Tues 1st September – Acts chapter 2:13-21:

Tues 1^st September  Read Acts chapter 2:13-21:

V13:  Some mock, suggesting the believers are drunk – though how that would explain their speaking clearly in many languages is mystifying! But there will always be those who, sceptical of any manifest work of God, seek to explain it away, however implausibly.

V14:  Peter, the other Apostles standing with him, calls on the crowd to listen to him. Some suggest there was a further “miracle of hearing”, and each heard him in their own tongue, but there is no real indication of this in this verse. More likely, he addressed them in a “common language”, either Aramaic or Greek, both of which most Jews of that day would know.

V15-16:  He brushes aside the suggestion that they are drunk ( almost sarcastically saying it is much too early for that.) But he comes at once to the serious truth – this is a fulfilment of what the prophet Joel foretold.

 V17-21:    He quotes fully and accurately Joel ch 2:28-32 – a prophecy of what God would do in ” the last days.” Biblically, the “last days” often speaks of the whole period between the Ascension and the Second Coming of Christ. In this OT prophecy, God spoke of the pouring out of His Spirit upon all His people, young and old, male and female, with accompanying signs and wonders. Perhaps there is a further fulfilment of some of these things to come at the end of the age, when Jesus returns, but many were clearly fulfilled at the time of the crucifixion – remember the 3 hours of supernatural darkness – and resurrection. Note the promise, so long before, that ” everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved” – saved through faith in Christ, as the later verses of this chapter make clear.