¹As they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them, ²being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. ³And they laid hands on them and put them in jail until the next day, for it was already evening. ⁴But many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.

God had promised Abraham that He would populate the patriarchal family tree down-line into a populous and blessed nation (Gen. 15:2, 15:5, 22:17). God would then work through that nation to bless the entire world (Gen. 22:18). We know from studies of prophecy that it would be through one particular member of Abraham’s descendants, namely, Jesus Christ, that God would accomplish this. The Christian movement is all about that truth, to take the message of God reconciling the world to Himself and to experience the accompanying blessing of living out His image in our lives.

Israel on the day of Pentecost was at the crux of this truth, the revelation of Jesus as God’s Christ, the Messiah, who would bring God’s blessing. The question was, would Israel as a nation accept Jesus as God’s Christ or reject Him? So it is significant that Peter and John were confronted by the priests (the pinnacle of the Jewish religious system) together with the enforcement squad and the political heavyweights that were particularly offended by the proclamation of resurrection (the Sadducees opposed the concept of resurrection of the dead as a matter of principle). The apostles were speaking, in effect, to all of Israel, as represented by those standing before them.

Two divergent responses ensued. The first was rejection and suppression. Israel as a nation was in danger, on the verge of missing out on the very purpose for which God had called out Abraham and his descendants. To be sure, God would accomplish His purpose through Jesus, the singular Jew, but the nation as a whole was to bear testimony to God’s blessing. Now, would they get on board with God’s program or reject Jesus and be set aside? We see in today’s passage the beginning of Israel’s growing rejection of this proclamation of the truth.

The second response was hugely positive; many who heard the “message” (Greek: “logos,” that is, “word”) came to believe. Luke records the rapid growth of the movement, now standing at “about five thousand.” This is relatively small compared to the Jerusalem population, which at that time stood at twenty-five thousand to forty thousand but swelled to upwards of half a million during Passover. The Christian movement began explosively and continued to proliferate.

Lord, may we see once again an explosion of faith among the lost.