In the book of Acts, 2nd chapter, Peter's
testimony to the resurrection of Christ, beginning with
verse 22.
Ye men of Israel, hear these words.
Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God
among you, the miracles and wonders and signs
which God did by him in the midst
of you, as ye yourselves also know.
Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God ye have taken, and by
wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God
hath raised up, having loosed the pains of
death, because it was not possible that he
should beholden of it.
Therefore, being by the right hand of God
exalted, and having received of the Father the
promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed
forth this which ye now see and hear.
For David is not ascended into the heavens,
but he saith himself, The Lord said unto
my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand,
until I make thy foes thy footstool.
Therefore let all the house of Israel know
assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus
whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.
Now when they heard this, they were pricked
in their hearts, and said unto Peter and
to the rest of the apostles, Men and
brethren, what shall we do?
And Peter said unto them, Repent, and be
baptized every one of you in the name
of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins,
and ye shall receive the gift of the
Holy Ghost.
For the promise is unto you and your
children, and to all that are for all,
even as many as the Lord our God
shall call.
Now Peter here in his sermon preaches truth
that concerns Christ altogether, Christ.
Other people are mentioned only casually, but it
all centers around our Lord Jesus Christ himself,
Christ crucified and risen.
It was never in the mind of Peter
to teach the noble doctrines of Christ or
to refer to them.
It never was in the mind of Peter
to talk about the heroic example of our
Lord.
His teachings were noble and are noble, and
his example is heroic.
But the New Testament centers its emphasis around
Christ crucified and risen, and the New Testament
presents Christ as the last and ultimate object
of faith.
The whole question now is, What think ye
of Christ?
The question, What do you think of the
Bible, is out of date and has no
meaning since Christ and the Bible were confirmed
by the resurrection of the dead, and Christ
endorsed the Bible in toto.
And the question, What do you think of
the church, has no meaning now either.
Nobody can ask that and be truly sincere,
because Christ said, On this rock I will
build my church, and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it.
Now we have this question before us, What
are we going to do with Christ, and
What do we think of Christ?
And we have it whether we like it
or not.
We have it all year round.
We have it all the time.
We have it Easter, and we have it
the next day after Easter.
And we have it the third of July,
and we have it the ninth of November,
and we have it the first of December,
and we have it the third of January.
We have it every day of the year.
What are we going to do about this
man whom God has raised from the dead?
Christ is the last word to man, in
God Almighty's last word to man.
It's written that God at Sunday times, and
in divers manners, spake in time past unto
the fathers by the prophets.
But now in the last end of the
world, he hath spoken unto us by his
Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And it's written again that the word became
flesh.
When the word became flesh, God spoke.
He spoke his word in flesh.
He spoke his incarnated and fleshed word.
And Jesus Christ is that word.
And that sums up all that God would
say to men.
Now our religious question then is about Christ
himself, and all religious questions are reduced to
this one major one.
What do I think of Christ, and what
am I going to do about Christ?
Now there are those who pretend to have
doubts and problems concerning this, but they that
do are in love with themselves.
They are blinded by egotism and self-love,
and I respectfully claim the right to doubt
the sincerity of those who now are saying,
I have problems about the Bible, I have
problems about the church, I have problems about
morality.
All problems are reduced to one.
God spake his eternal word in Christ Jesus
the Lord, and so Christ is a settled
question and a question settler.
The sincere question of the honest seeker is
not what proof has Christianity, because when God
raised his Son from the dead, he gave
the only proof there was, and the only
proof there is, but he gave a proof
infinitely capable of settling the mind of anyone
who is concerned and who is sincere.
So the question is not what proof does
Christianity give, because we are not dealing with
Christianity, we are dealing with Christ.
We're dealing with the man who became flesh,
we're dealing with God who walked among men,
we're dealing with the God who gave his
life for men, and so the question is
not what do I think of Christianity, but
the question is what do I think of
Christ, and what am I going to do
about Christ?
And the question of the sincere man is
not, is Christ what he claimed to be?
Some claim they have doubts and wonders about
whether Christ is what he claimed to be,
but there should be no question here at
all, because the scripture says that Jesus was
approved of God among you.
He was approved of God with great stacks
of books have been written, books that would
fill this building from the cellar to the
roof, and books that would fill all the
buildings up and down Avenue Road.
Books have been written trying to show that
Jesus is what he claimed to be, but
the worshiping heart knows he's what he's claimed
to be, because God sent the Holy Spirit
to carry the confirmation to the conscience of
men.
It does not lie with evidence.
History can offer no higher evidence than that
God raised him from the dead and set
him at his own right hand.
And the question of the sincere man is
not how do Jesus' teaching compare with the
teachings of the moral philosophers or the teachings
of Buddha or of the Hindus.
The question is settled for us forever, because
the moral teachings of Jesus stand or fall
with him.
I heard on the radio the other night
a debate put on in the city here
between a number of men of some intelligence
I would gather from their questions and answers,
and they were willing to question the teachings
of Christ and to take issue with Christ
on certain issues.
Let any man take issue with Christ and
his done as far as being a Christian
is concerned.
No one can take issue with the Lord.
No one can question the truth of the
truthful one.
No one dares bring up the matter of
whether or not Jesus is the Lord and
whether his teachings are sound.
He is approved of God, and his moral
teachings stand or fall with him.
Jesus Christ, our Lord, himself, is the object
of our attention, not the teachings of Jesus.
Though the teachings of Jesus are dear to
us, and though the teachings of Jesus are
there that we might keep his commandments and
prove that we love him, it's the person
of Jesus that gives his teachings valid as
aid.
God put the proof down upon a spiritual
level.
It rests not upon reason, but upon conscience,
you see.
If the resurrection of Christ were to rest
upon reason, then only the highly reasonable people
could be converted.
If the resurrection of Christ were to rest
upon man's ability to gather and weigh evidence,
then the trained man, trained in the gathering
and evaluating of evidence, might believe that the
simple-hearted man who guides the plow, or
who labors with his hands and doesn't do
much thinking, he would remain unconverted.
But it was just the opposite.
The appeal of Christ was always to the
simple-hearted man whose conscience gave him trouble.
He brought a troubled, lacerated conscience to Christ,
and when the conscience knew that Christ had
risen and that he had appeared unto Peter
and unto 500 brethren at once, and that
God had approved him and confirmed him and
validated him and marked him and sealed him
and proved him to be his Christ, sent
to save mankind, then the human conscience immediately
responded.
And that's how people are converted.
The simple people are converted.
All kinds of people are converted, not because
they have the ability to weigh evidence.
If salvation depended on my ability to know
when a thing was true and not true,
or if it depended upon my ability to
know, as in a court of law, whether
a witness is telling the truth or not,
then of course only lawyers and persons trained
in this would have any possibility of salvation.
But this truth of Christ rising from the
dead leaps past all human reason, leaps over
it, arises above it, and goes straight to
the conscience of the man, so that as
soon as the message is preached, everybody can
know immediately.
They don't have to ask.
They don't need to ask.
In fact, it's an affront to ask.
Jesus Christ is risen and has appeared to
his disciples, and God, to confirm his resurrection,
sent down the Holy Ghost.
And now the verdict has already been rendered
by the Most High God Himself, Maker of
heaven and earth, the verdict on the resurrection
of Christ.
And He has sent His Spirit to carry
the verdict to the conscience.
So the result is they were pricked in
their hearts.
You might be interested to know that that
word pricked here, now in our present English
the word pricked simply means pricked lightly.
But there the word was so deep that
it had a qualifying and intensifying prefix on
it.
Listen, when it said that they pierced the
side of Jesus with a spear, when they
found that he was already dead, they pierced
the side with a spear, and the word
pierced there is one word.
But the word that they use here about
they were pricked in their hearts, showing that
the words of Peter went further into the
hearts of the hearers than the spear of
the soldier went into the breast of Jesus.
So that the Holy Ghost carried the spear
point of truth into the hearts of the
people, and they cried, Men and brethren, what
shall we do?
And Peter had the answer for them immediately.
He said, You are to believe on Jesus
Christ, and you then are to prove that
you believe by identifying yourself with him in
baptism.
You are to identify yourself with him in
baptism and prove and show to the world
that you believe in this one that's been
raised from the dead.
So that facts and reasons cannot have such
an effect.
I can argue with the man, I can
reason with him, I can preach to him
if I were capable of so doing.
I could preach to him with the oratory
of Cicero or Demosthenes, and when it was
all over I could only convince his mind.
But the Spirit of the living God convinces
the conscience, and so every last one of
us listening now are conscience caught.
If we have any conscience left, we must
be conscience caught by the presence of Jesus
Christ as having come out of the grave.
Let us not be fooled into believing that
it was the life of Jesus that saved
us, and oh no, he had to die,
nor that it was the death of Jesus
that saved us, no no, he had to
rise from the dead.
All three had to be present before we
can say truly that we have a Savior
that we can trust.
He had to live among men, holy and
harmless and spotless and undefiled.
He had to die for men, and then
he had to rise a third day according
to Scripture, and he did all three of
those things.
And when the Spirit of God carries that
fact home to the heart, then we're caught
on our conscience, I say.
We're impaled there by the spear of the
Holy Ghost, and we can't escape until we've
done something about Jesus.
What then shall we do?
Peter wasn't afraid of the word do.
In some of our evangelical circles they're afraid
of the word do.
They say that's a legal word, that's a
Jewish word, that's not a word for Christians.
I tell you, Peter wasn't afraid of it
at all, because it's not the do of
merit, it's the do of condition.
What shall I do that I may receive
the benefits of this Lord Jesus Christ into
my own life?
Well, Peter said, Believe on Jesus Christ and
identify yourself with him by baptism.
Now that's what we're to do.
We're to do this.
That's what Easter means, that's what this means.
And you can't escape it.
You can't go home and not return for
a year, but you can't escape it.
It'll haunt you all year, and if in
the providence of God you should die this
year, it will haunt you to the grave
and haunt you to eternity.
For God has given his Son, Jesus Christ,
to the world, and he said, Believe on
my Son, and whosoever believeth on him shall
not perish, and whosoever believeth not is condemned
already, because he is not believed in the
name of the only begotten Son of God.
So this is the do, I say, of
condition.
That you can add no merit, I can
add no merit.
No, no, you have none and I have
none.
We're not good men, we're not good women,
we are sinners.
And the sinless one came and took our
sins on himself, and went to an ugly
cross and died there amid blood and swarming
flies and sweat and tears and grief.
And then God raised him the third day,
for it was not possible for death to
hold him.
God had declared concerning him, I saw the
Lord always before me, because he is before
my face I shall not be condemned.
God raised him from the dead, and the
Holy Spirit seals it.
And while I've given you this brief message
this morning, the Spirit of the living God
has carried it to you.
Of that I'm positively sure.
He's carried it to the heart of my
hearers this morning, and he has impaled you
on that fine, sharp point of the truth
of the risen Christ.
If he's alive, then you've got to do
something about him.
If he is alive, then he's on my
conscience until I've done something about him.
And that he is alive is proved by
the downcoming of the Holy Ghost, to carry
the evidence straight to the consciences of men.
Thank God he lives.
Thank God that the fight is over, the
battle won, the victory of life is won.
Thank God.
But until I have done something about it,
he is on my conscience, and he will
remain there until the edges have rolled away.
He is on the consciences of millions this
hour who are doing nothing about it, trying
to live it out, trying to brazen it
out, trying to face it out.
Let them do it, but I can't.
I can't.
He died for me, took my sins, God
raised him from the dead, sent the Holy
Ghost to say, This is my Son, hear
ye him.
So I must hear, I must listen, I
must identify, I must commit, I must follow,
I must devote, I must dedicate, I must
follow the Lamb with us wherever he goes.
I must.
He's on my conscience till I do.
I'm impaled with the fact that he rose
again, and in triumph of the resurrection, brought
confirmation of his saving grace to the whole
human race.
May God grant today, this day, that we
do something about Jesus while we can.
Amen.