Some people despise the message proclaimed on Easter—and other Sundays, as well. They find the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ difficult to believe and certainly, unwarranted as the focal point of history. How anyone can put their trust in Christ and follow Him is beyond their comprehension. Disdain for Christianity marks their conversations and attitudes.
One man who seems to show more disdain than most others for Christianity and the gospel message is author Christopher Hitchens, whose best-selling book God Is Not Great caused quite a stir. Recently, Hitchens moderated a panel discussion in New York for a documentary looking at the turbulent period of the Viet Nam era. Other journalists joined the panel. One pointed out the cultural difference between the Viet Nam era and present day—that young people do not share the same passionate anti-war sentiments as those forty years ago. She stated, “Our audience is more religious and conservative than we assume.” Hitchens, startled at the statement, reacted. “I really hate to hear that the young are becoming more Christian…If that’s true, that’s the worst news of the night!” [“Atheists in Time of War,” World, March 22/29, 2008, p. 11].
Had Mr. Hitchens been part of those gathered for Pentecost just seven weeks after the death and resurrection of Christ, he would have faced a momentous occasion. The small group of Christ’s followers were filled with the Holy Spirit’s power and made such a commotion by their demonstrative experience of Christ that the whole of Jerusalem gathered to hear an explanation. The city swelled in population during the week-long celebration. Hundreds of thousands heard the sound of the rushing wind, while various people groups represented at Pentecost heard the confession of Christ as Lord in their own native tongue (2:6-11). They had to have an explanation of how these things were happening before their eyes and ears.
Some mocked, claiming that the 120 disciples were “full of sweet wine” (2:13). Peter, who only weeks before had fallen miserably by denying that he even knew Christ, now stood forgiven, restored, and emboldened by the Spirit to put the pieces together for the questioning masses. He scoffed at the idea of the disciples being drunk by pointing out that it was much too early in the day for this in Jerusalem (2:15). Instead, he quoted the prophet Joel, who eight centuries earlier predicted the great day they were now experiencing. Luke only gives us a synopsis of Peter’s sermon but what he shows us is masterful. The restored Apostle brought together the whole message of biblical revelation as pointing to Christ. He interpreted the Old Testament in light of the coming, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus Christ. Christ’s death took place at the hands of godless men but behind it all loomed “the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (2:23). Though men sought to rid Israel of the one called “the Christ” by crucifying Him, “God raised Him up again,” and through that death and resurrection, put “an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (2:24).
Here’s the first sermon of the infant Church: the aim of biblical revelation is to declare Jesus Christ as Lord. That declaration leaves us with the need to respond. It’s not given to add to our storehouse of knowledge. It is the central truth of all life and history. What Peter set forth 2000 years ago is still the same message and carries the same eternal weight that it did in the ears of his hearers. How does Peter show Jesus Christ as Lord to be the aim of biblical revelation and the most important truth for humanity?
For people living under Roman rule, heroes remained important just as they do today, especially among oppressed people. For instance, when I was in Albania, I heard often about Skanderbeg, the brave 15th century leader of Albania whom they call “the Dragon of Albania.” His image still adorns money and the markets. In Peter’s day, the Jews spoke of the great days of their history. They talked of the patriarchs, the entry into the Promised Land, and the days of King David. Visitors still made their way to David’s tomb to think of what had passed before them and what might have been if they had remained faithful to the Lord.
But David remained in the tomb. Any hope they had of David reviving from the dead to lead them to triumph over Rome was dispelled by a visit to the sealed tomb where his remains continued their decay after 1000 years of interment.
“Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.” Was Peter trying to take a shot at the long-dead David? David lived, died, and was buried. The remains of the great king lay in the tomb, helpless to change anything in Israel. Dead heroes are inspiring and motivational as one reflects upon them. But they remain powerless to lead oppressed people.
Peter recognized that much of Israel’s hope lay in the promises God gave to David. That’s why he quotes portions of Psalm 16 where David spoke of future hope, future joy, and future glory (2:25-28). Peter connects the dots for them. David was not speaking of himself in that meditation but of his greater Son—the Messiah. “Because You will not abandon My soul to Hades, nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay. You have made known to Me the ways of life; You will make Me full of gladness with Your presence” (2:72-28). Peter points out: You’ve been waiting for this psalm to be fulfilled. You’ve been looking in every generation for the Davidic King to arise. You thought it might be Solomon. But he died and was buried. You thought it might be King Hezekiah but he died and was buried. You thought it was good King Josiah but he also died in battle and was buried. They remain in the graveyard of the kings. Then, when Zedekiah died, ending the Davidic dynasty, you thought all hope was gone—all promises unfulfilled. But you have looked in the wrong place! You looked for pageantry and political power. Yet before your own eyes, God sent the Messiah who was delivered over by God’s predetermined plan so that you put Him to death.
David spoke prophetically in Psalm 16, looking for the day when God would bring fulfillment to His promise. “And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ.” Peter is expounding the meaning of Psalm 16, so he restates the phrase he had just offered (2:27): “He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.” In that Psalm, David confessed the Lord as his refuge and delight, finding great satisfaction in God’s works of providence in his life. But the King takes the mantle of the prophet and looks ahead. David remained in the grave—or “Sheol,” or “Hades,” the place of the dead. All Israel knew that; so David could not be speaking about himself in that context. David died and was buried and remained as a handful of dust and bones in his tomb. But “Your Holy One” did not undergo decay. In other words, He would go to the grave but the grave would not have the normal destructive effect upon Him that it has on everyone else who has died. God would not allow His flesh to suffer decay because in three days, He raised Christ from the dead.
There are two important considerations regarding God’s promise. First, this Scripture gives clear evidence of the aim of biblical revelation to declare the Christ as Lord. The writer of Hebrews gives detailed evidence of how even the rituals in the Old Testament era served as shadows pointing to Christ as the substance. They had their place: Moses and his leadership, Aaron and the Levitical priesthood, and the complete sacrificial system served their purpose to keep men in check and to point them to the necessity of a Savior. Even the kings of Israel and Judah had their place to display kingship over the temporal kingdom that would one day give way to the King of kings over an Eternal Kingdom. They were never intended to be the end all. Jesus drew the same conclusion as He spoke to the multitudes that questioned Him. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). The New Testament writers took this hermeneutical approach as they read the Old Testament—not by continual allegories as some of the church fathers and medieval writers did—but by showing how the whole of God’s revelation moved to its consummation in Jesus Christ and His death, resurrection, and exaltation.
Second, Jesus Christ is the Christ—God’s anointed who speaks as God’s Prophet, who mediates as God’s Priest, and who reigns as God’s anointed King. As Christ or Anointed One, He exercises the three-fold offices of prophet, priest, and king—each recognized in the Old Testament by an anointing or setting apart to God. So, David “spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.” Israel had many great prophets, priests, and kings. But their graves were still with the people (Elijah being an exception). Christ was set apart as the One who conquered death, “putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (2:24).
Thus, the resurrection sets Jesus Christ apart in His prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices, showing that He discharges His offices eternally and not temporally as all that foreshadowed Him. As Prophet, He speaks the way of eternal life to us. As Priest, He mediates the way for sinners to be accepted by Holy God for eternity. As King, He reigns for eternity as Lord over His kingdom. Death could not hold Him! The worst enemy of humanity, the culmination of both our depraved natures and our active enslavement to sin in death, Christ conquered through His death and resurrection.
Such promise to David in which he found hope and refuge is the same promise that we run unto for refuge.
Peter is emphatic in verse 32: “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.” Here is the crux of history. God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Of course, the resurrection followed His death and burial. For sinners, Christ died, according to “the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.” Why did He die? It was not, as some suggest, showing an example of humble suffering. It was not because He could do nothing about it. He told His disciples that He could appeal to His Father who would “at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels” (Matt. 26:53). He did not do it to “show us the way,” as one song, otherwise quite good, expressed it. He died to be the way to the Father. He died because God’s justice required that He appropriately judge the sinners that He purposed to save. He died vicariously, as a substitute in our place before the judgment of God. He died so that God might be just in declaring sinners to be righteous. What the death of thousands of animal sacrifices could not do before Him, Christ did through His solitary death at the cross. He died that we might be forgiven and accepted by God through Him.
Jesus Christ was also buried. After the centurion in charge of His crucifixion determined that He was dead, Joseph of Arimathea, a rich disciple of Christ, received permission to take the body for burial. He and the renowned Pharisee Nicodemus carefully wrapped the body of Jesus in a linen burial shroud and applied the appropriate mixture of spices, “as is the burial custom of the Jews” (John 19:38-42). They laid His body in Joseph’s own Garden Tomb. His death was a real death not a feigned one. The burial added to the centurion’s verification of Christ’s death. In that tomb lay God Incarnate! In that tomb lay the One slain for sinners! Joseph and Nicodemus carried the lifeless body of Him who bore all of our offenses against God. They held Him who fully satisfied eternal justice so that unworthy sinners, called by the gospel, might exchange their sin for His righteousness.
“This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.” Peter adds another layer to the fact of Christ’s resurrection. The “all” to whom he referred were the 120 that had gathered in the Upper Room waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit in power. They were the ones, because of the Spirit, who had caused the commotion in Jerusalem. One hundred and twenty “witnesses,” ready to testify to all that would listen that God raised Jesus up from the dead! The Christian faith relies on the witnesses that God appointed for such a time. They told the rest of the world that death was conquered; the grave could not hold Him! It would still have been just as true if none of these were around to bear witness. But to help our weakness and to overcome our unbelief, God gave these disciples the opportunity to see the risen Christ. He could have written it in the clouds or heralded it by angels but He chose to use weak vessels, just like us, to testify of the most important news the world has ever heard. They spent the rest of their lives bearing testimony to the good news that “this Jesus God raised up again.”
It was “this Jesus,” the same One that God promised, David foretold, and who had lived among them healing the sick, feeding the hungry, raising the dead, and proclaiming the kingdom of God. “This Jesus” was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, arrested by religious zealots, jeered by the multitudes, condemned by Pontius Pilate, scourged by Roman soldiers, bore His cross to Golgotha, crucified between two thieves, and cried with His last breath, “It is finished!” “This Jesus God raised up again!”
The resurrection stood between the crucifixion and Christ’s exaltation to the right hand of the Father. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, He ascended back to the Father where all of heaven received Him with honor and glory. I imagine that it went something like this:
Lift up your heads, O gates,
And be lifted up, O ancient doors,
That the King of glory may come in!
Who is the King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O gates,
And lift them up, O ancient doors,
That the King of glory may come in!
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts,
He is the king of glory. (Psa. 24:7-10)
Being “exalted to the right hand of God,” implies the position of authority. That’s why Peter quotes from Psalm 110:1, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” The great resurrection chapter, 1 Corinthians 15, affirms this truth: “For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death” (15:25-26). We still see death lingering, snapping at us, clamping its jaws on us, but the day will come when all that Christ has accomplished through His death and resurrection will be fully applied. The perishable will put on the imperishable and the mortal put on immortality. Then the eternal taunt begins, “‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting.’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:53-57).
The resurrection and exaltation of Christ further explains the indwelling difference between the redeemed and the unbelieving of the world. “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received the promise from the Father of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear.” Remember that Peter is answering a question about the Spirit-filled disciples of Christ, “What does this mean?” The Holy Spirit is the resurrection gift of the risen Lord to His Church. He is the promise from the Father which Peter had explained from Joel’s prophecy (Acts 2:16-21). The demonstrative gift of the resurrection of Christ is the indwelling Holy Spirit who makes such a difference in believers that the world both sees and hears this holy distinction.
What were they seeing? They saw the remarkable unity of this small band of believers bearing testimony to the different people groups represented at Pentecost. They saw the uninhibited love for Christ and joy in the gospel. They saw people willing to face ridicule and shame for the sake of Christ and the gospel. What were they hearing? They heard this group “speaking of the mighty deeds of God.” They were not talking about themselves or their great plans for the future. They spoke of what God has done in Christ.
That’s what the Holy Spirit does in every age among those He indwells. He is ever pointing to Christ and glorying in Christ, and so too, are those indwelled by Him through the resurrection gift of Christ.
I debated on whether to call the last point “a declaration” or “a conclusion.” It is both. It is a declaration of Christ’s Lordship and divine office as Messiah. But it is, even more, a conclusion to Peter’s sermon. He draws together the points He has made: (1) the coming of the Spirit is precisely what the 8th century B.C. prophet Joel had foretold of that time when Messiah would come(2:16-21); (2) Jesus Christ’s crucifixion came by the hands of ungodly men but only because “it was God who contrived the cross” [Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Book of Acts: Authentic Christianity, vol. 1, 44] and who demonstrated His purpose by raising Him up again from the dead (2:22-28); and (3) the prophecy of David is made sure by the promise of the Spirit that this Jesus God raised up again (2:29-35). So, what will you do with this? God promised through the prophets that the Redeemer and King would come. Though the centuries seemed to bring into question the promise, God’s timing was perfect. Christ came to save sinners. But how do we know that what He did on the cross was accepted by God? God raised Christ from the dead! The resurrection shouts the loud affirmation of heaven to the sufficiency of Christ as Savior and Lord!
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.” Though you were guilty of His death because of your sin, God purposed through that death to bear away His judgment in His Son. “This Jesus whom you crucified” is “both Lord and Christ.” In other words, He is the eternal, sovereign Lord who reigns over all creation without end. “All things have been created through Him and for Him” (Col. 1:16). He is Lord of all! But He is also “Christ,” the descendant of David whom God promised as a Savior.
Archaeologists dig around and occasionally find some tomb of an ancient king. Though the centuries have worn away the remains, the dust of their once royal bodies has been scattered over the earth. But not the body of Christ crucified and buried—God raised Him up again and has exalted Him, declaring Him to be Lord and Christ. Have you confessed Him as your Lord and Christ?
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