Jr. R. Albert Mohler - Acts 1-12 for you

• James Montgomery Boice, Acts in the Expositional Commentary series (Baker, 1997)
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , edited John T. McNeill, translated Ford Lewis Battles (Westminster, 1960)
• Mark Dever, A Display of Gods Glory: Basics of Church Structure (9Marks, 2001)
• Mark Dever, The Gospel and Personal Evangelism (Crossway, 2007)
• Martin Dibelius, Studies in the Acts of the Apostles (SCM Press, 1956)
• Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles (Westminster John Knox, 1971)
• C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Eerdmans, 1965)
• John MacArthur, Twelve Ordinary Men: How the Master Shaped His Disciples for Greatness and What He Wants to Do With You (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002)
• John Piper, Desiring God; Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (2nd edition) (Multnomah, 2003)
• R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (2nd edition) (Tyndale House, 1998)
• John Stott, The Message of Acts in The Bible Speaks Today series (IVP Academic, 1994)
• B.B. Warfield, Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (P&R, 1948)

This section is filled with intrigue, politics, and drama. Lukes opening words, About that time ( 12:1 ), shift the setting away from the previous scene at Antioch. But these words also signal a shift in the narrative. Luke is going to take his readers back in time to recount what had happened to the church at Jerusalem.

This is something todays writers of history often do. A historian telling the story of World War II, for instance, cannot do it all in chronological order (although Martin Gilberts The Second World War: A Complete History comes fairly close). There are simply too many important events taking place in different theaters simultaneously, and so the action switches back and forth, from one to the other. Similarly, Lukes opening words move our attention to an event that took place around the same time as the famine that occurred in the days of Claudius (mentioned in 11:28). We are moving from the theater of gospel work in Antioch, back to the one in Jerusalem.

So what happened about that time? Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church ( 12:1 ). We meet many Herods in the Bible. This particular Herod was Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, who tried to kill Jesus soon after he was born (Matthew 2:1-18). Herod Agrippa claimed to be a Jew. His grandfather married a Jewish woman, which, according to Jewish law, meant Herod Agrippa could legitimately make this claim.

On the one hand, you would think that openly declaring his Jewish heritage would cost Herod certain status and privileges in Rome. Yet many historians believe it was a political move. Claudius, the emperor at the time, was very concerned with keeping the peace in Palestine and Judea. What better way to keep people happy than to have a king the Jews could recognize as one of their own?

Just how devoted was Herod at playing the part of the Jewish king? Well, we know he had moved to the palace in Jerusalem instead of remaining in Gentile territory. We also know from Jewish historians that he went to the temple every day and, as king, read the law as commanded in Deuteronomy 17:18-20. In fact, the first-century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus reports that Agrippa did everything he could to flatter the Jews and ingratiate himself into their favor.

Nevertheless, it was all an act. Herods ambitions were political, not spiritual.

In Acts 12:2 , Luke tells us that Herod killed James the brother of John with the sword. James and John were the sons of Zebedee, and known as the Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17). In Jewish law, a person was put to death by the sword if the circumstances of their case met the conditions laid out in Deuteronomy 13:12-15:

If you hear in one of your cities, which the L ord your God is giving you to dwell there, that certain worthless fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which you have not known, then you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently. And behold, if it be true and certain that such an abomination has been done among you, you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, devoting it to destruction, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword.