Peter's Sermon--Exalting Christ, Part 1
Acts 2:22-23
We come in Acts Chapter 2 then in our continuing study of Acts to the sermon that Peter preached on the day of Pentecost. Now we've been seeing much about this al the way through the book of Acts as God as set the stage for the preaching of this sermon. Although the sermon doesn't start until Chapter 2, verse 14. Everything leading up to that is really just preliminary to this preaching of the powerful sermon that Peter gives. The occasion of Pentecost has no parallel. The sermon has no parallel prior to it. It is a very unusual occasion. The Spirit of God has descended. The Spirit of God has melted together by baptism all the believers into one body, the body of Christ. Then the Spirit of God filled each of those believers and sent them out with a new kind of boldness and speaking languages that they did not know. And speaking to the people the wonderful works of God.
And all of that was simply a buildup to this fantastic sermon that climaxes the day of Pentecost. Everything that the Lord had done up to this time was to set the stage so Peter could stand up and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now just to review for a moment. You remember that in Chapter 1, Jesus gave the disciples all the equipment they needed to fulfill the commission the He gave them, which was to go into all the world and preach the gospel. They had all of the equipment to do that. The only missing thing was the power of the Holy Spirit. And He said, "not many days hence you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit."
And in Chapter 2 it came. Beginning at Chapter 2, the Spirit of God descended. They were blended into the body. They were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and they began to do the job. And then God in the marvelous miracle allowed the Spirit of God to be made obvious to some extent by the sound of a mighty rushing wind and the crowd began to gather. Then the disciples begin to speak in languages and because of that, the people were confused and they couldn't understand how a lot of ignorant Galileans could possibly be such linguists.
And then to hear them speak the wonderful works of God even confused them more, because they had believed, the Jews had, that these men were of the devil. They had concluded must earlier that what Jesus did, He did by the power of whom? Satan, Matthew Chapter 12. And they believed that this was a whole satanic movement against their true God. And now all of a sudden, they were speaking the wonderful works of Jehovah God, which made it a little bit hard for them to understand. There are only 2 supernatural sources for miracles, Satan and God. And you can be sure that Satan wouldn't be going around glorifying God. Therefore, the recognize that they were speaking concerning God and yet they believed in their hearts them to be blasphemers because they had assigned themselves to Jesus Christ who was the greatest blasphemer because He claimed to be Messiah.
And so they were confused. At the same time that they were confused, they were gathered together. They did not understand what was going on and that's exactly what the Holy Spirit wanted to have accomplished. He wanted them to be together in one place, well confused. And involved in it would be activity of the supernatural. And so that somebody could stand up and say now let me tell you what this is all about. And that's exactly the setting for Peter's sermon.
There were several hundred thousand people in Jerusalem at this time. It was the key time because it was the feast of harvest, 50 days after Passover. Hence it's called Pentecost. And so they are gathered together in a perfect fullness of time type fulfillment to fulfill the picture of the feast of harvest. They are drawn in their minds and in their bodies into one confused conglomerate and they are ready to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. The strategy is fantastic. It is the key time. Because Jerusalem has been invaded by all the Jews from everywhere.
And everyone of them is going to get infected with the gospel. They may not all catch the disease of salvation, if we can call it that in this analogy, but they're all going to be carriers, at least of what's gone here when they go back to their own country. And so it's a critical time to get the message out. And so gathering all of them together confounding them by the miracle of languages, then preaching the gospel to them sets them back to their own homes with a lot going on in their minds and an awful lot to tell everybody.
And thus they became willing or unwilling carriers of the message of Jesus Christ back to all of their own people. So in response to sovereign timing, the Holy Spirit came. And the strategy was fantastic. God had set the stage perfectly. Now it's interesting to me just to draw a couple of tangents here, footnotes. It's interesting to me that everything up to verse 14 was preparation and immediately when the preparation was done, they did the job and the preparation was all spiritual. There was no structural preparation.
Somebody asked me this week what's your view of church organization. And I began to draw from this particular passage, a least a basic view and that is the first thing the church is to do is not to get organized, it's to get at it. Do you realize that in the book of Acts the basic structure of the church never even begins to appear until the 6th Chapter. For the first part of the book of Acts up until Chapter 6, they're just kind of moving with the Spirit of God. And then all of a sudden in Acts Chapter 6, they realize that it's time to set some structure so that they can really operate like the Spirit wants. In other words, the first responsibility is to do the job and worry about getting organized later. Not to create a structure seemingly in which everything has to function. In Acts Chapter 6, finally the apostles who had had to serve dinner and everything else, said look it's ridiculous. Guys we've got to give ourselves to the most important things. We'll give ourselves continually to the study of the word and to prayer and that's really what the ministry's all about. "You guys wait on tables. Chose out from among you men full of the Holy Spirit to do the job." And they were called what? Deacons. And that's the basic structure of the church.
It never ever gets any more involved than that. That's it. The leaders called, of course, in the early church, the beginning church, the 1st century church that apostolic church, they were the apostles and prophets. Later on called bishops, pastor, teachers, or elders or Presbyters, all the same idea. And that is the leader, that's the pastor teacher and under them are the deacons and that's it. That's all there is in the involvement of the organized church. It stayed just that flexible because the Spirit of God moves the way He wants to move and it's always different. It's always different.
We've found here at Grace Church that as the church has grown, as the Spirit of God has led us in certain directions that all of a sudden the old organizations of the church are obsolete and we keep running into old organizations that don't have anything to do with what we're doing. In other words, the church is to be organized only as it accommodates the moving of the Spirit of God flexible enough so that the Spirit can move in another direction without throwing everything into chaos.
LaCoch said on one occasion, "Christians when they get organized become very un-Christian." And that's very often true. When the structure restricts the work of the Spirit, then the structure isn't right. And so these people weren't too concerned about the organization. They didn't start a committee immediately after all the preparation. They just got at it and preached. And then later on they let the structure catch and accommodate the work of the Spirit.
And so they were completely unconcerned about organization. They were a living organism. Now you don't have to sit down and plan your body. Do you have to do that? Plan your activities for your hand for the day? Plan the activities for your feet? Do you sit down and map it all out. Now knee you be sure you cooperate with ankle there. We want to get a subcommittee to make sure that thigh goes along.
When you have an organism you don't need to have an organization. And so the structures are always minimal in the New Testament because they were living, breathing body of Christ really doing it the way God intended them to do it. And the only kind of structure they had was to accommodate the ministry that the Spirit was directed.
And the most obvious characteristic that we see of them is that they got right at the job. So many times we excuse ourselves to work on something when we could go right out and do it. Now this was a new age. We saw that didn't we? A new age had begun in the day of Pentecost. The age of law had ceased. The age of grace had been born. The age of the church had been born and this was a whole new ballgame. In every dimension the new age had dawned a few days before this the disciples were huddling in secret in their little upper room and they were kind of afraid. They were hesitant, they were powerless, they were hobbled by questions and fears and doubts and weren't too sure really what was going to go on and all of a sudden Pentecost came, the Spirit of God came, the Spirit of God filled them, no more secret knocks, no more little secret passwords. They were out on the streets and they were announcing Jesus Christ all over the place like a mortar barrage. They were unhesitating.
The transformation proved the Spirit had come. The transformation prove the new age had been born. And unto the energy that was there it's because of the birth of a new age, because of the birth of the church and because of the baptism and the filling of the Spirit of God they moved out to preach Jesus Christ with power and boldness. And they began in Peter's sermon. Peter was first. He got the first shot at it. And he announced a blockbuster announcement to the Jews. He announced to them, I'm telling you the messianic age has arrived. Now that is a fantastic announcement.
Every Jew since the first one has been waiting for that. Since the Abrahamic covenant in which God promised to bless all nations through the seed of Abraham. Every Jew since then has been waiting for messianic times for the Messiah to come for the wrap up on history. For the time when the kingdom would come, when the wrong would be made right and the injustice is just and Israel would be recovered, placed in the land and ruled in the land and all would be well and the curse would be reversed and the lion would lie down with the lamb and the desert would blossom with a rose, that all...like a rose. That all of these things would happen. Every Jew was waiting for that day.
Then all of a sudden Peter stands up and says you know what you've just seen, you've seen the beginning of messianic times. That is a blockbuster announcement. And that's how Peter begins his summer. They thought that the disciples were drunk. That's how spiritually perceptive they were. Peter says they aren't drunk, verse 15, "But this is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel, it shall come to pass in the last days." You've seen the beginning of the last days. The last days in Jewish terminology has been going on now for 2,000 years. The last days to the Jews meant the time of Messiah. Messiah has come and He'll back to set up the kingdom. All of that is the last days, the Jewish last days.
And so Peter makes this fantastic announcement that the Spirit has come as Joel said he would and you have seen the beginning of the last days. That's how he begins his sermon. That's his introduction. Now we studied his introduction last week, and we saw that his introduction explains Pentecost. Today we're going to study his theme and his theme exalts Christ.
Like any good preacher, he starts with an introduction, then has a theme, then he makes an appeal at the end and then examines the results. And to begin with, we saw the introduction last time as he explained Pentecost. He said you know what it is? It's the birth of the messianic age. Now let's face it, if the messianic age has been born, then Messiah must be around, true? That's the point Peter wants to make.
He says in verse 21, and we saw this last week, "It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's time folks to get saved. It's messianic times. It is the last days. And he shows how that some of the last days will involve the signs that are indicated in verses 18, 19, and 20. And these are signs, of course, of the second coming of Christ. But nevertheless, this whole period is the last days.
Joel's prophecy has already been prefilled. It will be fulfilled at the second coming of Christ. And we studied that last week. But he says you need to get saved. Now if he's saying to them it's messianic times, it is the last days, you need to get saved, then the implication is obvious. There must be a Messiah around here somewhere. That's exactly what Peter wants you to think because he's about to tell them who it is.
And he informs them in his theme, verses 22-36 that the Messiah is none other than Jesus of Nazareth. This is a powerful, powerful sermon. If we could only reconstruct the whole Jewish attitude and the whole scene, you would see that this was a dynamic event to announce that messianic times had come would be one thing, but to announce it view of the miracles that they had just scene and the wonders of those languages made it monumental.
And then for Peter to say what you saw was the beginning of the end. It's messianic times. Now let me tell you who the Messiah is. And then when he opened his mouth and said it is Jesus of Nazareth, can you even begin to imagine the reaction? The same one that 50 days earlier had been crucified as they all screamed for His blood. Peter says, "you've killed the Messiah of God." The one you've been waiting for centuries and centuries and centuries came and you killed Him. That's Peter's announcement.
Now to the Gentile reader, it may seem like a small thing that Jesus is the Messiah, because we don't understand what Messiah is. Messiah is the ultimate ruler. Messiah is the one of whom it was said the scepter shall not depart from Judah. Messiah is the one promised to David in 2 Samuel Chapter 7 when he said, "there will come a king who will be an everlasting king, who will rule in peace and righteousness over Israel." Messiah was the great anointed king who would come and set everything right and give Israel its kingdom and reign in Israel and restore everything that had been lost. Messiah was the greatest figure in the Jewish heart and mind. And for Peter to announce that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah to the Jew was the absolute height of blasphemy.
They crucified Jesus because he was a blasphemer, they said. And here's Peter continuing to blasphemy. I'll never forget I went into the office of a rabbi in Hollywood who is the rabbi of the largest temple there and I wanted to just talk to him about Jesus Christ. I got an appointment with him and I went in and I...his name was Bowman, and I said sir, I'd just like to ask you what you think of Jesus Christ. And he looked at his fist and he hit the desk as hard as he could and things just went up and right down again. And he pointed his finger at me and said don't you ever mention that name in my presence. That's what he said.
And then he says, you don't know anything about Judaism. He said, you can't even read the Talmud. I said, let me see a copy. He wasn't aware that I had had enough Hebrew to barely get by. Well, he didn't show me a copy, but I spent the time talking to him about everything but Jesus Christ. He refused to mention the name of Jesus Christ. And for Jesus to be exalted as the Messiah of Israel right in the face of all these Jews gathered in Jerusalem, was absolutely the most powerful dynamic, open and forceful issue that ever could have been brought to their attention. This was a serious situation. And Peter shows boldness encouraged like he has never shown before.
And so Peter stands up and he doesn't just say it. He proves it. He proves that Jesus was the Messiah and the evidence is overwhelming. And there are many things that Peter...he didn't use all his thunder in one sermon. You just keep reading through the book of Acts, the first part when Peter's preaching up through Chapter 12 and there's just thunder after thunder. He stores some of it up. It doesn't say it all at once. When you read through this chapter and I keep thinking to myself, boy why didn't He use that Old Testament passage. Gee, Peter if you had used that one and then later on you say oh yeah he did use it over here, see.
But Peter is going to prove that Jesus is Messiah. Now I want to show you just there are four things that he uses to prove it and we'll only cover two of them today. Four things that he uses to prove, the life of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and the exaltation. Life, death, resurrection and exaltation. It just goes chronologically right through it.
Verse 22, the life of Christ. Verse 23, death of Christ. Verse 24 clear on down to verse 32 the resurrection and then verse 33-35 the exaltation. He just says everything about Him, His life, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension into heaven all proves He is Messiah. And the sermon is so absolutely passionate and so overwhelming that when it's done with they are stunned and they are shocked and they stand there in a stupor and say what shall we do?
And then Peter tells them, repent. Look to begin with how Peter presents His life. This is the first thing that accredits Jesus as Messiah. Verse 22, "Ye men of Israel hear these words," and I like that positive approach. I like that boldness. "Ye men of Israel hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by Him in the midst of you as ye yourselves also know."
Did you catch two things in there? Number one, God did it. God did it. Number two, you saw it, you saw it. The same time the accredits Jesus by God, he indicts them because they can't claim ignorance. And so he begins with a confident demand for their attention. Listen to me, I'm going to talk to you about Jesus of Nazareth. "Ye men of Israel." He speaks first to the men of Israel. Christ came in the beginning you remember to Israel. Israel was always to be God's vehicle. It wasn't that God didn't want to reach the Gentiles. It was that God had designed to reach the Gentiles through Jews. But finally when the Jews rejected Christ, He just completely bypassed them and went directly to the Gentiles and called His church out of the Gentiles and the remnant of believing Jews.
And so here he announces again the message is to Israel. In the beginning Christ came to Israel and the disciples were told specifically, of course, to go to the outer most part of the earth, but the Bible still indicated that it would begin in Jerusalem. Jesus said, "You'll be witnesses to me in Jerusalem." That's where it'll all start. And that's grace, that's just grace. The message of grace is given to the ones who crucified Christ.
And so the age of grace begins with the greatest illustration of grace in the Bible. Grace to the crucifier. Grace to the unbelieving. There were times in the Old Testament, do you remember when God wrote Ichabod in Israel, that means the glory hath departed and just walked away, but here they have committed the greatest crime that could ever be committed. The execution of their own Messiah and yet He turns to them in love. That's the age of grace.
In the Old Testament, they would have seen the word Ichabod, and God would have walked away. In the age of grace, grace is extended. Now notice that Peter uses the name Jesus of Nazareth. This is, of course, not the theological name of Jesus, but it's His common name. It's the name by which the Jews called Him in mockery, because they all believed that nothing good came out of Nazareth. Nazareth was really nothing. I mean, just a little nothing town and for the Messiah to come out of Nazareth, they just didn't believe that. In John's gospel, they said Messiah, no prophet comes out of Galilee.
Nothing good, John 1, can come out of Nazareth. That was not where Messiah would come. Not through that kind of a pattern or route. And so they mockingly called Him Jesus of Nazareth. When He died on the cross, that's the inscription they put over His, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. Why? Because it was so incongruous for anybody from Nazareth to be king of anything. They thought that was a laughing kind of matter. And so Peter picks their own word, Jesus of Nazareth.
In a very sarcastic way, Jesus of Nazareth. The one that you have despised. And he uses that same name for Jesus in Chapter 3, verse 6, Chapter 4, verse 10, Chapter 10, verse 38, whenever he talks about Jesus, he called Him Jesus of Nazareth. Only the next time that he uses it, he puts the word Messiah in there. Jesus, Messiah, from Nazareth. Oh can you imagine the reaction?
Can you imagine they were tearing their...they were tearing their clothes you know hearing that. Jesus of Nazareth our Messiah. No way. It's an open rebuke to the Jews, because it was their mocking name for Him. And yet it's also a beautiful way for Peter to show the condescension of Jesus Christ who was God in human flesh and condescended all the way down to be a humble man from the humblest of villages, Jesus of Nazareth.
Then he says this, a man approved of God. That is just a rich statement. Jesus Christ didn't have to give testimony to Himself. He said in John 5, "I have a greater who gives testimony for me, my Father. John 8, "my Father in heaven." In John 5, He made the statement "That I don't do the things I do of myself. I do them because the Father shows them to me." He said, "My meat is to do," what, "the will of Him that sent me." He was approved by God.
Now what does it mean to be approved? This is a fantastic word, enapodeiknumai. It has many shades of meaning. Let me give you a couple and pull it together. First of all, the word is used in 1 Corinthians 4:9 for exhibiting. For putting something on display. And so we could translate it that way. Jesus of Nazareth, a man put on display by God. It also means to bring evidence to prove your point. It's used that way in Acts 25:7, the idea of proof. We could read it that way. Jesus of Nazareth, a man proven by God.
Thirdly, it's used in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 proclaiming someone to a high office. So just in that little word approved, you have the whole thing. You have God in human flesh on display. God in human flesh proven to be who He claims to be. And proclaimed to be the Messiah. Everything in that word is true of Jesus.&