It’s pretty clear that Luke, the author of the gospel bearing his name, wrote Acts and intended for it to be a direct continuation of the Jesus story. It may even be good to think of Acts as Luke II, or together as the Luke-Acts story of Jesus.

Reading Acts is like jumping into a time machine and being transported back into the world of the early Christians. In fact (as you know I like to do), let’s do just that! Imagine you were there amongst the very first Christians (that is, followers of the Christ). You had just seen Jesus ascend into heaven a few days ago; but not before commanding all his followers to spread the good news (the gospel) throughout Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. Yet you weren’t to leave Jerusalem just yet, because Jesus promised that he would send a “helper”, who would be constantly with you and remind you of everything Jesus had taught.

So there you were waiting, with nothing else to rely on but Jesus’ words. What was going to happen? How was your small group of believers (a few hundred, at most) meant to change the entire world? Would Jesus make good on his promise? Will it actually work?

But we know how the story worked out. Sure enough, we see the Holy Spirit, God Himself, descend on all the believers that fateful day, and notice what results – the gospel bursts at the seams! All the believers begin speaking in tongues – or more specifically, the languages of everyone else in town! Talk about grabbing attention. Peter, the same disciple who only a few weeks before cowardly denied his relationship with Jesus three times, now stands up in front of the massive crowd and starts proclaiming Jesus as saviour of the world! Something big is going on here; something powerful is behind this movement.

Indeed, as the story in Acts develops, we see that at every major turning point, the Spirit is the driving force behind the forward movement of the gospel. Whenever we read that someone gets filled with the Spirit, the person is immediately filled with power, courage and boldness, usually to proclaim the gospel. We see a beautiful portrait of the Trinity at work: the Father working through His Spirit to spread salvation through His Son.

Acts shows us that the spread of the gospel and the establishment of the church is really God’s mission, and because it’s His, nothing can stop it! Not the Jewish leaders (“if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God” 5:39), not those bent on destroying the church like Saul of Tarsus (8:1-3), not political leaders like Herod (12:1-24), not religious or secular oppression from the Greeks (19:23-41), not even shipwrecks or snakes (ch27-28)! Nothing can stand in the way of the power of the gospel, because it’s completely God’s mission.

And with the promised coming of Jesus and the Spirit, God’s plan of salvation was now completely revealed; no longer will it be a mystery. Salvation through Jesus is for everyone, Jews and Gentiles, not just the children of Abraham, but every child of Adam! (Acts 11:18 is one of my favourite moments in the book.) Through our opened eyes, we can now see that this was God’s intention from the very beginning when He promised Abraham that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:3b). Through Jesus, descended from Abraham, God’s blessing of salvation has been extended to the whole world. And that’s why the gospel is such good news.

There are millions of lessons to learn from Acts, but let’s reflect on just a few:

• When you share the gospel with your friends, give money to missionaries, or evangelise in any way, do you feel like the success of the mission depends on your efforts? Never forget that the gospel began as, and will always continue to be, God’s mission - acted out by the Church as enabled by His Spirit, but still entirely God’s mission. That means that it’s not your mission or my mission. That means that we just have to faithfully do our part, and trust that God knows exactly what He’s doing. And that means that we don’t have to be timid or afraid about sharing the gospel, for the God of the universe is the one who saves.
  

• Salvation for the whole world came at a huge cost - the death of God’s Son. Yet that was how important it was to God, that the whole world could receive salvation through Jesus. We have been entrusted with the precious gospel news, meant for all people. What are we doing with it?