Acts 2:39 in Context, Interpreted, Applied

And greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Thursday. I don't have anything up on the screen up there, but welcome to the program today. I hope you have your Bible. I want to jump into a quick study and, well, quick, may not be all that quick, but you never know.

A quick study, get through this, and then we'll see what we have time for after that. A lot of folks enjoy when we delve into the Greek text and consider text rather fully, and it's something I certainly enjoy doing.

And if it is of assistance to others in approaching the text in a consistent fashion, we are big on consistency around here. We attempt to do that as much as we possibly can. And so I'm going to, there we go.

Sometimes, have you noticed, sometimes stuff will come up on Twitter where it's an automatic plays video, and it just, you, it's so distracting, especially when you're trying to do something else. It's just, it's just all over, all over your eyes.

Scripture, Hermeneutics, and the Problem of Tradition

Anyway, there is a passage of scripture, very familiar to many of us, Acts chapter 2, the first great sermon of the church, church age anyways, after the coming of the Holy Spirit, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the inauguration of the proclamation of the gospel all around the world to Jews and Gentiles.

And obviously, this is a very important section. We start getting our first glimpse into what the Lord Jesus would have been talking with the disciples about in regards to the fulfillment of Luke chapter 24, where Jesus is saying, you know, upbraids the disciples for not believing all that the prophets from Moses on through had testified concerning himself.

And so, this is where we start getting an idea, well, what was it that Jesus was speaking with the disciples with for the time after the resurrection? And we start seeing, initially, there in Jerusalem with all these different people from all over the world, obviously, God's timing, so that the gospel would then go out into many places from there.

We get to really get to see how the early church is going to handle opposition, questions, what they're focused upon in their proclamation, etc., etc. So, there's much that can be learned, but I want to focus our attention on a text and basically ask the question, how can the application of sound, rigorous, consistent hermeneutics, the utilization of rules of exegesis, assist us to identify when tradition could be overriding our desire to hear the text in its original context?

This morning, Brian Zond, in fact, I have to look at mine to pull it up here, Brian Zond posted something that had actually been retweeted by Jonathan Merritt, which tells you where Jonathan Merritt's when he's retweeting Brian Zond, but he said, when we form a theological position, this is Zond, when we form a theological position by citing scripture, we are interpreting scripture through our various theological, ecclesial, cultural, historic, ethnic, and linguistic lenses.

We may be right, we may be wrong, but we are not, quote, taking the Bible as it is, end quote. And this has been retweeted, like I said, by Jonathan Merritt, who, by the way, still has not answered the questions I was asked.

That exposes the slander that he aimed my direction last week. He's just going to let that sit there because that's how you push the narrative. You don't worry whether you're slandering anybody as long as the slander promotes your narrative.

That's how you identify those on the left. Anyway, so here's Brian Zond, and we all know Brian Zond, you know, sort of part of the emergent church type stuff, squishy stuff, and you'll hear this all the time, that, you know, we have these lenses, see, and so you have theological, ecclesial, cultural, historic, ethnic, and linguistic lenses, and you can't escape them, and what's the fundamental concept that is being communicated here, which is being communicated in a large number of schools and seminaries in Western culture as well, we must recognize.

What's being communicated is that there is no objectively true revelation of Scripture that can actually be known. Even if there was one, we couldn't know it. It's unknowable. It's Christian agnosticism.

Anybody who's gone here is obviously looking for other sources of authority because, you know, you can't get rid of your theological lenses, you can't get rid of your ecclesiastical lenses, your cultural lenses, your historic lenses, you certainly can't get rid of your ethnic lenses, and I'm not sure what a linguistic lens would be unless it's just simply, well, you're understanding things as an English speaker, and that's true, and see, there's truth to all these things because there are lenses.

There's no question about it. You can, that's why church history is so important. When we look back on church history and we look at, for example, how the early church fathers or even how our own Reformational fathers or the Puritans engaged in the task of the interpretation of Scripture, we very plainly can see lenses functioning.

We have enough distance going back to them to be able to recognize on particular subjects, particular issues, and yeah, I mean, for example, second, third generation Reformers are dealing with the Counter-Reformation, and so Rome is pressing them on particular issues.

Can you see evidence of that in their exegesis? Yes, you can. And so what can we learn from that? Well, you learn from that that when you are in the midst of a battle, a pitched battle with the world or with false religious systems or whatever else it might be, the tendency is to start seeing those things in passages of Scripture that may not actually be there, and the tendency, the human tendency, is to make application of certain texts to topics that aren't really being spoken of by the text.

When you know church history, then you can get a more balanced view because people 300 years earlier, 300 years later, probably aren't dealing with the same issues, and when you look at what they said about the text, you're not going to have those same things going on there.

Obviously, what our goal is, what the goal should be, is to always strive to handle the text in such a way that if the original author was standing there, they'd go, yeah, that's what I meant to communicate, right?

And to make application of the text in such a fashion that the original author and the original audience would be able to see that you've understood what they were talking about and then are making a proper application within a context that they couldn't have possibly known.

So if we try to make an application of biblical categories of creation to the issue of genetic manipulation, anybody in the, any writer of the Old or New Testament and any audience of the Old or New Testament is just going to be sitting there going, genetic what?

They have no possible way of knowing that. So the point would be that we got them right and are now making a proper application in the context in which we now live. So as I've said many times, we truly show respect for God's Word as God's Word when we do the work of exegesis, hermeneutics, proper application, but you start with the hard work of understanding what was being said initially.

That's why it's very hard for me to have a lot of respect for the standardized, even jellyfish, Bible study methodology of read a text and go, what does this mean to you? Because it had a meaning before you were born, it will have a meaning after you're dead, and the reality is that the meaning to you, I'm not denigrating the importance of you coming up with a meaning for yourself, but that is way down the road.

And when that's the first thing that you think of, you've missed the boat completely, and you're probably not going to end up with a proper understanding of the text anyways if you're primarily focused upon what this means for you.

The reality is you show respect for God's Word and God's speaking by beginning with doing the hard work. Oh, that doesn't sound very spiritual. I know, I know. You know, I look at these folks that sell millions of copies of books based upon pandering to people's wanting to be the center of all things, and I go, man, if I could just sell one book like that, then we could go back to consistency.

No, can't do it. Can't do it. So there you go. We show respect for God when we do this in such a way that we are really handling the Word for what it is. And it is not meant to be a self-help, meet-my-needs manual.

It is a revelation that is intended, when properly handled, to reveal God's will to men and women living in incredibly diverse situations, incredibly diverse cultures, at incredibly diverse times in world history.

And it has functioned to do that because it's divine in its origin. So, with that having been said, we turn to Acts 2, and we just dive into Peter's sermon in verse 34, for it was not David who went up into heaven, but he himself says, and then we have one of the many citations, and it is the most cited text from the Old Testament in the New Testament, Psalm 110.

The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. And now, we could diverge from this particular text to discuss that entire topic and its meaning, and the fact that it is frequently abused.

Still want to do that. There's an article I want to introduce you to on that subject, but it would take us far afield from what I'm trying to get to here. But the early church, plainly, and this is, again, this is within a matter of days of Jesus' ministry to the disciples after his resurrection, where he is opening their minds to understand the scriptures and their testimony concerning him.

So, to see Psalm 1101 that early on and central in Paul's preaching, Peter's preaching, very, very, very important that they see this as a fulfillment in Christ. So, therefore, let all the house of Israel with certainty know that God has made him, Kurios and Christon, has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified, whom you crucified.

Now, don't allow that to just run by you. That is extremely, extremely important. I'm sure Peter would like to have avoided having to say what he just said there, but he doesn't. He pronounces to the entire house of Israel, and this is a Jewish audience to whom he is speaking.

It's not a mixed audience, not a Gentile audience, Jewish audience. Let the house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both, Kai Kurion Auton, Kai Christon, has made him both Lord and Christ.

Now, this is in regards to what? Well, sit here at my right hand to make it, this is in light of the resurrection. The resurrection from the dead demonstrates that this one who was crucified, which is the lowest form of crucifixion for the most common criminal, has been seated at the right hand of God, that his claims have been vindicated by an empty tomb.

This does not mean that he was not Lord or Christ before these things, but there has been a clear demonstration through the empty tomb and the exaltation of the Son to the right hand of the that he is both Lord and Messiah, Messiah, just as he indicated through the use of Old Testament texts.

So, imagine what this is saying to the Jewish people whom you crucified. Now, when they heard this, they were stabbed to the heart and they said to Peter and to the other apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do?

We've crucified the one who was sent to us, the one we were looking for, we crucified him. What shall we do? And what would be the thinking if you were in their shoes and you're a Jewish person and you have been a part of the generation that turned the Messiah over to the Romans to be crucified?

We're toast. I mean, your mind's going through all the ways in which people in the past have felt the judgment of God. You've got fiery serpents and you've got leprosy and flesh-eating diseases and hey, the ground opened up and ate a few people.

Are you starting to look down at the ground wondering if that's what's going to happen to you? I mean, there's a lot of ways that God can bring his judgment to bear and who could even begin to argue that it would not be appropriate for God to bring judgment to bear upon the people who killed the Messiah?

And I know it's extreme. Ever since, over the past 75 years, because of what happened in Europe, passages like this have almost been excised from the to even read Peter saying, you crucified him. Because taken out of its context and applied in some other fashion and ignoring what's about to be said, then you turn the Jews into the Christ killers and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

And for some reason, there are evil, insane people out there who are anti-Jewish just simply because they hate Jewish people, which I've never understood but it's out there. There's various reasons for it, but it's out there.

So they ask, what should we do? And it is a cry of desperation. So everybody knows Acts 2 .38, especially if you live in the South, you happen to know that the Church of Christ guys, it's still about the only verse in their New Testament and it's the one that they want to debate for three or four days in a row and things like that.

But try to lay that aside because it's a blind alley. It's not what's being discussed. Let's stick with the context because I'm convinced that what we have here in its context is a tremendous illustration of the fact that in the very first sermon of the infant church, the Apostle Peter anticipated the teachings of John Calvin 1500 plus years before he ever put pen to paper.

It's a Reformed sermon. It's focused upon God's sovereignty and election. And the amazing thing is because so few Christians read the Bible as a whole and so few Christians read the Bible contextually as a flowing piece of literature, even within a single book, because Christians don't do that, because we buy into the Western mindset, that compartmentalizes everything.

That's why I've said many times we have chapters and verses and it makes it easy for us all to get the same text the same time. That's great. That's fine. That's wonderful. But we allow the chapters and verses to compartmentalize and break up the flow.

And so that's why it's insane to have a three-night debate on one verse. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. But for many people, if you want to see this in its grossest form, gross not as in, ugh, but as in big, pervasive, takes over, Joe Ventilacion, INC.

You want to see what an absolute destruction of the context of the New Testament looks like? Look at INC. They have maybe 12 verses that they all know. Not a one of them knows what their context is. Not a one of them knows what the flow is around it.

But they've got those one verses, those few verses that are crammed in their mind. You would think that that wouldn't be the case amongst Christians who are going to church with freedom and not in a cult for years on end.

But that's frequently how our sermons handle things. And we in the pulpit are the ones that teach the people in the pew by example. Just some thoughts there that might be helpful to somebody. So, let's look at Acts 238.

Leave that out of sight. You have Jews asking, men and brethren, we are convicted, we have been pierced through the heart that our leaders and our people crucified the one that God has made both Lord and Christ.

What shall we do? And the first thought across their mind is not that there's going to be anything they can do. I mean, you go back and read the curses and blessings of Deuteronomy and there really isn't much there to go, hey, and if you just happen to mess up and crucify the Messiah, don't worry, everything will be cool.

That's not, no, that's not the first thought across everyone's mind at this point in time. So, they're desperate. And Peter's response is, repent, turn, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So, notice, repent, so much for that not being a part of New Testament teaching and a proclamation of the gospel in the very first Christian sermon in the sense of after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, his ascension into heaven, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

When people say, what should we do? The first word out of an apostle's mouth, repent, repent, and be baptized, each one of you, in the name of Jesus, the Messiah. See, it's easy for us, because of our tradition, our familiarity with the text, to use the term Jesus Christ as if Christ is Jesus' last name, which in no way, shape, or form is accurate.

The very utilization of the phrase Jesus Christ at this point would have been heard by the audience, Jesus the Messiah. And by putting them together, you are making that a profession of faith. The very thing that was denied about Jesus is now being proclaimed about Jesus.

But now it's able to put into the context that God intended. Because see, Jesus himself said, you know, don't tell anybody that I'm the Messiah. It's not that he denied being the Messiah, but there were so many political ideas about what the Messiah was that you had what's called the secret of the Messiah, the Messiah secret.

Now it is proclaimed as part of his designation, Jesus the Messiah. But it is important that we always recognize that Christos, the Greek term for the Anointed One, is simply the representation of Mashiach in Hebrew, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Jewish Messiah, the one prophesied in the Jewish scriptures.

That's very important to keep in mind. So, here's what you, if you have been pierced through to the heart, repent, turn, and be baptized. Each one of you, each one of you who repents is to be baptized in the name of Jesus the Messiah.

Now, immediately, think about what that means. You weren't baptized in the name of Moses, Abraham, David. You have sinned against God of Israel, but you are baptized in the name of Jesus the Messiah. That's extremely important.

For the forgiveness of your sins. So, Peter is not here discussing baptism regeneration, he's not discussing anything other than this involves a confession that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and faith in that truth and obedience to his command, which is both repent, believe, be baptized, all these things are Jesus's commands, results in the forgiveness of sins.

That's what they needed to hear. We are so accustomed to hearing about the forgiveness of sins and the ease with which it can be obtained that it's difficult for us to even think about a situation where someone would be going, there can't be any forgiveness for this.

We crucified the Messiah. How can there be forgiveness? The apostolic answer is repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Messiah and the forgiveness of sins and of your sins specifically, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So, there had been, back up here in verse 33, right before we started, it should have started at 33, forgive me for that. Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, so here you have the word epangelion, the promise, the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, and he has been poured out, the Holy Spirit has been poured out, he has poured out what you have seen and heard, because remember, they had come together, tongues aflame, speaking in tongues, et cetera, et cetera, speaking in languages that people understood because they were communicating these things.

So, here you have the use of the promise, and so that's what's important here when we get down to verses 38 and 39, and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is what they themselves had received.

So, the apostles received the gift of the Holy Spirit, those who repent and believe likewise receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for, verse 39, and this is where I want to camp, for the promise is to you, plural, and to your children, and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call, as many as the Lord our God shall call to himself.

Now, with many other words, he solemnly testified, kept on exhorting them, saying, be saved from this perverse generation, and you'll notice, verse 41, so then those who had received his word were baptized, and that day there were added about 3 ,000 souls.

The Promise Is to You, Your Children, and All Who Are Far Off

So, here you have a signal text, and what I'm going to do is, we looked at it there, but I want to minimize that, bring up a word processor, put it on a word processor that I have here, and we'll maximize that.

Oh, thanks a lot. It had been nice and big. There we go. Now it's nice and big. Is that nice and big? Let's hope it's nice and big. Here is verse 39. Verse 39, and I removed the textual critical stuff for now, we won't get into that, for the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God shall call, shall call.

All of that background just to get to one verse, but it's an important verse, and I have broken it up into the relevant sections here so that we can apply the same rules of interpretation, analysis, context to this text that we would to any other text to seek to understand what the original hearers would have understood.

We want to know what was Peter's intention in saying these words? What would his hearers have understood? We begin with, for the promise is to you. What promise? Well, we already saw promise up in verse 33.

It's a promise to receive the Holy Spirit, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and that's what had just immediately preceded this. You repent, you're baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and you would expect that these individuals who would have understood fully a message of judgment, I mean, I think there would have been some of them who went, there's nothing, if Peter had said there's nothing you can do, this generation is toast, just like the generation that questioned God's promises and hence could not enter into the promised land, neither can you, you will be destroyed, but there's hope for your children.

Don't you think they would have understood the possibility of that? Were they expecting so quickly? You can be forgiven of this incredible sin of participating in the crucifixion of God's Messiah, and you can receive his Holy Spirit.

You want good news? That's about as good as it's going to get. Wet the whistle? Sorry about that. Four, the promise is to you. That was a tremendous extension of grace. The promise is to you. Were some of these men in the crowd that said his blood be upon us?

We're not told. I don't know. It's possible. Had some heard Jesus' teachings? Had some heard secondhand that there was a false Messiah amongst the people? Were some just now hearing about it, but because of their understanding of federal headship and knowing they're part of the Jewish people, they were accountable for what their leaders had done?

We're not given any names. We don't know the specifics of who these 3 ,000 are and what their personal experiences were, but what we do know is they were pierced through the heart. They were stabbed in the heart by the message that Peter delivers.

They hear the testimony of the prophets, and they say, what shall we do? And they are told, and then they have this incredible promise that is given to them. The promise is for you. You have not been left without a promise from God.

That was grace, and like I said, we can think of numerous ways in which God could have said, that generation, no, I'm not going to save anybody out of that. There were just a few that had been saved out of the unfaithful generation that came out of captivity and never entered into the promised land.

They wandered in the wilderness 40 years until they buried their bodies. But the promise is for you. Then we have the next phrase, and your children, and your children. Now, as you know, we've talked about this many times in the program.

You put these two phrases together, and it is one of the very favorite phrases of our dear Presbyterian brothers and sisters who all have memorized the promises for you and for your children. They all quote it just like that.

Within the past couple of weeks, I've been amongst my dear Presbyterian brothers, and that's how they quoted it. It's a partial quotation. It's a partial quotation. Because please notice here that we have a gar beginning the first line.

That's a post-positive connecting term, for. So there's your connection. For the promise is to you, chi and chi tois technois humon, to your children, chi possin tois ais macron, and to those who are far off.

You have two chi's. And so, if we were looking at the deity of Christ, you're looking at some other standard issue, we would recognize that all of this means one group. You, your children, and to all who are far off.

The promise is to you and to your children. Now, how would they have understood that? Well, again, probably covenantally, in the sense that they had sinned in cutting off the Messiah, so it would have made sense if God had actually just cut off they and their children.

But what's the promise? The promise is to you and to your children that if they repent and are baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That's the promise. God will be forgiving to those who repent, to those who are baptized, they'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

There will be no distinction. There still is hope. Again, it would have been easy for them to accept the idea. We've been cut off. My children are going to be without hope. My people are without hope, because God's judgment has come upon us.

And the answer is no. To you and to your children, the promise is sure. Repent, believe, be baptized in the name of Jesus the Messiah, which is a confession of faith. That's where the believe part comes from, in case you're see the forgiveness of your sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

But it's all one sentence, because it's the next line that's going to end up being so controversial, and to all who are far off. Now, there have been some who would say, given the the Jewish context in Jerusalem, that what you have here is you and your children in Jerusalem and in Virens, and all who are far off, the whole diaspora.

And this is all simply speaking of Jewish salvation. But given that central to the Apostles' understanding of the Old Testament text, and what's going to be coming out throughout the Book of Acts, is that the Old Testament text itself directed us to the Gentile mission of the Church, to the reality.

And those who are far off is much easier to define and defend in New Testament usage as those that are outside the covenant people of Israel, the specific nation of Israel, the circumcised Old Covenant people.

To all who are far off would probably be much better understood, as the promise is to anyone who will repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus the Messiah for the forgiveness of their sins, they will receive the Holy Spirit.

And I wonder if when Cornelius and his household, who were not Jewish, they were God-fearers, which, by the way, is a specific group. I was listening to Hernandez and Ruggerio in a debate I'll make some comments about later.

But the issue of God-fearers came up, and nobody on either side seemed to know that that is a technical term for individuals who attended synagogue but would not be circumcised. They were God-fearers, they were attracted to the message, but they did not go through the rituals to become a part of the community.

And there were a lot of them. We see them a number of times in the Book of Acts. They're very, very important, but it was a specific people, and there was something that defined them. That didn't come up in the debate.

So, to those who are far off are the Jewish people, I'm sorry, are Gentile people. So, the proclamation of the apostles is that this promise is wide in its application. You haven't missed out. Your people will not be banished.

God's not going to say, I'm done, I'm not going to save anybody out of the Jewish people, they're all destined for the fire. No. But it's important to see that this promise includes repentance and understanding that Jesus is the Messiah, baptism into his name as the Messiah, and to receive the Holy Spirit.

And who receives the Holy Spirit in New Testament theology? The redeemed. Who do we understand them to be? God's elect. And that's exactly what the last phrase says. Because I want us all to look, I mentioned on Twitter that we're going to be looking at that phrase right there.

Hasushon. This is a correlative term, and when it's used as a phrase like this, it's the only place in the New Testament where this particular form is used. That's so that it matches what has come before.

And it is a phrase that is translated as many as, and then whenever you have hasa, hasus, hasa, it's going to be translated based upon the character of the verbal form that it's used with, whether it's in a parcipial form or a finite verb.

And it generally, I think every time, but at least generally, didn't look to see if every time, but generally takes the subjunctive, which is what you have with praskalesetai, that lengthened thematic vowel is the sign right here, the eta is the sign of the subjunctive.

So this is a correlative and so it is defining something on the basis of the verb. And the verb is to call. You can see kaleo, praskaleo, so kaleo would mean simply to call, praskaleo, hence whom the Lord, our God, shall call to himself, comes from really the form of the verb, praskaleo, to call to oneself.

So this phrase here at the end, using hasus on, is telling us something about everything up here. The promise is for you and your children and all who are far off. Does that mean that everyone's going to receive forgiveness of sins, that everyone's going to receive the Holy Spirit?

No. There is a specificity as to this promise, and the specificity of this promise is found in the sovereign right of the Lord, our God, to call unto himself. This is where Peter's theology is shown at the very beginning of the Church before the conversion of the Apostle Paul, before Saul of Tarsus holds the coats of the people stoning Stephen, that's still future, and hence before the conversion of the guy who's going to tell us in Romans 11 that there is a lemma, there is a remnant, there has always been a remnant people that God's calling to himself, even out of all those horrible kings and all those people under the old covenant who bore the covenant signs but did not have a changed heart.

There is always a remnant that God called unto himself. Here you have the Apostle Peter speaking consistently with what the Apostle Paul is going to expand upon much later, years later, and why is that important?

Because you're going to hear it all the time that it was Paul that invented all this stuff, that Paul forced this on us, the Church, that Paul was the innovator, but here in the very first sermon recorded for us on the day of Pentecost itself, you have God's sovereignty.

You have whether people are going to repent, whether people are going to believe, confess that Jesus is the Messiah, whether they're going to be obedient to the command to be baptized in his name is all dependent upon what?

The calling of the Lord our God to himself. As many as the Lord our God shall call to himself. So, there is, just as you have in John 3, 16, and 17, a in-the-text limitation. I think a lot of the discussions that we have within social media, blogs, debates, would be different if more Christians engaged universalists.

They're out there. They tend to, you know, you'll, I ride my bike past a Unitarian Universalist church over on off of Greenway, Greenway and 16th Street, I think, and sometimes the light will change. I'm stuck there.

It's a long light. I'm looking over there, you know, at this sign and just going, what are these people even, why do they even bother? I mean, Unitarian Universalism has always just gone off to the left and eventually just become a semi-religious social club.

But there are some sharp, biblically aware universalists out there. I'm not talking about Pope Francis either, though he may be one of them. And universalism has been a subject that people have had to argue against in past generations, but most people I know of have never had to take on a universalist.

And I think a lot of the provisionists, Arminians, synergists, if they had to go up against a sharp universalist, would start to realize how much their position is of two minds, how inconsistent it is with itself.

And they might not be quite as quick to make some of the objections that they do against Reformed theology. The point is that Hasusan takes the tenor of the verb, proskaleo, to call to, and it plays off of that so it is translated, as many as the Lord our God shall call to himself.

There is your delimiter. Just as in John 3, who gets eternal life? Those who believe, as many as believe. Here you have, as many as the Lord our God shall call to himself. Three lines forming one group.

You, your children, those who are far off. As many as the Lord our God shall call to himself. Now, there would be some who would argue, well, he's going to call everybody because that's what John 12 .32 means.

Well, that's not what John 12 .32 means in its context, and that's certainly not what it would mean here. The beautiful consistency is that, as I said, here you have in primitive, short, brief explication in the first sermon, once the Holy Spirit comes, the first sermon, you have Peter laying the same foundation in the sovereignty of God and his divine calling that Paul will expand upon in Romans 8, 9, 10, 11 in discussing the very Jewish issue, and that remnant is central to an understanding.

I mean, it was central to the apostolic experience. They were Jews, and the question was constantly being asked of them. Why are you guys so much in the minority? Why does the Jewish leadership reject you?

Why is the Jewish leadership saying you're a cult? You're following a false messiah? If all this fulfillment language is true, why are these things? This was their constant experience, and so the idea that the Lord our God is calling from you and your children and those who are far off, that becomes the church.

Isn't that the whole issue of the church? How could this not have echoed in the ears of Peter in Acts chapter 15 in light of his own preaching, his own teaching? Yeah, God's going to have to drop a sheet down three times because tradition is tradition, and tradition can be powerful, but the point is it's as many as the Lord our God shall call to himself.

There is divine election in Peter's answer. Peter's answer is not. That's the irony, is how many Church of Christ ministers will pound away on verse 38 within the context of free will and miss what's found in verse 39.

I know what they'll say, he calls everybody, but he doesn't. How was the Lord our God calling people in China in the days of the apostles? What was the mechanism? Well, that's why we have to send missionaries, but the point is he's the one who gets to make those choices.

He's the one that chooses, and the Jewish people had no problem with that. The Jewish people at that time had no problem with the idea that God gets to choose. That was the point. They thought he had chosen and he was done, and they hadn't seen that they would become a light to the Gentiles.

The gospel would go out to the Gentiles, but the idea that God has the right to choose like that, that would be central to their understanding. That would not be shocking to them in any way, shape, or form.