“What do we need to do, brothers?

14 Peter stood up with the eleven apostles and shouted to the crowd. “Listen carefully, my fellow Jews and residents of Jerusalem. You need to clearly understand what’s happening here. 15 These people are not drunk like you think they are, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16 This is the fulfillment of what was prophesied through the prophet Joel, for God says: 17 ‘This is what I will do in the last days—I will pour out my Spirit on everybody and cause your sons and daughters to prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will experience dreams from God. 18 The Holy Spirit will come upon all my servants, men and women alike, and they will prophesy. 19 I will reveal startling signs and wonders in the sky above and mighty miracles on the earth below. Blood and fire and pillars of clouds will appear. 20 For the sun will be turned dark and the moon blood-red before that great and awesome appearance of the day of the Lord. 21 But everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ ” 22 Peter continued, “People of Israel, listen to the facts. Jesus, the Victorious, was a Man on a divine mission whose authority was clearly proven. For you know how God performed many powerful miracles, signs, and wonders through him. 23 This Man’s destiny was prearranged, for God knew that Jesus would be handed over to you to be crucified and that you would execute him on a cross by the hands of lawless men. Yet it was all part of his predetermined plan. 24 God destroyed the cords of death and raised him up, because it was impossible for death’s power to hold him prisoner. 25 This is the very thing David prophesied about him: ‘I continually see the Lord in front of me. He’s at my right hand, and I am never shaken. 26 No wonder my heart is glad and my glory celebrates! My mouth is filled with his praises, and I have hope that my body will live 27 because you will not leave my soul among the dead, nor will you allow your sacred one to experience decay. 28 For you have revealed to me the pathways to life, and seeing your face fills me with euphoria!’ 29 “My fellow Jews, I can tell you there is no doubt that our noted patriarch has both died and been buried in his tomb, which remains to this day. So you can see that he was not referring to himself with those words. 30 But as a prophet, he knew God’s faithful promise, made with God’s unbreakable oath, that one of his descendants would take his throne. 31 So when peering into the future, David prophesied of the Messiah’s resurrection. And God revealed to him that the Messiah would not be abandoned to the realm of death, nor would his body experience decay. 32 “Can’t you see it? God has resurrected Jesus, and we all have seen him! 33 “Then God exalted him to his right hand upon the throne of highest honor. And the Father gave him the authority to send the promised Holy Spirit, which is being poured out upon us today. This is what you’re seeing and hearing! 34 “David wasn’t the one who ascended into heaven, but the one who prophesied: ‘The Lord Jehovah said to my Lord, I honor you by enthroning you beside me, 35 until I make your enemies a footstool beneath your feet.’ 36 “Now everyone in Israel can know for certain that Jesus, whom you crucified, is the one God has made both Lord and the Messiah.” 37 When they heard this they were crushed and realized what they had done to Jesus. Deeply moved, they said to Peter and the other apostles, “What do we need to do, brothers?” 38 Peter replied, “Repent and return to God, and each one of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus, the Anointed One, to have your sins removed. Then you may take hold of the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For God’s promise of the Holy Spirit is for you and your families, for those yet to be born and for everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 Peter preached to them and warned them with these words: “Be rescued from the wayward and perverse culture of this world!” 41 Those who believed the word that day numbered three thousand. They were all baptized and added to the church.

What do we Need to do, brothers?

Seizing the moment in the midst of the crowd’s bewilderment and confusion, Peter addresses the people in Spirit-filled utterance (see 2:4). He begins with a formal address, Fellow Jews, which will soften as he proceeds (men of Israel, 2:22; brothers, 2:29). His message will explain the Pentecost event as God’s saving acts and show its crucial importance for his hearers and for us. Though those drunk and those filled with the Spirit are “carried out of themselves into an abnormal sense of freedom and expressiveness,” the cause and the end results are entirely different Peter with good humor dismisses this empirical explanation with further empirical evidence: in a culture where the first meal is not taken until ten o’clock, nine o’clock in the morning is too early in the day to find people drunk

Acts (Apostolic Gospel at Pentecost: The Immediate Cause (2:22–36))

But how can a Messiah who suffers and dies also reign forever (Ps 22:15–16)? It is possible only if that Messiah rises from the dead. David was permitted to see ahead of time this vital stage in God’s process of redemption. So he could speak confidently of Messiah’s resurrection when he said that Messiah was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay (Acts 2:31). What a wise God to plan a path the Messiah would follow to effect salvation! What a merciful God to reveal a portion of that path to prophets, so that now, as we look back after the fulfillment, it all makes sense

See First 1 Pet 1:10–12

The ultimate cause and significance of the Spirit’s empowerment is found in God and his saving purposes, as the prophet Joel foretold. In the last days—the final days of this age, the time when the “age to come” is inaugurated—God promises to pour out his Spirit on all people. Joel used the imagery of the vivifying impact of a Near Eastern torrential downpour on parched earth to picture the generosity, finality and universality of the Spirit’s coming. And Peter declares that this is now happening before the very eyes and in the very hearing of his audience. In contrast to the selective and occasional outpouring of the Spirit on king and prophet in the Old Testament time of promise (1 Sam 10:10; 16:14; Ezek 11:5), here the Spirit comes without regard to age, sex, social status or, as Acts 2:39 indicates, ethnic origin.

What the Spirit empowers people to do is prophesy. Prophecy for Luke encompasses Spirit-filled speaking in other languages where dreams and visions guide the post-Pentecost church) and proclamatory witness .

As the Old Testament prophets made God’s will known by witnessing to his Word, so now, as Luther says, all Christians are Spirit-enabled to bear witness to “knowledge of God through Christ which the Holy Spirit kindles and makes to burn through the word of the gospel

Acts (Apologia for Pentecost: Ultimate Cause and Saving Significance (2:14–21))

Joel and Peter remind us of the decisiveness of these last days by pointing to cosmic signs on earth and in heaven. The universe will reveal what a shambles sinful humankind makes of things by its constant assault on God’s moral order.

From this the human race should know that judgment must come at the day of the Lord (Is 13:6, 9; Ezek 30:3; Zeph 1:14–15).

The hope held out by Joel is thus vitally significant. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Acts 2:21/Joel 2:32).

Today, living in a time of rapid social change, moral decay, environmental crisis and seemingly unmanageable economic and political problems, we can identify with the apostle’s and prophet’s sense of the end.

We are comforted that history is not out of control, for God is constantly at work. We live in the time of the Spirit’s life-giving presence—and there is the challenge: will we call on the name of the Lord and be saved?