Dr. Keith Essex · The Master's Seminary · 60 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Keith Essex, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This lecture is close exegetical work on three of Luke's most argued sentences, prefaced by the standing critical attack every commentary will raise: that the author of Luke and Acts cannot have known Paul. Dr. Essex answers the attack, then walks each hard text through its options to a reasoned conclusion. Listen for his caution on Luke 10:18: whatever position one takes on Satan's fall, none of them grants the church a continuing authority to command demons.
Barrett and Fitzmyer, the era's leading critical commentators on Acts, argue that whoever wrote Luke and Acts cannot have been Paul's companion, because he gets Paul's history and theology wrong. Historically they set Galatians 2 against Acts 15: a private meeting with the pillar apostles versus a public council, Paul conceding nothing versus the decree's requirements. Theologically they observe that the Pauline notes, justification by faith, the substitutionary death of Christ, are muted in Luke and Acts, where the preaching stresses the resurrection. On their late dating, Luke becomes a second- or third-generation interpreter of Paul rather than his fellow traveler.
Read for harmony rather than contradiction, the two bodies of writing prove complementary. Luke wrote historical narrative; Paul wrote letters to believing churches and coworkers, while nearly all his preaching in Acts is evangelistic address to unbelievers. The test case is the one Acts speech Paul gives to believers, the Ephesian elders at Miletus in Acts 20, and there the Pauline voice sounds unmistakably: shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood, sacrificial language, with verbal and thematic links running especially to the pastoral letters the critics like least. As for the Jerusalem question, Essex tips his hand: he will argue when the course reaches Galatians that Galatians 2 and Acts 15 are different events; and even those who equate them can hold that a private session sat inside the public council. In the end the issue is less historical than a matter of faith in biblical authority against skepticism toward it.
Jesus's first recorded words in Luke come with an ellipsis: did you not know that I had to be in the, and the Greek supplies no noun, of my Father. Three candidates. The family of my Father founders on the context: Jesus goes down to Nazareth in subjection to his parents, and the temple teachers hardly become his new family. The things, or business, of my Father is possible, and some point to the neuter plural article. But the anxious searching of Mary and Joseph is a question of where, and throughout Luke and Acts the temple is the house of God, Luke even using two temple words that answer the plural. With the translations and the majority, and because the majority is right here, Essex reads: in my Father's house. The ellipsis itself is ordinary Greek economy, the context supplying the obvious, and Theophilus, who knew Luke's style, would have filled the blank without a footnote.
The seventy sent ahead of Jesus return with joy: Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. They had been commissioned to heal and to announce that the kingdom of God has come near, and their message was vindicated by the same works that vindicated their Lord's. Jesus confirms the authority, I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and then redirects the joy: do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven. The experience of power is real; the surpassing gift is a place with God.
What is Jesus watching? Three positions. Historic: the past fall of Satan, echoing Isaiah 14, so MacArthur and Evans, though Essex carries over from Old Testament studies his reservation that Isaiah 14 is about Satan at all. Inceptive: the fall beginning in that ministry and concluding in the future, the reading of Stein and Bock and, with a question mark, Marshall, congenial to inaugurated eschatology, which is exactly why Essex hesitates. Prophetic: the aorist of a future so certain it is spoken as done, Essex's lean, since Scripture shows Satan actually cast down to earth only in Revelation 12, during the tribulation. He is candid that the verse is a theological ellipsis: every position imports its satanology from elsewhere, and were it not for Revelation 12 he would prefer the historic over the inceptive.
All three readings agree on the guardrails. Jesus is speaking of that historical commissioning, lifting the seventy's eyes from their experience to the larger reality that stands behind it, the doom of the one whose demons they had commanded. None of the positions makes Satan a presently bound foe, none turns the seventy's derived, occasion-specific authority into a continuing endowment of the church, and none underwrites the modern exorcist who validates the gospel by talking to demons. Essex is blunt: he does not want to be in a room with a demon; dealing with demons in this age is God's business, not a believer's commission.
Questioned by Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God is coming, Jesus answers that it is not coming with observation, nor will they say, look here or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is entos you. Then, turning to the disciples, he says days will come when they will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man and will not, and when it comes it will be like lightning across the whole sky, as observable as anything can be. So the unobservable answer belongs to the Pharisees: that generation would see neither the kingdom's arrival nor the interval's false alarms.
What then is entos? Inside you fails twice over: the audience is the Pharisees, in whom no one would locate the kingdom, and, as Marshall observes, nowhere in the New Testament is the kingdom ever said to be inside people; people enter the kingdom, on every theology of it, never the reverse. Within your grasp is grammatically possible, the kingdom there to be seized by receiving the King while he stood before them. But with the majority Essex reads, in your midst: the kingdom of God, in the person of Jesus the King, was standing among them, and the only question left to the Pharisees was their verdict on him. Accept the King or reject him; for them, that was the kingdom question, and it stood in the room.
Held beside the discourse to the disciples, the saying yields Luke's larger picture: the King was present, and in him the kingdom confronted that generation; the observable, lightning-visible coming of the Son of Man and his kingdom belongs to the future, through an interval in which disciples must not chase every voice crying, look here, look there. The kingdom question is thus always first a question about Jesus: what men do with the King decides what the kingdom is to them.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Key TermsTap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all fifteen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What do Barrett and Fitzmyer conclude about the author of Luke and Acts?
2. What historical contradiction do the critics press?
3. Why do Paul's Acts speeches sound different from his letters?
4. What does the Miletus speech of Acts 20 demonstrate?
5. What position will Essex argue about Galatians 2 and Acts 15?
6. Why does, the family of my Father, fail in Luke 2:49?
7. What best fills the ellipsis, and why?
8. How does Jesus redirect the seventy's joy?
9. Which reading of Satan's fall does Essex lean toward, and on what basis?
10. Why does he hesitate at the inceptive reading?
11. What does Essex mean by calling Luke 10:18 a theological ellipsis?
12. On what do all three positions agree?
13. Why can, inside you, not be the sense of entos in Luke 17:21?
14. What is the majority reading Essex adopts?
15. How do the sayings to the Pharisees and to the disciples fit together?
All fifteen correct. Lecture 10 is complete.
Essex says the Luke-versus-Paul question finally divides between faith in biblical authority and skepticism toward it. When you meet an apparent contradiction in Scripture, what does seeking harmony rather than disharmony look like in practice, without forcing the text?
The seventy came home thrilled with power, and Jesus pointed them to something better: names recorded in heaven. What successes in ministry or life most tempt you to misplace your deepest joy, and how do you recenter it?
The kingdom stood in the Pharisees' midst in the person of the King, and the question was their verdict on him. How does keeping the kingdom question fixed on Jesus himself guard you from both speculation about timetables and chasing every, look here, look there?
The Lord's word to the returning seventy: do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
The lecture's own directions for the week: hold the Galatians 2 and Acts 15 question until the course reaches Galatians, and when you meet the critical commentaries on Luke, read them knowing where the contradiction claims come from and how context answers them. The course turns next to the Gospel of John.