Expository Notes on the Bible (Constable)

• Structure
  Longenecker identified five phenomena about the structure of Acts that the reader needs to recognize to appreciate what Luke sought to communicate."1. It begins, like the [Third] Gospel, with an introductory section of distin...
• Outline
  I. The witness in Jerusalem 1:1-6:7A. The founding of the church 1:1-2:461. The resumptive preface to the book 1:1-52. The command to witness 1:6-83. The ascension of Jesus 1:9-114. Jesus' appointment of a twelfth apostle 1:1...
• 2. The command to witness 1:6-8
  The key to the apostles' successful fulfillment of Jesus' commission was their baptism with and consequent indwelling by the Holy Spirit. Without this divine enablement they would only have been able to follow Jesus' example,...
• The descent of the Spirit 2:1-4
  Luke introduced the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry with His baptism with the Spirit (Luke 3:21-22). He paralleled this with the beginning of Jesus' heavenly ministry with the Spirit baptism of His disciples (Acts 2:1-4)...
• Saul's calling from the Lord 9:10-19a
  9:10-12 Evidently Ananias was not a refugee from Jerusalem (22:12) but a resident of Damascus. He, too, received a vision of the Lord Jesus (v. 17) to whom he submitted willingly (cf. 1 Sam. 3:4, 10). Jesus gave Ananias speci...
• 2. The mission to Cyprus 13:4-12
  Luke recorded the events of Paul's first missionary journey to document the extension of the church into new territory and to illustrate the principles and methods by which the church grew. He also did so to show God's supern...
• The return trip to Syrian Antioch 14:21b-28
  14:21b-22 The missionaries confined their labors to the Galatian province on this trip. They did not move farther east into the kingdom of Antiochus or the province Cilicia that Paul may have evangelized previously during his...
• Ministry in Philippi 16:11-40
  Luke devoted more space to Paul's evangelizing in Philippi than he did to the apostle's activities in any other city on the second and third journeys even though Paul was there only briefly. It was the first European city in ...
• The response to Paul's preaching 17:32-34
  Most Greeks rejected the possibility of physical resurrection.721Many of them believed that the most desirable condition lay beyond the grave where the soul would finally be free of the body (e.g., Platonists). The response o...
• 4. The beginning of ministry in Asia 18:18-22
  Paul had attempted to reach the province of Asia earlier (16:6). Now the Lord permitted him to go there but from the west rather than from the east. Luke recorded his initial contact in Ephesus in this section to set the scen...
• The disciples of John the Baptist 19:1-7
  This is the first of two incidents taken from Paul's ministry in Ephesus that bracket Luke's description of his general ministry there.19:1-2 Two roads led into Ephesus from the east, and Paul travelled the northern, more dir...
• D. The extension of the church to Rome 19:21-28:31
  "The panel is introduced by the programmatic statement of 19:21-22 and concludes with the summary statement of 28:31. Three features immediately strike the reader in this sixth panel: (1) the disproportionate length of the pa...
• Paul's plans 19:21-22
  This pericope gives the reason for what follows in the remainder of Acts.19:21 Paul evidently sensed that having laid a firm foundation in Asia Minor and the Aegean Sea region he needed to press on to Gentile areas yet unreac...
• Paul's visit to Macedonia and Achaia 20:1-6
  "This report of Paul's return visit to Macedonia and Achaia is the briefest account of an extended ministry in all of Acts--even more so than the summary of the ministry at Ephesus (cf. 19:8-12). Nevertheless, it can be fille...
• Paul's raising of Eutychus in Troas 20:7-12
  "From 20:5 through the end of Acts (28:31), Luke's narrative gives considerable attention to ports of call, stopovers, and time spent on Paul's travels and includes various anecdotes. It contains the kind of details found in ...
• Paul's address to the Ephesian elders 20:17-35
  "Paul's farewell address to the Ephesian elders is the nearest approximation to the Pauline letters in Acts. Its general content recalls how in his letters Paul encouraged, warned, and exhorted his converts. Moreover, its the...
• The trip from Miletus to Tyre 21:1-6
  The third "we"section of Acts (21:1-18) is of theological importance because it focuses on Paul's recapitulation of Jesus' passion. Note the similarities between Luke's accounts of Jesus' trip to Jerusalem and Paul's. Both st...
• Paul's advance to Caesarea 21:7-14
  21:7 Ptolemais (Acco of the Old Testament and modern Acre located on the north side of the bay of Haifa) lay 20 miles south of Tyre. It was the southernmost Phoenician port. There Paul also met with the local Christians as st...
• The last stage of Paul's trip to Jerusalem 21:15-16
  Jerusalem was about 65 miles southeast of Caesarea, a long two-day trip. Mnason evidently became a Christian early in the history of the church, perhaps on the day of Pentecost. He was a Hellenistic Jewish Christian; he was f...
• 4. Ministry on the way to Rome 27:1-28:15
  For a number of reasons Luke seems to have described this stage of the gospel expansion in detail. He evidently wanted to demonstrate God's protection of Paul, to illustrate the increasingly Gentile nature of gospel expansion...
• Appendix 2
  Sequence of Paul's ActivitiesDateEventReferenceBirth in TarsusActs 22:3Early life and theological education in Jerusalem under GamalielActs 22:334Participation in Stephen's stoning outside JerusalemActs 7:57-8:134Leadership i...
• Appendix
  Sequence of Paul's ActivitiesDateEventReferenceBirth in TarsusActs 22:3Early life and theological education in Jerusalem under GamalielActs 22:334Participation in Stephen's stoning outside JerusalemActs 7:57-8:134Leadership i...
• 3. Reply to the charge of intrusion 10:12-18
  Paul defended his right to preach the gospel in Corinth and denied his critics' claim that they had been responsible for what God had done through Paul there. He did this to vindicate his former actions and to prepare for fut...
• Historical background
  Almost all Christians believed in the Pauline authorship of Ephesians until the nineteenth century when destructive biblical criticism gained influence (cf. 1:1; 3:1). The critics built a case against Pauline authorship from ...
• 1. The self-centered person 4:13-16
  4:13 James confronted his audience as the Old Testament prophets did. He began, "Come now"(cf. Isa. 1:18; et al.). The person in James' illustration was probably a travelling Jewish merchant, ". . . the materialist core of th...

Expositions Of Holy Scripture (Maclaren)

• The Fight With Wild Beasts At Ephesus
  After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome. 22. So he sent into Macedonia two of them...