Acts 3:1-19
Textual Introduction: This story comes from the early days of the new church. .
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Earlier this year the film “Son of God” opened in theaters; it hardly created as much controversy as “The Passion of the Christ.” I’ve seen Mel Gibson’s movie but I haven’t seen the film made by Roma Downey and her husband. Church people apparently like it but what about those who may not know as much about Jesus as that man or woman who regularly sits in a Sunday school class or in a preaching service?
One critic, Sheilia O’Malley, has said this about “Son of God.”
It’s heavy-handed and melodramatic, openly sentimental, and extremely earnest. ‘Son of God’ earnest-ness is not necessarily a strike against it; it was made by earnest people who want to spread the word. But it’s a tough draught to swallow if you’re not in the mood for a sermon.
Perhaps O’Malley’s most telling statement comes at the conclusion of her remarks about the film. She says,
His Sermon on the Mount isn’t rousing or mind-blowing in ‘Son of God’. It’s delivered too casually, too off-handedly for that. It is difficult to believe that that pretty-man in a white dress strolling around smirking ever threatened anyone.
In other words, the filmmakers committed the terrible sin of making Jesus boring.
The early church discovered very quickly that bringing up Jesus did not inspire people to yawn. The fact that Jesus died on a cross was a point of contention for centuries wherever the gospel was preached.
Mention Jesus in post-Pentecost Jerusalem and the first response would likely be, “You mean the man they crucified?”
Gibson’s film is known for its portrayal of crucifixion that exceeded the gospels in picturing its brutality. Of course, those who first heard the gospel didn’t need to be told about crucifixion; they could observe a crucifixion almost anytime they might wish to. The Romans were fond of this form of execution, thinking it a deterrent to crime. But the gospels’ de-emphasis on such details probably had another reason.
They knew the “how” of Jesus’ death was significant, but never so significant as the “why” and “who” of his death. The intensity of the suffering is meaningful only in light of the identity of the Sufferer.
Have you ever heard someone try to shake up a group of morose looking friends by asking, “Who died?” Part of the reason the message of the cross shakes people up is found in the answer to that question: Who died?
We see this in the story of a forty-year-old man who asked Peter and John for change and received a kind of change he never expected. (Sorry.)
This dramatic moment provided an opportunity for Peter to address the crowds at the temple. Everyone there needed to understand just who had died on the cross that first Good Friday.
In his sermon following the healing of the lame man, Peter gives several clues about Jesus identity.
So who died on that cross the first Good Friday?
We can begin by saying Jesus was a Jewish man who lived in a particular time and a particular place.
On the one hand, that may seem to be a given which is why Peter doesn’t spend a lot of time on it. Of course, Jesus lived at a particular time and a particular place. It may seem a given but it isn’t—at least not anymore.
Once again, there are those who are questioning the very existence of Jesus, saying his life and ministry were a complete fabrication. They don’t have a wide following but in a university town like Columbus, it would not be unusual to find some undergraduate who believed such a thing, maybe even a professor or two.
I won’t spend a lot of time on this. I’ll just say the argument has been made before and historians have been quick to show its fundamental flaws. Bart Ehrman is an admitted agnostic and probably the best known critic of the New Testament today. He disappointed the agnostic/atheist community not long ago when he published a book affirming the historicity of Jesus. Sure, he didn’t argue for the existence of the Jesus of orthodox Christianity but he did argue that Jesus really lived.
Now, to move on. We don’t know as much about Jesus’ earthly life especially before his public ministry began as we would like to know. In fact, a lot of what we think we know may be the influence of tradition. For example, that wonderful image of Joseph and Mary traveling to Bethlehem with Mary sitting on a little donkey and Joseph leading them isn’t found in the Scripture. A carpenter, Joseph might very well have built a little cart for his wife to sit in as they journeyed to the City of David. We just don’t know.
As ironic as it may seem, Jesus was most likely born about 5-7 BC. We’ve known for a long time that when leaders of the medieval church tried to establish a chronology of Jesus’ life they got it wrong. Most likely the events of the first Good Friday took place when Jesus was about 35 years old, maybe as old as 37 but that’s not likely.
It’s widely believed Jesus spent his early life as a carpenter but that’s not even certain. The gospels tell us that Joseph was a carpenter but not that Jesus followed him into that trade.
Recently, Rodney Stark has argued that Jesus’ family was relatively wealthy. Stark doesn’t say they were the Wolf’s or the Wexner’s of Nazareth but they were by no means impoverished. The argument he makes isn't flawless but he finds much of his support in the gospels, so we can’t rule it out completely.
True, Jesus said “foxes have holes but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” but this was after he had begun his itinerate ministry.
We don’t know if Jesus was short or tall, if his voice was deep like James Earl Jones’ or high like Abraham Lincoln’s is reported to have been. Phillip Yancey once suggested that he probably looked a lot more like the Lebanese Jaime Farr (Max Klinger) than Tab Hunter or I might add, Jim Caviezel. Again, we just don’t know.
We don’t know because this is not really as important as we might think it to be. We can say some other, more important things about the man who died the first Good Friday.
Jesus was One whose unique power to transform continues to be demonstrated in the lives of those who believe in Him.
We already had a hint of this when Peter addressed the lame man. He said to him, “In the Name of Jesus…rise and walk.” Several modern translations say something like, “By the authority of Jesus rise and walk….”
The idea here is that Jesus, through Peter, was carrying on the work he had done during his earthly life.
Peter is very quick to deny that this miracle had been done through any special piety he or John possessed. Jesus of Nazareth—the man many in the crowd would have thought to be safely buried—had done this great work.
As great as this miracle was, we’d be mistaken if we thought of it as only giving the power to walk to this poor man. The story says he joined Peter and John as they went into the temple. Actually, we’re told he went “walking, leaping, and praising God.” A Jewish person hearing this account would have understood his elation. You see, anyone with a physical deformity was not allowed into the inner court of the temple. So, for the first time in his life, he was able to worship with his fellow Jews.
Peter sums up his explanation of what happened by telling the crowd that the healing had taken place because of faith in Jesus’ Name. His words underscore the power and necessity of faith in Jesus.
Such faith brings the transforming power of Jesus into our lives. In the New Testament miracles are sometimes like visual parables, they portray in dramatic form a spiritual reality.
Faith in Christ brings “complete healing” to our souls. This can be said about no other person. When Peter defended his healing of the lame man—and the sermon which followed—before the Sanhedrin he made the dramatic claim: “…of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved."
It’s never been enough to merely know the facts of Jesus’ life, we need to put our faith in him. We need to accept his word and rely on him for our greatest spiritual need, our salvation.
Jesus is identified as the One who was on special mission from God.
Once again, Peter’s words to the lame man are a clue. Peter refers to “the Name of Jesus Christ.” We have become so accustomed to hearing references to Jesus Christ that we easily forget that the term “Christ” was originally, not a name, but a title. The International English Bible retains this understanding when it translates Peter’s command to the lame man: “By the authority of Jesus the Messiah from Nazareth--walk!'' Remember, this was still early days in the history of the church. Some hearing a Christian preacher for the first time would have been shocked to hear any man, especially a man who had been crucified, described as the Messiah.
At the same time, Peter describes Jesus as God’s “servant.” The title “servant” comes from Isaiah’s description of the Messiah.
For centuries the Jewish people had awaited God’s anointed Agent who would bring salvation not only to Israel but to all humankind. Now, Peter is telling the crowd that he had come. He had come but he had been rejected.
In pointed words Peter said, “you rejected him,” “you handed him over [to Pilate],” and “you didn’t want him.”
Wrong-headed people, sometimes claiming to be Christians, have used the story of Christ’s death to justify assaults on Jews. But that’s not Peter’s purpose.
General Sherman was from Ohio, but just as no sane Georgian would blame a 21st century Ohioan for what happened in the middle of the 19th century, no sane person would blame 21st century Jews for the actions of a band of corrupt Jewish leaders and their followers/minions some 2000 years ago.
I was working on this when I heard a news item that Blazing Saddles came out forty years ago. Remember the governor’s great line: “Gentlemen, we’ve got to protect our phoney-baloney jobs.” That’s what the Jewish leaders were doing when they plotted to kill Jesus, protecting their jobs.
In the end, Peter is not being anti-Semitic in bringing up the Jewish role in the crucifixion. He’s not even attempting to affix the blame. He’s issuing a wake-up call. He is saying, in effect, “Look, this Jesus was the One we’ve all been waiting for. You rejected him once, if you continue to reject him, there’s not going to be another Savior coming along.”
Peter would probably say something similar to us. He would warn us against rejecting the Savior God had sent. You and I might go to movies or look at famous religious art depicting the crucifixion and go away saying, “How could anyone do that to another human being?” Peter—and all who stand in the tradition of those who share the gospel—might see men and women continue to reject the call to faith in Christ and say, “How can anyone do that?”
Jesus is the One whom God honored because He lived as no one else ever lived.
This is a true story. A woman was responding to an episode in the Gospels in which Jesus becomes angry. She said, “I’m happy to see Jesus get angry, it tells me that he was a sinner just like me.”
That woman’s comment reveals a trend in recent years to see Jesus as sinful. The New Testament writers would have never embraced such a viewpoint. The idea is expressed in a variety of places. Paul in 2 Corinthians is very direct, “He made Him who personally knew nothing of sin to be a sin-offering for us, so that through union with Him we might come into right standing with God.”
The writer of Hebrews makes the same claim about Jesus, saying “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same temptations we do, yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) There are men and women we meet who live with an evident integrity, yet this cannot be said about any of them. In fact, most of these people would be the last to say it about themselves. Jesus alone has the right to the title “the Holy and Righteous One.”
Yet, this man died as a common criminal. He died charged with blasphemy and sedition. To the Jews the manner of Jesus’ death marked him as cursed by God.
But God overruled the sentence of a corrupt human court. He honored his Son through the Resurrection. The truth is, had Jesus remained in the tomb it would have been the greatest miscarriage of justice in human history. Men and women have sometimes suffered injustice, but all of these men and women would have eventually faced the death sentence for their sins, the death sentence we all will one day face. The Bible teaches us that death is the result of sin. Jesus alone did not merit death in any form.
Still, he died. He died, not for sins of his own, but for our sins. Paul would later explain this more fully. But Peter’s listeners, standing as they were in the shadow of the temple with its elaborate system of sacrifice, understood the notion of substitution. Jesus died for others.
So, on the one hand we can say that at a particular time and in a particular place Jesus died through a conspiracy of certain corrupt Jewish leaders and a compliant Roman governor. But, in a larger sense, all of us made Jesus’ death necessary. How he died pales in comparison to why he died.
He died to bring new life to you and me. The resurrection which we will celebrate on Easter reminds us that God honored that sacrifice.
Some ask, “How could the death of a man two-thousand years ago provide forgiveness for every other person in the world?” That question as caused some to reject Christianity. Thomas Jefferson rejected orthodox Christianity, in part, because he couldn’t answer that question.
Over the centuries, the church has tried to answer that question with what are called “theories of the atonement.” Some of these theories are better than others but none of them answer all the questions.
I’ve found some insight from a statement in John’s Gospel. It’s found in Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus. Jesus says to him, “And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” He was referring to an occasion when Israel had sinned and God sent deadly serpents to punish them. When the people cried out for mercy, God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole; he then was to lift up the serpent so everyone could see it. Those who looked on the serpent were healed and lived.
There is a series of books available that claim to tell us what we should do to survive “the worst-case scenario.” You, know, what should you do in a tornado or when you’re being chased by a bear at Yellowstone.
Well, I’ve not studied all those books but I’m pretty sure you won’t find anything like this:
If you’re walking through the woods and are bitten by a rattlesnake, you should immediately use mud, play-doh, or biscuit dough to make a snake model. Stare at that and you will be okay.
When you’re bitten by a snake, there is no therapeutic value in looking at the statue of a snake. Looking at that bronze snake saved the people of Israel because God said it would. Putting our faith in a man who died on the cross two-thousand years ago deals with our sin-problem because God said it would. That’s true whether we understand it or not.
In any case, the cross and the empty tomb are forever linked in God’s plan to bless us through the work of Christ.
Jesus is the One who is the source of a life that can only come from God.
In his confrontation with the crowd that morning, Peter says to them, “you killed the Prince of Life.” The word translated “prince” means “author or source.” The irony is that they, by rejecting him and turning him over for crucifixion, had killed the Source of life. One old commentator describes this as a “Glorious paradox.” Of course, Peter is quick to declare that God had trumped their actions through the resurrection.
There’s no evidence that “Prince or Author of Life” was a widely used title for Jesus Christ, but the words do describe his work. Years later John would recall how Jesus had spoken of his intention for his followers, “I came, so that they might have life--to the fullest!”
In commenting on that verse from John ten, William Barclay offers a beautiful explanation of its meaning.
Jesus claims that he came that men might have life and might have it more abundantly. The Greek phrase used for having it more abundantly means to have a superabundance of a thing. To be a follower of Jesus, to know who he is and what he means, is to have a superabundance of life. When we try to live our own lives, life is a dull, dispirited thing. When we walk with Jesus, there comes a new vitality, a superabundance of life. It is only when we live with Christ that life becomes really worth living and we begin to live in the real sense of the word.
In that interview with Nicodemus, Jesus had said, “You must be born again.” He was talking about the need to possess life which only comes from God. Without this life there is no hope of a future with God, a future of joy in God’s presence. That’s a stiff requirement but the good news is that Jesus is eager to give this life.
The Man who knew the darkest night of death wants to give this life to those who believe. The passion of the Christ, his suffering on the cross, is as much about life as it is about death.
He died that we might live, really live. Our sin has left us as spiritual cripples, barred from the presence of God; Jesus longs to transform our lives, to give us a new life, a life which sends us into God’s presence “walking, leaping, and praising” Him.
Conclusion
Peter had used some pretty hard language with the crowd that gathered to see what all the fuss was about. He had told them they had rejected the One they had been looking for their entire lives. He might say the same thing to lots of us today. Peter was saying, “If you think Jesus was just a man who was crucified, think again.” To us he might say, “If you think Jesus was just a good man who said a lot of good things, think again.”
