Judgment and Blessing. Acts 3:23 - 4:8
Acts 3:23 NASB “And it will be that
every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from
among the people.” Just as Deuteronomy stated that every word would be required,
i.e. accountable to obey every word from this prophet, it is restated here that
every soul that would not hear and obey this prophet shall be destroyed from
among the people. The word that is translated “destroyed” here is a somewhat
antiquated Greek word which is only used a couple of times in the New Testament
but is used numerous times in the LXX to translate the concept of being cut off. This is an extreme
term that indicates death in many cases—capital punishment for disobedience.
Cf. Psalm 92:7; 106:34; both use this word exolothreuo [e)coloqreuw].
Psalm 92:7 NASB “That when the wicked sprouted up like grass And all
who did iniquity flourished, It {was only} that they might be destroyed [e)coloqreuw] forevermore.” Psalm 106:34 NASB
“They did not destroy [e)coloqreuw] the
peoples, As the LORD commanded
them”—talking about the conquest generation when every Canaanite was to be
destroyed, and they failed to obey Him. So this word is a euphemism for capital
punishment and for death. So it is very clear that there is a penalty in the
messianic prophecy in Deuteronomy 18:15-19 that when this prophet like Moses
comes, if He is not listened to, the people will be destroyed.
Acts 3:24 NASB “And likewise, all the
prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and {his} successors onward, also
announced these days.” Remember that a prophet is a spokesperson for God; he
basically represented the Supreme Court of heaven to the people and he
challenged to people with reference to their disobedience. The first prophet
mentioned here is Samuel, probably the first writing prophet in the Old
Testament. Here Peter is addressing the people in the temple courtyard and
saying to go back and read the prophets from Samuel all the way forward and see
again and again how they foretold these days. So here is a clear statement that
the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, have prophecy after prophecy after
prophecy related to the Messiah. There are over 300 prophecies in the Old
Testament that were fulfilled in the life of Jesus.
Acts 3:25 NASB “It is you who are the
sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers,
saying to Abraham, ‘AND IN YOUR SEED ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE
EARTH SHALL BE BLESSED.’”
Here he is using the term “sons of the prophets” in terms of you have the
heritage of the prophets. He is saying to them you are the heirs, the
recipients of the teaching of the prophets and of the covenant which God made
with their fathers. He uses the word “covenant” as a singular noun. He is
specifically speaking of the Abrahamic covenant which had three basic aspects:
a promise of land, a promise of seed, and a promise of blessing. What he is
focusing on here is the seed promise, the blessing promise—Genesis 12:3 NASB
“And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” What is interesting
is that in that verse there is the English word “curse” twice. A curse is to
come under God’s judgment. The first word that is used here is a word that
speaks of a strong, harsh punishment or judgment; the second word is one that
basically means to treat with disrespect or lightly. It should be translated,
“I will harshly judge the one who treats you with disrespect.” The phrase “in
you” represents a Hebrew preposition that is just the letter b. It is similar to the Greek
preposition en [e)n] and it has not only the sense of
location, which is what it sounds like—“in you”—but also the idea of means or
instrumentality. It should be translated “by means of you” or “through you all
the families of the earth will be blessed.” So we have a promise here that
anyone who treats the Jewish people lightly, casually or with disrespect—not to
mention anti-Semitism—God will harshly judge. No nation or people on the earth
has ever survived being anti-Semitic.
So God’s
promise is that He will bring blessing to all families of the earth through the
Jewish people. This is not a natural blessing. There are many things that the
Jewish people have provided—artists, musicians, scientists, etc.
Acts 3:26 NASB “For you first, God
raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one {of you}
from your wicked ways.” This is the second time Peter has mentioned the
resurrection. There were witnesses of this resurrection and those in Peter’s
audience knew that. They had heard the stories, they had friends and family
members perhaps who had seen the resurrected Jesus, and so this just touched
them to the quick. They know that this has happened and there is no challenge.
Jesus is the blessing—“sent Him to bless you.” He is connecting Genesis 12:3 to
the role of Jesus. How? “…by [en/ e)n indicates means] turning every one {of
you} from your wicked ways.” The word for turning is another form of the Greek
word epistrepho, it has a
different preposition—apostrepho [a)postrefw] which means to turn, to cause a change
in belief or behavior. It should be translated “in order to turn every one of
you from your iniquities.” What is “their iniquities” in context? In context it
is the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. So they are going to turn from
rejecting Jesus as the Messiah to accepting Jesus as the Messiah, but this
message is having an extremely agitating effect on one group of listeners.
Acts 4:1 NASB
“As they were speaking to the people…” While Peter is still preaching there is
movement in the background. “… the priests and the captain of the temple
{guard} and the Sadducees came up to them.” These three groups were truly all
part of the Sadducee Party. What characterized the Sadducees was, first of all,
they did not believe in bodily resurrection. So they are extremely upset over
this proclamation of the resurrection. They associated that with the Pharisees
and thought that this was a Pharisaic innovation, some new doctrine that the
Pharisees had dreamed up. They also denied the existence of angels or spirits,
so they were basically like today’s religious liberals—they don’t really
believe in God, in the supernatural. They were loyal to the Roman government,
they cooperated, and they would be called Quislings in the modern sense. They
had a desire to maintain the status quo; they were associated with the wealthy
class; they adhered only to the Pentateuch and didn’t pay any attention to the
rest of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The words
“came up to them” is an aorist verb tense that indicates this is sudden. As
soon as they heard about this they gathered their people together and ran out
to stop this from happening. It is a very dramatic scene; they are highly
agitated. They hate this doctrine of the resurrection and they are disturbed
because Peter and John and the others are teaching and preaching. Two different
words: didasko [didaskw] means to teach, to give instruction, to
go through the Old Testament Scriptures point by point showing all the
different prophecies that were fulfilled specifically in Jesus; “preached”—we
live in a world today that has taken the concept of preaching and ripped it out
of the Bible and distorted it. We have created a rhetorical style. But that is
not what the Bible means by preaching. The word translated “preaching here is kataggello [kataggellw] and this means to simply announce
something: that Jesus has come, that Jesus died for our sins, that Jesus rose
from the dead. That is a proclamation. The other word that is used, kerugma [khrugma] for a sermon also has that thrust; it is
simply to make a proclamation. But didasko
is a key word, it means to instruct, to go point by point through what the
Scriptures teach so that the people understand it and can see how to apply it.
Neither of these are “preaching” in what we find in most churches today. It is
not good homoletics—the modern study of preaching.
Acts 4:2, 3 NASB
“being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming
in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them and put
them in jail until the next day, for it was already evening.” It is almost
dark, too late to have a trial; there are certain rooms within the precincts of
the temple where they can lock them up over night and so they arrest them and
put them in a holding cell until they can have a trial or hearing the next
morning.
Acts 4:4 NASB
“But many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the
men came to be about five thousand.” That is just the men, but in addition to
that there were women and children who also believed, so this could have been
fifteen or twenty thousand who trusted and believed in Jesus as Messiah on that
particular day. What is interesting is the word “believed.” It doesn’t say they
repented. What was the command back in verse 19? “Therefore repent and return,
so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come
from the presence of the Lord.” Today people take the word “repent” and say we
have to repent of our sins before we can be saved. That is not what the text
says. Repent is a mental attitude word which means to change your mind about
Jesus. What do you do when you change your mind about Jesus? You believe in
Him, you trust Him as savior. So their response was to believe in Jesus as the
Messiah and to trust in Him. Only the men are numbered here—5000 men. There
were four thousand people who were saved on the day of Pentecost and so by this
time there are thirty or forty thousand Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. The church was exploding and we can just
imagine how the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin must feel. It was out of control
and they had to do something to stop this.
Acts 4:5 NASB
“On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes were gathered together in
Jerusalem; [6] and Annas the high priest {was
there,} and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of high-priestly
descent.” This is the Sanhedrin that comes together, the ruling council over
the Jews. It was a collection of seventy-one rulers, most of whom were
Sadducees. It is referred to in Scripture as the body of elders in Luke 22:66.
Josephus referred to it as the Council in his Antiquities. The term that is used most of the time in the Mishnah
is “Sanhedrin” which is the ultimate law court, the rulers over the Jews at
this particular time. It first appeared in history in approximately 200 BC and it continues its role as the rulers
over the Jews until the Jewish revolt began in 66 AD. After the Jewish revolt there was
another body that came up, also called the Sanhedrin, but there is not a
connection between the two.
Annas,
mentioned here, is the high priest as appointed by the Jews, but the Romans
tried to regulate the Jewish observance and they wouldn’t allow a high
priesthood rule being in office for more than six or seven years. From the
Jewish perspective Annas is still the high priest. The high priestly family ran
everything—like the Godfather. Caiaphas was his Annas’s nephew and was the high
priest from 18-36 AD, so he is still the high priest but he is the high priest
that Rome put in there because they weren’t going to let somebody come in as high
priest for life, which is what the Mosaic Law had demanded. Then there is
mention of John and Alexander, two others in the family of the high priest who had
a position of authority over the Sanhedrin and were in the priesthood. These
all come together and they bring in John and Peter.
Acts 4:7 NASB
“When they had placed them in the center, they {began to} inquire, ‘By what
power, or in what name, have you done this?’” Then Peter responds. [8] “Then
Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers and elders of the
people.’” This filling of the Spirit is not the filling by means of the Spirit
that we have; it is not Ephesians 5:18 phraseology. In Ephesians 5:18 is the command to be filled—the Greek
verb poleroo [plhrow]—by means of the Spirit. It is the
preposition en [e)n] plus the dative for the Holy Spirit. Here
we have a different but related word, pimplemi
[pimplhmi]. It is found frequently in Acts with the
genitive, to be full of something. The genitive describes the content of
something. For example, if I say to fill up my glass with water I would use a
genitive there because I am talking about the content of what is in the glass.
But if I am talking about what you are going to use to fill my glass when I say
“Fill my glass with that pitcher” then the pitcher becomes the means and I
would use the phrase en plus the
dative to indicate what you are using to fill my glass with water. When Ephesians
5:18 talks
about being filled by means of the Spirit, the Spirit isn’t the content of the
filling; He is the one who is filling us with something. When we compare Ephesians
5:18 with Colossians 3:16 we realize we are to let the Word of Christ dwell
within us, so the Spirit fills us with the Word. But that is a completely different
idiom to what we have here in Acts 4:8 to be full of the Spirit. Every time we
have this verb and this phraseology, from Zachariah the father of John the Baptist
Luke chapter one, Elizabeth in Luke chapter one, Mary in Luke chapter one, it is always
followed by some sort of speaking—they are full of the Spirit and they say
something. It is something similar to the process of inspiration and it is
unique to this period of history. It is not something that is the result of
being in fellowship, it is not something that is the result of any volitional
decision made; it is a sovereign act of God where suddenly He gives them the
Holy Spirit for a particular purpose and they say something that is the result
of this being full of the Holy Spirit.
Peter now
speaks under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and we see a totally different
peter than we saw just a few weeks before. He is now in front of all the power
brokers in Judea and they are all angry with him and want
to kill him. And he is relaxed, calm, and he is going to turn the whole case
against them. What we see here is an example of what Jesus told the disciples
to expect. He said that they would meet opposition, be arrested and taken
before kings and governors, and that they would be persecuted for His sake; and
so He instructed them before the crucifixion: Settle in your hearts not to
meditate before hand what you will answer: “I will give you a mouth and wisdom
which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.” So this
is something that is a supernatural empowerment that comes from the Holy Spirit
so that they can answer the charges against them.
Acts 4:8 NASB
“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers and elders of
the people, [9] if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as
to how this man has been made well, [10] let it be known to all of you and to
all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom
you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this {name} this man stands
here before you in good health.” He is not backing off at all. He is not afraid
of the power that is in front of him, he just sees this as an opportunity to
witness and make the gospel clear to the members of the Sanhedrin. He does it
in a relaxed manner; he is not defensive or hostile, he doesn’t feel threatened.
He is empowered by the Holy Spirit and he makes it very clear and immediately
goes on the offensive. How can you judge us for a good deed?
Then he
connects it to the Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah. Acts 4:11 NASB “He is the STONE
WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE
BUILDERS, {but} WHICH
BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER
{stone.}” In Psalm 118:22, in context, the stone that is rejected is the nation
Israel, the Jewish people. But the embodiment of
everything that God intended the Jewish people to be is in the Messiah, and He
is the one who is rejected. Peter applies that verse to Jesus. Then he says [12]
“And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven
that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” He uses the word “salvation”
which can mean healing, but it can also mean eternal salvation in the full sense
of the word because he is talking about
not only was this man healed, he is also saved. It is done with the same word,
so there is a little bit of a play on words there. He focuses that just as by
the name of Jesus this man was healed there is no other healing or salvation in
the spiritual realm in any other for there is no other name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved.
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