-- him, given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye, by [the] hand of lawless [men], have crucified and slain.
Peter's Pentecost sermon reaches its sharpest point here. He tells the crowd they killed their own Messiah. He also says God had planned that death long before. God's settled purpose and the guilty hands of men stand in one sentence, and neither cancels the other.
Peter first reminds the crowd of the life they had watched, and only then names what they did with that life.
Peter goes on to give a lovely testimony to the Lord. He points to the beautiful life of his Master: what He had been doing, and how He had been blessing people everywhere. They knew it well. But then what a charge he makes! He boldly lays their guilt on them. Terrible accusation! They were guilty of the murder of their Messiah, and of refusing the Son of God. Only seven weeks before, they had refused the Lord. They chose Barabbas instead — a robber and a murderer. They had cried, "Away with him, crucify him," even though Pilate, the Roman governor, had declared Him innocent.
Roman hands did the killing, but Peter puts the blame on the crowd in front of him. "Lawless" here means the Gentiles, outside Israel's law.
What then had been the outcome? They, the men of law, had used the hands of lawless men — of the Gentiles — to crucify and kill Him. That might seem to disprove His claims. But no. Everything that happened had its place in the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, and it was by that plan that He was given up. Apart from it, all man's efforts would have been useless!
The verb Peter uses here for the act itself is not the usual one.
Two different words are translated as 'crucified'. One is the common word, which comes from the word 'cross'. The other appears only once in the New Testament, and it means 'nailed' or 'fastened' to the cross. This shows the audacity as well as the folly of man in committing this act.
Someone handed Jesus over. Peter says God did.
How blessed it is to turn away from man and all his wickedness, and to learn this. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ was not only the result of man's evil. It was also the result of the counsels of God. He was "delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God," when men took Him with wicked hands to crucify and kill Him. God knew what men would do with His Son, and took the occasion of man's wickedness to work out His plans for the blessing of mankind. When Pilate delivered up Jesus to be crucified, God delivered Him up for our trespasses (Rom. 4:25).
The word behind "foreknowledge" carries more than advance information:
A knowledge of persons and events before they exist. It is one of the divine attributes of God, by which persons were foreknown by Him and events determined. It is a capacity altogether beyond the mind of man to grasp.
Does God's plan excuse the men who carried it out? This verse says no.
God had given Him up to this according to His "definite plan and foreknowledge." God knows how to make the wrath of man praise Him and carry out His purposes of blessing. Yet this does not lessen man's responsibility in the matter. Verse 23 clearly shows that the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man do not clash in practice. In theory we may still find the two hard to fit together.
The same cross displays two opposite things at full strength.
On one side, unbelief and rebellion and blasphemy were left free to run their course when the moment came. His own people rejected Jesus in the most shameful way, and they urged the Gentiles to crucify Him. On the other side, all of this was so that He might become a propitiation for the sins of His own who believed, yes, for the whole world. If that was man's inexcusable wickedness, this was God's sovereign grace. If they were the instruments of their own spite, He gave One who had been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
Peter was not teaching history. He aimed at their hearts.
First, as to conviction of sin, he brings home to them the fact that they rejected Christ. Here the Holy Spirit presses their sin home. It was not now a question of this or that wrongdoing. They had refused to believe in Christ — they had rejected Him.
- Delivered — Pilate handed Jesus over to men; God handed Him over for our trespasses. The same act has two authors and two meanings.
- Determined — foreknowledge is more than God looking ahead. He knows persons and events before they exist, and He determines them.
- Guilty — men of the law used lawless hands to nail Him down; borrowed hands never transfer guilt.
- Both true — God's plan and man's guilt do not clash in practice. Only our theories struggle to hold them together.
- Turned — man's worst wickedness became the occasion of God's sovereign grace. The event that convicts them is the same event that saves.
Whom God has raised up, having loosed the pains of death, inasmuch as it was not possible that he should be held by its power;
Peter has just told the crowd that they killed Jesus. Now he tells them what God did with the Man they killed: He raised Him, and death had no power to keep Him.
The crowd had already given its judgment on Jesus, in words and then in a cross. The resurrection is God's reply. One writer calls it the moment God cleared Jesus of everything men had said about Him.
When was He justified beyond dispute? When He was raised from the dead. This was the standing justification of Him whom man crucified. If lawless hands slew the Lord of glory, God raised Him up, having loosed the pains of death: such was His answer to man.
The words "not possible" point to a matter of right, not difficulty. One writer finds the reason in who Jesus is: there was nothing in Him for death to hold.
Our Lord's soul would not, could not, be held by the unseen world, neither could the Holy One "see corruption"! This last part, of course, has to do with His body. But because of what He was — the "Holy One" — if He went into death He had to come out, for resurrection was inherent in Him. (John 11:25; 2:19.) A perfect, heavenly, holy Man could not be held by it. Death had no claim upon Him, and no seed of it in Him!
They killed Him, God raised Him — and then the cause of this, in the Lord's high personal glory. He loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that He should be held by it. "For David speaks," and so on. The hindrance to death's power, as it is stated here, is not the inherent power of the Lord, as we have it in Romans 1, declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, but the personal glory and dignity given Him by the counsel of God as the One witnessed of by the Spirit in David; and not in David only, but in all the Scriptures.
One writer points back to what was already finished. Nothing was left owing, so raising Him was the only fitting answer.
It was not possible, therefore, that He should be held by death (Acts 2:24), since all that righteousness required had been done. Only one answer could be given to such a work and such devotion — to be "raised from the dead by the glory of the Father," and to the throne in heaven.
The word Peter uses for "pangs" appears only a handful of times in the New Testament.
The word ōdin occurs only four times in the New Testament. It refers literally to the pangs of a woman in childbirth, and it has that sense in 1 Thessalonians 5:3. Twice it refers to the pangs that will seize the wicked when God's judgments are poured out on the earth, Matthew 24:8 and Mark 13:8; and once it refers to the pains of death endured by the Lord, Acts 2:24.
Scripture tells of others who came back from the grave. What happened to Jesus was different in kind.
He is risen, not like Lazarus, Jairus' daughter, and others, to return to corruption, but never to die again (Acts 13:34). Death has no more dominion over Him (Rom. 6:9). He is alive, then, for ever — the living One (Rev. 1:18). What is more, He was raised because it was not possible that He should be held by death (Acts 2:24). For He was holy and righteous, and His resurrection proclaims that.
Death had no claim on Him. But He had taken our place, and there it did have a claim. That is why His release is not His alone.
His resurrection was the loosing of the pains of death (see Acts 2:24). Death, of course, had no claim on Him personally. It had one substitutionally, since He took up our cause and on the cross assumed our liabilities. So His resurrection involves the loosing of us from all pains and penalties. He was set free, but so were we. He was "delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification" (Rom. 4:25). Because of this, His resurrection is often called the receipt God has placed in the believer's hand. It announces the complete discharge of all the believer's debts, which the Lord Jesus took up in His death.
- Loosed — Peter's word for "pangs" is the word for birth pangs: death held Him the way labour holds a mother, and the end was never in doubt.
- Impossible — not just unlikely: death had no claim on Him and no seed of it in Him, so the Holy One who entered death had to come out.
- Answered — men gave their verdict at the cross; God gave His by raising Him, and that reversal is His public reply to man.
- Grounded — righteousness had all it required, so raising Him was the only fitting answer.
- Discharged — the death He entered was ours, so His release is the receipt in the believer's hand: He was set free, and so were we.
for David says as to him, I foresaw the Lord continually before me, because he is at my right hand that I may not be moved.
Peter is preaching at Pentecost, and he backs his message with words David wrote long before in Psalm 16. His argument turns on one claim: the man speaking in that psalm is not the man who wrote it.
Peter's reasoning rests on a fact the whole crowd could check for themselves:
Was David writing of himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was with them, still holding his dust. Clearly his tomb was well known at that time. And all were perfectly agreed that he, the first of his line, had not risen from the dead. Yet he wrote of One who would die, and would shortly afterwards be raised.
Behind that argument lies a way of reading the whole Bible:
No truth is clearer to the spiritual mind, or more important to the student of Scripture, than this: Jesus is the sum and substance of the Spirit's testimony in Scripture. If we do not see this, Scripture becomes to our poor foolish minds a maze of dark places. His name is the clue and the thread through it. Reader, when you study Scripture what do you look for in it? Testimony to Jesus, or something about yourself?
The psalm traces a trust that carries its Speaker to the far side of the grave:
The same psalm gives the clearest proof that the most absolute trust in God would mark the Messiah through all His life. He was to lay down His life with trust in God just as unbroken and perfect in death as in life. And in the end He would stand in resurrection. So it is the psalm of confidence in God, and that confidence goes right through life, death, resurrection. It was seen in Jesus, and clearly it does not apply to David who wrote it.
One word in the verse, always, marks this life out from every other:
No one but He could say, "I have set the Lord always before me." Never for one moment did He turn aside from the way of perfect obedience. Because He obeyed like this, Jehovah was always at His right hand to hold Him up. So He would not be moved, no matter what lay before Him. Passing into death as the dependent Man, death could not hold Him.
This is why the psalm shows Jesus as a real man among men, living by dependence on God:
Psalm 16 places Christ fully — though perfect — among men, in His walk of righteousness in owning Jehovah. The living God takes up His cause, so that death is not to have dominion over Him.
The phrase pictures nearness, not distance:
A friend at our right hand is a friend at our side, to whom we can turn at any moment. So David can say, "I have set the Lord always before me: because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." The wicked man trusted in himself. He "said in his heart I shall not be moved," and then came under the judgment of the Lord. The godly man, trusting in the Lord at his right hand, can say, "I shall not be moved."
That same steadiness carried Jesus through what lay ahead of Him:
When the time came for Jesus to be received up, what enabled Him to set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem? It was because He had, with purpose of heart, set the Lord always before His face. Satan tried every means in the path of Jesus to shift Him off the place of dependence and obedience. He could not succeed. Jesus had said to the Lord, "You are my Lord." He had set Him before His face, and the Lord was at His right hand. Therefore He could not be moved.
Commentators differ over how far this applies to us. Some stress that only Christ could say "always." Others hold out the same path for us:
Such is the path open to the believer. Sadly, we have to admit how little we know of its blessedness. And yet, suppose day by day we set the Lord before us as our one object: to serve Him, to please Him, to do His will. Shall we not find that He will be at our right hand to support us? With that support, nothing will move us or turn us aside — no trying circumstances, no opposition, slights or sufferings we may be called to meet.
- Speaker — The "I" of Psalm 16 is not David. His tomb was still there, still holding his dust. He wrote of Another who would die and rise.
- Subject — Jesus is the substance of the Spirit's testimony in Scripture. His name is the thread through passages that otherwise stay dark.
- Span — That trust never breaks: not in life, not in death, not in resurrection.
- Support — "At my right hand" means help within reach at any moment. God was at His side, so nothing shifted Him from the path of obedience.
- Share — Set the Lord before you day by day. You will find Him at your right hand to hold you up, and opposition and sorrow will not move you.
Therefore has my heart rejoiced and my tongue exulted; yea more, my flesh also shall dwell in hope,
On the day of Pentecost, Peter quotes a song written a thousand years earlier — and tells the crowd it was never about its writer. Its words are gladness, singing, and a body resting in hope — spoken by a man walking straight toward death.
Peter quotes Psalm 16 as the voice of the Messiah, not of David. The psalm traces one unbroken confidence in God across three stages, and no Jew could claim it for the king who wrote it.
The same psalm gives the clearest proof about the Messiah — and no Jew could doubt that the psalm was speaking of the Messiah. He would show the most absolute trust in God all through His life. He was to lay down His life with a trust in God just as unbroken and perfect in death as in life. And in the end He would stand in resurrection. So it is the psalm of confidence in God that runs right through life, death, resurrection. It was seen in Jesus. It does not fit David, who wrote it.
Peter presses the point with a fact the crowd could check: David's tomb still held David.
Was David writing of himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was among them, still holding his dust. Clearly his grave was well known then. And everyone agreed that he, the first of his line, had not risen from the dead. For centuries that psalm had been read. Probably everyone in the crowd knew it. But until that day none of them could point to anyone who had died and say, "Here is the man."
The gladness is a result, not a mood. One writer traces it back to the way Christ lived, and finds a second meaning inside the word "tongue."
Christ lived in constant dependence and unswerving obedience. The result was that His heart was glad in a world where He was a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," and that His glory (that is, His tongue) rejoiced. There is something very beautiful here: the Hebrew word for "glory" also means "tongue." So it was with Christ. His tongue was His glory, and it rejoiced, because He used it only for the glory of His Father and God. Our tongues, sadly, are often our shame. Every word spoken by that blessed tongue was a word of truth, love, grace and wisdom.
The three things named in the verse — heart, tongue, flesh — all rest on one expectation.
His heart rejoicing, His tongue glad, His flesh resting in hope, was because of the certainty of resurrection. His soul would not be left in hades, which is the unseen state of separation from His body. Also, "Your Holy One" would not see corruption. This of course refers to His body. The spirit and soul had left it, so it lay in a state of death — yet it would not see corruption.
The change of word from "heart" and "tongue" to "flesh" is deliberate, and writers note that the psalm keeps the two apart on purpose.
In Psalm 16:9-10, where the Lord Jesus speaks prophetically, the distinction between "My flesh" and "My soul" is clearly indicated.
What makes this verse remarkable is where the words come from. The path He walked led straight through death.
The path of life that the Lord walked led through death. This is not death as making atonement for His people, but death that shows the blessedness of a life death cannot touch. It is the path of life through death. Here the prospect of death raises no cloud on His spirit. So far from being cast down at the thought of death, His heart is glad, His tongue rejoices, for His flesh will rest in hope. For the one walking the path of life, death is only a means to a fuller enjoyment of that life. The natural man walks the path of death, and at that very moment gloom and dread fill him. The one walking the path of life is marked by joy, praise and the rest of hope.
The verse describes One who is unique. Yet commentators draw the same hope out for those who belong to Him. The Scripture wording below follows an older translation of Psalm 16:10.
The Lord's joy remains even in view of death. His confidence is still in God: "You will not leave My soul in Sheol; neither will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption." Christ is indeed the "Holy One." But believers are "holy and beloved," and as such they can know the blessedness of the life of Christ as man. They too can look ahead with confidence, knowing that God will not leave the soul in death nor the body in corruption.
- Confidence — one trust in God holds firm through life, through death, and out into resurrection.
- Cause — the "therefore" ties the gladness back to dependence and obedience — His heart was glad in a world of sorrow.
- Tongue — one Hebrew word means both "glory" and "tongue." His speech was His glory, because every word served His Father.
- Flesh — heart, tongue and body all rest on the certainty of resurrection. The soul is not left in the unseen state, and the body does not see corruption.
- Ours — He is the Holy One; believers are holy and beloved. They may face death with the same confidence, for soul and body.
for thou wilt not leave my soul in hades, nor wilt thou give thy gracious one to see corruption.
Peter is speaking to a crowd in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. To prove that God raised Jesus, he quotes words David wrote a thousand years earlier in Psalm 16. The psalm makes two promises: one about a soul, one about a body. Everything Peter argues next turns on whose soul and body they are.
Peter's point is not that the psalm could refer to Christ. It is that it could not refer to anyone else. The proof stood a short walk away, in a tomb everyone knew.
Was David writing of himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was among them, still holding his dust. Clearly his grave was well known then. And everyone fully agreed that he, the first of his dynasty, had not risen from the dead. Yet he wrote of One who would die, and would shortly afterwards be raised.
The verse is not saying the same thing twice. Each half tracks a different part of the person who died. Peter's own explanation a few verses later keeps them apart.
Hades never means the grave, as some claim, although the imagery of the grave may naturally be applied to it. It is still clearly distinct. It stands in the same relation to the soul as the grave does to the body... So in the words quoted about the Lord in Acts 2:27, "you will not abandon my soul to Hades" refers to the soul. "Or let your Holy One see corruption" refers to the body. The apostle Peter separates them in the same way when he explains the psalm.
Older English translations turn "Hades" into "hell." That has confused many readers.
The word "hell" in that verse is not "Gehenna," the lake of fire, but "hades" (or in Hebrew "sheol"), which does not indicate a place, but a state. It is the unseen state of the soul and spirit as separated from the body. So His spirit and soul were in the unseen condition called "hades." But they were in the place called "paradise," the third heaven. In resurrection God would not leave His soul in that unseen condition. Nor would He let His body see corruption. Soul and body would be reunited.
The title is not the ordinary word for those set apart to God. It describes a character, and the possessive pronoun matters.
"Holy One" here is not the same as "saints in the earth." "Saints" are those set apart — consecrated to God. Your "Holy" One is one who walks in devotion to God, pleasing to Him. It is Christ known in this character... Notice that it is "Your Holy One," One who morally belongs to God by the perfection of His character.
Commentators differ. Some read the title of His body, tracing the name back to the angel's word to Mary:
"Your Holy One" is the flesh of Jesus (Acts 2:27, 31). The title comes from Luke 1:35. That word set the human nature of Jesus apart from every stain, and kept it in full favour and acceptance with God.
Corruption is not simply what happens to dead matter. It has a cause, and in His case the cause was absent.
The Lord was completely sinless. So we can understand how His blessed holy body saw no corruption, for corruption is the effect of sin. The blessed Lord had fully settled the question of sin by His atoning death on the cross. So death could have no further claim on Him. When sinful bodies die, death holds its sway and the process of decay starts at once.
Peter states two impossibilities. Death could not keep its hold, and Scripture could not fail.
Death could not hold Him fast — the death that He, the Holy One, had submitted to for sin, for God's glory. Nor was it possible to break the Scripture that said, "For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption." ... Here Peter, and Paul in Acts 13:33-37, declare that God fulfilled it by raising Jesus from the dead. It was not fulfilled in David, still less in anyone else.
The confidence in this verse is first His, but it does not stop with Him.
Christ is indeed the "Holy One," but believers are "holy and beloved," and, as such, can know the blessedness of the life of Christ as man. They too can look on with confidence, knowing that God will not leave the soul in death nor the body in corruption.
- Proof. David died, was buried, and his tomb was still there — so the psalm was never about him, and Peter names the only Man it fits.
- Parts. Hades holds the soul as the grave holds the body. The verse promises release from both, and Peter keeps the two lines apart.
- Person. "Your Holy One" is One who belongs to God by the perfection of His character. David could not say that of himself.
- Purity. Decay is the effect of sin. There was no sin in Him, so His holy body saw no corruption.
- Promise. Death could not hold Him, and Scripture could not be broken. The same confidence now belongs to those God calls "holy and beloved."
Thou hast made known to me [the] paths of life, thou wilt fill me with joy with thy countenance.
Peter quotes a psalm of David in his sermon, and this verse is the last line he quotes: a path out of death that ends in the joy of God's face. Two questions follow: who is really speaking, and why does a promise of joy settle an argument about an empty tomb?
The words Peter reads out are David's, yet he treats them as belonging to someone else. The New Testament itself gives the ground for reading the psalm that way.
Twice in the New Testament the Psalm is applied to Christ. The apostle Peter quotes verses 8-11 to prove the resurrection of Christ (Acts 2:25-28). The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews applies the principle of the first verse to prove that Christ shared in human nature (Hebrews 2:13). So we have the warrant of Scripture for applying the Psalm to Christ personally.
The psalm speaks throughout as "I" and "me," yet the "I" is not David.
In the sixteenth psalm, David speaks in the first person, yet he clearly speaks of Another than himself. That One was perfect in a perfect pathway. He kept the LORD always before Him, and the LORD was therefore always for Him. This gave unwavering steadiness to all His steps. So it was a pathway of life, even though it led through death. In it His flesh rested in confident hope. God would not abandon His soul to Hades, nor let piety such as His see corruption. Beyond, the face of God was the brightness before Him.
This "path of life" does not avoid the grave. It goes straight through it and comes out beyond.
So He would rejoice through it all, and pass through death with unclouded hope. His flesh would rest in hope; as a man He did not fear death. The LORD, whom He trusted, would not leave His soul in Hades, nor let His Holy One see corruption. His soul would go to the place of departed spirits and His body to the place of corruption, yet He would not be left in the one or see the other. The LORD would show Him the path of life through death, and beyond it.
Peter faces a charge: the disciples stole the body. He answers it from Scripture.
The lie that the disciples came by night and stole Jesus away, while the soldiers slept, is useless. Peter does not even notice such an unworthy excuse. He simply states the great truth on which the gospel rests: "Whom God raised up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it." ... Indeed death could not hold Him fast. He, the Holy One, had submitted to it for sin, to God's glory. Nor could the Scripture be broken which said, "You will not abandon My soul to Hades, or let Your Holy One see corruption." So He was shown the path of life through death, with fullness of joy in the presence of God His Father.
The verse does not end at rescue from death. It ends in gladness, and Jesus as Man finds that gladness in God Himself.
On His side too, Jesus, the ever blessed Man, lives to God. His holy nature as Man finds its untold, unmeasured bliss in God. He knows God infinitely, perfectly, with all the powers of the One risen from the dead. He is in the condition and the place where God has planned to put man in the closest relationship and privilege. He stands in the full light of all that God is. From that nearest and dearest place — may we reverently say it — the heart of Jesus rises up in ever happy and holy delight in God.
That destination explains why joy is possible long before the journey is over.
The secret of this joy is found in having the glorious end in view. The path of life may pass through a world of sorrow. It may lead through the valley of the shadow of death. But at last it ends in the presence of God. For Christ, and for those who are Christ's, this is the Father's presence. Here, among the sorrows of earth, we may taste the cup of life. There, among the joys of heaven, we shall enter into the fullness of life.
The path He was shown is not for Him alone.
In this place of death He makes out a path for us. His Father and God shows Him the "path of life." He was the life. But the path of life had to be tracked through this place of death, where not one thing testifies of God — one wide waste, where there is no way. Christ has tracked the path Himself... The gospel shows He gives it to those who believe.
- Speaker. David wrote the words, but the psalm speaks of Another. Peter and the Letter to the Hebrews both apply it to Christ.
- Path. The "paths of life" do not go around death. They run through it and come out beyond it, so the grave could not hold Him.
- Proof. Peter meets the theft-of-the-body story with Scripture, not debate. Death could not hold Him.
- Joy. The path ends at God's own face. Nearness to God is the source of the joy, and that end in view brings joy along the way.
- Ours. He tracked that path first, and the gospel hands the same path to everyone who believes.
Brethren, let it be allowed to speak with freedom to you concerning the patriarch David, that he has both died and been buried, and his monument is amongst us unto this day.
Peter has just quoted a psalm where the speaker says God will not leave his soul in Hades or let his body decay. To show that David was not speaking about himself, Peter points to a grave in their own city.
Older translations read "Men and brethren." That sounds like two groups. It is not.
In "men and brethren" (Acts 1:16; Acts 2:29, and so on), there are not two classes. The sense is "men who are brethren," or, in our own way of speaking, simply "brethren."
That is why the ESV reads simply "Brothers." Peter speaks to his own people, and he speaks freely.
Calling David a patriarch is unusual. The word normally belongs to a much earlier period.
"Head of a family." In the New Testament this title belongs to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the ancestors of the Israelites, and to the twelve sons of Jacob. David carries it too. Acts 2:29; Acts 7:8-9; Heb. 7:4. Other passages call these same men "the fathers."
So David stands at the end of that honoured line, the last of Israel's founding fathers.
Peter's argument rests on a fact nobody in Jerusalem could dispute.
Was David writing of himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was with them, still holding his dust. Clearly his tomb was well known at that time. And everyone agreed that he, the first of his royal line, had not risen from the dead. Yet he wrote of One who would die, and would soon be raised. For God would not leave that One's soul in Hades (the place of spirits without bodies), and He would not let His body see corruption.
The psalm describes a life of perfect uprightness and a body that never decayed. Neither fits David.
Certainly no one could say all this of David himself. No one could credit him with such perfection. His monument among them showed that he had seen corruption, like everyone else. So he was not speaking of himself. There was only One this could describe.
This argument was not Peter's alone.
Paul reasons in much the same way as Peter did in Acts 2:29-31; and both with unanswerable power. Only one man, the Messiah, was to see no corruption while tasting death. David in his own generation served the purpose of God, but he saw corruption. So did all his descendants, except that One of whom he prophesied in the Spirit. Scripture cannot be broken.
Peter does not stop at David's death. He moves from the buried king to the kingdom settled forever in David's son.
In his reasoning here, the apostle cites Psalm 132. That is the great psalm of the kingdom settled forever in the son of David. … This, and this alone, explains the uniquely glorious character of the kingdom, even on its earthly side. Even now the King is risen from the dead. This stamps permanence on it as nothing else could: yet it is the kingdom of a man. Only it is man risen from the dead, for in all things He must have the pre-eminence (Col. 1:18).
David's tomb is not an isolated case. It stands for the whole record of Israel's finest men.
Where is David, the man after God's own heart, in his glory? His tomb is with us today; the gates of Hades had prevailed over the king. Solomon in all his glory and wisdom, where is he? His tomb also is with us today; the gates of Hades had prevailed. All the great ones of the Old Testament had passed away.
- Brothers — Peter speaks freely to his own people. "Men and brethren" means one group, not two.
- Patriarch — David carries the title first given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jacob's twelve sons. He closes that line of fathers.
- Tomb — his grave was a known place in Jerusalem, still holding his dust; everyone agreed he had not risen.
- Prophet — the psalm describes a perfection and a body that never decayed. Neither was David's, so he spoke of Another. Paul later argued the same way.
- King — the buried patriarch points to the risen King. A kingdom held by a man raised from the dead can never be undone.
Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to him with an oath, of the fruit of his loins to set upon his throne;
Peter stands in Jerusalem and argues from a grave: David died and was buried, so his psalm about a body that would not decay must point to someone else. Verse 30 gives the missing link — David was a prophet, and he knew God had sworn an oath about one of his descendants and a throne.
Peter's case rests on a fact anyone in the crowd could check.
The Psalm writer speaks in the first person all the way through. I, me, or my turns up in every verse. Was David writing about himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was there among them, still holding his dust... People had read that Psalm for centuries. Most likely everyone in the crowd knew it. But to that day none of them could point to anyone who had died and say, "Here is the man."
Being a prophet did not make David a passive channel. He understood something of what he was writing.
David was surely aware that he was describing more than his friend's betrayal... So we see that David knew he was an instrument in the hands of the Spirit of God. Through him God announced in advance His purposes about Christ: both His allowing the wickedness that brought Him to the cross, and the grace that by that very means accomplished our redemption.
Peter points back to an oath in the Psalms. Writers note that the same passage holds two promises side by side: one absolute, one conditional.
In verse 11 it is the expression of the divine purpose, "The LORD swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: 'One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne.'"... So when Christ, as the Son of David, is in the Spirit's view, the promise is unconditional, because it announces God's purpose in grace. But when David's own children, his immediate descendants, are in view, whether they stay on his throne depends on their responsibility.
This is why the resurrection carries the argument. An oath about a throne that lasts for ever needs an heir death cannot remove.
In his argument the apostle cites Psalm 132, the great psalm of the kingdom settled for ever in the son of David... This, and this alone, explains why the kingdom is so glorious, even in its earthly side. Even now the King is risen from the dead. Nothing else could stamp it with permanence like that. Yet it is still the kingdom of a man — only a man risen from the dead.
The oath calls for a descendant from David's own body. If Joseph was only Jesus' supposed father, how can Jesus be that descendant? The answer points to two lines meeting in one Person.
The Lord's manhood was real because He was born of Mary, "the Virgin" of David's house. If He had not truly been the Son of God on the other side, the truth of His Godhead would have been overthrown. And if He had not held the legal rights of Solomon's line through Joseph — though Joseph was only His supposed father — He would not be the true Messiah under the oath God swore to David.
Did the oath reach its goal when Jesus rose and ascended? Commentators say no. David himself, they point out, foretold a waiting time before that throne is taken.
Peter would have them know what David has shown: for that Son whom David calls his Lord there would be a time of waiting for the Kingdom, with enemies opposing... So the pause before He takes David's throne is itself a proof that Jesus is the Messiah, instead of an argument against it. And it is David himself who testifies to this.
The throne He sits on now is not the throne He was promised.
Now the Messiah rejected by the Jews sits on the throne of God His Father, in contrast with His own throne, which He is to take another day. Neither David nor any other sat on the Father's throne... At His coming again He will sit upon the throne of David according to the prophecy before us and many more.
- Oath. God swore an oath to seat one of David's descendants on David's throne. That promise rests on His purpose alone, not on anyone's obedience.
- Prophet. David knew it, and wrote about Someone else. His own tomb was still in Jerusalem, and his own body had decayed.
- Descent. The oath called for a real son of David: true manhood through Mary, of David's house, and the legal royal title through Joseph.
- Resurrection. A throne promised for ever needs a King death cannot hold. God raised Jesus, and that stamps the kingdom with permanence.
- Waiting. He now sits on His Father's throne, not yet on David's. David foretold that very pause before He takes it.
he, seeing [it] before, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that neither has he been left in hades nor his flesh seen corruption.
Peter's sermon at Pentecost reaches its turning point here, in words David wrote long before. The verse makes two claims — a soul not abandoned to Hades, a body that did not decay — and neither one fits David himself.
Peter's argument rests on a fact his hearers could check. David was still in his grave.
Was David writing of himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was with them, still holding his dust. Clearly his tomb was well known then. And everyone agreed that he, the first of his dynasty, had not risen from the dead. Yet he wrote of One who would die and would soon be raised. God would not leave that One's soul in Hades — the place of spirits without their bodies — nor would He let His body see corruption.
Hades means the state of the dead apart from the body. The second half of the verse turns to the body itself.
His soul would not be left in hades, which is the unseen state of separation from His body. Also, "your Holy One" would not see corruption. This of course refers to His body. The body was in a state of death, because the spirit and soul had left it. Yet it would not see corruption.
Commentators differ over the exact wording. One traces a long-standing error to a rendering the text does not support.
Psalm 16:10 teaches that the Lord would not leave Messiah's soul to Hades, any more than His body to see corruption. "To leave in" does not seem to fit either the Hebrew or the Greek in the correct text. Early superstition made much of that error, and many revive it today.
The verse names soul and body apart, because death parted them. Neither was lost.
His soul was in hades, His body in the grave. Death separated His soul from His body, but divine power held both, so to speak, for His resurrection and glory. I see no difficulty here. His soul was in paradise, His body in the grave. Hades is only the invisible place of departed spirits, nothing more.
Every other body begins to decay at death. His did not, and one writer traces the reason to who He was and to what His death settled.
It is clear that our Lord could not go to a place of torment. It is just as clear that His soul was without its body, while His precious incorruptible body lay in the grave those memorable three days. The Lord was perfectly sinless. So we can understand how His blessed holy body saw no corruption, for corruption is the effect of sin. The blessed Lord had also fully settled the question of sin by His atoning death on the cross. So death could have no further claim on Him. When sinful bodies die, death holds its sway and decay sets in at once. In this verse our Lord's incorruptible body and His soul without its body were not to be left in death and hades. On the third day body and soul were re-united and His glorious resurrection took place — proof that the work of redemption was complete.
Peter does not stop to answer excuses. He rests his case on Scripture.
Peter does not even notice such an unworthy excuse. He simply states the grand truth on which the gospel rests… The word of God through David pointed to the resurrection of the Messiah. God showed Him openly, when risen, to witnesses He had chosen beforehand. But indeed death could not hold Him fast. He, the Holy One, had submitted to death for sin, to God's glory. Nor was it possible for the Scripture to be broken which said, "You will not leave My soul to Hades, nor let Your Holy One see corruption." … Here Peter, and Paul in Acts 13:33-37, declare that God fulfilled this when He raised Jesus from the dead. It was not fulfilled in David, and still less in anyone else.
The verse also settles what resurrection means.
What did the apostles regard as an essential feature of the resurrection? Let Peter instruct us, as he did his hearers on the day of Pentecost. David, he said, spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, "that He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption." Peter did not preach a resurrection of the person apart from the body that died.
- Foreseen — David wrote as a prophet about One still to come. His own tomb, well known in Jerusalem, proved he was not writing about himself.
- Separated — Death parted soul from body. His soul was in the unseen place, His body in the grave. Divine power held both for His resurrection.
- Preserved — Decay is the effect of sin. The sinless One's body did not decay, and His atoning death left death no further claim on Him.
- Raised — Scripture could not be broken, and death could not hold Him. God raised Him and showed Him to witnesses He had chosen.
- Bodily — Peter preached the resurrection of the very body that died, not of a person apart from his body.
This Jesus has God raised up, whereof all *we* are witnesses.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Having therefore been exalted by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which *ye* behold and hear.
Peter's sermon has moved from the cross to the empty tomb, and now it climbs one step higher — to a Man seated in heaven. The crowd had asked what the noise and the strange languages meant. Peter answers by pointing away from the scene in front of them, up to the place it came from.
Peter's word for Christ's exaltation is not a new one. Scripture already uses it for His lifting up to die.
In Acts 2:33 Peter speaks of Jesus, "being by the right hand of God exalted," and in Acts 5:29-31 the "other apostles" join in the same blessed theme — "Him has God exalted." Peter uses the word "exalted" to describe the Lord's present position. It is the same word used in John chapters 3, 8 and 12 for the "lifting up" of the Son of Man! That truly touches our affections, and touches them deeply. He who endured the cross with all its shame has been "highly exalted" by God.
(Where older translations read "by the right hand of God exalted," the ESV has "at the right hand of God.") That place carries meaning drawn from across Scripture:
The "right hand" speaks of authority, power, and eminence. According to Exodus 15:6, delivering and subduing power belong to the right hand. In Genesis 48:14 the right hand gives blessing that is sovereign and cannot be taken back. Acts 2:32-36 hails His exaltation as God's approval of Him, and at the same time as a reversal of man's judgment.
Jesus had already received the Holy Spirit once, at His baptism. Commentators draw a careful line between that occasion and this one.
As the exalted Man, Jesus had received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father, and had poured Him out on His disciples. At His baptism He received the Holy Spirit for Himself, as the dependent Man. Now He receives the same Holy Spirit on behalf of others, as their Representative. By pouring out the Spirit these others were baptized into one body and became His members.
God had put His Spirit on prophets before. Something different is happening here.
It was not simply God putting His Spirit into the prophets and others. It was a man exalted to glory, who received it to give it to others. So Psalm 68 says, "Received in respect of man," or as Acts explains it, "for men." But He received it as man, for them.
Peter appeals to their eyes and ears. Yet the outward signs and the Spirit Himself are not the same thing.
There were clear signs in front of them, and shown through them, that the Father's promise had been fulfilled. The promised Holy Spirit was not in Himself something the senses could take in. Still, outward power came with Him. This distinction matters greatly. Otherwise, when these outward signs are absent, men are in danger of overlooking and denying that incomparable gift, which was always above its effects.
What that evidence proved reaches further than the resurrection alone:
Peter points to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as proof of a glorious fact. The risen Jesus had "been exalted by the right hand of God," and had "received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit." The Spirit's presence on earth was and is unanswerable proof. It shows not only the resurrection, but also that the risen Jesus has left this world and gone to the Father.
Peter goes on to quote David, who never ascended, to show who the Psalm must be describing.
David himself had not ascended to the heavens, any more than he had risen from the dead. The One David spoke of was to sit in the seat of administration and power until His foes were made His footstool. So here is the conclusion of the whole matter. The pouring out of the Spirit, which they had seen and heard, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that God had made the crucified Jesus both Lord and Christ.
Because Christ received the promise and then poured it out, the security of the gift rests on Him.
But when Christ went up on high, He received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit. What amazing comfort, confidence, and rest this should give us! Suppose the Holy Spirit had been given straight to us. We might well think that if we did not behave as we should, the gift could be taken back.
- Lifted up, twice. The word for His exaltation is the word for His lifting up on the cross. The same Man, the same movement, now ending at God's right hand.
- Received as Man. At His baptism He received the Spirit for Himself. From the throne He received Him as Representative, for others.
- Poured out for men. Psalm 68 said He would receive "in respect of man." He takes as man, to give to men.
- Seen and heard. What the crowd saw and heard was the outward sign, not the gift itself. The gift was always greater than its visible effects.
- Therefore, Lord and Christ. The Spirit's presence proves the crucified Jesus is risen, gone to the Father, and enthroned. And the gift rests on His worth, not ours.
For David has not ascended into the heavens, but he says himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand
Peter quotes a psalm his hearers knew well, and turns it into proof. David never went up to heaven, so the psalm must speak of someone else — the man they crucified, now seated at God's right hand.
Peter's whole argument rests on one question his hearers could not answer: who is the person the psalm seats beside God?
So Peter cites another psalm. It shows that the Messiah had to ascend and sit at the right hand of Jehovah. He had shown just as clearly that resurrection was foretold of Him and of no one else. "For he says himself, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool." Who was the man that sat at God's right hand? No one could pretend it was David. It was his Son, the Messiah. This matched exactly what the apostles had seen for themselves.
Some have used these words to argue that the dead have no conscious life. The answer turns on what "ascend" actually means.
We freely grant that David did not ascend into the heavens. The Lord says the same of Himself after He rose, and yet He had been in Paradise with the pardoned thief... the departure of the spirit to God is never counted as "ascension."
The psalm puts two Lords in one sentence. David's son is also David's Lord, and that says something about who He is.
His sitting at Jehovah's right hand proclaimed in the clearest way that, though a man, He would also be God... Then Peter quoted it in Acts 2:34, and Paul in Hebrews 1:13. Both dwell on the words of Jehovah, "Sit at my right hand." Who in David's day could have said that of David's son, unless the Holy Spirit guided him and spoke through him? So we learn that the Psalm foretold the Lord's ascension. No one who accepted the Psalm as the inspired Word of God could question that authority.
Peter quotes two psalms, and they promise different things. One holds an earthly throne for the Son of David. The other tells where Christ is right now — and the crowd had just seen and heard the proof.
Psalm 132 secures the risen Son of David as the everlasting King on His throne in Zion. It brings the rich privileges that belong to His kingdom on earth and in Israel. If Psalm 132 does that, the quotation from Psalm 110 testifies to His present exaltation in heaven. The proof of this was conclusive. The Father had now fulfilled His promise and given the Holy Spirit. They could see and hear that outpouring beyond dispute.
The seat comes first; the subduing comes later. One small word holds those two apart.
This can refer to no one but the Lord Jesus. He is therefore David's Lord. The prophecy does not show Him taking His throne at once. It shows Him seated at God's right hand for a set time, before God would subdue His enemies under His feet.
Some read the psalm as fulfilled today, each time someone is converted. But conversion puts a person somewhere very different.
Are souls, when they are subdued by grace, made the footstool of their Conqueror? We have always understood that when men are converted they are united to Christ — made one body and one spirit with Him... This all makes sense if the psalm predicts Christ's exaltation to the right hand of God. There He waits in patient grace until the moment He receives commission to tread down His enemies, placed under His feet as a footstool.
The quotation is not just information. Peter preaches it to the nation, and it demands an answer.
Peter takes up these words in this way in his appeal to the nation at Pentecost, and his appeal was most powerful. He set two ways open to his hearers. One was surrender to Him whom God had set at His right hand. If they refused that, the other was to be crushed beneath His victorious feet. And it must be one or the other for every soul of man.
- Proof. David died, was buried, and never ascended — so his own psalm forces the question of who did.
- Person. The One David calls "my Lord" is his Son, yet seated at Jehovah's right hand: a man, and also God.
- Place. The throne in Zion is still future. Christ is at God's right hand now, and the poured-out Spirit proved it.
- Pause. "Until" marks a real interval — Christ exalted, enemies not yet made His footstool.
- Point. Every hearer must land on one side of that word: surrender to Him now, or fall under His feet later.