Here’s a question and answer that might surprise you: ‘Pastor, how do you know that Jesus is Lord?’ My answer: ‘I don’t.’ The truth is, I don’t know.
But I believe he is. In fact, I believe strongly enough to make Jesus’ Lordship the center and foundation of my whole life. And considering we only get one shot at life, to choose Jesus’ Lordship as the defining reality of my life is not a small thing, and it is not something I take lightly.
But to know… How can we know? Do we know based on our personal experience of Jesus? Now, my experience of Jesus gives me great confidence that my belief is solid. But my personal experience of Jesus is not – I would say cannot – be the ground of my conviction regarding Jesus. Some people have ‘experienced’ alien abductions. Some people think they are Napoleon. Our experiences are not in themselves trustworthy.
Besides, my experience – as is yours – is fickle. When we face doubt, we ‘experience’ the distance or unreality of God. So why not make that experience the defining conviction of our life? Some people do. We call them ‘atheists’ or ‘non-Christians’.
No, my conviction that Jesus is Lord – a conviction I live and would die for – is not rooted in my experience. It is rooted in something else, and insofar as my experience aligns with that something else… only then do I trust my experience of Jesus.
What about you? On what do you base your Christian conviction, your belief in the Lordship of Jesus? What is the ground of your confidence? Are you confident? Can you be confident? Or is it just a question of ‘faith’?
We’ve just read part of the text from Acts chapter 2 where the apostle Peter preaches and convinces his audience that Jesus of Nazareth is both Lord and Christ, or Messiah. And how he does that sheds light for us on why we can be confident.
The sermon happened on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to the followers of Jesus. After Jesus resurrection, he had spent 40 days with his followers. Then he left them and ascended into heaven, but only after he had given them instructions to remain in the city of Jerusalem until the promised Holy Spirit of God had been given to them. He said, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.
So they remained in Jerusalem, devoting themselves to prayer. Then on the day of the Feast of Pentecost, suddenly with the sound of wind and the appearance of fire, the Holy Spirit came upon each of them. Immediately they began to speak in other languages, declaring the wonders of God. A crowd gathered, made up of Jews from all over the Roman Empire who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover and/or Pentecost. They were amazed that they heard the Christians speaking in their own languages and recognized somehow that this was more than just a multi-lingual feat, but a spiritual event. And they asked each other, ‘What does all this mean?’
But in Acts chapter 2:13 we read this, But others, mocking, said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’
See, whenever you respond to the work of God in your life, there will be some people who don’t get it, and who take shots at you. And these are not just godless pagans. These are devout Jews, the religious people, worshippers of God who nevertheless do not recognize the presence of God. So the shots come from in-house: ‘They’re just drunk!’
Peter stands up and addresses the crowd loudly and clearly (and, I think, in good humor): Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words, for these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day (or 9 AM). In other words, ‘It’s not the time of the Pentecost celebration for the drinking of the wine, so don’t think we’ve just had a little too much of that.’
Then Peter launches into his sermon, and it is a brilliant sermon. Of course, it was brilliant: Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit of God. In this sermon, perfectly suited for his audience, Peter demonstrates to them conclusively that Jesus is their Messiah. The evidence he gives is so compelling that three thousand people are convicted in their hearts and are converted.
The line of Peter’s argument is essentially this: ‘The LORD God in his Word said he would pour out his Holy Spirit on people. The LORD God also said the Christ would rise from the dead. Jesus rose from the dead, and we are witnesses of that. Jesus has poured out the Holy Spirit on people, which is what you now witness. Therefore, Jesus is both Lord and Christ.’
What Peter appeals to in this sermon are the very things we rest our confidence in that this whole Jesus thing is for real: the resurrection of Jesus as prophesied in the Old Testament and borne witness to by the apostles in the New Testament.
How do you know Christopher Columbus sailed in 1492 and discovered America? Answer: You don’t know. You believe. You’ve never met Columbus. You were not here in 1492 and you don’t know anyone who was. But you believe the history, the written records of Columbus’ life and voyages, and though the record of history generally is littered with error and skewed facts, the overwhelming testimony is that in 1492, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic. We believe it and would be foolish not to believe it.
We believe Jesus is both Lord and Christ. We believe it so much we’ve staked our present life and future hope on it and we’d be foolish not to believe it, because we have a written history, reliable records from eyewitnesses of his resurrection. And we have more than that, too.
Let’s quickly follow the thread of Peter’s sermon. His starting place is the response of the crowd to the Christians’ speaking in many languages, by the Holy Spirit. Peter quotes the Old Testament prophet Joel, and says,
This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days,’ God declares, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. Even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy.
And I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below: blood and fire and vapour of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, that great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
The final era of history would be the era of the Spirit. The Spirit would be poured out with great equality: on sons and daughters, on young men and old men, on male and female servants of the LORD. And when it happened, they would receive visions and dreams, they would prophesy, declare God’s Word. This would be the signal that the winding down of history has begun. Peter is saying, that has now happened. The outpouring of the Spirit on people signals the beginning of the period called ‘the last days’, a period that would culminate at the end of history in ‘the day of the LORD’. ‘We are now on the road to that day’, Peter says.
The idea of the sun turning black and the moon to blood is picked up in Revelation, as a sign that the day of the Lord has come. But many of Peter’s listeners would surely have remembered that at Jesus’ crucifixion 52 days earlier the sun had turned dark for three hours. The era of the Spirit has begun.
Peter ends his quotation of Joel with, Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, because the goal of his testimony is that his audience, in fact, would call on the name of the Lord and be saved. (Three thousand do but that’s later.)
Peter begins by quoting Joel as an explanation of what they are seeing and hearing, that this is the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit as foretold by God through his prophet. Peter will come back to this at the end. But now he leaves that and starts to tell his hearers about Jesus:
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know… this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
‘God demonstrated his affirmation of Jesus by miracles, and you all know it. You saw them, for he did some of them among you. But in accordance with God’s plan that Jesus would die on the cross, you had him killed by the hands of lawless men (men without the Law: Gentiles, the Romans).’
But Peter goes on: God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it (ie. by death).
Peter declares the resurrection, and then goes back to the Old Testament prophecy again to set the resurrection in context. He quotes King David, the writer of Psalm 16: I saw the LORD always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. My flesh also will dwell in hope, for you will not abandon me to Hades (the grave) nor will you let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life and will make me full of gladness with your presence.
The line of particular interest to Peter is: You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will you let your Holy One see corruption. (In other words, ‘You will not just let me rot in the grave’.)
Now, who is the psalmist talking about? Himself? Clearly not, for Peter says. I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is still with us to this day. He’s still dead, and we all know he’s still dead. So, whose prophetic voice is this, then?
Peter goes on: Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.
Now, understand that King David was revered by the Jews, not just as a great king, but by virtue of his writing of many of the psalms, as a prophet of God. The Jews considered so many of the psalms to be Messianic psalms. So Peter declares, ‘David, your great King and God’s Prophet speaks not of himself, but of the Christ (Greek word), or Messiah (Hebrew word).’ It’s an argument of great weight and authority to the Jews listening to Peter. So who, then, is this Messiah? This Christ?
Then Peter gives the linch-pin statement of his whole address: This Jesus –of Nazareth, remember, Jesus who was attested to you by God himself as you well know – This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.
“We all are witnesses”. This is a very significant statement. The Scriptures had said that only the testimony of at least two witnesses would be accepted in a court of law. (No person should be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.) Two witnesses, or three, made a testimony carry weight. Now Peter says, `We – the one hundred and twenty of us – are witnesses that Jesus who was crucified has been raised from the dead. We have seen him, and we tell you he is alive.’
Peter’s listeners would have had to process the twin facts that Peter has presented to them: that the King and Prophet David prophesied that the Christ would be raised from the dead, and that there were one-hundred-twenty witnesses that Jesus had been raised from the dead.
Therefore, Jesus is the Christ.
Such a loaded statement to a Jewish audience! The Christ, the Messiah – the one promised of God, who would be prophet and priest and king, who would restore the covenant, who would rule with gentleness but absolute power and perfect righteousness, who would love God’s people and set things right for God’s people, who would ensure future glory, this one in whom all the promises of God and all the hope of God’s people would be fulfilled, it’s Jesus, whom you had killed less than two months ago. And whom God has raised to life, to which fact we 120 are witnesses.
A stunning declaration, and one that would have had great credibility with those listening.
But Peter’s not done yet. He continues: Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he [that is, Jesus] has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.
He’s cycling back to his original quotation from Joel: that Jesus, not only raised from death, has been exalted to God’s right hand, and has poured out the Spirit. In other words, the ‘Lord’ who promised he would pour out his Spirit is the resurrected Jesus.
Then Peter quotes David one more time: For David did not ascend to the heavens, but he himself said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’
David, then, who testified earlier that the Christ would be raised from the dead, now testifies that someone greater than David would be exalted to God’s right hand as Lord. And David, as a prophet, is speaking with God’s own authority on this.
‘We are witnesses that Jesus has been raised from the dead,’ says Peter. ‘We also testify that he has ascended to the heavens and been exalted to God’s right hand and has poured out the Spirit of God upon us, and that’s what all this you are seeing is about.’
Peter’s sermon has been brief, clear, logical and perfectly suited to his Jewish audience: ‘The LORD God through his prophet Joel said he would pour out his Holy Spirit on people. He also said through his prophet King David that the Christ would not stay dead. We are witnesses that Jesus has been raised from death, and we testify that Jesus has poured out the Holy Spirit.’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ this Jesus whom you crucified.
Jesus is Lord: exalted to the right hand of God.
Jesus is Christ, Messiah: the prophesied redeemer and ruler of God’s people.
That is the central affirmation of Christianity: Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, is risen from the dead. He is God’s son. He is Lord. He is the Redeemer of people.
This is our faith. Why can we be confident of it? For the same reasons to which Peter appealed: Jesus’ resurrection, prophesied in the Old Testament and witnessed by the apostles, demonstrates that Jesus is Lord and Christ.
The Christian Gospel is grounded in the prophecy of Scripture fulfilled in Jesus’ resurrection, as witnessed by the apostles. We can trust the New Testament record as an accurate, truthful account of the apostles’ testimony and therefore of the historical certainty of Jesus’ resurrection.
The ground of my Christian conviction is the Scripture, the Word of God. I believe that Jesus is Lord because God spoke of him in his Word, through the prophets of old and the eye-witness testimony of the apostles. Jesus really was crucified. He really did rise from the dead. Therefore, I am convinced that he really is the Son of God, that he is ‘Lord’, and therefore that I can really trust what God’s Word says about other things: being forgiven of my sins against God, being restored to right standing with God even to the point of being adopted as God’s beloved, eternal child.
And insofar as my experience of God and Jesus lines up with what God’s Word reveals to be true, then I trust my experience. So many of us make our experience the ground against which we measure God’s Word, and so we believe this but discard that. I think it is more appropriate, safer, better to do the opposite.
So Peter, on the basis of the Old Testament prophetic Word and their own witness of the death and resurrection of Jesus declares the Lordship of Jesus.
When Peter’s audience heard all this, they were cut to the heart and asked, What shall we do?
Peter’s response: Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the Holy Spirit. ‘Call on the name of the Lord and be saved.’
In Acts chapter 1 Jesus had commissioned his followers to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. So throughout the book we see them doing this. Sometimes, like with Peter in this chapter and in chapters 3 & 10, they are preaching to a crowd. Sometimes, like in chapters 4 & 5 when they are defending themselves to the religious authorities, they are saying just a sentence or two. There are certain things that show up frequently in these chapters: references to the Old Testament to indicate that Jesus is the fulfilment of prophecy, reference to miraculous as evidence that God was in Jesus, reference to the Holy Spirit, reference to themselves as witnesses, and so on.
But there are three things that always show up. Even if they only have a moment to say a single sentence, there are three things they always talk about and these three things form the core, the centre of the Christian declaration. When we call ourselves Christians, it means we have grounded ourselves fundamentally in three truths:
Jesus died. Jesus rose again. Forgiveness of sin comes only through him.
Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, the Christ foretold by the prophets, King and Saviour of God’s people: was crucified, bearing the judgement of God for the sins of the world:
Isaiah, eight hundred years before Jesus, said, He poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.
The New Testament book of Hebrews says that Jesus appeared once to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, that he was offered once to bear the sins of many.
This Jesus, though crucified, was raised to life by the power of God and lives even now, lives and reigns eternally.
Romans 1:4 – Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3 – God has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And by virtue of his death and resurrection, we experience and proclaim forgiveness of sin.
Again, Romans: Jesus was delivered up to death for our trespasses and raised to life for our justification.
Corinthians: God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Ephesians 1:7 – In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins…
Colossians 1:13-14 – God’s beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins…
There is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved. Call upon the name of the Lord Jesus and be saved: saved from the judgement of God for our sins, saved from the futility of living life outside the context of God, out from under his loving Lordship.
To respond to the Gospel of Jesus is to repent, to change directions: it means we reverse the direction of our life so that it is lived God-ward, under the Lordship of Jesus. The Bible talks about this in terms of ‘believing’.
To ‘believe’ in Jesus means:
· to acknowledge that I have sinned against God
· to accept Jesus’ death as the only adequate payment for my sins (He is my Savior)
· to accept His right to rule in my life by virtue of His deity (He is my Lord)
· to begin a relationship of love and obedience to Him by receiving His forgiveness and submitting to His Lordship
I’m sorry.
God, I know that I have sinned against you. I acknowledge
my guilt and am sorry for all I’ve done wrong.
Thank you.
Thank you for sending Jesus to earth to die for my sins, for I
could not have made things right with you on my own.
I accept His death as payment for my sins.
Please.
Please forgive my sins. Please come into my life and help
me have a relationship with you.
Amen.