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I) 1:5, “For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 7-8, “He said to them: “it is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
II) 2:4, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” 14-21, “Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: ‘Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 32. “God has raised the Jesus to life 38, ”
III) Acts 4:29-31; “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous sings and wonders through the name of your holy Servant, Jesus. After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”
IV) 5;3-4, “Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit …you have not lied to men but to God.” 9, “how could you agree to rest the Spirit of the Lord? Look..”
V) 6:3-4, “Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention for prayer and ministry of the word.” 10, “But they could not stand up against his (Steven’s) wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke.”
VI) 7:59, “While they were stoning him, Steven prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
VII) 8:14-23, “When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria has accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit has not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the Laying o of the apostless hands, he offerece them money and said, “give me also this ability so that everyone whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.” 29, “The Spirit told Phillip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” 39-40, When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Phillip away and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. Phillip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.”
VIII) 9:17-18, “Then Ananias went to the house and entered it., Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord – Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here – has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again.”
IX) 10:19, “While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Simon, three men are looking for you. So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with then, for I have sent them.”
X) 11:12-18, “The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved. As I began to speak, The Holy Spirit came on them as he has come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God? When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.” 27-30 “During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. …The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.”
XI) 13:2-4, “While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus.”
XII) 16:6-7, “Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “come over to Macedonia and help us. After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.”
XIII) 19:1-6, “While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we haven not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. So Paul asked, ‘Then what baptism did you receive?’ ‘John’s baptism,’ they replied. Paul said, ‘John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus. On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, they Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.”
XIV) 20:22-23, “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.” 28, “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.”
XV) 21:4, “Finding the disciples there, we stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem.” 10-11, After we had been there (Caesarea/house of Phillip) a number of days, a prophet by the name of Agabus came down from Judea. Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and fee with it and said, ‘The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over the Gentiles.”
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Theology of Atonement – Part I, the History
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For reasons only God fully understands, shed blood was a vitally important event throughout the Old Testament. The Blood of Atonement, and its importance are mentioned about one hundred times within the books of Law and the prophets.
What is Atonement? The Hebrew word for atonement, “Kaphar,” means to cover, expiate, condone, placate, or cancel. It has been translated as “appease,” “pardon,” “purge,” “make reconciliation,” “put off,” and of course, “atonement.” Another word for atonement, “Kippur”, means expiation and is translated, simply, “Atonement.”
The primary Old Testament passages that deal with the theology of Atonement include the account of Abel in Genesis 4, the account of Noah in Genesis chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9, Abraham and Isaac in Gen. 22, Israel leaving Egypt, Exodus 12, and Mount Sinai in Exodus chapters 19-30. Leviticus 1-4:1-35 describes the rituals of atonement, and Leviticus 16: 1-33 describes the Great Day of Atonement. Other important passages include Gen. 3:15 and 30:10; Lev. 5:1-19, 6:1-37, 16: 1-34, 17:11, and 23:27-32; 2Ch. 29:24, Isa. 53, and Dan. 9:24-27.
The History:
From the first, animal sacrifices were a shadow of the Great Atonement to come. The connection between the two was very real. The Mosaic books, History, Prophets and Psalms, when discussing blood sacrifice, provide prophetic foreshadowing of the atonement the Messiah would make for us all. Beginning with Genesis 3:15, a passage describing enmity between the woman and the snake, we see the first point where we see prophecy and violence occur together.
Blood sacrifice is a clear and well-understood fact of life in the early chapters of Genesis. There is nothing in ordinary way of thinking that would lead men, back then or now, to believe that sacrifice would somehow please God more than anything else. Yet, the first act of worship recorded in the Bible, the animal sacrifice Abel offered to the Lord in Gen. 4, was said to be acceptable to God, and Able is known as the first “Believer.” This first mention of sacrifice does not give the impression it was a new invention of Abel’s. Shed blood was described in a way that showed it was offered by divine appointment, not just Abel’s will.
Next, the Flood in Genesis chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 was both a clear example of God’s deadly judgement on sin as well as another example of the clear understanding early man had concerning sacrificial rites. At the time of Noah, the difference between clean animals and unclean animals was obviously well understood, as Noah classified them as such. In addition, Noah’s first act after leaving the Ark was to offer a burnt offering to the Lord.
Bloody sacrifices maintained a conviction of man’s guilt and a dependence on God’s forgiving grace. They taught that reconciliation could be obtained in no other way but through God’s divine justice. But they also symbolized God’s mercifulness, in that an animal victim could serve as a substitute. The offending worshipper must die, without possibility of living in fellowship with God, unless a sin offering were offered which removed it. On that ground, the sinner could be restored. From the beginning, as hard as it is for modern man to understand, blood sacrifice was a gracious, God appointed ritual given as a way to reconcile with God.
In Gen. 22, Abraham and Isaac had a divine appointment on Mount Moriah. As much as Abraham grieved the task set before him, he understood that only by killing his son could he be obedient to God. This was not arbitrary. There was a deeper meaning to what was going on than just the task that sat before him. Abraham and Isaac both understood the purpose of sacrifice, as sacrifice had long been a part of their lives, as well as the truth that most men understood at that time: that the only way to be fully consecrated to God was through a death. Blessedly, Isaac’s life was spared and a ram was substituted. By the ram’s blood, Isaac was figuratively raised from the dead.
In chapter 12 of the book of Exodus, Israel prepares to leave Egypt. What was done for one person on Mount Moriah will now be done for a nation. So the nation of Israel, God’s first born, spreads blood from a paschal lamb on its doorposts. Many people die that night, but not God’s redeemed people. God had told them, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” That night, the people of Israel learned that life is possible only with the killing of a substitute lamb and the sprinkling of that substitute’s blood. The Passover night illustrates the importance of the blood to God.
Part II Continues with the History -
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