punished to he’s a god who is to be worshiped. And Paul, of course, is horrified, and he just begins to say, No, I am not a god! But you must turn to the living God. And then they spend a couple of months there, and we just have to imagine that Paul is doing what he does everywhere he goes, which is explaining the gospel to them. And by the time they leave, certainly many of them have taken hold of Christ over the three months that they’re there. And once again, Paul has gone somewhere, he’s preached the gospel, and people have experienced the saving power of God.

39:23 - Support for Studying the Book of Acts for Yourself

Matt Tully
Nancy, you’ve written this whole book on the book of Acts, Saved, and you’ve also written a number of other companion products that go along with that and help people to really dig into this book. We’ve just barely scratched the surface on the incredible stories and the deeper meaning and significance that underlies it. We can read through Acts in a very surface-level way and feel like we know some of the events that happened. But for so many of these, there’s a lot of significance buried underneath that. So just briefly tell us about how you’ve designed some of these resources to actually support our better understanding of this book.

Nancy Guthrie
My desire is always to get people into the Scriptures themselves. And so the way I see this working, I’ve created this personal Bible study. I’ve actually done that with a lot of my books and just sold them as downloads online from my own website. But I just love it that on this project, Crossway is actually publishing that personal Bible study so that people can buy a printed version of it. I love that it’s spiral bound, and those who use it will just love it. They’ll be able to open it up and lay it flat and write their answers to the questions. And so in that, those questions are just questions on the text. I’m encouraging people to understand what’s in the text and hopefully begin to see what’s underneath the text, to begin to see that text in the context of the larger story of the Bible. And so those are questions that people would complete before they read that chapter in the book or before they watch the video presentation. And the video is the exact same content of the book. So if you’re leading a group, maybe everybody wants to read the book or maybe we would rather just watch it on video, but that content would be the same. So they would have that personal Bible study. And then, also available, and you can download these from Crossway’s website or from my website, are just discussion questions. So these questions are a little bit different than the personal Bible study questions. These are questions that say let’s talk about what this means, and let’s talk about what the implications and application are of what we have learned in this passage of Acts. How does this expand our understanding specifically of how God is working out his plans for saving a people for himself? I think that is so much at the center of the book of Acts. And then there’s also a complete leader’s guide. I’ve done a leader’s guide for a number of products, and I love it when people who lead groups tell me how much they appreciate them.

Matt Tully
All the Bible study leaders are like, Thank you so much!

Nancy Guthrie
I’ve got all of the questions for the personal Bible study, and I provide suggested answers. I’m not saying the right answers, I’m saying suggested answers and what we’re going for. And the same thing with the discussion questions. I think it could be helpful to say, Here’s why we’ve asked this question, and what you might be kind of hoping to hear from participants. So I hope that those resources will really aid people in leading a study of the book of Acts.

Matt Tully
In addition to those printed resources, you also have worked with us on another season for your podcast with Crossway—Conversations on the Bible. We did a first season on the book of Revelation.

Nancy Guthrie
Which we called Blessed at the time, and now we’ve changed and expanded it.

Matt Tully
We rebranded it. But this season follows along with the book of Acts. Just briefly summarize, for those who aren’t familiar with what you did last time, how have you approached this podcast? What are you doing? How might that complement some of these other resources?

Nancy Guthrie
I know that when I’m getting ready to teach a book of the Bible, I’m looking for good sources who can help me to understand aspects of the book that might not just immediately be on the surface. And so what I’ve done for this podcast is that I just have conversations with people who really helped me understand aspects of the book of Acts. I sought out people who could answer questions that I think anybody who really wants to understand the book of Acts needs to get to the bottom of to answer those questions. For example, the Holy Spirit is very significant in the book of Acts. So I had a great conversation with Fred Sanders, who’s written the book The Holy Spirit: An Introduction, to understand just what happened there at Pentecost. I talked to Richard Gaffin and Tommy Keene. Richard Gaffin wrote Perspectives on Pentecost. I was talking earlier about the witnesses and that speaking about those apostles, not we are his witnesses, but those apostles were witnesses. Well, I got that from Richard Gaffin from reading Perspectives on Pentecost. I learned a great deal from him, and so it was a joy to get to talk to him. I realized as I got later into the book of Acts that these first Christians are taking the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus and King Jesus into this Roman kingdom where Caesar is king, and just that there’s a clash of kingdoms. It just caused me to think you really have to have some understanding of what that first century Roman world was like and what they were taking this gospel into, so I had a great conversation with Greg Lanier about that. I have to tell you I think that everyone’s favorite episode, however, is going to be I had a conversation with six of the seven women I dedicated the book to. I dedicated the book to female friends of mine who are crossing significant boundaries to take the gospel—the good news that Jesus saves—and I can just hardly describe it to you, Matt. My husband was listening in, and he came into my office with tears in his eyes after this conversation. And it’s not that it was sad, it was just so beautiful. I just asked each of them—and these are people who have ministry in primarily Muslim culture, and a friend who ministers to Afghans, and one who reaches women coming out of sex trafficking, and two different people (one in Italy and one in Latin America) who are taking the gospel into places that are very Roman Catholic or prosperity gospel. And I just asked them each, “Will you just tell me how you are seeing it true that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved? Is it still true? And if so, how are you seeing it?” And just their stories of God saving people today were so beautiful and so much fun to listen to. So that’ll be a favorite episode.

45:58 - God’s Plan to Save a People for Himself

Matt Tully
We look forward to that. We’ll have a link in the show notes where you can already subscribe to that show and start to listen as you have those interviews. Final question, Nancy. You spent a lot of time immersed in the Book of Acts, a really foundational book for our whole Bibles, not just the New Testament. This is the culmination of the story. As you think back over all of that study, are there just two or three things that stand out to you that cause you to say to yourself not just Wow, this is an amazing book, but Wow, this is an amazing God?

Nancy Guthrie
One thing I really came to see about the book of Acts is at its heart it’s showing us and it’s giving us an important chapter in the story of the outworking of God’s plans to save a people for himself from every tribe, tongue, and nation. We see it in context of the whole of the Bible story. He’s been working that out really ever since Genesis 3, how he’s going to save and bring back a people for himself, a bride for his Son. And the book of Acts is so significant because this is when it really begins reaching out to all peoples. Up to this point, the gospel and the promises of God have been so contained. Not completely, not absolutely, but generally contained for this one small people group. And in the book of Acts, it just explodes out into the world. And I wouldn’t know Christ if these things that are recorded in the book of Acts didn’t happen. And so there’s a personal significance to them. And so I love that about the book of Acts. I do love the way it gives credibility to the Bible, the way it doesn’t hide the flaws. Even the way it doesn’t answer all of our questions as tidy as we want to. That, to me, just undergirds that it is a solid, reliable account of what is happening. But it also gives me such confidence. If I think of one message of the book of Acts, I would summarize it this way: the gospel is unstoppable. There’s such constant opposition to the gospel from the very beginning in the book of Acts. And nothing can stop the gospel going forward. And we see again and again these apostles giving their life for the gospel because they so believe in the gospel message. They so believe in the kingdom, but mostly they cherish and love the King, and he’s worth everything to them. They get stoned and they get up and they go on to the next town to preach the gospel. And so it makes me want to be as tenacious in declaring the good news of the kingdom of God.

Matt Tully
Amen. Nancy, thank you for giving us this taste of this incredible book of the Bible, walking us through some of these kind of confusing stories, and creating these resources that are designed to help us all experience the promise of the book of Acts in a new way.

Nancy Guthrie
Thanks so much, Matt.

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