00:00:00 – 00:02:36
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody, happy Wednesday. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate you being back with us as we continue through the Book of Acts. We continue to press on through the second chapter in verse 29 today. As we finish kind of Peter's initial appeal in the aftermath of the Pentecost miracle, Peter has spoken up in defense of the apostles and has begun to outline the beginnings of the presentation of what Jesus has done and who Jesus is. And today he wraps that up. We're going to get lots more of it in the book, but in this initial presentation we get through it today. So jump in here. We'll come back and talk our way through it. Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently that our ancestor David, of our ancestor David, that he both died and was buried. And his tomb is with us to this day, since he was a prophet. knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on the throne. For seeing this, David spoke of his resurrection, the resurrection of the Messiah, and said he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you both see and hear, for David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Therefore, let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified. So here we begin to get several threads that will be of continuing importance in the book. And if we start backwards here, we get this idea that the Lord Jesus, whom you crucified. Now, you sounds like a very pointed word here. When Peter says you, in this case, it probably doesn't mean maybe the specific people listening, although they may be numbered among them. He has in mind the Jewish religious leaders, those in collaboration or collusion with Rome.

00:02:38 – 00:03:34
Clint Loveall
He certainly doesn't mean all of the Jewish people, which has sometimes been a problematic way to read this text. He also, and I think this is, I think this is important. We mentioned this the other day. He sees this as an extension, that he can confidently and comfortably speak of Jesus as the descendant of David and as not only in the line of David, but ultimately the fulfillment of the Davidic line, not as an earthly king, but as he says here, Michael, the Lord and the Messiah, which we need to talk about little bit. But this idea that David was a prophet, and even David knew there was someone greater coming, and we see the arrival of that greater person in

00:03:34 – 00:05:59
Michael Gewecke
Christ. I think that we miss the challenge that Peter is trying to raise the bar to, because the idea of the people of Israel waiting for the Lord and the Messiah is not in any way. an uncommon thing, that this is a thing that would be talked about at family gatherings and then church gatherings and that this is a common idea. The part about this conversation that's not common is the fact that the one who might be Lord and Messiah would be a crucified one. That's the component of this story that is so impossible for the people to wrap their minds around. Because ultimately, it seems to stand in contradistinction to the very thing that was said just before. His flesh does not experience corruption, right? This is the incredible thing, is that Peter is wanting to make the case that Jesus' crucifixion is the very evidence that God has in that crucified Lord, who has now been raised from the dead, giving evidence to the fact that Jesus is the one who David was speaking towards. Nobody's going to argue, not nobody, but Peter stands on strong tradition and strong foundation to argue that in the Davidic line, the Messiah is going to come from. There are many contemporaries within Israel who are going to agree with that and who are actually, we know because of the architectural and historical record, there are many who are trying to force that ahead. They're actually trying to start military coups or military rebellion so that they can try to sort of push the hand of history, bend that arc sooner. And the reality is here, what Peter wants to argue this day is far more challenging. He's trying to argue that because Jesus Christ was crucified and because we're witnesses to the resurrection, now we can see the truth that the fact that his flesh didn't experience corruption does not mean that he did not die. it's rather that in the resurrection life, God did not leave him to death. And that's a radical transformation of the conversations that had come thus far. And I think it is maybe lost on us just a little bit,

00:05:59 – 00:06:41
Clint Loveall
Clint. There may be some difficulty for us, Michael, to see the contrast. David is for the Israelite people an embodiment of the glory days. I mean, he conquers the Philistines. He stands up to the enemies. He establishes the kingdom. He moves the capital to Jerusalem. David is in many ways the peak of the mountain as those Jewish people, those Israelites, would look back on their history. That is probably for most of them, the era that they would see as the most successful.

00:06:43 – 00:07:10
Clint Loveall
certainly has his issues, if you know the David's story, but he is a fierce warrior. He is a conqueror. He's passionate. He just embodies so much of what the Jewish people understood themselves to be and is very much framed as one of those great heroes of the past. And to make the case that now the Messiah that comes through his line,

00:07:12 – 00:07:53
Clint Loveall
is a sort of lesser-known figure that was born in a place and got himself crucified and didn't have an army and didn't have a palace and didn't win any physical battles. This is, I think this is a disconnect that is very difficult for us to understand and to appreciate the challenge that that would present in the mindset of Jesus contemporaries, the people of Jesus' day. And yet, Peter can preach confidently,

00:07:54 – 00:08:03
Clint Loveall
let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah.

00:08:05 – 00:09:04
Clint Loveall
And it's hard to tell with the word Lord, whether that's the Greek version or the Hebrew version. The word Messiah is the Hebrew version, which is the equivalent of the Greek word Christ. So he is the Lord, he is the ruler, and he is the Redeemer, the Messiah, the one who is coming to save. He is both of those things. David was one of those things. Jesus is both of those things, and yet this line that he was crucified. And we begin now to move toward unpacking what it will mean that Christians will, from these days forward, proclaim a crucified Savior. And the challenge that presents to presenting the gospel to people, who find that utterly confusing and unexpected.

00:09:05 – 00:11:50
Michael Gewecke
There's another part of this telling Clint that I think is also a really important part of the early church's proclamation that is maybe lost on us a little bit. And to illustrate that, I'd point us here towards verse 32, that this Jesus, God raised up. And of that, all of us are witnesses, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God. This is in our creeds, this exalted language, and it would be easy to pass by it. But I want to just point out, David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, who did ascend into the heavens? Jesus did, right? The point I want to make is, ascension sometimes gets missed in some of our conversations, but to the early church, this is an essential part of the thing that we witnessed to in Jesus. Yes, Jesus crucified. We have that built into our good friends. Friday service, right? Jesus resurrected, had that built into our Easter celebration. Jesus ascended, I suspect few people have as many memories or connections to as these others. And yet, I think theologically, this remains incredibly important to Peter. I think you see it again in Philippians. You see it all over the New Testament, that Jesus Christ is not just the one who's resurrected, but he's the one who ascends. So God descends in Jesus Christ and takes on flesh. And in the ascending of the Christ, that is the moment where Christians find the hope for ourselves, that what God has done for Jesus, God will also do for us. And I think that Clint, this is just a really, it's an important part of the early church's proclamation because to them, they're leaning and living into the scandal of proclaiming resurrection. People say, okay, he's resurrected. Where's he at? Where do you go to? And today, we don't really have that faith conundrum due to the now thousands of years. But I think that there's a reality that the early church felt a need to respond to that immediately. And they saw in it hope. They saw in it gospel so much so that we go back to this language that started with that we are witnesses, verse 32, that we're witnesses to this thing. and so therefore we give language to it, we give speech to it. We try to point others to it. Ascension is an important part of the church's understanding of what, not just the fact that Jesus was crucified, not just the fact that death itself could not hold him, death itself was destroyed, but it's not just death. It's that then Jesus was also taken up to be at the right hand of God the Father. It's an important part of our story, even if we'd always emphasize it.

00:11:50 – 00:13:30
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and I think we'd have to concede that when it comes to a Christian doctrine like the Trinity, which mostly gets fleshed out post-New Testament, based on some of what's in the New Testament, and yet here we have this idea that Jesus goes to be with God, which was not surprising for us, but was not in the day common thinking. It wasn't understood that people when they died went to what we now think of as heaven. That idea hadn't really made its way into common religious thought in Jesus' day. And yet here is an early proclamation that having done his work on earth, having been exalted by God because of his obedience and his willing, to sacrifice himself for the sins of others. He is now lifted up and is where God is, not here on earth, that ultimately his kingdom isn't an earthly kingdom. It's a spiritual, heavenly, the realm of God kind of thing. And it's interesting how you can see here the first little sprouts of things that will become very much established as Christian thought, as those early people of faith, begin to appreciate them and think about them and recognize them and what they then become later.

00:13:31 – 00:15:51
Michael Gewecke
Clint, the word that maybe stands out to me in this selection, we've talked about verse 36 extensively, but I'm just struck by it, let the entire House of Israel know with certainty with certainty what a bar what what a line to say with certainty that i want to invite you invite me invite us together to consider like what what thing would make you certain of the faith and i suspect for all of us that that bar is going to be very difficult to to to hit because certainty we go back to thomas if only i could see if only i could see if only I could touch, right? And I think what Peter says here is scandalous in a way, because what he's saying is the one who died, the one who rose again, the one who ascended. And so therefore, by definition, cannot be seen or touched. The scriptural record that we see, now when we look back and we see how David lived and what David said, and, you know, we're going to see the early church tease out even more than just the Psalms. They're going to point the gospels being a great example, reach all throughout the Old Testament from the Pentateuch through the prophets. And the argument's going to be that if you read these texts and you read so in the light of Jesus Christ, you're going to see that they're all pointed towards him. Maybe the book of Matthew is example par excellence or the book of Hebrews is a good example of this. If that is the way that you look at the story, then so. certainty becomes rooted upon the certainty that you have in those texts. You say, I'm so confident in the scriptures that when I look and see them in light of Jesus' teaching, that it should move you to a position where your certainty in them moves you to a place of certainty in him. And I just think that's a very clear line that Peter's drawing here in this. And the language of certainty, really, there's no rhetorical. gap there. He makes clear what he thinks that this should drive us towards. And I think that that is a kind of clarity that demonstrates a kind of theological guts to say that.

00:15:52 – 00:16:33
Clint Loveall
Yeah, a sense of without doubt. And for Peter, that doesn't mean proof as we've seen that that means witness, evidence. It means to believe that which maybe can't be proven or can't physically be proven. It means to interpret what one sees God doing, the tongues, and he says it there, everything you see and hear, this is the outpouring of God. And so as much as it might be nice for us to think of the idea of certainty as some kind of proof that was irrefutable,

00:16:35 – 00:16:51
Clint Loveall
the scripture seems to believe that we can arrive at the certainty of have no doubts, but by a different path. And I think, you know, again, that will continue to be the way that the church has to communicate the

00:16:51 – 00:17:23
Michael Gewecke
gospel. We broke it up into two sections, whether that should just be one or not. You know, certainly go back to the previous videos. You can catch the whole of this proclamation. But the natural question, is going to be, okay, so you tell the story, what happens next. And that's exactly what's going to come as we continue to study tomorrow. So thanks for being with us here today. Don't miss tomorrow because I think the response that Luke is going to describe is in many ways just as powerful as the thing that has been proclaimed here. And we look forward to seeing you then. Yeah, thanks.