Sunday, January 29, 2012

Acts 2:22-28

“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power. For David says of Him, ‘I SAW THE LORD ALWAYS IN MY PRESENCE; FOR HE IS AT MY RIGHT HAND, SO THAT I WILL NOT BE SHAKEN. ‘THEREFORE MY HEART WAS GLAD AND MY TONGUE EXULTED; MOREOVER MY FLESH ALSO WILL LIVE IN HOPE; BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT ABANDON MY SOUL TO HADES, NOR ALLOW YOUR HOLY ONE TO UNDERGO DECAY. ‘YOU HAVE MADE KNOWN TO ME THE WAYS OF LIFE; YOU WILL MAKE ME FULL OF GLADNESS WITH YOUR PRESENCE.’


vss 22-36 - "Peter reviewed the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth (vv 22-24) and then recited the prophecy of the Resurrection (vv 25-31), quoting Ps 16:8-11.  Since David was speaking of the Messiah (v 31) and since Jesus was raised from the dead (v 32), Peter continued, Jesus must be the Messiah (v 36)." (Ryrie)

"The purpose of Peter's words here must be clearly seen if we are to understand their meaning.  In spite of Paul's emphatic declarations to the contrary (especially in his letter to the Galatians) it is often claimed that Peter preached the very same gospel as Paul.  'Did not Peter, at Pentecost,' they ask, 'preach Christ crucified and risen, just as Paul did?'  Our answer is that at Pentecost Peter did not preach Christ crucified and risen as Paul later did.  How did Peter, in his Pentecostal address, deal with the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ?  Was that his gospel?  Did he proclaim it as good news?  Was it his purpose to offer salvation  to his hearers through faith in the death and resurrection of Christ?  No, nor did he in fact make such an offer.  On the contrary, his purpose was to convict his hearers of their guilt in the crucifixion of Christ and to warn them that the One whom they with wicked hands had crucified and slain, had risen from the dead and was alive again.  When those who were thus convicted asked what they should do, Peter did not tell them simply to believe that Christ had died for them, as we do today.  His 'great commission' had not contemplated such a message.  What he did was to command them to repent and be baptized, every one, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, so that they might receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (See Verse 38 and cf. Mark 16:15-18).  We now know that the very death which Peter accused them of was the basis upon which God could offer them salvation at all, but Peter, at Pentecost, was not commissioned to preach 'the gospel of the grace of God,' nor did he know that gospel (Cf. Acts 20:24 with Eph 3:1-3)...

"In His perfect foreknowledge He had a two-fold purpose in this — one related to prophecy and the other to the mystery; one with which Peter's ministry was concerned and the other with which Paul's was concerned.  The one related to prophecy and Peter's ministry is that with which we have here to do.  It was because God purposed, by Israel's very crucifixion of her Messiah, some day to touch and break the heart of His chosen people, that He thus delivered Christ into their hands.  Indeed, it is by recognizing and acknowledging her guilt in Christ's death that Israel will some day be saved.  'And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.'  'In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem...'  'And one shall say unto Him, What are these wounds in Thine hands?  Then He shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends' (Zech 12:10, 11; 13:6).  How thankful we should be that the death of Christ was not an accident which God failed to prevent!  A universe out of God's control, with right upon the scaffold and wrong upon the throne — such a universe would be too horrible to contemplate.  What would be the use of anything under such circumstances?  We would merely be the helpless victims of everything gone wrong!  No, thank God!  The Christ who was crucified and slain by wicked hands was first delivered by 'the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God'!  This in no wise lessens the guilt of Christ's murderers.  On the contrary, it is calculated to strike conviction into their sinful hearts.  And now Peter's hearers are faced with the fearful possibility that the One whom they have slain may be alive again, as Peter serves them notice that He whom they have stooped so low to rid themselves of has come forth in power from the grace.  Nor does Peter merely affirm this to be a fact; he presses the truth of it home to his guilty hearers with unanswerable arguments." (Stam)

David says of Him - "He [Peter] addresses them on the matter of the prophecy already quoted from the sixteenth psalm concerning 'the patriarch David.'  Here alone David is called a patriarch because he is the progenitor of the kingly race.  There was a reason for enlarging upon that prophecy, which becomes the foundation of his appeal.  None of the rabbis ever thought of applying the psalm to the promised Messiah.  There is, however, an old tradition, which no doubt was known and believed in that day, which applied the psalm literally to David.  This application was as follows: 'Those words, 'my flesh shall rest in hope,' teach us that neither worm nor insect had any power over David.'  Peter shows that such a traditional belief that the words referred to David himself were incorrect.  They could not mean King David.  David had died and been buried (1 Kings 2:10).  Moses' burial place was not known, but the tomb (literally monument) of David was known amongst them in that day (Nehemiah 3:16).  David saw corruption.  It was, therefore, impossible that the prophecy could mean him.  But David was a prophet and as such he spoke, not of himself, but of the promised descendant, who was to come out of his loins to occupy his throne.  The promised son of David was none other than the Christ." (Gaebelein)

Hades - "The unseen world, sometimes specifically a place of torment (See Lk 16:23) and sometimes merely the grave, as here. The meaning is that Christ's body and spirit would not be allowed to remain separated (v 31)." (Ryrie)

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