Acts 2:36

“Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Peter then brings them to his final conclusion. All the house of Israel, (all those who claimed descent from Jacob), should therefore recognise from a combination of these Scriptures and what has happened here that God has made Jesus, this Jesus Whom they had crucified, both Lord and Christ (Messiah). The crucified Jesus is also He Who has been raised from the dead and seated at God's right hand as His anointed King, and as the Lord of glory, and has sent the Holy Spirit to carry forward His work of restoring and revivifying Israel.

As ‘Messiah' (Christ) Jesus is the fulfilment of all the hopes of Judaism, and of mankind. He is the Man Who on behalf of men has received kingship and glory and power (Daniel 7:13; Matthew 28:18). All that is to be ours is ours in Him. In Him we have died, because He died. In Him we have been raised, because He was raised. In Him we are seated on the throne, because He is on the throne. We are even now seated with Him in heavenly places, in the spiritual realm, in Christ (Ephesians 2:6) that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace, His freely offered unmerited favour, in His kindness to us through Him (Ephesians 2:7).

As ‘Lord' He is ‘my Lord and my God' to all (John 20:28). He is the One Who came from God and returned to God. He is the Creator and Sustainer of all things (Hebrews 1-3; Colossians 1:16). He is the One Who enjoyed the glory of God with His Father before the world was (John 17:5). From having emptied Himself for us He has been restored to the fullness of His Godhood.

‘He has made --.' This does not mean that He became Lord and Messiah at this point in time. It means that what He already was, was, at this point in time, finally established through His having achieved all that God wanted to achieve. He was already Lord and Messiah, but up to this point in time there had been things which had to be accomplished in order to make that Lordship and Messiahship fully effective. Now they had been fulfilled, and now He was established by God as Lord and Messiah, as the full achiever of all God's purposes and will, as the Creator and Saviour of the world. All He had come to do had been accomplished. He could say, ‘It is finished'.

‘All the house of Israel.' An expression only used here in the New Testament but common enough among the Jews for it is contained in a number of synagogue prayers, and occurs over twenty times in the Old Testament (interestingly in Ezekiel 37:11 the dry bones are ‘all the house of Israel').

The Truth About Jesus of Nazareth and of What He Has Done For Us..

Having looked verse by verse at Peter's words about Jesus, we will now try to put together the whole. For the picture Peter has built up is a quite remarkable one. We see how step by step Jesus was born, grew up, died, was buried. was raised again and is now highly exalted, with all authority in heaven and earth having been given to Him..

· ‘Jesus of Nazareth.' Here we are firmly introduced to the man, the son of Joseph and Mary, the brother of James and his other brothers and sisters, the man among men, who for thirty years lived and walked, mainly in Nazareth, first as a growing child and then as a respected self-employed carpenter. He was made man.

· ‘A man approved of God to you by mighty works and wonders and signs.' And as man this Jesus of Nazareth was then evidenced to be a mighty man of God by the performance of works, wonders and signs. He was revealed as true and good, as compassionate and caring, righteous in all His works. He was revealed as an outstanding prophet among men, a man who did good things, a man of compassion and power who brought relief and hope and restoration to those who had lost all hope, and a man who through God's power cast out evil spirits, healed the sick, raised the dead, controlled nature, revealing Who He was through the ‘wonders and signs' that he did.

· ‘Which God did by Him in the midst of you.' He was revealed as the mighty instrument by which God exerted His power in the world in the midst of His people. He was not here of His own will, or to do His own will. He was here at the will of the Godhead.

· ‘Him being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.' The next stage was His crucifixion. But Peter could not mention that without revealing the secret that lay behind it. And that was that this great and powerful and good God-endued man was ‘delivered up' to suffering and death as a result of God's predetermined wisdom and counsel. God knew what must be done and He did it. Man must not think that he had interfered with what God was doing. What had happened was no accident or work of man. It was in accordance with God's knowing by experience even before it happened and purposing beforehand. For God's foreknowledge is not merely His pre-knowing, it is His pre-experiencing, His pre-purposing. It is an entering into something beforehand in order to do and bring about His own will. And it had been His purpose that He should be delivered up for us.

· ‘You by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay.' But men broke in on God's purposes. They revealed what they were. Although they did not realise it, their own evil intentions and behaviour were actually a part of what God was doing, while exposing their own essential nature. But that did not make it excusable or reduce the crime. Far from it. They chose to do it, and all they did was with evil intent and exposed the awful truth about them. They called on evil allies and deliberately and callously crucified and slew the One Whom God had sent, the man of Nazareth, the one Who went about doing good, the worker of miracles and wonders, the chosen of God. And having crucified Him they mocked Him there. There was nothing that they would not do to reveal their vindictiveness and hatred. Yet behind it all amazingly God was in control.

· ‘Whom God raised up having loosed the pangs of death.' Despatched in cruel suffering into the empty hopelessness of a darkened grave, crushed by the pangs of death, all was not over, indeed it could not be. For He was the Holy One. The Light broke in on the shades (Isaiah 26:19), and God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, and giving Him triumph over man's great enemy Death (1 Corinthians 15:54), and over all the forces of evil who wanted to ensure that Death reigned for ever (Colossians 2:15). He raised Him in triumph from the grave, giving Him the victory over death and the grave.

· ‘Because it was not possible that He should be held by it.' But now comes the even greater secret. Death could not keep its prey, the grave could not hold Him, not only because God was with Him, but because He Himself is the One Who has life in Himself (John 5:26). He Himself had the power to lay down His own life and take it again (John 10:18). Thus it was not possible for death and the grave to hold Him captive. He was more than a man. He was the Holy One, the Source and Controller of Life, the One Who had all life in His hands.

· ‘This Jesus did God raise up of which we all are witnesses.' The double repetition of His resurrection emphasises the centrality of the resurrection. God raised Him up and His resurrection was made clear in the eyes of witnesses who saw Him, who touched Him, and who ate with Him in His resurrection body (1 John 1:1).

· ‘Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted.' Having raised Him from the dead God exalted Him by His own right hand. All the fullness of the power of the ‘right hand' of Almighty God was active in His exaltation. It was the ‘arm of the Lord' as never seen before. He was raised up far above all powers in heaven and earth (Ephesians 1:20), and seated on the throne. But which throne did he receive? It was His Father's throne (Revelation 3:21). He enjoyed again with His Father the full dignity of Godhead. He was crowned as King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Revelation 19:11), and given a name above very name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess Him as LORD (Philippians 2:9). And that name above every Name was LORD, the holy Name of Yahweh. For He Himself is not just resurrected man He is the Mighty God (Isaiah 9:6).

· As a result of this, ‘having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you now see and hear.' And the result of all this work of the Father and of His Son Jesus Christ on our behalf, was that He received from His Father the promised Holy Spirit of God and poured Him forth on His people so that they are now indwelt by Him, sustained by Him, ‘watered' by Him, and completely within His power so that He might work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). What is Pentecost? It is the pouring out on us like life-giving rain of all that is contained in Jesus' life, death, resurrection and exaltation. All that He wrought and did is given to us through His Holy Spirit. That is the significance of Pentecost. It signifies that we are indwelt by our living and glorified Saviour, and that all His power in heaven and on earth is at our disposal in order that we might do His will and win the world for Christ.