The Power of Preaching-Acts 2:22-41

Acts of the Apostles, Sermons

Video Recording, Oct 9, 2022. I was scared to preach on Acts. After preaching on Acts 1 and 2 in the last 2 weeks, I remember why I didn’t want to preach on Acts ever since we started WL in 2008. I knew how important Acts was, for it is the only account of how the church was born in Jerusalem and how in just 3 decades she grew and spread to Rome–the end of the world. Just from reading through Acts:

  • I feared not living like the first Christians in Acts;
  • I feared not praying or growing like the way the church grew exponentially in Acts;
  • I feared not preaching like Peter and Paul, who preached the first ever Christian sermons in history (8+9), which are the template and model for how all Christian preaching should be, and thus I would surely fall far short of how theologically robust biblical preaching should be.

So I subconsciously decided to “skip” Acts. But after 14 years at WL I decided to face my fears. Pray for me and pray that our church may be empowered like the church in Acts that was empowered by the Holy Spirit. May God empower us to be “witnesses” in Chicago, the US, and even to the ends of the earth (Ac 1:8). God willing, pray for John, Maria and I for our month long visit to Podil UBF in Kyiv in Nov and Dec 2022.

  • What vision do you have for your life (Ac 2:17)?
  • What is the main point and theme of Peter’s 1st Christian sermon [and every Christian sermon] (Ac 2:36; 3:13-15; 4:10-11, 27-28; 5:30-31; etc)? What is preaching?
  • What are you “devoted” to as a Christian/as a church (Ac 2:42)? What are 4 pillars of the church (Ac 2:42, 43-47)?

The Power of Pentecost (Ac 2:1-21). If you are going to do anything worthwhile, you need power [dynamis]. When young men are filled with the Holy Spirit, they see visions (Ac 2:17), become powerful and are unstoppable. The first church was founded by young visionary Jewish men who were bent on conquering the world with the gospel by witnessing powerfully to Jesus (Ac 1:8; 4:33), even at the cost of their lives. They were more powerful than current Ukrainian soldiers resisting a far more numerous Russian army. In contrast, without a vision or revelation, people cast off restraint, become [self-]destrutive and cannot but perish (Prov 29:18). I had no vision for my life other than to make money and do whatever I want. So I became a doctor and came to the U.S. But when the Holy Spirit worked in my heart through studying Scripture (Genesis), I saw a vision of the holy God who loved me in spite of how I had lived–which is in complete denial of God. This vision of a holy loving God has sustained me only by his grace for the last 42 years since becoming a Christian. May God give you a glorious vision of God for your life and future.

Peter‘s Pentecost sermon (2:14-36)–the 1st Christian sermon in history–is a model for all Christian preachin. 3 parts:

  1. Part 1. The introduction–the explanation of Pentecost (2:14-21): the last days/Messianic age has arrived. Capture the moment and move the people to where you want them to be.
  2. Part 2. The theme [main body of Pentecost] (2:22-36) is exalting Christ: the Messiah is Jesus, who you killed and who God raised from the dead (Ac 2:36; 3:13-15; 4:10-11, 27-28; 5:30).
  3. Part 3. The conclusion is exhorting people (Ac 2:37-40).

Preaching–which is uniquely Christian–is explaining the Bible and proclaiming its truth. Today, preaching is someone saying something to you that you don’t want to hear: “Don‘t preach to me.” When truth and Scripture is rejected, preaching fades and becomes watered down to platitudes, and the church becomes a place to feel good and to be entertained. But preaching is God’s method and God’s means for anyone to know the truth (Lk 11:28; Jn 8:31-32), without which we live based on lies (Rom 1:25). Preaching is biblical logic on fire [Martyn-Lloyd Jones]. Preaching is persuasion; it is aimed at the mind, not our emotion. It is to change what people think and believe through persuasive speech. It is a reasoned intellectual argument toward a conclusion. It is a Spirit empowered intellectual battle/conquest to persuade the hearers of the truth in such a way that they see the reasonableness of it and the inescapable reality of it. It is to reason and persuade others that God is God and Jesus is God’s Messiah. I like listening to TED talks, because the speakers are usually excellent. But preaching is persuasive speech at the hightest level, because what is at stake is so critical. The spread of the church in Acts [and throughout history] has always been through preaching. It is always through Scripture, passionately proclaimed, and well explained and expounded, that exposes people to the truth–unbelieving people and even believing people. Historically, preachers brought down fire from heaven and launched revivals, as Peter did. The first work of the church in history is not to emotionally rile people up with wind, fire and strange speach (Ac 2:2-4) but to draw people to hear a sermon preached by Peter (Ac 2:14-15, 22). Preaching is the gospel, the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ proclaimed/heralded in words, of careful convincing argument, appealing to the mind of the hearers with the goal of persuading sinners that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation by which they can escape the coming judgment (Ac 17:2-4; 18:4; 19:8-10; 28:23-24, 30-31).

  • Preaching began with the OT prophets who were preachers [announcing the coming of the Messiah] with John the Baptist being the last OT prophet who was also a preacher.
  • Jesus–the best preacher who ever lived–preached the good news of the kingdom of God.
  • The apostles in Acts, who were a new generation of preachers, continued the preaching ministy of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
  • Every church in the last 2,000 years has been founded, grounded and expanded through preaching.
  • Preaching is words (Jn 6:63; Rom 10:8-14; 1 Cor 2:1-2; 2 Tim 4:1-2); it is words that are spoken persuasively with reasoned logic and arguments.

Jesus is the rightful king, for God made Jesus, both Lord and Messiah (Ac 2:36), the One whom we call for salvation (2:22-36). Up to now, Peter explained that the extraordinary phenomenon of the wind, fire and babbling tongues (Ac 2:2-4) is the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy about the arrival of “the last days” (Ac 2:16-17), which is the new era of the Messianic age. The reason “the last days” are here is because of the resurrection of Jesus, which Peter now proceeds to explain: the resurrection is not an odd, isolated miracle, but the fulfilment of specific promises made by God through King David. Since the Messianic age has begun, it will also end one day (Ac 2:20). It will be a day of dreadful judgment (Ac 2:19-20). What then should you do (Ac 2:21)?

“Listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth…” (Ac 2:22; 3:6; 4:10; 10:38). Peter begins by stating emphatically the name of his subject “Jesus of Nazareth” (Ac 2:22), making various claims about Jesus that will be repeated, with variation, in a series of speeches (Ac 3:13-26; 4:10-12; 5:30-32; 10:36-43; 13:23-41) each one adapted to its context. To prove that Jesus is the Messiah to this crowd of thousands of Jews, he tells the story of Jesus in 6-7 stages [Peter’s sermon is only an outline (Ac 2:40).]

  1. Jesus’ life and ministry (Ac 2:22). In all evangelism, our chief and overriding responsibility is to point people to Jesus, and to keep bringing the conversation back to the person and work of Christ, because the gospel of God concerns the Son of God (Rom 1:2-3). Jesus is the very heart and soul of Christianity, still controlling men, still capturing men. Jesus–as “a man accredited by God“–alludes to him having both a human and a divine reality He was divinely attested “by miracles, wonders and signs” the 3 NT words used for the miracles God performed publicly through him.
    • Miracles indicates their nature: exhibit God’s power [dunamis].
    • Wonders indicate their consequence/appearance: they aroused amazement in those who witnessed them (John 4).
    • Signs indicate their purpose/intention: to signify the claims of the Messiah.
  2. Jesus’ death (Ac 2:23, 36; 4:28). If Jesus was so powerfully accredited by God, why was he rejected and crucified? Peter said that Jesus “was handed over to you by God,” which emphasizes God’s sovereignty in everything that happened. Though death was Jesus’ destiny (Jn 3:14; 8:28; 12:32), it was “impossible for death to keep its hold on him” (Ac 2:24). The cross was no accident. Jesus was put to death by wicked hands, though according to God’s purpose.
    • Here is the paradox of divine predestination and human freewill in its strongest form. It is the juxtaposition, common in various parts of the NT, of God‘s divine plan with human actions for which humans are held responsible. Even in putting Jesus to death, the Jews were simply fulfilling what God had already determined must take place and indeed was foretold in the prophetic writings (Isaiah 53). “God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge” refers to the fact that Jesus died not just because the Jews thought him a false prophet [though true], or that Judas betrayed him [also true], but out of divine necessity. But though Jesus‘ death fulfills prophecy, it in no way lessens the crime of those who crucified Jesus. Thus the same event–the death of Jesus by crucifixion–was attributed simultaneously to the purpose of God and the wickedness of men, Thus, human evil and divine providence were not incompatible with each other. God forwards his very own purposes even through the wickedness of men.
  3. Jesus’ resurrection (Ac 2:24-32) is the decisive contrast and the key fact, stressed time and again by the 1st preachers. They didn’t need to prove that it happened; they simply proclaimed it and bore witness to it. Jesus was raised from the dead, as the prophets foretold and the apostles witnessed. The cross is the center of God’s plan of salvation. The resurrection is NOT a disembodied spirit going off to heaven, leaving a body behind in a tomb, but is about a physical body being very thoroughly dead, but then being very thoroughly alive again, so that the normal corruption, decay and dissolution of the flesh which follows death would not happen (Ac 2:25-28, 31; Ps 16:8-11). Peter made 3 statements about Jesus’ resurrection.
    1. God freed him “from the agony of death” (Ac 2:24a). Agony [Gk–birth pains] pictures the ressurection as a regeneration, a new birth out of death into life.
    2. …”it was impossible for death to keep it’s hold on him (Ac 2:24b). Peter affirmed this moral impossibility without explaining it.
    3. Peter saw in Psalm 16 a prediction of the Messiah’s resurrection. All OT Scripture bears witness to Christ, especially to his death, resurrection and worldwide mission. Jesus himself said so both before and after his resurrection. In consequence, his disciples came to read the OT Christologically and to understand OT references to God’s anointed and David’s royal descendants as finding fulfilment in Jesus. Peter concluded, “We are witnesses of the fact” (Ac 2:32), i.e. Jesus’ resurrection connects the spoken testimony of the apostles (NT) and the written predictions of the prophets (OT). The OT and NT together converges and coincides in their witness to Jesus’ resurrection.
  4. Jesus’ exaltation (Ac 2:33-36) to God’s right hand as Lord and head of the new Israel, and from there poured out the Spirit (Ac 2:33) as promised in the OT (Eze 36:26-27; Joel 2:28-32). The resurrection is to be understood as the exaltation of Jesus. It was not simply a revivification but an ascension to be with God. The Spirit was thus the gift of the exalted Jesus. While the resurrection was only a matter of testimony by the disciples acting as witnesses (Ac 2:32), the effects of the pouring out of the Spirit were manifest to all Peter’s hearers.
  5. Jesus’ return (Ac 2:34-36). As Peter applied Ps 16 to the Messiah’s resurrection, he now applies Ps 110 to the Messiah’s ascension and return. Ps 110:1 is by far the most frequent OT passage found in the NT–over 20 times. It is the Messiah who is addressed by God [Yahweh] as David’s Lord and invited to sit at his right hand (Ac 2:34-35). Jesus had already applied this verse to himself when he was teaching in the temple courts.
  6. Jesus’ salvation (Ac 2:37-40). Information is for transformation. Calling upon Jesus involves repentance and baptism in his name. [Peter issues a call to repentance]. To their question (Ac 2:37), Peter’s reply sums up the standard call by Christian preachers to their audiences: Repent, be baptized (Ac 2:38), save yourselves (Ac 2:40). Jesus now gives forgiveness and the Spirit to all who repent, believe and are baptized (Ac 2:38-39).
    • “Save yourselves” (Ac 2:40) by repenting and believing. It does not mean they can save themselves. It is better to translate as “Let yourselves be saved.” The “corrupt generation” looks back to the wilderness generation (Dt 32:5; Ps 78:8) and sees the current nation warped by unbelief.
  7. Jesus’ new community (Ac 2:41, 42-47). The characteristics of the church. Jesus multiplies the body of Christ 26x from 120 (Ac 1:15) to 3,120. Luke separates off the various incidents in the 1st part of Acts with short summary paragraphs or verses which indicate the situation of the church at several stages of its progree. 2:42-47 is the 1st such section [others are Ac 4:32-37; 5:12-16], and it bridges the gap between Pentecost and the next set of incidents resulting in opposition from the Jewish authorities.

A flying start by the end of Acts 2 with:

  • the risen Jesus appearing to the apostles over 40 days (Ac 1:3),
  • the spectacular events of the day of Pentecost (2:1-12),
  • Peter’s address to the puzzled crowds (2:13-21),
  • the 1st Christian sermon emphasizing the cross (2:22-36) and
  • God’s rescue operation through him (2:37-41).
  • It’s a glorious dramatic exciting new beginning with full of energy, possibility and hope. Everthing is in full swing. Now at the end of the 1st Pentecost, Luke pauses for breath, looks around and describes the situation. The new era of the church–the Messianic age–has begun.

References:

  1. Wright, N.T. Acts for Everyone, Part 1. Chapters 1-12. 2008.
  2. Witherington III, Ben. The Acts of the Apostles. A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. 1998.
  3. Stott, John. The Message of Acts. 1990.
  4. Peterson, David G. The Acts of the Apostles. The Pillar NT commentary. 2009.
  5. Osborne, Grant. Acts. Verse by Verse. 2019.
  6. Marshall, I. Howard. Acts. Tyndale NT commentaries (TNTC). 1980.
  7. Barclay, William. The Acts of the Apostles. The Daily Study Bible Series. 1976. 
  8. Fernando, Ajith. The Message of Jesus in Action. 2010. 

Understanding Pentecost is not through the OT prediction, but through the NT fulfilment, not through Joel but through Jesus.

The founding/birth of the church (2:1-47). Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit. 3 fathers were expectantly waiting for the good news outside the maternity ward with their wives in labor. The 1st nurse came out and told the father that he had twins. He was elated and said, “What a coincidence. I’m a big fan of the Minnesota twins.” The 2nd nurse then came and told the next father that he had triplets. Overjoyed he said, “Wow. I work for 3M company.” The 3rd father began to look really scared and anxious. When asked why, he said, “I work for 7 eleven.”

Parallelism. Did Luke intentionally structure Acts to parallel the inaugural events in his gospel?

  • John the Baptist says, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Lk 3:16), followed by the baptism and reception of the Spirit by Jesus (Lk 3:21-22).
  • Sermon in Nazareth indicating that the time of the fulfilment of God’s promises and prophecy had come (Lk 4:16-30).
  • Jesus’ witness to Jews and occasionally others in Galilee, Samaria and Judea (Lk 4:31ff).

Christians’ struggle is to be faithful to this apostolic gospel, while presenting it in a way which resonates with modern men and women. Like the apostles, we must focus on Jesus. It is impossible to preach the gospel without proclaiming Christ. John Stott’s framework to be faithful to express the apostles’ message:

  1. The gospel events, namely the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Holy Spirit “opened a school” in Jerusalem. The school teachers were the apostles, whom Jesus appointed and trained with 3,000 pupils!
  2. The gospel witnesses. The OT and the apostles witness (Ac 2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39).
  3. The gospel promises. The good news is not only of what Jesus did (1 Cor 15:3-4) but also of what he offers as a result.
  4. The gospel conditions. The gospel demands a radical turn from sin to Christ, inwardly of repentance and outwardly of baptism.

The wholeness of the biblical gospel is that we cannot proclaim the cross without the resurrection, or refer to the NT but not the OT, or offer forgiveness without the Spirit, or demand faith without repentance. For the 4-fold message has:

  1. 2 events (Jesus’ death and resurrection).
  2. 2 witnesses (prophets [OT] and apostles [NT]).
  3. 2 conditions (repentance and faith, with baptism).

The gospel [told by the apostles] is:

  1. historical (witnessed by their own eyes: Jesus really lived, died, rose and ascended in the arena of history).
  2. theological (interpreted by the Scriptures; Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension all have saving significance).
  3. contemporary (confronting men and women with the necessity of a response/a decision).

Outline:

  1. POWER at Pentecost (2:1-13). The breadth of God. The pouring out of the Spirit. The coming of the Spirit. The empowering event and the 1st witnessing.
    • The setting: Pentecost in Jerusalem (2:1).
    • The descent of the Spirit (2:2-4).
    • The reaction of the crowds (2:5-13).
  2. PREACHING at Pentecost (2:14-40). Peter preaches the gospel. Peter’s interpretation of the event. The first Christian preaching, and the response to it.
    • Introduction (2:14-15).
    • The fulfillment of Joel (2:16-21; Joel 2:28-32). God’s day has come. The gift of the Spirit is a sign that the Day of the Lord is at hand.
    • The basis: the death and resurrection of Jesus (2:22-36).
      • Introduction: Jesus of Nazareth (2:22).
      • The death and resurrection and Jewish guilt (2:23-24).
      • OT prophecies fulfilled (2:25-35).
      • Conclusion: Lord and Messiah (2:36). Jesus is the Lord on whom to call for salvation.
    • Call to repentance (2:37-41). Calling upon Jesus involves repentance and baptism in his name.
  3. PEOPLE of Pentecost (2:41-47): the community created by the Spirit. A summary of the life in the early [Jewish Christian] church. The 1st summary passage in Acts characterizing the early community of Christ.
    • 4 pillars/marks of the church (2:42).
    • Results in the life of the church (2:43-47).
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