Scripture Daily

Context No. 1155 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 2:29-35: in context

29“Brothers, I may tell you freely of the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, he would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, 31he foreseeing this, spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that his soul wasn’t left in Hades, and his flesh didn’t see decay. 32This Jesus God raised up, to which we all are witnesses. 33Being therefore exalted by the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you now see and hear. 34For David didn’t ascend into the heavens, but he says himself, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit by my right hand 35until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’

In his Pentecost sermon, Peter is proving that the resurrection was promised long before it happened. He points out that David, in the psalm, spoke of one who would not be abandoned to the grave or see decay, but that cannot be David himself, because, Peter says bluntly, David died, was buried, and his tomb is here among us to this day. David was a prophet who foresaw the resurrection of the Christ, his descendant. This Jesus, Peter declares, God raised up, and we are all witnesses; exalted to God's right hand, he has poured out the Spirit you now see. For David did not ascend, yet he said, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand.

Peter's argument turns on a plain, verifiable fact: David's tomb is still here, and it is occupied. Everyone in Jerusalem could go visit it; David died and stayed dead, his body decayed like everyone's. So when David spoke of one who would not see decay, he was not talking about himself; he was prophesying about his greater son. And the contrast is the whole force of the sermon: David's tomb has a body in it, but the tomb of Jesus is empty. The one who fulfilled the psalm, whose flesh did not see decay, is the risen Christ, now exalted to the right hand of God and pouring out the Spirit that the crowd can see and hear. The evidence is right in front of them, an occupied tomb for David, an empty one for Jesus, and the outpoured Spirit as proof of his exaltation. The whole hope of the gospel rests on that difference between two graves. David's still holds him; Christ's could not. And because the tomb is empty, the man they crucified is now Lord at God's right hand, and everything Peter says flows from that.

Do I rest my hope on the difference between the two tombs, David's still occupied and Christ's empty, and on the risen Lord now exalted at God's right hand?

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