Jesus of Nazareth was a man approved by God, demonstrated through His miracles, wonders, and signs, yet He was also surrendered by God through His determinate counsel and foreknowledge for crucifixion. The sermon emphasizes that Jesus's crucifixion was not an accident but part of God's perfect plan, and His subsequent resurrection by God signifies His exaltation and victory over death. The core lesson is that God's approval, surrender, and exaltation of Jesus provide salvation and assurance to believers. The message concludes by urging listeners to recognize Jesus as both Lord and Christ, a truth that stunned the original audience and should impact believers today.
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Ye men of Israel hear these words. Basically, the Apostle Peter is saying, Listen to what I am saying. Now before this, before this we read that he said, It shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now that is what he may have had in mind when he said, Ye men of Israel, listen to me. On the other hand, it could have been what follows.
Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. It could have been a reference to this. I have an idea myself. It refers to both. But particularly the Apostle Peter wanted to draw the attention of these people of Israel to the message concerning the Lord Jesus. Now notice again as I read with emphasis some of these phrases.
Ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.
Now go a little further down the chapter, and let's read from verse thirty. therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne. This is speaking of David, of course. He's seeing this before... spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did seek corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.
Therefore, being by or true this should be, to the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this which he now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens, but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ.
Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? To God we could hear people in these days crying out like that. I want you to notice just three phrases, and these are going to be my emphasis and focus this evening. Verse twenty-two, and speaking of the Lord Jesus, Peter says, he was Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God.
That's the first thing. Now look at that next verse. being delivered by the determinate counsel and for knowledge of God ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. We have first of all God's approval of his Son and then we have God's surrender of his Son. But listen to verse twenty four. whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.
And there we have God's exaltation of his Son. Three very precious and wonderful things. It's wonderful to think of this relationship. It's really something that the human mind cannot really conceive. The relationship between the Father and the Son. Between the Son and the Father. But we know that there never was a more close relationship than this divine fellowship between Father and Son. And he is spoken of as having God's complete approval.
The Apostle Peter has been talking to men about their sin, and then he's reminded them in the verse that we repeated that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And I used to be taught in Sunday school that whosoever means you, me, and everybody else whosoever. It was a wonderful message to these men because they were proud men. They were men who had been guilty of bringing about the death of the Lord Jesus.
They were men who had a hatred in their heart for him, and Peter pulls no punches. He said, you crucified him, you slew him, and he was the approved of God. Now there is no doubt here as to his identity. Peter says, ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus... of Nazareth. No doubt at all about his identity. There is no doubt in Peter's message about his humanity.
For he says, ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man. The Lord Jesus was man and God. He was God and man. This is very difficult for the human intellect to take in. And there are people who reject this because they cannot understand it. And yet, how can they possibly understand a wonderful thing like this. It is something that has to be received by us by faith.
God came in human flesh. He was called Jesus. And he was from Nazareth. Somebody once said, So the Bible records, can any good thing come out of Nazareth? The best thing in the world came from Nazareth, but he came to Nazareth from his father's side in heaven. There's no doubt about his identity. There is no doubt about his humanity.
and there is no doubt about his ability. Look at what follows here. He was approved of God by miracles and wonders and signs. The Lord Jesus had proved to all of those who met him, listened to him, and watched him that he was human, but that he was more than human. He fed five thousand men, it says, with just a few small loaves and two small fishes.
Now he must have been more than a man to be able to do that. He was a son of God and he was doing his father's business. Wished he not that I must be about my father's business. Twelve years of age and already his eye is set to the future and on his mission for his father. Miracles. Now, what were miracles? The word is a word which is a root word for what we call dynamite.
Dynamite. It is a word from which we get our word dynamite. I think that's very fitting. You know, the Lord Jesus must have really staggered the people by the things that he did and by the things that he said. He could tell them what they had done in the past. He could tell them what they were going to do in the future. And he could tell them what they were doing at the present. He knew the past. He knew the future. He knew what was going on not only in their lives, but in their hearts. He was able to read the hearts of men.
And this God-man, We are assured of His identity, we are assured of His humanity, and we are assured of His ability. Miracles. Now, I would have no difficulty, if I spoke to you, in expecting from you to be able to name some of these miracles. You read your Bible so often and you learn it and you know it and you could tell me the stories. Tell anybody the stories of the miracles that the Lord Jesus performed. Every one of them is worthy of being dissected word by word, expression by expression.
Sometimes you can read the wonder of the writer as he tells the story. And always you can see the picture in your mind, if you will, look for it, of how things unfolded, and the Lord Jesus did the impossible. He was approved of God by miracles. These miracles not only staggered the people, but they delighted the heart of God. God knew that his son was capable of these things. But behind these miracles there was always a purpose that was lost upon man, and perhaps we haven't fathomed it either.
But these things were according to the will of God and to glorify God, and he was approved of God. because these miracles were the will of God. The Lord Jesus said, I do always the things that please the Father. So God looked down upon his miracles, and his heart was warmed, and so it's written, he was approved of God by them. But then there were wonders. Now, wonders The word that's used here means manifestations.
And I can think of a number of things that fall into this category. Sometimes they were chosen, people who observed them. Can you imagine the disciples at the moment of transfiguration? When they looked upon the Lord Jesus and he was transfigured before them, it was a manifestation. You can think of others. I'm sure they very readily come to your mind. He was approved of God because of those manifestations. and then there's another word used here and it actually means tokens something that the Lord Jesus gave that would be a blessing to people and that would speak to their hearts and would make them look back and ponder tokens they're called here signs now I'm sure that some of these were beyond really the ken and the
understanding of men but there was something about every sign that the Lord Jesus gave that was meant to be a challenge to them that was meant to speak to them that was meant to remind them of who he claimed to be and who indeed he was we know that so many of them didn't recognize these signs for what they were, or they would never have taken him and nailed him to a tree. But he was approved of God. And along with the miracles and the wonders and the signs, I'm perfectly sure, though it's not mentioned in the verse, God's approval of His Son was because there was never an instant that his son failed him.
There was never a moment when the glory of God was not in his mind. That's a nice expression, a prude of God. I pause here and I ask myself, I know, that I cannot be like the Lord Jesus altogether. But I ask myself, am I sufficiently like the Lord Jesus that I am approved of God? Every one of us should be growing in our Christian lives and God knows my heart.
I am speaking to my own heart when I say this. As the days go by, we should be growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and God's approval of us should be growing with these things. But sometimes I look back in my life. Do you ever sit down quietly and look back over your life? How many times, as I do it, I've disappointed the Lord Jesus. How many times I have deliberately While I've never said no to God, I've shuffled out of things, I have felt that I couldn't do this or do that, although deep down in my heart I knew it was what God wanted me to do.
Have you ever had an experience like that? Do you have experiences like that? Sometimes I've looked back over my life and been somewhat discouraged, although somebody said that all discouragement comes from the devil, and that may well be true. But I don't see in my life a growth that makes me more like the Lord Jesus with every day that I live. I wish I could. I remember hearing a man give a testimony in the open air. You know, I used to be an open air preacher with a group of open air preachers.
And we used to call on the crowd for testimonies. And I remember one night standing just in the middle of the crowd, there was a man who gave a testimony like this. He said, I'm not what I ought to be. He said, I'm not what I'm going to be. But praise God I'm not what I was. And I empathized with him. I empathized with him. We look back on the past and we know what we might have been. And we thank God that we're not what we used to be. But God has a right to look at our lives and to be increasingly to know a growing approval of us.
Every day is lived hour by hour and moment by moment and we are human and we get taken up with so many things. But we ought to have a concern about still growing in the knowledge and more like the Lord Jesus. Some of us sense that we haven't so many more years to go. I'll be eighty-four on June the third this year. And believe me, I'm beginning to feel that way. But I think I look back on eighty-four years. And although sixty-five of them have been given to the Lord in full-time service, for I came out in the work when I was seventeen, I still mourn the seasons when I know that I've let God down.
The devil would try to discourage us because we all of us can look back upon failure. We can all look back on times when we know we missed the will of God. But we have known all along that the eye of God was on us. He sees the evil and the good. Not only with us as believers, but sinners too. Do you know, I'm going a little stray here. But I was thinking the other day of my mother. I remember the night she got saved.
It was after I got saved. One of my four sisters got saved first. I got saved next. And then my mother was saved third in the family. One of my sisters, the oldest sister, as far as I know, she never did get saved. I can remember the day I got a telegram from my brother-in-law to tell me that she had passed away with a brain tumor. He sent me a telegram to tell me that she was in the hospital very seriously ill.
I can remember finding out that there was a ham radio operator on the Dania Bridge outside of Hollywood in Florida, and I got a message to him and asked him if he could possibly get in touch with a pastor because of my sister's condition. And that man got hold of a pastor in South Africa. And he went, he wrote me and told me, I sat by her bedside. And although she was unconscious, I prayed with her. I read the scriptures to her.
I hope she heard. I recall her bringing a young man to the house, the man that actually she married. He came on a motorcycle and he parked it outside the bay window, leaning up against the wall up to the window, and spent the evening with us. My mother always had a promise box. Didn't matter who was there, it went around us all. And then we had to open these little rolls. I remember she used to take what we used to call a Kirby grip. You have another name for it.
And she had one in the box and you would push it down on the roll and pull it out and roll it. My brother-in-law, he wasn't then my brother-in-law, that sister's husband, unrolled his and he read this. What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. He was an agnostic. He said, I hope he isn't puncturing my tires. When he left, both his tires were flat. That's actually true. And when he came back into the house and he said sheepishly, my tires are both flat.
He was ashen. He was deathly white. God spoke to him in that event. was able to do these things and he loves the sinner as he loves the saint but he's conscious of their shortcomings as well as ours have we earned the approbation of the God of heaven the Lord Jesus was approved of God now the second thing after God's approval of his son is God's surrender of his Son. Listen to what it says.
It says, him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God ye have taken. He who was approved of God was surrendered to God. God gave him up to the all the evils that were going to be poured out upon his head you know when it finally came to the crucifixion the crucifixion was no surprise this took place according to the foreknowledge of God it was no surprise God knew all of these things beforehand that's why the prophets wrote Speaking for the Lord Jesus, they pierced my hands and my feet.
This is the reason why the prophets of old spoke about piercing of the Messiah. The Father surrendered the Son for all that shameful treatment, all of that scoffing and and ignorance. Men turned from the Lord Jesus, they cursed Him, they shrugged their shoulders. What did He matter? What did His message matter? God surrendered His Son.
Now the prophet had foretold it, and although the people who were standing around and guilty of it didn't realize it had been prophesied, But we know it wasn't a surprise. God knows the end from the beginning. And how accurately on the hill called Calvary was the prophetic word of God fulfilled. God approved his son. God surrendered his son. The crucifixion was no surprise. The foreknowledge of God. The crucifixion was no accident.
The determinate counsel of God. So God not only knew about it in advance, but it was in His wisdom and in His power that the circumstances came about that brought it about. the determinate counsel of God. And his foreknowledge. The crucifixion was no accident. Do you know what the twentieth century? I was just looking for it. The twentieth century New Testament says this, in accordance with God's definite plan.
I thought that was beautiful when I read it. in accordance with God's definite plan. And the translators maintain, of course, so it wouldn't be in their translation that this is exactly what the statement is. This is exactly what the language here means. They pierced my hands and my feet. Psalm twenty-two. Do you remember that? In Zechariah we read, they shall look upon him whom they pierced. It was no accident any more than it was a surprise.
And the crucifixion was no mistake. It was no mistake. You and I whose hearts are softened toward the Lord Jesus. And we who know, because the word of God tells us, and we read that word, that God was behind all of this. Because, as the hymn writer said, there was no other good enough to pay the price of sin, he only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in. Because Jesus, by dying, lew death.
The fear of death has been taken away because he made possible by his death on the cross the salvation that so many of us here tonight enjoy. Death has no fears for us because we know what it's going to mean. It'll not only mean the exit of time, but it'll mean the entrance to eternity and a bright and wonderful eternity and joys and felicitations that will never end. All the crucifixion was no mistake. It was according to the will of God.
And as this verse says, it was God's perfect plan. I'm so glad that God loved us that much. He loved his son, and yet he surrendered him. The one he approved, he surrendered him to such a death. But then we read, God hath raised him up. Now here is the exaltation of his Son. Let me find here a little expression that is interesting.
Well, perhaps I won't take the time to look it down and to find it. But in thinking of what I was just talking about, That same twentieth century New Testament says, You, by the hands of heartless men, nailed Him to a cross and put Him to death. This was His challenge to the Jews. They had just celebrated the Passover. Just a few days before. It's now Pentecost.
and he is charging the whole nation as well as these people when he said, you did it, and you did it by the hands of lawless men, and you put him to death. But God raised him from the dead. Man had done his worst. Man had seen to it. that the Son of God, though they would not have admitted that, and they didn't believe that, should die in humiliation. And he did. More than that, they were determined that the Lord Jesus should die in agony.
And he did. And agony such as you and I can not even dream of. Because, as a sacrifice for our sins, he not only suffered at the hands of men, but he suffered at the hands of God. God laid our sins upon the Lord Jesus, and only God knows the depth and the horror of those sufferings. They run from the Lord Jesus this cry, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? God had no choice.
He turned his back upon his son because the Lord Jesus was being made sin for us. But the moment came when God said enough. God allowed them to roll like a sweet morsel under their tongues, their victory as they thought. They had brought about his death. They had put an end to his preaching. This was deliverance from the torment that he brought to their hearts. He's dead.
but he didn't stay dead. God satisfied with the work that he did on the third day we read, raised him from the dead. God raised him up. That's the language of our chapter here. And in this resurrection, God glorified and exalted his Son. We sing it from time to time. Death could not keep its praise. Jesus, my Savior, he tore the bars of, away the bars of death. Jesus, my Lord, and up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph or his foes.
They had done their worst, and they killed him. But God raised him from the dead. His resurrection was exaltation for the Lord Jesus. He proved himself the conqueror over death. But it says also in our chapter here, in my Bible just across the page, it says, Therefore being by, that's what it says in the authorized version. But that should be true.
This Jesus has God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses, therefore being to the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he has shared this forth. And he's speaking, of course, of what happened at Pentecost. The Lord Jesus was exalted in his resurrection. he was exalted in his elevation the Lord Jesus he was raised up to sit at the right hand of the Father in the glory that was his reward his willingness for his willingness to be the sacrifice for sinners look at verse thirty six will you in our chapter.
Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, and now Peter rubs it in, whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ. So he was exalted in the resurrection. He was exalted in his elevation to the throne. And he was exalted in his acclamation. God hath made him both Lord and Christ. And his victory is our victory. We're not on the winning side.
We're on the side that has already won. because the Lord Jesus proved himself too strong for death. Now what happened to these people? It says they were pricked in their hearts. This is the only time this word is mentioned. And Mr. W.E. Vine, one of our British Assembly scholars, translates this word, translates this word stunned. They were stunned.
Did you ever see a man who was stunned? He just was totally incapable of doing anything, can scarcely take his breath. His eyes bulge and he is powerless, totally, shrinkless. stunned. This is what happened to these people. I wonder how many of them awakened to the truth that they had just heard and gleaned the fruits of it.
I wonder how many of them will see in heaven. There are many who preach Christ, and there are many who listen, and there are many who go away and shrug their shoulders and don't understand what a wonderful Christ they're turning their backs on. He was approved of God. He was surrendered of God. and he was exalted of God. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank you for a message like this.
We fancy that we can see Peter preaching with all of his heart this wonderful message of a Christ crucified and risen from the dead.