Acts 2:37-41

37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.




Dig Deeper
Some people seem to have a natural sense of direction wherever they. At any given point and time they seem to know exactly where the cardinal directions are and how to get where they want to go even if they have never been there before. I am the exact opposite of those people. I have no sense of direction at all, can easily forget how to get to places that I have already been many times, and can get lost almost anywhere. I recall one incident in particular when I was driving somewhere that I had not been before. I had the directions written down telling me where I wanted to go but when I came to one turn I had to make to get on a highway, the directions simply said to get on that highway without indicating whether I should go North or South. I probably should have been able to figure out the right direction but knowing that I’m terrible at that sort of thing, I just guessed. I quickly realized that I had chosen the wrong direction and needed to turn around, but then things got worse. As I was looking for an exit at which I could turn around I saw a sign that said that the next exit was 20 miles down the road. It’s a sinking feeling to know that you are going in the wrong direction and cannot turn around.

A major part of Jesus’ ministry, one that Luke stressed even more than the other gospel writers and one that is often missed, is Jesus’ constant warnings to the children of Israel as a nation. They were heading in the wrong direction. They were believing that God would exalt them no matter what and that someday the Messiah would come and defeat their enemies, namely the Romans. Because of that belief they moved closer to war with Rome all the time believing that God would give them victory. Jesus constantly and firmly warned them that this was not the way and it was not God’s plan. If they continued going down that road any longer they would soon find that there were no exits where they could turn around and that the only thing that awaited them was destruction. Jesus’ death was the final exit for the nation as a whole. There was no turning around now. What can be worse than finding out that the next exit is twenty miles down? It is to find out that there are no more exits at all.

Jesus had warned that if Israel did not turn off of the path on which they were heading that things would end with the judgment of God pouring out on them in no uncertain terms. This is what would happen to God’s people if they rejected his way and substituted it with their own. Yet, the message of the Cross was stunning in its implications. Jesus, as the Messiah, was not only the true king of Israel, he would also serve as their representative and take on the very wrath and judgment of God that was due to them. He went into Jerusalem, the very city where he promised the judgment would be poured out, and took it on himself so that they would not have to bear the brunt of it.

He was the Messiah. He was the one that God had promised and had sent to fulfill all of God’s promises (2 Cor. 1:20). Jesus was the one that could bring salvation and reconciliation to the people who would embrace God’s plan and come to faith in Jesus. It was too late for the nation of Israel as a whole but anyone who would believe in Christ as Messiah and Lord could receive a pardon and turn around. As Peter declared all of this, the hearts of many were moved. God had promised that one day he would remove the stone hearts of his people and give them a new heart of flesh animated by his own Spirit. Now they were cut to the heart and those that responded to God’s plan could receive what God had promised. They had been moved in their hearts and wanted to know what they could possibly do.

Realistically what could they expect? Would it have been that shocking if Peter replied that there was nothing that they could? Would it have been completely unexpected if he said that they had killed the Messiah and now the only thing that their generation could do was to expect judgment? But that’s not the response they heard from Peter. They would not be treated as they deserved. The reality was almost beyond belief. They had killed God’s Son and would now be offered sonship. They had taken the life of the Messiah but would be offered eternal life. They had tried to seize the vineyard and take the inheritance for their own and would now be offered the full rights of co-heirs. They had turned their hearts from God and hardened them and now God was offering to give them completely new hearts.

How should they respond then? Peter offers two conditions and two results, but in both cases they can almost be said to be one-in-the-same because the two conditions are inseparable from one another just as the two results are inseparable from one another. Baptism was not unknown to the Jewish people. It appears that Jewish converts by the first century were being baptized to signify their purification as they became Jews and John the Baptist had called people to be baptized to identify themselves with the repentance and forgiveness of sins that was to come as they aligned themselves with the new thing that God was doing in the world.

Repentance was not merely a desire to try something new. It was a complete change of mind and to turn one’s entire life in the opposite direction. It meant to leave behind one’s life and way of doing things and enter into the life of the Messiah. Luke seems to make no effort, try as many might have since then, to separate repentance and baptism. They cannot be separated as one is contingent upon the other. To repent and show faith in the life of Christ over one’s own is to submit to baptism into his life. But this is no magic ceremony. Baptism without repentance and true faith in Christ is little more than a bath.

What set this baptism apart was that it offered the ability to enter into the life of Christ and brought with it the fulfillment of God’s promises to deal with the sin of his people once-and-for-all. Being baptized into Christ would bring with it the incredible mercy and grace of God, the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Those who enter into Christ will find themselves hidden in Christ (Col. 3:3) and clothed in him (Gal. 3:27).

It has become increasingly popular in the last two centuries to marginalize the necessity of baptism, as it has been relegated to the status of a symbolic act, despite any lack of scriptural citation to make such an assertion, as well as the high place given baptism in the Scriptures themselves. Paul places the one baptism (it is clear that Paul said “one” and meant “one” despite modern claims by some that there are actually three different baptisms) into Christ with pretty lofty company such as the one faith, one Lord, one Spirit and one Father (Eph. 4:4-6). Luke will later go in to make it clear in Acts that the symbolic baptism of John was not adequate (Acts 18:24-19:7), nor was the simple act of prayer to receive the forgiveness of one’s sins (Acts 22:16). The early church continued that same view of the necessity of responding to God’s offer of mercy by being baptized. The late first century work, Shepherd of Hermas, a highly respected work in the early church, states “[T]here is no other repentance than that which takes place, when we descended into the water and received the remission of our former sins.” Similalry, second century church leader Justin Martyr wrote that “Accordingly, we have believed and testify that the very baptism which he announced is alone able to purify those who have repented. And this is the water of life. . .” While writing around 180 AD, church leader Irenaeus argued that the Gnostics, false Christians according to the early church had actually been “instigated by Satan to a denial of that baptism which is regeneration to God.” We would be wrong, though, to think of baptism as a simple ritual. It is a birth (Jn. 3:5). It is the incredible moment when God allows a repentant sinner to move from the family of fallen humanity and be born again into his new family (see Rom. 6:1-14).

Although this incredible offer of grace was being given to individual Jews and would eventually spread to be announced to all the nations of the world, it was much more than just personal salvation. Salvation is an individual event but we are saved into a body, into God’s family. This is likely what Peter meant by declaring that the promise that God was making available was for them and their children and even those who were far off. Peter’s audience that day would likely have understood him to be referring to Jews that were scattered around the world far off but the part about the promise being for them and their children would have been clear. This wasn’t a reference to infant baptism (something that proponents of that doctrine often claim) which would contradict Peter’s conditions for the promise, namely repentance and a baptism of faith into the life of Christ. As infants can neither repent or have faith we can safely conclude that baptism into Christ and the reception of the Holy Spirit is not something that can truly be available to infants. What Peter was likely referring to was the formation of those who accepted his message into the family of God. He wasn’t just issuing a call to a new sect of Judaism or any other religious group. They were becoming the people of God and were receiving the same kinds of promises that God had given to an obedient Israel (Deut. 6:1-3). The choice was theirs: they could enter into God’s promised family or remain as part of the corrupt generation, a phrase that connected them with the Exodus generation that rebelled against God (Deut. 32:5, 20), and a concept that came to be connected with those that rejected Christ (Matt. 12:39, 45; 16:4; 17:7; LK. 9:41; 11:29).

About 3,000 people present that day responded to Peter’s message through the faith of repentance and baptism. Some critics have argued that this is an unrealistic number but recent scholarship has demonstrated that the population of Jerusalem was likely approaching 200,000 plus all of the festival’s pilgrims. In addition, recent archaeology has shown that there were more than enough pools present around the Temple to accommodate all of the baptisms in short order. Truly Jesus’ promise to them that because he was ascending to the Father and sending the Spirit that they would do even greater things than he had done (Jn. 14:12) had begun to be fulfilled. As amazing as this day was, it was just the beginning of God’s great reconciliation project with the family of fallen humanity, a task that continues to this day.



Devotional Thought
Peter placed repentance in the category of something that was needed in order to enter into the family of the Messiah. To repent means to totally turn one’s life in the other direction. It means to live the life of Christ rather than the life of our own identity. It is something that we must continue in constantly (1 Cor. 15:31) as Jesus called people to the standard of carrying their cross daily (Lk. 9:23). Have you continued in the way of repentance and dying to self or have you try to resurrect the dead of your old self?

Acts 2:22-36

22 “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23 This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men,[d] put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24 But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. 25 David said about him:

“‘I saw the Lord always before me.
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.
26 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest in hope,
27 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
you will not let your holy one see decay.
28 You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence.’[e]

29 “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. 30 But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. 31 Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. 32 God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. 33 Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. 34 For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
35 until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”’[f]

36 “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”



Dig Deeper
Our youngest son has an absolute knack for asking mind-numbingly difficult questions to answer. He’s especially skilled at doing so when you are most tired and feel the least like doing any sort of mental wrangling to explain some inquiry that he has cooked up in his over-active little mind. Recently he was insistent on wanting me to explain what the government is. You might think that sounds like an easy question but try explaining to a seven year old what government is in a way that will properly satisfy his inquisitiveness. I was doing a particularly poor job of explaining to his young mind the vast wonders of government with all of its elected officials, bureaucracies, and seemingly infinitely expanding powers.

As I was failing disastrously in my meager attempts to explain to him exactly what government is, he looked up at me with his brow furrowed and asked “so, what I really want to know is where is the government?” That threw me back for a moment. Once again, that’s a difficult question to answer. After stumbling around for a moment I finally explained to him that government is more of an entity of ideas and laws that has people all over a particular region or country that work for the government but that there is no particular place that a government is at. The reason I couldn’t explain is because he was making a category mistake. Asking where a government is at assumes that it is a type of thing which it is not. He was not satisfied with that, however, and I knew that I was going to have to find a way to stay within the reality of the situation (I didn’t feel like I could just say that the government is in Washington DC and be done with it because that would be to present the government as something that it is not) and still explain it to him in a way that was satisfactory to him in the moment. Finally, I said, “Government is the direction and control exercised over a specific community and in our country government is by the people and for the people so that means that the government is in each of our minds and hearts.” He either understood what I was saying or had just given up by that point because he just turned around and walked away.

The problem that he was having was that of a category mistake. A category mistake is when we talk of something in terms that really only apply to something of a completely different kind. For the average Jew, the gospel message that Peter preached on Pentecost and that the early church continued to preach seemed like just such a category mistake. They were preaching that Jesus was the Messiah but that he had been crucified. That was impossible in their minds. The Messiah would be a victorious conqueror who led God’s people out of oppression. To speak of a Messiah that was killed by the Romans was a pure category mistake. If he was crucified then he simply could not be Messiah. Theologian Gordon Fee has said that this category mistake would have made as much sense to early Jews as it would seem to talk about “fried ice.”

If the Christians were going to declare that Jesus had indeed been crucified at the hands of the Romans and that he was the true Messiah sent from God they were going to have to come up with some way to explain it so as to remove this stumbling block for those that were open to truth. They had to show that Jesus did die on the Cross but that this was exactly what was supposed to happen and what had to happen in order for God’s word to be shown to be true and reliable.

The first thing that Peter does to lay common ground is to establish that Jesus was indeed a man from Nazareth just as they supposed him to be. They were not making any wild-eyed claims about Jesus but were going to talk realistically about who he was and stick to the facts. He had, however, done incredible miracles, signs, and wonders among them. That much never really seems to have been in dispute. Even those who wished to discredit Jesus during his lifetime and thereafter didn’t claim that he had not done amazing things. They simply argued for a malevolent source of his abilities rather than the power of God. Peter didn’t try to convince them that the miracles and signs were from God, he simply stated that they were. Jesus had already quite ably answered that objection (Lk. 11:14-20) and Peter felt no need to improve upon that answer (although he may have dealt with that issue using just such an argument and Luke chose not to include it in his summation of Peter’s speech for the very reason that he did already address that in the book of Luke).

The next plank in his argument was vital to Jewish acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah. All of those who had a hand in Jesus’ death were guilty of evil acts of rebellion against God, yet at the same time, all of this was part of God’s will. What we see Peter arguing is the incredible co-mingling of man’s free will and God’s sovereignty. Those who were responsible for Jesus dying on the Cross really did act wickedly but God knew the wickedness of man and would use it to further rather than subvert his plans. God knows how powerful evil can be but he is greater. He sucked the power from evil and nullified it by sending Jesus to take on the very worst that humans acting in opposition to good could muster up, the violent death of a perfect and sinless human being who was sent by God himself. God, embodied in the Messiah himself, took the full force of human evil straight onto himself and delivered it a death blow.

God allowed Jesus to die on the Cross but it wasn’t a sign of his displeasure. And then God raised him from the dead to confirm what the miracles had been pointing to all along. Jesus was from God. Peter used stunningly powerful language when he said that God freed Jesus from the “agony” of death. The word translated “agony” was actually the specific word used for labor pains. Peter’s powerful point, then, was to give a picture of death itself in the throes of labor unable to hold back the Messiah, who burst forth from death, not as a ghost or some spiritual entity after death. Jesus walked into death and defeated it. He physically rose from the dead and left no body behind in his tomb or anywhere else. Death couldn’t hold him anymore than a pregnant woman can stop a child from coming.

Their mistake was in thinking that the Messiah could not taste death. There was no category mistake when it came to a dying Messiah. It wasn’t that he couldn’t die according to God’s will, it was that death could not keep its hold on him. That is the point that Peter makes in verse 25-28 as he quotes from Psalm 16:8-11. His logic was as simple as it was elegant. David wrote prophetically that the Lord would not allow the godly subject of the Psalm to be abandoned permanently to the grave. He would not let him stay in the realm of death like ordinary people because the “paths of life” were his inheritance. Peter’s point was dramatic. The site of David’s grave was still well-known in Jesus’ day. He had died, been buried, and stayed that way just as every other human being before him and since him. But David was a prophet so if his words did not apply to him then they must have been intended for one of his descendants, the promised Messiah. It was not that the Messiah could not die; quite the opposite in fact. It was God’s plan all along to take on the greatest weapon that evil has in its arsenal, that of death, and defeat it. The Messiah would die, but through God’s power he would be raised to life and never again experience the incorruptibility and decay of death.

The resurrection of Jesus was the central tenet of the gospel. It is what everything else hinged on. It was what showed him to be the Messiah. It was what proved Jesus to be correct when he boldly declared to the Jewish leaders just before his death that he would be exalted to the right hand of God (Lk. 22:69). It was because of the resurrection that Jesus received the inheritance and promise of the Holy Spirit and it was Jesus who was now pouring that same Spirit out on his people. The apostles would act as witnesses to the resurrection but that would simply be a matter of their word. The pouring out of the Spirit that would guide God’s people into sonship and truly being a family (Rom. 8:15-17), was tangible proof that what Peter said was true. Jesus’ resurrection and his pouring out of the promised Spirit would remove the stumbling block of a dead Messiah if they would respond in faith and humility to the truth.

Peter goes on to make the case that David made it clear that Jesus was not just the Messiah and the giver of the Holy Spirit but that he was also Lord, the one to whom their allegiance was due. He was not just a fulfillment of some of God’s promises as Messiah, he was the fulfillment of all of them as both Messiah and Lord. Peter demonstrated this once again by turning to the Old Testament Scriptures themselves, specifically to Psalm 110. Assuming that David was the speaker of the Psalm then he confirmed that the Messiah was also Lord. Messiah carried the idea of being the deliverer and the bringer of salvation but “Lord” spoke of the sovereign rule and kingship of Jesus. Jesus was the true Messiah and the rightful Lord of the entire world. This meant he was on a collision course with the rulers of the world and those who stood apart from God. When one is faced with the rightful King and Lord, there can be only one response. It is to that proper response that Peter will turn in our next section.




Devotional Thought
Many people relish the idea of Jesus being Messiah, the savior. A much small number of people, however, equally embrace the idea of Jesus being Lord. Have you embraced Jesus as Lord as much as you have enjoyed the aspects of him as savior? Have you truly submitted every area of your life to his lordship?

Acts 2:14-21

Peter Addresses the Crowd
14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
20 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
21 And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.’



Dig Deeper
According to Nelson Mandela in his auto-biography,” A Long Walk to Freedom,” the official movement of his organization, the African National Congress (ANC) began in 1912 as they sought to gain the political and social freedom that had been denied to non-white Africans for hundreds of years. The movement gained momentum as a force to be reckoned with in the 1940’s and 1950’s as they held out the promise of freedom for the African people. They continually and constantly laid out to their supporters what true freedom would look like. They wanted them to not be fooled by counterfeit offers of freedom from the Nationalist Party that held power in South Africa at the time and settle for something less than real freedom. But they also wanted them to know the signs of what it would begin to look like when they were gaining power and the power base of the exclusively white government was beginning to slip. Surely then their freedom would be near. One of those signs that they always pointed was the time when the government would recognize the ANC and agree to negotiate with them.

Mandela was placed into prison as a political prisoner in 1963 and the ANC continued to be unrecognized by the South African government as a legitimate group. By the 1980’s, the ANC was still banned and its leaders were either in prison or were in exile having fled South Africa. What people did not know was that in the late 1980’s in a quiet little prison cell near Cape Town, negotiations had begun. The South African government realized that they could no longer keep their grip on power without a bloody civil war and had begun to negotiate with Nelson Mandela while he was still in prison. This was certainly not what anyone would have expected and very few people knew that it was going on. But indeed, the beginning signs of the great promises of the ANC had taken place in a very unlikely way. The process was not complete and had not come in full but it had unmistakenly come in a way that fulfilled the signs that had always been taught but just not quite how anyone envisioned.

The people of South Africa had been waiting for the promises of freedom for decades but the Jewish people had been waiting for many hundreds of years for the great promises of God to finally come upon them. Israel believed that although they had returned to their homeland after the Babylonian exile some 500 years earlier that they were still in exile because the presence of the Lord had not yet returned to the Temple and the nation. The promises of God to return to his people and pour his Spirit upon them in a great and new way had not yet happened. But they had expected that the coming of the Messiah, the crushing of Israel’s enemies, the exaltation of Israel to rule over the nations with God’s presence in full display, and even the resurrection of the righteous would all take place at one time in what they knew as the Day of the Lord. God would pour out his Spirit, but probably in the way that he always had, meaning that he would give the Spirit to come upon one or two specific people at a time, usually leaders of the people such as kings, prophets, and priests. Based on many things, including some of the prophecies of Daniel concerning a 490 year exile (the exact time of the end of that exile varied depending on how specific dates of the exile were calculated), the people of the first century were awaiting this Day of the Lord in eager expectation. This is when God would separate his people from his enemies and set things straight, brining the long awaited salvation and freedom to his people.

When Peter stood up early in the morning of Pentecost it was with all those expectations and hopes swirling about that provide a context for what he said. As the commotion of the disciples speaking in tongues and praising God in the native languages of Jews from all around the world began to command the attention of the large Pentecost crowds, Peter stood up with the other eleven apostles, creating the important symbolic statement that they were hearing from the twelve leaders of the renewed Israel. Through the Messiah, these twelve men were now the place where people would find the promises of God being fulfilled.

First things needed to come first, though, and so Peter cleared up any misconceptions that the crowd may have had. No, they were not drunk. No good Jew would be pounding wine down that early in the morning. Peter wanted to make this clear. They were doing what Paul would later call all Chrsitians to do when he urged his readers to not be “drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). The amazing things that the people were seeing and hearing were not of human origin or spirits but were divine in origin and from God’s Holy Spirit.

To explain to the crowds what was going on that day in Jerusalem Peter turned to words of the prophet Joel. Joel was dealing with the question of the people of his concerning the apparent absence of their God. When would he act? God would, said Joel, send rains that would heal the damage to the land and make a way for Israel to be restored, words that pointed to the coming of the Messiah. Afterwards, said Joel, God would pour out his Spirit on all people and then would come the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

That was beginning now, declared Peter. Not in a way that anyone expected but it was beginning nonetheless. What Joel said would be a time “afterwards,” or after the coming of the Messiah, Peter specifically defined as the last days (v. 15). So many people today read the phrase “last days” and assume that this means the end of the world and that the “saved” status that Peter holds out to all those who call on the name of the Lord to be refernces to the time of final salvation from judgment before resurrection. But this is not what Peter meant by “last days.” The last days were the time when God’s promises began to be poured out. No one expected that to begin with a small band of disciples speaking in other languages, but here it was, said Peter.

If they considered Joel’s words carefully they would see that God had promised to pour his Spirit out on all people, not just kings or priests, or even just the Messiah. This is exactly what he was doing now. Here they were, young and old, male and female, people of all types that were the recipients of God’s mighty Spirit being poured out. Their praising of the Lord in other languages (tongues) was the sign that God had fulfilled his promises. In this action, Peter saw the beginning of the prophecy that sons and daughters would prophesy, young men would see visions, and old men would dream dreams. This unlikely beginning was indeed what they had all been waiting for.

It was the beginning of something ground-breaking and earth-shattering. Just as both of those common phrases in the previous sentence have a specific and rather understandable meaning outside of a woodenly literal interpretation, so could the prophets speak of incredible events like the stars falling from the sky or the sun going dark to signify events of epic proportion rather than thinking of these type events as being actually literal. Incredible things that would happen that would shake the foundations of the earthly order. All of this was common Jewish language to describe events of epic proportions.

As was common in prophecy, Peter could place these monumental events that he calls the last days right next to the day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord, which the early church quite comfortably transferred from referring exclusively to Yahweh as Joel would have intended to referring to Jesus Christ, was a time of definitive judgment laid out by God. In one sense, this day of the Lord would be fulfilled in 70 AD when the judgment of God was poured out in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. That was the “great and dreadful day of the Lord” that Joel has spoken of. But Peter speaks of the “great and glorious day of the Lord,” likely because he saw the dreadful day of the Lord for Israel, the judgment upon Jerusalem, as an early fulfillment and foreshadowing of the ultimate day of the Lord at the resurrection. The day of the Lord that was dreadful for Israel will be glorious for God’s people, even though it will still be a day of judgment and humbling of God’s enemies. In essence the “day of the Lord” occurs anytime that God pours out judgment and though there will be one final and definitive day of the Lord, it cannot be said that there has been or will be just one day of the Lord.

This means that the last days were the strange time between the beginning of God’s promised action and the final fulfillment of those things. The last days had begun. The Messiah had ushered in the kingdom of God. God’s Spirit had been poured out on all his people and the life of the age to come would actually be available in the present time through Jesus Christ. The last days began then and we are still in the last days, the days of God’s final act of salvation, awaiting the resurrection of all believers and the onset of the age to come in all its fullness (and that final and definitive day of the Lord).

Entrance into that salvation is as wonderfully universal as it is specific. It is available to anyone without limitation regarding nation, language, tribe, ethnicity, or gender but is limited to those who call on the Lord. Joel had promised that this would be God’s means of final salvation and now that time had begun. In many respects, the first part of Peter’s speech here has great parallels to the end of his speech that comes later in chapter 2. Ben Witherington III, in “The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary,” says, “The two parts of the speech material in vv. 14-40 have a certain unity and coherence: (1) “to call upon the name of the Lord” (v.21) is another way of speaking about the event that involves being baptized “in the name of Jesus Christ” (v. 38); (2) the promise in vv. 17-18 prepares for the promise of receiving the Spirit (v. 38).”

Peter seamlessly transferred Joel’s promise to call upon the name of Yahweh (the Lord in most English translations) to a fulfillment in Jesus Christ as though they were one in the same (the early Christians certainly believed that Jesus could fulfill promises made of Yahweh because they were one in the same in a Trinitarian way). To call upon the name of the Lord was a specific act, however. It didn’t mean to just cry out to God or even to pray. Peter will define it in verse 38 as the act of repenting and being baptized into the life of Jesus Christ. This is precisely Paul’s line of thinking in Romans when, in chapter 6, he refers to being baptized into the life of Christ, and then culminates that great argument in 10:9-13 by affirming that Christians must repent and confess Jesus as their Lord and call upon his name. Acts 22:16 confirms quite clearly that calling on the name of the Lord was the act of being baptized into the life of Christ and taking part in the incredible gift of the Spirit that had been made available here at Pentecost.

Those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved just as God had promised through the prophet Joel so long ago but being part of God’s salvation doesn’t just mean that individuals have a private experience with God and then can look forward to dying and going to heaven one day. Salvation was a much bigger concept of being part of God’s family and actively taking part in his reconciliation project for the whole world (2 Cor. 5:14-21). To be baptized into Christ and take part in this baptism of water and Spirit (see Jn. 3:5; Acts 2:38) into the life of Christ (Rom. 6;1-4) was to be baptized into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13). As Luke will make clear at the end of this chapter, to enter into God’s salvation and take part in his Spirit would be to enter into his family and take up the work of the family. That’s what salvation was and it continues to be what salvation is.


Devotional ThoughtSalvation is not just a future hope but a present reality for God’s family as we show the world what it looks like to live a saved life. What can you do today to demonstrate to your neighbors, co-workers, fellow students, etc., the salvation life that is available to all those who call upon the name of the Lord?

Acts 2:5-13

5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[b] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”




Dig Deeper
On a recent trip my family and I had a few extra hours to spend in a rather large airport in Washington DC on our way to Africa. While we were sitting there, we realized that our youngest son had quite a bit more energy coiled up in his body than would really be helpful on a long flight in a confined plane, no matter how large the jet was. So I decided to take him for a nice, brisk walk through the airport to burn off some of his effusive energy. As we made our way through the airport we found one long walkway that had the flags of all kinds hanging from the ceiling. First we went through an area where they had the flags of every state and territory that was part of the United States. Then came a very long walkway that had the flags of countries from all over the world. My son had a great time walking up and down this long hall that was probably nearly a half mile and trying to name the flags of the different countries. Because of his older brother’s affinity for world cup soccer video games, he had an uncanny ability to rattle off which flags belonged to which countries. He was, in fact, far better at it than I was, due in part to the fact that I realized that many of the countries and flags that I had learned and become familiar with while in school no longer exist and many of these flags were new to me. As we made our way back through the flags for the third time (he really enjoyed the flag naming game) he asked me if this was absolutely every flag of every single country in the world. That was a good question. As we walked further, I realized that it wasn’t. He didn’t understand the point, though, of having so many flags up there if they weren’t going to have them all and he was quite concerned about the poor countries that weren’t represented. I explained to him that the point of the flags was not necessarily to give recognition to each and every country around the world but was, rather, to make the point that this was an international airport that sent and received people from all over the world. The hanging flags were a symbol that this airport was actually a gateway to the world.

The great detail that Luke goes into in this section, especially when it comes to the home countries of those present, as he describes the incredible outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost can seem largely unnecessary and even pointless if we fail to remember the promises of God. When God came to Abraham and promised him a family, he told him that one day this family would make him the father of all nations (Gen. 12:1-3; 17:1-5). Paul argued that when God came to Abraham he knew that he would declare the nations to be part of his family one day (this is basically what justification is—the time when God declares us to be in his family and therefore saved from our sins). Paul says, in Galatians 3:8-9 that “Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you’. So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. “ The declaration that all nations would be part of God’s family, says Paul, was a proclamation by God of the gospel in advance. The promise of all nations joining God’s family was an important and central aspect of the gospel.

If we remember that this was a central promise of the gospel then this section makes perfect sense. God’s promises were finally coming into focus and they were being poured out just as he promised. He had promised to pour out his Spirit and bless all nations of the world through his Son and that was now happening. So if the goal of the gospel was to create one family of many nations then it would be important that all nations would be represented somehow on the day when the family was finally opened to all.

This is why God tells us that there were God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven that were present when Jesus’ disciples came pouring out from the house where they had been overwhelmingly baptized by the Holy Spirit in ways that could only be compared to the power of wind and fire. As they came into the public arena, they were surrounded by Jews from every nation. These would have been Jews that were scattered during the diaspora, the time when Jews were exiled hundreds of years previous and scattered throughout the known world. The word that Luke uses for “staying” seems to imply that these Jews were people who had grown up as natives of other nations who had come to basically retire in Jerusalem and live out their lives there, although there were, no doubt, many who were there as temporary pilgrims during the Passover.

Luke described that these people were from all directions and all reaches of the known world. It is not, however, a list of every country in the known world. Many have tried to find some sort of rhyme or reason to this list but there seems to be none on Luke’s part, and that is, I believe part of the point. What he describes is a hodge-podge of people from countries all over the world. Luke well knew that these weren’t all of the known parts of the world and he surely knew that there was much more out there beyond the traditionally “known” parts of the world but this was not a geography lesson. His point was that the gospel was a message that, because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the people of all nations could finally join God’s family and no longer be aliens and strangers to God’s people (Eph. 2:19). This day of Pentecost was not the complete fulfillment of that promise but the firstfruits of it. It included only the Jews that were present but they were Jews from every nation. This was the beginning of a family that would spread to the very ends of the earth.

It is a great reminder that God’s people have always meant to include every tribe, language, people, and nation (Rev. 5:9). This was God’s plan for his family all along. It means that his people are called to make sure that the gospel goes out to all the nations (Matt. 28:19: Lk. 24:46). It would be easy to make ourselves feel better by saying that this call is being fulfilled by the likes of missionaries and such as they take the gospel around the world, and that would be true in one sense. But being God’s one family of all nations also demands of us that every outpost of God’s family is committed to being comprised of and reaching out to the people of every tribe, language, people group, and nation that are in the reaches of their influence. There is simply no room for racism in the church of God. There is no room for separation of people groups in God’s family. The fact that there are traditionally white churches, black churches, and the like are declarations of exactly the opposite message of the gospel.

In Nelson Mandela’s auto-biography, “The Long Walk to Freedom,” he describes that while being in prison for the crime of fighting for freedom from apartheid for the non-white people of South Africa, that the guards would mistreat him and his fellow prisoners all week and remind them that they were merely “black boys.” Then on Sunday they would conscientiously make sure that the prisoners would have worship service because of the commitment of the whites to their Christian religion. Situations like this are an abomination to God. When people encounter God’s true family they should see and feel an acceptance of people of all nations and should see a people that are deeply committed to taking the gospel constantly to all people, not just the ones that share their culture, their nationality, or their color of skin.

They were from all nations but was it necessary to have languages from all over the world? It is likely that these Jews from all nations would have all spoken Greek or Aramaic in addition to the native language of where they were born but that is hardly the point. The apostles came out praising God in tongues so that people could understand them in their home language. It is not necessary to assume that they could not have understood them if they spoke in Aramaic. In fact it is likely that when Peter began speaking in verse 14 to preach to the crowd that he did so in Aramaic rather than in other tongues. The gospel was going to go too all nations and people of all languages so just as the crowd was symbolic of that truth, so the fact that the disciples came out praising God in tongues that could be understood by the people of the crowd in their own distinct dialect and language would have been not only a powerful verification that this was from God but would have set a precedent and been a strong symbol of the goal of the gospel. The main point was that the Spirit was not limited by the barrier of language. No language, no national border, no tribe identity, or anything else would stand as a barrier to the spread of the gospel.

The response of some in the crowd was to accuse them of being drunk but this does not mean that they were speaking in unintelligible languages that sounded like nonsense to some in the crowd. Quite the opposite. This was the reverse of the Tower of Babel incident. There the confusion was caused by people not being able to understand all of the languages. Here, however, the confusion was caused by people hearing languages that they did understand. How could these Galileans be capable of such a thing (Galileans were viewed as a bit backwards by the rest of Israel, much the same way that someone from the United States might make jokes about someone from the deep South)? The gift of tongues was apparently the God-given ability to speak in a language that the speaker had never learned. It was primarily used to praise God as a sign to unbeliever (1 Cor. 14:22) not as a private prayer language or some such thing to edify oneself as is often claimed today by those who argue that the gift of tongues is the ability to speak in an unknown language. Thus, if the disciples were coming out early in the morning praising and singing of the wonders of God in languages from all over the known world, that by itself would likely be enough to induce some to accuse them of being drunk. Truly, however, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, not wine (cf. Eph. 5:18).

This all leads to an important thought. At every turn, God’s new family was taking on boundaries. They were pushing the boundaries of nations, tribes, languages, people, and proper behavior through the power and leading of the Spirit. And at every turn, they were criticized, ostracized, and persecuted for it. When is the last time that you and your church did something at the Spirit’s prompting that was even criticized? When is the last time you allowed the Spirit to lead you right past one of those boundaries that human beings are so good at constructing?


Devotional Thought
Do you actively seek to take the gospel beyond your normal comfort zones? Do you personally make attempts to spread the gospel to people of every tribe, language, nation, social status, culture, etc.? That is, after all, what the gospel is all about. What are you waiting for?

Acts 2:1-4

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost
1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.




Dig Deeper
I haven’t been to very many college football games in my life and have never been able to go to a regular season professional NFL game but I did get the opportunity to go a game a few years back and watch my home state college team play a big home game. It was my first time being at their stadium, known as Camp Randall, and it was a pretty cool experience. We made our way through the tailgating cookouts and the incredible noise and crowds to find our seats in the chilly autumn afternoon and watch the game. As the end of the third quarter neared and our team, the Wisconsin Badgers, were winning as usual, I got excited because something called the “Jump Around” was nearing. The Jump Around is a Wisconsin football tradition that is nearly twenty years old now. In between the third and fourth quarters, the stadium blasts the 1990 rap hit “Jump” by the group known as House of Pain. It is a fun song with an infectious beat and as the beat begins to pound, the entire stadium of well over 60,000 spectators begins to jump up and down rhythmically with the song and in unison with one another. I had heard people describe the Jump Around and I had even seen glimpses of it on TV, but as I experienced, I realized that it’s just not something that you can describe and do justice to. You have to be there to see it, hear it, and especially to feel it. It was an incredible thing to experience and it’s one of those amazing memories that you hold dear in your mind because you can never really share it with someone and have them fully appreciate it unless they have been there themselves.

I have to believe that the day of Pentecost was something like that, only a much grander and more incredible and meaningful scale. How could you possibly begin to describe such an event? Luke has given us the facts of Pentecost and done it justice on that level, but this is something that we cannot break down into a series of facts and formulas anymore than you could really completely grasp what it was like to be in a war by watching war movies or reading about it. The Holy Spirit is not something that can be described. He must be experienced to be fully appreciated and understood. Keep that in my mind as we read this passage and the remainder of the book of Acts. On one level, Luke is trying to give us a picture of the coming of the Spirit and the formation of God’s family. On another level, the book of Acts is less a description of God’s people and more of an invitation to come and experience God’s family and the power of the Spirit for oneself.

Pentecost is one of those terms that has become so identified with one particular religious group that many Christians get nervous about the term and almost stay away from it completely. It has become so associated with the Charismatic Pentecostal movement that it’s almost like they own the name. It almost reminds me of the way that many people refer to any tissue as a kleenex even though kleenex is a brand of tissues and not the product itself. Pentecost, though, is in many respects the day that God’s church was born. It was the day when the kingdom of God that had broken into the present age through the person of Jesus Christ was focused into the creation of God’s family as the people that had received the promised Holy Spirit and realized the prophecy of Acts 1:4. It is a day of incredible importance and the word “Pentecost” should never be given up or ceded to one group. In the true sense of the word, all Christians are Pentecostals.

Pentecost itself was a Jewish festival that took place fifty days after the Passover. It was known as Pentecost by the time of Jesus but was the same festival known as the Feast of Weeks (or Feast of Harvest) in the Old Testament (see Ex. 23:16; 34:22; Lev. 23:15; Num. 28:26; Deut. 16:9-16; 2 Chron. 8:13). It was a celebration that showed gratitude to God for the coming harvest and also dedicated the firstfruits to him in the prayer and hope that the rest of the crop would soon be brought in as well. It was also the time when the Jews celebrated the moment when Moses received the law at Sinai, fifty days after the Passover. It was the time when God had given his people the standard which would guide them in their way of life as his people.

An interesting parallel can be seen from the writings of the Jewish philosopher Philo, in the first half of the first century as he wrote of the giving of the Law to Moses: “Then from the midst of the fire that streamed from heaven there sounded forth to their utter amazement a voice, for the flame became the articulate speech in the language familiar to the audience.” Historian Ben Witherington III, in his book “The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary,” says that “If Luke knew such traditions, his portrayal of these Pentecost events could be taken to suggest not only that Christianity will have a worldwide impact, but that the giving of the Spirit is parallel (and supersedes?) the giving of the Law.”

What this is all means is that this was the day when God unleashed the fullness of his promises for his new covenant people. He had finally given his people the promised baptism of the Holy Spirit and made him available for all time to all those that would enter into Christ. The Spirit would be the fulfillment of God’s promises and would guide them in their way of life as God’s people. This was an event that was parallel to but even greater than the moment when God gave his law to the nation of Israel.

As the morning dawned, the Jerusalem believers were all together, presumably praying although Luke des not say that specifically. He says that the entire house was filled with a sound that he can only describe as sounding like a violent wind. The imagery here is powerful, especially considering that the Greek word for “wind” and “spirit” are the same word. The presence of God being accompanied by the wound of a violent wind was a common Old Testament symbol (2 Sam. 22:16; 1 Ki. 19:11; Job 37:10; Ezek. 13:13). The primary Old Testament connection here, however, seems to come from the prophecy of Ezekiel 37 where the wind and breath of God came upon the dead and dry bones and brought them back to life, telling his people “Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live” (Ezek. 37:13-14). Jesus himself compared the work of the Spirit to that of a strong wind when he declared “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going” (Jn. 3:8). The power of the Spirit was clearly palpable and Luke says that it sounded “like” a violent wind, but what exactly it was like we can’t really even imagine. The Spirit is someone to be experienced not analyzed.

Another powerful symbol of the Spirit and the presence of God consistently through the Old Testament was that of fire as can be seen in such accounts as the burning bush (Ex. 3:2-5); the pillar of fire in the wilderness (Ex. 13:21-22); and passages where God is referred to as a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24; see also Heb. 12:29). The fire denoted the divine presence of the almighty God, but once again Luke actually says that it looked “like” tongues of fire (Some theologians, it should be said, see significance in the fact that Luke says that this phenomenon that was like tongues of fire came to rest on each of them. This, they argue, is a sign that the Spirit would belong to all of God’s people but also in an individual way that was never available to all of God’s people in the Old Testament). He is doing his best to put into words something that could only fully be experienced. This is the time that John the Baptist spoke of the Messiah, declaring that “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit [literally “wind”] and fire” (Lk. 3:16). The once-for-all promised baptism of the Spirit had been poured out into the present age like a rushing tidal wave.

As the believers were filled with the Holy Spirit during this incredibly unique event, they began to speak in other “glossa,” a word that clearly referred to a regular known language. This was no doubt an incredible event but Luke describes quite succinctly and clearly that the believers were filled with the Spirit and able to speak in other known languages. There has been much confusion about the gift of speaking in other languages, the gift of tongues, but it really makes a great deal of sense. Why would God give the early church the ability to speak in other languages? [It seems clear from both this passage and a proper reading of 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 that the gift on tongues was precisely the ability to speak in other languages rather than forcing the Bible to say something that it does not, namely that this gift of tongues was different from that described in 1 Corinthians, claiming that the tongues of 1 Corinthians is one in the same with the ecstatic utterances practiced today by many Christian sects in the last two centuries as well as many pagan religions throughout world history. Although pagan religions engaged in ecstatic utterances there is no convincing evidence that the Bible ever describes any such practices and no clear evidence that the orthodox early church of the first three centuries did either.]

The reason for this gift of other languages is actually quite sensible. If God’s promise was always that he would have one family of all nations, tribes, and languages (Gen. 12:1-3; 17:1-5; Isa. 2:1-4; Rev. 5:9), then that would be a daunting task for a church that was starting in one place that would consist of a similar people group (namely Jews) that would be limited in the languages that they could speak. God was serving notice through this gift that he was serious about his family being available to all nations of all languages. The sin at the tower of Babel had split humans into people groups and languages and God was now finally reversing that. As we will see, he would start with the Jews from all over the world that were gathered at Pentecost. But the gift of other languages would be invaluable as well as deeply symbolic for a church that had the commission of taking the gospel to all nations. Once they were there and established, the gift could slowly fade away. The family of Christ still speaks in all tongues and languages today albeit not through the supernatural means of the early church. The means may be different but the message of the gospel and God’s one family of many nations is still the same. That will never change.



Devotional Thought
When is the last time that you really experienced the Holy Spirit personally? Set aside some special extra time (as long as you can) during a day or through the night sometime soon to just pray and experience the Holy Spirit. Ask the Spirit to really make himself manifest in your life and be willing to follow his lead. Make sure, though, that as the Scriptures warn to test everything that you experience against the word of God as found in the Bible.

Acts 1:15-26

15 In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) 16 and said, “Brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus. 17 He was one of our number and shared in our ministry.”

18 (With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19 Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)

20 “For,” said Peter, “it is written in the Book of Psalms:

“‘May his place be deserted;
let there be no one to dwell in it,’[e]

and,

“‘May another take his place of leadership.’[f]

21 Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, 22 beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”

23 So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. 24 Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen 25 to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.” 26 Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.



Dig Deeper
When I asked my wife to marry me I was much more interested in the part of actually being married than with the wedding itself. She seemed to be much more interested in the actual wedding ceremony than I was, but it was important to her so we went about planning it and getting ready for it. She wanted to have five attendants stand up with her including the maid of honor. This meant that I had to get five friends to be the groomsmen. After some wrangling and working through some scheduling conflicts with my potential groomsmen, I finally settled on the five guys that I wanted to stand up there with me on the big day. We went through all of the preparations and getting tuxedos and all of that. Then I got a phone call. One of my friends that was supposed to come from Oklahoma to be in the wedding could not make it as something rather unpreventable had come up that would preclude him from making the trip. That might seem bad enough but to make it worse, it was five days before the wedding. I was in real trouble now. Then I realized that I had a cousin who was a particular favorite of mine and who had been joking around for weeks that she was hurt because I hadn’t asked her to be one of my groomsmen. So, I decided to go outside of tradition and ask her to be one of the groomsmen. I had to have five groomsmen; it was just absolutely necessary. Five days later, there she was, tuxedo and all to help me out and fulfill the necessary number of groomsmen that I needed.

We obviously are not dealing with a wedding here but there was a sudden and unexpected shortfall for the apostles just the same. It was important that they had twelve apostles. It was highly symbolic. Having twelve apostles was a signal to the potential Jewish believers in those early days that Jesus’ people were the restored Israel, the fulfillment of the kingdom of God. Israel had traditionally had twelve tribes (although the tribe of Dan was removed from the list of twelve in Rev. 7:4-8 and replaced apparently for their persistent idolatry; this is an interesting detail as we see that one of the twelve apostles in this passage is removed from his place and replaced) which signified who they were as the people of God. A new movement that was claiming to be the fulfillment and true embodiment of the people of God would make that statement clearly and strongly to Jews by having twelve leaders at the helm. Having eleven just did not make the same statement. Although my situation at the wedding wasn’t as deeply symbolic, in both situations it was important to get another person fast. The apostles knew that they needed to restore their number to the count of twelve.

But before Luke described how they went about that choice, he recounted quickly how they arrived at such an emergency shortage in the first place. Peter, as he often did during Jesus’ ministry, took leadership of the twelve and the other disciples, and stood up before the group of believers in Jerusalem. It is not clear if Luke saw particular significance to the number of one-hundred twenty but that was the number of men required in Jewish practices in order to constitute a community with its own council (We should not think that these were the only disciples at the time, forgetting that there was a group of at least five hundred in Galilee who witnessed Jesus’ resurrection. This was simply the number of believers in Jerusalem at that time). Luke may have simply been recording the number of believers present, but he may also have been sending the message that they were a legitimate community with a legitimate leadership.

They found themselves in a rather unpleasant situation as a community. Not only was Jesus no longer with them but one of their own had betrayed him. Up until the night before Jesus’ death, Judas was one of them by every standard that they understood. Jesus had known that Judas would be his betrayer but had so loved Judas and treated him without contempt to the degree that when he declared that one of their number would betray Jesus, none of the other apostles even suspected Judas. Then came the shocking news of what he had done coupled with the dramatic events surrounding Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus was dead and word soon came that so was Judas. Luke’s details of this differ from those that Matthew gave in his gospel and it is difficult to know precisely how the two accounts fit together but it can easily be done without assuming that they contradict one another. Luke says that Judas bought a field and fell headlong in it as his body burst open. Matthew said that he hung himself and that the Jewish leaders bought the field with the money that Judas returned to them. The simplest way to harmonize these two accounts is to assume that Luke’s description was an assumption of the fact that his audience knew that Judas had hanged himself and was a rather graphic way of describing his fate when he was cut down from the tree. Almost as if to say, “here is the sad fate of this man who once walked with Jesus.” The Jews may have bought the field but they did so with Judas’ money, so it may have became common to simply speak of the field as being bought by Judas.

This situation with Judas left the apostles in uncharted waters. So they turned to prayer, as we saw in the previous passage, and to the word of God, the Scriptures. The early church saw the Psalms as being full of foreshadowing of the Messiah and so they saw them to be full of prophecies that related to Jesus and events surrounding his life and death. Psalm 69, which was quoted by Peter in verse 20, had to do with the one who would desert and betray God’s suffering servant. He should be removed from his place of salvation and be “blotted from the book of life” (that Peter related this Psalm to Judas’ condition should put to rest the arguments that some make that Judas was acting nobly and should still be considered righteous). In Psalm 109, the second quote in verse 20, we have another scene of a betrayer of the righteous, suffering servant. Let this betrayer, said the Psalmist, be stricken from his place and replaced by another. Luke’s point in the previous passage and in this one is that God was in control of all of this. Judas’ betrayal was not some unforeseen tragedy, but was prophesied about and fell into the strange purposes of God. It was difficult and unknown waters for them but not for God. When faced with such trying times, they turned to prayer and the word of God, a pattern worth following.

They decided upon the method of choosing lots after they had narrowed their options down to two men. They prayed and then let the Lord decide through the lots. I have, over the years, had people ask me if I think that the church today should decide matters based on this method. I would say decidedly “no” for at least two reasons. The first is that just because something is described in the Bible does not mean that it is prescribed as something we should do. It is significant that we never again see this method used anywhere in the New Testament Scriptures. Secondly, it is important to note that this event took place before the Holy Spirit was poured out on the community of believers. That is not to imply that this was a superstitious act. They narrowed the list down as best they could to two men in whom they had confidence in, then they prayed fervently, and felt that putting it to lots would be to let God decide. Later in Acts, when faced with difficult decisions, we see the leaders turning to the guidance of the Holy Spirit within them (Acts 15:28) to determine God’s will. That means that their actions were taken faithfully before the Holy Spirit was given to God’s people and so actions like drawing lots are no longer necessary or desirable for us who have the Holy Spirit.

As they determined who would be the replacement apostle, Peter made clear what the qualifications for the apostles were. The first was that they had to have been with the disciples from the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. They could hardly serve as witnesses to Jesus’ ministry to the Jews if they were not there during that time. The second qualification was that they had to be a witness of the resurrection for that would be their primary role. These are qualifications that should be kept firmly in mind for men who would inappropriately claim the title of apostle today.

One interesting question that arises from all of this, though, is why Judas was replaced as an apostle but when James was martyred much later (Acts 12:2), he was not replaced. It appears that it has to do with their early role as witnesses to the people of Israel. Noted author I. Howard Marshall points out that when the community that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls chose twelve leaders it was intentionally done so to signify that they saw themselves as the renewed Israel, the faithful remnant. This was no doubt the same for the role of the twelve apostles. Jesus was always big on symbolism and saw the twelve apostles as a powerful statement to the children of Israel. This was the renewing of God’s people, his new family (see Luke 22:30). So, eleven apostles just would not do at the beginning, but as the gospel began to expand beyond the borders of Israel, the symbolism of having twelve apostles was no longer necessary. Paul would be added to the number of apostles as one “abnormally born” (1 Corinthians 15:8) and the twelve apostles would not be replaced continually. Once the twelve had served their primary symbolic function in Israel, they would have fulfilled their mission and the role of apostle could eventually give way to those that God called and to whom he gave different gifts.

Eventually the apostles chose Matthias. According to church writings of the early centuries, Matthias went on to spread the gospel in Ethiopia. We don’t know what happened to Joseph but I always have wondered about him. Neither man is mentioned again in Acts and neither is held up as being more important than the other. That’s an important reminder in God’s family. There are different roles but there are no greater or lesser roles in God’s kingdom. Everyone is called to do their part and bring glory to God no matter what role they have called to.


Devotional Thought
In everything that the early church did, they showed a reliance on God and a desire to be led by him through prayer, his word, and eventually the Spirit. Do you have the same reliance on God or does self-reliance sneak in more than you care to.

Acts 1:9-14

9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Matthias Chosen to Replace Judas
12 Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. 13 When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.


Dig Deeper
We live in a time when most people dislike their leaders. In the United States of America, there are virtually no political leaders that have a positive rating in nationwide polls. In fact, most people are more apt to decry or put down their leaders, including the President than they are to revere or praise them. It wasn’t always that way, though. I don’t mean to imply that there was once a time when all people adored their king or leader and praised whatever they did, but it is true that people in the ancient world took much more pride in who their leader was. It was generally believed that a leader like a king or emperor was the representative of his people and what was true of that leader was true of his people. If a king was perceived to be powerful and mighty then so was the nation that he led. In the Roman Empire, many of the people had come to view the Emperors as divine. They celebrated this fact not so much because they adored the Emperor, although some did, but more so because if the Emperor was great and divine, then it meant that they were a powerful nation that would last forever.

Romans began to believe that the Emperor was divine beginning with the first Emperor, Julius Caesar. It seems that this belief increased with each passing emperor during the first century. Because of this believed divinity, it was often claimed that when emperors died that their souls would ascend into the afterlife to take their place with the gods. Roman mythology, in fact, was full of accounts of gods like Herakles, a son of Zeus, materializing on earth and eventually ascending back to heaven, so it only made sense to claim the same power and honor for the divine emperors. Although these claims were made, they were never actually rooted in empirical fact. It was more of a commonly shared myth and belief than anything anyone might have tried to actually defend or argue as a truth that would change anyone’s life.

Here, though, Luke has gone to great pains to paint a very different picture. All of those claims of divinity and godhood for the emperor were based on myths, Luke seems to be saying. They were a paltry counterfeit of the real thing, the real King. As he will carefully describe in this section, what happened to Jesus was no act of wishful thinking or fantasy and the state of Jesus’ divinity was no mere myth. This was all too real and it was about to be shown true not just through the testimony of the eyewitnesses but by the unlikely story of conquest through suffering and persecution that follows in the remainder of the book of Acts.
We first have to understand that Luke was not envisioning this scene the way that some 21st century person likely does. He is not imagining Jesus deftly floating up into the sky like an escaped balloon at a child’s birthday party that eventually disappeared out of sight behind a cloud several thousand feet in the air and then shooting off to a floating city that lies somewhere past the stratosphere. It’s easy for us to read this passage like that but that’s not what Luke would have meant at all by this passage.

Biblically speaking, the cloud, was a way of speaking about God’s space when it broke into the physical realm. It signified the presence of God himself (Ex. 16:10; 40:34; 1 Ki. 8:10-11; Ps. 104:3). When Luke described the witnesses as seeing Jesus disappear into the cloud, it is of this that he was making reference. Just as Elijah had been taken up into God’s presence and the mantle of being God’s witness to the world had been passed on to Elisha, so now Jesus was returning to his Father’s realm, heaven, and was passing on the mantle of being his witnesses to the disciples. It would now be up to them to carry on the work of the kingdom that he had initiated. It would be up to them to build the family that Jesus had created.
At its heart, then, Luke was describing a scene in which Jesus was enveloped by the very presence of God. The translation of verse 10 in the NIV doesn’t really help matters when it implies that they were looking up into the sky as though they really were like six year old children watching starry-eyed as their favorite balloon drifted out of sight. What the text actually says is that they were staring toward heaven (Luke uses the exact same word, “ouranos,” to describe where they were staring as is used in passages like Matthew 6:9 which says “Our Father in ‘ouranos’ or ‘heaven’).

As they watched the physically resurrected Jesus be enveloped by the glory cloud of God’s presence and disappear they were surprised. They had seen something like this before (see Luke 9:28-36) when Jesus was transfigured as Peter, James, and John stood by. But that time when the cloud receded, Jesus was still with them. It seems logical that they were staring into the place where glory cloud had ascended because they were expecting Jesus to still be there but he was no longer visible to them.

The poor disciples always seem to be understandably one step behind God’s plan and this time was no different. As they were standing there a bit befuddled by what had just happened as they watched Jesus ascend into the presence of God and take his place at the Father’s right hand (see Eph. 1:20-21; Phil. 2:9; Heb. 1:3; 2:9), two angels appeared in their presence and offered a gentle rebuke. Why were they just standing there? They had seen Jesus physically depart from them into the presence of God and they could rest assured that he would return in precisely this fashion one day. In the meantime the mantle of being a witness to Gods’ kingdom had passed to them.

The promise of Jesus’ return was not a reference to the popular but largely imagined doctrine of the rapture (a doctrine that did not appear until the 1830’s and was originated by a very sketchy group of mystics known as the Irvingites, although it has become quite popular in this century). The problem with the rapture theory, besides not being taught in the Scriptures themselves, is that the whole process goes in the wrong direction. Rather than Jesus coming and then leaving with believers, the Scriptures are clear that Jesus will return and dwell with his family forever (This includes the often misused Thes. 4:16-17 which clearly teaches that the Lord will return in the glory cloud of God where he will be “met” by believers, says Paul, using a very precise word that meant to meet a dignitary outside of a city and escort him back into your city). This is a clear prediction of the physical return of Jesus and the resurrection of all believers. It is the time when heaven and earth will be brought together (Eph. 1:10; Rev. 21:1-5) as Christ returns and brings the final salvation of renewal for the whole creation (Rom. 8:18-25) and the resurrection and transformation that is being stored in heaven (Acts 3:21; Matt. 19:28; 1 Pet. 1:3-5; Col. 1:3-5) for God’s sons and daughters who eagerly await his return from heaven (Rom. 8:23-25; Phil. 3:20-21). Jesus left their sight physically in the power and glory of God’s presence and he will return in the same way one day.

The disciples returned to where they were gathering together, a Sabbath’s day’s walk. This doesn’t mean that this took place on a Sabbath day but rather that the distance was about the amount that one could walk, according to Jewish tradition, on a Sabbath, which was a distance of nearly ¾ mile (about 1 km). They, no doubt, had quite a bit to talk about as they arrived to a group that included the eleven apostles (minus, of course, Judas Iscariot), the women disciples, Jesus’ mother, and his brothers. There are two things of note in that list. The first is the special mention of the women, something that would have run counter to normal societal practices to downplay or not mention the women at all. The second is that Jesus’ brothers have moved decidedly from the camp of skeptics and unbelievers (see John 7:5) to the ranks of the true believers, something that was almost assuredly a result of Jesus’ resurrection appearances to them (see 1 Cor. 15:7).

Jesus had promised them an incredible outpouring and baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5) and now they would wait together and in prayer for that promised to be fulfilled. Luke tells us that they were “constantly” in prayer, a word that carries the meaning of doing something resolutely, steadfastly, persistently, and to persevere without fainting. Luke draws special attention to the fact that the disciples spent their time waiting for the Spirit in the proper action of constant and united prayer for God to act. Although Jesus had called them to “go” and baptize people of all nations into God’s family, they had finally learned the lesson that they were unequipped to do this under their own power. They would pray until the Spirit came upon them and enabled them to complete their mission. They would go, but not before they waited for the Spirit to lead them. This is certainly a lesson that Christians of each generation need to remember.

Devotional Thought
Do you gather together consistently with other believers to “constantly” pray for God to work among you, for him to fulfill his promises to believers, and to be prepared to follow the Spirit wherever he leads you all? Take some time today to consider what that might look like and what it might demand of you to do this if you don’t regularly already.

Acts 1:6-8

6 So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"

7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."


Dig Deeper
My family recently had the opportunity to spend almost a month in Southern Africa traveling around, teaching from the Bible and gathering together with disciples from various different places in the Southern part of that great continent. My wife and I have been there several times now and our eldest son was returning for his second trip, but our youngest son, our seven-year old, was going to go for the first time. Needless to say he was quite excited to go and couldn’t wait for the day to arrive when we would leave, although to be honest, I don’t know if his initial excitement was greater for the actual experience of being in Africa or the specter of nearly twenty hours of uninterrupted video game playing and movie watching on the plane. He would constantly ask if it was time to go on our trip yet and each time we would patiently explain to him when we would be leaving. Then about a week before the trip, we had a smaller out-of-town trip that would be overnight so we packed our bags and prepared to go. This put our son in a near-fever pitch. Surely the time for our trip had finally come. This must be it. He was ready to explode. But, we once again had to temper his excitement. This wasn’t yet the time but it would be soon.

At first glance, this short section of Scripture might seem quite similar to the above example, and in some ways it is. The apostles were like many other Jews who were expectantly waiting for the kingdom of God to come. In their understanding that would be the time when the promises of God, given through the prophets, would be fulfilled. It would be the time when the Messiah would finally set up God’s people to be the exalted people through whom the whole world would be blessed. Israel, they believed would be exalted among the nations, with God himself returning to rule the entire world through his people. All the nations would be judged for their rebellion against God and their persecution of his people, but yet they would somehow be blessed through the rule of God’s kingdom as well. In short, all of God’s promises would be fulfilled. Although Jesus’ answer is, in some respects, similar to ours to our son. It was not yet time although it would be soon. Yet, in a very real way, the answer is much more complicated than that.

Isaiah’s great prophecy, among many other similar Old Testament prophecies, would finally be fulfilled they hoped: “In the last days the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths’. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Isa. 2:2-4). To be honest, when I first came across this passage, I found it confusing. Isaiah spoke of all nations coming to the Lord and laying down their instruments of war and turning them into instruments of peace, but the world has been full of war since the coming of the last days (the time time between the coming of the Messiah and the onset of the Resurrection Age). Then I realized that I was making the same mistake that Jesus’ disciples were making. I was looking at things from the wrong angle. This passage doesn’t promise that when the Messiah comes, people of all nations of the world will come to peace. This passage isn’t about the so-called end-of-times at all. It is a promise that when the Messiah comes, people will come to the new Temple (the place where God’s presence is found on earth). It is a promise that people from all nations will come to be part of God’s people and they, who were formally at war with one another would now live at peace as one people, one family. It is a promise about what God’s kingdom and family will look like. It will be one people of all nations who live in peace with one another.

Despite Jesus’ many attempts to explain the kingdom to them and their role within it, there were still a few misconceptions that needed to be cleared up. The kingdom would not be what most Jews of their day were expecting. They would have to let go of those ideas once-and-for-all in order to fully and finally grasp what Jesus was really up to. They were still under the impression that, although Jesus was a different Messiah than they had expected, that he was going to restore Israel according to their expectations. His crucifixion had thrown a wrench into that and made them think that perhaps they had gotten it all wrong. It caused them to begin to ponder if he was not the one and this was not the time. But his incredible and unexpected resurrection had changed all of that. Resurrection was what was supposed to happen, according to the prevailing Jewish belief, when God’s presence flooded the earth and his kingdom had finally come. So what were they going to do with all of that? They seem to have thought that perhaps Jesus’ ascension or his promise of the coming baptism of the Spirit would finally be the time when all of those nationalistic expectations had been fulfilled.

But they were seeing things from the wrong angle. First of all they needn’t worry about times and dates because the answer to when the kingdom would come is not simplistic enough to sum up with a specific time. All of that is up to the authority of the Father anyway. But if they wanted to know when the kingdom would come they needed to change their viewpoint. When the Holy Spirit came, which would be soon enough, then they would finally have the ability to be his witnesses. The nation of Israel had been called to be God’s witnesses to the nations (Isa. 43:10; 44:8) but they had failed in that task. The task that Israel had faltered in had been taken up by Jesus under the authority of the Father that had been given to him, and he had subsequently shared the power to complete that mission with his disciples. God’s plan was always to have a people, one family that would draw people from all the nations. These people would be a light for the whole world so that God’s salvation would “reach the ends of the earth” (Isa. 49:6). This was the mission that was about to begin through Jesus’ disciples (v. 8; see also Acts 13:47).

The answer wasn’t as simple as when exactly would the kingdom come. Nor was Jesus’ answer as simple in content as many still today would like to make it. Jesus’ response was not to rebuke the disciples for their eagerness in wanting the time to have finally come and to tell them that they had it all wrong, that it wasn’t going to be an earthly kingdom but a heavenly one where they should just go about and prepare people to escape this world and go off to heaven one day.

They were waiting for a specific moment when God’s kingdom would come, when the presence of God would flood the earth, Israel would rise above the nations as a light to the world and would rule over the world as God’s true people, the promised family. From one perspective they had it all wrong but from another perspective, it would all come into focus if they would just change the angle from which they were looking. It all hinged on the resurrection of Christ, the very thing that they would be witness to. When Jesus walked into death and strode out of it, defeating it, he was the embodiment of the age to come. The resurrection had come through Jesus Christ as the firstfruits (1 Cor., 15:20) guaranteeing that the rest would come one day. And God’s presence would flood the earth through his Holy Spirit who would serve as a deposit guaranteeing that God’s full presence would come one day (Eph. 1:13-14). The kingdom would come not through calling people out of this world but by witnessing that the future had broken into the present. Those who entered into Christ would enter into the age to come, guaranteeing them to be there when the fullness of God’s age to come does come. They would begin to bring the physical realm under the rule of heaven, one person at a time. They would call out people from all nations to become the promised family of God (Rev. 5:9-10), a family that would be God’s witnesses, that would be a light to the ends of the earth, and would prepare themselves for the day when the fullness of God’s salvation, and kingdom, being stored up in heaven, flooded the earth and finally brought the realms of heaven and earth together for eternity (Matt. 19:28; Eph. 1:10; Rev. 21:1-5; Col. 1:5; 1 Pet. 1:3-5; Acts 3:21).

The kingdom was coming soon but the coming of the kingdom would also be a long way off. The resurrection had already happened in Christ, but the resurrection of believers would be a long way off. Salvation was coming to all people, but the final salvation would be a long time off. In the meantime, Jesus’ new family would live in the unique time between the coming of the kingdom when it had broken into the present age through the resurrection and ascension of Christ and the final and complete coming of the kingdom. His disciples would be those who live by the values and reality of the coming age and show the world what it looks like. They are those who are living as though it is daytime because they know that the day is coming even though the world is entrenched in the darkness of the night (see Rom. 13:11-14; 1 Thess. 5:4-11). They were being given the power of the Spirit and a mission that will serve as a model of sorts for the rest of the book of Acts. They were to go Jerusalem, which will be covered in chapters 1-7; to Samaria as will be outlined in 8:-11:18; and then the mission to go to the ends of the earth is picked up for the remainder of the book. Yet the description of the formation of God’s promised family ends rather strangely in chapter 28. In fact, the books of Acts has no proper ending at all. As we continue on through the remainder of the book of Acts, see if it doesn’t become clear why that is.

Devotional Thought
On a smaller scale, it has been pointed out that each Christian family, wherever they are at, should have the same focus of their immediate community (their Jerusalem), the surrounding area (their Samaria), and the ends of the earth. Spend some time praying today for each of those areas for your local Christian family and then be active in that mission.

Acts 1:1-5

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Jesus Taken Up Into Heaven 1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with [a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with [b] the Holy Spirit."



Dig DeeperWhen I was just six years old the movie “Star Wars” came out. It was a phenomenon immediately and everyone wanted to see it. In fact, the movie amazingly stayed in my hometown as a first-run showing in the theater there for well over one year. One of the main characters of that movie was a Jedi Knight named Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan was a central character that heroically marched into his own death and laid down his life for the benefit of others. So a few years later when the sequel to “Star Wars” came out it was bitter sweet because it would be another “Star Wars” movie but one without Obi-Wan, or so I thought. I was wrong, though. Obi-Wan did make a few important appearances in the next two Star Wars movies. His ghost-like appearance burst into a few scenes here and there but he was no longer a main character.

Although there might be a few similarities there between Obi-Wan’s journey in the Stars Wars series and that of Jesus Christ, it would be quite a disservice to think that the book of Acts is a sequel to the Gospel of Luke with the ghost-like Jesus making a few important appearances but really just fading into the background as a secondary character as the real work of the mission carried on without him, as was the case with Obi-Wan. Luke is quite clear that this is a continuation of his previous writing, which we call the Gospel of Luke, but the reality is that originally these were two parts of the same work and were considered as such for at least the first century of their existence until they slowly came to be seen as separate entities in their own right.

In the ancient world of Luke’s time it was quite common to break up one piece of work into separate parts with a quick summary of the previous work that served as a brief introduction for the second part. That’s exactly what Luke did here. But when Luke says that his former book had to do with “all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven,” he doesn’t mean that this second part was going to go on and talk about something else. Quite the opposite in fact. This work is a continuation of the previous work which means it is a continuation of all that Jesus did and taught. But Jesus had also promised that he would continue to be with his disciples but in a different and even more powerful way. He would constantly reveal himself to them through the work and power of the Holy Spirit. That’s what this book is about. Although it has traditionally been called “The Acts of the Apostles” since around the late 2nd century, it could rightly be called, as some have pointed out over the years, “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” At it’s heart, though, this book is not a sequel. It is not something entirely new. It is precisely a continuation of the kingdom-bringing work of Jesus Christ.

Before we move on, though, there is one other contrast with “Star Wars” that we need to clear up. Obi-Wan did return to the thick of things on occasion but he was little more than a ghost. Luke is quite clear that the resurrected Jesus was anything but a ghost. He was the prototype of the resurrection body that is promised to all believers. He is the firstfruits of the age to come and he was very real. He spent time with them, taught them, ate with them, and gave them constant proof that he was real, physical, and material. He was not anything less than physical and material, but his resurrection body was actually more than that. The goal of God’s universe, as is made clear by passages such as Ephesians 1:10 and Revelation 21:1-5 is that the separated realms of heaven and earth will be brought together for eternity. At the time of the resurrection of all believers, God will bring together and unite heaven and earth and will be with his people in full presence forever. Jesus is the place where that bringing together of heaven and earth, the age to come, broke into the present age. His resurrection body was at home in the physical realm (which is why he could eat and perform quite normal functions) but it is also quite at home in the spiritual realm (which is apparently why locked doors seemed to be no obstacle for him).

At the heart of this ongoing story, addressed to the same Theophilus as the first section is, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Everything in the Gospel of Luke pointed ahead to and culminated in that seminal event and everything in Acts emanates from that same event. And Luke wants us to know from the beginning that there was no mistaking what had happened. Jesus really did physically raise from the dead. His grave really was empty. In fact the word that Luke used that is translated as “convincing” was actually a technical term used by the Greeks to indicate something that was conclusive with no other alternative. Jesus was alive and they were to be his witnesses, not just about his resurrection but about the kingdom of God itself. The kingdom had indeed broken into the present age and it would be their vocation to go announce that to the world (a topic we will consider in more detail tomorrow).

The book of Acts is a theological history of the ongoing action of God through the life of Jesus Christ and the continuing power and unifying work of the Holy Spirit to bring about his kingdom. It is that simple in one respect, but the reality that coming to a unified understanding of the book of Acts has proved to be elusive over the years. Some have viewed it as nothing more than a nice story with more myth and wishful thinking than anything else. Wiith a critical look at the reliability of Acts as an account that contains factual information, however, we can safely reject this view. Others have seen it as an authoritative blueprint that gives the commands and examples necessary to constructing a proper and biblical religious institution called the church. Still others view Acts as a paradigm for connecting with and accessing the miraculous and incredible power of the Spirit. Luke, however, seems largely uninterested with any of those possibilities as being anywhere near his primary purpose.

At the heart of Luke and Acts are the promises of God. God promised that he would have one family that consisted of all nations (Gen. 17:3-5; Gal. 3:7-8) and this is a picture of the foundations, formations, and ongoing identity of that promised family. Acts is simply not a rule book for constructing a rightly ordered religious institution, nor is it a spiritual handbook for the miraculous and amazing. It is a map. It is a blueprint that shows us the way to creating the family that God desired his people to be. We can easily begin to build the wrong structure, though, if we aren’t clear on what the finished product should be. God promised a family (Gen. 12:1-3; 17:3-5), Jesus delivered a family (Mark 3:31-35; 10:28-30), and as we continue through Acts we will see a beautiful mosaic of that family being formed as the Holy Spirit works within the foibles, shortcomings, and prejudices of human beings. We need to keep all of that mind as we go so that we don’t try to make Acts into something that it was never intended to be. Acts is about the creating of the church but a church that is a family not a religious institution.

It is a picture of a family, true enough, but it is a family that would rely on the strength and power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus wanted his disciples to be clear that they would not be able to be the fulfillment of God’s promised family, his kingdom, on their own strength or ability. They did not have the power to change the world but the Holy Spirit did. So, they would stay put and not do anything until he came upon them. They had forty days after Jesus’ resurrection to be with Jesus and learn from him about being his witnesses but they still would fail miserably until they had the power of the Spirit. They needed to wait for that.

The needed to wait for the powerful baptism of the Spirit that would empower them to be Jesus’ witnesses all over the world and would give them the ability to be unified as the promised family of God. But what exactly did Jesus mean when he spoke of being baptized with the Holy Spirit?

The answer to that question has become more varied over years, especially over the last hundred or so years. It has become increasingly popular to assert that there is a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit that is available to believers at a point and time after their salvation as a second work of God’s grace. This “baptism in the Spirit” is usually said to be accompanied by miraculous gifts of the Spirit, most typically the ability to speak in ecstatic utterances known as “tongues.” According to this view, those who have been baptized with the Spirit are those who have attained a higher spiritual level, one to which all believers should strive to attain.

Despite the growing popularity of such a view, there is little, if any, actual biblical substance to back up such a belief and most who hold to this view are left to rely on shaky biblical interpretation, tradition (and mostly recent tradition at that), and experiences. In fact there are but seven references to the baptism of the Holy Spirit and six of them, including this reference in verse 5, refer to John’s contrast between his symbolic baptism of repentance and the baptism of dying to self and entering into the life of Christ and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit that would become available following the death and resurrection of Christ (see Rom. 6:1-10; Acts 2:38; see also Acts 19 :1-5 where the line of distinction between the pre-resurrection baptism and the post-resurrection baptism will be clearly drawn). John’s baptism with water pointed to the real thing, the baptism into Christ that was still in water but now was the point of contact with the promised Spirit. John’s point was to draw a distinction between his symbolic baptism and the one that would truly bring about entrance into the family of God and the reception of the Holy Spirit who would unify God’s children into this promised family. That is the point of 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, the only other mention of being baptized with or by the Spirit into the one body. The Spirit’s role here is to create and unify the promised family of God.

To properly understand the baptism of the Spirit, we must realize first of all that after the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out, fulfilling the promises of God (Ezek. 36:24-27) and of Jesus (Jn. 14-16), there is no biblical example of believers being said to be baptized with the Spirit. Pentecost, as we will see in chapter 2, was the anointing or the baptizing of Jesus’ believers with the Spirit, an action that has never been withdrawn and has continued to be available to all men and women when they are baptized into the life of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sin (Acts 2:38). It is also important to note that the disciples were told to wait for the anointing of the Holy Spirit but no believers since then have been told to wait or look for a second outpouring of grace at a “baptism with the Spirit.” We simply cannot claim that the baptism of the Spirit is anything other than the outpouring of the Spirit initiated at Pentecost and continually made available to all believers through water baptism into the life of Christ. This is an outpouring of the Spirit that has never been withdrawn and to insist on a second work of grace through a second baptism not only stands in clear violation of Ephesians 4:5 which declares clearly that there is just one baptism (many claim that there are actually three baptisms available today for believers and claim that Paul here refers just to the “one” baptism that he is speaking of in the context of this passage but consistency would then demand that if Paul said there was one baptism but there are really three that there could actually also be three faiths, three Lords, three hopes, three Gods over all and so on). The erroneous view of the Spirit’s baptism would also contradict Romans 8:9, which says that all believers have the Spirit, not that some have some of the Spirit but should be waiting for a second outpouring.

As we continue reading the book of Acts, what will slowly come into view is a family picture. An account of the anointing of God’s people with his promised Spirit. It is an invitation to come and see what it looked like when God began to form his family and a further invitation to come join in and continue the story. It is the story of God’s promises, his fulfillment, and the Spirit through whom it all happened and continues to happen.

Devotional ThoughtLuke reminds us here in verse 3 that a central aspect of the concept of early Christianity was a willingness to suffer for the benefit of others. Do you embrace that aspect of Christianity or do you try to escape the call to lay down our lives and being willing to suffer so that others might come to the family of God?