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Podcast: What Really Happened at Pentecost? (Patrick Schreiner)

January 03, 2022 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

What Pentecost Means for Us Today

In today's episode, Patrick Schreiner discusses the story of Pentecost—a fascinating but also somewhat confusing account of the sending of the Holy Spirit to indwell God’s people in a new and powerful way.

The Mission of the Triune God

The Mission of the Triune God

Patrick Schreiner

Follow Luke’s ordered narrative of events in the book of Acts to see how the early church grew “under the plan of God, centered on King Jesus, and empowered by the Spirit.”

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:59 - How Luke and Acts Fit Together

Matt Tully
Patrick, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Patrick Schreiner
It’s good to be with you, Matt.

Matt Tully
I’m sure most of our listeners are at least somewhat familiar with the book of Acts. We know it’s this important section of the New Testament that chronicles the early days of the church and Paul’s missionary journeys. So many things are happening in this story. We might even know, if we’ve been in Sunday school or studied the Bible for ourselves, that the book of Acts and the book of Luke kind of go together. I think there is a lot within these stories that is sometimes hard to make sense of. In particular, the story of Pentecost is one of those stories in Acts that I think many of us have maybe struggled over the years trying to understand what’s happening and what is the significance. It feels like a big deal, but we might not know exactly why. I want to get into that today with you, but before we jump into Pentecost, help us understand how Acts and Luke fit together. What are the big movements in each book and why should we view them together?

Patrick Schreiner
Both of them have prologues where it’s really clear that Luke is writing to the same person, Theophilus—or, at least, he seems to be some benefactor for the writing of these two works. They couldn’t fit Luke and Acts on the same papyrus, so they had to split them because they’re both really long. In the New Testament, the most writing we have is from Luke himself and not from Paul because both of these works are really long. What many have noted is that there is a lot of theological and geographical correlation between the two. For example, the Gospel of Luke is very focused on the temple. If you look at the very beginning of the Gospel of Luke, it begins in the temple with Zechariah and the angel coming to visit him. The very last line of Luke is actually They were in the temple praising God continually, so you have this book-end to the temple. Then you have this journey to the temple (to Jerusalem) in Luke that many people have noted—that’s the geographical focus. Then, when you come to Acts it’s the same thing. You have the famous Acts 1:8—Go into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. In Luke, what’s really neat geographically is it’s all leading towards Jerusalem; in Acts, it’s all leading out from Jerusalem, so there’s this great geographic focus. Not only that, but you have ties in terms of emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Again, in Luke 1 and 2, the Spirit came upon Mary, the Spirit came upon John the Baptist, and then you have a great emphasis, of course, on the Spirit in the book of Acts with Pentecost and so forth and so on. I think authors who are working on this rightly see these going together, but one of the things I like to encourage people to do as well is to recognize that Acts comes after the four-fold Gospel in our canon, and to not just tie it to Luke, but actually tie it to the four Gospels. Sometimes we have a tendency to only think of the relationship between Luke and Acts and forget that we actually have a four-fold canon of Jesus’s story, which Acts is really following up on. I could go on and on about this, but you have Acts kind of as a canonical bridge between the Gospels and between Jesus and the letters, and then it transitions from the days of Jesus to the days of the church—how did the early church begin? In Paul’s epistles, we have him writing to those different Jesus communities (the places that he established), so it’s really a bridge book canonically between these different eras. I like to point out to my students that in our English ordering—really, the most common ordering that we have from the early church—John comes in between Luke and Acts. And actually, there are a lot of Johannine themes that come up in Acts as well. Think about in John how he promises he will send them the Holy Spirit, that the comforter (the paraclete) will come to them. He talks about the unity that they need to have in the gospel. So, there are all these different things in terms of Jesus’s final speeches in John that actually lead us directly into Acts and the themes there. I love to point out to students and to everyone that we need to think about John, we need to think about Matthew, we need to think about Mark and Luke and the connection between all of these.

Matt Tully
You mentioned how one of the factors perhaps at play with why the book of Acts and the book of Luke were written separately is just the physical limitations of writing on papyrus. Is that our best theory as to why these were separated from each other even though they do tell a single story?

Patrick Schreiner
Yes, I think the physical limit is part of the reason, but I also think Luke is cognizant that he’s writing two different stories—one the story of Jesus and one the story of the early church. He splits it at a natural place. Actually, at the end of Luke you have a short account of the ascension, and at the beginning of Acts you have a little bit longer account of the ascension. He almost uses that ascension account as the flip: Okay, Jesus is going away. What’s going to happen next? Let me tell you that again. He’s going away; now here comes the early church. I would say it’s both—there’s a historical reason, there’s a physical media reason, and then there’s a theological reason as to why these things are split. But what many have pointed out is that that doesn’t mean that Jesus is not still present in Acts. Acts 1:1 speaks about what Jesus began to do and to teach, and he continues to act in the book of Acts just from heaven. The Spirit brings heaven to earth in the Pentecost scene. You actually have Jesus arrive at different scenes. Think about Stephen’s death where he sees Jesus. When Paul is on the Damascus road, he sees Jesus—the Spirit of Jesus leads Paul. So, you have Jesus showing up at key points, but it’s actually really evident from the rest of the New Testament that the Spirit of Jesus brings the presence of Jesus to his followers.

Matt Tully
It’s so amazing how when you get into these biblical books, all of them in different ways have such beautiful literary features to them. There is so much going on that is below the surface if we would just slow down and kind of pay attention.

Patrick Schreiner
That’s right.

07:28 - How Pentecost Fits into the Narrative of Luke and Acts

Matt Tully
Let’s get into the Pentecost narrative. Again, it’s one of those stories that I think we get the significance and we can feel that it’s a big deal, but we might not understand all that’s going on. Thinking about the big picture, how does Pentecost fit into this broader narrative that we’re seeing in Luke and Acts?

Patrick Schreiner
You see at the beginning of Luke that Jesus promised that he would send them the Spirit. John the Baptist said, I baptize you with water, but someone is coming that will baptize you with fire. As you step into the book of Acts, you’re kind of waiting for this other main event that’s going to happen. What’s really interesting in Acts 1 is you do get Jesus’s exaltation—the enthronement of the Davidic king—and he tells them their mission right before that. He ascends before the Father, and then you have the choosing of the twelfth disciple. I find this really interesting because you have his ascension and giving of the mission text, and then you have Pentecost. In between those is the choosing of the twelfth disciple, so you almost have two mountain peaks of text and a valley in between that people don’t really know what to do with. If you look back to the Old Testament, what’s really interesting is to see the flow of what’s happening in terms of Jesus’s exaltation is that kind of Davidic enthronement scene, and what is the king going to do? He’s going to unify Israel. The choosing of the twelfth disciple is actually where the numbers become prominent there. It’s necessary that they must choose a twelfth disciple because that brings the nation together as a whole. I don’t want to neglect the narrative right before Pentecost. As Israel becomes symbolically whole through the twelve disciples—the twelve apostles—then now is the time for the Spirit to be poured out, and actually, that’s why Pentecost is such a big deal. You have a symbolic bringing together of the people, but then Pentecost actually brings all the people together because it’s a Jewish festival. There is something about the reality that God had promised that he is going to bring his sons and daughters from afar, and it’s when he brings his sons and daughters from afar who had been exiled and living in the diaspora. All these Jews were living in different regions, but then they come together and it’s at that point that the Spirit comes upon them. I think we have to ask the question, Why is it so important that Israel is made whole before they go out to the nations? If you think back to the Old Testament, they have to be holy so that they can spread that holy presence. They have to be whole; they have to be complete. So, the commands that God gives to Israel in the Old Testament, he says Act this way and follow these rituals and these laws so that you might embody and show the other nations my presence. They haven’t been able to do that in the Old Testament, and now at Pentecost the true King of Israel who has ascended is now bringing them all back together. He says, According to the promise of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, I’m actually going to write that Torah upon your hearts, but I have to do it upon the whole nation (symbolically). Then you can go out and be a blessing to the nations (Abrahamic promise).

Matt Tully
I think that gets at one of the things that can be confusing about this whole story. How long after Jesus ascended did the apostles have to wait until Pentecost happened? Why would God cause there to be such a delay? You got at one of the possible explanations—that they needed to choose a twelfth apostle to replace Judas. Is there anything else going on there that would cause them to wait?

Patrick Schreiner
You have forty days between the resurrection and the ascension, and I don’t remember if they say how much time there is between the ascension and Pentecost. I already noted the bringing together of Israel. There is also, in that Acts 1 text, in the reality of choosing the other apostle is that Jesus could have chosen the twelfth apostle. He had forty days to choose the next one, but he actually allowed them to do that. I think that was kind of a handing of the baton off to them—I’m giving you this leadership capacity. I’m sending you out to do these things. Even though I’ve ascended to the heavens, you have the Scriptures, you’re about to get the Holy Spirit, so you need to go ahead and choose the next one. You have Peter’s speech there in Acts 1 where he quotes from the Old Testament, pointing out the need to choose another disciple. So there’s something going on in terms of that leadership transition. Everyone always asks, Why did they cast lots for this person? Should we do that? Well, this is pre-Pentecost; this is right before the Spirit falls. That was the typical way that God let his will be known in the Old Testament. We see that again and again. The famous story is the story of Jonah where they cast lots. God is still directing them, but he’s about to direct them in a new type of way at the Pentecost scene.

13:03 - The Feast of Pentecost and the Coming of the Holy Spirit

Matt Tully
When we think of the word Pentecost and this event, we think of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Christians. There was an established Jewish festival and feast called Pentecost that was being picked up on here. What was going on with that feast? What was the meaning of it? How often did it happen? Why do we think that God picked that feast as the time for the Holy Spirit to come?

Patrick Schreiner
There is some debate about all of those questions, but I’ll give you my view on that. Pentecost was one of the three Jewish pilgrimage festivals. You have Passover, you have Pentecost, and then you have the Feast of Booths (or the Feast of Tabernacles). At these festivals, Jews would gather from the diaspora—those who had been scattered through the exile—and they would come back to Jerusalem and basically have a feast. Passover celebrated their redemption from Egypt, the Exodus. Pentecost is tied to an agricultural festival, and that’s actually the fifty days after the exodus event. So, God is providing for his people. It revolves around food and God’s provision and his abundance. In Jewish literature, Pentecost is also tied to Sinai. If you think about the exodus movement, they come out of Egypt and then they go to Mount Sinai. There’s this provision of God’s presence to his people at Sinai. When we think of Pentecost, there are a few things that should come into our mind. Number one, like you said, when we think of Pentecost we just think about the coming of the Holy Spirit, but you’ve got background there. What’s important about the background? Number one, as I already stated, you’ve got Jews coming in from all nations. We’re going to see that in Acts 2:9–11. He’s going to list all the different nations that come in, or the Jews from the different nations, and he spends almost as much time (or as many words) on that as the actual Pentecost event. He wants you to know all these people are being gathered together. The coming of the Holy Spirit is going to come on Pentecost because all those Jews gather together. Jerusalem would have been filled with something like 100,000 people, or something like that. It would have been filled with Jews from all these nations that are coming to celebrate. But also, I think that tie to Sinai is really important because the imagery that we get with the coming of the Spirit is that wind and that fire, and that’s very evocative of the Mount Sinai event. What you have is God is going to be providing for his people like he did in the Pentecost festival—the agricultural festival—but he’s now going to be providing for them in terms of his presence. If you think about Mount Sinai, it’s only Moses and his three companions. Actually, only Moses goes all the way up the mountain and his three companions only go part of the way up the mountain. The rest of Israel can’t go onto that mountain. Why? Because the fire and wind of God are too overwhelming for the people. But now at the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost here, you have the tongues of fire that rest over their heads. It is a consuming fire, but it’s not a fire that destroys them; it’s a fire that cleanses them and purifies their hearts. I think taking those two events and seeing, Oh, this is the creation of a new people. You have Sinai, the establishment of the people of God. This is what’s really cool to see is you have the feast of the Passover, and Jesus has already accomplished that. He’s the Passover lamb. He’s provided redemption for them. Then you have Pentecost and Sinai—the establishment of the people of God and the establishment of the new people of God. The next festival is the Feast of Booths where they celebrate how they were wandering in the wilderness. They would all live in tents for a week. What’s going to happen in the rest of Acts? They’re basically going to be wandering around to different nations and living in tents. They are God’s mobile people moving around. So, you can look at the festivals and just trace it from Jesus’s life to Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Booths. If you’re coming from the Jewish mindset, Acts and Luke are kind of following that pattern and saying, All of these are pointing to something greater, and the something greater that is here is that this is a new Sinai event; this is a new agricultural feast where all Jews gather together. Some people don’t like this language, but it is the birth of the church in one way. This is the establishment of the new people of God. We can get into the question, Isn’t there already a people of God? Yes, it’s Israel. But there’s something new happening here, and I think Jeremiah and Ezekiel make that clear.

18:07 - A Mighty Rushing Wind and Tongues of Fire

Matt Tully
Are there any other references in the New or Old Testament that help us understand what the mighty rushing wind and the tongues of fire are meant to convey? If we had to pick one thing that feels kind of confusing to us, we’re like, What’s going on? Were there literal flames above someone’s head? Was it hot?

Patrick Schreiner
Acts 2:2 tells us they hear the wind—a sound like a violent rushing wind. It doesn’t say they felt it. It doesn’t mean that they didn’t feel it, but they hear the sound of the violent rushing wind. I tend to think they felt that, too, and that they heard it at the same time, but it just says that they heard it. Then they saw the tongues of fire. So, there’s hearing and seeing. What’s really interesting about this is, if you’ve read the Bible a long time you would know that it’s the Holy Spirit coming. But it’s not until Acts 2:4 that he tells you it’s the Spirit. He actually really wants you to focus on that imagery. If you’re reading this for the first time, you’re like, Okay, wind and fire—and then you get to Acts 2:4 and you’re like—Oh, it’s the Spirit! We assume that. So, getting to your question of why it is wind, wind in the Scripture is an emblem. Spirit is pneuma for the creative breath of God. You think of Genesis 1 where the Spirit of God is hovering over creation. The Spirit of God actually enters people and makes them alive. What does the Spirit do in the Old Testament? This wind that is present—think of John 3 and how we don’t know where the wind blows—creates new creation beings. He actually brings order out of chaos. It doesn’t say cloud here, but typically with the tabernacle and the temple you would have the glory cloud come and fill the temple as well, which I think is somewhat associated with that wind type imagery. So, the first thing we should think of with wind is God’s creative breath, the Holy Spirit coming and bringing the presence of God. Then you also have the fire. The fire, again, was associated with the temple, as Israel would offer sacrifices. It actually goes back further than that. Think about Genesis 15 when Abraham has that smoking fire pot—it’s the presence of God—or the burning bush in Exodus 3 or the pillar at night in the exodus generation that leads them, and I already mentioned Mount Sinai. So, fire is an image of the presence of God just like wind is. Why use these two images in the Old Testament and New Testament for the presence of God? Because they’re uncontrollable. You can’t control wind and fire. I think if you’ve ever been through a tornado or a hurricane or ever had a fire hit your town, it is completely devastating. You cannot control these things. In the Old Testament and in the New Testament fire and wind become a symbol of God’s powerful yet uncontrollable presence. As I already mentioned, what happens here is that it is not a destroying fire. We know this imagery because we’ve read it so much, but the fire divides and rests over them. Fire consumes and destroys, but here it’s like they’re given that power. Now you have to go back to Acts 1:8 where it says the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will receive power—dunamis. The question the disciples ask is, Hey, when are you going to restore the kingdom? That’s military language—Restore this kingdom! He says you will receive power, and our mind should immediately think army, sword, shield, spear. That’s the power that we’re expecting. But Jesus says, No, you’re going to receive the power of the Holy Spirit; the power of the presence of God. I’m trying to tie this all back together now. The power of the presence of God is to bring in the new creation. If you just do a word search on power in Acts, it happens when they’re speaking of Jesus and when they’re healing in his name. With great power they continue to do these things. That’s really helpful for us to hear. How do we bring in the new creation? How does Pentecost and the Spirit affect how we act and we live? What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, it means to speak the deeds and the words of Jesus and to spread resurrection life. What’s really interesting is if you go throughout the rest of the New Testament, it totally affirms this. Ephesians 5 says to be filled with the Spirit. What do you do? Sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God in your heart. It’s going to affect your tongue—what you speak, what you say. Sometimes we get so mystical about what the filling of the Spirit looks like. Well, it looks like people singing to Jesus. It looks like people talking about Jesus, recounting his deeds. In Acts as well, I would say it also means healing in the name of Jesus. The power that they receive is actually restoration power. They’re restoring, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and they’re bringing the new creation in in the midst of the old creation. This is the power and presence of God coming upon them. Wow, that was a long answer, so I’ll let you speak now.

23:57 - Why Did the Spirit Empower Them to Speak in Different Tongues?

Matt Tully
I think it helps to understand a little bit more those Old Testament images and themes that they’re picking up on here. If we don’t understand that stuff we’re going to miss a lot of the significance here. I think a lot of us understand intuitively that there is this power that these things represent, but I think that then leads to a somewhat befuddling situation where we might think, Alright, they’re filled with the Spirit and they have this power and they’re going to start healing people, or they’re going to start preaching the gospel and see people get saved, or they’re going to establish the kingdom in some forceful way. But instead, what we read in Acts 2 is that they’re filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in other languages and other tongues. That can be really confusing. That feels like an odd expression of God’s power, just to start speaking in other languages. What’s going on there?

Patrick Schreiner
This goes back to why God gives them the ability to speak in different tongues, and what he goes on to say is that people heard—this is Acts 2:6—each one heard them speaking in their own dialekto, dialect or language. So, who is hearing what? The Spirit comes and they start speaking in these different languages. Why? Well, it’s actually an unnecessary miracle, if you think about it, because they probably all would have known Greek at that point, or Aramaic.

Matt Tully
Because they’re all in Jerusalem together.

Patrick Schreiner
They’re all in Jerusalem together and everything is Hellenized at that point. You’ve got diaspora Jews coming from their different regions and they have a mother tongue that they know based on the region that they’re from. You remember when I spoke about Acts 2:9–11—you have Jews from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontius, Asia, etc. They all have their mother tongue. Peter, or the apostles, probably could have gotten up and just spoken in Greek. I think he actually does that later on and they understand, but they speak in these different languages. What is this Spirit doing? Why would the Spirit do this? There’s something about the unity of God’s people that the Spirit is actually bringing about. He is affecting their tongues so that people will understand, in their own mother tongue, the gospel message. What’s so interesting about this is the Spirit’s power to actually bring people from different backgrounds together. I think we sometimes get confused and think that the Spirit is going to come and make one language so that we can all understand one another. No, what the Spirit does here—I’ve been helped by other people in reading about this—what the Spirit does is he creates unity out of diversity, but he affirms the diversity because they hear it in their own mother tongue. So there’s something really intimate about what the Spirit is doing here. You have a look forward to Revelation when every tribe, tongue, and nation will worship before the throne. I think this is giving us a picture of the new creation—the new heavens and new earth—where we won’t all speak the same language, but we will all understand each other’s languages. If you read anything about language, what’s amazing about language is it is how we’re inducted into personhood. It’s how we understand the world. Different languages actually lead us to slightly different understandings of things. If you learn another language you understand, Wow! They see the world differently because they speak a different language. This goes back to Babel when there was a scattering of the languages. I think I’ve always thought of that as just a judgment, but I think it’s better to put it under the language of a severe mercy. He’s actually doing something where he says, Humanity, you can’t represent me without actually being different from one another. These Jews who know these different languages because they’ve lived in these different places, the Spirit comes and suddenly they hear the message of Jesus in their own tongue and they recognize that God is bringing us all together, but he’s not canceling out where we’re from. He’s not canceling out that I know these different languages here.

Matt Tully
A Christian Jew at the time might have thought, Oh, God will cause everyone to understand Hebrew. They might have thought they would all come together and be united in their Jewish identity.

Patrick Schreiner
That’s right. Hebrew, Aramaic, or whatever it is, they might have thought, This is God’s language. This is the one that he wants us to speak. This is going to be a forerunner to what is going to happen when they go out to the nations. God’s affirming that all people can come in. This is mainly Jews in Acts 2. In Acts 2:10 we see Jews and converts mentioned. There are some people outside of the Jewish nation present there, but it’s mainly Jews. I think sometimes when we hear that we think, Look at all these people coming in. Well, it is Jews coming in, but it’s Jews and converts—those who have converted to Judaism at this point. I think we need to do more in terms of actually thinking about what this even means for our churches in terms of the Spirit coming is supposed to create unity in the midst of diversity. And unity doesn’t mean one culture—a monoculture—it means a bringing together of multiple cultures. Look at Acts 2:5. He says, “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.” That’s a key clause there. Why is it under heaven? It’s because Jesus has ascended to the heavens. If you think back to Matthew 28 and the Great Commission: All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, into all nations. The King of the universe is going to draw people together because he’s the King under heaven. The mission to the nations only occurs because Jesus has been exalted. The exalted King will bring his people, and all of the nations, together. That little phrase “every nation under heaven” is really important because it’s pointing to the kingship of Jesus in bringing his people together.

30:02 - Peter’s Sermon

Matt Tully
With the story of Pentecost, it’s easy to look at the headings in our Bible and think, Okay, it ends right there with people speaking in tongues and people watching. However, the story actually continues right into Peter’s sermon that he delivers. What’s the main point that you see Peter trying to make as he addresses all these people standing around watching this unfold?

Patrick Schreiner
People are confused when they start speaking different tongues. People think they’re drunk and Peter says, No, it’s 9am in the morning. We’re not drinking that early. He’s addressing the confusion. Actually, if you just step back I think it’s helpful to realize Spirit and word work together in Acts. You have this Spirit falling but it only produces confusion, so Peter adds a word to the Spirit. So, God’s acts by the Spirit are not always self-evident to what’s happening. Sometimes a word needs to be added to interpret it, so Peter stands up to interpret it. What does he do in that speech? He explains that this was all according to God’s promises. He uses three Old Testament texts and he does three topics in this sermon. What he says is 1) God promised that the Spirit would come upon you in the Old Testament (Joel 2:28–32). Why are you surprised? You shouldn’t be surprised. If you read your Old Testament, God promised this would happen. Then he backs up and asks, 2) How did this happen? God promised the resurrection of Jesus and he also promised the ascension of Jesus. The only way—and here’s the logic—the only way that the barrier between heaven and earth is split is by Jesus becoming the one who accomplished all and is, therefore, exalted and, therefore, he sends the Spirit. He links, theologically and narratively, the coming of the Spirit with the resurrection and the exaltation of Jesus, which is basically the victory of Jesus. He says the Spirit has come because Jesus has been victorious, and you read about this in your Old Testament. 3) What does that mean you need to do? He says because Jesus has been exalted, he is, therefore, the Messiah (Acts 2:36). He’s Messiah and Lord. Therefore, you need to repent and believe in him and you will also receive the same Spirit. He’s basically doing a logical, theological explanation of why the Spirit came at this point. Why not at some other point? This is the pattern that must happen. It must be that after the Messiah is exalted that, therefore, he sends the Spirit. If you think back to Luke—this is really important—in Luke 4 in Nazareth, Jesus stands up and says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. I’m going to go preach good news to the poor.” The one who has the Spirit has now given the Spirit to his followers. He’s the anointed anointer; he anoints us. So, that’s the logic of the speech where Peter says you shouldn’t be confused, you shouldn’t be surprised, God promised that this would happen. Just backing up, what is Luke doing with this narrative? That’s so important because Luke is trying to show that this is all according to God’s plan.

33:28 - Corporate Responsibility

Matt Tully
That point right there ties in with, I think, one of the most remarkable verses in all of the Bible, and certainly in the book of Acts. Right in the middle of that speech where Luke says that Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, when he was crucified and killed at the hands of lawless men.” Unpack that for us. What does that mean? Why is that worth stopping to really consider?

Patrick Schreiner
He brings together both their guilt and God’s determined plan and foreknowledge. He doesn’t stop philosophically to explain how those two can go together—what we call human responsibility and divine sovereignty—but his point in the sermon is to say, This was all according to plan. Think about a Jew who is wondering, Is this Jesus figure—Jesus of Nazareth—is he the Messiah? Some people are saying he is, but he died on a cross and that’s shameful. That’s actually a curse, according to Deuteronomy. Peter says, No, this was according to God’s determined plan. Even in that language of “he was delivered up,” that’s Isaiah 52 and 53 language: this servant will be delivered up. God had planned and he even knew that he would go to the cross, but that doesn’t cancel out your guilt. You used lawless people to nail him to a cross and to kill him. So they’re looking at him and asking, What is going on with the Spirit thing? He answers and says, God’s promises are coming true, and guess what? You’re standing on the wrong side of this. You’re guilty. Backing up, I don’t know how much you want me to get into this, it is interesting to recognize that likely there is some overlap between those who are there and those who were there to crucify Jesus. But it’s probably not a one-to-one correspondence. So, he has some notion of corporate responsibility here: You as a nation have crucified your Messiah. I just try to put myself in the situation. What if I’m a Jew standing there and I wasn’t there for Jesus’s crucifixion over the Passover festival? What if I couldn’t make it that time? I’m assuming a lot of people there were like, I didn’t kill him. But he says, You—all of you—have done this—I think by their sin, by their rejection of the Messiah—so you are corporately responsible for this. That’s a really interesting statement that he makes. As he gets out of Jerusalem, Peter and Paul say that they did this, and so that corporate responsibility also stops somewhere, but they’re still guilty in terms of sin. That a whole different topic, but just how he condemns the crowd in the midst of sharing the gospel, I think sometimes we’re like, Okay, we got to present all the good stuff. Peter is just going for it: You killed him. You nailed him to a cross. Therefore, you need to repent and believe*.

Matt Tully
It’s amazing to me that we’re not even through the second chapter of Acts and there’s so much going on. There is so much rich meaning being packed into these few verses. Thank you so much, Patrick, for helping us today to dig into the story of Pentecost a little bit more and encourage all of us to open up our Bibles and read the book of Acts, perhaps with fresh eyes and slowing down a little bit.

Patrick Schreiner
Thanks, Matt. I hope I was helpful.

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