Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles
2. The Holy Spirit and the Word of God
The second talk in a series given at Nedlands Anglican Church 10th March 2024
In this second talk we are primarily exploring Acts 2, but since we cannot cover the whole of Acts in ten studies, and must needs look at themes as well as individual passages, I intend to focus on the twin subjects of the Holy Spirit and the early Christian’s preaching.
In our first study we saw how Jesus laid a foundation for our understanding of history. The simple two-stage division of time into this evil age and the age-to-come which the Messiah would inaugurate gives way to a three-stage understanding: before the coming of the kingdom and the full restoration of Israel there is an unforeseen period; the Messiah has died and been raised; the age of wickedness continues, but the kingdom of God has been inaugurated and must be announced by witnesses to the end of the earth. We left it with the tiny community gathered in an upper room, waiting for the promised Spirit, and attending to the restoration of the twelve-fold apostolate.
Pentecost
Fifty days after Passover on the Jewish calendar comes Pentecost, their harvest festival, also connected in many minds with the giving of the law at Sinai. As Luke tells it, the house where they are gathered is filled with the sound of a roaring wind. Fire falls and divides onto each person’s head, and they are all filled with the Holy Spirit.
In the modern mind the word “spirit” suggests an immaterial being or ghost, but to the Hebrews it indicates power.
Elijah sought God in the “rushing mighty wind,” but the Lord was not there. Now he is, and also in fire, which at Sinai fell on the mountain top, but now rests on each individual. Jesus promised they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit; such a miracle would have left them in no doubt the Spirit had come. It must have been an awesome experience.
The Gift of Languages
At the sound a crowd gathers and the disciples disperse among them speaking excitedly about … Luke tells us they spoke of “the wonders of God,” and each person heard them speaking their own language. Peter will explain this as a “sign”: a meaningful miracle. Probably it signaled the undoing of the confusion of languages which came on the builders of the Tower of Babel.[1] The kingdom of God ultimately entails the coming together of the nations under the leadership of the King-Messiah.
The miracle is unique. The speaking in known foreign languages is never repeated.
Amongst the Irvingites of the nineteenth century some spoke in tongues and believed God had given them a supernatural gift to enable them to evangelize the South Sea islanders, but it turned out not to be so. The “gift of tongues (languages)” occurs twice more in Acts, and to the Corinthians Paul affirms it as a possible genuine manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but it is never suggested it is like the gift of languages experienced at Pentecost. [Though one can never know what God will do. Someone at the talk told me about his grandmother and grandfather, people of limited education, who went as missionaries to Brazil, and were preaching in Portuguese within four months.]
Peter’s Audience
Get a map of the Bible world and try to work out what is going on here. What country is glaringly missing? This is Luke describing who was present at the Pentecost miracle: Jews from Palestine and all over the world (the diaspora). There were more Jews living outside the Holy Land than within. Could Luke be picturing the world as it seemed to him? Starting from the east and traveling to Jerusalem; then north and west to Capadocia and the roman provinces of modern Turkiye; the take a ship to Alexandria and travel through Egypt to Libya; take another ship to Italy, and another back east to Judaea and Arabia. He has left out Greece! Could Greece be at the centre: where he is located, andÍ missing from his view, as he himself is almost invisible in the story. I am just guessing!
Proclaiming the Word
Some of the crowd jokingly dismiss it as drunken ravings, and Peter seizes the opportunity to deliver the first public Christian proclamation of what we call the gospel.
It brings us to the subject of speeches in ancient historical writings, and to the question whether we are listening to Peter or Luke. Luke obviously intends we listen to Peter, but many scholars dismiss this. Luke’s readers, they say, would have expected to hear a composition of Luke; it should not be thought that anyone would have memorized a whole speech and remembered it for Luke to recount thirty years later.
Certainly, we need not think we have a word for word transcript of what was said, but just becauset historians like Tacitus and Josephus crafted speeches to place in the mouth of their characters, does not mean Luke did. The use of speeches was discussed by ancient historians, and most agreed that, though there was an element of creativity in fitting a speech to a historical narrative, speeches should be appropriate to the occasion, represent what was said, and say it in a way the original speaker would have.
Peter’s speech is certainly appropriate to the occasion. But it would also have been remembered in its broad outlines, the occasion being what it was. We will see that the speech has a clear structure built around three Old Testament scriptures. There is every reason to think it is a fair representation of what Peter said, even if the summarizing and retelling picks up some of the style of Luke.
The Point of the Sermons
Here we note that Acts is full of speeches, and ask why. A story is a narrative of events, and alone carries no meaning. A speech enables an author—also the original speaker—to give meaning to the action. Indeed, this is exactly what Peter does on the day of Pentecost. The commotion in the street could mean a lot of things, but Peter interprets it by placing it in the context of Old Testament promises.
Luke has various ways of indicating meaning. Messengers of God (angels) explain what is happening—if an angel speaks, listen! Quotations and allusions to Scripture provide meaning to events. Association of events, and repetition can also signify meaning. In the case of Acts, speeches have another function. If Luke was aiming to have his work read to groups of believers and unbelievers, the speeches will address his audiences in no lesser manner than the original listeners. Many of these speeches are evangelistic: they declare and explain the gospel. A well-known writer claims Luke’s purpose cannot be evangelistic because so much attention is given to defending Paul. I say that five major evangelistic addresses and a number of defense speeches in which the gospel features, along with some abbreviated accounts of evangelistic preaching indicate the author of Acts wants people to hear the gospel, and hear it over and over, and in different ways. Acts is more than a retelling of the past, it is also a tool for evangelism.
Explaining the Holy Spirit
Peter grasps the opportunity that the misunderstanding presents. He will explain the coming of the Holy Spirit. The way he does this is by relating the events of the recent past to the predictions of Old Testament scriptures. The first of these is from the prophet Joel.
Six things should be noted here, before we look at what Peter does with this scripture.
- Peter is addressing Jews; Gentiles do not come into the story until later.
- God has promised to “pour out” his Spirit on “all flesh.” In the present context this means young and old, male and female, leaders and led. As Acts unfolds it will become clear that people of all ethnicities are included.
- Prophecy had ceased 400 years earlier. Joel promises that “in the last days” the gift will be exercised by all manner of people. We saw it in the case of Zechariah, Mary, Simeon, and Anna in Luke’s infancy story. It is now happening among the apostles and early Christians.
- Along with this prophesying that will take place “in the last days” will go signs and miracles, and disturbances of the natural order. These latter Jesus associated with his coming at the end of the age, but Joel sees them as all apiece with his miracles and resurrection.
- “The great and glorious day of the Lord,” marks the end of normal history, as we saw in chapter 1. At that time, according to Joel, “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” The Lord is God, of course. It is striking that as his account goes on Luke will refer to believers as those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus.[2] This is one example of how he repeatedly associates Jesus’ identity with God.
Peter now explains the significance of the passage.
The only obvious connection between the Joel reading and what Peter says apart from God pouring out his Spirit, is “signs and wonders.” Peter has connected what is happening in the street to Joel’s promise of the Spirit, and then moved attention to Jesus. That Jesus did signs and wonders is known to all Peter’s listeners. Nevertheless, they crucified him, albeit according to God’s predestinating plan, and with the help of evil people. But God raised him from the dead.
Peter has outlined the gospel story and brought it into relationship with the event of Pentecost. No doubt he said much more about this on the day. I pause to note that most good gospel preaching begins by making a connection with something known or interesting to the hearers, and moves on to connect with Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Peter next introduces a second scripture, this time from the Psalms.
The point here is that their Scriptures predict that the Messiah would be saved from death.
Peter reasons that David himself died and decayed, the proof being that his tomb was there in Jerusalem at the time he is preaching. He must then have spoken of the eternal king God promised to one day place on his throne (2 Samuel 7). Peter is developing an argument, each point of which is secured by a passage of Scripture.
His third scripture predicts that God will exalt his Messiah to his own right hand, the place of executive authority in the universe.
Peter now returns to the question he set out to answer: What does it mean that all sorts of people are receiving the Holy Spirit? The answer is that Jesus died, rose, and has been exalted to God’s right hand as Lord, in accordance with Psalm 110, and is pouring out the promised Holy Spirit. All that remains is to draw a conclusion:
This is no emotional appeal to the easily swayed; it is a closely argued case for people who believe their Scriptures are the word of God. It is built around three well-known passages and comes to a logical conclusion, which is the heart of the gospel: Jesus is Lord! We can see the speech would not easily have been forgotten. There is no reason at all for doubting it is essentially what Peter said, and is probably close to what he preached on many other occasions. It is worth studying today as an example of gospel proclamation, but, as I said before, Luke has given it in full in the hope that those who hear it read will be convinced and believe in Jesus: Jews as their King-Messiah, Gentiles as their Lord and God.
On a second occasion in Acts 3 Peter addresses a crowd of Jews at the temple. The occasion this time is the excitement at his and John’s healing of a crippled beggar who sat at one of the temple entrances. I will not explain it in detail, but simply make a few comments, especially about what Luke is doing.
Note here in passing that Luke describes Beautiful Gate with a present participle that suggests it is still called this when Luke was writing—the same for Solomon’s Colonnade in 3.11.
It is no proof, but an indication that Luke was writing before the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70.
Peter charges his hearers with unwittingly killing their Messiah. In doing so he identifies Jesus with several Old Testament titles. In his first sermon he has identified him as “Lord and Christ.” Christ (Messiah) is still his principal identity, but he is also the glorified Servant (Isaiah 53), the Holy and Righteous One (Isaiah 53), and “the author of life.”
The main point of gospelling is to show who Jesus is and what he has done. Luke wants his readers and listeners to know exactly who he is. Each of the speeches adds to the picture.
As in the Pentecost address, Peter establishes that Jesus died according to God’s plan, though this in no way lessens the guilt of those who carried out the crime. Then he calls on them to repent and turn around.
The main thing I want to point out here is confirmation of what we saw in chapter 1: Jesus must remain in heaven until the time of restoration, which Peter here describes as the restoration of everything promised by the prophets. In the meantime, forgiveness of sins and “times of refreshing” are promised to all who turn and believe in Jesus. My guess is that he refers to the era of the Holy Spirit as “times of refreshing.”
Peter then identifies Jesus as the prophet Moses spoke of, whom God would raise up after him.
This is confronting. The people of God (the Jewish laos) consists of those who hear and obey Jesus. All others will be cut off from the people. If Jesus is God’s king, then the people of God will be associated with him—just as, if there is one God, there can be salvation nowhere else.
Peter concludes that all the prophets have spoken of these days, that the promise to Abraham that through his seed all the peoples of the earth should be blessed is being fulfilled—in the first place by sending Jesus to Israel that they might turn to God and be blessed.
Peter seems still to hold out hope for a national turning.
Acts is full of speeches and reports of speeches. In all of them the raising of Jesus to life is central, and an unveiling of who he is. People are called on the repent and turn to God. Forgiveness and the Holy Spirit is promised to those who do. Those who don’t are warned of coming judgement. Let us close this study with a look at how people responded to the Pentecost speech.
Several things are noteworthy here:
Luke does not say so, but we may believe that it is the Holy Spirit who is at work penetrating their hearts. Luke is very predestinarian in his thinking. Those who repent are those who are called (2.39). Only God’s powerful Spirit can break open a rebellious heart and create faith.
The Holy Spirit has provided the occasion, and the Holy Spirit has worked in the hearts of the listeners. We may be sure it is also the Holy Spirit who has empowered Peter to speak as he does. “Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” says Paul. Those are mistaken who would imagine the Holy Spirit as an alternative to the Bible; the Spirit uses the gospel to bring Christ to the heart. He works in the world, the preacher, the preached word, and the hearer to create the messianic community. In the next talk we will see more of the community.
Of those whose hearts are open Peter requires repentance and baptism.
In other places faith will be required.[3] Repentance (metanoia) means a change of mind; it corresponds to the prophets’ call to “turn,” meaning to turn towards God. The state of mind resulting from repentance is faith; repenting and believing are two sides of the one coin. Baptism is the public acknowledgement of the change we have decided on. It brings us into the new community.
God’s promise to those who turn is forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit. These are distinct gifts, but they go together. They are both promised to everyone who turns to Christ. If we ask, what must I do to be forgiven and saved, the answer is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16.30–31). If we ask, What must I do to receive the Holy Spirit? The answer is the same.
There is one final observation I would like to make. Peter further exhorts his audience to respond to his message.
Peter is one of the witnesses Jesus commissioned to take his message to the ends of the earth. He was a witness of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and heard the teaching of his master during the forty days between his resurrection and ascension. It is on this basis that he “bears witness,” and calls on his hearers to save themselves. Salvation implies a situation of grave danger, which if they do not save themselves will destroy them. The crooked generation is not to be understood of as Peter’s contemporaries. In a song to be in the mouth of every generation, Moses spoke of Israel present and future as a “crooked and perverse generation.”[4]
The anger of God would destroy them. So now, Peter is urging his listeners to distance themselves from the generation (unbelieving Israel) who would be destroyed. Three thousand heeded his warning.
In our next study we will consider the community which came about as a result of the preaching of the gospel. If you want to read ahead, look at chapters 2,3, 4, and 5.
[1] Genesis 11.1–9.
[2] Ananias, addressing Jesus in prayer, calls him Lord, and speaks of those “who call upon your name.” Acts 9.14; also 9.21; 22.16.
[3] Acts 16.30–31.
[4] Deuteronomy 32. 5, 20.