“OUR EXALTED LORD AND SAVIOR”
ACTS 2:22-36

I. Introduction
John Wesley, the eighteenth century English preacher, trained many men for the gospel min-istry. When he thought they were ready, he would send them out to preach wherever and whenever they could. Upon their return to him he would ask them two questions: The first was, “When you preached, did anyone get saved?” The second was, “When you preached, did anyone get angry?”

If the answer to both questions was, “No,” Wesley would tell them, “In that case, you ought to pursue a different vocation, because the Lord has not called you to preach the gospel. When the Holy Spirit convicts people of their sin, they either get saved or they get angry.”

Why is that? It is because the gospel, when properly preached, exposes our fallen nature. It tells us the truth about ourselves. And that truth is not pretty. We are nowhere near as nice as we think we are. On the contrary, we are all lost sinners in desperate need of a Savior. So I believe that John Wesley had a point. When someone preaches a so-called gospel that fails to garner any response at all, you can be sure that it is not the pure gospel of Jesus Christ.

Over two hundred years later, John MacArthur, still preaching and teaching today at the age 76, has said this: “The preacher’s objective is never to minimize conflict over the gospel, because inevitably the gospel is an offense. The mark of a great leader is not how well he avoids conflict, but how courageously he accepts it.”

John Wesley and John MacArthur could not be more different in their views of predestina-tion and free will. Their views typify the nearly two-thousand year old conflict between the theological models commonly called Arminianism and Calvinism. But both men recognized the reality that a gospel that neither convicts nor saves – a gospel filled with happy talk and “warm fuzzies” – accomplishes nothing.

This morning we will hear Peter as he continues preaching on the Day of Pentecost. There will be no happy talk and no warm fuzzies. There will only be the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ, and the truth about those who are hearing it. The Apostle Peter will both proclaim and explain the truth. That is to say, he will preach and teach the Word of God. Then he will step back and let the Holy Spirit accomplish His divine purpose. And we know He will!
Isaiah 55:11
11 So shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.

What will God’s Word accomplish on this first day of the first church?
Those who hear it will be convicted of their sin. And they will do exactly what those who hear the Word of God today will do with it. They will either run to saving faith or they will run away from it.
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II. Review
It is the Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. The Lord Jesus was resurrected from the dead fifty days ago. Ten days ago he ascended to heaven from the Mount of Olives. Only minutes ago the Holy Spirit descended from heaven, baptized (indwelled) the believers who were present, and filled them with the power of God.

The response of the unbelievers to this miracle has been predictable. They have witnessed a movement of God, but being spiritually blind and deaf, they’ve attributed it to drunkenness. But this is the very moment of the church’s birth. And Peter, for all intents and purposes, the first pastor of the first church, has stood up to face this unbelief and speak the truth.

First Peter got their attention.
*Acts 2:14b-15a
14b “…let this be known to you, and give heed to my words.
15a “For these men are not drunk, as you suppose…”

He then proceeds to quote from the Scriptures and explain to them that what they are wit-nessing is the beginning of the fulfillment of prophecy. More specifically, they are witness-ing the first day of the last days before the Second Coming of the Messiah. Quoting prophe-cies from the Book of Joel, Peter speaks of some of the events of the Great Tribulation that will take place immediately before Jesus’ return in power and glory. And he speaks of the joys of the Millennial Kingdom when God will pour out His Spirit on believing Israel.

Between this Day of Pentecost (when God has sent His Spirit), and the Day of the Lord (when God will send Jesus at His Second Coming) there will be a time of grace. We know it as the Church Age. We live in it now, but we believe that the Church Age will soon come to an end, when Jesus will return to judge the lost. But in the meantime…
*Acts 2:21
21 “And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.”

Peter’s premise in vv. 14-21 is that if the last days have already begun, then the Jewish Messiah must have already come. What Peter will do in vv. 22-36 is show them that Jesus of Nazareth is that Messiah. And that brings us to this morning’s text in Acts.
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III. Text
What follows will convict Peter’s hearers as few things could possibly do. How could this Jesus be their Messiah? Hadn’t they just had Him arrested, tried, and executed?
Just before we look at the rest of Peter’s sermon, I want us to remember that this is the very same Peter who, less than eight weeks earlier, was a prideful and boastful man, and who, when faced with the reality of Jesus’ death, denied Him and fled as a coward when the Lord needed him the most. But now Peter has been changed; now he is a completely different man. And now God is going to use him in a marvelous and exciting way. What happened? We know what happened! He has been indwelled by and filled with the Holy Spirit.
*Acts 2:22-36 (Please stand with me in honor of reading God’s Word.)
22 “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know –
23 this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.
24 “And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.
25 “For David says of Him, ‘I was always beholding the LORD in my presence; for He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.
26 ‘Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted (rejoiced); moreover my flesh also will abide in hope;
27 because you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.
28 ‘You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of glad-ness with Your presence.’
29 “Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.
30 “And so, because he was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants upon his throne,
31 he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was nei-ther abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.
32 “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.
33 “Therefore having been exalted (raised up) to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear.
34 “For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says: ‘The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand,
35 until I make Your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’
36 “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ – this Jesus whom you crucified.”

In this portion – the heart of Peter’s sermon – he focuses on Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and exaltation. Jesus is alive and He is coming back!
In v. 22 Peter begins with something that he knows his hearers cannot deny.
*Acts 2:22
22 “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know –

“…listen to these words!” Peter’s boldness probably surprises these men who are listening to him. They know that he was anything but bold only a few short weeks ago. He begins by identifying Jesus as “the Nazarene” (sometimes translated as “Jesus of Nazareth”). It’s the name that He was known by during the three years of His ministry, and was the name that Pontius Pilate had placed on the cross.

Peter is essentially saying that Jesus proved who He was by performing miracles, signs, and wonders. Even the Pharisee Nicodemus – who ultimately came to saving faith – admitted that Jesus must have come from God because he said, “…no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him (John 3:2b).” Wouldn’t you think that Peter’s use of just one of those words – “miracles,” “wonders,” or “signs” – would have been sufficient to make his point about Jesus? The answer is “No,” because individually they don’t convey the full impact of the supernatural things that the Lord did.

• The word “miracle” is translated from the Greek “dunamis.” The word actually means “power,” or more specifically, “internal power.” We get the word “dyna-mite” from it. Think of it. A stick of dynamite is a rather benign object, isn’t it? It doesn’t do anything until its internal power is released. Then it does something! So in Acts 2:22 the word “miracle” expresses the supernatural power of God.

• The word “wonders” is “tĕras.” It speaks not of the power that performed the mira-cle, but of the results of those miracles. It isn’t the explosive itself; it’s what the explosive did. So the wonders are the tremendous impact that the miracles had on those who witnessed them.

• The word “signs” is “sēmĕiŏn.” This word addresses neither the power nor the result of Jesus’ supernatural works. Rather, it speaks of the reason He did them – their purpose.

But no miracle or wonder or sign has any real value unless it points to the One who performs it. Jesus didn’t do them in His own power. Peter is careful to tell us that “God performed them through Jesus.” He did them to focus people’s attention on Jesus as the Messiah, the One sent from God to both display and deliver spiritual truth.

What Peter says next cuts right to the heart of the matter. He says to the men of Israel that God did these things, “…in your midst, just as you yourselves know.” He is telling them that they cannot claim ignorance. There is no gray here; there is no “wiggle room.” They did not reject Jesus because of lack of evidence.
They rejected Him for the same reason that people reject Him today. People love their sin, and when God’s exposes it, they hate God. Here is an example of the hatred. We know that one of the things Jesus called Himself was “the light of the world.”
*John 3:19-20
19 “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.
20 “For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”

“…men love darkness!” That’s the problem, isn’t it? Men don’t reject Christ because they don’t know who He is. They know. Even those who hated Him the most could not deny His miracles. In John 11 Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Unbelief knew He had done that. But how did unbelief respond?
*John 11:47-53
47 Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs.
48 “If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”
49 But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all,
50 nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.”
51 Now this he did not say on his own initiative; but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation,
52 and not for the nation only, but that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
53 So from that day on they planned together to kill Him.

What more proof do you need that fallen sinners hate the truth of God? And that takes us right back the next verse in Acts 2.
*Acts 2:23
23 “…this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.”

Let me paraphrase and change the order in this verse for just a moment. Peter is saying, “‘…this Man,’ Jesus the Nazarene, was killed by you. It was you godless men who rejected and murdered your own Messiah. You did it!” Too many in the modern church would say, “Well, that’s no way to talk to people. That’s no way to win friends and influence people. That’s no way to build a church. Where’s the love in that? Peter wouldn’t get anywhere with a message like that today.”

Maybe Peter wouldn’t, but the Holy Spirit would!
Unless and until the truth that you and I are responsible for Jesus’ death penetrates into the deepest recesses of our beings, we will never understand the Lord Jesus Christ or what He has done for us. We recoil at the idea that it was us who nailed Him to the cross, but it was us. Before we repented and came to saving faith we were the godless men and women who put Jesus to death. Were it not for your sin and for mine, Jesus would not even have been there. That’s the truth that Peter is driving home in the second part of Acts 2:23.

But now look back at the first part of Acts 2:23. It was God who turned Jesus over (delivered Him up) to those godless men who would murder Him. Listen, when God sent Jesus into the world, the Father was turning His Son over to His enemies. But it was all the “predeter-mined plan and foreknowledge of God.”

This is where one of the greatest of all theological battles rages. The Scriptures clearly and repeatedly teach that God planned Jesus’ death, but men did it. Then the Scriptures just as clearly and repeatedly teach that God is not responsible for Jesus’ death; men are responsible for it. And because men are responsible for it, they will be judged and condemned for it. At first glance that seems to be a contradiction of massive proportions, but it is no contradiction at all, once we begin to embrace the awesomeness and magnificence of a sovereign God.

In order for us to do that, we need to understand the meaning of the words “predetermined,” “plan,” and “foreknowledge.” The first, “predetermined,” is from the Greek “hŏrizō.” We get the word “horizon” from it. It has to do with boundaries and limits. God sets the boun-daries and the limits of everything in His creation. And why not – isn’t the right to do so His and His alone?

Consider the word “plan.” It is “bŏulē,” meaning “decree.” It has to do with God’s deci-sions as they relate to His ultimate purposes. Who can seriously argue that God’s decrees, decisions, and purposes are not His alone to make? And who can seriously argue that God’s decrees, decisions, and purposes could be anything other than perfect and absolutely holy?

Finally, consider the word “foreknowledge.” It’s translated from the Greek “prŏgnōsis” from which we get the word “prognosis.” In English it means “the prediction of a probable course of events.” But in Greek there is nothing “probable” about it at all. It means “God’s deliberate and foreordained relationship with those whom He has saved.”

This means far more than the common Arminian view that God planned the future around the decisions He already knew men would make. Such a view serves only to make a holy and sovereign God subservient to the decisions of sinful and fallen men.

God’s plan was predetermined and foreordained. It included the use of sinful men in accom-plishing His eternal purpose. They were already sinners. They already hated Him and His Son. He simply used the sin that they loved and their hatred for God to His own ends. That is precisely what sovereignty does. Thus Jesus was delivered up according to God’s plan.
The fact that God uses evil to accomplish His eternal purpose should neither surprise nor confound any Bible-believing Christian. Men are never held responsible for God’s plans. Men are held responsible for their sin. Judas Iscariot is a prime example of this truth. Jesus was referring to Judas when He spoke of this truth on the night He instituted Communion at the Last Supper.
Luke 22:21-22
21 “But behold, the hand of the one betraying Me is with Me on the table.
22 “For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined; but woe to that man (Judas) by whom He is betrayed.” (back to Acts 2:23)

So in Acts 2:23 Peter emphasizes the reality that God planned this course of events for the Messiah, and the men who should have welcomed Him rejected and murdered Him. That’s the bad news. But here is the good news…
*Acts 2:24-32
24 “And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.
25 “For David says of Him, ‘I was always beholding the LORD in my presence; for He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.
26 ‘Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted; moreover my flesh also will abide in hope;
27 because you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.
28 ‘You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of glad-ness with Your presence.’
29 “Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.
30 “And so, because he was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants upon his throne,
31 he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was nei-ther abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.
32 “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.”

Just as these unbelievers couldn’t deny the miracles, wonders, and signs God performed through Jesus, neither could they deny His resurrection. I love what Peter says in v. 24 – “…it was impossible for Jesus to be held in (death’s) power.” Ponder that wonderful truth, Christian. Since you are in Christ, and Christ is in you, it is also impossible for you to be held in death’s power. Just as He came out of the grave, so too will you. This must be the case because every true Christian has been baptized into Christ’s death.
Romans 6:5
5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.
Peter then confirms this truth by quoting David from Psalm 16. David writes his prophecy in the first person, but ultimately the Messiah Himself is speaking.
*Psalm 16:8-11
8 I have set the LORD continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; my flesh also will dwell securely.
10 For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol (Hades); neither will you allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.
11 You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

In v. 10 David uses the Hebrew word “Sheol,” while Peter, in Acts 2:27, uses the Greek word “Hades.” There is no confusion here because they’re the same word. It can mean either “the abode of the dead” or “the grave.” The word is rightly defined based on the context in which it is found. Therefore, in both Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2:27, the word speaks of the grave. Jesus’ body did not “undergo decay.” (back to Acts 2:29)

From where Peter is speaking near the temple, he can literally point to David’s grave at the top of Mount Zion. What’s left of King David’s body is still there. David’s body has under-gone decay. David is still dead. So it is obvious that David was not talking about himself in Psalm 16. He was prophesying about the Messiah – Jesus the Nazarene. His body has not been abandoned to the grave. His body has not undergone decay. He is not dead; He is alive. And in Acts 2:32 Peter reminds his hearers once more that they know all of this to be true. “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.”

Peter’s argument is virtually ironclad. The unbelievers who are hearing him can deny Christ and reject Him, but they cannot escape the truth. Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Son, the Jewish Messiah sent from God, and they have killed Him. But He has been raised from the dead.
*Acts 2:33-35
33 “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear.
34 “For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says: ‘The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand,
35 until I make Your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’

Not only has Jesus been raised from the dead, He’s “been exalted to the right hand of God.” That means He holds the seat of honor in heaven. And in v. 33 Peter says that what they have seen and heard take place on this Day of Pentecost came right from heaven. Jesus has ascended and now His Holy Spirit has descended. That is exactly what Jesus said would happen after His departure.
John 14:18
18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
John 16:7-8
7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.
8 “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and right-eousness, and judgment…”

What has happened is anything but the drunkenness Peter and the apostles were accused of back in Acts 2:13. Rather, what has happened is that the Holy Spirit has come and given birth to the church. Thus the Church Age has begun, and this Day of Pentecost is the first day of the last days.

Jesus ascended to heaven after He was resurrected from the dead. David did not. Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God the Father. David is not. And God will soon make Jesus’ enemies a footstool for His feet, not for David’s. With all of that Peter has driven home the truth. Unbelieving Israel can claim to deny the fact that Jesus is their Messiah, but the facts are undeniable.
*Acts 2:36
36 “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ – this Jesus whom you crucified.”
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IV. Conclusion
In v. 36 the word “certain” is “asphalōs.” It is a strong word that means “absolutely” and “without a doubt.” You can deny it all you want, but you cannot change the truth. God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ.

So the question is not whether Jesus is who the Scriptures say He is; the question is what are you and I going to do about it? Listen, the birth, the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension, and the return of Jesus the Nazarene are all certain facts. We are called to believe them, to repent (to change our minds about who He is), to humble ourselves, to confess our sins, to turn to Him in faith, and to receive Him and His gift of forgiveness and eternal life.
John 1:12-13
12 But as many as received Him (Jesus), to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,
13 who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

That is the truth that convicts people. I believe John Wesley was right. People either run to it or away from it. What will you do?

~ Pray ~