Who Killed Our Savior?

Good evening. Mr. Martin's ninth grade social studies class. It was where my passion for politics, and for those that know me well, there's a lot of passion, really flourished. It was born. I absolutely loved that class. And I can't seem to remember the exact circumstances that surrounded why I chose the following topic for my end of term essay. But I ended up writing about the mysterious death of President John F. Kennedy. As we all know, JFK was assassinated in September of 1962 in Dallas, and Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended shortly after the shooting. And the infamous report from the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone. The majority of the American public was unconvinced. They were certain that there were others involved. There were conspiracy theories that were rampant, as you might remember, about the involvement or at least support of the CIA, the KGB, American mobsters, Fidel Castro, even sitting FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, sitting vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson. And for an impressionable and anti-establishment youth like myself, I absolutely ate this stuff up. I loved it. For decades, many have felt a lack of closure on who actually killed our 35th president. With all these constituencies, potential participants, how do we know? And probably we never really know who was actually an innocent bystander and who was really responsible for killing JFK. Well, thankfully, scripture is much clearer and more reliable than the Warren Commission and any conspiracy theory. And one question that it does answer without ambiguity is who killed our savior, Jesus Christ. We'll see that there were many instruments, many means in which God used to orchestrate the sacrificial death of Jesus. There were various constituencies. Many individuals played a role. But Peter, in the verse that we're going to study tonight, makes it very clear where the accountability and the guilty verdict ultimately rests. Open your Bibles with me to Acts chapter two. If you're new to the church or if you didn't bring a Bible tonight, there should be one at the end of the pew and you'll find it on page 592. For context, I'm going to begin reading again Acts chapter 2, verse 22 through 24, but we'll spend most of our time reflecting on just verse 23. Peter says, 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 for knowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. To best understand this verse, it's first essential that we grasp the stage and the setting in which Peter utters these words. This is the great Simon Peter, the fisherman that had turned leader of the apostles. And he's in the midst of what we'll later call what we call now the first Christian sermon ever. And not only can we mark this event, this seminal event, by the fact that it's the first Christian sermon ever, but this is actually going to become a very historically relevant day in church history. Jesus had just risen. He appeared to this very Peter, then to the 12 disciples, and then to 500 additional witnesses, as Keith's going to preach on from First Corinthians on Sunday. And in Acts 1, the chapter right before where we're focusing tonight, Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Father. His work on earth, at least for now, is complete. And here in Acts 2, which is about 50 days after the events of the cross, Jewish pilgrims from various nations, not just residents from Galilee or Jerusalem, but men from the full reaches of the developed world, were gathered together in the temple grounds. The temple grounds would be the only place that could possibly hold this many people. We know from later in Acts 2 that there were at least 3,000 people. Some have speculated that as many as 200,000 people could actually have been in Jerusalem that day. And they were in Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish holiday, the Feast of Weeks. Now, this Feast of Weeks this year was going to be different, though it was going to be memorable because some crazy stuff was about to start happening. As these thousands of people are all assembled together, 120 men began speaking in all the languages of the world about the great wonders and the works of God. Now, let me try to paint a very imperfect picture. of what that might have looked like. And I'm sure that it doesn't possibly grasp the scope of what was happening. But let's just pretend that you and two friends are on the downtown mall and you're watching a street evangelist. And your friend on your left is from Beijing. And the friend on your right is from Paris. And the three of you are standing there and the man starts preaching. And your friend from Beijing hears him speaking in Mandarin. And your friend from Paris hears him speaking in French. And you hear him speaking in English. It's pretty freaky image, isn't it? You'd be a bit scared. You can imagine why they were a bit perplexed, why the Bible says that they were all amazed. You can even empathize a little bit with those, the few that actually claim that they must be drunk. They must be mad on too much wine. And this is the stage in which Peter enters to give this sermon. that we now call the day that we call Pentecost. Some call it the birthday of the New Testament church. Impetuous Peter, who only seven weeks ago had denied his savior three times, now becomes the very mouth of the apostles, the very mouth of the Christian world at large. And he proclaims in verse 14, men of Judea, all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. And by the way, just quick commercial break, why don't we speak like this anymore? Give ear to my words. I want to do this at work so badly. Men and women of IT and marketing, give ear to my words. Maybe I'll try that. So after explaining, after Peter explains that the men are indeed not drunk, that in fact, this is the day that was foretold by the prophet Joel and later promised by Jesus, He goes on to say, men of Israel, this is now verse 22, as we read here, 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. Now, maybe I gave it away that time the way I read it, but did you pick up on the repetition and almost even a bit of sarcasm in Peter's verse? In the way he describes Jesus, the more I studied and prayed over this first, the more it just jumped off the page at me. Listen to it in parts, Jesus of Nazareth, you know, Joseph's son, the carpenter born in Bethlehem to fulfill the scriptures, this Jesus, a man attested to you by God, the Messiah promised to the generation starting in Genesis three through the patriarchs. further revealed by the prophets and whom King David would later call the Lord, who sits at the right hand of my Lord. Yes, this Jesus who performed mighty works and wonders and signs. The man who turned water to wine, walked on water, exercised demons, healed the sick and even raised Lazarus from the dead. This Jesus. That God did through him in your midst. He claimed all along that he was doing his father's business. that his work and power was of God, that and to which he was in full obedience the entire time he was here. And it was all right in front of your face. Yes, this Jesus. And then my favorite, just in case they're still not picking up on it, as you yourselves know, you should have known better. Yes, this is the Jesus I'm talking about. That's the man you crucified and killed, your savior in the flesh, Jesus Christ. You see, Peter wants to be absolutely sure that they grasp the gravity of the character of the man who was put to death, that he was the perfect fulfillment of all the Old Testament Jewish prophecies about who the Messiah would be. Moses's new prophet, Jeremiah's righteous branch, David's eternal king, Isaiah's suffering servant. This is your Jesus. So after affirming Jesus's identity in this near rebuke of sorts Peter then turns to one of the great statements in scripture describing the intersection between God's complete sovereignty and man's responsibility. He says delivered up according to the definite plan and for knowledge of God you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. So on the one hand, in the first half of this verse, we have Jesus being delivered up as a sacrifice by the definitive plan of God. And yet, in the second half of the verse, we see that he was killed by the actions of men. Well, how do we reconcile these two great truths, these two pillars of the Christian faith? How is it that God's sovereignty over every detail of world events is compatible, it can coexist, with humans responsibility for evil deeds. It seems to fail our tests of human logic of rationale because if he knows that is God knows and ordains all things doesn't naturally follow that he's responsible for all things. Well in order to attempt to briefly tackle this dilemma that let's be honest as as theologians from all of church history have struggled with. We should carefully remind ourselves first that God is God and we are not. He is the creator. We are the creature. He is the potter. We are the clay. And as Paul says to the Romans, the potter has full rights to the clay. We are his subordinate subjects. We have to be careful. As my brother Ron often likes to quote from Deuteronomy, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever. God can choose to reveal what he pleases, what he deems necessary, sufficient for us to understand about him. And by the way, ask yourself, would you really want to worship a God that's completely comprehensible? That's a bit scary to me because he's a little bit too much like us, if that's the case. Well, this is simply one of those areas where the reality of how these two doctrines intersect is simply beyond our comprehension. It's like if you're looking out across two parallel railroad tracks and you're absolutely certain that they intersect, but they hit the horizon before you can see it. You know that they intimately interrelate those two railroad tracks, but it's beyond your grasp to capture exactly how. But here, God and his mercy and love lets us peek over the wall a little bit, if you will, to one of those secret things that belong to him. It's as if he gives us that little boost and we can climb up. And if we squirm and maybe stretch and get on our tippy toes a little bit, we can get a small glimpse of what he's what he's trying to reveal to us. Let me just give a quick warning that our sinful temptation, when he gives us that boost, is then to maybe kick him, jump and grab her own foothold and jump over the wall, try to take what isn't rightfully ours. We act like thieves, like those committing treason when we attempt to exploit this bit of mercy by demanding what isn't rightfully ours. This is what Adam and Eve did, of course, in the garden. And do you remember how God responded, maybe another example, to Job? When he attempted to do more than just peek over the wall, Job had drawn conclusions, along with his friends, you might remember about God's intentions through Job's trials. And God thunders from a whirlwind in chapter 38 of the book of Job. Who is this that challenges me? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who laid its measurements? Well, surely, you know, Job. This was a cosmic beatdown. This was a rebuke of epic proportions. If you're ever having one of those prideful or arrogant days, go to Chapter 38 of Job. It is good medicine. God makes it clear how he feels about us trying to trespass on the secret things. But those warnings aside, here's what we can say with confidence, absolute confidence about this paradox, because scripture as our sole source of truth is clear about the following. Number one that God is the all powerful all knowing creator that preordain and orchestrated all things before the foundation of the world. Number two God is good and therefore doing anything opposed to goodness would be contrary to his nature. Number three that all things work together for our good and to the glory of God. And number four that these happenings all the events of history and future are all interwoven into a grand redemptive narrative. A grand redemptive story that culminates in all things being made new, where everything will be reconciled to their creator. So that's what we can say with confidence. Scripture also makes clear, however, that none of what I've just stated removes the culpability and accountability of sin and evil from those that choose to commit it. We will be charged and held responsible for all of our iniquities, all of our transgressions, our rebellion against Miss Holy God and the Lord's providence and his foreknowledge is no excuse for us choosing disobedience. God cannot and he does not exercise evil himself directly but he uses it. He directs it into that greater narrative that I just mentioned. This is why we can say with Joseph that what men meant for evil God can use for good. And where does this intersection of God's providence. And man's evil intent reached its ultimate historical climax. What's the day we remember today? The focus of Peter's statement in this verse, the very center and pivot of the entire Bible. And God's plan, the events of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Listen to Jesus himself describe it to the disciples at the Last Supper, he said, For the son of man goes as it has been determined. But woe to that man by whom he is betrayed. You see the two hanging together in perfect harmony there. God's sovereignty fully determined. And man's responsibility, punishment for the betrayer. Similarly, Peter, in just the next chapter of Acts, from where we're studying tonight, Acts three says the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers glorified his servant Jesus. So you see him here affirming the divinity of Christ as the fulfillment again of that Old Testament promise and God's hand clearly and ordaining those events. But then listen what he says in the second half of the verse. He says whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him. But you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you and you killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead. The plan to have God himself condescend into human flesh as Jesus of Nazareth to live among us as a man concealing his glory for a time and then suffer and die was foreknown and determined before the foundation of the world. And several places in scripture we see language that affirms that this eternal and everlasting plan was made manifest or it was fully revealed to us 2000 years ago. Listen to Dutch theologian Claus Schilder's explanation of this. God had arranged all the preceding centuries, all the intervolutions of time, all the events from Genesis 1-1 up to this moment, that is the moment of the cross, has arranged and molded them, has had them converge in such a way that there would be a place for this hour, the hour for which the sun will be bound. He allowed neither forces above nor forces below to tamper with the clock of history. He directed the battles of the Caesars, the conflicts of the kings, the migrations of the peoples, the world wars, the courses of stars and sun and moon, the change of epochs and the complex movements of all things in the world in such a way that this hour would come and it had to come. It's very hip in our postmodern world to challenge the goodness of God when bad things happen, isn't it? To claim God's hands were tied or he's some passive, aloof, intelligent being, maybe even unintelligent these days. You know, he just kind of wound up the clock and then sat back or went on vacation and watched as we and natural creation spun into chaos. And we make up absurdities like bad karma or fate to fit in those gaps in our comprehension, because it certainly can't be if we can't explain it. Well, God is never surprised. He is the author of all of history. Peter understands this, and he is confidently and categorically exclaiming this reality. So once we accept that God has orchestrated all the preceding events up to this moment, as we read in that quote. But is not held accountable, then we have to ask ourselves, well, then who is? Well, in the second half of the verse, who are these lawless men that Peter's talking about? Well, we could talk about Pontius Pilate. I mean, famously, this was the man, the governor of Judea, who presided as judge over Jesus's trial. And if you remember, he actually personally found no fault in Jesus. But he succumbed to his own fear, his own insatiable desire for power. Surely he must deserve the blame, right? How about the Roman soldiers? These were the vicious thugs that beat and mocked and spit and literally hung our savior. to the tree. Clearly, they must be accountable. What about the Jewish leaders, Caiaphas specifically, the high priest, the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, in aggregate, the Jewish council or the Jewish leaders? These were the manipulators of evidence. Paranoid to lose power, self-righteous in their own dead faith, determined to rid themselves of this threat, this young man who was saying these crazy offensive things. They delivered him to pilot. They must be responsible. And then there's Judas, who Keith tells me last week, and I think I agree with him, maybe the most tragic figure in all of scripture, one of the original handpicked 12 disciples. A vessel for Satan. Plots with the Jewish leaders becomes history's ultimate betrayer, sells his soul and sells out the Messiah for a mere 30 pieces of silver. Isn't he the obvious answer to who's responsible? I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that any of these characters are innocent. That's not what I'm saying, but Peter clearly in this verse is shining the spotlight somewhere else. Again, look closely at the verse with me because Peter is careful with his words in assigning responsibility delivered up according to the definite plan and for knowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. Crucified and killed is attributed to whom? The lawless men? No, it's to the you. Peter makes very clear that there were lots of supporting actors, the lawless men, but the charge of murder is again placed squarely on this audience of you. Listen to a couple alternative modern translations on how they render the Greek, because I think collectively they reinforce this important point I'm trying to make. In the New American Standard Version, it reads, 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. And maybe even more clearly, the New International Version says, This man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. Did you pick up on that? It's subtle, but it's very clear. The lawless, the godless, the wicked men pick the translation. The actors that played a role in the actual events of Jesus's death were mechanisms or instruments. But the guilty sentence rests again on this audience of you. Who is this you? We keep asking ourselves. Remember how we started our conversation tonight, who was Peter talking to? Thousands of people from the full breadth of the two great competing empires of the day. The Bible says that every nation under heaven was represented by men in Jerusalem that day. To the east of Jerusalem, you had the Parthian Empire, Western Iran in modern day. So there were Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia. And on the West, I'm doing this backwards. I know on the West is the Roman Empire, modern day Syria and Turkey and parts of northern Africa. And they were all there in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a was an ancient melting pot, you could argue, of the old Jewish world. Realistically, very few of these thousands of people were directly participating 50 days ago in calling for Jesus's death. He was speaking to the entire world. It was a representation of God's people from the east to the west. Peter was talking to all mankind. And friends, that means that Peter was talking to you and to me. Peter's talking to us. We are responsible for Christ's death. It was our sin that put him to death by the hands of lawless men, no doubt. We were there not just as spectators, but as participants, guilty participants, plotting, scheming, betraying, mocking and even nailing him to that tree. We should therefore identify with pilots. with the Jewish leaders, with the soldiers, with Judas. It was this realization of our participation that day that moved the 19th century Scottish pastor, Horatius Bonar, to write the following. I see the scourges tear his back. I see the piercing crown. And of that crowd who smite and mock, I feel that I am one. Twas I that shed the sacred blood. I nailed him to the tree. I crucified the Christ of God, I joined the mockery. We are the reason he endured the punishment in order that we might be ransomed and declared innocent, the prophet Isaiah says that with his stripes or with his punishment, we are healed. God providentially before the foundation of the world had architected the only solution to the problem of mankind. You see, because we were created originally to serve him, we were created to worship him, to live a life of obedience to him. But we rebelled. We sought our own way and we still seek our own way. We wanted to be our own gods. We wanted to have our own thrones, be at the center of our own universes. And God, because he is perfectly just and because he is perfectly good, must punish this rebellion, which is what we call sin. In our current state, we will be judged and condemned to his wrath, rightfully so. But and here's the glorious but. God sends his son, Jesus, in human flesh to live the obedient life that we failed to live. And this sinless, blameless, sacrificial lamb stands in our place. He is our substitute. And he endures the wrath. He takes the punishment that we deserve in order that we might be acquitted of our guilty state. And three days later, he gloriously rises, conquering sin and death forever, proving that the father was satisfied that the punishment was paid. And we accept this reality that Christ is our savior, that he's died for our sins, repent of our sins. He will welcome us back with open arms and be reconciled. That, friends, is the reason that Jesus went to the cross, to pay our debt to the Father, free us from the chains of eternal condemnation, so that we may live the life that we were originally made to live, to serve him. That's the gospel of Jesus Christ. The cross is the greatest expression of mercy and love ever imagined. If you're a Christian here tonight, do you meditate? Do you reflect on that enough? Do you think I'm not each day just for physical health and the very breath of air you have and monetary provision which are all wonderful things. But you thank him for his saving work on the cross because we should never grow out of the cross. We never mature past what we're remembering this day. Well if you're anything like me you do an awfully good job of separating your own sin and your own self from the events of the cross. You tend to think more about the betrayal, the manipulation, the violence of the lawless men than your own participation that day. Imagine with me, however. That in those final moments. Before Jesus uttered those famous words, it is finished, which, by the way, means your debt is paid. That you meet his gaze. And on his countenance, Deep in his eyes, you see this amazing combination of eternal abandonment and pain on the one hand, but an unmatched love for you on another. It's hard to hold eye contact, isn't it? That's the image that should define your prayer life. That's the image that should define your worship. Go to the cross every day. Confess your sin. Thank him for bringing you new life, new joy. Similarly, Christian, do you need to be reminded, just as Peter reminded his audience who this Jesus is, because this Jesus continues to attest to himself by fully revealing himself now in his word. And he still declares his glory through natural creation. And this Jesus continues to perform miraculous deeds and wonders by replacing hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. And this Jesus convicts and rebukes by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit and all still right in front of our faces, as Peter says, right in your midst. Let's not miss it. If you're new to Christianity. If you've come here tonight as a family or a friend or Maybe you've wandered in because you're struggling with a life trial. How do you respond to this claim that you're a sinner in need of a savior. I know when I first heard that probably the first hundred times I heard that I was offended. I understand that but I want to be honest with you is that we are the ones that are offensive to God. Do you know what we're really good at? At least I'm really good at this. And everyone I talk to that's honest with themselves seems to agree. We're really good at making up our own rules, drawing that line between good and evil, to be absolutely sure that we come out looking like the shiny penny and everyone else is condemned. You know, we have our kangaroo courts that acquit us and convict everyone else's actions. We're very good judges when we're not on the stand. Well, at least I'm not a murderer. I mean, come on, how bad can I be? I haven't killed anybody. Is that really our litmus test? It's not God's. Let's try to think about sin a little bit differently. What if Barnes and Noble decided to publish a new book and they were going to send this book out to all seven billion people across the world? And seven billion people go to their mailbox that day. Maybe it's an e-book so they open their mobile device that day. And on every single page of that book is every harsh word you've ever had, every slanderous thought you've ever had, every lustful temptation you've ever had, every selfish desire, every blatant lie, etc., etc., etc. How would that make you feel? First of all, mine would be a very long book. How would your friends and family and coworkers feel? How would your spouse feel? Be a lot of pages on your spouse. How would God feel about that book? We don't look so shiny anymore, do we? Christianity is appealing because it's the only world religion, the only world religion that claims we are helpless sinners and we can't earn our way to heaven. Completely unique. Even atheists are believers in the doctrine of sin because our experience attests to it, whether it's that silly Barnes and Noble's metaphor or it's watching the nightly news. It's inarguable that we are poor, sick and needy people, humankind. That's the enormous debt that this Jesus paid on your and my behalf. by dying on the cross. And he laid down his life voluntarily. Listen to the words of Pastor Tim Challies described this. It was not the nails that held Jesus to the cross. He could so easily have escaped the cross. And even if he decided to go there, could just as easily have escaped from the cross. He could have stepped down and watched as his angels gained vengeance on the heartless men who had nailed them to that tree. But he did not. Jesus remained there until the work was accomplished. He stayed there until he had done the work his father had assigned him. He stayed there until he had secured the redemption of all of his people. It was not the nails that held him, but his love for the father and his love for us. It was my sin that held him there in the deepest expression of love the world could ever know. It was death by love. He was no martyr. Jesus was no martyr. He did not lose his life. He gave it up for your and my sake. I plead with you to consider the weight of the gospel tonight. Don't leave here with unanswered questions. Ask a friend. Ask Pastor Keith. Ask one of us deacons. We would love to talk with you. Brothers and sisters, family and friends in the midst of all that evil that day, particularly yours and mine, there was so much good. This is a sad and somber Friday, but it's also a very good Friday. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you that you have preordained and pre delivered all things together for our good and for your glory. And we confess, Lord, that we continue to rebel against that beauty, that we continue to follow a path that you have not intended. Forgive us for this, Lord, we thank you that you have sent your son to save us. I pray, Lord, that this message would not. Be left. When we leave here. That we would consider to continue to reflect on it. That your spirit would work mightily in the hearts of all of those here that you might convict and convert hearts, that you might give us the weight of the glory of what your son had done for us on this day. We thank you, Lord, in Jesus name, amen.