Jesus the Nazarene

Follow Up

Last week I mentioned a friend of mine who says he’s rekindling his relationship with God but he doesn’t trust the Bible and he looks for “signs” that God is talking to him; allowing for his own interpretation of God. After the service I was asked if I could provide some information on how one could argue for the reliability of the Scriptures. I regret I didn’t take that opportunity last week; rest assured I did immediately take the opportunity with my friend. It broke my heart to hear him say he thought the Bible had been molested and the true Word of God had been lost. I love him and I pray he learns to trust God’s ability to preserve His Word. In an effort to get him to see that the Bible can be trusted, I shared with him some facts about the preservation of the Scriptures and I’ll review them with you this morning. After all, if we’re going to be Bible Centered, we should be able to defend it, right?

External Evidence for the Reliability of Scriptures

Manuscript Abundance and Quality

The biblical texts vastly exceed any other ancient literature in manuscript evidence. For the Old Testament we have over 6,000 Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts exist alongside approximately 200 Qumran manuscripts and numerous translations. Key to the reliability of these manuscripts is that the Qumran date between 200-100 BC while the Masoretic to the late ninth century AD. And the Qumran were found between 1947-1956. Think about that, God preserved His Word in a cave for 1,900 years and what was found not only vindicates the texts we relied on for centuries but provides even deeper understanding of the textual traditions of antiquity.

The New Testament survives in over 5,000 Greek copies, about 8,000 Vulgate manuscripts, and thousands more in other ancient languages. By comparison, Homer’s Iliad ranks second with only 643 surviving manuscripts, and Caesar’s Gallic War has merely nine or ten good manuscripts, with the oldest being roughly 900 years removed from the original. This abundance matters not for quantity alone but for quality—the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus, when copyist errors are noted, essentially reproduces the apostolic text, as do other significant manuscripts.

Textual Accuracy and Variants

You can be totally confident that the books you are reading are the books that were written more than 1,900 years ago and there is no issue of substance affected by any textual variants. While more manuscripts create greater textual variations through scribal mistakes—whether from mishearing during dictation, confusing similar-looking words, or eyes jumping between repeated words—textual critics can reconstruct the original wording with high probability. The Bodmer papyri demonstrated that a faithful line of transmission could be traced back into the late second to early third century AD, showing that reliable manuscript families existed since nearly the beginning of the church.

Eyewitness Proximity and Early Composition

The New Testament was written not too long after the events it records, making it less likely that accounts would be significantly altered or embellished over time, and making it difficult for legends or myths to develop and be universally accepted. The authors, who for the most part claimed to be eyewitnesses, give clear evidence of their close proximity to the public ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus, along with subsequent events spanning two to three decades. Gospel writers demonstrate extraordinary familiarity with places, customs, and language of the day, including Aramaic sentences spoken by Jesus and Hebrew or Aramaic expressions that would have been unintelligible to later, distant audiences.

Patristic Corroboration

Patristic - “church fathers” - writers quoted the New Testament over a million times, and these citations are so extensive that if all other sources were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for reconstructing practically the entire New Testament. Just two or three church fathers date to the late first century, with an increasingly large stream of patristic writings through the 13th century rendering them extraordinarily valuable for determining the wording of the New Testament autographs (original writings). When patristic testimony is certain, it becomes a valuable witness to the text in a particular place and time, and in many respects can be just as important as the earliest Greek manuscripts.

Introduction

Last week we saw:

Priority of Preaching - Christ, Disciples, Peter, Paul, Book of Acts (sermon notes)

No in cleverness of speech - the apostolic preaching was not designed to be clever, to trick people, or to simply illicit an emotional response.

How will people hear without a preacher? Some are called to be what we call preachers but all are called to make disciples by the preaching of the gospel to the world.

Bible Centered - Sola Scriptura - Bible is the ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice. Preaching is to rely on scripture, to show that Old Testament prophecy is fulfilled in the person and word of Jesus.

Having called the attention of the receptive and the scoffer to the reality of the messianic age, today we will see Peter focus in on a carpenter from Nazareth.

Prayer

Lord God, prepare us to understand Your Word. Give us the ability to see what you want us to see. Write your Word on our hearts and embed it in our minds. We know that you want us to study your Word and we are submitting to you. We are not just submitting, Lord, we are excitedly studying your Word. Lord, fill us with your Spirit. Help us to love You, Your Spirit, Your Son, and Your Word more. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Scripture

Acts 2:22–31 NASB95

22 “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know— 23 this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. 24 “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power. 25 “For David says of Him, ‘I saw the Lord always in my presence; For He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken. 26 ‘Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted; Moreover my flesh also will live in hope; 27 Because You will not abandon my soul to Hades, Nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay. 28 ‘You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of gladness with Your presence.’ 29 “Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 “And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, 31 he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.

Jesus the Nazarene

Acts 2:22 NASB95

22 “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—

Peter started his sermon with Joel’s prophecy to explain what the people had seen and heard that morning. Now, he calls for the attention of the very people he’s been speaking to.

He says “Men of Israel, listen to these words…” He started off calling them “Men of Judea” and “you who live in Jerusalem” but now he’s calling them Israelites. This is easy to speed past but we’re going to pull over and take a closer look. He started his address with appealing to the crowd by where they lived or where they were from, now He grabs their hearts by calling them “Men of Israel.”

Israel was the name given to Jacob when he wrestled with God and prevailed. This name was an honor to carry and so Peter is calling on them to show they are worthy of being called Israelites.

He has just explained to them that what they have seen and heard is Joel’s prophecy being fulfilled - that the Messiah had come. He is moving towards Christ but he is not doing so by calling him the Messiah. He begins by calling him “the Nazarene” and “a man.”

When we hear the title “Nazarene” today we think of Jesus - the Savior of the World. In 1st Century Israel they would not have thought of a Savior of anything. Remember how the Apostle Nathanael asked “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” when Philip told him the Messiah had been found? Nazareth was a small and insignificant town. Being in Galilee, its people were seen as inferior and unintelligent. It wasn’t mentioned in any Old Testament writings or any of the writings of the intertestamental period. The great Jewish Historian Josephus says nothing about Nazareth, although he wrote about Christ.

So, then when we read that Peter said “Jesus the Nazarene,” he wasn’t building a case for a man of means or respect due to his lineage. Let’s read the rest of the sentence to connect it together:

a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know

He says “a man attested to you by God.” Jesus was truly a man, in every sense of the word except that all other men are fallen, sinful creatures. Jesus is neither fallen nor a creature - He has always been and therefore is not created.

It is God who says Jesus the Nazarene is the Jesus the Christ - the Messiah.

Peter says it this way, God proved to you who Jesus of Nazareth was with miracles and wonders and signs. God performed these miracles right in front of your eyes and you know it. They liked the miracles for sure - although some accused Him of performing them under the power of Satan. They liked people being healed and fed. They got something from that. But that wasn’t enough for them. They wanted the Messiah to be a general; a great warrior who would throw off the yoke of Rome. What Christ preached was a Kingdom of God that was not of this material world. He preached that the lowly would be high and the exalted would be low - that certainly wasn’t popular.

So we have Peter speaking to the interested and the disinterested alike. Some are thinking there is something to what they had seen on this Pentecost morning. They might have attributed Jesus’ miracles to Satan and seen the disciples as a Satanic cult but now they were speaking other languages of the mighty deeds of God. Followers of a Satan would not be proclaiming the greatness of God. Satan himself certainly never proclaims anything good about God because he is jealous - he wants to subvert God’s rule and rule in His place.

Then we have the disinterested. The scoffers. Peter quickly addressed their baseless claim the disciples were drunk but there is no indication they walked away.

Both groups of people are folks that did not have the Holy Spirit. We know that because they were either blaspheming the miracle that was in front of them or wondering what it was all about. These people knew in their minds that Jesus was no ordinary man but they had not accepted it; their hearts were still stone. For some, that wouldn’t be the case much longer.

Sovereign God

Acts 2:23a NASB95

23a this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God

Having pointed Joel’s prophecy to the events of the Holy Spirit and drawn a straight line to Jesus the Nazarene, Peter points these Men of Israel directly at God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Sin.

We’re going to look at God’s Sovereignty first. It was in God’s predetermined plan and with His full knowledge that Jesus would be escorted to His agony and death by evil men. God knows all that will happen and everything that does happen has been ordained by him. Scripture is clear over and over again that God is in control. Matthew 10:29 “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”

Some claim this would mean mankind is but a bunch of robots. That’s nonsense. God being sovereign over His creation means that anything that is done, God has either caused to happen directly or has not stopped from happening. Human beings are responsible for their sinful actions because they have decided to commit them. God just didn’t step in and stop them from doing the things they wanted to do in the first place. He doesn’t lead us into temptation at all. No, the desire to sin originates within each of us in various ways but the desire and power to resist sinful temptations comes only from God through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

The sovereignty of God can be called “Big God Theology” because the opposite of it is an impotent God who is at the mercy of the created. Think about this for a moment; we come every Sunday and we pray that God would heal people, that He would draw people to Himself, and that He would give us comfort. We pray for all sorts of things, don’t we? What else do we do every Sunday? We worship God. We sing songs to Him - remember worship is about God, He is the object of our worship. Now, what kind of God would we be worshiping and praying to if He could not make things happen? He would be nothing more than the golden calf or the asherim. But God is more than the golden calf and the asherim. God is more than everything.

Jeremiah proclaimed to God, “nothing is too difficult for You.” Jer 32:17

Christ told us that “with God all things are possible.” Matt 19:26

Paul explained that God “works all things after the counsel of His will,” (Eph 1:11) and “for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28

Job acknowledged that God “can do all things” while no purpose of His “can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2)

Doesn’t John tell us that we have confidence to ask anything according to God’s will that He hears us and we have whatever we have asked from Him? 1 John 5:14-15

God invited Jeremiah to pray to Him and He established that it is precisely because He made the earth that Jeremiah should rely on Him. Jeremiah 33:2-3

When God promised a righteous branch of David to execute Justice and Righteousness on earth, He said He would cause the branch to spring forth. He would cause it. Jeremiah 33:15

Christ said that all who ask will receive because the Father is the Good Father who cares for His children for their good. Matt 7:7-10

Only a Big God - a truly Sovereign God - can make things happen. And if He can do anything He wishes, we cannot stop Him. If we could stop Him, He wouldn’t be God.

Verse 23 here is one amongst so many which precisely says God is sovereign and all-knowing.

This is a haunting doctrine for those who trust in themselves to control their lives, but it is a blessing for those who trust in God.

The Triune God - Father, Son, and Spirit - set this entire plan of salvation before the foundation of the world and now it has been fully enacted. It was no accident; Christ was never in any danger from anything He had not already determined would happen.

Depraved Man

The gospel message is a cause & effect and solution & effect message. Because man sinned the world is fallen, destined for eternity separated from God in Hell. Because God loves the world, He sent His Son to satisfy His wrath and He called everyone to belief in His Son as their Christ. We can’t preach the saving grace of God without preaching the reason for the grace. It is not grace if it is deserved and it is not grace if it is not needed.

Acts 2:23b NASB95

23b you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.

Peter is speaking to everyone that day when he said YOU nailed this Man to a cross. But, think about how he continued his sentence. By the hands of godless men. The word godless here is more literally translated as lawless or outside the law. Peter was speaking about Gentiles, the Romans specifically. Remember that Peter started his sermon by calling the attention of the men of Judea and then progressed to Men of Israel? He used that great honorific title at the beginning of this sentence and now at the end of it he’s telling them that they are not worthy of that title because they used those outside of the law, people not chosen by God, to do their dirty work of murdering Jesus Christ. Just 50 days ago the people of Jerusalem screamed with one voice “crucify him!” and then walked away because they didn’t have to get their hands dirty. The godless romans did it. Just like the Jewish authorities wouldn’t allow the money they bribed Judas with to be put in the temple’s treasury because it was “blood money.” Peter doesn’t let them off the hook; he tells them “you nailed Jesus to a cross by convincing the Romans to do it for you. You are guilty!”

Now, brothers and sisters, here’s where this pill gets really hard to swallow. We often read the Bible and think of ourselves in the place of the faithful. Sure, we want to picture ourselves as Abraham when he was listening to God; Joseph when he was so forgiving of his brothers; Moses when he was longsuffering with the people; Ruth when she took good care of Naomi; Daniel when he defied Darius; Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego when they stood up to Nebuchadnezzar; Mary when she was immediately submissive to God.

We don’t picture ourselves as Sarah when she tried to fulfill God’s promise; David when he had the affair with Bathsheba; Orpah when she left Naomi; certainly not Ahab or Jezebel at any point; Judas - poor miserable Judas. No one pictures himself as Judas. Thomas when he was doubting the resurrection.

But Peter wasn’t speaking only to those people listening to him firsthand that day. What he said was recorded by Luke because God wants us to hear these words of Peter. He wants us to hear these words because God is speaking to everyone today through Peter’s sermon. Christ was crucified long before any one of us was born but make no mistake, each and every one of us is guilty of nailing Him to that cross, because it is our sin which made the whole thing necessary!

Not one of us is sinless. Not one man, woman, or child is without sin. Rom 3:23

As a depraved race, we have no way to save ourselves and can do nothing to earn our salvation.

But God

Acts 2:24 NASB95

24 “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.

Again, God is Sovereign. Verses 23 and 24 are very reminiscent of Genesis 50:20

Genesis 50:20 NASB95

20 “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.

The people meant evil against Jesus BUT GOD meant their evil for the good of mankind, including the people who sent Him to the cross! Yes, God determined that Jesus would suffer on the cross but He did not make men commit sin. They were carrying out God’s Will without knowing - more importantly, without wanting to - carry it out. Not once does Scripture allude to the idea that they were at all concerned with the Will of God. No, they were concerned with upsetting the political situation and their shaky control of Israel.

Again, we can do nothing to earn salvation BUT GOD can and already has.

End of Agony of Death

Now we go back to the 3rd chapter of Genesis. Death is the curse. Death is not the design of the perfect world. God is angry about death; it doesn’t delight Him. Agony of Death is not merely the pains associated with the physical body dying. There is something far worse than death. The Wrath of God demands satisfaction for the injustice of sin. When Jesus sweat blood in the garden, it was not just the thought of bodily harm that stressed Him so. It was the thought of standing before the judgment seat of Almighty God. The Wrath of God is very real and it is essential to the Gospel. Christ took our punishment and to receive punishment one must be judged. Christ understood the weight of that. He understood the Wrath of God. When we say we are saved, we must know from what or whom we are saved. Christ taking our punishment for sin is something we rightly sing about but do we understand what it really saved us from?

Jesus Christ satisfied that wrath for us who believe and trust in Christ. As it was impossible for death to hold Christ because of His divine power (John 11:25; Heb 2:14) and God’s promise and purpose (John 2:18-22; 1 Cor 15:16-26), God raised Him up again.

The Agony of Death is ended for us as well. God has saved us from it and that is grace. We didn’t earn it and we don’t deserve it. But God determined we were to receive it. We are saved by the free grace of God alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, for the glory of God alone, exactly as told to us by God in His Scriptures alone. (Rom 3:28, 11:6, 36; Eph 2:8-9; Gal 2:16; Titus 3:5-7; John 14:6; 1 Cor 10:31; Acts 17:11; 1 Peter 4:11; 2 Tim 3:16-17; Deut 4:2)

David’s Prophecy

Peter now defers to God’s Word for the second time in his sermon. This time, David is the prophet and Peter is quoting a portion of Psalm 16. In this Psalm David is extolling the greatness of God and his own experience in life. But, for verses 8-11, he is ultimately prophesying about Christ.

Acts 2:25–28 NASB95

25 “For David says of Him, ‘I saw the Lord always in my presence; For He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken. 26 ‘Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted; Moreover my flesh also will live in hope; 27 Because You will not abandon my soul to Hades, Nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay. 28 ‘You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of gladness with Your presence.’

After reminding them what David said in this Psalm, Peter explains that it could not have been about David because they all knew David’s tomb was there in the city and his body had never been raised.

Acts 2:29 NASB95

29 “Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.

One other thing I will call to your attention here; notice what Peter calls the people: “Brethren.” He started off calling them men of Judea and who live in Jerusalem - no different than calling them “people of Excelsior Springs.” Then he called them “Men of Israel” - a honorific title that he used to show them their hypocrisy and culpability in the death of Christ. Now, he calls them his brothers. Peter is working with the minds and hearts of those listening to him. He is working their minds by showing them the facts about Christ. He working their hearts by appealing to them as his countrymen and kin.

Peter’s not done with David’s prophecies though. Now he reminds his brethren that God promised David that his descendant would be placed upon the throne and David knew this when he spoke of Christ.

Acts 2:30–31 NASB95

30 “And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, 31 he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus

The Holy Spirit gave the best introduction to a sermon that will ever exist. He worked miracles in front of the eyes of the listeners. He got their minds spinning and searching for an explanation. He had Peter right where He wanted Him. He had those people right where He wanted them.

And Peter explained the miracles - the sound of violent rushing wind; the appearance of divided tongues of fire; the ability to speak in foreign languages - by reminding the people of Joel’s prophecy about the Spirit of God being poured out and the people prophesying in the last days. They knew the last days meant the age of the Messiah.

Their attention having been grabbed by the Holy Spirit and their minds prepped with Peter’s recollection of Joel’s prophecy of the Messianic Age, Peter explains to them who the Christ is - Jesus the Nazarene. He doesn’t stop there - he doesn’t just say “Jesus loves you and died for you.” NO NO NO, Peter explains to them that they are the very reason the Messiah that they had been waiting for over the course of centuries was crucified. He reminds them that Jesus had performed miracles which was God confirming all that Jesus claimed to be. He reminds them that they had screamed for the death of Jesus. He holds up the mirror and shows them that they killed their very own Messiah.

Again, Peter doesn’t stop there. He proclaims the sovereignty of God. He shows them that God’s providential care placed all of this into motion before time. He tells them that Christ was raised again by God. They had heard of the resurrection by this point. Jerusalem was a buzz about Jesus being alive after His public death. Jesus appeared to hundreds over the course of 40 days. It was certainly no surprise to them to hear His followers speaking of His resurrection but now they were being told what it all really meant. Finally, Peter shows them that David had prophesied that the Christ would not be left to the grave.

From the beginning to the end, Peter preached Christ and he’s not done yet. We’re going to see more next week as he expounds on the resurrection and the Holy Spirit brings 3,000 to the Lord.

This first sermon of the Christian Church is unique because it’s the only one where the Holy Spirit acts in this peculiar way. Beyond that, it’s not unique. All of the sermons recorded from this point have the same theme: The life of Jesus, His miracles, death, resurrection and ascension show that He fulfills Old Testament prophecies; we are all sinners and need Him for salvation so we must repent, believe, and receive forgiveness; the reality of judgment; the apostles as eyewitnesses; and universality of the Gospel message for Jews and Gentiles.

Peter centered his sermon on the scriptures and focused the attention of those listening on Jesus Christ. The Apostolic Preaching recorded for us throughout the New Testament did the same. (Acts 3, 8, 10, 13, 17, 20, etc…)

The early church preached the same. Since the first Christian Pentecost, the Gospel has been preached this way. Men obscured it with ritual, fancy clothes, and worse but there have always been true Gospel Preachers. Through the Reformers, God brought the church out of the dankness of manmade religion and gave us Sola Scriptura and also Solus Christus - Christ alone is the basis on which the ungodly are justified in God’s sight.

I have no other message for you today. Today, March 29, 2026, 1,993 years after Christ was crucified, the Gospel has not changed. Jesus Christ has not changed. The way to the Father has not changed. The need for His sacrifice and your salvation has not changed.

I can say nothing but repent and believe in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. I and our elders are available for anyone who would like to chat after the service.

Prayer

Our God and Our Salvation. We come to you humbled by your calling and your plan. We ask that you soften the hearts of those who do not love you, Lord. We ask that our witness is glorifying to you and that you will use us to proclaim your Word to our community and beyond. Lord, if there are any here today that you are calling, we ask that you bring them to you; give them the courage to stand and proclaim their love for Jesus Christ. We pray this in His name knowing that you have already answered our prayer. -Amen.