2^nd Sunday of Easter – April 19, 2009

He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Acts 3:12-15, 17--20 - When Peter saw this, he said to them: “Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer. Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.”

Dear fellow redeemed,

In the early 1800’s, two men embarked on a mission to suppress the Gospel. In order to accomplish this, they believed that they needed to show that the Biblical miracles of Christ’s resurrection and Saul’s conversion were false. So off they went, studying the Bible, digging into history, and researching all they could. At the conclusion of their work, they met together and one asked, “What is the result of your work?” The answer was, “I have thoughtfully investigated the resurrection of Christ, and have come to the conclusion that he who is said to have come forth from the grave in Joseph’s garden, was, as he claimed to be, the very Son of God.” The other one then replied, “I have fully investigated the narrative of the conversion of St. Paul, and I am satisfied that this man, on his journey to Damascus, really saw Jesus of Nazareth, and that this Jesus was the very Christ of God.”

How true it is dear Christian friends! He is risen! He is risen indeed! In this truth is wrapped the very fabric of our faith. For what good is his death if he had remained in the grave? What hope of everlasting life could we have if death had won? But he is alive. Sin and death and the devil have been crushed. And the words of Peter, recorded for us in the book of Acts, give us opportunity for a refreshing review of why our faith is not in vain. He who suffered and died and rose again is true God. Through faith in him we have the complete assurance of the forgiveness of our sins.

In our Lutheran Confessions it is written, “If it were not said, God has died for us, but only a man, we would be lost.” How clearly these words declare what we hold so dear in our hearts to be true, that when Jesus died on the cross, God died on the cross. In the days following Pentecost, the apostles went about Jerusalem speaking about the crucified and the risen Jesus in order that more and more people could be brought to believe this very thing. The section before us this morning gives us another such example.

Peter, by the power of Jesus Christ, had just miraculously healed a cripple. When the people saw the healed man they were filled with wonder and amazement and a crowd quickly gathered. Peter took advantage of this situation to explain how this remarkable event took place as he directs his hearers to the real source of power: “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus.”

Put yourself into the shoes of Peter’s audience that day. They considered themselves to be the chosen children of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They knew full well that that God had promised to send a Messiah. But now, this man Peter, was telling them that the Servant of God had come in the person of Jesus. He had carried out his mission. He had proclaimed himself by word and deed to be the divine deliverer, the one who would serve by giving his life as a ransom for many. And Jesus had kept his word. He had lived a sinless life, and then he had offered his holy life as a perfect sacrifice for all guilty sinners. And if that wasn’t enough – to prove that he was the Son of God and that his work was God’s word – God raised him from the dead.

But what had they done? How had they received the servant God had sent? Peter says, “You handed him over to be killed…you disowned him…you…asked that a murderer be released…you killed the author of life.” No doubt by this point the emotions of Peter’s audience were at boiling point, but they needed to hear this. They needed to hear that they were wrong. Peter didn’t hesitate to preach the law with all its crushing power. “You did it.” “You killed the author of life!” But in addition to all this, Peter also wanted them to know, that in the very same event, shameful as it was, lay their only hope.

The author of life is none other than God himself. Peter is saying, this man Jesus is God and God died as that man. What man was required to do and could not do, God came and did for us. The work of salvation is divine work, and he who lived and died for our salvation is divine. It is this fact of Jesus’ deity that makes his death the all-sufficient sacrifice it is. God, the ever holy God, who must punish sinners with death and the torments of hell, could punish Jesus with the very agonies of the damned and with the death of one accursed – and then count those agonies and that death the equivalent of what he should have exacted from a world of sinners. He could do so because Jesus’ suffering and death were those of his Son, very God of very God. And that the God-man’s work was successful and accepted by God is made more than clear with this thunderous approval, “God raised him from the dead.”

This is why the Bible ties the validity of Christ’s sacrificial death and his glorious resurrection to his deity again and again. In Romans 5 we are told, “We were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10). In 1 John 1 we read, “God is light…if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:5,7). Again in Acts 20 we hear, “Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood, (Acts 20:28). And in Romans 1 we are instructed, “And who…was declared…to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4). There is no doubt, he who suffered and died and rose again is true God.

This is all so vital because it assures us that our faith in Jesus is not in vain. Mankind’s un-payable debt of sin has been paid in full. Not one penny more needs to be paid. Not one of our sins heaped upon him clings to us any longer. Not one bit of our vast guilt remains un-atoned for. “He was delivered over to death for (because of) our sins and was raised to life for (because of) our justification” (Romans 4:25).

You see, it is of the utmost importance for us that Jesus be the Son of God because only then can we be assured of the forgiveness of our sins. And we need the forgiveness of our sins. How that is brought out in an old familiar Lenten hymn that says,

Whence come these sorrows, whence this mortal anguish?

It is my sins for which you, Lord, must languish;

Yes, all the wrath, the woe that you inherit,

This I do merit.”

(CW 117 v.1,3)

And another, that reads:

All the world on Calvary, Crucified the Prince of life,

Pierced the hands of God’s own Son, There on Calvary.

Sin was there on Calvary, All the sins of ev’ryone,

Laid upon God’s sinless Lamb There on Calvary.

(CW 140 vv. 2,3)

Peter’s words are echoed loudly in the stanzas of these hymns. “You did it.” You killed the author of life!” Are you taken aback by such a charge? Dear friends - don’t be. The hammer blow of the law cannot be soft-pedaled when it comes to us either. We need to impress upon our hearts and our minds that when Jesus died, as we confess, “Crucified under Pontius Pilate,” we all had a part in this perversion of justice. In our disobedience to God’s holy law, we too are guilty of having killed the author of life.

Every time we sin by closing our eyes to a fellow believer’s sin, letting him or her continue on without calling them to repent, we need to realize that that sin was added to Jesus on Calvary. Every time we choose “my will” over “God’s will,” we need to be reminded that it was for that sin our Savior had to suffer. Every time we bypass the opportunity to hear the Word for some lame reason we invent in our minds, we need to understand clearly that for that sin Jesus was stricken by God. Every time we talk badly about someone, anyone, everyone, it needs to be stressed that that sin was included in the guilt that caused Jesus to be led like a sheep to be slaughtered. Every time you have watched an inappropriate television show, let linger in your mind an impure thought, or delighted in coarse language or jokes, we need to remember that those sins were included in the driving force behind those nails. The law must continue to crush us with the realization of our guilt. It must still drive us to feel the fiery flames of hell licking at our souls. But before we are driven to despair, we need to be reminded that at the cross of Christ, as shameful as it is, lies our hope, a hope which rests in God’s power over sin and death, and a hope that is made certain in the resurrection of Jesus.

That was what Peter was aiming at from his listeners. He didn’t want them to despair, but to see that the very Son of God died and rose again to take away their sin. Now, Peter called on them to realize the greatness of their guilt and sorrow over it, and to look to Jesus as the Messiah who had paid for all their sin and guilt, and put their trust in his redeeming life and death. “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.”

It is the same for us today. On the one hand, we are called on to realize the greatness of our guilt and to sorrow over it, and on the other, to look to Jesus as the Messiah who had made good for all our sin and guilt, and put our trust in his redeeming life. Jesus wiped out all of our sins. This we know with the greatest of certainty because he is the Son of God and God made known to all of mankind that he accepted Jesus’ payment by raising him from the dead. Therefore apply this assurance to yourself over and over again. “I have been redeemed! I am God’s beloved son or daughter! The blood of God’s own Son counts for me.” The blood of Jesus has wiped out, erased, your sin from the pages of God’s book, and now it is clean and white. There is no doubt – Jesus rose from the grave.

So there it is! Another sermon. It wasn’t “catchy” the way we think of “catchy.” There were not a lot of stories and illustrations. There were no power-point or visual aides. It was a simple message of sin. It was a simple message of grace. Is that dull? Never! It is the heart, the core, the center of our faith. God gave himself into death for us because as sinners we could never save ourselves. In that very act, which culminated in Christ’s resurrection, lays the certainty of our deliverance from sin, death, and Satan. It is what we believe! It is why we believe! In fact, it even answers the question of how we know that we believe. The object of our faith makes all the difference. He who suffered and died and rose again is true God. Through him we have the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins. Our faith is not in vain. Amen.