Sermon Tone Analysis

PRAY

INTRO: Where we are in Acts 3, a man who had been lame from birth was just healed instantaneously by the power and authority of Jesus working through his apostles Peter and John by the presence of the Holy Spirit in them.

The first question our text gives us an answer to is…

What do we do when serving Jesus draws attention?

(vv.

11-12)

In this case it is positive attention.

People are “utterly astounded” and gather to them at Solomon’s portico.

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But what does Peter do, and what must we do, when their faithful service draws attention?

(v.

12)

We exalt Christ.

We redirect attention from ourselves to Jesus.

We’ll see in ch. 4, what do we when it draws negative attention?

We still deflect attention from ourselves to Jesus.

We exalt Christ.

- So what do we do when serving Christ draws attention (positive or negative?)

- “Jesus taught....

The Bible says....”

So we’ve already seen something to learn from Peter and John’s example, but also from the bulk of this passage,…

What can we learn from listening to Peter proclaim Christ?

(vv.

13-26)

[Outline where we are heading today with the rest for today.]

The first three in our list we’ll discuss at length, and then the last half we’ll cover more briefly because there is overlap with our explanation from the text with the first three.

In proclaiming Jesus as Lord, we…

Connect with and correct our listener’s understanding of God and his purposes from Scripture.

The first thing Peter does is acknowledge the one true God and the unique relationship the Jews have (his audience) to God in his gracious plan, revealed in his former covenants, dating all the way back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

These are the patriarchs (the fathers) who represent God’s covenant uniquely with the Hebrew people (not bc of anything in them, but by his own good pleasure, to display his glory on the earth).

So too it is from this very identity as Jews that Peter must correct their understanding, and this comprises the overall thrust of the whole message.

In fact, the whole sermon is held together by this thread: Peter’s message opens and closes with a right understanding of God overall (catered to the knowledge and experience of his audience) and of Jesus in particular, and why that matters to “you” (again, his audience).

(from v. 13 to vv. 25-26)

More specifically, Peter must correct their understanding of God’s plan for the Messiah as revealed in the Scriptures.

You must think you’re still waiting for God’s promised Messiah, but you just killed the Christ.

However, that suffering servant was in God’s plan, and He has raised this Jesus and has exalted him on high.

Calling Jesus God’s servant [pais] (beginning and end, as we showed) comes into focus when we understand Peter’s argument.

This is indeed an unusual NT term for Jesus (Peter uses it here, and the believers use it in their prayer in Acts 4 (27 & 30), but it was not an uncommon OT name for Messiah.

The only other NT use is in Mt 12, but there he is quoting a text from Isaiah with reference to Jesus.

To briefly summarize: What the Jews were overlooking was the necessity of the Christ to be the suffering servant who would die for sin but rise again to be vindicated as Lord.

They were overlooking that this same servant was uniquely empowered to do miracles unlike anything they had ever seen.

And they were overlooking that this Jesus was indeed God’s servant to bring the promised hope to the Gentiles also.

But it is not just this term “servant” and the overall thrust of the message that offer this needed correction of their understanding.

Peter will also focus attention more explicitly on the testimony of OT prophecy.

So we see Peter say in v. 18…

And then vv.

22-23 drive home the point that Jesus is the prophet foretold by Moses.

There too is the warning for those who reject this prophet, especially those who of the household of Israel.

Peter continues, v. 24, that all the prophets from Samuel onward have also foretold these days.

What days?

The days now ushered in by the Christ, these “last days” as Peter called them in chapter 2 when quoting the prophet Joel.

These are the days where, because of Christ, the Spirit is poured out on all who believe, all who become the true sons and daughters of God.

Miracles such as these are proof that…

So, what’s the point to his audience about this evidence from Scripture?

But you’re not there yet without repentance and faith.

We’ll head back to that in a moment.

Peter does here what we must do in order to accurately proclaim Christ, he connects with and corrects their understanding of God and his plan, and then of the person and role of Jesus in particular.

He does so from Scripture.

In our situations, we have to listen well to understand what people know or think of God, and then undoubtedly offer needed correction according to God’s word.

When we proclaim the gospel, we really are only saying what the Bible says… about God, about us, about Jesus.

If Peter’s audience dealt with a level of ignorance about the meaning of OT Scriptures, how much more do you think we deal with misunderstandings and confusions and misrepresentations of what the Bible teaches.

Our listeners will have different misconceptions, but we must be prepared to address those.

In proclaiming Christ as Lord, we also…

Bring clarity to our culpability before God.

The Jews were mostly clear about generally being sinners who needed atonement and forgiveness for God to not crush them in his righteous wrath.

Here Peter clarifies, for his particular audience (“Men of Israel”), the way that they are also guilty in the unjust killing of Christ.

So in this case, Peter intertwines their responsibility for their sin with their complicity in the death of Jesus because of rejecting him as Messiah and calling for his crucifixion.

So this point about man’s culpability for sin and the true identity and work of Jesus are woven together in Peter’s public proclamation of the gospel on this day in Solomon’s Portico.

Notice how Peter again draws attention to the responsibility of his audience before God for what they have done.

(End of v. 13) You delivered over and denied Jesus to Pilate, even when he had determined to release him.

Denying that Jesus was holy and righteous, you instead asked for a murderer be given to you (v.

14) and you killed the Author of life.

Yikes!

Peter doesn’t preach any soft-petaled version of the gospel that tries to coax people in without stabbing them in the heart with the truth of their sin, crushing them with the weight of God’s holiness and wrath.

Your sin separates you from God and is destroying you and leads to your eternal destruction.

God hates sin and his wrath is burning against it, and you.

Your sin is so pervasive in your life and attached to your identity that you are powerless to do anything to make yourself right with God.

You are at the mercy of God.

The reason a perfect Jesus, God the Son, died a horrible death was because of your sin… and God’s mercy.

Such is the reality that must be declared in the true gospel.

Finally, even in their ignorance they are not innocent.

(v.

17) In his second movement in the sermon, which I suggest begins at v. 17, Peter acknowledges that, on some level, what they did was out of ignorance.

We know that they weren’t ignorant of the fact that Jesus was uniquely attested by God by “mighty works and wonders and signs” (Ac 2:22).

(And to this we could add the unique authority with which Jesus taught and talked.)

They were not ignorant of that.

The context, which we spoke of already, will go on to show that their ignorance was at the level of not understanding and listening to the plain testimony of Scripture concerning the Christ.

The reason Peter can be gracious here is because the disciples themselves were ignorant of these things until Jesus explained it to them (see Lk 24 resurrection appearances) and gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit.

But what Peter does not say is that this ignorance is innocence.

Romans 1:18-23 teaches that this ignorance is intentional, an unrighteousness suppression of the truth.

We are accountable to God for ignoring what he has revealed.

And then we are particularly without excuse when the gospel is proclaimed to us.

(In this way, there is not just bad news within the good news about Jesus, but the gospel itself is bad news for those who continue to reject Jesus, bc one day he will judge according to their willful ignorance and rejection.)

When we share the gospel today, we are shining a light on the darkness of our willful ignorance.

Specifically, we likely must show people from Scripture that they are sinners, that sin separates them from God, and that the result (the necessary consequence) is to be judged (death/destruction—eternal separation).

Secondly then, we also help them to see that it is in fact their own sin which contributes to the need for Christ’s atoning death and resurrection.

As we continue, we see that, like Peter, our witnessing must…

Focus on who Jesus is and what God has done through him.

We already talked about Jesus being the fulfillment of OT prophecy concerning God’s chosen and unique servant (clearly Jesus this is the Christ, the Messiah), but aren’t you blown away by the other two references to Jesus from Peter in vv.

14&15?!

We should note that calling Jesus the Holy One and the Righteous One are still connected to Jesus being this unique servant, the Messiah of God.

Not only that, but they are accurate descriptions of God the Son being uniquely set apart and unstained by sin.

The demons he cast out acknowledged this about him:

He is the prophesied righteous one and indeed the only one to live a perfectly righteous life on the earth, and that righteousness was vindicated by his resurrection from the dead, and accordingly he is able to forgive sin and account others as righteous: