This Is What Was Spoken

Today’s Passage: Acts 2:14–41

Yesterday Luke left a whole city asking, “What does this mean?” Today somebody answers, for Peter stands up in that street and begins to preach. What he says, and just as much what he never says, is the point we are after today.

As you read, hold this: The sign was never the point. The sermon was.

Acts 2:14–16 (BSB)

¹⁴ Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, lifted up his voice, and addressed the crowd: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen carefully to my words. ¹⁵ These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It is only the third hour of the day! ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

Peter answers the mocking in a single line: it is only nine in the morning.

Then watch what he does next. He never explains the fire, and he never so much as mentions the wind. Instead he opens the Scriptures. Joel had been dead for centuries, and still it is Joel’s book that Peter opens.

Acts 2:17 (BSB)

¹⁷ ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.

Peter reaches back across hundreds of years and reads Joel aloud. Listen to that first line: I will pour out My Spirit. God said this long before anyone watched Him do it. And look at what Peter calls it in verse 16. This is what Joel spoke of. Not something like it. This.

His first move is not “look what is happening,” but “God said.” And from there he moves straight to Jesus.

Acts 2:22–24 (BSB)

²² Men of Israel, listen to this message: Jesus of Nazareth was a man certified by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him, as you yourselves know. ²³ He was delivered up by God’s set plan and foreknowledge, and you, by the hands of the lawless, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross. ²⁴ But God raised Him from the dead, releasing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep Him in its grip.

Here is the turn, and it is the whole sermon. Look at verse 22. The signs marked Jesus out as the real thing, yet they were never the message themselves. They pointed at the messenger and said, listen to Him.

Verse 23 softens nothing. Lawless men drove the nails, and yet none of it caught God off guard. Then comes verse 24: death took Him, and death could not keep Him.

Acts 2:33 (BSB)

³³ Exalted, then, to the right hand of God, He has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.

So the wind, the fire, and the languages (διάλεκτος) dialektos, pronounced dee-AL-ek-toss. Strong's G1258, a language, one's own native tongue or dialect. This word means the language a person speaks at home every day. Our English word dialect comes from it. God sent His message that morning in languages people already knew, so they could understand it. all came from Him, and every one of them is a signpost pointing to Jesus.

Acts 2:36 (BSB)

³⁶ Therefore let all Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ!”

Earlier in this series we learned that Christ means Anointed One. That is where Peter ends. Not with the fire, but with a name.

Acts 2:37–38 (BSB)

³⁷ When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and asked Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” ³⁸ Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

At last the crowd asks a better question: not “what does this mean,” but “what shall we do?”

He does not send them looking for more of what they had just seen. He tells them to repent and be baptized. The sign was never the invitation. Jesus was.

Acts 2:41 (BSB)

⁴¹ Those who embraced his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to the believers that day.

Three thousand in one morning. Now count up what did that. Not the wind, and not the fire, but a man who read the Old Testament aloud and told the truth about Jesus.

Personal Application

1. What is one thing you believe about God that you have never looked up for yourself?

2. What has God already told you that you have not done yet?

Today’s decision: I will take one thing I believe about God, find it in the Bible myself, and read it out loud.

Pray to Close

The central truth: The sign was never the point. The sermon was.

Praise: praise Jesus, whom God has made both Lord and Christ.

Give thanks: thank God that He wrote down what He wants you to know.

Ask: ask the Holy Spirit to make Jesus look larger to you today than He did yesterday.