Acts 2:5 ¶ And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. 6 Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. 7 And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? 8 And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? 9 Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, 10 Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. 12 And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? 13 Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.
Every
nation under heaven does not mean that every nation on earth was represented but that
a wide variety of nations where Jews lived had representatives there. There was
no distinction with regard to where Jews dwelt as we must remember that words
like every and all in English can be without distinction or the more strict
without exception. For instance,
1Timothy
2:4 Who will have all men to be saved,
and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
…cannot mean all without exception or you can toss out free will
and include universal salvation as a doctrine. Of course, this would contradict
almost every other verse in the Bible on the subject of salvation. This is
clearly all without distinction. Salvation is open to all people. It is God’s wish
that all men be saved although they will not be because of their own choices.
We get the word nation here
from the Greek ethnos from which we get our modern ethnicity or ethnic which
denotes people-groups as opposed to what we think when we see nation, as modern
nation-states. There are different places represented here whose people speak
various languages, all having in common that they were Jews, perhaps by blood
or by conversion. These are native speakers, born in the places mentioned. Proselytes, converts to Judaism, called
by some commentators of the Jews, new
creatures, are mentioned elsewhere.
Matthew
23:15 Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye
make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
Acts
6:5 And the saying pleased the whole
multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,
and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:
Acts
13:43 Now when the congregation was
broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them,
persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.
As a note of interest, notice how the Holy Spirit appropriates the
Jewish reference to the convert as a new
creature.
2Corinthians
5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away;
behold, all things are become new.
Galatians
6:15 For in Christ Jesus neither
circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.
These Jews and proselytes came from the area of present-day Iran
and Iraq, Egypt and North Africa, and in the area of modern-day Turkey. What tongues are is made very clear here by
their relationship to the languages spoken.
The mocking in verse 13 is based on the fact that the term new wine is defined based on the
context. In the following it would be newly pressed juice;
Isaiah
65:8 Thus saith the LORD, As the new wine is found in the cluster,
and one saith, Destroy it not;
for a blessing is in it: so
will I do for my servants’ sakes, that I may not destroy them all.
Remembering that in the specific context of Joseph’s pharaoh it
was indeed that, squeezed by a trusted servant’s hand into the pharaoh’s cup.
Genesis
40:11 And Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand: and I took the
grapes, and pressed them into
Pharaoh’s cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand.
However, in other contexts new
wine is intoxicating and not just freshly squeezed grape juice.
Hosea
4:11 Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart.
Zechariah
9:17 For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! corn shall make the
young men cheerful, and new wine the maids.
And so, new wine here is
in a mocking suggestion that the disciples are drunk which Peter will then deny
saying it is only 9am, the third hour of the day, a bit early for a normal
person to be making merry with wine.
Acts 2:14
¶ But Peter, standing up with the
eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye
that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words:
15 For these are not drunken, as ye
suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. 16 But this is that which was spoken by the
prophet Joel; 17 And it shall come to
pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh:
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see
visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: 18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I
will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: 19 And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and
signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: 20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and
the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come:
21 And it shall come to pass, that
whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. 22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of
Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs,
which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: 23 Him, being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified
and slain: 24 Whom God hath raised up,
having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be
holden of it. 25 For David speaketh
concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right
hand, that I should not be moved: 26
Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my
flesh shall rest in hope: 27 Because
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to
see corruption. 28 Thou hast made known
to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance.
29 Men and brethren, let me
freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried,
and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. 30
Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath
to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise
up Christ to sit on his throne; 31 He
seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not
left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. 32 This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof
we all
are witnesses. 33 Therefore being by the
right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the
Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. 34 For David is not ascended into the heavens:
but he saith himself, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand,
35 Until I make thy foes thy footstool.
36 Therefore let all the house of Israel
know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified,
both Lord and Christ.
Peter quotes the prophet Joel as the prediction of what just
happened. He is, of course, speaking in Hebrew, translated into Greek, then
into English for us at least. Scholars like H.C. Hoskier noted that manuscripts
were translated from one language into another and then back again often. The book of Joel clearly speaks to the end
times. Peter and the believing Jews would have been reading the context of Joel
and expecting, once again, the restoration of Israel’s former glory and its
triumph over its enemies, a recurring theme, hope, and expectation to be
imminent.
Joel
2:28 ¶ And it shall come to pass
afterward, that I will pour out
my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your
old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: 29 And also upon the servants and upon the
handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. 30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in
the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and
the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come. 32 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name
of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be
deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall
call.
Peter preaches about Jesus and in verse 25 he quotes David;
Psalm
16:8 ¶ I have set the LORD always before
me: because he is at my right
hand, I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore
my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.
10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. 11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy
presence is fulness of joy; at
thy right
hand there are pleasures for evermore.
Jesus had previously spoken about this Psalm.
Psalm 110:1 ¶ « A Psalm of David. » The LORD said
unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy
footstool.
Matthew
22:41 ¶ While the Pharisees were
gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42
Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David. 43 He saith unto them, How then doth David in
spirit call him Lord, saying, 44 The
LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies
thy footstool?45 If David then call him
Lord, how is he his son? 46 And no man
was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.
The repentant sinner being saved by calling on the Lord in verse
21 will be contrasted against God’s calling of a person to salvation in the
next passage in verse 39. See what Paul
says about salvation.
Romans
10:8 The word is nigh thee, even
in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy
mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth
confession is made unto salvation. 11
For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be
ashamed.
12 ¶
For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek [Paul
calls Gentiles Greeks as that is the dominant culture]: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
13 For whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved.
In verse 34 Peter says that David did not ascend into the heavens
as Christ did. Christ is the Messiah, David’s Lord. So, with Jesus as the son
of David (see Matthew 1:1), the descendant of David, He is also David’s Lord as
per Jehovah, LORD God. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Jewish Messiah, the Christ
(see John 4:25, 26), the Word by which all things were created (see John 1:1-18),
and the Saviour of the world (1John 4:14), the true God (1John 5:20), the
visible, physical appearance of the invisible God the Father (Hebrews 1:3; John
14:9), who in which abides all power and authority in the universe.
Matthew
28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto
them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and
in earth.
Verse 36 and the verse in Matthew 28 I just quoted bring up
important points about Biblical interpretation. Some theologians have insisted
that Jesus was not made the Son of God until He was baptized by God and, in
fact, verse 36 says that God hath made
that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Does being
made something or being given something mean in our strict usage something you
weren’t before or didn’t have before? Does this indicate that Jesus was not the
Christ before God made Him so or did
not have all power before it was given to
Him?
For something to be given, granted, or bestowed as a gift does not
by necessity mean in a specific moment in time. In the same way for someone to
be made someone can have the same meaning. It can refer to something one has
always had or always been. As a result I put forward that this made and this given are from the beginning, announced to the world at a specific
time, implying no sudden granting or bestowal or change of condition but a
declaration of something that has always been so. As an example I can be the
heir of my father’s fortune and that status may have always been so even if I
do not receive the inheritance until my father dies or I come of age. Our Lord
had to be born into the flesh as a man, a human being, to affirm His status as
the Saviour of the world, God walking in the flesh on earth.
Isaiah
43:10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have
chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God
formed, neither shall there be after me. 11
I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.
As He told Philip in John 14:9 to have seen Him is to have seen
the Father and as Paul said in Hebrews 1:3 Jesus is the appearance of God. Jesus
is that Messiah spoken of in Daniel 9:25, 26. He came into this world in a body
of flesh and assumed the form of a man, and was and is fully God and fully man,
the bridge between God and man.
Hebrew
10:5 Wherefore when he cometh into the
world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou
prepared me: 6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no
pleasure. 7 ¶ Then said I, Lo, I come
(in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. 8 Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering
and burnt offerings and offering
for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law;
9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O
God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. 10 By the which will we are sanctified through
the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Peter is accusing the Jews, his own people, of crucifying Christ
even though his listeners individually probably had nothing to do with it. He
is accusing the Jews of rejecting the Messiah God sent but giving the people of
God a way back into God’s good graces as the martyr Stephen will later do to
the Jewish leadership.
Acts 2:37
¶ Now when they heard this, they
were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the
apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? 38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be
baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of
sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. 39 For the promise is unto you, and to your
children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God
shall call. 40 And with many other words
did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward
generation. 41 Then they that gladly
received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them
about three thousand souls.
Notice the Jews here asked a similar question to the Philippian
jailor.
Acts
16:30 And brought them out, and said,
Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
Notice how this baptism is connected with repentance for rejecting
their Messiah, which the leaders of the Jews and the people that followed their
instructions did. The statement here is made after Peter identifies who Jesus
is and what the Jews had done to Him.
First, what does it mean to repent? The
words repent and repentance don’t just carry with them an intellectual assent to
something like just changing your mind. They involve a turning from something like sin or an action you were purposed to
do.
Exodus
32:12 Wherefore should the Egyptians
speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the
mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
Jeremiah
4:28 For this shall the earth mourn, and
the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and
will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.
Jeremiah
18:8 If that nation, against whom I have
pronounced, turn from their evil, I
will repent of the evil that I
thought to do unto them.
Jeremiah
26:3 If so be they will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way, that
I may repent me of the evil, which I
purpose to do unto them because of the evil of their doings.
Ezekiel
14:6 Therefore say unto the house of
Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Repent,
and turn yourselves from your idols;
and turn away your faces from all
your abominations.
Ezekiel
18:30 Therefore I will judge you, O
house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord GOD. Repent, and turn yourselves from all
your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.
Jonah
3:9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
Repenting is
also an inward action, an act of the mind or spirit, with this baptism as the
outward and immediate expression acknowledging the change. Repentance also
implies belief as you repent from sin and turn to God. Sin is downplayed in
today’s Christianity so repentance from it usually receives short shrift except
in the most fundamental of churches. Consider these verses;
Romans
5:8 But God commendeth his love toward
us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
1John
1:9 If we confess our sins, he is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.
So, if sin before we are
saved and after we are saved is not an issue then what do you think about these
verses, if we are just to admit we sin like we admit we chew gum and move on?
And why did Christ trouble Himself to die on the Cross?
1Corinthians
15:3 For I delivered unto you first of
all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to
the scriptures;
In the so-called Sermon
on the Mount in Matthew, the spiritual counterpart to the very earthy Sermon on
the Plain in Luke, Jesus made a very important point in saying that it was more
important that you reconcile to a brother who had something against you first
than to offer something to God. In Matthew 5 He made a spiritual application
for mourning as in regard to contextually mourning for sin’s very existence and
hungering for God’s righteousness.
I realize preachers have
taken this too far. The most stunning example is Charles G. Finney’s insistence
that if you weren’t trying to make up for all of your past sins to the people
you had wronged then you probably aren’t saved, which is foolish. But modern
preachers not preaching against sin is just as foolish, if not moreso.
You cannot simply dismiss
sin and your sin nature as a bad rash and forget it. We need to deal with our
sin, or, more importantly to have Christ deal with it.
1John
1:9 If we confess our sins, he is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.
Have you mourned for your
sin? Do you weep even now over what you feel so helpless to overcome? Haven’t
some of you ruined your families? Haven’t some of you wasted your youth on
alcohol and promiscuous sex, looking for love and acceptance, a replacement for
your father or mother, pursued money and found bankruptcy, messed up your kids?
Do you feel nothing? Has someone gotten you to believe that everything is just
peachy? David was forgiven but he suffered terribly for his sin, in his family.
Don’t you mourn?
I know that there are
verses about salvation that don’t mention repentance like Romans 10:9, 10 or
Acts 16:31 but we need to look at all of the verses on a topic before we
formulate a doctrine in our head. Repentance from sin, from what you are, a
sinner, repudiating your sin and turning it over to Christ, trusting His
righteousness and not your own is basic to Bible salvation. You won’t come to
the point of receiving Christ if you don’t realize you are spiritually bankrupt
without God.
Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Isaiah 66:2 For all those things hath mine hand made, and all
those things have been, saith
the LORD: but to this man will
I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite
spirit, and trembleth at my word. [contrite is
a feeling of remorse, based on guilt]
Psalm
34:18 The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as
be of a contrite spirit.
Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit: a
broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
The result of repentance and faith is the receiving of the Holy
Ghost who indwells the believer, the Spirit of God and Christ, also called the
Holy Spirit in its active state with the Holy Ghost being His person.
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