Clough Acts Lesson 6

Official Indictment of Israel – Acts 2:22-32; Ps. 16:8-11

We studied the doctrine of tongues and gave some points on the history and the doctrine and some of the applications of the so-called tongues issue. We hope that will orient you to the rest of what goes on in the book of Acts and will keep you from getting involved in some of the shenanigans that are going on in religious circles today.

Pentecost is built on the resurrection of Christ; you always want to see everything that’s going on here as built on the resurrection. It is not built on your experience, my experience or even the apostle’s experience. Experience is not the issue on the day of Pentecost. On the day of Pentecost we have confirmation of the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Christians who insist upon replacing God’s gospel with human experience, even Christian testimony are basically rebelling against God’s Word. Now Christian testimony and Christian experience have their place but they are not the gospel. The gospel is what God has spoken into history and recorded in Scripture.

We said that tongues were a sign, not of blessing, but a sign of cursing. Peter quoted the passage in Joel, a passage that was written to commend the nation back to repentance. It was a passage that attacked the nation for their rebellion against Scripture, for their rebellion against what God had told them. And so tongues, far from being any sign of any blessing whatsoever is a sign of impending doom upon the nation. And because it is we have to review a particular doctrine which we have studied over and over and it should be part of the divine viewpoint framework in your soul; that is the doctrine of judgment/salvation. It is this doctrine that occurs again and again in the verses of Acts 2.

Peter is addressing the nation and he is addressing a nation that falls under this doctrinal area, and so the first point in the doctrine of judgment/salvation is that God is always gracious before judgment. Grace precedes judgment; God always makes sure that a person has adequate warning before He lowers the boom. This happens with us personally and it happened here. Notice in the Joel quotation, in Acts 2:19-21, “And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath: blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. [20] The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon into blood,” these are obviously geophysical disturbances around at least the planet earth. These are things that are going to happen in the future to get men’s attention. They’re going to terrify and probably destroy thousands of people. We have had geophysical catastrophes in our generation but nothing like that which God is predicting. Apparently this is the only way He can get the attention of a depraved human race, and thus He gives grace before judgment, warnings upon warnings.

Then the second point in the doctrine of judgment/salvation is that God has perfect discrimination. When God judges between the good and the evil He does not judge statistically; He does not judge by a roulette wheel. God judges sovereignly; He judges omnisciently; and this means no mistakes and therefore in verse 21 you’ll see Peter’s appeal using the Joel passage that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” He doesn’t say they might be, or they have a higher probability of being saved: they shall be saved!

The third point in the doctrine of judgment salvation is that God when he judges only has one way of salvation from that judgment. This goes back to Noah and the flood, it goes back to the Exodus; take whatever example you want from the history of redemption and you’ll always see God consistently hammering away at the old, old theme—only one way of salvation from His judgment. And so again in verse 21, “And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Not who cranks out good works, who gets 1,000 religious points for doing good things, but “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord,” that is trust.

And then we find the fourth point in the doctrine of judgment/salvation is that this way of salvation must be appropriated by faith; always that way. We cannot earn it, we do not deserve it, there’s nothing we can do, we can only rest in what God has provided. Noah built the ark but he built it by God’s blueprint; Noah finally went on the ark and God shut the door. In the Exodus Israel it is only by blood during the Exodus that people were saved. It had nothing to do with their IQ, their degree or lack of degree, their education, their personality, how much furniture they had in their house, it was only a matter of whether blood was on the door. That’s the issue.

And finally in the doctrine of judgment/salvation both man and nature are involved. This is always the way it goes. When God judges the human race He judges it through His creation. The hymn we sang this morning was a praise for God’s work in nature. God blesses us through nature and God can curse us through nature; nature is His tool. And thus in verses 19-20 it is in nature that God works to warn that generation.

Now Peter’s sermon is a reflection of the thinking of Jesus Christ. There’s something that you want to appreciate here and this is why I’m going slow in the book of Acts on these passages. These series of sermons that you’ll see time and again in the book of Acts quote the Old Testament. For example, last time we concluded with verse 21. We started in verse 14 and we ended in verse 21; that’s 8 verses and of those 8 verses 5 were quotations out of the Old Testament. Five out of eight and that’s about the ratio of the apostolic preaching; that’s how much Old Testament they used. And that is why it is so foolish when you hear Christians who go around with their little pocket testaments… pocket testaments are fine, but reading a pocket testament is no more going to edify you than going out and looking at the stars every night. The problem is that you have to read the Old Testament; thus we drill the Old Testament, in family training, over and over and over and over and this is why I stop every time I do in the New Testament and I’m sure I must bore you and some of you who are new and cannot appreciate the Old Testament because you basically don’t have the capacity to appreciate it, you’ll get that later on but just new to the Scriptures you just don’t have that capacity and to you this is a lot of dull plodding.

But I want to draw your attention to one very simple fact; for forty days between Jesus Christ resurrection and His ascension, during those forty days according to Luke 24 He briefed and drilled and drilled some more the apostles in how to interpret the Old Testament. He went through the Law of Moses; He went through the Torah; He went through all those five books over and over and over and over again and then He went through the Prophets, He went through Isaiah, He went through Jeremiah, and then He went through the Writings, He went through the Psalms, He went through Proverbs, and He explained all of these Writings in the light of Himself. And so when we read sermons like we are now reading, we ought not to react to them like the usual sidewalk skeptic, well, that’s just your interpretation. That’s a lamebrain idiotic excuse for lack of thought. Obviously it’s your interpretation but the question isn’t whether it’s your interpretation, it’s whether it’s your interpretation that is correct or not. That’s the issue, whether it’s just your interpretation or more than just your interpretation. And this is more that just our interpretation; in fact, it is more than just Peter’s interpretation. In fact, this interpretation of the use of Joel and other quotes which are coming is Jesus own interpretation. Where did the apostles get all this information on how to interpret the Old Testament? The forty day Bible school that Jesus Christ conducted for their edification between the time of His resurrection and the time of His ascension.

This also ought to warn you about this usual thing, well, I just speak from the heart. Every once in a while some minister who hasn’t studied will get up and say today I’m just going to speak from the heart as the Spirit leads. Now if I got up here and spoke from my heart as the Spirit led absolutely no edification would come forth. The only way a clergyman can prepare is by hours and hours and hours of training in the original languages; to study in those original languages and interpret the Bible in the light of the day in which it was written. This is the only way to do it and when Peter gets up in Acts 2 he doesn’t just kind of float along as the Spirit leads; the Spirit led him by a forty day intensive course of training in Old Testament hermeneutics under the Professor of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is where he got His training.

So now when we come to this sermon understand Peter has not just thought this up, this particular Sunday morning. He had been trained in this. All these passages had been drilled into him. So it’s very easy, he gets up and he begins to quote one passage after another and he moves with it. Now let’s see how he uses this. His sermon; break it down. The first verse, verse 14, is the introduction. It’s this introduction that catches the attention of his hearers. They have obviously watched the tongues phenomenon and now something has to happen, so this is what happens, verse 14. Then in verses 15-21 Peter handles the immediate pressing problem of the crowd which is to explain this baby talk that they hear coming to them through Parthian, through Greek, through Ethiopian languages and through the various Semitic languages of Aramaic, Arabic and so forth. All this input that they’re getting they’ve got to explain this and that’s why he quotes Joel.

Today we’re going to study two more portions, Acts 2:22-24 which form his official indictment of the nation Israel for the sin of crucifying Jesus. Today the Vatican won’t even admit that because of the fear of being labeled as anti-Semitic. But verses 22-24 Peter accuses the nation of the sin of crucifying Christ. And it was his prerogative to do it; it is not our prerogative to do that today. Today for us to do it would be anti-Semitic because the generation of today’s Jews aren’t the ones responsible for the death of Christ, and it’s wrong as many so-called Christians have done as they’ve gone in and massacred Jews by the hundreds in Jewish ghettos, swinging the cross of Christ and saying you killed Christ, we kill you. That’s a real fine introduction of the gospel to some Jewish person, but yet that’s what has happened time and time again and this is why the Jewish person is so defensive about the name Christ. So be careful. Peter was authorized to do it to that particular generation. We are not!

Acts 2:25-31, in these verses Peter is going to justify the resurrection on the basis of Old Testament prophecy; he’s going to show that what happened to Jesus after the nation committed its sin of crucifying Him God reversed man’s rebellion. In God’s universe autonomous man has some freedom to tear apart, he has some freedom to rebel, but he doesn’t have unlimited freedom. This is why there is no such thing as absolute free will. You don’t have absolute free will, you’re just kidding yourself. You have freedom up to a limit that God has decreed and no more; there is no such thing as absolute free will; that’s paganism so be careful how you talk about volition.

Now as Peter proceeds in Acts 2:22-24 he begins the indictment. He says in verse 22, “Ye men of Israel,” please notice that his remarks are being addressed to Israel, not Gentiles, in the context. So when we get down to Acts 2:38 and so on you’ll understand it is in the context of this accusation of a national sin. “You men of Israel, hear these words:” and then he calls Jesus by a name. It says here, “Jesus of Nazareth,” but it’s not Jesus of Nazareth. It’s “Jesus, the Nazarion,” which comes over in English as “Jesus, the Nazarene.” What’s this title, Jesus Nazarion? Jesus Nazarion was a title used by the Hebrew Christians. You see, Christians weren’t always called Christians. We call ourselves Christians and by the end of the book of Acts most believers were called Christians but in the first hours of the Church, in the days of Pentecost and thereafter, the name for the Christians was not Christians but the Nazarenes. And for decades later it was the Jews who believed in the Messiah who called themselves the Nazarenes. That was the particular name of Jewish Christians, or Hebrew Christians, not any connection to the modern denomination of the Nazarenes but in that ancient day the Nazarenes was a particular code name, you might say, so Jesus is the arch Nazarion, or the arch the first Nazarene.

“…a man approved by God among you with miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you, as you yourselves also know.” Now the word “approved” that you see there is a word to attest; it is a word in the Greek that is a particular special term, it is used for attesting to a man for public office. Josephus uses this term when he describes how David, just before he died, took his little baby son, Solomon and had a great parade all around Jerusalem, floats and choirs and everything else, and the purpose was to attest to the public in the city of Jerusalem that Solomon, my son, will be the one who sits on my throne. David attested to his son by a public declaration. So the verb He was “approved by God” in verse 22 means God publicly attested to Jesus Christ as the One qualified to be the Messiah. Notice again it says that He qualified Him in the eyes of the public by “miracles, wonders and signs.” Notice the emphasis.

I want you to read verse 22 with me and we’ll count the number of times Peter uses you or you all. It starts off, “Ye men of Nazareth,” (1), “hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you,” (2), “by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you,” (3), “as you yourselves” (4) also know.” So four times in one sentence you, you, you, you. Why does Peter do that? Because Peter is driving home the point of guilt, you are guilty; you are guilty of rejecting what God has done for you. You! And so he uses… he gets very personal here, he uses the second person plural to get personal and to drive home the point of conviction. He’s not just talking about an abstract fact, he’s talking about something that involved their spiritual, ethical, moral standing before God. What have they done to God’s Son, that’s the issue: you, you, you, you.

Now he says that God attested to Jesus by “signs and wonders.” Now the signs and wonders mentioned here are not the signs and wonders of tongues; they are not the signs and wonders of the apostolic era; they are the signs and wonders that occurred between the baptism of Jesus under John and His death on the cross; His pre-death signs and wonders, not His post-ascension signs and wonders. Why is that so important? Well, critics always argue that Jesus’ evaluation, the evaluation of Jesus has evolved in history because the all permeating pagan myth of evolution has so enamored itself in the minds of scholars we even have it applied to religion. And so here’s the man Jesus; this is the usual image, I’m not caricaturing anybody, this is your majority opinion in this country, right to this day. Jesus was mere man, this is how they say things started. And He went around doing good, He went around teaching people to love their neighbor, He went around basically as an ethical teacher. And then after He was crucified and they would view it in the same light Socrates took the hemlock and so on, after this good man died there arose around Jesus an aurora that turned Jesus into something He really wasn’t; it turned Jesus into a divine Savior, and all of that aurora developed after Jesus died. It was in the minds of his followers that He did this. Now this verse is extremely important, a little point but very important. It shows Peter getting up within hours of Christ’s ascension into heaven and seating with the giving of the Holy Spirit and he is able, not 80 years after the fact but only days after the fact, to get up in front of a public audience and to say to all of the people, you all have seen God’s signs and wonders that He did in Christ, and you yourselves know this, and never was Peter challenged.

He was never challenged and this is something you ought to remember when someone says to you well, there’s no other evidence for the Christian faith other than the Bible. Oh is that so? Where is the evidence against the Christian faith. You see, if Christian evolved over an 80 year period of time there ought to be some evidence somewhere of the (quote) “true tradition,” of the non-divine Jesus who never did any miracles. That tradition ought to be some place and surely someone should have come forward and challenged Peter’s preaching. But no one did come forward. We have no record whatsoever in all of history. Remember if there had been the Jewish rabbis in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries surely would have communicated this, but they didn’t. There’s a massive question mark in the ancient world; why didn’t the ancient public refute these claims. The answer is because they couldn’t. As Peter says here in verse 22, “you yourselves know this,” I’m not telling you new facts, you already know these. And therefore Peter holds that generation culpable, that is he holds them guilty, guilty of conviction of a crime they committed, not in ignorance but deliberately in full knowledge. So the liberal higher critical argument of an evolving Christianity just doesn’t stand up to fact, and particularly the fact of verse 22, the early Christians preaching the signs and wonders done before the resurrection.

He says here that God did this, “by Him in the middle of you all.” The signs and the wonders are obviously in some way tied to the signs and wonders of verse 19; surely Peter has verse 19 on his mind. Now however we interpret verse 22 we’ve got to understand, how is Peter using Joel in this sense? All right, what did Joel predict? Joel predicted a judgment to come upon the nation Israel. He said grace before that judgment with signs and wonders; that’s Joel’s prediction. After Christ would come, after the great judgment, “I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh,” so cursing to the disbelievers, blessing to the believers. That’s Joel’s passage. Now what Peter is saying is that the same judgmental process has just occurred. He says observe, the “signs and the wonders,” were they not done between the baptism and the cross, and He says on the day of the crucifixion, do you remember what happened in the afternoon about 3:00 o’clock. What happened to the light? The sun grew dark. Wasn’t that a little tiny kind of miracle of the massive scale miracles that Joel is predicting in verse 20. So Peter is consciously saying to the people that you people have had three plus years of signs and wonders that God has done among you. Signs and wonders that should have tipped you off long ago to who Jesus really was, and now the Spirit has come in the same kind of way it’s going to happen in the Second Advent; there’ll be signs and wonders for seven and a half years, seven plus years here and there’ll be the Spirit coming afterwards. This is that same kind of thing predicted by Joel.

He goes on in Acts 2:23 with the most amazing claim. This is one of the claims the early Christians had to face. “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken,” notice the heavy emphasis on sovereignty. You’ll notice as we go carefully through the early Christians and their evangelism that the early Christians had to come from behind in the race. The early Christians operated initially from a tremendous disadvantage. They had a problem and they had to overcome it every time they gave their witness for Christ. What was it that early Christians had to overcome that we don’t? Early Christians had to overcome the blot on the record of Christianity of their founder being a criminal.

See, the cross to us has become a religious symbol, but forget that; if this is happening in your head right now as you’re trying to understand this text, pretend Jesus wasn’t crucified on a cross just for a mental exercise, visualize Jesus being hung or put to death in an electric chair but do it some way in your mind so you can see that the instrument of Christ’s death was an instrument that would be identified with a criminal element. Now that’s the picture of the death of Christ you have to have and that has to be seen and appreciated to realize the disadvantage were in. Oh, your founder, big deal, he was treated like a common crook, he was a thug that was eliminated from society like all the other incompetents and parasite. So the Christians had to cope with this early disadvantage. How do we come from behind; we go out to witness for our founder and immediately we have to admit that He was handled as a criminal. So the way the Christians coped with that disadvantage in their apologetic was to say look, the reason why Christ was crucified like a crook was by God’s sovereign will, and then they proceeded to show that that itself was a fulfillment of prophecy. Let’s look at this.

Peter says, “by the determined choice and foreknowledge,” the word “determined” comes from the Greek word, horizo, here’s the present moment and here is the past moment, horizo means that you make a decision back here, here’s your decision; the decision was made back here and you’re carrying it out in the present. It has reference to a decision made prior to the present. In this context horizo means a decision not just made in the simple past but made in eternity past; mathematically we would express it with the infinity sign and a negative prefix, in eternity past this decision was made, and he says the decision to crucify Christ God made before the foundation of the world. Thus, one of the titles of Jesus in the book of Revelation is the lamb that was crucified before the foundation of the world; that’s His title and it shows that there are no accidents in history, that what appear to be reverses are not reverses at all. God’s program operates three steps forward and one step backward and the one step backward is still really forward because then there are three steps forward and one step backwards, the net result is always forward. And this is how God’s sovereignty worked in history.

This theme of God’s absolute sovereignty occurs several times in Luke’s writings. If you turn to Luke 22 he records the statement that Jesus Christ made at the last supper, a strange statement, a statement which many have puzzled over and I’m sure the disciples who were eating food with Him that night, they surely puzzled over this statement, but nevertheless He made it and we’ve got to deal with it. In Luke 22:22 Jesus says, and to get the context look at verse 21, He’s telling the people at the last supper that the traitor is here, “Behold, the hand of him that betrayeth Me is with Me on the table.” It must have hit like a bombshell, here is a small group of men, everybody knows one another, they’re all friends, they worked together for three years. Judas Iscariot didn’t have horns on; Judas Iscariot didn’t have a red cloak, he didn’t even have a black mask. Judas Iscariot was not the sinister person that he’s been made out to be in history. We are Monday morning quarterbacks after the game, we’re saying, well you should have seen that all the time. If we were there, we would not have noticed. Judas Iscariot would have fooled all of us like he fooled all the disciples. And then this last, very precious hour, just before Jesus is going to leave and die He comes out with this kind of a crack, “the hand of him that betrays Me is with Me on the table.”

And then He goes on and makes next statement, “Truly, the Son of man goes, as it was determined; but woe unto that man by whom He is betrayed!” Do you see sovereignty and responsibility operating together I that verse? The Son of man must be crucified; it has been ordained from eternity that I die; it has been ordained from eternity that Judas be the one, if I may use the word in the slightly wrong theological context, right linguistically but wrong in the tradition of theology, Judas was predestined to betray Christ. Judas had been picked out for all eternity as the Christ betrayer, as the man who would cause the murder of Jesus Christ and yet Jesus doesn’t say therefore Judas is excused because he was predestined to turn Me over to the authorities. He says it was predetermined that he do this, but woe to him when he does it.

Now why is this? Some of you are still confused between fatalism and sovereignty. Some of you still have not caught the difference between these two concepts and they’re struggling in your mind and this is why when you hit a passage like this you begin to vibrate a little bit. Fatalism means that the end can occur irrespective of the means—no means to the end, just whatever will happen will happen. If it’s predestined that I get knocked off by a car on 34^th street, then even if I don’t have a car I’m going to be knocked off by a car on 34^th street. Whatever will happen will happen. That’s fatalism. That is not what the Scripture is teaching: that is NOT what the Scripture is teaching!

Let’s look at what the Scripture is teaching. The Biblical sovereignty says the end is a product of definite specified means. Predestined, people predestined to be with the Lord forever, the elect, are not going to wind up in heaven by any means; they’re going to wind up in heaven because they have freely chosen to trust in Christ. There will be a definite means of entry to that final goal that is predicted. And so here we have the final goal of the death of Christ predicted. Christ is not treated fatalistically, well I’m just predestined to die and whatever happens is going to happen. That’s fatalism and Jesus isn’t a fatalist. What Jesus does say, it is predestined that I die; it is predestined that I die by an individual person and I know who he is and that person has been picked out, but it’s going to be by an act that is responsible and he’s going to be held responsible for it. So there is Judas’ negative volition that is the means of the death of Jesus Christ, and that’s why Christ very carefully in verse 22 says, yes, I will die, but woe, cursing be to the one who does this. Now this is a horrible and very serious thing to realize. Visualize yourself in Judas Iscariot’s position; you have just banned the Son of God; you have committed Him to the cross. You did it by an act of your own choice, no one caused your soul to work that way; God didn’t go down and say well now I’ve got to remove this integrated circuit and put it over on the left lobe and change a few transistors to make Judas work right. That is not how it works. Judas freely chose to betray Christ but that free choice itself was sovereignly ordained.

Now the philosopher who is a skeptic will argue that that statement I just made, that you cannot sovereignly predestine a free choice. They will argue that I just contradicted myself, to which I will respond, I have not by the definitions of sovereignty and volition in Scripture, within the conscriptural system I am totally consistent when I make that statement. If you say that there is a contradiction between sovereignty and volition it is because you have deliberately defined sovereignty in such a way, deliberately defined free will in such a way that they would collide and you’ve done it in the interest of autonomous apostate thinking.

Let’s look further in the Scripture for God’s sovereignty. In Acts 1:16, we’re talking in context not just sovereignty but sovereignty in connection with the crisis of Jesus’ betrayal. Notice that when Judas had done his act, Peter said, “Men and brethren, this Scripture had to be fulfilled, which David spoke about Judas.” So again the emphasis is not upon Jesus dying as a thug by an accident of history; Jesus’ death was ordained. Notice Acts 4:28, again showing you a little how our brothers and sisters in the 1^st century thought, how they handled their crises, how they responded to the pressures of the world. “For to do,” they say, “whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done.” How’s that for a good verse on sovereignty. It’s in a prayer, and they say God, the people who betrayed Jesus did exactly what you predestined them to do; thank You O God. Strange kind of thinking unless you absorb your soul and let divine viewpoint have control.

Turn back to our passage, Acts 2:23, “Jesus, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken,” you have taken, notice the emphasis on personal responsibility, “and you,” it says in the King James “by wicked hands have crucified and slain,” but it’s not by wicked hands at all. “By” in the Greek, “By the hands of antinomians.” Who are antinomians? Antinomians are people, anti—against; nomos—the Law, people who have no law, people who have no standard. That is an antinomian. It’s been appalling for me to see in this part of the country, in the Bible belt, where supposedly the Bible has been taught for generation after generation, in the city of Lubbock where there is supposedly more of the Bible being taught than most metropolitan areas in the United States, it’s appalling to me to see the antinomian Christians that live in this city. For example, we have certain Christians who object when someone asks them when they’re running for public office, do you believe in this or do you believe in that? Do you believe in the Biblical view of economics or do you believe in the Biblical view of the priority of education in the hands of the parents rather in the hands of the state. We’re not asking and imposing some Greek philosophy upon the Christians running for office; we’re simply asking the Christians running for office are you letting your faith hang out in your politics. Are you, as a Christian, going to love the Lord in how you decide issues by showing that you’re going to decide these issues on the basis of the Lord’s own Word, or are you going to be like so many Christians who go around, give their glad, glad testimony, oh what Jesus has done for me and then vote some other way; talking Bible out of one side of your mouth while you vote against the Bible out of the other side of your mouth. This city is full of good, sincere, but antinomian Christians. Christians should be advised vote against such antinomians whether another brother in the Lord or not, that’s not the question, whether they’re Christians. God save us from antinomian Christians. Antinomians are dangerous people.

In verse 23 it’s stating that Jesus was crucified by antinomians; not bad men, notice it doesn’t say in verse 23 they were a bunch of sinister bad men, evil men. It says “wicked hands” but that’s a wrong translation. It doesn’t stay that all. Pilate wasn’t a guy that went around with a black motorcycle jacket; Pilate was a sincere individual who tried sincerely to get together all the segments of diverse social opinion in the city of Jerusalem to keep a conflagration down between the Jews and the Romans. Pilate would have been accepted in any good respectable gathering of leading citizens. But Pilate, the Bible says, and God’s Spirit is the one that wrote this, says that men like Pontius Pilate are dangerous, they’re Christ crucifiers because they are antinomians; they can do extreme damage because they will not let their behavior pattern be ruled by the Word of God in every area. Don’t be fooled in an election year by Christians running for office who have no intention whatsoever to applying Scripture to these areas. They are more dangerous than a non-Christian.

All right, Peter says it was the antinomian element in society that crucified Christ. But then in verse 24, having said you, you, you, you, you and emphasizing this over and over again, now in verse 24 he shifts, “But God has raised Him up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should continually be holden of it.” Notice the emphasis between verses 22 and 23; man, these people on the one hand and God on the other, the collision between the two. That is what Peter is emphasizing, that’s the sin. You people screwed up, he’s saying, and you know what, in all of your rebellion and all of your antinomianism, and all of your vaunted free will you still didn’t do what you thought you were going to do. You thought you were going to put away Jesus forever, you thought you were going to destroy the movement but you know what happens? God reversed your rebellion, God sovereignly limited your rebellion and your very act is the stepping stone for the next great event of history, the resurrection and ascent of the Lord Jesus Christ. God raised Him up.

Verses 22-24 has been the indictment on the nation. He has accused them of fulfilling prophecy but that doesn’t absolve them of their own responsibility in it, and now he gets to the resurrection. And now he is going to quote from a Psalm of David. Verse 25, 26, 27 and 28 are all citations of Psalm 16 so to catch the context let’s go back in the Old Testament to Psalm 16 and look at it. Remember what we are now about to witness is not just Peter’s own interpretation. What we are about to witness if Peter’s interpretation guided by that forty day Bible school that Jesus Christ conducted between resurrection and ascension. During that Bible school Jesus Christ taught a hermeneutic to his apostles; the hermeneutic how to interpret Old Testament texts.

Psalm 16, it starts off, a “Michtam of David.” That is a title, it is meant to communicate something and even though some modern translations drop the titles, they’re wrong; the title is part of the inspired text. David, according to this title, is the author of the Psalm. A lot of people will argue with you and say look, David really didn’t write these psalms, these psalms were written late. But unfortunately these people apparently have gone to school where they have learned something that Jesus didn’t know because Jesus only learned that David was the author of Psalms, this particular Psalm. And this Psalm, and we’ll go through it very briefly so you can appreciate how Jesus interprets the Old Testament. If we look at this psalm quickly you’ll notice that it appears to be talking not about Jesus at all, but about David. Look what he says:

Psalm 16:1, “Preserve me, O God; for in Thee do I put my trust.” Now we know that David was a king when this psalm was written, for reasons I’ll say in a moment. David was a public office holder and in a public office you are constantly subjected by every crybaby minority, self-pitying envying group of people. And the only way anyone in a public office can keep their sanity is to ground their decisions upon an absolute standard that transcends this little group and this little group and this little group. And the only standard that you can have that works is the Word of God. You can try to borrow one from Plato or Aristotle but it’s going to fail you. The only standard that works will be the Word of God. [tape turns]

… public office holder, faced with pressure upon pressure upon pressure, what is my salvation? The faith technique. I am constantly using “trust in the Lord.” I am constantly appropriating the promises of God. It is the only way I can maintain my sanity. Notice in verse 2, “O my soul, thou hast said unto the LORD, Thou art my Lord; my goodness extends not to thee,” this is a problem of translation which we haven’t got time to go into. Verse 7, “I will bless the LORD, who has given me counsel: my reins [heart] also instructs me in the night season.” Now that’s very interesting because in verse 7 he says God is the one that counsels him in the public office. Now how did God counsel David in a public office? The answer is given back in the Old Testament; Deuteronomy required the king to study the Bible every day... every day the king was to meditate in the Torah and that way the king’s soul would acquire a Biblical mentality. That’s how God gave him counsel. So again David is speaking as an office holder.

“The LORD has given me counsel; my reins also instruct me in the night seasons.” Now that is a very unusual statement. In the Bible parts of your body are used to describe your soul. The Bible has no word for emotion; it’s very interesting. The Old Testament doesn’t, the New Testament does. In the Old Testament emotions are described in terms of the lower body, bowels, stomach, loins, and one other word, rein, which does not refer to the kidneys but it refers to the gland on top of the kidneys which are the adrenals. And now we know that the adrenal gland obviously has effect on our body mobilizing us in situations to flee or to fight. So the adrenal glands are important and it’s those adrenals that are used in Old Testament Scriptures to describe emotional responses. Now what David is saying, “my adrenal glands instruct me in the night seasons.” Now what is he saying? He is saying that he has taken and absorbed so much of the counsel of God by studying Scripture day after day after day after day after day, he has so much doctrine in his soul that the effect is to work down into his emotions.

Let’s look at the human soul as it’s pictured in Scripture. You have the mind; the mind is a product of our body, indicated yellow, and the human spirit indicated red, the combination, orange, is the area of the soul. The mind is the place that process the Word of God. Through the central nervous system the Bible is taken in, it comes over to the conscience, the conscience verifies it as the Word of God; this is why we, after we’ve been exposed to Scripture, in eternity we’re going to be judge don the basis of the amount of Scripture we’ve been exposed to and we’re going to say well Lord, we didn’t understand it and He’s going to say here’s the tape recording from your conscience. Your conscience recorded that at 11:45 on March 28, 1976 you saw this passage of Scripture; you may not have understood it all but your conscience gave testimony that this is My Word. And so there’s an indelible record in all of our consciences to what we know and that’s the standard to which we’re going to be held accountable. The conscience, then, acts as a support to the mind. The mind develops the divine viewpoint framework over a long time, this is just a process of Christian growth. And then as this gets bigger and bigger and the mind gets more absorbed in divine viewpoint, our emotions begin to be changed. Now the emotions are the last thing to be sanctified in anyone’s Christian life. So you have depression and exaltation and anger and so on, these emotions will be changed after we’ve had the Word taken in and we’ve trained our self to respond to the Word of God. Then we’ll someday wake up and find ourselves that we enjoy it. Now you’re not going to enjoy the Word of God, necessarily, and this is where some people have dropped out of family training and so on, because they thought it was a little fun and games operation where we all get together and have a happy little time. And they discovered that learning the Word of God is work, that it involves getting here on time; it involves studying the Scripture, it involves being tested on that and it involves an applying it. It involves working with your children and all that’s work. And because we have this apostate line of thinking that says well, I’ll do what I feel like and what I have to do I’ll put off until tomorrow, the human viewpoint manyana thing. And when this gets going into the mentality of people’s souls the Word of God becomes distasteful. And you see what’s happened? The Word of God is starting to take hold in the mind but the emotions are trained to say hey, you don’t really want to do that, you want to do what’s pleasurable right now, come on, you’re going to wilt like a flower if you don’t have something that pleases you every day. This is just a habit, that’s all it is, it’s a bad one. But if we plug at it then the emotions swing into line.

Therefore, what David is saying in this psalm is that during the night, when my emotions have full play under my subconscious and so on, when all this is going on, my soul meditates on the Word. Translated; some practical aspects. He dreams doctrinally. When David dreamt and he saw himself in his dreams, and he watched how in his dreams he responded to things, he found himself responding in his dreams correctly, Scripturally. Now when that begins to happen, that signals to you that the Word of God has come down into the mind to the subconscious level and has begin to sanctify those bottom out areas of the mind. That’s not going to happen overnight; that happens only after extensive teaching of the Word of God because it shows that the habit patterns of the mind itself are now being changed slowly in line with Scripture. That’s what David’s talking about. So verse 7 talks about a fantastic absorption of Bible doctrine in David’s soul and a tremendous use of the faith technique.

Psalm 16:8, he describes the effect that this has on him in political office. “I have set the LORD always before me,” that means that in his office, though he was the supreme person as king in the nation, though he was supreme over people, he always had the Lord above him. The “setting the Lord before me” means I place myself in public office underneath the Lord’s authority, and he says the result was, “because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” See, that’s the key to leadership; that’s the key to a stable person, so that when… if David were in an election type thing when it came down to election he suddenly wouldn’t just decide then that it was time to buy his way with the voters, “I shall not be moved.” Why? Because he had so much doctrine in his soul, that’s why and he didn’t whine, every little crybaby newspaper editor that didn’t like something, it didn’t bother David in the least.

Psalm 16:9, “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; my flesh shall also rest in hope.” Three terms are used in verse 9, “my heart,” which is a synonym in the Old Testament often for spirit, “my glory,” you soul, and “my flesh,” my body. Notice the tripartite nature of the whole man. David says the whole man rests and rejoices. That’s the key to verse 10-11 from which Peter will deduce resurrection. David does not look upon himself just as a soul or just as a soul and spirit. He looks upon himself as a whole person including his physical body. Verse 10, “For thou will not leave my soul in hell, neither will thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” Reminds me of a feedback card I had, I forgot to answer at the beginning: where in the Bible does it say that hell is down? Right here; “thou will not leave my soul in hell,” the word “hell” is grave, sheol. Here’s where it says down. “…neither will thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.” So he’s saying look, if this whole big picture, the big picture falls together, I can’t have my body rotting in a grave some place because if my body goes I only have spirit and soul left, but I can’t have a relationship with God completely without my body. So I’ve got to be in my body come back so I can have a complete relationship with the Lord using my body too, as well as my spirit and soul. So therefore verse 10 implies a future resurrection of the body.

Psalm 16:11, “Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.” “At Thy right hand” talks about God’s throne. “…show me the path of life,” the word life in the Bible indicates spirit plus body and so therefore verse 11 teaches a resurrection. You can’t have life without a body and if David’s going to die, obviously something is going to have to happen to his body and something permanently happen to his body, he just can’t get resuscitated like Lazarus because Lazarus gets resuscitated from the grave, he gets sick and he dies. You could say well then he gets resurrected, this goes on and on and on. It’s not resuscitation, it’s resurrection that must solve this problem; something permanent must happen to prevent the body from every decaying.

That’s Psalm 16; now I said that when Peter quotes this Psalm he is quoting it as Jesus taught him to quote it. Now suppose Jesus were in the pulpit this morning and we had opened to Psalm 26 and Jesus were to go through this Psalm. Let me try to reconstruct for you some of the points that Jesus would have brought out, and we can do this because we see the points that Peter brings out, and since what Peter brings out is what Jesus taught him to bring out, we conclude here’s how Jesus would interpret the psalm. He’d go on until he got to verse 9, 10 and 11, and as Jesus would be reading us the psalm at this point he’d have some questions for us. As he directed our attention to verse 11 he’d say to us, probably something like this. Thou will not leave my soul in hell and thou will not suffer the Holy One to see corruption. The Lord Jesus Christ would probably say folks, do you notice that the word “Holy One” is used here. “Holy One.” Now he would say if this refers to David it can’t be literal because this would be the height of arrogance for David to call himself the Holy One, the perfect one, when in fact we know David’s life wasn’t perfect. So we’ve got a choice, he would argue, at verse 10. Either we continue to interpret our Scriptures literally or at this point we have to put on the brakes and say whoa, hold it, verse 10 can’t be applied literally to David; it says too much to be applied to David. So Jesus would argue; you’ve got a choice, you can abandon literal interpretation of Scripture here or you can argue that David must have been talking about something greater than himself yet connected with himself which would have been he plus his seed; he plus his dynasty, his progeny, David collectively and out of that progeny would come a Holy One. And then Jesus would probably direct our attention to verse 11 and he’d ask us to look at that phrase, “at thy right hand,” and he’d ask us to consider what “at thy right hand” means. He said do you not read “at thy right hand” and have you not understand that “at thy right hand” must mean at God’s side in His throne room. Such would be the kind of thing Jesus would point to in Psalm 16.

Now turning back to Acts 2 watch what Peter does with it. I cannot emphasize this enough; we do not have just Peter’s interpretation. What we have is Jesus’ interpretation mediated to us through Peter. [Acts 2:25, “For David speaks concerning Him: I foresaw the Lord always before my face; for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. [26] Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope. [27] Because thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou allow thine Holy One to see corruption. [28] Thou hast made know to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance.”]

So Peter says in Acts 2:29 after citing Psalm 16, “Men and brethren, let me freely speak to you of the patriarch, David, that he is both dead and buried, and his grave [sepulcher] is with us unto this day.” Now the grave of David was known in the ancient world. Today we don’t know. If you go to Jerusalem today they’ll take you to another hill; the temple site is here, there’s a hill that comes down like this and a valley that’s filled in now but it wasn’t then; this is called Mount Ophel, the hill just south of the temple area, and over here we have Mount Zion, this is in Jewish territory, and there’s a building here that supposedly is the traditional site of David and on top of that building is a second building built, a second story, which is supposedly the church of the upper room. Now we, some time ago had a group of the charismatic types that went over there and were to reenact Pentecost in this upper room, and they were going to have the Holy Spirit come, I guess, and go through their hollering and whooping and carrying on. Of course these people usually aren’t bothered by facts and one of the problems with it is the building wasn’t there before 1300 AD, but other than that slight difficulty we have the reenactment of Pentecost in the upper room. Now below this church is the traditional sepulcher of David. We know that is not the traditional sepulcher of David because 1 Kings 2:10 says he was buried on Mount Ophel, not Mount Zion.

But wherever that grave was, when Peter spoke this it was well known, and here’s why we know it was well known. John Hyrcanus was a ruler in Israel after the Maccabean period and at one point he was being sieged; the armies gathered around Jerusalem and he had to break the siege and the only way you break the siege is two ways, you surrender or you buy the guy off; and by the way, in the Bible it is not wrong to offer a bribe; it’s not wrong to bribe someone. In the Bible it’s wrong to accept a bribe, but not to bribe someone, and the reason for this is because this is the out that Christians have down through history to stop persecution against them; buy off the enemy; it is perfectly legitimate to do so. If he’s corrupt enough to take a bribe go ahead and let him be corrupt. And that traditionally has always been what the Christians are doing in Europe, buying off the Russian guards so they can infiltrate Bibles across the iron curtains; perfectly moral, perfectly ethical behavior to offer bribes.

Now at this point John Hyrcanus needs something to buy off the commander of the sieging army and so he gets an idea, the tomb of David. David was buried by his wealthy son, Solomon, and when Solomon buried his father in there he had rooms around David’s tomb and in each one of these rooms he filled up the room, from the floor to the ceiling, with silver and gold; fantastic wealth. John Hyrcanus broke in to the grave of David and went into room one and took out all the gold and silver and bought off an entire army with it. Shows you how much was just in one room. And then he closed it up and years went by until another man went long by the name of Herod and Herod decided he was in a problem one day and he needed some money so he broke into room number two and walked off with all the gold and silver there. And then after Herod did this the Jews pressed him, cursed be you for breaking into the sepulcher of David and that’s why they explained how Herod died of worms eating his body, it’s a nice gross description of how this man died, and they say so be it to the man who broke into David’s tomb. It’s just a Jewish saying at the time. But my point is that in this tomb, and then if some of the earth caved in on it, nobody knows where it is so don’t bother to dig up Mount Ophel; the tomb has fantastic riches of gold and silver in it, still sitting in there because only two rooms have been ripped off, the rest of the rooms area all still sealed.

Now that sepulcher was know and that’s what Peter’s talking about; “David, that he is both dead and buried and his sepulcher is with us [unto this day],” you can go down the street, it’s right down there, you can see it. So obviously Peter says, reflecting Jesus’ own interpretation of Psalm 16, if you apply a literal hermeneutic to Psalm 16 it doesn’t fit David; hasn’t his soul seen corruption? You bet it has. So either God’s Word is wrong or we’ve got to look for a future fulfillment of it. And so this is why in Acts 2:30 Peter goes on to say, “Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; [31] He, seeing this before, spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.”

Now I suggest to you that as you go through Acts or through the New Testament, if you like to do this to your Bible, take a colored pencil, yellow or something, and rub over the text wherever you have a citation out of the Old Testament. I’ve done this with mine as an exercise to train me, when I look at the New Testament, to see how much of it is Old Testament. And to train me to see how much these apostles are relying on Scripture in their argument. And if you were to do that you would have to color verse 25, 26, 27, 28, then in verse 30 you’d have to color the last half of it and you’d also have to color the last half of verse 31. All of that is citation out of the Old Testament. Now there’s one misquote in verse 30 that we have to clear up for those of you who have the King James translation. It reads “that of the fruit of his loins,” and the rest of it is superfluous, “he would raise up,” drop out “Christ” “to sit on his throne; that’s the literal quote. The rest of that has been injected by the King James translators and writers of earlier manuscripts to explain it; it’s right what they put in there but it’s not part of the original quote. That original quote comes from Psalm 132:11. It’s a quotation of the Davidic Covenant.

Here’s what Peter is saying: Psalm 16 was written at a point in time when David was king; prior to that time David had been promised a Davidic Covenant, 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 132 and Psalm 89 also. The Davidic Covenant said this: David, in addition to the promises you inherited as a Jew, born again in Abraham, I’ll give you three more promises: (1) I will give you an eternal survival to your seed; your seed will survive for all eternity. (2) I unconditionally elect your house as the dynasty forever over this nation, unconditional election. (3) You and your sons and your seed will have a father/son relationship with Me, a unique relationship in the history of the human race. That is the Davidic Covenant. But if you look at this, the way Peter quotes it, notice what he emphasizes; notice how concrete he emphasizes it. Verse 30, “That of the fruit of loins,” now, body parts, the loins include he genetic tissue of David’s sperm and what he is talking about is that physically David is carrying the genetic tissue in his sperm that will be incorporated by the Holy Spirit working on the virgin Mary. So you have the conservation of the genetic material transmitted through the human race generation after generation. Now what did we read in Psalm 16? “My flesh should not see corruption.” Now if Christ is David’s seed, you have David here, 1000 BC, Jesus Christ here in 30 AD and Christ represents the end of the line of the Davidic line because after that the genealogies are destroyed and they can’t find the Davidic line, and if you have the genetic tissue in the loins of David, David transmits that genetic tissue to his son; Nathan in this case, not Solomon, and that goes down the line, down the line, down the line, until Mary and Mary has part of that genetic tissue, has part of that makeup. If Christ dies with the genetic tissue of David, then Psalm 16 is destroyed because it says “my flesh shall not see corruption” and the genetic materials are in the flesh. And so therefore Jesus Christ has to rise from the dead; He has to or the promise of Psalm 16 fails. And when Christ rises from the dead that’s the basis ultimately for David’s resurrection from the dead too.

So what have we seen? We have seen God’s Word used by Peter to explain the resurrection. Notice he says in Acts 2:32, “This Jesus has God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.” “… all are witnesses,” the witness in Acts is not to my personal experience; the witnessing is to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, history, objective fact.

Summarizing we’ve seen verses 22-24, the nation Israel convicted for the sin; the specific sin of crucifying Christ. In verses 25-31-32 we have seen God’s Word vindicated by the resurrection. Peter lays everything on the fulfillment of prophecy in the resurrection; that is the Christian apologetic in the first century. It is not based on miracles; it is not based on personal experience; it is based completely on God’s fulfilled Word. Since the resurrection has been such a point in Peter’s sermon so far let’s stand and sing together…