On the Third Day

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Rachel Voytek, and we are just finishing up the second chapter of Acts.

We have made it through Peter’s initial sermon on the Day of Pentecost, and are about to find out what happened. What was the aftermath of his preaching? I think we’re in verse 40.

Before we began, we were talking about some of our pacing in the book of Acts. I keep saying this is a history podcast, not an exegetical one, and yet there’s so much that we can talk about and probably one way or another will end up talking about. Rachel had a really great response, which I’m going to ask her to give us now.

When I approach the book of Acts, which whenever I taught church history that was where I started, generally my approach to it was to stop and talk about everything that had been misused throughout history, which is the majority of the book. Some of these things may seem like we’re belaboring the point, but it’s because somebody grabbed a certain part of the text and used it to justify their strange theology.

Also the book of Acts is in many ways the type for how we do things. What’s the regular practice of the church? So when we stop and say, “Look at this sermon,” it’s not just for us to find the theology of the sermon but also to see what does a New Testament sermon look like? What do the apostles’ sermons look like? What do they talk about? What do they focus on? What are their themes? How do they structure things? Then also what does it mean, for example in context, that everybody shared everything? Does that mean that we should have communism?

It’s that sort of thing, that we need to both look for the general principles, look for the ways things have been misused, and also try to understand what was going on at that time so that we can understand how to apply things currently, because we are not the New Testament church, but everybody seems to think if they can link their teachings or their movement to the New Testament church they are pure. All we have to do is go back to the original and somehow we’re better.

The whole point of church history is to study the progress of the church, which means the building and the growing of the church, which is very faltering at times. We’re ‘halting’ toward Zion. We’re not running toward Zion. But if we just want to run back to the New Testament church and stay there, we’re denying the richness that the Lord has given us for the last 2,000 years.

It is the Lord who’s building his church through history.

Yes, exactly. So it is really, really important to understand the foundation, because I’m shocked at how many people don’t actually know the whole book of Acts or its flows and events. They pull random parts out or just know a couple stories. So I think a slower study through it than we potentially would otherwise is very helpful.

And with that in mind, we can pick up where Emily suggested, around verse 40.

And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.

That’s the closest thing anybody in the book of Acts ever does to getting an altar call, but there’s no altar and there’s no coming forward. It’s “You need to come to Christ.” In fact, the altar call consisted of them surging forward and yelling, “Men and brothers, let’s hope we do!” He didn’t really call them, they just kind of responded spontaneously. The command is to repent and be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

Pentecost is a celebration, a memorial of the giving of the law. When the law was given, 3,000 people died because of the sin of the golden calf. Here 3,000 are escorted into the kingdom of heaven.

We will see throughout the book of Acts the steady emphasis that when God saves people, when he brings them to Christ, he brings them to the church. There are no lone gunners for Jesus here. It’s always adding people to the church, so we need to look and see something about the church.

As Rachel was saying, people like to say, “We’re a first-century church.”

“Do you wear sandals? Or what does that even mean?”

This is the fledgling infant church. If you want to say, “We’re a bunch of spiritual babies,” that’s neat, but why that would compel anyone to join you I’m not sure. “They got their revelation directly from God.” By and large this is so initially, but as the church began to spread – we can think of the church at Corinth, for instance, or Laodicea before Jerusalem fell – not all of these churches were churches you really want to be like.

Heresies enter very quickly and the apostles could not be everywhere. Very quickly they had to rely on the written word of God and upon pastors and teachers rather than apostles, but we’re at the beginning. The baby is being born here. The New Testament church has come into existence with the baptism and filling of the Spirit, and here’s what that church looked like.

First of all, its membership is baptized. Does that include children? To make things real simple, yes. We can argue that another time, but Peter had just said the promise is to you and your children, and to a good Jew children are included within the covenant.

The church continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine. They were taught by the apostles – taught, not entertained, not given “Here’s a spiritual thought for you to consider this evening.” There was actually some teaching going on by God’s ordained and, in this case, inspired officers.

Fellowship – they actually hung out with each other and talked, and probably about more than the local chariot races. They talked about the Christian life and about Jesus, and about one another’s needs and such.

And in the breaking of bread. People have argued back and forth as to whether this is communion or whether this is fellowship meals. Without being dogmatic I’m going to fall on the side of communion because it would be strange if it were not mentioned. It’s that simple.

And there are a couple other places that we see it, including in I believe 1 Corinthians 10 where it speaks of it that way. Also we can think back to the gospels where they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, so there’s very much a connection with that expression and a particular meeting with Jesus.

And it just struck me – the breaking of the bread, not the eating of the bread. Of course they ate it.

It seems like a technical term.

It does, doesn’t it. And in the prayers – the definite article they use there. Jewish folk were used to praying three times a day and there were set prayers that they could pray. They could pray extemporaneously and often did, but they also had set prayers, including obviously the psalms.

The suggestion here is that very early on the church adopted a similar practice, although most likely, as we’re going to see, we’re going to see an example of the church praying together based on a psalm, but they’ve added words that incorporate the name and the works of Jesus very explicitly.

Not everyone knows how to pray, and not everyone knows how to pray in public, so that in itself is a spiritual discipline to learn. Jesus taught us a prayer to pray. He said, “You say this,” and also “Say something like this,” depending whether you’re reading Matthew or Luke. So that’s going on. Prayer is basic to the life of the church.

Then we start getting into some things that are a little more sensitive.

And fear came upon every soul.

I don’t think that the average person passing by our churches on a Sunday is terribly afraid of anything, least of all of God. But at this point with what was going on, people were sober-minded. They took this seriously, and we’ll see some of why that would be.

Many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

These were miracles. They were done by the apostles. We don’t have apostles today so we shouldn’t go to church expecting signs and miracles. Jesus said that these things would follow them as they went out to preach, to testify to their office, and to the book that they were about to write, that we call the New Testament.

And all that believed were together…

They hung out all the time.

And had all things common.

Now we get into something a little controversial.

And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

At first glance we can say communism.

Or communalism, since communism is more of a system of government.

That’s one way of looking at it. We’ll save that for five years from here. Yes, it’s communal and, this is a key point, it’s not enforced. There’s no idea here that the apostles said, “Okay, you’ve joined the church. Now give us all your money.”

Or that there’s a loss of personal property that is allowed. We see this later when Ananias and Saphira fake the amount of money that they got for something. Peter says, “When it belonged to you it was yours and you could do with it what you wanted.”

They could have kept it. It was fine.

Yes. There’s very much still a sense that private property is okay.

Yes. And there’s something here that would have been right in their faces, but I think in part because theologically and just in our simple reading of the text we separate Acts so far from the gospels that we forget that it was not that long ago that Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives with some of his guys and said basically, “This city is going to be leveled. This temple is going to be leveled. Not one stone is going to be left upon another. It’s going to be trodden under the foot of Gentiles. The heaven and earth of the old covenant are going to be dissolved and something brand new is coming. You’ll know that it’s coming when you see Jerusalem encompassed with armies.” That would be a good hint.

So they understood. Unlike modern writers on such subjects, they understood that Jesus was talking about something really close at hand. He had given them a time limit. “This generation shall not pass away until all these things be fulfilled.” A generation is about 40 years, give or take. It’s a group of people living at the same time.

In other words, some of the people who were alive when Jesus said that would still be alive when those things happened. So the apostles knew and the early church knew that land values in Jerusalem were about to drop to zero. There was not a whole lot of point of hanging onto fixed assets in Jerusalem.

Within a generation does not necessarily mean you’re going to get the whole generation. It might mean within the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years, so there was that. There was an acknowledgment that “Nothing we have here is going to be worth a whole lot.” But because we tend to do our little gospel reading and then later in our Bible reading plan we get to the book of Acts and we don’t make the connection.

In terms of systematics, we put what’s going on here under maybe evangelism or ecclesiology, and we put Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 under eschatology. They’re in separate categories, so we never stop to think that maybe they inform each other somehow.

The other thing, as the apostles learned on the Day of Pentecost, is that producing a worldwide movement is expensive and we need stuff. We don’t know what the apostles were able to do for all those people who had come to Jerusalem for the festival. Were they able to hand-copy some of Jesus’ words? Did Matthew output his gospel that quickly?

Probably not, but certainly by the time they were done they would say, “Oh, if only we had a book about Jesus, because we’ve just gone through this great covenant transformation and God always gives a book. Uh-oh, anyone feeling inspired around here?”

Again, you need to pay your writer, pay his expenses for however long it takes for this to happen, and then there are printing costs, which means copying by hand costs to get these books, sermons, whatever out there.

In the meantime, as we will see, a lot of people who joined this new movement were very poor. They didn’t have a lot, and Christian love required that the church should help.

That’s the overwhelming impression of these verses is that there’s a disposition of generosity. It’s not just that they’re looking at the value of their land and go, “Uh oh, if I don’t sell this now I’m going to lose everything.” That’s not what it is. It’s caring for the brethren.

So if we’re looking at these verses and saying, “Yeah, I’m a Christian but I don’t want to spend any time with other Christians, or I don’t want to be thought of as a filthy Commie and give up all my stuff,” that’s not the disposition of the early church. There was a spirit of generosity and an open hand and love for the brothers.

There was a great deal of unity as well, because the commonness goes back to their continuing together steadfastly in these things. There’s a great desire to be together and help one another for the sake of their common faith more so than anything else.

And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple…

That was the one large structure they had. There was a synagogue in the temple in Solomon’s Porch where they could assemble, and apparently at this point the authorities weren’t ready to challenge them. That will come soon, though.

And breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart…

You’ve got 12 ordained apostles. Jesus had ordained some other people – 70 to preach. Whether or not they were here in Galilee is not clear. But at least in some fashion they continued to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, to meet together, and to eat their food with gladness and singleness of heart.

…praising God, and having favour with all the people.

That is with people who weren’t Christians, but they behaved themselves wisely and kindly, and that gained the acknowledgement and favor of everybody else. “Those Christians are pretty cool people, but I don’t want to go over there because I’m not sure what’s happening, and the authorities are looking out the window right now, so hmm.”

Then here we have what I mentioned earlier –

And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

That’s a description of divine predestination and sovereign grace. There are those who should be saved because God’s ordained that they should be saved, and God adds them to the church. The conversion rates were high at that point. Daily people were coming to Christ, so that’s a good thing and not a thing we always see in our churches, nor is it something that can be forced, but it is something we can pray for and hope for and prepare for.

I often ask the kids at school, “What would happen if 1,000 people came to Christ in your church next Sunday. Would you be ready?” and interestingly enough, a few hands go up and they’re sure. “Yeah, we’d be ready.” Maybe they have discipleship programs already in place. I know a lot of small and medium-sized Reformed Presbyterian churches wouldn’t be ready. They wouldn’t have a clue what to do with that many people because we don’t expect those kinds of conversions, but the early church did a couple times. This was 3,000, and in a couple days it will be 5,000. That brings us to chapter 3.

Peter and John are going up to the temple, we’re told, and they’re still observing some of the outward Jewish traditions. It’s the hour of prayer, the time when the daily sacrifice followed by the daily incense is offered.

What time of day is this? Are we in the Roman reckoning or the Jewish reckoning? What does the ninth hour mean?

Now that you caught me on that, I think that’s the Jewish reckoning which would mean 3:00. The sixth hour would be noon and the ninth would be 3:00. It could be 9 in the morning. It says it’s the hour of prayer, but the hour of prayer was normally the evening, not the morning sacrifice, so I’m going to assume they’re using the Jewish reckoning because they’re in the temple.

There’s a certain man who’s been lame from his mother’s womb, and he’s deposited there apparently by friends or family. You’d need a license to beg at the temple, so he had one. They checked him out and he’s legit and people can give him money.

I’ve often wondered about this man. Where was he when Jesus was around, because Jesus always healed anybody who was anywhere close to him. Did he go on vacation that season? Every time Jesus was in Jerusalem he was hanging out at a relative’s home or something? I don’t know. Somehow Jesus in his divine wisdom never encountered this man, or passed over him, as he did on occasion. So he’s here and Peter and John come upon him, and the guy looks up, asking for alms, for some kind of gift.

We know the response. Peter says –

Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee…

We’ve made songs and jingles out of that.

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.

And immediately he jumps up. His ankle bones receive strength and he’s leaping, dancing, jumping up and down, showing off his new legs. The people saw it and see that he’s praising God and they recognize who he is.

For once no one says, “Oh, that’s not really him. This is a duplicate. This is a sham. Now everybody’s got it,” which makes it uncomfortable for the temple authorities. They can’t try that line again. So a crowd gathers and Peter preaches his second sermon.

Rachel, unless there’s something specific in here you wanted to talk about, I’m content to just skim over it. Is there something here you wanted to hit?

Not necessarily, although it is the inspiration for one of the verses in one of my favorite hymns, “My Song is Love Unknown,” which is a wonderful reflection on the life and work of Christ, particularly the line where it speaks about the poetic irony that they save the life of a murderer, and they murder the Son of Life, the Son who gives life. That actually comes originally from Peter’s sermon here.

In terms of the overall structure of the sermon, we can see that the apostles begin with what they’ve got. They’ve just healed a man – Jesus has healed a man – which they’re at pains to point out. “It wasn’t us, it was Jesus.” And they immediately do a flashback because they’re dealing with people who understand the Old Testament and understand the covenant, so they’re grounding it for them. “The God of Abraham, the God of Jacob.”

Then they condense all of redemptive history from there to “He glorified his Son Jesus,” and brings home, “And you’re the ones who denied him before Pilate. You denied the Holy One and desired a murderer be granted you, and killed the Prince of Life, but God raised him from the dead, whereof we are witnesses.” The resurrection always figures as a central motif and fact of the apostolic sermons.

Now, in a sense it’s not what we think of as an exegetical or expositional sermon. He’s not preaching through any particular Old Testament text, although he’s assuming the whole Old Testament beginning with the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But then he moves very quickly to the events of the gospels – historic events that you rejected Jesus. Why is that important here? Because this is the covenantal sin of the people of Israel. They just denied their Messiah, so that’s relevant to them.

Whether or not we would need to include that in a modern presentation is something else again, but there’s a pushing here on the need. Why do you need a savior? Why do you need forgiveness? Because you just killed him.

Then they refocus – “The miracle? That’s not us. That’s Jesus.”

I think this is one of the first times we have a discussion of faith, faith in his name, so that the name of Jesus is very specific and particular in who you have faith in. I do believe this is one of the first times they start speaking of that need.

Yes, because before it had been “repent and be baptized.” Now there’s an emphasis upon faith.

He concedes that they did not fully understand what they were doing, and yet God had prophesied all these things by his prophets, and he’s going to talk more about that in a bit. He comes back to “repent, be converted,” and then speaks of the future coming of Jesus, both spiritually and ultimately at the end of the age.

He describes the purpose of the gospel as the restitution of all things, and there’s he’s not talking simply about the resurrection and the end of such, he’s talking about the process, because he immediately doesn’t go to Isaiah or Ezekiel or Zechariah – someone who may be actually looking at the new heavens and earth. He looks at some real basic stuff like Moses says God is going to raise up a prophet. Well, that’s happened. Samuel spoke of the house of David and the covenant with David, or at least laid the ground for it. “You’re the children of the prophets and of the covenants which God made with our fathers,” all the way back to Abraham. “In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.”

Again it’s talking about how the gospel is going to transform history, and he uses that wonderful Old Testament word ‘restitution’ – putting right what once went wrong. It’s not a Gnostic or Neo-Platonic escape out of the world, but altering the world by dealing with the basic problem, which is human sin. Again he speaks of turning everyone away from their iniquities.

In Chapter 4 the temple authorities and the Pharisees are not happy…

Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead…

This would be a Sadducee problem. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection or souls or angels or much of anything actually. So here they have people, as it were, in their front yard teaching the very thing that they had absolutely renounced, so on that alone they’re not happy, but there’s more because they’re taking notes. They know what the apostles are saying. “Messiah came and your rulers killed him.”

“Well, ya know…no, we didn’t…did we? No, it wasn’t like that at all. They’re making us the bad guys.”

So they laid hands on them and kept them in jail till the next day, but many believed and the number of men – and again that means the number was much larger than this – was about 5,000, so lots of people are coming to Christ. We’re probably clear enough of Pentecost that a lot of these people would have been people who actually lived in Jerusalem or thereabouts, maybe a few still hanging on, but most of them would have gone home at this point.

And it came to pass on the morrow, that their rulers, and elders, and scribes…

So now it’s not just the Sadducees, the priestly class. It’s also the Pharisees.

And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem. And when they had set them in the midst they asked, By what power, or by what name, have ye done this?

Wow. “Please just tell us all about Jesus.”

“You’re sure? Ok. Well, here goes. You’re not going to like this.”

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel. If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole, be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.

Then referring to Psalm 118 they say –

This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.

The rest of the psalm reads –

This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. [speaking of the day of resurrection, the Lord’s Day.]

“God is building a temple. You’re supposed to be the ones building it, but you’re not. You just discarded the foundation stone, but God has made him the head of the corner.”

Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

That’s called exclusivity. There’s no other name given among men except Buddha and Confucious and Zoroaster – no, there’s only one name, one source of authority. God reveals himself in Christ exclusively and that’s the reality.

The world does not tolerate that. If we offer Jesus as one solution among many, they might be content to think of us as a bit weird and stuck-up in our religion, but we would not nearly be the threat to them as when we say there’s only one way.

Yes. I think we can say that this is a core summary verse that in many ways defines church history because this is what sets Christianity apart from everything else and says, “No, we can’t be just like everybody else. No, we can’t just change and adapt to the culture, to whatever is going on.” It’s one of those lines that’s drawn very clearly, that there’s only one name, there’s only one way, and also that everybody needs salvation.

So I think in many ways we can say that this is a theme of the book of Acts for sure, but also of everything that comes after. You could come back to this verse again and again and again in every argument with unbelievers, or even believers, to push us to define what true Christianity is.

Indeed. Then we have to talk about finding who Jesus is, which of course is what happens not too long after Rome stops persecuting Christians.

The leaders look at Peter and John. They marvel at their boldness. They understand they’re unlearned and ignorant, in the sense that they haven’t been through any of the theological schools. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t read and write. Obviously both Peter and John could read and write quite well, John especially. John is very elegant and eloquent in his writing, but he didn’t have a degree from Harvard Divinity or some such thing.

The leaders took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. They recognized the stamp of their Master upon them, only too well. They saw the man who Jesus healed just standing there and they don’t know what to say about this.

But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves saying, What shall we do to these men? for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem and we cannot deny it.

Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you go over to their side and become followers of Jesus?

No, can’t do that.

No. Again this brings us again to something we’ve touched on many, many times, the nature of faith and the nature of proof. They admit flat-out this was a miracle.

Now, they could try claiming it was a Satanic miracle. They’d done that with Jesus, but done in the temple and a positive healing thing, are they going to convince anybody of this? No, and they know that. They don’t even go there. All they want is for this to go away. So when the world can’t deceive us and trick us, what does it do? It threatens us, because that’s going to work.

But that it spread no further among the people, let us straitly threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this name. And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.

“You can go ahead and do your miracles and heal people, and you can teach about a godly life and moral precepts and how to be a good person, but don’t bring up the name of Jesus.”

And as Rachel was mentioning before the podcast, this sets them up for one of the great responses that resonates throughout the book and throughout the rest of the New Testament and on through church history.

But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.

Since those things came from God. It doesn’t mean we’re obligated to blab out everything we’ve ever seen or heard, but what they had seen and heard were God’s own revelation, and they were bound to repeat and to speak aloud and abroad. The fact that the civil and religious authorities were telling them no is irrelevant.

“Christians can stand up to people and say, ‘I don’t care what your rules are’?”

Yeah. Now if you’re in the supermarket, or whatever we call them these days – speaking of our supermarket called Winco, there’s this nice old lady who I’ve run into two or three times now, and she goes around with this gigantic boom box kind of thing on a pull cart, cranked at full volume, playing gospel songs. I don’t think she’s accomplishing what she wants to accomplish. She’s obviously trying to testify to Jesus and I appreciate her boldness, but when she’s anywhere near you you can’t even talk, it is so loud. Should she speak the things she’s heard? Yeah, but this may not be the appropriate platform.

And I have noticed that the employees there have not asked her to leave. I don’t know if they’ve even asked her to turn the thing down, but that’s a different kind of consideration. You’re on someone else’s property? Well, step off their property and then start talking. It doesn’t give us the right to go everywhere at every moment and speak about Jesus, but the blanket command “don’t speak about Jesus” – that we simply ignore. That’s the church’s mission, to speak to the world about Jesus, and we cannot let the world shut us up, even when it comes in the form of political or religious authority, or educational authority or whatever.

There are going to be multiple rounds of interaction or altercation with these temple leaders and it’s interesting to watch them escalate. The first time they just threaten them, then they start to escalate to physical violence. But the apostles have already established their line, and even when they’re not being violent towards them they say, “We are going to obey what the Lord has told us and not you, because he has the greater authority.”

But as they keep going, the apostles repeat a repetition of this in different forms, but the leaders keep trying anyway. So even what they say logically makes sense, it doesn’t get through to the leaders because they are deceived and self-worshipers.

The leaders are in fact afraid. They’ve been in control for a long time, and Jesus challenged their authority and their role in society, and they thought that was over. Although they hated Jesus, and there’s a certain satisfaction in killing the person you hate, I guess, there was real fear going on there. “Whew, he’s safely buried. Well, something happened to him, we’re not sure, but he’s gone.” Then here comes these guys and they’re bringing up Jesus again.

It’s not just irritation, it’s “These guys need to shut up or we’re going to…” and we’ll see it in the next encounter where they actually say, “You mean to bring this man’s blood on us!”

“Um, his blood be on us and on our children? Yeah, you already did.”

So they can’t come up with anything but threatening them, so the apostles go back to the church.

And being let go, they went to their own company and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them. And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord…

When I was very young I read this and was a little mystified because my background and the radio programs I listened to were mostly Baptist and broad evangelical, and even Reformed Presbyterian, as far as that goes. How is it, I asked myself, that they all said the same words at the same time? Is that a miracle?

I was naïve, ok? I had heard of a prayer book but, aside from saying the Lord’s Prayer together in church, really had never been in a church where there was a liturgy that let everyone pray the same words together at the same time.

In fact, I remember reading one author – I don’t know if he was Reformed Baptist or Presbyterian – who said, “Well, obviously what this means is that one man stood up and gathered the prayers and he prayed these words.” That is exactly what it does not say. Even in my youth I could at least read the English which says “they prayed with one accord.” That’s the remarkable thing. “How are they able to pray all together?” Because somebody had written it out.

The heart of the thing is Psalm 2, but someone had come along and added to the prayers that we saw earlier this particular one, and so they probably figured, “Hey, let’s use that prayer because it so fits.”

They start by testifying to God as Creator. It’s amazing how many times in Acts and elsewhere in the New Testament that’s where we start. We haven’t given up that doctrine. That’s not irrelevant. Yes, it’s a salvation issue, if you want to call it that.

“You spoke by your servant David,” and they start quoting Psalm 2. “Why did the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.” In Hebrew it’s “against his Anointed, against his Messiah.”

When we read it in Psalm 2 it just sounds like it’s talking about the ungodly conspiring against God and his Messiah, which of course is what it is, but the church puts a very particular interpretation on it. This is not just in general. In their minds the psalm is very specific, and this is the rendering they give.

For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate [those would be the kings], with the Gentiles [heathens] and the people of Israel, were gathered together…

So here’s this conspiracy against the Messiah, but what did they accomplish? They were gathered together “for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.”

So despite the fact that they conspired against you, tore off your bands and freed themselves from your authority, they ended up doing exactly what you decreed. The worst crime in human history was fully orchestrated and overruled by God for his purposes, so there’s great comfort in that, that here God is still sovereign. This was not an accident that he interrupted and said, “Oh wow, they’re about to kill my son. Hey wait, I’ve got an idea! What if…?” No, the plan was there from eternity. So in light of that…

And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word…

They don’t take for granted that they’re going to be bold enough and brave enough to keep on dealing with this. They’re going to need God’s help. They ask that the apostles might continue doing the signs and wonders. When they’re done praying, the place is shaken and they’re all filled with the Holy Ghost. There’s the miracle, the room shaking. This completes the imagery that began at Pentecost.

At Pentecost we had the tongues of fire on the heads of the people, with the sound of a rushing wind. Now we have the earthquake, the shaking. These were the phenomena at Sinai that inaugurated the Mosaic covenant, so now we get them again but they’re not on a mountain up there that we can’t go and touch. They’re in the midst of God’s people and surrounding God’s people, and God’s people are not running away terrified. They’re embracing them and gaining new courage.

I think it’s amazing if you pay attention in the epistles how often the apostles ask for prayer for boldness. I’m thinking of Paul particularly. When we read him, he seems so bold and courageous and he’s got everything figured out, and yet he’s always asking, “Pray that I will be bold. Pray that I will be bold,” and they ask that here and immediately receive that.

I think it’s something we should stop and meditate on a bit, because I think we often don’t do things because we’re afraid. We don’t speak about Jesus because we’re afraid and feel like we don’t know what to say. And yet all of these people who we could look up to needed to pray for boldness just as much as we do, and here we have an example of an immediate answer to that prayer. They prayed and they had boldness. It’s one of those things that we need to stop and realize the frequency of certain requests in the scriptures.

And it’s not that some people are bold and other people don’t have to be. It’s not a unique gifting to be bold. It’s a gift of God that we can ask for.

For sure. I think one other thing we can comment on in looking at these first portions of Acts is the way that the New Testament church immediately starts – for one thing, the Old Testament is quoted so many times in these sermons and such. I don’t even know how many times we’ve already seen different passages, but they immediately start interpreting them in light of Jesus.

There’s no, “Oh, we need to go back to the original context. We need to understand what the Jews would say.” No, they pick it up and say, “This is what it means now because of what Jesus has done.” I think that’s another important lesson for our understanding of the Old Testament.

There was one verse, something creedal I think – I was looking through a number of commentators and they said, “Well, it’s really hard to find justification for this.” It may be the third-day resurrection, I’m not sure. “But we’ve got this verse and we’ve got this verse, so they must somehow have figured this symbolically.” Others have just said, “Yeah, the third day is not the point. The point is that he rose again.”

No, he rose the third day. It’s a calendar day, and if he was raised on the second or fourth day then God’s a liar. The fact that you are straining to find Old Testament references to a third-day resurrection – have you read the Old Testament? Well, not with those eyes.

It does give us grounds for recognizing patterns. It’s not just the things that are explicitly stated, “Oh, 7, creation. 8, new creation. 3, resurrection.” That means something.

Yes, and the New Testament church was very quick to pick up on this because they were so full of the presence of Jesus. They weren’t trying to figure out how to get around him or how to humor the Sanhedrin or the Sadducees or the Roman philosophers. They were just, “Look, God gave us this incredible book about his Son! Every page I open there’s something about him.” Oh, that we had that mentality again.

“That’s the Old Testament. Does it mention Jesus at all? Isaiah 53 I guess, and some Christmas stuff. Let’s just go to the New Testament.” You’re missing a lot.

More and more there are a number of teachers that are throwing out the Old Testament completely again.

Like we haven’t dealt with this enough before.

You’re getting that Gnostic division of two gods or something akin of, “Yeah, that was a different God,” or “You don’t need the Old Testament. You just need Jesus,” and all of that. It just keeps recycling.

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul. Neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common.

They freely shared and gave as God laid it upon them.

And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

Not just the crucifixion, but that’s implied in the resurrection. You have to be dead before you can be raised. But the doctrine of redemption centers in the resurrection – not simply that he died but that he came back to life.

The crucifixion had been quite a public affair.

Yes, it had, actually.

Also one of the qualifications of an apostle is to be the witness of his resurrection, so they’re being faithful to their office.

It’s amazing that even some young people raised in a Christian church don’t know that Jesus is alive. “He died and then something happened afterward, I don’t know.” When I describe the resurrection I generally go way out of the way to overstate what happened – “His heart started pumping. His lungs started expiring air. His synapses started firing. His brainwaves came online. He got up and walked out of the tomb, and his feet left prints in the sand,” because it’s so easy to treat it as a fable, as some kind of mystic symbol. “He’s alive in my heart.”

That’s nice but it’s really irrelevant to what we’re talking about right now. He is actually alive and that’s what they kept saying, that he is alive, in a physical place in the universe that’s called heaven, and he’s coming again one day. In the meantime, he’s ruling the world and we’re his agents. That should kind of scare people. All of those sci-fi films where aliens come from some great galactic empire and knock on our door and the world is terrified – this is way beyond that.

“The God who made the universe just sent his Son and now he’s sending us because we killed his Son, but he got better, and now we’re coming to tell you that you’re on a ticking clock. You’re going to meet the Lord of the universe. You better get ready.” It should be something sobering and fearful after a fashion.

And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

Let’s not lose the grace aspect.

Neither was there any among them that lacked, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the apostles' feet. And distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

This is going to become very time- and energy-consuming real fast because the apostles have other things they need to be doing. This is not their primary chore, and yet at this point they were doing it, which means that even busy pastors sometimes are going to have to stop and do some charitable work until it just becomes overwhelming and starts distracting from their other work. But for now they had to do everything, and they were. They probably had a few friends helping out, but primarily it fell upon them.

We’re introduced though to a man who will become useful in their midst. We’re only given his name I believe here, Joses, “who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, son of consolation.” He’s the guy you go to for comfort. And as we see him throughout the book of Acts and the gospels, that’s what he’s great at – coming alongside people and helping them out and bringing people together. He will play a major role in the first missionary campaign.

He’s a Levite from Cyprus and he brings money and puts it at the feet of the apostles. That’s a lead-in for the next story, which will have to wait till next time.

We can start with some people falling down dead – action-packed.

Yes, lots of drama next time.

I’m joking, because it’s a history podcast so it’s about events and things happening.

But history doesn’t have to be boring. It can be people dying mysteriously or dramatically. Sometimes that’s the best part.

Before we sign off though, let’s leave some recommendations for our listeners.

I can offer mine, which maybe I’ve offered before, but being inspired by the talk earlier of my favorite hymn, I will recommend Fernando Ortega as a musician/songwriter. He has some of his own original songs, but he does beautiful covers of some hymns including “My Song is Love Unknown.” Also I absolutely love his rendition of “Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted.” The way he arranges it and the music really communicates the theme of the hymn. I enjoy both of those and others from him. He’s a great songwriter.

There’s one of his albums – not one of his worship albums, more like his other songwriting – but it was one that would be on the radio when we were getting for church, along with the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack. That probably tells you a lot about my family.

I was just telling Rachel, “By the way, everybody, there are gaps in the tape where we disappear and then come back, and you have no idea how much time is passing.”

I was telling Rachel that I rarely remember to think about these things. I think we both agree that when we’ve been reading or watching or listening to new things it’s much easier, but somehow that did strike something.

My wife and I were talking earlier about her work. She has a friend who was a Roman Catholic priest, got officially released from it – had to go to Rome to do that – so he’s a Christian in that tradition. So they get to talk about things that the secular people who work there have no clue. I think that’s probably an encouragement to this gentleman.

Anyway, he was asking Kate, “Do you celebrate the Church calendar?”

“Well, not that much. The RCUS constitution actually allows for celebrating more days than we normally do, so it’s a complete dearth, but no, our church doesn’t put that kind of emphasis upon it.”

Nonetheless, then I remembered what day it is today. It’s Epiphany. I recommend keeping at least a vague eye on the church calendar. “Oo, that’s Roman Catholic.” No, not particularly. It’s the way the Church kind of kept track for 1500 years of the passing of the year.

We, on the other hand, record incredible things like the Rose Bowl Parade and Halloween and the 4th of July and Black Friday. Those are the things that mark our calendars. Think about that for a second there.

Or if you also want to think about modern things, today is January 6, which is the 5th anniversary of the Capitol building incident. It would be nicer to think of it as Epiphany, and it’s also the Eastern Orthodox Christmas Day.

And thus the climax of the 12 Days of Christmas, which actually begins with Christmas. They don’t end with Christmas.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the Church calendar, Epiphany celebrates the presentation of Jesus, the visit of the Magi, and then it skips 30 years to the ministry of John the Baptist. It also looks beyond that to the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles. So it fast-forwards real fast. We go from Advent, where we remember the world longing for Christ, Israel waiting patiently or not for Christ, then Christmas when he comes, then Epiphany where he is revealed to the broader world – the wise men, through the preaching of John, and then on to the Gentiles.

We certainly don’t need to memorize every saints’ feast day, and some of them weren’t even real, and sometimes we don’t know a whole lot about the ones the Church does celebrate, but the things that point directly to our Lord’s ministry like Pentecost, there’s no problem here. There’s no danger of becoming Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox or whatever, to acknowledge that here are some calendar reminders of the great things God has done in the past.

Now, we celebrate Christmas, at least most of us do. You know the Puritans didn’t. They thought it was too Rome-ish. Most people go, “Oh wow, that’s dumb.” Why is that dumb, and some of this other stuff isn’t?

“Well, we celebrate Christmas completely differently because we have trees and stars and presents and Black Friday.” Yeah, that’s a great argument right there. Anyway, take a look at the Church calendar. At least know that it’s a thing. As you read through the history of the medieval Church you’re going to run into it again and again.

If nothing else, as a way of keeping track of what in the world people are talking about, even in Shakespeare’s plays, you might want to know what some of the major feast days were and what things were celebrated. Also notice that the Church arranged for people to have lots of holidays – holy days. They weren’t for going out to the golf course. They were for worshipping God.

Great. That’s another perfect lead-in to my recommendation, which is Andrew Peterson’s Christmas concert. It probably won’t be available anymore by the time this episode airs, every year he does the Behold the Lamb of God tour, where he performs his album, Behold the Lamb of God, which I know for sure I’ve recommended before.

He kind of assembles a super-group for the tour each year, so it’s a slightly different line-up, then you can go and get access to the video recording of the concert. It’s like $25 or something and then you can watch it as many times as you want between Christmas and late January.

It was so worth our time. We got the video, thinking it was just the album, which is about 45 minutes long, and we didn’t realize that there’s a whole pre-concert where all of the people who are touring with them give an introductory song that they’ve written or some such-like. The pre-concert was incredible and we really enjoyed that. Then we got to the main event and it was like, “Yes, we enjoyed this as much as we expected to, and even more!”

One of the things they emphasize is the reality of Christ’s coming, his real birth as a real person, a real descendant of David, and the way he really sets people free.

One of their ministry partners – I guess it’s a sponsor, or that they’re sponsoring, I don’t know how the world would describe it – is International Justice Mission. They basically rescue victims of slavery throughout the world, and not only that but provides them after-care to help them get on their feet. Also they get their lawyers to go prosecute the slavers, because they’ve found out that if they just rescue the people, the slavers just move somewhere else and start it all over again

There was a beautiful moment when they presented the ministry and invited people to give to the ministry, and recognize that Jesus came to save us from slavery – slavery to sin, but also literal slavery. His real coming, his real birth, his real death, his real resurrection continues in his real power through the world today, and the real ministry of his people. It was very encouraging.

Thank you both, as always, for this conversation. It’s been a delight. A big thank you to David Maxson, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband, and to our financial supporters for keeping the show rolling. We really appreciate you. Dear listener, if you’d like to join their number you can visit our Patreon at patreon.com/haltingtowardzion.

If you’d like to get in touch with us for any reason, you can send us an email at [email protected]. We always love to hear your recommendations for things that we should be listening to and recommending and reading and all that stuff, so please do write in. Please join us again next time. We look forward to it.