We studied the last six chapters of Acts this week in Come Follow Me. As we finished the book, I realized that the whole book of Acts is meant to show the leadership of Christianity passing from the Jews to the gentiles. If you think about it, all the bad guys in the book of Acts are Jews and all the good guys (beside the apostles and Paul) are gentiles. Over and over, Paul goes to preach to the Jews first, they reject him, and then he has success with the gentiles. On his final trip to Jerusalem, Paul is captured by the Jewish leaders who want to kill him, and he is saved by the Roman military and leadership. Both Felix and Festus treat Paul fairly, while the Jewish leaders try to lie and use treachery.
The clencher in the depiction, however, is the last two chapters of the book. That is the kind of odd story about Paul's trip to Rome on a ship that sinks (Acts 27). Then he is marooned on an island where Paul gets bitten by a poisonous snake, but it doesn't hurt him (Acts 28:3-6). What is all that about? The writer of Acts is Luke, who is a gentile, but he is also highly educated. He would have been very familiar with Jewish scripture. It think what he is doing here is calling on some well known Jewish symbols to show that the authority of the LORD had passed from Jerusalem to Rome.
To see this, we have to, once again, go back to Genesis. In Genesis I the waters of the deep represent Chaos (v1). God's breath hovers over the chaotic waters and create order. The idea of God exercising power over water is repeated again when the Israelites pass through the Red Seas to escape Egypt (Exo 14) , and when Joshua passes over the River Jordan to enter the promised land (Josh 3). In the Gospels, Jesus shows his powers over the "deep" when he calms the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35-41) and walks on water (Matt 14:22-33). Now it is Paul's turn. By not only surviving the 14 day storm, but also bringing all his shipmates to dry land safely, Luke is showing that God's power is now in Paul and He is guiding the effort for that authority to end up in Rome.
Another strong image from the creation is the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. It states that the Serpent will have power to bruise man's heel, but man will have power to bruise his head (Gen 3:15). This represents the tribulation the faithful must endure, but that God with ultimately triumph over evil. We see the image again in Exodus, because Pharoah's symbol was a adder. Moses defeated the "serpent" by defeating Pharoah. Jesus' encounter with the forces of evil came during his temptation, and when he was lifted in the cross, like Moses' brazen serpent, to overcome the ultimate evil. Now we have Paul, being bitten by a snake, but shaking it off into the fire, unhurt.
I can't think this is an accident. I think Luke is intentionally including these stories to show the power and authority of God being transferred from Jerusalem to Rome through Paul. The fact that the Jews are the "forces of evil" in the book of Acts, and that the snake gets thrown in the fire by Paul could also be prophetic. Within a few short years of Paul's move to Rome, Jerusalem and the temple are totally destroyed.
I keep reminding myself that the books of the New Testament were written decades after the actual events occurred. The authors had a long time to think about what happened and recognize symbols and foreshadowing. They wrote their gospels and the book of Acts very deliberately, respecting the Jewish religious tradition and tying it to the new Gospel of Jesus Christ.
