We Are All Witnesses Of The Fact

“WE ARE ALL WITNESSES OF THE FACT” (Outline)

April 11, 2010 -

Easter 2 -

ACTS 2:22-32

INTRO: Our lives are filled with searching. During our earthly living we spend a lot of time searching for answers, truth, and fact. This is not always easy in our world today. All too often today’s “experts” have only wrong or biased answers. Today truth is often considered as relative. This means that each person establishes his own truth. The facts can be overlooked in our age of overwhelming information. Our loving Lord makes our search for answers, truth, and fact easy. God gives us his word in the Scripture that has every answer, is all truth, and provides the facts. This is our joy of Easter in the fact of Jesus’ resurrection. "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men--the testimony given in its proper time" (1 TIMOTHY 2:5,6).

“WE ARE ALL WITNESSES OF THE FACT.

I. Our sins crucified Jesus.

II. Our Father raised up Jesus.

I. OUR SINS CRUCIFIED JESUS

A. Peter preaches to the crowd at the first Pentecost. This is the first public preaching of the empty tomb.

1. Verse 22a. Peter uses a common term of courtesy to address the crowd. He wants their ears.

2. Verse 22b. “Jesus of Nazareth” was the respectful term people used for the prophet Jesus.

3. “Miracles, wonders, and signs” were the proofs required to call a person divine, Jesus.

B. Verse 23a. Jesus was handed over to you. The crowd would be the ones responsible for Jesus’ death.

1. All of this happened as the plan of God. All this happened with God’s knowledge, approval.

2. Verse 23b. You used wicked men to carry out the crucifixion: Judas, Pilate, and Herod.

C. The crowd might try to deny their responsibility but they could not escape it. Voices cried, “crucify!”

D. Peter preached the full extent of the law to the crowd. You, your sins nailed Jesus to the cross. We do not like to hear the law. We are the guilty ones. Our sins also crucified Jesus. This is God’s law. No one can escape sin. Too many try to redefine sin as sickness. Others try to completely deny sin. Still others feel that sin is just on outdated idea of the church. Ask people what will happen at the end of their life. All agree that earthly life will end in death. We cannot escape death. In the same way sin constantly clings to every one on this side of heaven. "For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son--both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die" (EZEKIEL 18:4).

E. Make no mistake of the danger of sin. Sin is alive and well. Sin lives in the hearts and lives of every human being. We always want to remember that we spend far more time living in this wicked world than surrounded with God’s security inside the walls of worship. The world has a greater influence on our living than we sometimes want to admit. This world and all of its evil would try to turn our hearts into hardened stone. "The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every incli-nation of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time" (GENESIS 6:5). These words are spoken before the flood when wickedness ruled. Read on in Genesis and in chapter 8 (verse 21) the Lord God Almighty speaks the same words to Noah after the flood. This is God’s truth about sin.

F. We are all witnesses of the fact. Our sins have nailed Jesus to the cross. After the sin of Adam and Eve God demanded justice. The justice God demanded for payment for sin was to be paid by him. This is God’s grace for us and for all of mankind. "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (ISAIAH 53:6). How very true! We all go astray and wander off to do our selfish things in this life over and over and over again and again. We also know that fact our Lord God Almighty lays on the Lamb of God all of our sins.

“WE ARE ALL WITNESSES OF THE FACT”.

Our sins crucified Jesus, nailing him to the cross.

II. OUR FATHER RAISED UP JESUS.

A. Verse 29. Peter speaks of David their well-known ancestor. David died and did not rise again.

1. Verse 27. In Psalm 16 David wrote of a resurrection. Some thought it was about David.