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Acts 2:14-41 If you haven’t yet, read it here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%202%3A14-41&version=NLT
God bless Peter. He is absolutely the most relatable disciple. Am I right? He was so rarely at a loss for words. This day was no exception. But this day was exceptional.
Peter, who so often spoke first and thought later, delivers a sermon that in itself is powerful evidence of a massive transformation in him. He references the Psalms and the prophets as though he were a lifelong scholar. He masterfully demonstrates that the man who died less than two months ago on a cross in the same city where they now stood, was in fact the Messiah, the hope of Israel and the world.
He begins by answering some in the crowd who heard the believers speaking in languages they had never learned and dismissively assumed, “Meh, they’re drunk.”
I love the fact that his response included, “Guys, it’s 9am. They haven’t had time to get drunk yet.” But then he goes on to quote one of the books of the prophets. He explains, “What is happening here is something we were promised was coming. The prophet Joel told us God’s spirit would be poured out on all kinds of people, young and old, men and women. They would receive the spirit of God and have visions and dreams and be supernaturally empowered to proclaim God’s words. The prophet explained that in those days there would be all kinds of startling natural events and people would be saved by calling on the name of the Lord.” Having asserted that the time of which the prophet spoke had arrived, he backed his claim. Everyone there had seen or heard of Jesus. God had shown that Jesus was the Messiah they had been waiting for by empowering him to perform signs and miracles. And then, in accordance with God’s plan which he had told them in the scriptures was going to unfold, Jesus was arrested and executed. But God raised him from the dead. I love how he says, “And we are all eyewitnesses of this.” In another book of the Bible we are told that over 500 people saw Jesus at the same time after his resurrection. I imagine Peter was making eye contact with some of them in the crowd as he spoke. He knows his audience is Jewish and that they had been waiting for a Messiah who would rescue them from their oppressors. He knows that Jesus did not meet expectations. So he explains that they had been misunderstanding the scriptures that described who the Messiah would be and what he would do. They had got some of it right. They had been expecting a man, a descendant of the great King David, but one whose body would never be allowed to decay. King David had prophesied about it and he clearly wasn’t talking about himself because his body had long since decayed in a tomb that everyone walked past in Jerusalem. Jesus, however, was a man, and a descendant of David but, Peter announces with a heart that still had to be just overflowing with the wonder of what had happened, “God raised this Jesus to life and we saw him.” I love the part where Peter declares, “It was impossible for death to hold onto him.” I just want to inhale so deeply as I read that. It was impossible for death to hold him. Read it again! Say it out loud! It was impossible for death to hold him. It grabbed him. It pulled him down. He truly experienced death. But it couldn’t keep him. Don’t run past that phrase because it is everything for those of us who have trusted our lives to him. Death doesn’t win! I don’t know about you, but I have lost some people I really love. Death makes me really angry. But from the moment it lost its grip on Jesus, it has never been able to close its fist around any of us who trust him. When our hope is in Jesus, death is temporary. In a couple hours I will be attending the interment of my uncle who met Jesus kind of mid-life. He loved and served him for the rest of his life. Putting his ashes in the ground today, sucks. It just does. But because death couldn’t hold Jesus it had no hold on my Uncle and he is now so much more alive than I have ever been and enjoying the presence of God.
All that to say, this sermon from two millennia ago is relevant today!
Peter moves on, so I should do the same. Jesus wasn’t just a man. He points to another prophecy of the Messiah where David refers to the Messiah as Lord and says that God invites him to sit at his right hand while he places everything under him. This isn’t just a man he is talking about. This is someone who is exalted to the throne of heaven along side the father. This is someone who is worshipped in heaven. Who is allowed to be worshipped in heaven you ask? God alone.
Peter concludes with the terrifying declaration, “This guy who scriptures predicted would be both the Messiah and the Lord of heaven is the very same Jesus who you crucified mere weeks ago.”
Apparently his message was compelling. We are told they were “cut to the heart.” They recognized the truth, the horrifying truth, and asked Peter and the other disciples, “What do we do now?”
Peter’s response echoes around the world to this day. It’s the foundation of our hope. It’s the only way to peace. It’s what we share with little ones in Sunday School and broken criminals in prison fellowships. It’s a truth that transcends culture and gender and socio-economic status and time itself. Repent. Allow the regret you feel to actually become a choice to change. Be baptized in the name of Jesus. Baptism is an outward symbol of walking away from your old path and turning onto the path down which Jesus leads you. In fact, it is really a symbol of letting the person that you were die, and becoming a whole new person whose life is an extension of the life of Jesus. In doing this, you are forgiven for the myriad ways you chose your own rules and lived by your own standard, and you commit to allowing God to make you into someone who lives by his rules. And, just like the disciples received the Spirit that day and were transformed by his presence in them, you will also be given the Spirit to live within you. He is both the deposit on God’s promise to forever rescue you from death, and the one who will lead you through life and give you the ability to honour God.
In many ways it’s very complex. But ultimately it is simple. Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Believe that he is who he claimed to be. Believe that he is Lord and, as such, makes the rules that enable us to live life as it was designed to be. Believe that his death, his execution that was a punishment for sins he never committed, is enough to cover the punishment for all the sins that you have. Believe that death couldn’t hold onto him because God raised him from the dead and he can do the same for you.
We are told that three thousand people accepted the message that day and joined the followers of Jesus.
I would be remiss not to pause here and ask if you have also accepted this message. If you haven’t, please consider doing exactly that. If you need more information, or if you are someone who has, but wants to understand it better, let’s keep going. This is the very beginning. This story that is about to unfold – now that the Holy Spirit of God is actually living permanently in his people- is magnificent.
