25 October 2025
Picking up directly from Luke's Gospel, this session traces the risen Jesus' forty days with His apostles - the convincing proofs that He was alive, His teaching on the kingdom of God, and His command to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit before the mission can even begin.
Editor's note: This article is a written summary based on the substance of Harry's Bible study on this passage. It is not a verbatim transcript, and while it aims to reflect the heart of the teaching faithfully, it cannot fully convey the warmth, care, and encouragement of the class itself.
Opening Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of your word and for the privilege of gathering together in the Name of your Son, Jesus Christ. As we open the Scriptures today, we ask that your Holy Spirit would illuminate our minds and soften our hearts, that we might hear your voice, grow in the knowledge of you, and be equipped to live and speak for Christ. We commit this time of study into your hands, in Jesus' Name, Amen.
Harry began with a short recap of the previous week's overview of Acts' theology: that God is the sovereign Creator who alone orders times and seasons; that Jesus stands at the centre of the narrative, with a strong focus on His name and His resurrection; and that Christianity, from Jesus' mission statement in Acts 1:8 onward, is mission from start to finish - a mission that begins with, is directed by, is the very means of conversion through, maintains unity by, and is expressed in ongoing prophecy through, the Holy Spirit. He noted there was more still to draw out as the class worked through the book.
The class then read the whole passage together, Acts 1:1-11 - Luke's account of Jesus' forty days of resurrection appearances, His command to wait for the Spirit, His answer about the timing of the kingdom, and His ascension, watched by two men in white who promise His return "in the same way." Harry's exposition that evening worked through verses 1-5 in detail, leaving verses 6-11 - the disciples' question about the kingdom, and the ascension itself - for the following week.
Acts opens by referring back to "my former book" - Luke's Gospel - about "all that Jesus began to do and to teach" (Acts 1:1). Harry pointed out that Luke's Gospel is careful to record not only what Jesus taught but what He did, for example the authoritative healing of a demon-possessed man in Capernaum (Luke 4:31-37). The two books deliberately dovetail: Luke's Gospel opens by addressing "most excellent Theophilus" - Theophilus meaning "friend of God," and "most excellent" a title used for high-ranking Roman officials, as it is later for Felix and Festus (Acts 23:26; 24:3; 26:25) - so that he might "know the certainty" of what he had been taught (Luke 1:1-4). Acts simply continues that same account.
Harry drew attention to Luke 24:36-53, where the risen Jesus opens the disciples' minds to understand the Scriptures, tells them that repentance and forgiveness must be preached in His name to all nations "beginning at Jerusalem," promises to "send what my Father has promised," and is then "taken up into heaven" while blessing them. Acts 1:2 fills in a detail found nowhere else in the New Testament: a period of forty days between the resurrection and the ascension, during which Jesus kept giving the apostles "instructions through the Holy Spirit." Harry noted that without Luke, we might easily assume - as the ending of Mark's Gospel or the Apostles' Creed can seem to suggest ("he rose again... he ascended into heaven") - that the ascension followed the resurrection almost immediately. Instead, the ascension is shown to be, alongside the resurrection, one of the two great acts by which God vindicated Jesus and seated Him at His own right hand (Acts 2:32-35).
During those forty days, Jesus "presented himself... and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive" (Acts 1:3). Harry linked this to the appearance recorded in Luke 24:36-44, where Jesus invites the startled disciples to touch His hands and feet - "a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have" - and then eats a piece of broiled fish in front of them, proof that the resurrection body is real and physical, not merely a vision. Some commentators count as many as ten resurrection appearances across the Gospels, from the women at the tomb through to the appearance to "the 500," with a further, later appearance to Saul of Tarsus still to come.
Throughout this period Jesus "spoke about the kingdom of God" - the same theme, Harry noted, that James D. G. Dunn calls the phrase that "characterises Jesus' teaching" throughout His ministry (e.g. Luke 4:43; 8:1; 9:1-2, 10-11). The apostles carried that same message forward through Acts (8:12; 14:22; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23), right down to the very last verse of the book, where Paul in Rome is still "proclaiming the kingdom of God" (28:31). Harry flagged this as a significant thread: the phrase "kingdom of God" runs right through Luke and Acts and beyond, yet is strikingly rare elsewhere in the New Testament - notably, Paul barely uses it in his own letters.
Jesus' command was specific:
"Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised... you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit." - Acts 1:4-5
Harry stressed that this is not some new departure from God's purposes for Israel, but their completion - echoing Jesus' own claim that He came "to fulfil," not abolish, the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17). The promise of the Spirit is rooted deep in the Old Testament, in passages like Ezekiel 36:27 and Joel 2:28-29 (which Peter will go on to quote at Pentecost, Acts 2:16-21), and it is repeated again within Acts itself, at 2:33 and 2:38-39, almost as though Luke is deliberately binding his two volumes together with the same promise.
Harry drew out a striking parallel: just as Jesus' own public ministry began only after He was anointed by the Spirit at the Jordan (Luke 4:18-19), so the church's mission could not begin until the apostles were likewise filled with the Spirit (Acts 2:4). John the Baptist's ministry stands as the hinge between the old era and the new - a thread Luke keeps picking up throughout Acts (1:5, 22; 10:37; 13:24; 18:25; 19:3-4). This, Harry explained, is why Jesus repeats the command to wait so insistently: without the gift of the Spirit, the apostles simply could not have carried out the mission entrusted to them. Waiting was not a delay to the mission - it was the necessary precondition for it.
The thread Harry kept returning to was dependence. Jesus does not send the apostles out and leave them to their own resourcefulness; He tells them, in effect, not to move a step in their own strength. The same Spirit who anointed Jesus for His own ministry is the Spirit the church must wait for and rely on for hers. Harry's point for the class was as much about us as about the apostles: God's work is never advanced by good intentions or natural ability alone, but by waiting on, and being filled with, the Holy Spirit - a theme this study will keep meeting all the way through Acts.
Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you that we are gathered here in the Name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Father, by the power of your Holy Spirit, open up our hearts and our minds that we might understand your words in the Scriptures and get to know you more, that we might live holy lives, and that we might share the Good News about Jesus in the power of your Spirit, for the building of your Church and the extending of your Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven, in and through Jesus Christ, Amen.
