Clough Acts Lesson 7
Doctrine of Christology – Acts 2:33-36
Acts 2 is the first Christian sermon of history, therefore, although things are different and situations may be changed, there are certain principles that Peter follows that ought to be followed throughout church history. The success of this sermon was fantastic, as you can see by verse 37, after people “heard this they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Now wouldn’t it be nice if every time you had an opportunity to share Jesus Christ with a non-Christian, wouldn’t it be nice that when this happened that the result of your conversation with the individual there would be this kind of response.
Now as we go through Peter’s address we’re going to watch his argument and see if we can learn something to make our own approach more effective, and then to see if we can also from this learn why in our generation we are not seeing this kind of thing, generally speaking. Because our culture is so far away from even the thought forms of the Bible, it’s very unlikely that Peter would have this kind of success had he used exactly this method today. Nevertheless, there are principles here that we want to look at and should help us. Remember that Peter here is speaking to a group of people who had listened to tongues.
I put out a paper that was written by a professor of linguistics at Bethel College in Minnesota, and this man had done a tremendous analysis linguistically of the so-called glossolalia, or speaking in tongues today and substantiated exactly what I said last time, that tongues…as far as Charles Fox Parham who was the first man to start it on a large scale in the United States in 1801, when this all began, the first Pentecostals insisted that what they were doing was speaking real languages and not gibberish. And it was the failure, after decades of this claim, they never could get it clear to men who knew the languages that in fact this was foreign language, that led to the modern interpretation that the New Testament tongues were just gibberish. That’s something new, brought in by people who were unable to substantiate this concept of speaking in a very obviously human language. In the course of the paper this linguist had conducted analysis phonetically of the language and he gives 16 reasons why the modern phenomenon of glossolalia is not a real human language; consonant sounds, vowel sounds are not full range, the consonant sounds, the vowel sounds that are being given are not those of another language at all, they’re simply those of the mother tongue of the speaker. And he shows this quite well.
But the phenomenon of languages occurred, and from verse 33 Peter says you now see and you now hear. So apparently this phenomenon of languages was going on all during the time that Peter was talking, in the background. So that’s the context and in verse 14 Peter starts the introduction to his sermon. Then in verses 15-21 he explains this outburst in the light of the Old Testament and what was going on with the Joel 2 prophecy. Then in verses 22-24 he indicts the Jewish nation. Now don’t do what Gamal Nasser did to the troops of Egypt, the Egyptian army, before the battle broke out in 1967 when he had something printed and I understand it referred to this passage of Scripture, in which he said go into battle today so that you can kill the Christ-killers. And his argument was that all Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus Christ and of course this has always been the theme song of anti-Semitism and it’s wrong. Peter is addressing one generation of Jews; not all Jews, one generation who were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. That’s why he concludes in verse 40 when he says, “he testifies and exhorts, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” Now why bother to make that kind of a statement? He’s making it because that is the generation that was responsible for the death of Christ, that’s why. So please be careful, and watch for it, and even good Christian material sometimes has this kind of sneaked in anti-Semitism. And here we are trying to win Jewish people to Christ and we get this plopped in the middle of something; it really creates an impression. So let’s watch for that in our own personal conversations and in the conversation of others. We can’t hope to win Jewish people to Christ if that’s the way we’re going to do it; it turns them off right from the start.
Acts 2:25-32, Peter has dealt with the proof that the resurrection is Old Testament. It is not some freak thing that just happened to be stored up in Ripley’s Believe it or Not, but it’s something that was long prophesied in the Old Testament. So there’s continuity with the Old Testament, and as we’ll see, this is one of the persuasive means Peter used to convince his generation. Today we come to the end of the sermon, Acts 2:33-36 plus the response of the people. And this end of the sermon the theme is the concealed Messiah. This is something that is new in Jewish thought. The fact that Messiah was concealed, that is, He was reigning but somehow He wasn’t reigning in a visible way and so we speak of the hidden Christ and for 19 centuries Jesus Christ has reigned from the Father’s right hand and those of us who are born again and who have spiritual eyes to see can see the things that He does; the non-Christians just walk on in their complete blindness as usual, never understanding, attributing everything to chance or some vague evolutionary process, but never once guessing the true facts of Christ’s sovereignty over history.
Acts 2:33, Peter says, and we want to be careful, let’s read this through carefully because the King James, as usual, has it all rearranged so that we can’t understand it, “Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received from the Father,” now let’s look at that carefully and re-work the order of the words. The words are translated correctly, they’re just in a confusing order. “Therefore being exalted,” passive voice, “being exalted by the right hand of God,” if you don’t read it that way you’re going to tend to read verse 33 and think it says, “Therefore, being exalted to the right hand of God and having received of the Father.” Now that’s true but that doesn’t happen to be taught here. The idea, God’s right hand, is a picture of God acting firmly and decisively in history, and so God reaches down and He does a mighty work, it’s with His right hand; that’s just an idiom, an anthropomorphism as to God’s working in history. So God has raised Jesus Christ, not just from the dead, but also at His right hand, and with this we start into an appreciation for the person of our Lord Jesus Christ with the doctrine of Christology.
You cannot love Jesus unless you know something about Him. Our culture, we just specialize in this screwed up idea of what love is because I see so and so, I’m some single male and I watch this beautiful girl walk by and all of a sudden I fall in love. Now I may fall but I don’t fall in love. You can’t fall in love; no one ever has fallen in love. You grow into love but you do not fall into it as though it’s some passive thing you’re just going to trip into. That’s infatuation and too many couples are going down to the altar on the basis of infatuation and then, of course, I waste my time in premarital counseling trying to get them through this thing and then they go down the to the altar all tripped up with one another and then about two years later when they really begin to see each other, ooh golly, how did I ever get married to this person and then they get a divorce. It’s the old story, rigmarole that goes on over and over and over again and the point is that people have such a fouled up, untrue, idea of what love and appreciation is all about. Now you can’t love anybody because you just saw them yesterday.
You cannot love someone until you know their soul because love requires an object. Now love doesn’t involve your emotions, and we want to be careful that we keep these in balance. There is an emotional response; of course the chemistry reacts, that’s all right, God put the chemicals there to react. He gave you hormones, He gave you emotion. That’s the appreciation of life, so you can enjoy yourself; nothing wrong with that. But the point is, to what are your emotions responding? To other emotions or to what you know? If your emotions are responding to other emotions you’re just going around in a circle, you’re chasing your tail is what’s happening. That’s all you’re doing, just like a dog out in the backyard. But that’s what happens when people follow their emotions and don’t be misled this way. The Christian woods are full of people that because they don’t come in and get glad-handed 25 times by someone at the door somehow they’re not loved.
Now let’s relax, you cannot love someone at first sight. You have to grow into it, and now translate that to the person of Christ. You can’t love Jesus because you became a Christian yesterday; you’re not going to love Jesus for a long time. The reason you’re not is because you don’t know enough about Him to love Him. You love Him…if you use the word appreciate in the place of love once in a while it’ll improve your thought patterns associated with the word love. That’s not the whole story, that’s just one aspect of love, appreciation; but when we’re talking about loving our Lord Jesus Christ we’re really talking about appreciating His person, meditating upon it, taking it in and so on. And that’s what this whole story is all about; Christology is the amount of knowledge about Christ, and we’re gradually moving into this as we study more and more of the New Testament. In fact, the book of Acts is one long study of how the first Christians grew in their appreciation for the person of Christ and you’re looking at this first sermon which shows you a little bit how these first Christians appreciated Christ. Now I can’t go into it this morning, all the details of Christology, in fact we won’t even go into detail in one point of Christology, that will come later, but one area we’re going to just briefly look at, but not go into details, is the glorification of Christ.
What does it mean to say that Christ is glorified? Turn to Philippians 2. This is one of the key passages in the Bible about Christ’s character. Next year we’ll learn more about Christ’s character; we’re going to have Arnold Fruchtenbaum here for a week to give us a crash course in the life of Christ from a Jewish perspective; we’ll use A. T. Robertson’s Harmony of the Gospels, which is one of the classic harmonies of the gospels and we’ll go through this in detail and then we’ll just come back to the various doctrines throughout the rest of the year. Already you’re getting preliminary material as we begin to work in the Gospels and in Acts.
Now under the doctrine of Christ’s glorification we want to look carefully at how Paul develops it in Philippians 2:5-11. Notice that Paul speak of Jesus Christ in the context of discouragement and in the context of pride. He starts out in verse 5, “Let this mental attitude be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” Now that’s the context for Christology so you can’t say Christology is just for third year seminary students. That’s not the point; the point is that Christology was revealed originally to help Christians with a mental attitude problem; that’s what it was for, it wasn’t for a seminary course. Now let’s see why. [6] Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, [7] But made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. [8] Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Do you notice, Christ’s sanctification in verse 8, He was not born obedient, Christ learned to obey.
That’s a very interesting statement; it’s repeated in the Hebrews, it’s repeated many times in Scripture. Learning takes time and you can’t grow overnight. Some of you are new Christians and you are discouraged because you sit there and you insist on comparing yourself with somebody two rows ahead of you or one row back of you or someone in the same dorm floor that’s been a Christian ten years and you’re a Christian ten minutes, and you’re comparing yourself. Or you become a Christian somehow and you drift in here and you see someone on the board and they’re doing great things for God and you’re sitting around doing nothing and you get discouraged. Now this is for your encouragement. Don’t compare yourself with people who are on down the line in sanctification and don’t be embarrassed by your point in spiritual growth. After all, every person had to be where you are; all those people you admire that you think are so far out ahead of you, they were there one time. Where would they be if they got discouraged like you’re getting discouraged so accept where you are in the spiritual ladder and just grow patiently; don’t try to do it overnight.
This is where your Americanism gets in your way; it’s just part of our national character to do everything yesterday and that comes in the area of sanctification. Americans have some good characters to our soul but we have weaknesses and that’s one of our weaknesses, our impatience. That’s why the communists won in Vietnam, they’ve learned a very valuable lesson; you want to whip an American, don’t provoke him to an all out fight, just keep the pressure on low scale a long time and most Americans will give up because most Americans are impatient. Americans like to have fight and have a big bloody mess and get it over with; but the communists have learned that that’s not the way to whip Americans because we’d whip them if it happened that way. The only way they can win is deescalate, talk, do everything else and just keep the squeeze on long enough. Now this is where Bible doctrine of course can help us overcome our weakness in this part of our Americanism.
Now the Lord Jesus Christ humbled Himself and He learned to obey, over a process of time and Jesus didn’t have a sin nature like you do. So even He without a sin nature took time and had to learn this thing. Now look what happens, Philippians 2:9, “Therefore, God has highly exalted Him,” why? Just look why, why is this exaltation, because Jesus Christ was sanctified, Jesus Christ learned His lesson, that’s why. Humility before glorification, not glorification first, afterwards God exalted Him “and gave Him a name which is above every name, [10] That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, [11] And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Now this is a most interesting passage. This should tell us something about glorification.
The standard error most of us have in our head and where we are wrong in our appreciation for our Lord is that when we talk this glorification business and when we think of Him rising to sit at the Father’s hand, there goes through our mind the unbiblical notion that Christ is now full bare deity like He was before the incarnation and we think of Him more or less as just God. That’s where we’re wrong; glorification has to do with what theologians call the theanthropic person, that means the God-man. God-man, Jesus Christ one person with two natures, and even after the resurrection and ascension to be at the Father’s right hand, if we could see Jesus today we could see the scars on His hands because He still has His human body. Jesus is glorified as to His deity and His humanity; that’s the first point in the doctrine of glorification. Glorification concerns Jesus in deity and Jesus in humanity. That is important.
Notice how this comes out here; in verse 9 it says that God has given Him a name which is beyond every name. Now you know that’s a quotation from several Old Testament passages; guess who in the Old Testament alone could be given a name above every name? In a monotheistic Jewish society who alone would be reserved for the name above every name? God only. God only, or Yahweh, or Jehovah. So what is happening is that thing that has happened so often here in the text and I hope those of you who are attending regularly have taken notes, you’ve followed through here and I’m trying to point out to you verse after verse after verse so this will kind of absorb into your soul; watch how the deity of Christ is implicit in the text. I want you to see that. You think oh, is there a verse I can show somebody about the deity of Christ. Yea, about every other verse in the New Testament, if you just relax, take it slow and watch what’s there. This is one of those places, just take it slow, go at our own pace and notice what’s happening.
In the Old Testament it was Yahweh or Jehovah who had the name above every name. Yet the apostles seemed, without any contradiction, without any problem, seem to just blasé take Jesus in the place of Yahweh. They make no distinction. The next time someone comes to your door and offers you kingdom literature, you can say to them well I too am a Jehovah’s witness. You are? Yes, because Jesus Christ is Jehovah and I’m a witness for Him. It would be interesting to see the expression on the face of the individual. But the point remains that this is exactly the New Testament position that Jehovah is Jesus and so in verse 9 God has exalted Him and given Him a divine name. Now this doesn’t mean Jesus became God; it just means Jesus is being recognized as God. Then in verse 11, every tongue must confess this. But notice what the name is in verse 10, it’s “Jesus” which is the term for His humanity. So here we have God-man; we have His name which is above every name and yet the name is the name of humanity. So we have the theanthropic person, the magnificent person of Christ Himself.
The first summary point of the
glorification then is, and we’ll develop this later but I’m just kind of
introducing it at this point because of Peter’s sermon, is that glorification
is not just due to Jesus’ deity; it is due to His humanity. If you want to see another picture of this
turn to Revelation
That’s the first area of glorification, now let’s turn for a second point on the doctrine of glorification which is Christ’s role as the founder of a new human race. 1 Corinthians 15:45; normally this passage is read at funerals and people, usually because of grief at a funeral, not to in tune with what’s being read so let’s learn what it is and the next time you hear it at a funeral you can appreciate it. “And so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening [life-giving] spirit.” Now for those of you who still have difficult reading Genesis normally, who still want to get a billion years into Genesis 1 and 2 because you have not recognized the nature of the controversy yet, you’re going to have trouble with this passage because this is one of those thicker type passages where you’ve got to accept a literal Adam and if you don’t you can just kiss it off and forget the doctrine that’s taught here too because it all depends on a literal Genesis. “The first man, Adam, was made a living psuke, which means life, which means body plus spirit. Adam, the first one was made this.
Now the word “Adam” refers both to Adam and his wife because the first woman in history was made from the genetic material of the man. God did not make a male and a female when He made man. He made a male and a female animal, but when He got to man he made a bisexual being; Adam when he was first created was bisexual, he had chemical hormones of both sexes in his body. These were then differentiated and you say now that’s silly, God goes through all this business. No it isn’t because that little innocent story back in Genesis about Eve coming out of the side of Adam is absolutely necessary to solve a tremendous, tremendous spiritual problem and that is how can you have an atonement for a unified race and you don’t have a unified race unless Eve shares the same genetic material that Adam has. So Eve, the first woman, must be made and built out of her husband’s body; so they have to have the same flesh, the same genetic material. And from that point forward, which we’ll get into when we get into the series on Christian manhood we’ll show why that becomes the basis of the whole thing of marriage and so on.
But right now we’re only interested in Adam from whom comes all humanity. See, all of this morning have genetic tissue. Do you realize that that genetic tissue is in direct lineage with the tissue that God personally created in Adam. You share Adam, I have Adam in my body and you do too. So Adam is in all of us and he is the living soul that became the diverse human race. Now, it says, “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. [46] However, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. [47] The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” And so here we have the second Adam or Christ; He is known in the Bible as Adam II simply because He is the originator of a new human race. Now Christ is not a psuke, He is a life-giving pneuma, wind or spirit, and that means, for example, we may have six members of the human race who share Adam, now number 2 and number 6 may become Christians; that means that at the point of regeneration number 2 and number 6 receive a regenerated human spirit that is made after that of Christ.
Now be careful; you see, if you hold to a wrong idea of what Christ is doing today as just pure deity, now you’ve got a problem because who’s spirit is created in you at the point you become a Christian? It’s not God’s Spirit, that’s another story, the indwelling Holy Spirit. But there’s a human spirit that’s created in you. Now where did that human spirit come from? What is it modeled after? What is its archetype? What is its pattern? Christ’s human spirit. So therefore Jesus Christ from glorification, so to speak, incarnates Himself in us by regeneration. This is the most magnificent thing that has ever happened to you today if you’re a Christian, and you didn’t feel it, and you have no sense that it’s there except over a time period you notice things changing in your life. Now how come things are changing in your life? Because something happened in your soul and the heart of your soul that no psychotherapy can do, no matter how much money you have you can’t buy it because it’s free, it’s given only to those who trust in Christ; regeneration, the acquisition of this other thing, this new human spirit, or rejuvenated human spirit. That’s what it means when it says Christ was made this quickening spirit.
So the second thing that we know about Christ now reigning at the Father’s right hand is that very quietly, almost with an unseen hand, He is busy creating here, there, some place else, people who are forming the second human race, the human race that fulfills the purpose of the first one which fell.
And finally another picture of Christ reigning at the Father’s right hand is that He is the head of the body, a very valuable symbol. Now if you just had a head, a little bit of a neck and it came walking in here, I’m sure some of you would raise a few eyebrows because it’d look a little unusual. Not that’s just as crazy as thinking of Jesus Christ at the Father’s right hand independently of yourself as members of His body. When you think… and this is a habit we’ve got to get into when we go back to Acts, because this is the habit the early Christians had; they never could conceive of themselves separate from the guy that’s at the Father’s right hand. They were always in touch with Him, they felt. This why on the Damascus Road Christ asked Paul, Paul, why did you persecute Me. Well, Paul hadn’t seen Jesus to persecute Jesus but he had been touching, physically touching Christians and Jesus said you tough them, you touch Me. And so there’s this mystical union between Christ, spatially now at the Father’s right hand, us spatially separated from Him, but spiritually one with Him. That’s a mystery and no man can tell you all the details of that mystery. Oh, we know that it’s there and it’s true, the Bible tells us so.
Now let’s turn back to Acts 2:33, Peter’s sermon; the concealed Messiah. “Therefore, being exalted by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has now shed forth this, which ye see and hear.” If you notice back verse 17 [Acts] in the Joel passage it talks about the shedding of the Spirit. Now I’m going to contrast the Old Testament and Peter a minute because I want to show you what a magnificent development has happened and again you have to just slow down, take it easy, relax and just watch what’s happening. In the Old Testament who was going to do the shedding? God was. God pours out the Holy Spirit on whom? Men. Now look at what Peter does with this thing; he says Jesus goes to the Father’s right hand, which means that the Lord Jesus Christ in His resurrection humanity was the first man that strolled into the throne room of God Himself. Think of that one! Moses didn’t, Bahaullah didn’t, Maharaja didn’t, no one has walked into the throne room except our Lord Jesus Christ, He’s the first man qualified to do that. And He took the helm of the universe, just like walking up to a boat or the control panel of an aircraft and He takes command. Christ is at the helm of history and He takes command as a man as well as God.
Now when He does this, God, just like this Old Testament, gives Him the Holy Spirit. How obviously Jesus had the Holy Spirit before but this is a giving for something else. God gives Him the promise of the Spirit. Then notice the end of the verse, “He has shed forth this,” obviously you know what “this” is, that’s the Holy Spirit, the phenomenon that was going on then, who is “He”, question there as you read that verb, ask yourself what’s the subject of that? Who’s that “He”? Is that God or is that Jesus there? It’s obviously Jesus, so now look what Peter’s done. Jesus gets the Holy Spirit as a man, then He turns around and gives the Holy Spirit to man as God. And that’s the position that Christ now assumes as the very first moment of Church history. This is not a slow evolution like the liberal keeps telling you, that the early church got together and they brooded and finally they brought out of this little Jewish carpenter God. Not at all, here’s the first sign under the Christian church, it’s ours as the Church Age begins, already Christ is looked upon as God and man; equal with God, equal with man, and therefore the umpire, the one who stands between. And so we find this magnificent analysis of Peter of Joel’s prophecy proving the theanthropic nature of Christ.
Acts 2:34, “For” he says, “David is not ascended to heaven,” thinking again of Psalm 16 which we studied in the resurrection, “David is not ascended to heaven, but he said himself, The LORD said unto My Lord, Sit thou on My right hand, [35] Until I make Thy foes Thy footstool.” Now here’s a most interesting psalm, it’s one that’s quoted many times and if you turn to Psalm 110 we’ll look at that one. In the 19th century there was one of the greatest Old Testament scholars who has ever lived; I guess every conservative seminary student buys his commentary of the Old Testament at some point when he can afford it; Dr. Delitzsch. Dr. Delitzsch, along with his colleague, Dr. Keil, wrote the famous conservative commentary of the Old Testament but Delitzsch’s specialty was the Psalms. And for years and years this man studied very devotedly the text of these Psalms in the original languages. Dr. Delitzsch came up with a form outline that has been used ever since his day by ministers all over the world. It’s a thing that’s verified time and time again that there are certain types of Psalms, certain classes of Psalms, there are types of Christ and there are others that are hyperbole speaking of Christ, there are others that are prophetically speaking of Christ and so on. But said Dr. Delitzsch after years and years of study; he said you know, there’s one psalm that doesn’t fit any of my categories; one psalm in all the Psalter that’s absolutely unique because it just won’t fit any contemporary event of the Old Testament, and that was Psalm 110. And here’s why.
Notice David wrote it. Jesus affirms the Davidic authorship, even if the critics don’t, of this Psalm. The critic’s position is that anybody could have written Luke except Luke, anybody could have written Matthew except Matthew, and everybody could have written the Psalms except David. Psalm 110:1, “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” Now that’s just one little bitty verse, but do you know that is quoted in almost every major doctrinal discussion in the New Testament on the nature of Christ; almost every time. Why? Let’s look at the verse a little more carefully. Let’s first consider David. Who was David at this time in history. In his civil authority where did he stand on the totem pole of rank? He was number one because he was king.
Now he says, David does, “The LORD said
unto my Lord,” now the word “my Lord,” that second word “Lord” is Adonai, or my
Master, or one with a higher rank; it would be used of an inferior officer to a
superior officer. A lieutenant sees a
major, he salutes first. Why? The major has higher rank. He walks 100 yards down and an airman comes
up or a private comes up; who salutes first?
The private does because a lieutenant carries more rank. All right, there’s a higher structure in
command and the word Adonai was used in this hierarchy and what David is saying,
The Lord said to the One I salute to.
The one who I salute to? But I’m
the king, David didn’t salute to anyone in his life. So it can’t refer to someone in the political
power structure of ancient
We might say well, gee, Peter is pretty smart after all for a little old Galilean fisherman, pulling out Psalm 110 out of his little bag of tricks. Where did Peter get all this stuff from? Turn to Luke 20:41 and see where he learned that. Please notice again that Peter just didn’t get up and speak from the heart; the heart is desperately wicked and corrupt, you don’t speak from the heart. Where Peter got this was because Peter had been carefully trained by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself so if you are tempted to look at this and say well that’s just your interpretation, we’ve got a problem because this happens to be the interpretation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look who started this thing? Jesus, in Luke 20:41, “said unto them, How say they that Christ is David’s son?” See, Jesus is arguing…they were taking David’s son, which was legitimate, they were using it to say that the Messiah was here and David was here, the Messiah was lower than David because he was David’s son.
See, they had turned that term around and misdefined it, so Jesus has to straighten the people out and so what He means when He says “I am David’s son,” because they were all fouled up. So the way He does it is He starts this interpretation of Psalm 110, He says now look at this, “How can you say that Messiah is David’s son?” in the inferior sense. Verse 42, “David himself says in the Book of Psalms,” notice Jesus accepts fully the authorship of David. I don’t know, frankly apart from Dallas Seminary and a few Bible schools, I know of no professor of Old Testament today who holds that David wrote any of the Psalms. And yet the Lord Jesus Christ obviously defends Davidic authorship, I do and the conservatives generally do. “David himself said in the Book of Psalms, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand.” [43, “Till I make thine enemies thy footstool.”]
Now Jesus comments on that psalm in verse 44, He says, “David, therefore, calls Him Adonai,” or “Lord,” or “Master,” one who has higher rank than he has. “How is he, then, his son?” in the inferior sense. See how Jesus silence His critics? He silences them by asking them to explain who is the Adonai of Psalm 110. Figure it out. And you know what? No one else has ever figured this out. Jews all through the history have held that this passage refers to Messiah, except… except from 100-300 AD and guess what? Because the Christians were so vigorous, so skilled at taking Psalm 110 into every synagogue in the ancient world and saying okay, you don’t buy Jesus, who is this then? Who is He? And they did that in synagogue after synagogue after synagogue so finally by 100 AD one of the rabbis said okay, we’ve had enough of this, we’ve got to change our interpretation of Psalm 110. So between 100 AD and 300 AD the Jewish interpretation shifted to make this Psalm 110 refer to Abraham and that finally fell apart by 300 AD and to this day nobody still knows, who isn’t a Christian, who this Psalm is talking about.
So we have Jesus originating this quotation; Jesus taught Peter this interpretation, so when Peter gets up to give the first Christian sermon Peter doesn’t just come, O Spirit, speak to me, give me an idea… [tape turns].
Let’s turn to his sermon and see what the
result was when he worked this thing into his sermon. Acts
But you see how far… that’s a thousand miles away from this statement. Peter demands that before his hearers, and you know we’re creeping up on Acts 2:38, he demands that his hearers know for sure before they submit to the ordinance of baptism. He demands this certainty; don’t waste your time pretending you’re a Christian if you cannot relax and be confident that what we say is true. And my advice to you, particularly if you’re one of those who may be here considering the Christian faith, don’t let me pressure you into premature belief. Don’t let your friends do that. I have prevented any evangelistic invitations at the end of the service because early in my ministry I discovered that was what was happening; people were being pressured to make decisions they had no more idea of the decision they were making than the man in the moon. The invitation to believe is all the time you are studying Scripture, that is one continuous invitation to believe. And Peter would have you know for sure, unmistakably that this is so.
How does Peter produce this? Now we come to what I mentioned at the beginning: why is it that this sermon hit people so hard and today just doesn’t seem to do a thing. Here’s the problem. Peter’s argument used two steps. Those of you who are Christians ought to be interested in witnessing and sharing Christ with someone else so this applies to you. Peter uses two ideas here. The first one, he uses the divine viewpoint framework of the Old Testament. Notice how much he’s used that. If you’ve colored the text in the way I suggested, if you’ve colored every reference, if you’ve got a marginal thing in your Bible it will tell you whether what you’re encountering there is a quotation out of the Old Testament, if you’ve been coloring in so far since verse 14 it would be verses 17, verse 18, verse 19, verse 20, verse 21, verse 25, 26, 27, 28, you would also color where the verse is re-quoted in verse 30, where it is re-quoted again in verse 31, the last part of verse 34, verse 35; back in verse 33 you would color the verb “shed forth,” you would color the verb “promise.” And by the time you get through coloring you’d realize, good night, what did Peter do? He built off of the Old Testament knowledge of his hearers. He linked what was happening to what they already knew.
Then what did he do? Then he took the New Testament event or let’s say the New Testament revelation which consists of both word and deed, and he links it firmly with that Old Testament framework. And I think, I haven’t counted it up but I just eyeball and say it’s about 50/50 or say 60/40. 60% of the time Peter is working with that Old Testament framework; 40% of the time he’s plugging Jesus into it. You see, it’s a little different than the way we usually approach people.
Now here’s our problem and here’s what we have a problem with. When we witness we have got to do one thing. The best way of starting to witness is to shut your mouth; that’s probably the best advice I could give you because I’ve watched some of you. One person said to me well, gee Clough, you know you get in the pulpit and you’re a machine gun and then you get talking with somebody and you hardly speak at first. Of course, that’s exactly my strategy. When I’m in the pulpit I’m teaching; you’re here because you want to hear something out of the Word of God. Now that’s a different situation than when you’re talking on a one to one basis. When you’re talking on a one on one basis the best thing to do is shut your mouth until you find out where these people are. We’ve got to go back into the soul of that person; that person in their mind has certain categories, certain information and we’re on the outside looking in and you can’t tell what’s on the mind of some person. There’s no way you’re going to do that except keep your mouth shut and listen to what they say. You listen to not only what they say, you listen to how they say it; watch their facial expression when they’re speaking sometime, watch what they emphasize. If something is troubling them you’ll see it. They can say three sentences and you can tell which sentence means the most by…they may fiddle around or something when they say it, there’ll be a physiological response if you just watch carefully a person speaking. You can tell what they want to emphasize.
All right, now let’s look at this. We’re on
the outside looking into their mind so we’ve got to read there, like Peter
did. Now Peter happened to be in a
better advantageous situation that you are. When we witness we don’t know all
this, but Peter said look, I know what these people know, they came here to worship
in the city of
The next step is that you’ve got to fill in information they need to have a divine viewpoint framework set up; otherwise when you preach Jesus to them you are going to say Jesus Christ and it goes in their ear, up their audio nerve to their brain, gets fouled up with all their presuppositions, and they’re talking about something entirely different than what you’re talking about. You both are using the same words and you haven’t communicated a thing. Believe me, it’s happened to me many times. Most people are not prepared to hear about the Biblical Jesus. So, you have to listen and then you have to say okay look, I’ve got start here and I’ve got to supply some… now it doesn’t mean you have to go into all the details of how they put blood on the door in the Exodus and who Joshua knocked the walls down at Jericho; not all that’s required to witness but I’ll tell you what is required to witness. They’d better get straight on what the nature of God is. And don’t open your mouth about Jesus Christ until you personally are assured that person understands, they really understand what a personal infinite God is and how He speaks in Scripture, they understand that. And don’t go further until they do understand that or you’re wasting your time and their time.
Let me give you an example how this works
out. Something happened a week ago, I
usually sit down with my boys and watch Space 1999; I’ve got four excuses to
watch it. One of the reasons that
intrigues me about this program is I’ve had great respect for this director
over the years, Stanley Kubrick, and Kubrick is responsible for that tremendous
film, 2001, A Space Odyssey. When
Kubrick puts something forward he knows what he’s doing. For years he has studied under Arthur Clark
who is probably one of the worlds greatest science fiction writers and these
men are committed pantheists; they know exactly what they believe. They employ high class cinematography, they
put forward an excellent product, so it’s always kind of a little game with me
that I’ve kind of developed with Kubrick and his films, I always like to see
them to figure out how this smashes Christianity because that’s what he’s
doing. And it was amazing to me that
when 2001 came to
So on this program the other night it was a follow up on something else, on an earlier program he had one of these characters go to this planet and they were all involved in playing god and one of the characters remarked to another one, why this is wrong for you to play god with these people. So we were sitting there watching the thing and my boys commented, gee, I wonder if that person there is trying to say he’s a Christian. Of course, if you just took that segment it did look like there were some Biblical knowledge of it. This is where it fools you; God’s words were used, they could have tossed a few Jesus words in, they didn’t but they could have, and it really sounds good but then last Saturday night was a program that was fantastic. I wish I could get the tape just to show you what pantheism is all about because Kubrick put on the most graphic visual presentation of pantheism I’ve ever seen in my life. He had this lunar base coming toward this dark star and after they got into this field around this dark star they begin to get absorbed into this thing. All right, so they’re going to die and everybody gets ready to die. A strange thing happened, as they come into this dark star everybody starts getting older. And you go into this weird photography, kind of like what you’d seen in the pictures of an LSD trip, and everything goes bananas for a while until you come down to this point where they’re communicating without words; you hear their voice and they’re communicating brain to brain, just thought to thought and they’re sitting there with this aged expression on their face and then Kubrick does one of his brilliant little things where he has not a man’s voice but a woman’s voice speaks and they we seem to know you, where do we know you from, we really haven’t heard your voice but somehow we know you. Then the woman’s voice said I speak only once every thousand or so of your years because I dwell in eternity. And finally it dawns on them an done of them looks up, it’s sarcasm but it’s very profound, “are you God?” and the voice ends and they find themselves on the other side of the universe all back and everything’s happily ever after.
But when they comment on this after they’ve gone through this experience they make this comment and this shows you exactly what Kubrick wants: they said wasn’t it wonderful when everything was one, nature, man and God, all part of one beautiful thing. That is pantheism.
Now why do I tell you this? Because the nature of God… you could not witness to a man like Stanley Kubrick; you couldn’t whip out the four laws and say Stan, I want to read something to you. This might work with some people but it’s not going to work with Stanley Kubrick; Kubrick can’t understand anything beyond the first law. He can’t understand the second, third and fourth laws because he cannot understand what the nature of God is. He is an active promoter of God words to which he has connected vast gobs of human viewpoint. And if you’re going to use the word “God” and Kubrick is going to use the word “God” you’re not communicating at all, you’re just talking at him and that’s why we have to take a lesson from Peter.
Peter had to start with the divine viewpoint framework in his hearers. He has an easier time than you’re going to have; yes, because Peter had a generation that had this already into their souls; we don’t. So our job is we sit back and instead of the one two step that Peter used, where Peter used the divine viewpoint framework that the people had and he was referring to that 60% of the time and 40% of the time, that’s just guesswork but just an eyeball estimate of this, and then he talked about Jesus and His work; in our day I guess it’s more like 95%-5%. 95% of the time you are going to be struggling to communicate just what God is and this is a challenge, I take it to myself and you ought to take it to yourself as individuals, we have to go absorb the text enough so that we can use our conversation without the text. The average person doesn’t know this, we can’t use “well, the Bible says….” The person doesn’t know the Bible so what are you doing that for? You’ve got to be able to illustrate God’s nature in the creation around; you’ve got to develop a repertoire of vocabulary that will enable you to make contact with the soul of people that you love, people that you want to know Christ. And that requires effort. And laziness will well up within you, well I’m just going to go around and pick the ripe fruit. How about sowing some seed in people’s minds so that someone else can lead them to Christ; how about doing that for a while. That’s harder but somebody’s got to do it. I’ve had to talk to people four or five months before they became Christians, a little bit here, little bit there. Some of you live in a dorm; over the course of a semester you could built a vast amount of information in that person’s soul so that they would grab hold of the gospel, maybe a year or so after they graduate. Bring some of these things into the conversation, learn how to slide them in, after you’ve learned the first lesson and that is how to listen. If you’re that interested and you really love people and want them to trust Christ, you ought to be interested enough to listen to what they’re telling you because they may not even realize what they’re telling you but you, with the eyes of regeneration, with the indwelling Holy Spirit, you have equipment aboard your soul they don’t have. If you make a mistake so what, try again. That’s how skill occurs.
Look how many times Peter put his foot in his mouth before he started this sermon in the book of Acts; every time he was doing something in the Gospels he’s doing something like this; for three years he went through that process, but Peter kept on trying and then he produced this magnificent sermon. It wasn’t born overnight; it was born through patience.
Let’s finish up with the last point. Acts 2:36, notice that he says “you have crucified,” “you,” it’s emphasized in the syntax and that makes it personal and that makes it moral, “you people,” not me, you people have your own personal sin; you have personally rejected this God that you now know. And then he relates Christ to that issue and that’s what we’ve got to do. Somewhere in the conversation we have to make it clear. I was raised in a church that spoke all the time, Christ is Savior of the world, Christ is Savior of the world, Christ is Savior of the world, Christ is Savior of the world, and I could have told you Christ is Savior of the world and it wouldn’t have mean a particle to me. It was vacuous terminology, it didn’t mean a thing because I didn’t realize Christ was “my” Savior; it makes a big difference. Somewhere it’s got to get personal. You can show them that they personally are responsible and they’re going to have to answer to God. This is the call of God through Peter and we have to follow in Peter’s footsteps and see what we can do to act as channels of God’s calling today.