The following message is by Pastor John Piper.
More information from Desiring God is available at
www.DesiringGod.org This morning, Pastor John will
be continuing his sermon series from the book
of Acts.
I invite you to turn in your Bibles
to Acts chapter 2, verses 22 to 36.
If you didn't bring a Bible, there's one
available, hopefully, in the pocket in front of
you.
Acts chapter 2, verses 22 to 36.
Men of Israel, hear these words.
Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you
by God with mighty works and wonders and
signs, which God did through him in your
midst, as you yourselves know, this Jesus, delivered
up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge
of God, you crucified and killed by the
hands of lawless men.
But God raised him up, having loosed the
pangs of death, because it was not possible
for him to be held by it.
For David says concerning him, I saw the
Lord always before me, for he is at
my right hand that I may not be
shaken.
Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue
rejoiced.
Moreover, my flesh will dwell in hope, for
thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades,
nor let thy holy ones see corruption.
Thou hast made known to me the paths
of life.
Thou wilt make me full of gladness with
thy presence.
Brethren, I may say to you confidently of
the patriarch David, that he both died and
was buried, and his tomb is with us
to this day.
Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God
had sworn with an oath to him that
he would set one of his descendants upon
his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the
resurrection of the Christ, that he was not
abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see
corruption.
This Jesus God raised up, and of that
we are all witnesses.
Being therefore exalted at the right hand of
God, and having received from the Father the
promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured
out this which you see and hear.
For David did not ascend into the heavens,
but he himself says, The Lord said to
my Lord, Sit at my right hand till
I make thy enemies a stool for thy
feet.
Let all the house of Israel therefore know
assuredly that God has made him both Lord
and Christ.
This Jesus whom you crucified.
I want to begin again with a question
this morning, like I did last week, only
this one's harder, it's more personal, it's more
pointed, it's more offensive, and I don't want
you to answer it immediately, I want you
to hear the message and then answer it
at the end.
Some of you will be resistant to it,
others of you will have a stock answer
ready from your tradition, but I want you
to hear the question interpreted and the answer
given by the Holy Spirit and then answer
it at the end.
And the question is, did you kill Jesus?
Did you crucify the Lord?
And if you're like me, then inside of
you, you would feel denial and maybe rising
a resentment.
How could you even ask a question that
something so distant and far away could begin
to be laid at my feet?
The reason I ask the question in spite
of the unlikeliness of it is because I
think that emotional reaction was very likely to
be felt by some in Peter's audience.
When he looked out over that vast crowd
and said, you crucified Jesus.
Now, why do I think that?
You remember how many were converted?
3,000 were converted by this sermon.
How many do you think were listening to
the sermon?
Do you think all of them got converted?
I doubt it.
Jesus said, maybe get one out of four
when you scatter good seed.
So maybe there were 12,000 people listening
to this sermon.
Maybe Peter preached it because he's the one
with the big voice.
No PA system.
Or maybe 5, 6, 7, 8,000, who
knows?
A lot of people there.
But now, what is the law of probability
that all the people there on Pentecost 50
days later on a holiday from people scattered
all over the world, all of those people
listening were there on Good Friday morning crying,
crucify him, crucify him.
What's the probability they were all there?
Zero probability, I think.
Which means a lot of people heard Peter
say, you crucified him, who would feel inside,
we didn't have anything directly to do with
that.
We don't know what you're talking about.
And yet, Peter doesn't seem to be the
least concerned about that.
He says in verse 23, this Jesus, you
killed by the hands of lawless men.
As he looks out over that crowd, then
in verse 36, he says, this Jesus, you
crucified.
Now, how can he say that?
And I think the reason he can say
that unabashedly without qualification is that everybody in
that crowd had participated in the crime that
brought Jesus to the cross.
Now, what's the essence of the crime that
brought Jesus down?
I think the essence of the crime is
not the physical ending of his life.
I don't think that's the essence of the
crime against Jesus.
The essence of the crime against Jesus was
the rejection of God in Jesus' life.
The rejection of God in Jesus' life.
Now, think with me about this.
Put on your thinking cap here.
Jesus was handed over for blasphemy.
He had said, I am the son of
God.
He had said, God endorses me as Messiah.
The Jewish rulers have said, no way.
We reject God's endorsement on your life.
We reject your claim to be the son
of God.
You're a blasphemer.
And they handed him over to Pilate to
be crucified, the lawless man.
Which I take to mean that any time
someone rejects the endorsement of God on Jesus'
life, they vote for blasphemy.
And when they vote for blasphemy in the
Sanhedrin, they hand him over to be crucified.
The issue this morning is not whether you
were there bodily to cry out, crucify him,
crucify him.
That's not the issue.
Don't get hung up on that.
The issue is, do you this morning embrace
the endorsement of God on Jesus' life?
Or do you stand against God's endorsement of
Jesus?
And what I see in this text is
a kind of bracket.
I see it begun in verse 23 with
the indictment.
You killed him.
I see it ended in verse 36.
You crucified him.
And in between those two indictments, I see
five contrasting ways the way God treated Jesus.
God didn't kill him the way you killed
him.
God didn't crucify him the way you crucified
him.
God endorsed him.
You rejected him.
God accepted him.
You killed him.
God raised him.
Now, I want you to see this.
And so I'm going to take these endorsements
one at a time.
I see five of them.
And at each point, I want you to
be asking the question, not just historically, about
how they fit into that situation, though that's
important.
I want you to say, do I this
morning side with God in his endorsement of
Jesus?
Or do I find myself resisting God in
his view of Jesus?
All right?
Number one.
God endorsed Jesus by working miracles and signs
and wonders through him.
Verse 22.
Men of Israel.
Hear these words.
Jesus of Nazareth.
A man.
Now watch these words.
Attested to you by God.
That's where I'm getting this idea of endorsement.
Attested, endorsed to you by God with mighty
works and wonders and signs, which here comes
again, which God did through him in your
midst, as you yourselves know.
So in that sentence, we see two times.
Peter drives home the endorsement of God upon
Jesus while he was here on the earth.
First, he says he was attested by miracles.
Every time Jesus did a miracle, it was
God's vote.
I'm for you.
You are my son, my beloved.
I delight in you.
Listen to him, everybody.
I attest from heaven to Jesus.
That's the endorsement of God on Jesus life.
Every time he did one of those miracles
and then the text goes on and says
it again.
Not only was he attested to us by
God, by miracles, but it goes on to
say and God worked through him.
God did these miracles through him.
God was in Christ healing the sick.
God was in Christ raising Lazarus and others
from the dead.
God was in Christ delivering people from demons.
God was in Christ stilling the storm.
When you see Jesus perform miracles, what you
see is the attestation of God almighty maker
of heaven and earth on the life of
Jesus Christ.
That was the issue in this sermon.
The issue in the sermon is God and
his attestation.
And he means for these people to feel
the clash between what they have felt and
what God has felt about Jesus.
They killed him.
God attested to him.
Are you in step with God this morning?
That's the question this text poses for you.
Second, God endorsed Jesus by planning his death
for the sins of his people.
God endorsed Jesus by planning his death.
Look at verse 23.
This Jesus delivered up.
Here it comes.
According to the definite plan and foreknowledge of
God, you crucified and killed by the hands
of lawless men.
Now I can hear a superficial cynic say,
well, some endorsement.
He killed him, right?
I'm sure that's impressive endorsement.
He just links arms with lawless men, plans
the death of his son, gets together and
works it out with pilot and the Jews
and the soldiers and gets his son crucified.
Some endorsement.
That's the way a cynic, a superficial cynic
talks who just hears one word and then
just runs with it and makes it sound
stupid without thinking at all about what is
meant.
About what the rest of Luke's writings have
to say, not to mention the rest of
the Bible about what Peter meant when he
said he was handed over according to God's
definite plan.
Now, what does it mean?
How is this an endorsement?
Is God just like pilot?
He's just handing him over as a pretender,
just a pretender.
Get rid of him.
He's a threat to my authority.
So just get rid of him.
Is that all God is doing?
Is that the motive?
Is that what God is saying by handing
over his son?
Well, just to stay in Luke's writings for
a moment, listen to what Jesus said at
the end of Luke's gospel.
He said, Thus, it is written that the
Christ should suffer.
In other words, it was written, it was
planned.
Thus, it is written that the Christ should
suffer and on the third day rise and
that repentance and forgiveness of sins, therefore, should
be preached in his name to all nations.
Now, now we catch on.
Now we catch on to the point when
Peter said Jesus was delivered up according to
God's plan.
What we hear is Isaiah 53.
We read it responsibly.
It was the will of the Lord to
bruise him.
Upon him was the chastisement that made us
whole.
He is the lamb of God and our
iniquities are now upon him.
You talk about endorsements.
There is no being in all the world
but the Son of God, spotless and blameless,
who can bear the sins of the world.
When God handed over Jesus according to his
definite plan outlined in Isaiah 53, he is
choosing Jesus among all the beings in the
universe who alone can do the work that
would save the Jews and allow forgiveness and
repentance to be preached in Minneapolis 2,000
years later.
This is a high endorsement.
This is not what Pilate did.
God is not just linking arms with lawless
men to get rid of a pretender.
God is voting for Jesus by saying this
is the lamb of God.
This is the spotless one.
This is the blessed infinitely worthy one who
alone of all beings can bear the sins
of the world.
I see the endorsement of God in this
verse.
Do you endorse Jesus in your life the
way God endorses Jesus as the sin bearer?
The one who had to die because only
one like Jesus could bear sins.
Nobody else.
You can't bear your own sins.
You'll only go under with your own sins.
Only Jesus could.
You endorse God's endorsement of Jesus by receiving
that gift.
Number three.
God endorsed Jesus by raising him from the
dead.
Verse 23 says this Jesus you killed and
crucified.
And then in stark contrast and Peter means
for us to feel the contrast here.
But God raised him up, having loosed the
pangs of death because it was not possible
for him to be held by it.
You voted no.
God voted yes.
You denounced him.
God endorsed him.
You killed him.
God raised him.
Are you in sync with God or are
you against God this morning?
Now, in verses 25 to 31, we could
preach a whole sermon on this Old Testament
text and its exposition.
I'm only going to sum it up in
a sentence or two.
What Peter wants to do there for his
Jewish audience is show that in the Old
Testament, the death and resurrection of the Messiah
was foreseen by David.
And it's manifest, I think, how he develops
that.
And we don't have time to go in
and in detail except to say this is
the point.
The point is to add weight to the
indictment and to cut deeper to the heart.
It wasn't just anybody that you crucified.
It was the Messiah.
The one who was to sit on David's
throne from his own seed.
The one you regard as Messiah you killed.
And God vindicated that Messiahship.
He endorsed that Messiahship by raising him from
the dead.
That's the one you killed.
Are you for God or are you against
God?
Now, this is really shocking.
This is really shocking.
Just picture yourself there.
It's 50 days since Jesus had died.
Many of the people in that crowd had,
in fact, said crucify him, crucify him.
All of them in that crowd had rejected
him.
And he says, you're a religious people.
You're Jews.
You are worshiping people.
You're here on Pentecost.
It's a holiday for the Lord.
You're here to worship.
They are a Bible memorizing people.
Jews knew the Bible a lot better than
we do.
They are a moral people.
And Peter says, you are anti-God.
You are diametrically opposed to God because God
endorsed Jesus.
You killed Jesus.
You reject the endorsement of God.
God is here.
You are here.
Antagonism.
Anti-God.
Now, this is a shocking thing for them
to hear.
It's a shocking thing for people in America,
all of whom, except for a tiny little
fraction, say they believe in God.
Everybody in America says they believe in God,
love God, obey God, worship God, or at
least have some kind of vague relationship to
God, whoever he is.
And along comes Christianity and says, if you
say you love God and know God and
do not embrace his endorsement of Jesus as
a great miracle worker, you don't know God.
If you say you know God and love
God and do not endorse God's endorsement of
Jesus as the sin bearer of the world,
you don't know God.
Unless you agree and embrace the endorsement of
God as one who raised Jesus from the
dead, you don't know God.
You are anti-God.
Jesus becomes the litmus paper of true knowledge
of God.
Now, that's a remarkable thing in a pluralistic
society like America.
Almost nobody in America will allow you to
say that.
And we are so infected by the relativism,
pluralism, live and let live, laissez-faire religious
atmosphere in which we live that it's hard
for you to say, even though you say
you know God, if you don't embrace God's
endorsement of Jesus, you don't know God.
You are anti-God.
You are against God.
Now, I wonder how that sounds to you.
You see, we live in a culture where
you may not say that.
You can have your God and I have
my God.
You can have your understanding.
If Jesus meets your needs, fine.
But if Mohammed meets mine or if the
stars meet mine or if my crystals meet
mine or whatever, fine.
I mean, don't impose your religion on me.
You can't be a Christian and agree with
that mentality.
Christianity, by definition, is either or.
When Peter stood up and preached and said,
God worked miracles in him.
God planned his death for sin.
God raised him from the dead.
But you killed him.
He means to say you're against God.
It doesn't matter whether you call yourself religious,
moral, Bible memorizing, church attending or anything else.
Do you feel the grip of that?
The Pharisees were the most religious of all
people and they didn't know God.
They were the most God relating people in
Palestine and they didn't know God.
The litmus paper is.
What do you do with God's endorsement of
Jesus?
That's it.
What do you do with God's endorsement of
Jesus?
If you reject that, you reject God.
Number four, God endorsed Jesus by exalting him
to his right hand and putting all his
enemies under his feet.
Verse thirty three.
Being therefore exalted at the right hand of
God.
And then in verses thirty four and thirty
five, he quotes Psalm 110 to show the
meaning.
David did not ascend into the heavens.
But he himself says, the Lord, that is
God, the father said to my Lord, that
is the coming Messiah, Jesus.
You, Jesus, sit at my right hand until
I make your enemies a stool for your
feet.
The ultimate horror of crucifying Jesus was not
only that it was a rejection of God's
endorsement of the Messiah.
It was also a rejection of God's endorsement
of the Lord of Glory.
God took Jesus.
Not only did he work miracles through him.
Not only did he ordain him as the
lamb that takes away the sin of the
world.
Not only did he raise him from the
dead and vindicate his Messiah ship.
He brought him all the way up into
heaven, seated him on the throne of the
universe is putting all of his enemies under
his feet.
And that is the ultimate horror that that
one should be crucified, that that endorsement of
God should be rejected.
Is what cuts to the heart of those
in whom the Holy Spirit is moving both
then and now this morning.
And so I want to ask the question.
Did you kill Jesus?
And, you know, now I don't mean were
you there bodily crying, crucify him, crucify him.
I mean, do you reject God's endorsement of
Jesus as the worker of wonders, as the
one who dies spotless for sinners?
As the Messiah raised from the dead, as
the Lord of Glory and King of Kings
seated at the right hand of the father.
Do you reject that endorsement of Jesus and
say it's irrelevant to my life?
Or do you embrace that endorsement of Jesus
and say, if God feels that way about
Jesus.
I feel that way about Jesus.
I endorse Jesus.
I take Jesus.
I exalt Jesus.
That's the question.
And now in closing, there's one more endorsement.
I save it for the end because it's
real encouraging to me.
It's in verse thirty three.
And it is that God endorses him by
making him counting him worthy to receive the
promise of the Holy Spirit and pour it
out on the church.
Verse thirty three says, being therefore exalted at
the right hand of God and having received
from the father the promise of the Holy
Spirit.
He has poured out this which you see
in here, that is the Pentecostal praise and
prophecy and languages.
Here's the situation.
God.
Has endorsed Jesus as the worker of miracles.
He has endorsed Jesus as the one who
dies for sinners.
He has endorsed Jesus as Messiah risen from
the dead.
He has endorsed Jesus at his right hand
to sit on the throne of the universe.
And he looks at him and he says,
son, you are worthy to receive the promise
that I have made for ages past of
the Holy Spirit's blessing upon your body.
The church.
I give you the spirit to dispense according
to your good pleasure.
Go ahead.
That's a great endorsement of the son.
No one knows the father except the son
and anyone to whom the son chooses to
reveal him.
No one has the Holy Spirit unless he
is brought by the son into your life
through new birth and conversion.
And no one receives that extraordinary outpouring, that
baptism, that filling, that clothing with power.
No one receives that unless the son seated
at the right hand of the father says,
now is the time.
These are the people and I will pour
out my spirit upon this church.
Did you kill Jesus?
Are you embracing the endorsement of the father
upon his son?
The great miracle worker, the one who dies
spotless for sinners, the one who rises to
vindicate his Messiah ship, the one who is
exalted as Lord of Lords, supreme over all
the universe and the one who received the
promise of the Holy Spirit.
And now, according to his good pleasure, pours
it out on his people.
Let's pray.
Father, I endorse Jesus.
We endorse Jesus in his five-fold glory
this morning.
Help people in this room right now who
have not embraced your endorsement of your son
to do it.
As a way of closing, I think the
Lord would really enjoy hearing our endorsement of
his son since it's obvious he has such
an affection to endorse his son.
And perhaps we could do it with the
words, we endorse you, Lord Jesus.
Let's say those words two times.
We endorse you, Lord Jesus.
And all the people said, amen.
Amen.
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