The First Gospel Sermon
Notes
Transcript
Therefore, since he has been exalted to the right hand of God and has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, he has poured out what you both see and hear.
For it was not David who ascended into the heavens, but he himself says: The Lord declared to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies your footstool.’
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”
So to recap Peter stands up boldly to preach the first gospel sermon on the day of Pentecost. He begins by quoting Joel. He's telling everyone that what they're experiencing in that moment is what Joel prophesied about some 850 years ago. Then Peter goes on to remind them of the man they crucified, the man Jesus Christ who was crucified and then Peter goes on and begins to tell about the resurrection and he makes that famous statement that we talked about last week that it was not possible for death to hold the Messiah the king Jesus. Thus Jesus was resurrected from the dead and defeated death hell and the grave all at once. But Peter decides to use psalms 16:8-11 not to prove the resurrection, but to affirm the messiahship of Jesus which is very important in this sermon because Peter is preaching the gospel for the very first time and these people were some of the same people that saw Jesus get crucified and so Peter is taking all these Old Testament scriptures and he's pulling them up and he's placing them in context with the last three months that these people have seen Jesus crucified now they're seeing the Holy Spirit come and so Peter is like connecting the dots so to speak for these people as he's preaching the gospel for the very first time it's never been preached before this and so he said all of this and then he says therefore now in scripture when you see the word therefore you have to look and see what it's there for which means he said everything that I just recapped and he's now saying therefore as if Peter was wanting to proclaim the whole gospel, so he could not stop at the crucifixion and resurrection. In these verses he moves on to the exaltation and the coming of the Holy Spirit, bringing his listeners right up to the moment. Another quote from the Psalms (110:1) surely must have stabbed their collective attention. The humble carpenter of Nazareth was not only the Messiah, but now he lives in heaven and has caused all the Pentecostal commotion which aroused this sermon in the first place. Showing an enormous confidence in his God and his message, Peter used a phrase appearing only here in the New Testament (all Israel) and hammered home his final point: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. In fine homiletical style he returned to his original text
acts 2.21
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
and, along with the prophet Joel, exalted the messiahship of his Lord. The one you think dead is your living Lord, Master, and Messiah! Can you imagine what it would have been like to see Peter who had been through so much over the last 50 days but has now come out of the other side redeemed revived rejuvenated transformed by the blood of the lamb and full of the Holy Spirit preaching the gospel as it's meant to be preached using the Old Testament to preach about the very situation that they're in and then moving forward talking about Jesus whom they crucified whom they put on the cross whom they killed for no reason at all but it didn't matter because he rose from the dead and Peter using that scripture from psalms the he saw is not being about David comes to this next part and just slams his sermon home glory to God. Then Peter says it was not David that ascended into heaven which is Peter saying these songs are about Jesus the true Messiah because Peter didn't ascend into heaven Jesus did we watched him ascend into heaven and he's saying that setting us up for the next psalm that he uses. . The LORD said to my Lord: This begins the third Old Testament passage Peter used in his sermon, Psalm 110:1. This verse of the Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament more than any other single verse; either quoted or referred to at least 25 times. In this Psalm, David understood and proclaimed the deity of the Messiah.
i. In this Psalm, King David – by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – recorded that Yahweh, Israel’s covenant God (The LORD), spoke to David’s Lord (my Lord) as God. Peter used this to show that the Messiah, who is the focus of Psalm 110, is in fact Divine – He is God.
b. Therefore let all the house of Israel know: The sermon concludes with a summary. Simply, all Israel should know that even though they crucified Jesus, God has declared Him both Lord and Christ.
i. It is as if Peter said, “You were all wrong about Jesus. You crucified Him as if He were a criminal, but by the resurrection, God proved that He is Lord and Messiah.”
ii. When Peter exhorted them whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Acts 2:21), there is little doubt who the Lord is that he spoke of: Jesus.