Acts, 2:37-47

Alright, one of the things, I'm going to do a quick jump ahead to the second page of your handout here. Before we do that, let's look at the questions that popped up in last week's, okay? On page 7. This is Acts 2, 37-47. Okay. He says, Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do?

Peter said to them, Repent, each of you, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Why did Peter say repent instead of believe? Believe is what we hear later on in the epistles across the board. Why the repent? What's the reason for the message?

What did you come up with? They need to agree with God. Ah, yeah. They knew the facts in reality. I mean, they'd seen Jesus, they'd seen things presented. Their mindset about it was what needed to change. So, repent, metanoia, is a change of mind, right? Yeah. Good. And they needed to have that change of mind. That was the pivotal point. So the focus is there on repenting, changing the mind.

Is that different from believing? Okay, there is a different emphasis there, isn't it? If they repented, would that be believing? It's not exactly the same thing, and yet the change of mind that he was calling for was for them, rather than disbelieving, to believe that he was the Messiah, the one he claimed to be.

There's some questions there. In the case of the Jews, it was specifically a reversal, wasn't it? Yeah. So that was his focus. He wasn't intending that they somehow repent and that that's entirely different from believing. And yet the focus is different because they had a stance about the facts that needed to be reversed, that needed to be changed. Ben?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is true, there needs to be a change of mind to go from unbelief to belief. Their case was a matter of coming to reverse the position that they had. Repent and believe are not two separate things, but they are related. And specifically for the Jews, they needed to have this specific change of mind about Christ. They had one mindset about Him. They needed to have the different mindset that Peter just presented.

Now, the other question we asked there, Does the receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit mean that those who would repent would speak in tongues just as the apostles had done just before Peter spoke? Minutes before, the apostles had all spoken in tongues. Does that mean that the rest of those folks there would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and therefore also speak in tongues?

What do you think? I'm seeing heads shake. The other interesting thing to note, were there other than the Apostles there that day, before this specific event took place? Or was it just the Apostles? Yeah, it's more than that. Others were gathered with them. And yet as we examine it, it appears that the apostles were the ones speaking in tongues.

So it wasn't a universal phenomenon. Not everybody spoke in tongues. There's no recording that those who believed that day, though they received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, there's no recording that they also spoke in tongues. So it was a special event, partial to the group, not throughout the whole group. It's interesting, as we look later on in that chapter here, the description of what took place describes several different things. The whole bunch of them speaking in tongues was not one of those pieces of description. How about the second question?

How much of what is detailed in Acts 2.37-47 is intended by God to be typical of the Church? And how much not? Is it descriptive or prescriptive? How do we know the difference between the two?

Yes, yes Pardon Okay by the epistles let's let's ask this question here on this first day of the church Have these believers been identified with Christ in his death burial resurrection ascension and seating? Happy Yeah Do they know it? No. How long would it be before they knew it? A few days? A few weeks? Yeah, it would be decades later before they would understand that, right? We're going to see time moving on up until Acts chapter 10, some years later.

It dawns on them, and that's only with some resistance, that the Gentiles are to be included in the church as well. Yeah. It's going to take a while for them to get it. And yet, was it not true that when Christ died on the cross that the law was put out of commission with regards to the church? Yeah.

So one of the things to keep in mind is the epistles are laying out What is true of the church from the very beginning, the recognition of it, may not come for years, in some cases decades. And that's kind of a mind adjustment that's important for us to keep as we go along, isn't it? Because we're going to see things. Remember the chart that we had there? Here are the ministries of the Holy Spirit. So you've got this chart. Here's the ministries of the Holy Spirit. The ministries of the Holy Spirit start at the beginning.

The Holy Spirit didn't say, well, you know, I think I'll wait around until they realize what's happening. It's true regardless. Don't we have the same thing today? Are there not a great many believers who do not realize that they have a position in Christ fixed? Here's an example. There are believers who will say, well, you can't really be sure you're going to stay saved. Okay?

And an illustration that I've heard goes this way. There was a man who was kind of, you know, lost out in a very snowy, cold country. And he needed to cross the river because he saw across the river was a place where he could, you know, get to some shelter and food and warmth and things of that sort. But as he started to cross the river, he was not sure whether the ice on the river would hold him up. And so he very carefully put his foot down and tapped on the ice, and then he kind of laid down on the ice and, you know, felt carefully ahead and, you know, tapped along, very slowly making his way across the ice. When he'd gotten partway across the ice, suddenly there came down the river somebody with a horse and sleigh just zooming right down the river, frozen. The person with the horse and sleigh apparently knew quite well that the river was just frozen solid and you weren't going to fall through. The person who was very carefully making his way across was quite uncertain as to whether the river would hold him up, the ice would not break. Now, were they both equally as safe on the ice? Yeah. Did they feel the same about the ice? No. So it's a subjective response, but the safety is there just the same.

And it's quite often that people don't realize what they have. What we see here is, as the church is beginning, they have a great many things they don't yet know that they have. And we need to recognize that, that what the epistles are describing quite often are things that are recognized later. Because the full revelation of what this means is not given until the New Testament is completed, right? So up until that time, they're still learning.

Here's Peter, and he doesn't get up on the day of Pentecost and say, you've been identified with Christ. He's not going to know anything about that for a while. But it's true nonetheless. He has been sealed with the Holy Spirit, and so have the rest of them there. But he doesn't know that yet either.

So all these things are laid out in truth. And that's one of the reasons why it's important for us as we read through this to recognize the character of the transition. Now let me put some of this material up here. I want to jump ahead to have us look at something quickly here.

And I won't be using the I won't be using the PowerPoint too much here, but this is one I think is pretty good. By the way, I sent an email around to a number of folks and I didn't have all your email addresses. How many of you got the email I sent around about the photo simulations at the temple? I'll have a handout for those who can catch up with it if you didn't get my email.

It starts like this. Here, if you were walking from Jerusalem, and this is about the area where they came from. Sorry about that. That's a good question, Mark. I'm not able to project it up there. I'm not sure why here. Does this not even give me the option? I have to hold off on it. How many of you got to take a look at the handout there? The idea on what I had, let me pass out, some of you may not have had a chance to take a look at it. I want you to distribute it to someone who hasn't taken a look at it. The idea is this, and I'll have to follow it up next time. For some reason it's not recognizing the projector.

The point being that there are photo simulations that have been done of the temple area, and it's like you're right there, walking up to the temple, walking through the porticos, things of that sort, and you can see what it would be like to be in those porticos and to see things in scale here. Pardon? No, no, because I was expecting this thing to work here. Anyway.

So the simulations allow you to walk into the porticos, to walk into the Plaza area there where Jesus was with the teaching in the porticoes and now the Apostles are in those same porticoes and Anyway, we'll go through that when I can get it up. I'm not sure why I'm not able to get the thing to respond Okay, let's continue on with this thing here All right, so how do we tell what is transitional and what is not we always want to compare things with? What did the epistles teach? was true.

The recognition of it took decades. The recognition of it took decades. Let's think about this. On the day of Pentecost, how many days had it been prior, how many days had it been prior that the disciples were asking, is now the time you're going to set up your kingdom? Pardon? Well, okay, it had been about 50 days from the day of Pentecost back to the time of the prior Passover, but it had only been a week and a half before this time that they were asking the question. Yeah?

Well, what it's not doing... No, that's not it. What it's not doing is it should be, and this isn't something... It should be showing the connection to this, and it's not. So I don't know what the... Yeah, but I'm not sure what the... And the way this thing... I mean, this is working. And this is connected into the port. Yeah, that's fine. You know, and you're seeing that, but I'm not getting the... Well, can you change this? Change what? The DICU. This is what I was trying to get to show up. See, and it wasn't showing up at all. It should show up here, but I'm not getting it. So I'm not sure what the story is here. Let me try something.

I'd say it's like reading something. It is important for us to be looking at what the epistles say rather than trying to capture something in transition and say that's the norm. Because what various groups have done is to look at some aspect of Acts in transition and say, that's the norm, rather than looking at the epistles. The Book of Acts is an important link between the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. But to take a snapshot at any one point will be misleading because they are discovering what this means.

It had been only a week and a half. To give you an idea what that would be like, It would be like having an understanding that was basically totally Jewish. And here we are at the end of January, right? Two weeks ago when we met. That's a longer period of time than they had from the time when they asked Jesus. It's now the time you're going to establish your kingdom for Israel. We've had more time in the last two weeks than they had since they asked that question. So their shift of mindset, their shift of understanding, that's going to take time. That's going to take time. All right. Let's look at the next... Acts 3, 1 through 26, okay? And again, what we find here, and so I was hoping to get this to show up here.

It's somehow not cooperating. What we find is that the temple area from about chapter 3 through about chapter 5 ends up being kind of a focal point. And so it's valuable for us to get a sense of what it's like there in the temple. And then the temple in Jerusalem kind of drops off the scene until chapter 21.

So we'll revisit it then. So taking some time to look at the temple. Now you got in your handout here, this page two where you've got kind of a diagram. Let's kind of walk through that diagram because I think it's valuable to get a sense of what kind of a place this was. What I'd like for us to think about is place yourself in this temple scene here. Think about, you're an apostle and you've spent the last few years with Christ with a lot of time here. And things that are very gripping have taken place here.

Look up at the top, you see up at the upper left-hand corner, Antonia Fortress? That's the fortress where Pilate judged Jesus. That's where Pilate went ahead and gave the authorization to crucify him. That's where they beat Jesus. So here is their teaching, they're looking at this fortress knowing that that's the place right there where Pilate judged him and gave the sentence of crucifixion.

The Romans, and by the way Pilate was the one who made the decision, the Romans had that fortress and they put Roman soldiers overlooking the temple area. The Jews did not like that. Here are Roman soldiers pacing about up on the towers overlooking the Jews' temple area.

Then you look at the main temple area there that you see is the naos, that's the inner temple area. Multiple references to that. This is where the curtain which was torn from top to bottom was located in that partition between the two halves. The half on the left there is the Holy of Holies. I have simply marked out the altar. There's actually the altar and then there's a kind of a staging area for dealing with the animals in that area that's called the altar.

Then you notice a series of three gates. The Nicanor Gate, the Corinthian Gate, and the Shushan Gate. They're in sequence. This passage here, because remember the lame man is being healed at what's called the beautiful gate. Here's what's interesting.

We don't know exactly where that is. It may have been a nickname. Everybody called it that. Can you think of places like that where people have another name for it, but it's not necessarily the official name? A lot of cities will get nicknames, some other name.

This would be an example of something like that, where exactly what the beautiful gate is, we're not sure. The likelihood is that it's the Corinthian gate, the middle one. If the lame man had been at the closer gate there to the temple, the Nicanor gate, that would have excluded any Gentiles. It would have been more limiting because some people never got to that gate. and there were some carvings and things like that that were more attractive at the Corinthian Gate. So it likely was there. The Shushan Gate is also known as the Eastern Gate or the Golden Gate.

Now, you see the Court of Women? You see that? See reference to that? See it? Have I got you? Okay. The Court of Women was the court where people would come in. This is the place where, remember, the widow put her mite into the treasury? That was the place in that court there.

There was a floor level and then there was balconies, and you could stand up there on the balconies or you could be down at the floor level, either one. At the lower left-hand corner is where they stored the oil, and at the upper right-hand corner is where they stored the wood for the sacrifices. This is also the place where Jesus would have made the description of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee says, thank you that I'm so good, and the tax collector says, have mercy on me.

So this would have been that location. At the round stairway, there's kind of a semi-circle stairway that comes out of the Nicanor Gate, the Levites would have choirs and they would stand at kind of divided levels in a half circle and sing there at the appointed times. Okay, so probably outside of this Corinthian gate, that would be where the lame man would be. So Peter and John come up to this guy and And Peter says, I don't have any silver or gold.

He just says, stand up and walk. Stand up and walk. And then as he stands up and walks, everybody cheers and everybody thought that was great, right? Well, a lot of people did. Not everybody, as we'll see in the next chapter. A lot of people thought that was good. You have any left there or is it just... How can I reboot this thing? I can't even reboot it. Oh, really? Yeah? Well, I may have... There you go. Yeah, there you go. Try to restart it and see what you can get. Okay. Okay. All right.

Now, let's look to page three. Page three, I've got a couple of photographs and one of them is kind of standing at the outside Jerusalem wall, looking in towards the two gates there, and probably the Corinthian gate would be the one where the layman would be. So then, What happens there? What's the next thing?

Peter again uses an opportunity to speak. He speaks to them and presents to them. He recounts recent events. Why would it be valuable for him to recount recent events? Why would that be helpful? Yes. They would understand things better. They would certainly understand because he did some explaining with it. He didn't just lay down, here's the history, right? So he explained some things. Good. Why else? Why else would it be helpful? Yeah, this had been recent and so a number of people listening to him would be either first-hand or close second-hand familiar with the details, right? So yeah, it would be real helpful.

Now, as he speaks to the Jews that are gathered there, what's their response? On the day of Pentecost, we get the description of all kinds of response. Lots of response. But when we come to this account, something different happens. The focus is not on the response of the mass of people. There may have been a fair amount of response.

But what we see, this rolls into chapter 4, where we see the description of things, the reaction from those in the temple. And one of the things that we see happen throughout the Book of Acts is the heat keeps getting turned up. more and more reaction, more intense reaction as time goes on. And again, here's another example.

If you were to say the reaction from people is some kind of a standard, which one would you pick? If you were to say, all the time, when you present the gospel, people should react like they did on the day of Pentecost. No opposition at all, was there? Is that the standard we should pick? That if people are not responding exactly like they did on the day of Pentecost, then there's something wrong. Should that be the way? No. We go farther down the road here and we're going to see some opposition, fairly mild compared to what it's going to be later. But what you see is a larger group of people getting increasingly upset at what the apostles are bringing.

One thing is I'm trying to run this thing off battery, but it may not. It may not work too well. It's just not even showing up there at all. OK, fine. But then let's say it's not even showing up. It's it should show a control control. I mean, excuse me, the function key right there at five should show the. Yeah, except that it's not, it should show a second one for that. And you hit it twice to make that one, and it's not even showing up. I don't think you've got a problem here. I don't think it's your... Yeah, problems with that. So, okay. We'll just proceed. Apologies for the interruption here.

Now, as you look through the Book of Acts, you're going to see increasing reaction. As we look at this, for example, we're going to see in Chapter 4, we get a reaction from those in and around the temple. Really, what do the Romans think of this Christian event? Is that any big deal to them? It's head-shaking. No. The truth is that this hasn't even shown up on the Romans' radar screen.

So far as Pilate's concerned, you know, they had a little bit of a ruckus. Pilate was the guy in charge there. from about 26 to 36 A.D. And as far as he was concerned, we took care of this and it's a done deal. Got rid of that Jesus and the soldiers took care of him and it's on to the next guy.

The Romans really haven't paid any attention to it and it's going to be about 30 years before the Romans are really going to care a whole lot. And then finally it starts showing up in about the time of the end of the Book of Acts. that the Romans really began paying much attention. We have no record from the Romans of anything until a time about 30 years later where the Romans really were concerned.

Ben? Right. Right. Right. Yeah, Dave? Of Christ's crucifixion? Not immediately. And even the Roman record of reaction to Christians later is from a subsequent period of time. In other words, it's kind of looking back and saying, this happened during that period of time. There's no record of Christ's crucifixion directly in Roman records. what Pilate said and that kind of thing.

Basically, think about it, as far as the Romans were concerned, here's sort of an obscure edge of our large empire. We showed on the screen some time back here a view from space of the Roman Empire. It was amazing. You see quite a bit of curve in the earth.

I mean, this is a substantial chunk of real estate at one point extending from the Persian Gulf Over where we are over in Iraq and you know Kuwait and all that all the way up to Britain and in a large span in between so the Roman the Roman view of this is sort of an obscure corner of our Empire and These people are just kind of troublesome And and pilot also was one he just after he got finished in 36 ad he drops off the Romans view of things There's an inscription In Caesarea, which is over on the coast there, that's the place where the Gentiles first came into the church. It's the place where Paul was put in jail for a couple of years before he was taken by ship. In Caesarea, when they were doing excavations at the amphitheater, they found an inscription with Pilate's name on it. It had been turned around and used as just a building block. Pilate was a nobody on the Roman big picture. And he faded from the scene. He wasn't a very successful fellow as a politician. He didn't climb the Roman political ladder.

So they really paid no attention to the Christians initially, and they were just thought of as sort of a sect of the Jews. And actually think about it, what did the apostles think of themselves as? They thought of themselves as, hey, we're just Jews, and this is completed, and all that. So it comes back to this point, and that is that a great many of the misunderstandings of the New Testament are based on a misinterpretation of Acts, of taking a snapshot and saying that's it. Whether you're talking about the covenant reform folks who still look at the church as sort of a continuation of the of Israel, whether you're talking about the charismatic folks who try to grab hold of what they see as apostolic gifts and make that the norm, whether you're talking about the ultra-dispensationalists who will try to say the church started sometime later, or whether you're talking about the messianic Jews, and we have some congregations here in Denver, who will try to basically go back to these early chapters of Acts and say, here we've got this Jewish-Gentile distinction, and we want to hold to that. So all these different understandings are based on a snapshot of the Book of Acts, taking that snapshot and not understanding the big picture that this is a transition, that the epistles, if you look at what the epistles are describing, are giving us the longer-term picture. so that we understand our position in Christ. They really didn't understand that yet.

Yes? Yes. Yes. Yeah. If we look here at this passage and start reading through it, it's very important to ask yourself, what do the disciples understand here? What do they understand so far?

And really, it's almost easier to list what they don't understand, isn't it? It's almost easier to think of what they don't understand. This last week, Ben and I have been kind of emailing back and forth about the book of James. Some have argued otherwise, but the evidence seems to point towards it being a very early book.

And so it reveals an understanding. Okay, we have the church. Notice, for example, that it's written to the twelve tribes. What does that tell us? It's written to Jews, right? At the time of that writing, there doesn't seem to be much understanding of the Gentiles. So it reflects an early understanding of what's going on, whereas that growth and understanding and revelation is still in progress.

If we put ourselves in the apostles' shoes, And see, they had several decades of kind of aha moments. You ever have one of those aha moments? One of these times where they're progressing along and all of a sudden they, oh, is that what's happening? You can imagine, as we're going to see later on with Peter, here's Peter who just now performed this miracle that we saw. He heals the lame man. Is that an aha moment for Peter and John? You're saying no. What are you thinking? Ah, okay. Had they done that before? Had they done some miracles before? Yes. Did they do it as the church?

No. So here's something interesting. Even what we see here in Acts chapter 3 where Peter performs a miracle They've been through that before when it was Jesus told them only go to the lost sheep of Israel And it was an evidence that these people were speaking of the Messiah Because Isaiah had told them that the Messiah would be one who would bring healing and perform miracles and things of that sort So even as he's stepping into the temple and telling this fellow be healed, you know, stand up, rise up and walk. He's still drawing upon his prior background, isn't he? You're right, it's not really an aha moment, even though to us it looks like, boy, this is a phenomenal thing, and yes it was. It wasn't the first time. But it was the first time we have recorded in the church.

Something else to notice about the event, he goes up to the lame man, and does he say, just a minute here, let me pray for you, and maybe the Lord will heal you. He doesn't do that, does he? He doesn't say, well, we've got to get this on the prayer chain. What does he do? He walks up to this man who is lame, and says, rise up and walk. There wasn't anything like what you see in today's church environment. It was a very different kind of event. He didn't say, let's see if I can help you. He didn't say, can you walk? None of the above, right? But you, rise up and walk. You who have been lame from birth for four decades, rise up and walk. Now, and this is not a suggestion. Now, let's take a look at some of the questions that come out of here.

Since this is the area of the temple and it's obvious Jesus would have been there numerous times, why didn't Jesus already heal him? Now that's not for you to answer now, but think about that. Why hadn't Jesus already healed him? Jesus had, obviously this guy had been coming here for a long time. Jesus had weeks before, no I'm sorry, a couple of years before by this time, a couple of years before had been in this very place. We knew he walked in this area many times. The lame man had already been there. Why did Jesus not already have healed this fellow?

The second question, since this is the first recorded miraculous event performed at the command of an Apostle in the Church, is it fitting to ask some questions of the miracle? What was the spiritual purpose of miracles by an Apostle? How is this different from asking the Lord for healing and then seeing that prayer answered positively? What's the difference? And third question there.

If we peek ahead in Acts 4, we see that this miracle provided an opportunity for Peter to speak the truth to those in the temple area, which resulted in Peter and John being taken prisoner by the temple authorities. Does this mean that what Peter and John did was wrong, since there seemed to be a bad outcome from the event? Why or why not? So that asks a really important question. If something bad happens, does it mean you've done something wrong?

So those are questions we want to take a look at, and we'll visit those next week. Hopefully I can get this thing working here so that you can see the temple slides. I think it's real valuable to get a sense of what that was like, to step into those porticos and to step in front of those gates and see what that was like.

Yes, very large. in one dimension over three football fields in length. So really, really large and about 45 feet wide on those porticos. So it gives you a good sense. Yeah, 37 and a half feet high, really tall. Yeah, yeah, it is phenomenal, isn't it? Yeah.

Let's pray. Lord, as we Look at this passage here and ponder and think about the questions that are raised We we thank you you have done marvelous things and and you have this Paul Describes to the church at Ephesus you have revealed Because you're a God who reveals you're a God that makes known things that are kept in secret We thank you for what you have revealed. We thank you that by your your marvelous grace and your love for us you have made known things that at this stage in the church still were unknown and yet to be discovered. Thank you for what you've accomplished. In Jesus' name, amen.