The Acts of the Apostles 7

Subtitle: Peter Preaches to the Crowd III

Acts 2:25-33.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on July 3, 2022.

We are continuing to look at Peter’s sermon to the crowd on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was first poured out on the disciples of Jesus.

Let’s review his main points so far.

• He countered the mockers who said they were drunk.
• He then reminded them of the prophecy in Joel 2:28-32 where God promised to pour out His Holy Spirit upon all flesh in the last days.
• He then points them to everything that has just happened with Jesus: he was publicly proved by God to be from Him, he was given into the hands of the religious leaders, they had him executed and buried, but he was raised from the dead.

This last point that Jesus has been raised up from the dead leads Peter to point out another prophecy to Israel.  Why would Peter say it was impossible for Messiah to remain dead in the grave?

Peter points to Psalm 16:8-11 (vv. 25-28)

Psalm 16 speaks to Peter’s point of the impossibility of Jesus being held by death.  Peter will interpret this psalm in the next verses, so let me just point out some secondary points from these verses.

This whole psalm lays out the confidence that David has in the Lord to be his ultimate shepherd.  David had confidence in the present because he knew that the Lord was at his right hand (Psalm 16:8; Acts 2:25) no matter what he faced.

Do you have confidence that God is by your side?  That kind of confidence can only truly be ours if we are repentant of our sin before God and working to do His will in our life.  This world needs Christians who have a confidence that is not just based on theory, but on the reality of a repentant, humble relationship with Jesus the Messiah who is our savior and Lord.

Yet, this confidence also had a forward-looking hope while he was in the present.  God had given David a promise that was a secure hope that gave him rest, inner peace, in the now.

The world often argues that Christians are too focused on heaven and the future.  They don’t do enough for the present.  Whether that is true or not, the fault is not in having a future hope promised by God.  Just like David, we have promises from God of a future glory that cannot be taken from us.  This can enable us to have an incredible peace even when we face great obstacles and threats from the Goliaths of this world.

In Psalm 16:10-11, David brings up the hope of resurrection.  The truth of the resurrection of the righteous filled David with the knowledge that he would one day be full of joy in the presence of God.

We are given a measure of joy in this life that can even reside with us in troubled times.  However, David foresees a time of dwelling in God’s presence like we see pictured in Revelation 21-22.  The joy of the Lord in this life is a foretaste of that eternal joy that will know no subsidence.  What we have ahead of us can only be described as Life Eternal, of which we get a taste in the present. 

May we become more like David in these difficult days that require us to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Yet, Peter is focused on why Jesus couldn’t stay in the grave, and that is found in Psalm 16:9, Acts 2:27.

Peter applies the passage to Jesus (vv. 29-33)

In verse 29, Peter respectfully points out that David is still dead and buried.  His flesh saw corruption, or the full process of decay. His tomb in Jerusalem stood as a witness to this.  It would be easy to ignore the words and say that it is not clear what he means.  Yet, Peter points out that David was not speaking about himself.

Now, I would point out that Peter clearly sees all of Psalm 16:10 as speaking about Christ.  However, he doesn’t exactly explain the interpretive method that he is using.  I am of the opinion that his “interpretive method” was simply witnessing the events and then learning from Jesus what it meant.  Even without a special revelation from Jesus, there is something going on in this verse.  David first says, “You will not leave my soul in Hades…”  Yet, in the second phrase he speaks of “Your Holy One.”  Though we can see this as pointing to David, it is quite possible that it is scoping out and David has in mind a greater being, the Holy One of God.

On top of this, the lives of the Patriarchs, and later men like David, were often prophetic enactments of things that pertained to God’s dealing with humanity.  So, even David’s reference to his soul not being left in Hades can speak to a greater Son of David, the Messiah, (of whom David is a picture) not being left in Hades as well.

Peter points out in verse 30 that David was a prophet.  Yes, his psalms were not collected and placed among the books of the prophets, but David was a prophet nonetheless.  In fact, all three Hebrew sections of the Old Testament have prophecy.  The Torah, or the Law, has plenty prophecies throughout it, even Moses pointing to “the prophet like me” in Deuteronomy 18:15-18 that Israel should listen to.  Psalms is placed among the Writings, or Wisdom literature.  However, not only are the psalms full of prophecies, but the book of Daniel, and even Job speaking of a time in Job 19:25-26 when his Redeemer will stand in the last days and, even though Job’s skin will be destroyed, he will see God “in my flesh.”  Our categorization of Scripture can be helpful, but it can also get in the way of hearing what the Holy Spirit is saying.

David was a prophet and Psalm 16 is not just some quaint worship song to sing at the temple.  It contains a prophecy about resurrection, yes of David, but even more so, of the ultimate Son of David, Messiah.  Yes, David had the hope of his own personal resurrection, but he knew that this hope was pinned in the person, the One, who would come from among his descendants that would be the Anointed One of God.  He foresaw that the Anointed King who would rule upon the throne of David forever, would also run into trouble just as he did.  He recognized that the spirit of this world would come against Messiah and slay him too.  Like Job, David knew that he had a redeemer that would come down into the grave and release him from its grip because it was impossible for the grave to hold Messiah, or to deny his plundering of its spirits.

Peter wants them to take David seriously.  David stated that the Holy One would not be held by the grave or see decay, which means he must first be killed and then resurrected!  Thus, in verse 32, Peter states that the 120 people that had been filled with the Holy Spirit were witnesses of all that Jesus had done, especially his resurrection.

I will point out that verse 24 and verse 32 use a word saying that God “raised up” Jesus.  This word can also be translated as to set up, or to establish something above.  In this sense there is a dual raising up.  To his enemies, it looked like Jesus was down and out as he died and went to the grave, Sheol, Hades.  However, he had been raised up from the dead and set, established, upon the earth.  For 40 days, he interacted with his disciples.  Yet, another raising occurs in verse 33.

Jesus has been exalted to a position at the right hand of the Father in the heavenlies.  It wasn’t enough to just raise Jesus up out of the realm of the dead like Lazarus.  He was raised up with an immortal body and further raised up into God’s heavenly domain, and further raised up to sit at His right Hand, the highest place.

This point is always difficult on our flesh.  Like the disciples in Acts 1 speaking to the resurrected Lord, will you now restore the kingdom to Israel?  Why didn’t he (doesn’t he even now) remain on earth and fix it?  The point is that in our flesh, we will always have an enemy to fight due to the fact that the enemy of sin is inside of us all.

It is at this highest position that Jesus receives from the Father the Promise of the Holy Spirit.  In a sense, this is talking about authority.  It is given to him, or he is authorized, to pour out the Holy Spirit as he sees fit.  In fact, that is exactly what Jesus was doing.  He was in heaven pouring out the Holy Spirit on that very day (and today as well!). 

Back in John 16:7, Jesus had told Peter and the disciples, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.”  The sending of the Holy Spirit is the same as the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.  The first accentuates his personhood.  The Holy Spirit is another comforter who is like Jesus, but different.  The second phrase accentuates the water analogy.  We need to be baptized, cleansed, by the Holy Spirit in order to be filled with Him to overflowing.

This is the same Spirit that we need in this hour.  We need the same Spirit that David had when he faced Goliath (an uncircumcised Philistine), and later King Saul (an uncircumcised in heart Israelite).  We need the same Spirit that Peter had as he spoke to the crowd that day and later gave his life in the Roman Colosseum.   We need the same Spirit that Jesus had in all that he did while he was on this planet.  This is the same Spirit that we can have as we daily open our hearts and minds to His leading and His purposes.

Let’s ask Jesus every day to fill us with the Holy Spirit in order that we may be his voice, his hands, and his feet in these the Last Days!

Peter Preaches III audio

The Acts of the Apostles 4

Subtitle: The Comforter Has Come!

Acts 2:1-13.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on May 22, 2022

Today, we will talk about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem.  This is The Promise of the Father that Jesus explained to his disciples in John 14-16.  He told them in John 14:16, “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever…”

Let’s look at our passage.

The disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit (1-4)

In verses 1-4, we have arrived at the awaited day.  For ten days, the followers of Jesus have been meeting to pray, asking God to send the promised Holy Spirit.

Of course, God was not holding out on them.  It was quite the opposite.  They were about to receive great help from God.  They would be filled with the Holy Spirit, and baptized into the Spirit of God.

The tragedy of losing faith because things do not happen on our time table is great.  God has very good reasons for the timing that He picks.  Satan’s lie to us is like that of that ancient serpent in the Garden of Eden.  He convinces Eve that God is holding back something great from her, you shall be like God.  The truth is that God was all along working to truthfully and rightly bring all humanity into a place where we will be like Him, perfectly imaging him to the universe around us.  May God help us to trust Him for the timings in our own lives.

We are told that the Holy Spirit comes on the Day of Pentecost.  It is formally called the Feast of Weeks because it occurred seven weeks (seven sevens) plus one day after the first day of Unleavened Bread.  Harvest is a huge theme in the Feast of the Lord given to Israel.  In the spring, the Feast of Firstfruits celebrated the beginning of the barley harvest.  Pentecost celebrated the beginning of the wheat harvest, and in the Fall the Feast of Ingathering/Tabernacles celebrated the completion of all the harvests for the year.

We are also told that the disciples were all “in one accord.”  We saw this phrase back in Acts 1:14. After 10 days, they were still united around the singular passion for receiving what Jesus had promised would come, the Holy Spirit.  Unity is good, but it must be focused upon what God has promised, not what our flesh wants.

May God give us a singularly-focused passion to be filled with the Holy Spirit for the days that we are in.  We should lift up our eyes and look at the fields because they are ripe for harvest!  Who will go out into the field and bring them in?  O Lord, we pray that you will send laborers out into Your great harvest, and let it start with us!

There are some signs and wonders that are associated with this first outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  They are called signs and wonders because, on one hand, they are amazing things that get our attention regardless of our spiritual state, and on the other hand, they are signs that mean something to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The first sign is a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, that fills the whole house.  This is a real sound, but notice that it doesn’t actually say there is wind blowing in the room.  Wind is a term in the Bible that connects with the Holy Spirit.  The same word could be used of a spirit, wind, or breath.  When a person is alive (i.e., they have a spirit in them), it is natural for them to breath.  Breathing is a sign of a spirit inside.  It takes little extension to see the wind as a breath of God over the earth, or even ill-winds as the breath of bad spirits.  The disciples would have no doubt that this sound of a rushing wind was the promised Holy Spirit.

The second sign is divided or distributed tongues of fire that appeared over the heads of each of them.  Fire was often a sign of the presence of God going back to the wilderness wanderings with the cloud by day and pillar of fire by night.  Again, there would be no doubt that the Holy Spirit was coming upon each of them.

At this point, the Holy Spirit fills them and our third sign occurs.  They began speaking in different languages that they would not naturally know.  The Holy Spirit was giving them what to say.  We cannot say how it felt for them to be filled with the Holy Spirit, have an urge to declare the wonders of God, and have a foreign language come out of their mouths.  Regardless, these 120 people filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in many different languages is a sign that pointed to something amazing that God was doing, but more on that in a bit.

The significance of the commotion (5-13)

It doesn’t seem like the crowd is drawn by the sound of a rushing wind, or that the sound of the wind continued.  It is the sound of 120 people proclaiming the wonderful things of God in many different languages that draws them.

We are not told exactly where this house is in relation to Jerusalem or the temple mount.  However, few houses would have been able to accommodate 120 people.  This is probably a place that is built close to the temple mount with large balconies and openings.

Jerusalem is also filled with people from all over that part of the world.  They are hearing languages of the places that they had come from.  There would naturally be many languages spoken in Jerusalem: Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, and perhaps even some Latin, but the emphasis is on languages that are from far away.  There would be no reason people to learn most of these in Israel, much less Galileans.  They are speaking about the wonderful works of God.

The crowd is amazed and perplexed about how it is possible for these Galileans to be speaking all of these languages.  Of course, some mocked them saying that they were drunk, but that is only a refusal to try and understand what is happening.  Drunk people do not suddenly speak languages they haven’t learned declaring the wonders of God.

We will talk more about this event over the next two weeks.  For today’s purposes, we will focus on two important connections to what God is doing here.  We already know that this is connected to a harvest of believers coming into the Kingdom of God from among all nations.  This is essentially what Jesus said was the purpose of the Holy Spirit being poured out.

The first connection regards the sound of wind and the presence of God hovering over the people.  This harkens back to the imagery in Genesis 1, where the Holy Spirit hovers over the waters of the earth preparing for God to bring order to His new creation, and to fill it with creatures.  Here, the Holy Spirit hovers over these new creations of God, and prepares to fill them with His Spirit in parallel to the waters being filled with water creatures, the skies with flying creatures, and the earth with terrestrial beings.  These new creations would be filled with the Holy Spirit of God Himself!

The second connection regards the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai.  Moses led God’s people out of bondage in Egypt to Mt. Sinai.  At Mt Sinai, a covenant was cut with God, and God gave them a gift of The Law.  It would teach them righteousness, but also be a sign of the true righteousness of the One True God to the nations that would encircle them later.  In Acts chapter 2, Jesus has led God’s people to Mt. Zion (Jerusalem) where he cut a covenant with God on the cross.  God gave them the gift of His own Spirit.  It would teach and empower them, but it would also be a sign of the righteousness and grace of God to the nations of the earth. 

These picture two very different messages to the earth:  Behold, the severity and the goodness of God.  Of course, there was goodness under the Law.  Just ask, Rahab, Ruth, and many others.  However, the Law emphasized the righteousness of God. He is fundamentally a God of Truth.  There is also righteousness during the Age of the Spirit of Grace.  However, the pouring out of the Spirit emphasizes the grace and mercy of God.  He is fundamentally a God of Loving-Kindness.

There are also word and picture similarities between the two events.  Both events describe the presence of God accompanied by loud sounds and fire.  The people of Israel stand amazed at the presence of God in both cases.  There is also a sealing of a new covenant with God in both cases.  And, both are being sent to be a witness of God to the nations.

The third connection is with the events at the tower of Babel.  The tower of Babel involved the rebellion of Nimrod and the people of the earth.  God had told them to spread out and fill the earth, but Nimrod counseled those around him not to do that.  They build a god-gate, most likely trying to connect to the pre-flood “gods” that had brought “civilization” to the ancient world.  This ended with a judgment from God in which He confused their languages, gave them boundaries on the earth, and gave them into the hand of false gods by disowning them.

There are two words specifically used.  The first is the word translated as “divided” or “distributed.”  The divided tongues like fire that are placed above the 120 points us back to a time when all of the nations were divided (Genesis 10:32).  Deuteronomy 32:8 talks about a time “When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations and separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the peoples…”

The second word is the word “confused” or “Perplexed.”  The crowds are confused by what they hear and the same word is used of Genesis 11:7 where God says, “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech…”

Essentially, God is signaling that a reversal of the Babel Judgment has begun.  At Babel, they could not understand one another.  At Pentecost, God the people are able to understand.  At Babel, they are dispersed in judgment and disowned by God.  At Pentecost, God is dispersing His people to go to the ends of the earth and bring whosoever will back into the people of God, His called-out ones.

This event was as significant to the god of this world as the trumpets of Joshua were to the giant-clans of Canaan. The evil spirits of the world would be quaking as they began to hear about this spirit-filled people who were coming out into the nations.

How about you, my friend?  Are you filled with the Holy Spirit, and do you hear that mighty trumpet blast of the Holy Spirit calling us to follow Him?  O, God help us to not trade our inheritance for a bowl of beans!

Comforter Has Come audio