Introduction:
KEY STATEMENT: In Acts 2, we learn a message and method for making him know. We discover what to say when we hear afresh this text. It doesn’t matter how we say it, if we do not know what to say.
QUOTE: Elmer Gantry "When someone says a half-truth as whole-truth it becomes an untruth."
That is what we want … the truth. And Acts 2 presents us with several truths.
1 JESUS CHRIST IS AVAILABLE TO ALL
SCRIPTURE: "And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (2:21).
EXPLANATION: Peter states explicitly that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice is effective for all. The only question is will they call on the name of the Lord.
APPLICATION: We have to learn to say to everyone … your welcome. To the neighbor, the fellow worker, the black, the Indian, the women who had the abortion, the drug addict, the homosexual, the AIDS victim.
ILLUSTRATION: I have been to churches were I did not feel welcome. I felt I was welcome to come, I just wasn’t welcome to come back.
PERSONAL ILLUSTRATION: I used to think there was a magical line which I would cross when I would begin to make people feel welcome: 1) when I went to Bible college; 2) when I graduated; 3) when I got my first ministry. But there is no magic line.
ILLUSTRATION: There was a church bordering the low and middle income neighborhood in Chicago. Although the preacher had been there 20 years, he had never been calling in the low income neighborhood.
TRANSITION: You see, we need to tell people they are welcome, not only with words, but in the way that we treat them.
2 JESUS CHRIST DID NOT DIE BY ACCIDENT
SCRIPTURE: "This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge …" (2:23a)
EXPLANATION: Jesus Christ did not die by accident … God did it.
AMPLIFICATION: You thought it was the Roman soldiers and government … but God did it.
It wasn’t Judas … God did it.
It wasn’t godless men … God did it.
It didn’t occur in the heart of the Pharisees … it occurred in the heart of God.
PARALLEL TEXT: "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted." (Isaiah 53:4) "Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer (Isaiah 53:10)
EXPLANATION: It was God’s plan, not man’s.
PROBLEM: Our world has trouble seeing God doing that.
EXPLANATION: Jesus wasn’t forced to the cross because he was not accepted in the role he came to fulfill. God had the intent of offering his son to show us the true extent of his acceptance of us.
APPLICATION: This is the message we have for our world. That Jesus Christ would die for us so that we might have a chance for life.
TRANSITION: But he is not dead anymore.
3 JESUS CHRIST IS NOT DEAD ANYMORE
SCRIPTURE: "But God raised him up again …" (2:24)
AMPLIFICATION: The truth of the resurrection is the crux of the Christian faith. It is upon the resurrection that the reliability of the Christian faith stands or falls.
SPECIFIC INSTANCES: It was the resurrection that caused Frank Morrison to write The Proof Of The Resurrection, instead of his original intention, The Myth of the Resurrection.
- It was the resurrection that brought Josh McDowell to the foot of the cross.
QUOTE: Michael Green, in Man Alive!: Christianity does not hold resurrection to be one among many tenets of faith. Without faith in the resurrection there would not be Christianity at all. The Christian church would never have begun. The Jesus movement would have fizzled out like a damp squib with his crucifixion. Christianity stands or falls with the truth of the resurrection. Once disprove it, and you have disposed of it.
BIBLICAL EVIDENCE: There are a number of items to which the resurrection is given as the proof of:
*Romans 1:4 - Resurrection affirms that Jesus was God’s Son.
*Romans 6:4 - Resurrection provides the grounds for out share in eternal life.
*Romans 8:34 - Resurrection allows Jesus to intercede for us.
*Galatians 1:1 - Resurrection determined Paul’s apostleship.
*1 Corinthians 15 - Resurrection proves the validity of Christianity.
*1 Thessalonians 1:10 - Hope for the future is rooted in the truth of the resurrection.
STATEMENT: He is risen.
EXPLANATION: That is what the text keeps bringing us back to: vs 24; vs 32; Psalm 16, the whole quote of David.
TRANSITION: He’s risen and we are responsible.
4 JESUS CHRIST CARRIED OUR GUILT
SCRIPTURE: "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him … This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose … and you with the help of wicked men, put him to death …" (2:22-24)
EXPLANATION: He was rejected.
ILLUSTRATION: Several years ago, a man walked onto the football field of the Baltimore Colts, he had been rejected by everyone else … Johnny Unitas became one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.
ILLUSTRATION: Another man was defeated in election after election. But he became President of the United States. The only President from the state of Illinois. Lincoln, rejected, but one of America’s finest.
EXPLANATION: The image of 1 Peter is of Christ as the rejected stone.
SCRIPTURE: "Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, who YOU crucified, both Lord and Christ." (2:36)
EXPLANATION: We are responsible, just as much as Pilate. Just as much as the Jews 2000 years ago. The one we have rejected, God has made Lord, ruler over the universe.
APPLICATION: We crucified him every time we denied his Lordship over us. We crucified him again every time we … We plant another cross every time we … We drive the nails a little deeper each time we … We are responsible for every time we have placed ourselves and our priorities ahead of God’s.
OBSERVATION: Modern preaching tries to avoid guilt.
EXPLANATION: But nothing we could say could bring more guilt than what Peter said, "Your guilty." And he stopped. He didn’t offer an invitation. He didn’t give them a way out. He just stopped. And he might have begun to walk away. But someone in the crowd cried out, "What do we do? We’re guilty." And Peter tells them to respond.
RESTATEMENT: That is the gospel -- When we come to terms with our own personal guilt and responsibility for putting the Son of God on a cross.
