Acts 2:14-38
Last week we looked at the beginning of the very first Christian Church service. This week we will dive in to the very first Christian sermon that we have recorded. The Holy Spirit has come, and we are now reading about the birth of the Church and its first evangelists.
The text of this chapter from this point forward will focus on Peter’s preaching, and the rest of the Christians in the room fade to the background. We do not read anywhere that they stopped speaking, nor is there any reason to think they left. So it is possible that they continued to speak in tongues as a translation service for Peter’s message. However this is not recorded for us, what is recorded is the text of Peter’s first sermon.
Peter stats his sermon by standing up and boldly addressing the crowd in a loud. We are beginning to see a new Peter here, one who is using his unique makeup to serve God in a mighty way. Through out the Gospels Peter is seen as one that acts boldly and speaks quickly with out thought to any risk or plan. We also seem him falter just as quickly. For example, when he is walking on water with Jesus he starts off with great courage, but quickly looses it and sinks. (Matt 14:22-32) The same boldness that drove him off the boat and onto the sea drives him to stand and preach before this crowd.
The boldness of this act becomes apparent when you remember that this is the same crowd that just fifty days prior demanded the crucifixion of Jesus. This is the same people whom Peter denied knowing Jesus to out of fear on the night that Jesus was betrayed. By standing to preach, Peter was openly and very publicly throwing off his prior denials and declaring his allegiance to Jesus and the message Jesus preached. Peter must have known that it could cost him his life, and eventually it would, but this was a Spirit filled Peter who worked for the greater cause of seeing the salvation of his people.
Peter starts his sermon off with a transitional section that he makes as brief as possible. Peter needs to address the comments from the people that the men present were drunk, but he does not spend much time on it at all. It would detract from the message he is about to give to waste time on this. The focal point of the sermon should be the primary message and not side issues. Side issues, like these comments that the people where drunk, must be dealt with but we must make sure that the dealing with them does not detract from the goal of the service.
After putting that issue aside he moves quickly in to explaining what really happened, and what the crowd just saw. He masterfully uses it to lock the crowd’s attention on him. It is natural for people to want an explanation of unusual events, and it is natural for everyone to look to leader to give that explanation. Peter stepped into this roll and uses it to share a message about Christ. This is an important example for us today. Peter does not allow an opportunity to share the Gospel pass; instead he jumps forth and shares it boldly. If he had hesitated, it is likely that some other person from the crowd would have come forth, possibly a Pharisee and dismissed the events another way, and the important message that Peter had would not have been shared. How many times do we today let opportunities like this pass us by?
Peter’s message moves from the miracle that the crowd just witnessed to a very short summary of Jesus life. The crowd he is speaking too would have already known some of what Jesus had done, and if not seen it first hand, had heard many reports already. This is something many would like you to miss when you read sections of scripture like this, and it is a point I have brought up many times before. The crowd hearing the message, and the people that would later read this account, all would have been able to discredit the speaker by presenting argument that the miracles never happened; yet no one did. It might seem easy today to say these events never happened, since no one is alive to give witness to support them, but at the time of this sermon just about anyone listening could have brought up counter evidence if there was any, but none is ever presented. That leaves us with only one conclusion; the people that were alive at the time of Jesus witnessed and believed He did miracles.
This is an important thing to note because the miracles served a very real and needed purpose. It has been said that the more outrageous the claim made, the more outrageous the proof that is needed to support it. Surely no claim could be more outrageous then the claim to be God. Jesus life was characterized by miracle after miracle. With out these miracles there would be absolutely no sane reason to believe the claims he made. Any modern day preacher that tries to say that only the moral teachings are important and that the miracles did not happen, destroys any possible reason for anyone to believe that Jesus is who he said he was.
Using this platform of proof Peter them moves in to address the obvious objection to Jesus’ Godhood. That is, if Jesus is God, then why did he die? To answer this he uses the same explanation that Jesus gave over and over again before His death, which is it was part of the plan from the beginning that Jesus would die. Jesus death was not some unfortunate turn of events that got a good man killed; rather it was the collimation of a plan that took thousands of years to play out.
By presenting Jesus as Messiah, and quoting from their scriptures the prophecies concerning the last days, Peter was preaching on judgment. The Jews knew, and were anxiously waiting, that God would come to judge the world and setup His kingdom. What they did not know was when, and they did not understand the gap between the first coming of Messiah and establishment of the Kingdom of God. When they finally understood that the coming of Messiah had just happened, and that they killed Messiah, they were justifiably terrified. This prompts them to ask the most important question that anyone could ever ask, “What must we do to be saved?”
Peter gives them the simple answer of “repent and let everyone be baptized.” (Acts 2:38) It is important we take a passage like this in light of all of scripture, otherwise we can easily jump to conclusions from our English translation that are not warranted by the Greek, nor in agreement with the rest of the Bible. In our English translation of this verse it almost sounds like Baptism is a requirement to salvation, but that stands in stark contrast to salvation being of God’s grace alone, and not of works of men. The underlying Greek here is a bit hard to translate because it uses a language construct that we do not have in English, so it would be foolish to make an argument for either position from that. Instead, turn in your Bible to Romans 10:1-13 and you will see clearly spelled out how one must be saved.
The key to salivation is repentance and when the Bible talks about repentance it is referring to a turning. If you are turning, you need to turn from something, and in this case that is sin and self. You also need to turn towards something and in this case that something is God. To put it a more simple way, the way to salvation is to surrender yourself and your will to Jesus and make him Lord and Master of your life.
So how does baptism play in to this? Baptism is very important, but as an act of obedience not a means of salvation. Simply put, if Jesus is truly Lord of your life, and the very first thing he asks you to do is be Baptized, why would you not do it? Another way to word the question is, if you do not do it, is Jesus really Lord over your life? Most Christians would claim they want to be used by God for some great work, but if God could not trust them to follow him in the very first and simple step of baptism, why would He trust them to do much bigger things?
Peter in giving this sermon gave us some very important examples to live our lives by. First he modeled for us the boldness that sharing Jesus requires. Second he models that we need to focus in on the most important part of our message and deal with side issues as little as possible. Finally he answers for us the most important question anyone could ever ask, which is “what must I do to be saved”, and gives the simple answer of “repent!”
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