22-23 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ 24-25 And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ 26 God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”

4 vs 1-3 And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. 4 But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand. Acts 3:22-4:4 English Standard Version

The apostle Peter was preaching to the large crowd that gathered around him and John after Jesus had given them power to heal a man at the templegate in Jerusalem who'd been lame from birth. That happened around 3pm in the afternoon, and vs 1-3 of chapter 4 tell us ‘it was evening’ when they were arrested, So Peter's message was probably a lot longer than the bit we read in Acts. Peter pointed out how what the people were seeing with their own eyes had been foretold by Moses, and then by Samuel and all the prophets who came after him. What would you say was the significance of that?

I’d suggest that it reminds us that the message called 'the gospel', wasn't some chance event that took place, or some new teaching, but something that had its roots in the whole of the Old Testament. Peter spoke of God's promise to Abraham, which goes back to the first book of the Bible, and over 1,900 years before Jesus came into the world. Samuel, and the prophets who came after him, covered a period from around 1100 BC to 400 BC. So the story of Jesus isn't a novel myth invented by people 2000 years ago, it was the culmination of God's wonderful plan of salvation with its roots in all He had progressively revealed in the Old Testament. What then are the fruits of this message? We see at least two things in Acts 4:1-4.

The first of these was the negative reaction and response of the religious leaders in Israel at that time. Luke, the man who wrote the Book of Acts, tells us that the leaders were “greatly annoyed because the disciples were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” Sadly, this fierce rejection of the message about Jesus by Israel's religious leaders has continued throughout the centuries. And not only by Israel, but in many nations of the world. Does that mean the gospel failed? What do we read in vs 4?

While many in Israel rejected Jesus, a growing number believed on Him for salvation. Years later the apostle Paul (a Jew who became a follower of Christ) spoke of his sorrow that so many of his fellow Jews resisted Jesus. Speaking of Israel he said: “Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised!” But he went on to show that the rejection by many of them didn't mean God's plan had failed. He pointed out that it's not physically being born a Jew that leads to salvation, but it’s a spiritual birth that makes a person belong to the people God saves.

God's plan was always that the message of salvation would first be preached to Jews, and then to all the nations of the world. Today's reading shows how the message began to bear the fruit of Jews being saved. And in the last book of the Bible we read how the apostle John saw a vision of a great uncountable multitude of people from every nation, tribe, and language, standing before God's throne, and before the Lamb, joyfully saying: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:9-10) Yes, God's gospel has been bearing much fruit over the past 2,000 years of people being saved through Jesus.