Moses indeed said, A prophet shall [the] Lord your God raise up to you out of your brethren like me him shall ye hear in everything whatsoever he shall say to you.
Peter is preaching to the men of Israel. To show them that Jesus is the one they had waited for, he does not start with something new. He quotes Moses.
Peter's argument gains its force from who said it.
God has fulfilled His word through Moses the prophet. Moses in no way took the place of being Israel's deliverer. He was only a witness to it, a partial display of God's power at the time, but looking on to the great Prophet and Deliverer who was coming. Now He had come.
The promise did not appear out of nowhere. It answered something Israel had asked for.
The prophets of idolatry were deluded. In contrast, the Lord would raise up a prophet like Moses — but infinitely greater than Moses — from among Israel. Israel must listen to Him. Moses was about to die. But God remembered Israel's fear at Sinai. They were terrified at the thought of hearing God Himself speak, and had asked for someone to stand between them and God. So the Prophet spoken of is the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."
The phrase "from your brothers" points to someone truly human, standing among the people He speaks to.
Peter's use of these words in Acts 3 makes it clear that the One in mind is Christ Himself. In Deuteronomy 18 the stress seems to fall on the precious fact of Christ's humanity — "a prophet like me from your brothers." Perhaps the outstanding feature in Moses was the closeness he enjoyed with God, and his freedom in going into the Lord's presence. The words "like me" remind us of the perfect communion between the Lord Jesus as Man and the Father.
The fit is exact, and history has produced no rival:
Peter quotes Moses: God would raise up a prophet from the Jewish nation, similar to Moses. But He would speak with such authority that no one could ignore His words... This could apply to no one but Christ. Leaders in Israel knew that Scripture. They had asked John the Baptist whether he was that prophet. But John testified that the Lord Jesus was far greater than he, and the evidence of Christ's own life and ministry was clear for all to see... In fact, Israel knows that neither before nor since has there been such a prophet.
Some have tried to attach this promise to other men, or to spread it over a whole line of prophets. Kelly tests each idea against the wording.
The theory of Aben Ezra and others, that Joshua is meant, cannot stand. Joshua only added to Moses' work, and in little more than one direction. He does not stand out in any adequate way as the prophet raised up from his brothers like Moses. So some of the most distinguished Jewish teachers tried to read this one unique prophet as a whole line of prophets! That reading fits neither the language nor the facts of their history... The place of mediator, whose words must be heard on pain of death, points to what marked Moses out. In the highest degree it is true of no one but the Messiah.
The command attached to the Prophet has no limits in it. Moses had delivered a law; this Prophet opens something wider.
Moses had predicted the coming of a prophet — a man like himself, to whom the nation must listen or be destroyed. Jesus fulfilled this prophecy. Though He is the Eternal Son, He stooped to become Man among us — as truly human as Moses or anyone else. He was no mere explainer of Moses' law. He announced a new and more glorious order of things altogether. The words themselves show it: "You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you."
The command to listen still stands. Fereday points to where the Prophet's words can be found.
The Prophet is Christ. He has come. Men have heard His voice with their own ears, and we may still hear His voice in Holy Scripture. Here is one of His sayings: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." What words are these! How divinely suited they are to meet every need of the human heart!
- Promised — Moses never claimed to be Israel's deliverer. He was a witness pointing forward to the greater Prophet still to come.
- Provided — At Sinai, Israel asked for someone to stand between them and God. The promise answered them, and Christ Jesus is that one mediator between God and men.
- Person — "A prophet like me from your brothers" marks out real humanity. No one else fits — not Joshua, not a line of prophets. Only the Messiah is the mediator whose words must be heard on pain of death.
- Priority — He does not merely explain Moses' law. He announces something new, and we owe Him a hearing in whatever He says.
- Present — That voice is still heard in Scripture, and its words meet the need of the human heart today.
And it shall be that whatsoever soul shall not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people.
Peter has just offered his listeners forgiveness and the return of their Messiah. Now he quotes Moses, and the offer comes with a warning: everything turns on whether people listen to the Prophet God raised up.
Peter did not invent this threat. He took it from Moses — the very lawgiver his hearers claimed to follow.
God has fulfilled His word through Moses the prophet. Moses never took the place of Israel's deliverer. He was only a witness to it — a partial picture of God's power at that time, pointing on to the great Prophet and Deliverer who was coming. Now He had come. So Peter set before them the arrival of the One who came to bless, His rejection among them, and how terrible a thing it is to treat that lightly. Whoever would not bow to Him was to be cut off — by the declaration of their own Moses.
Their defence was that they followed Moses. That defence collapses.
So by refusing to listen to Christ, they were guilty of direct disobedience to Moses. The lawgiver would be their accuser. The people who claimed to be Moses' disciples, so eager (as they imagined) for his honour, would find themselves accused before God by him!
The threat is this heavy because of who the Prophet is. Moses did not promise another teacher of the old system. He promised the start of something new.
Moses had declared that Jehovah would raise up for them a Prophet like himself. He firmly affirms this Prophet's authority. He is not a mere explainer of what had been spoken before. He is the Originator of a new order of things, as Moses was, and so must go beyond what Moses had begun... Had Moses been enough, there would have been no need for another. But the law was bound to fail to bring people near to God. There must be, then, another Prophet and a different message. If people hear Him, the way to God that is otherwise closed opens for the one who receives His message. If they do not hear Him, there is indeed no remedy: "every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people."
Only one thing was asked of Israel: listen to Him. Their own great creed began with the word "Hear" — and still they did not.
Israel boasted in their great "Shema," where the prophet Moses called them back to the privilege and responsibility of what the law revealed... But Israel was the "deaf servant" of Jehovah. Now God had raised up another Prophet, and of Him it was written, "You shall listen to Him in everything He says to you"... Moses had charged the people, "Hear, O Israel." Now One greater than Moses cried, "Who has ears to hear, let him hear." What if they did not hear? For those who refused to listen, that old prophecy held a warning just as serious: "whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him."
The wording in Acts is sharper still. Moses said God would require it of the man; Peter says the soul is "destroyed from the people."
One writer checks the Greek word behind "destroyed," and a related noun, in a standard Greek dictionary.
The first of these words occurs only once (Acts 3:23). The second appears four times — three of them about the destruction of the ungodly. Liddell and Scott give exolothreuo as "to destroy utterly," and olethros as "ruin, destruction, death."
The warning is personal. It sets two outcomes before every hearer.
See how serious the issues are that hang on hearing the voice of this Prophet... Everything depends, he says, on how you hear Him. To hear Jesus is to secure salvation. To deafen the ear and harden the heart against Him is to seal the soul's eternal doom.
The warning is not the whole sermon. Israel still had a future to wait for, and a duty in the present.
There was, however, a word for them in the present. The One who had been among them was truly the Prophet like Moses, to whom all were to listen. So a present responsibility rested on them while they waited for the future. For if that Prophet had come — and Jesus Christ was that Prophet — then all people were bound to listen to Him, or judgment would overtake the rebellious.
- Promised — Moses foretold a Prophet like himself. Refuse that Prophet, and Moses himself becomes your accuser.
- Greater — He does not just explain the old order. He opens the way to God that was closed, and refusing Him leaves "no remedy."
- Heard — the one thing required is listening. Israel recited "Hear, O Israel" and stayed the deaf servant.
- Destroyed — this verb appears only here in the New Testament, and it means "to destroy utterly."
- Offered — the warning sits inside an offer. The duty now is to listen to Him, before judgment falls.
And indeed all the prophets from Samuel and those in succession after [him], as many as have spoken, have announced also these days.
Peter is still speaking in the temple after the healing of a lame man, and he has just pressed Moses' words about a Prophet whom Israel must hear. Now he widens the appeal. Every prophet from Samuel onward spoke of the days his hearers were living in. Two questions follow: why the count begins at Samuel, and which days are meant.
Samuel is not named at random. One writer asks why, and finds the answer in what had collapsed in Israel — both the people and the priesthood.
Why "from Samuel"? Where was the great fitness in that? What moral reason led the Spirit of God to tie prophecy to Samuel's place? The people had failed completely long before. The priests were now just as plainly a failure... What remained to be done? No one is holy like the LORD; He is the One who never fails. But how does He act? Samuel and the prophets after him are the turning point. There the announcement of His Anointed as king first begins to dawn on Israel.
Peter starts the line at Samuel. That does not mean prophecy began there.
He was the first of the "successional prophets" (Acts 13:20; 3:24). Yet Moses, and even Abraham, were prophets before him (Psalm 105:15; Deuteronomy 18:18).
Prophets arrive when something has broken down. Their message then runs in two directions at once.
Prophecy is a special intervention, and it applied to their case of failure. So when Shiloh fell and the ark was captured, God raised up Samuel. That is why the Lord counts the prophets "from Samuel and those who came after him."... But while they showed the people their sins, they kept pointing to the Messiah, the great Deliverer... Prophecy judges the people in their responsibility. It also announces the sovereign purpose of God.
Commentators differ on what "these days" means. One reading ties them to the peace and blessing Peter offers if the nation repents.
Here Peter is still urging them to repent. If they do, he pledges the return of Christ to bring in the predicted time of peace and blessing. For Jesus was clearly the Prophet raised up, like Moses but far greater, as Moses himself testified in Deuteronomy 18:15. No one could refuse His words and escape; to refuse them was to bring on his own destruction.
Another writer takes the two phrases in Peter's speech as two different periods.
Again and again we gather that all the prophets bore witness to the sufferings of Christ. They spoke of the present interval of testimony to Him, rejected and glorified, under the title of "These days," and of the future glory as "Times of refreshing."
The verse sits inside an offer. Peter tells a nation that has just killed its Messiah that God offers to send Him back.
All the prophets from Samuel onward had pointed to His day. Israel was privileged indeed: first the prophets in long succession, and at last the Son of God Himself speaking among them. And now, despite their killing of Him, God proposed to give Him to them a second time. So blessing — full and final — would come in, not for Israel only, but for all the nations of the earth. Alas for the hopeless evil of the human heart! The gracious offer was refused. So the world drags on, century after century, in its weary way. It feels its need of peace and rest more deeply all the time, yet never finds it. The rejected Jesus is the only true hope people have, if only they could see it.
Peter is not laying out history. He is proving that the Prophet Moses named has come.
That Jesus was this Prophet is plain. Peter goes on to say, "And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days." Everything depends, he says, on how you hear Him. Nothing could be plainer. To hear Jesus is to secure salvation. To close the ear and harden the heart against Him is to seal the soul's eternal doom.
- Failure — Peter dates prophecy from Samuel because that is where people and priesthood both broke down. God answered the ruin by pointing to His Anointed.
- Succession — Samuel was not the first prophet of all. He was the first of the unbroken line, so "from Samuel" traces a chain, not a start.
- Two voices — Every prophet in that chain did the same double work. They exposed sin, and they named the Deliverer to come.
- These days — The whole line pointed to the days Peter's hearers were standing in. Commentators differ on whether that means the present time of testimony or the promised season of blessing.
- Decision — All this witness leaves one question. Will you hear this Prophet? Salvation and ruin hang on your answer.
*Ye* are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God appointed to our fathers, saying to Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
Peter tells the crowd in the temple what they are by birth: heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with Abraham. But does that birthright save them?
Peter names a real title here. It rests on a promise older than the law of Moses.
The apostle now presses these things on his hearers. They are the rightful heirs, the sons of the prophets, and heirs of the wide-reaching covenant of promise. That covenant was given before the Law, and the law's weakness never crippled it. In Abraham's Seed all the families of the earth would indeed find the blessing.
Israel had more than one covenant with God. Peter reaches past the law given through Moses, back to Abraham.
Now Peter appeals to the people as children of the prophets, and as children of the covenant God made first with Abraham. He does not speak of the covenant of law given by Moses, but of God's unconditional covenant of promise to Abraham and his seed. That promise finds its answer only in Christ, the one seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:16). Through Him alone blessing could come, and will yet come, to all the families of the earth.
Peter's hearers had not yet believed. So who is the offspring the promise points to?
The apostle Peter, speaking to unconverted Jews, calls them sons of the prophets and sons of the covenant God made with their fathers, the covenant that promised Abraham blessing for all the families of the earth. He spoke during the time of the church, and in that sense his words belonged to it. But in that time, in any spiritual or moral or real sense, are unconverted Jews the seed of Abraham in whom all the families of the earth are to be blessed? Whom does Paul call the seed of Abraham in whom the nations are to be blessed? "It does not say, 'And to offsprings,' referring to many, but referring to one, 'And to your offspring,' who is Christ."
Birth inside the covenant line brought real privilege. It brought no guarantee. The same test falls on anyone who trusts a religious upbringing.
No one is a Christian by nature. He may be born of Christian parents, brought up under Christian discipline, and hold to Christian ordinances. But unless he is born of God, all such outward privileges are worth nothing to him. Here is the real point, and how few ask themselves — am I in Christ? Now the Jew had natural hereditary privileges. He was born a Jew, and the Jews were "children of the kingdom," "children of the prophets," "children of the covenant"; but they were cast out.
Peter's words were a real offer to the nation. Their answer changed how the message went out afterwards.
Is it not clear that here is God's distinct offer, through His servant, to make good all that was promised to Israel? But they refused, and His offer lapsed entirely for the time. … After that no one presented the word of the Lord in that way again, and no later offer came to Israel on any such ground. Yet the covenant of grace is not gone for ever. It will reappear, under the returning Son of man, for both houses of Israel.
Their refusal did not cancel the promise God made to Abraham. Its reach was never limited to one nation.
The promise was unconditional and absolute. God gives it as the revelation of a purpose He will carry out. He addresses it to Abraham, so as to fix the person in whom it was to be fulfilled. God steps in to bless, and He makes clear that the blessing rests on His own faithfulness alone. He blesses because He is pleased to bless. Notice too that the promise reaches out to the whole world. "In you shall all the nations be blessed." Its reach is universal, its character absolute, and its fulfilment rests on the faithfulness of God alone.
- Birth — Peter's hearers were true heirs of the prophets and of a covenant of promise older than the law.
- Covenant — the covenant here is Abraham's, not the law given through Moses. It is unconditional, and it rests on God's faithfulness alone.
- Seed — the promise finds its answer in one offspring, Christ. Through Him blessing reaches all the families of the earth.
- Refusal — an inherited title saved nobody. God offered the nation everything He had promised; they refused, and the offer lapsed.
- Reach — man's failure does not undo God's promise. The blessing still goes out to all nations, and it comes only through Christ.
To you first God, having raised up his servant, has sent him, blessing you in turning each one [of you] from your wickedness.
Peter ends his temple sermon with a promise to the very crowd that had handed Jesus over: God sent His Servant to them before anyone else. The blessing He brings is named in the same breath: each hearer turned from his own wickedness.
The phrase sounds like resurrection. Commentators point somewhere else.
We may need a caution here about what that raising up means. It does not point to the Resurrection. It points to the Lord's first coming to earth, in line with the words just quoted from Deuteronomy 18:18: "I will raise up for them a prophet like you," and so on.
The distinction shows in the Greek. Peter uses a sharper word when he means resurrection.
Here the word is no longer the ambiguous anestesen, but the more definite egeiren. It does not just mean raising Him up as a living Messiah on earth, as in Acts 3:22, 26; Acts 7:37; Acts 13:33. It means waking Him up after death.
Older translations read "his Son" or "his Child" here. Later translators changed it, and Isaiah shows why.
In Acts 3:18, 26, as in Acts 4:27, 30, the Revisers rightly give, not Son or Child, but "servant," referring to Isaiah 42:1; Isaiah 52:13; Isaiah 53:11.
The word choice fits the whole shape of Peter's preaching.
The burden in Acts is that the Jews rejected Christ whom God raised up… but we do not find grace coming down in its completeness… Peter does not even go so far as to call Him the Son of God. When Peter speaks here, the word is really "servant" in that passage.
The people standing in front of Peter were the ones who had called for the death of Jesus. They are the first named recipients of the blessing.
If we needed any further encouragement, here it is: the ambassadors were to "begin at Jerusalem" — the guiltiest spot on the face of the earth. They were to make the earliest offer of pardon to the very murderers of the Son of God. Peter does exactly that in this verse, in words of wonderful and surpassing grace.
Peter had denied the Lord himself before he ever announced pardon to others.
What a fitting vessel Peter was for the grace of God to flow out through, since he had tasted it so sweetly and fully himself! How his heart must have glowed as he closed his sermon to these very people who had denied and crucified the Lord… Here was the announcement of repentance and forgiveness of sins that was to go out to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. God is the source of all blessing. Jesus is the One by whom it reaches men, and the effect of it is to turn men from their iniquities.
The verse says plainly what the blessing is.
In the last verse of the chapter he added this: whatever their response, God had raised up Jesus to bless them by turning them from their sins. We all need two things. First, the judicial blotting out of our sins. Second, to be turned away from our sins, so that they lose their power over us.
So where must that turning reach?
The blood of Christ has precious power. Even so, no soul is ever really blessed except through the judgment of sin — of self — in the conscience.
Peter is not just gathering people one by one. He speaks to the whole nation, and that ministry had an end.
Peter presents Him as the exalted Man. To my mind Peter presented Him this way to the nation, not to a small faithful group inside it, as we read in Acts 3:26… But they rejected the message Stephen brought them, and they killed him, and that closed this ministry.
- Raised up — God brings Jesus forward as the Prophet promised through Moses. This is not yet His resurrection. Acts uses a different Greek word for that.
- Servant — the title is "servant," drawn from Isaiah. It fits Peter's message in Acts: they rejected the One God raised up.
- First — the offer opens at the guiltiest address on earth. It goes to the people who called for the death of Jesus. It comes from a preacher who had tasted that grace himself.
- Blessing — God is the source and Jesus is the means. The effect is the measure: sins blotted out, and sinners turned from sins that once held them.
- Every one — the turning is personal, and it goes through the conscience. The offer went to the whole nation. When the nation refused it, that ministry closed at Stephen's death.