“What a transformation!”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Thursday, June 22, 2023

Acts 2:22-36 (Forward, p. 55) CEV p. 1135

One would hardly guess that this is the same man, the same Peter, that only a few days earlier was huddled in hiding for fear of the Jewish authorities, and yet, here he is, fearlessly proclaiming Jesus to the astonished crowd. And yes, he was still sequestered in hiding, even after the resurrection. So, what has happened? What has happened is a fulfilment of Jesus’ own promise and prediction as to the coming of the Holy Spirit. He had told His disciples that the Holy Spirit would teach them (John 14:26) and that the Holy Spirit would give them power, enable them to be His witnesses (see Acts 1:8), and indeed both of these has now come true.

Peter begins this section of his Pentecost sermon by relating how God, in His infinite wisdom and fore-ordained plan, had testified and proved Jesus to be Lord and Messiah:’

-by the miracles, wonders and signs that He wrought;

-by setting Him free from death and raising Him from the dead,

as all of the disciples present there that day could confirm;

-by speaking through His servant David who predicted this very

thing, that God would not leave His anointed one in the grave (see

Psalm 16:10);

-by taking Jesus up to sit at God’s right hand, again as predicted by

David (see Psalm 110:1);

-by gifting them with the Holy Spirit this very day, as this assembled

could plainly see and observe;

-by thereby demonstrating that Jesus is both Lord & Christ [Messiah]

All of this, Peter relates, is in spite of their having put Jesus to death on a cross. And incredibly, all this was from the mouth of a lowly, common, uneducated fisherman, a man who by rights should have been huddling in terror given that the authorities had just put to death his Master and could well be expected to do that same with His followers. What an amazing transformation! It could only be supernatural, God’s own doing. There could be no other explanation. No wonder they were ‘cut to the quick’, touched deeply by Peter’s words.

And that empowering, that transformation, is available and readily accessible to each and every one of us. That same Jesus is still alive and well and still bestowing His Spirit upon His followers—that is, you and I. God desires that each of us will have the same boldness, the same power and wisdom, as Peter demonstrated that first Pentecost day. All we need to do is be open to the Spirit’s coming and ask. Amen.

Forward notes: “But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power” (verse 24).

“When I think about God incarnate being within the clutches of death and yet unable to be held permanently there, I think about Samson.

“He deceived his enemy by telling her that he could be bound by fresh bowstrings, or new ropes, or a tight braid. And once he found himself bound by those things, he broke free from his bonds and went about his business. Jesus’s enemy deceived himself into thinking that God could be bound by the bowstrings of creaturely death. The ropes tied around him were unspeakably awful, but ultimately the braids were no more capable of holding Jesus than the Philistines’ cords were of holding Samson.

“To admit Jesus into the realm of death was to sign over the title to him and watch him do an extreme makeover, home edition. To seek to bind Jesus to death just like all other humans was something that the devil ultimately could not resist. Unlike Samson though, Jesus’s deception and self-liberation were not for the purpose of his own gratification, but for ours.”

MOVING FORWARD: “Can deception be a good thing? How so?”

Some concluding thoughts: our author choses to describe both what Samson and Jesus did as deception and as what Jesus did as both deception and self-liberation, but I would beg to differ. What both of them did was not to deceive, but rather not to tell the whole truth, not to ‘let the cat out of the bag’, as it were. As Aslan says in C.S. Lewis’ epic children’s novel, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there was a deeper magic at work here that the enemy knew nothing about, namely the deeper and more ancient plan and purpose of God. Indeed, I do not think the enemy would have understood or accepted this truth, even if it had been told him. I would not call this deception.

And, as for self-liberation, the Scriptures are quite explicit that Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t a matter of Jesus ‘pulling this off.’ After all, He was dead and buried and lifeless there in the grave. No, Peter explicitly states here that it was God that raised Jesus from the dead (verses 31-32) and Paul backs this up, sometimes indirectly and sometimes explicitly (see 1 Corinthians 15:4,12,15,20 and Ephesians 1:20). It was God that was at work in Jesus’ resurrection, doing something that was humanly impossible for Jesus to do.