So...it's the day of Pentecost in the 1st century. These first apostles had weathered an amazing set of circumstances over the months and weeks. Some 40 months previously, they had been suddenly uprooted from their regular commitments and routines to travel the countryside with Jesus of Nazareth--preaching, teaching and healing with great rigor, crowds, adulation, controversy and persecution in attendance. They had experienced a full range of emotions over those 3+ years: surprise, joy, frustration, awe, doubt, fear, enthusiasm, dismay, anger, sadness and probably all the rest possible.
Some 50 days previously, they had attended Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem at the Passover time. Then, in a most grievous turn of events, they stood by in a stunned and paralyzed state, as Jesus was arrested, mocked, condemned and crucified. Their euphoria had, all at once, turned to fear, doubt, disillusionment, anger and confusion. They were, for the most part, not strong and courageous, but weak and timid. If there were any heroes, it was the ladies, not the guys.
But suddenly...almost beyond belief...their sorrows and doubts turned to joy and restored faith as Jesus came up from the grave and appeared to them. He kindly and firmly wooed each of them back into confidence and strength on the heels of their various brokennesses. (Untested faith and unbroken strength don't seem to get the job done over the long haul, do they?) He appeared to them regularly over that period of 40 days...days of reformation and transformation and preparation. A time of refitting and retooling for the great mission and Divine purpose ahead. The resurrected Christ speaks with them, in depth, about the kingdom of God that his coming had inaugurated...the new genesis that his incarnation and resurrection mysteriously witnessed to.
So...now...after 10 days of waiting on God in prayer and fellowship...the Spirit of God had come upon them and filled them as never before in the whole history of God's relationship with His people. They are standing together to testify and explain the strange and miraculous event of this Pentecost day to those devout Jews, both local and international, who had come to celebrate the feast before God. Just 53 days before, many of these gathered had been a part of the religious mob that had called for the crucifixion of Jesus and the release of Barabbas. It is in the face of this potentially lethal throng that Peter, as a spokesperson for the rest, interprets this phenomena in the light of Scripture. He quotes from memory (and...I'd bet these were passages that Jesus had expounded to them during the 40 days--how about you?) the following:
1. Joel 2:28-32--This wondrous event was a fulfillment of Joel's foresight into a future trans-national, trans-generational, trans-gender and unprecedented outpouring and infilling of the Holy Spirit. (And...some of the melodramatic and symbolically charged cosmic events were apparently hidden from human eyes...though some were not.)
"I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord."
Not that these are the final words on or exclusive fulfillments of what these things referred to, but... the Father did speak audibly from heaven on three occasions and many miracles took place on the earth during the ministry of Jesus. The sky went dark supernaturally during the crucifixion. And, of course, Jesus did shed his precious blood on the cross. Tongues of fire appeared over each believer's head on this particular day. We know from the epistles that the demonic powers were stripped of their authority by the work of Jesus on the cross as well--what kind of colorful and vivid language might God use to prophesy such displacement in the invisible realm? Truly, the heavens and the earth have never been the same since the resurrection of Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit--whether the peoples of the earth recognize this or not. A main part of our mission as followers of Jesus is to simply unveil to them this historic and radical shift.
2. Psalm 16:26-27--"Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will live in hope, because you will not abandon me to the grave...."
Peter's inspired commentary on the passage follows in Acts 2:29-31: "Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. 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. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay."
Such NT passages provide a interpretative grid or template for how we must approach many OT prophecies of this genre--i.e. David wasn't speaking primarily or literally about himself in this Psalm, as we would tend to imagine on the surface of things. But, more profoundly, he was intimately linked by sovereign and superintending prophetic purposes of God, across the generations, to the Person of Messiah Jesus and was even penning grand words that he himself did not fully comprehend.
And then, at the climactic point of his sermon, immediately prior to three thousand, formerly hostile, people putting their personal faith in Jesus and...their representatives crying out to Peter, "What must we do to be saved?"...he quotes one more OT prophecy. Can you venture a guess which one???
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