From Background Notes [BN] for February 25th/26th written by Pastor Bob Brown:
Here is a heavy-duty word for a serious claim to facts. He grounds his sermon in the witness of history and in his own eyewitness account of what took place, corroborated by his fellow apostles who saw the same things.
Recall the rationale for picking a replacement for Judas: he needed to be someone who witnessed everything from the time of John's baptism up to that moment. However, Peter is not just giving a history lesson. Because these things have happened, this is what Israel must do in response. He communicates that idea through the use of the word "exhort" (Greek: parakaleō, "to beg, urge; encourage, speak words of encouragement; request, ask, appeal to; console, comfort, cheer up; invite, summon"). Jesus called the Holy Spirit the paraklētos, "the one called alongside" (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7: variously translated as "Comforter, Counselor, Help or simply transliterated as "Paraclete"). Peter, empowered by the Holy Spirit, engages in the Holy Spirit work of encouraging and summoning the New Israel to their God-assigned responsibilities. God called them as a new people for a definite moral and social task in this world. [BN, 12]
Join us this week in Study & Worship at ChicagoFirstChurch of the Nazarene –
* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am, 5:30pm
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