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Acts 2:22-36 | The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ
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We are living in perilous times. We are in the final hours of the church age, and we must wake up across this city, nation, and around the world. Right now, our brothers and sisters are being persecuted in Africa and the Middle East, while here at home, we destroy ourselves through infighting and division.
This is the hour to turn from foolishness and set our gaze on the mission of Jesus Christ. We are not helpless. We are the most powerful organism on earth—the people of God. Our prayers have power. Our words have power. Our service has power, because we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
We are studying the first two chapters of Acts, the history of the formation of the Christian church written by Luke. Today's text is Acts 2:22-36, which contains the back half of the very first Christian sermon ever preached.
After the Day of Pentecost, when 120 disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in multiple languages, a massive crowd gathered. Some mocked, saying the disciples were drunk. Peter, the former coward who ran at the cross, now filled with the Holy Spirit, stood up with the apostles and began to preach to thousands.
Peter first defended the church: "These people are not drunk as you suppose." Then he defended the work of the Holy Spirit: "This is what was promised by the prophet Joel." Now, in the back half of his sermon, he defends the Lord Jesus Christ by proclaiming His life, death, and resurrection.
Peter addresses the Jewish nation—the very people who, fifty days earlier, were shouting, "Crucify him!" He tells them:
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.
Jesus was from Nazareth, the hood in Palestine—a place considered so insignificant that people asked, "Could any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Yet through this man from humble origins, God worked mighty works, signs, and wonders.
They saw Him flex over nature—commanding storms to be silent. They saw Him heal the blind by spitting and rubbing mud on their eyes. He opened deaf ears. He healed the crippled and raised the dead. No other religious leader in history has raised people from the dead. Muhammad didn't. Joseph Smith didn't. Buddha didn't. Only Jesus demonstrated power over death itself.
The Spirit of God is saying to somebody right now: Do you want to be healed? How long are you going to hold on to your trauma? How long are you going to make a badge out of your trauma?
These signs and wonders proved one thing: This is the Son of God. This is no ordinary man. No man can do what Jesus did apart from the power of the Holy Spirit.
Peter then moves to the crucifixion:
This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
Here lies a profound theological truth: You killed Him, but it was God's plan. You murdered the Son of God according to the foreknowledge and plan of God.
This raises the spiritual reality of God's sovereignty juxtaposed with the will of mankind. Somehow, in our evil decisions and our good decisions, God works through all of the decisions of human beings to bring about His perfect will. No decisions human beings make will hinder the plans of God.
Consider Joseph in the Old Testament. His brothers, jealous of their father's favor on him, threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery. Years later, when famine struck the land, those same brothers came to Egypt for food—only to find Joseph now second in command of the most powerful nation on earth.
Joseph told them:
You meant that for evil, but God meant that for good.
What they did to him in their will, God used for good in His sovereignty. This principle applies to all of us. You meant that for evil. Man's will. But God is working it for good. God's sovereignty.
Raped? Molested? Abandoned? Betrayed? Deceived? Glory to God—it made you wiser, stronger, more discerning. It shaped your character. It built your faith. It taught you what friends not to have, what business partners to avoid. And it made you look out for the next person coming who looks like the last person you left.
Even your own mistakes against yourself cannot hinder God's plan. Two years into my walk with Jesus, I had a catastrophic fail. I hurt God and hurt people. I thought God would never use me again, that I would never preach again. But I remained inside His will even when I made a mistake. Not even your own mistakes inside the will of God will hinder His plan from unfolding in your life.
My whole life is a second chance. God took what I did to myself for evil and turned it around for my own good.
So I say to you: Just stay inside God's will. It doesn't matter what nobody says, what nobody does, how many videos they make about you, who walks out, who stays. Stay inside God's will. Your enemies are your gift. They think they're doing something to you, but they're just increasing your reward in heaven.
Blessed are you when men persecute you and revile you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my name's sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.
Every video made against me just adds to my heavenly bank account.
Peter then announces the heart of the gospel:
But God raised him up, loosen the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
The word "pangs" means birthing. Jesus's body, laid in that tomb, birthed out of that tomb hope for eternity—hope for the life to come. Jesus, who called Himself "the way, the truth, and the life," could not be held by death. If Jesus is the Life, then no grave could hold Him. The grave had to release Him because His body could not stay in that grave.
For this reason, the Scripture says He is the firstborn from the dead, and for that reason, you and I will be the second born from the dead.
Set your mind on things above, like a thermostat. You have to program the thermostat. The more you set your mind on what's coming, the more strength you have for the trials in this life. The more you're not overly tethered to things of this life, the more you can go through hell and keep bouncing back because you have a hope that goes beyond this life.
Some of you think heaven is just floating around on clouds with harps and wings. But when you read to the end of Revelation, you see that God will make His home with men in a new earth. God is preparing a world like this one—with air, trees, water, food, laughter, relationships—but without tears, without sickness, without betrayals, without deceitful people.
Imagine the life you have right now without all the pain you hate. Every time you shed a tear saying, "God, why is this happening?" remember: He went to prepare a place like life without all those tears.
To defend against the false narrative that the disciples stole Jesus's body, Peter goes back to the Word of God:
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. My flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will you allow your holy one to see corruption."
Peter is quoting Psalm 16, but here's what they didn't realize: This psalm is not about David. It is about Christ. This is the law of double reference—a principle where the Spirit of God wrote through certain people in the first person the voice of somebody else coming in the future.
The whole Old Testament reveals Christ. From Genesis to Malachi, it all points to Jesus. When Jesus was on the road to Emmaus, He taught two disciples about Himself from the Old Testament.
So when David wrote these words, he was not writing about himself. He was writing about Christ, speaking in first person the voice of the coming Messiah:
I saw the Lord my Father always before me. My whole life was set on the Father. For He is at my right hand, I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. My flesh will also dwell in hope.
How could a man facing death say, "My flesh will dwell in hope"? Because He had confidence that the Father would not leave His body in a grave. Jesus trusted so much in God the Father that He willingly laid down His life, believing: "If I lay down My life, the Father will raise Me from the dead."
This teaches us: You can have confidence in the Word of God. Whatever the Scripture says about you, you can believe that it is true.
I have a medical condition in my body right now, but I believe that God is a healer because His Word says so. My medical condition does not change His character. I believe He is a Provider because He said so. I believe He is a Healer because He said so. I believe He is with me because He said so.
When you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you fear no evil.
When you start seeing the scriptures not just as something to post on Instagram, but as something to tattoo to your heart, it changes the way you live, think, walk, and feel.
Jesus faced death with hope because:
You will not abandon my soul to Hades. You will not leave me in a grave. You will not allow my body to see corruption.
Jesus lay in the grave for three days—not long enough for His body to see corruption. Why? The Father honored His word. Jesus knew from the Old Testament scriptures that if He gave His life for the sins of man, the Lord would not leave Him in a grave. That's why on the cross He said, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit."
You have made known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness with Your presence when I'm seated at Your right hand.
Peter then explains the text to refute the false belief that David was writing about himself:
Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David, who wrote that psalm, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day, just south of Jerusalem.
Muhammad is still in his tomb. Joseph Smith is still in his tomb. Confucius is still in his tomb. Buddha is still in his tomb. The progenitor of every religion is still in their tomb. David was also in his tomb.
Since David is in a tomb, he could not have been writing about himself. The psalm is about resurrection. David, by the Spirit, was writing about the One whom they killed:
Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his own descendants on his throne—since Jesus came through the family lineage of David—he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of Christ, that He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption.
This is what good preachers do: they destroy bad doctrine. The preaching of God destroys bad theology. Bad theology is dangerous. The study of God coming through the wrong mouth will make you believe things about God that are not true and will eclipse the glory of Christ.
Peter uses the scriptures to show them that their false narrative is wrong. Be thankful when you are connected to biblical teaching that is sound and good theology, because it builds you up into the man and woman you are supposed to be.
Peter finishes his sermon:
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 promised Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.
Here's something crucial: For the Spirit to be poured out, it must come from the top down. The Spirit came from heaven down to those people on that day. But the Spirit could only come from heaven if Jesus was in heaven. A dead man in a grave cannot pour out from heaven the Holy Spirit.
If Jesus was still in a tomb, the Spirit could not be poured out. So how do we know the resurrection is real? The best evidence is not only doctrine, but you.
Everybody who knows you're saved, who has felt conviction, who has felt the Spirit leading and guiding you, who has felt the Spirit talking to you, who has felt the Spirit comforting you when you hurt—do you know for a fact the Spirit is in you?
The fact that the Spirit is in you is evidence that Christ is not in the grave. Your life is proof of the resurrection.
The Spirit cannot be in you if Christ was dead somewhere in a box. When an atheist runs up to you on a college campus and says, "There's no way a man could be raised from the dead," you can say: "You're right. Not by his own power. But the fact that the Spirit is in me proves it. I used to rob people at gunpoint. I used to destroy lives. I used to sell crack at twelve years old. I was reckless in the streets. You think I'm doing all of this right now out of goodwill? I'm being led by someone on the inside of me. That person on the inside of me could not be there if Christ was in a box. For a dead man cannot pour out something that must come from heaven."
You are evidence of the resurrection. You used to be one way. What happened to you? I got filled with the Spirit that came from a Messiah who is alive. That's why I'm like this—because somebody's on the inside of me who's alive.
Peter closes with the ultimate declaration:
For David did not ascend into the heavens. He's dead. But he himself says, "The Lord—the Father—said to my Lord Christ, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'"
The Father said to the Son, "Stay right here until I send You back to deal with all of Your enemies"—talking about judgment coming for those on the wrong side of theology.
And let all of the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him—Christ—both Lord, Master, and the anointed one, the Messiah. This Jesus whom you crucified.
The man they nailed to the cross nailed their sin to their heart.
After this, they were cut to the heart. They felt convicted.
This is the power of biblical preaching. Where there is biblical, Holy Spirit-filled preaching, it will confront you in sin. It will rob you of false comfort. It will meet you where you are and not leave you where you are. It will lovingly tell you about yourself. It will exalt the person of Christ. It will execute the scriptures.
It has the power to heal. The power to transform. The power to change. The power to reveal.
Is that the preaching we're hearing in America? Is that the preaching you hear on social media? Is that the preaching you hear at your church? Is that the preaching we hear in this hour?
Is this not the preaching we need in this hour? No more fluff. No more garbage. No more secular humanistic doctrine. No more lies from the pulpit. No more being afraid to tell people the truth for the sake of man-made approval. No more being addicted to people-pleasing.
Where there is love, there is confrontation. This is what we need in America and around the world in this hour.
Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I pray for an explosion in this hour of biblical proclamation across America and around the world. I pray for the exaltation of Christ in America and around the world.
I pray for a gospel spreading across America and around the world that is biblical and powerful and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Preaching and teaching that heals, transforms, confronts, convicts, and brings the sinner. That snatches people from the fires of hell and transforms men, women, teenagers, and children into witnesses and missionaries.
Time out for nonsense in these final hours. Let revival break out off the backs of gospel preaching in cities and countries all around the world in these final hours of the church age. We ask this in the mighty and majestic and matchless name of our soon-coming King, the Lord Jesus Christ.
