Peter's Speech: Jesus (Acts 2:14-41)

Read it here.

This is the first time the completed gospel (except for Christ’s return) is preached. Peter draws from Scripture to explain Jesus as Christ. The effect of the gospel was the same then as it is now: “they were cut to the heart” (verse 37).

The men listening to Peter’s speech had heard of Jesus, His deeds were pretty well known. He was a rock star of the Mediterranean world. Possibly many of the people at this event had looked forward to Pentecost and the possibility of hearing Jesus preach, but then they found out that He had been crucified. (The way Peter describes Jesus’ murder is interesting, saying He was “killed by lawless men” (verse 23). These “lawless men” were the Pharisees, who were supposed to be the teachers of the Law).

Peter puts the guilt on everyone listening:

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. (Acts 2:36)

Jesus’ blood is on the hands of all sinners, and if you study His life, if you see how He lived and loved and never refused to help somebody, it leads to guilt. Can you honestly say you’ve lived and acted like Jesus? That you’ve lived as selflessly and as righteously? No, we have all “fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But Jesus died for those sins and shortcomings.

What a dramatic, overwhelming action to react to. When we make a mistake and find out it causes someone pain we feel horrible. I can remember times where I was late to pick up my brother or sister from something and they were left waiting and waiting – in fact, there was one time where I was supposed to be home and my sister ended up waiting outside of a locked house for an hour.

Because of our sinfulness and our wickedness, Jesus died! Painfully! His death was terrible and agonizing, and on top of that, shameful. Crucifixion was not only painful but demoralizing, especially to the Jews. In fact, it was looked down upon so much that Roman citizens were not allowed to be crucified – they were “above” such things. So the King of Kings – whose “nationality” is greater than that of the Roman Empire – was hung on a tree on the side of a busy road like a common criminal.

The very nature of Christ’s death demands a response. Do you feel bad, but walk away? Do you spit on Him and say, “Serves him right”? The crowd needs to respond, and they do, asking: “Brothers, what shall we do?” (verse 37). If you like Jesus at all His death leaves you asking such a question. If you love Him you feel horrible, and you can’t walk away. Guilt weighs down on you as you realize a perfect man stuck Himself between heaven and earth (literally and figuratively, and, on top of that, literally in the figurative sense too – think about that one…) suspended by wood between God and man.

God, perfect and good, demands good. He demands justice, and as He looks down at us, as He looks beyond what any human eye can see and into our hearts we are judged rightly. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Psalms 119:126 says:

It is time for the LORD to act, for your law has been broken.

And again:

Your righteousness is righteous forever, and your law is true. (Psalm 119:142)

Jesus was righteous and able to see our full brokenness and sin. And instead of walking away from our eventual death and destruction, He embraced it for us, interceding between God and man, taking the sins of all on Himself, a just man being condemned by a just God for an unjust, unholy, undeserving, and thoroughly wicked people (you and me and everyone we know).

But he was wounded for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquites;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush

him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. (Isaiah 53:10)

Jesus stuck himself in front of God’s wrath, embracing our death – and in order to truly live our response must be to embrace His.

Peter calls us to throw off sin and that which is an affront to God.

“Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ…”

Embrace His death! Do not walk away.

“…for the forgiveness of your sins…”

He has removed them “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12).

“…and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our god calls to himself.” (Acts 2:38-39)

This is the gospel: that Christ died, rose again, and promises eternal life and eternal fellowship with Himself, with God. It is called the “gospel” because it is good news, in fact, the best news we ever can (or ever will) hear.

Just Live (Ecclesiastes 11)

Solomon’s great book of repentance and of reflection (on a life lived in sin) draws near to a close with his great conclusion in chapter 12. Up until now Solomon has lamented that life is pointless, every day just like the day before, every year the same as the last, there is “nothing new under the sun” (1:9b).

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be
done. (1:9a)

There is also great evil on the earth, and even this seems pointless because justice seems far away and even those who work for justice on earth are evil doers (3:16). Happiness is impossible to attain, “all is vanity and a striving after wind” (1:14). Solomon has tried everything to find joy in his time under the sun, and:

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing. (1:8)

He tries women (he had 700 wives!), he tries laughter (2:2), he tries wine (1:3), he tries building monuments and creating works of art (2:4-6), he tries entertainment (2:7), and he tries wealth and power (2:8-9).

And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. (2:10)

Most everybody lives with their own idea of “I’d be happing if…” Solomon conducts a great human experiment and tries everything we dream of, and his conclusion is bleak:

Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. (2:11)

So what is the point? Mark Driscoll says that Ecclesiastes asks the questions the rest of the bible answers, specifically Jesus Christ. Roughly 1,000 years after King Solomon (962 – 922 B.C.) writes this book Jesus is born in Israel. Everything about Christ satisfies Solomon’s frustrations and leads us to this chapter (11), in many ways an encouragement to keep on living and, in light of chapter 12, too look forward to God and His judgment. In this chapter we see hope. It’s almost as if right here the clouds part and we see the sun for the first time. (In fact, this is the first time in the whole book Solomon speaks positively about the sun: “Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun” – 11:7).

One of the big ways Christ satisfies Solomon’s frustrations (and ours) is that through Him God deals with evil. We’ve tried to deal with evil, but our own justice is perverted by our own evil and it is not enough. How can a dirty hand clean a dirty hand? We need a clean one. Jesus deals with evil in complete goodness and authority without evil in Him. he does this in two ways.

The first has already happened, and that was His crucifixion. The second hasn’t happened yet, and that will be when Jesus returns and destroys evil once and for all. But let’s focus on the first one and clarify what happened that day two thousand years ago.

On that day “for our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Because here’s the problems with true justice, that is, if God took to task every evil ever committed and punished the guilty persons there would be nobody left. We’ve all sinned “and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). God, like the faithful husband married to a prostitute in the book of Hosea, has two divine qualities that must be satisfied. The first is justice – God hates sin! And would He be good if He didn’t? If He looked at a child molester and said, “You’ve done nothing wrong,” would that be justice? No, justice must be satisfied.

The second quality is love. “God is love” John writes in 1 John 4:8. God loves us, and He is faithful to us as we resist Him. Look again at Hosea: God is like our faithful husband and we are nothing but whores. God refuses to leave because He loves us, but how can He tolerate our unfaithfulness? If God abandoned us, or just simply destroyed us how would that satisfy His love?

So God had an ingenious plan developed since the second Adam and Eve walked away from Him (even before if He is all-knowing – He inevitably knew what they would do!). He makes a promise after the first sin that He would take care of all sin. He says to Satan, the serpent, the one who led Adam and Eve to sin (and is a good representation of sin):

“I will put enmity between you and the
woman,
and between your offspring and her
offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his head.” (Gen. 3:15)

The word “offspring” in Hebrew means “seed”. Paul writes in Galatians (Gal. 3:16) that the “seed” written of to Abraham (the same words spoken in Genesis 3:15) is not plural, but singular. Look at the next line here, “offspring” is not “they” but a “he”. This man will stomp on sin, but he will be wounded. Right away, God promises to deal with the sin problem by sending His Son. Jesus put it this way:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

That is probably the most well-known verse in all of Scripture, which is fitting because in one sentence Jesus explains what all of Scripture is about. In this verse we see:

1) Our condition. We are “perishing” and need saving.
2) God loves us. He sends His Son to die for us in our place, so that:
3) we will live with Him and have eternal life. “Eternal life” means more than living forever. Jesus defines it as:

“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

Eternal life is living forever knowing Jesus (the Bible is pretty clear that all will live forever, past death, but the question is will you live with Jesus). Here we see life! Joy in living! Isn’t that what Solomon was after? Joy is now ours in Christ.

So on the cross God provided a substitute for us so that both His love and His judgment could be satisfied. Because of Jesus’ death, if we humble ourselves before God and ask for His forgiveness, we will be made new, our sins washed away.

That is the hope in the clouds of Ecclesiastes. In chapter 11 get pieces of this hope and some wonderful advice on how we should live now that we have been forgiven and made right with God, but while we still live in this broken, fallen world described by Solomon. Really, what should we do? Should we build a bomb shelter and wait for Jesus to return? Should we, as so many Christians do, completely cut ourselves off from culture and society, and fun? Not sinful fun, but fun. Didn’t God make us to enjoy things?

One of the best sermons I ever heard was a few months after becoming a Christian. It was sermon about grace – how, through the free gift of Jesus Christ, we are made right with God. The pastor ended by saying, “So now what do you do?” He waved his hand and said, “Just live.” Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t God good? Can you see how we are given everything through Him? Not only forgiveness but life. We’re allowed to enjoy this world He has given us.

Cast your bread upon the waters,
for you will find it after many days.
Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. (11:1-2)

Just live! Solomon then writes to remind us, Caution!, remember our helplessness and God’s sovereignty:

If the clouds are full of rain,
they empty themselves on the earth,
and if a tree falls to the south or to the
north,
in the place where the tree falls, there
it will lie. (Ecc. 11:3)

What man can control nature? Do not worry about it. Our place is under God, not over Him. Your Father is in control. There are certainly many, many things of God we cannot understand:

As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. (11:5)

You’re not a in control: Let go of the illusion. Live by God’s grace and fear Him. And, once again, please live:

He who observes the wind will not sow,
and he who regards the clouds will
not reap. (11:4)

Don’t be idle: Your Father has given you purpose and strength and direction in Jesus Christ. Rejoice in this life (11:9), because you are headed to a different and better place. You are going to be with Jesus.

10/1/09