Even though the Old Testament is filled with prophecies about Jesus Christ and His work of redemption, many people in Israel rejected Him, even to the point of delivering Him up to die. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul discusses the Apostle Peter’s second exhortation to Israel in the book of Acts, showing our need for an accurate understanding of Scripture and all that it reveals about Christ.

Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon’s, greatly amazed. So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people: “Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.

“Yet now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.

Let us pray.

Father, as we contemplate anew another of those recorded Apostolic sermons, we pray that this Word may speak to us even as it did to those hearers at Solomon’s Porch. We ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Clinging Beggar

We turn our attention once more to the sermon of Peter, which is the second recorded sermon by this Apostle in the book of Acts. When we looked at Peter’s first sermon it took three Sundays to get through it. I will be quicker this time and cover this, his second sermon, in two weeks, but we will still take it in segments because time does not permit a decent treatment of this sermon’s content in one session only.

The first thing I want you to notice about this sermon is the peculiar spirit of political correctness and sensitivity in which it was delivered to its hearers. This is the kind of sermon that could cast people in jail if they preached this way today.

The passage begins with Luke’s record that “the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John.” We know he was not holding on to Peter and John because he needed their physical support to stand. That was already established in the marvel of his miracle we looked at last time. The man was congenitally crippled and had never stood on his own two feet in his entire life, and he was so miraculously healed by the touch of the Apostles that he not only stood but walked, jumped, and leapt for joy without any assistance or handholding from Peter and John.

Yet we are told here that this man, after praising God, jumping and leaping, came back to Peter and John and held on to them. If someone had just cured you of such a malady, would you not want to keep him in sight? So, he came and held on tightly to the Apostles.

“Why Do You Marvel?”

We read: “All the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon’s, greatly amazed. So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people: ‘Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this?’”

When you look through the New Testament record in the Gospels of the ministry of Jesus, which was a blaze of miracles, it is almost as if the authors had a literary formula in front of them as they wrote. They would tell the circumstances of the affliction, then show the miraculous power of Christ in healing that affliction, and it was always followed by the same response of the people: astonishment. One of the first verbs you learn when studying Greek is the word thaumazō because of its frequent use in the New Testament, and the verb indicates astonishment.

Peter asked, “Why are you people amazed?” It is a wonder nobody said to Peter: “Why wouldn’t we be amazed? We’ve been walking past this man every day. He’s been crippled from the day of his birth, and now he’s walking, leaping, jumping, and praising God. How could we be in anything but a state of absolute marvel and amazement?”

But Peter was not being facetious. He added to the question: “Why do you marvel at this? But while you are marveling, you look at us as if we had the power or godliness to give this man his strength.” The implication is: “It would be amazing if I could say, ‘Rise up and walk,’ by virtue of my own strength or godliness. Then there would be reason for amazement and astonishment. But none of you should be amazed at what you just witnessed had you noticed that when we raised this man, we did it in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.”

The Glorified Servant

Then came the sermon of all sermons: “Why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus”—let me stop here for a second.

Notice something different about this sermon from the Peter’s first sermon on the day of Pentecost. On the day of Pentecost, there were three different sections to Peter’s sermon, each in which he gave an exposition of an Old Testament passage. In this sermon he did not do that, but it is not as if he abandoned the Scriptures. Rather, if you look carefully at Peter’s words, he was compacting them, choosing his words carefully, and he included a summation of Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah who was to come.

Peter began by saying: “You’re looking at us as if we had power and godliness to heal this man, but where you ought to look is to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, who glorified His Servant Jesus.” Notice what Peter did not say. He did not say, “Who glorified His Son Jesus.” In this case he did not say, “Who glorified the prophet Jesus,” though Jesus was a prophet. He did not say, “Who glorified the Prince of Peace.” No, the language Peter used in this instance took them squarely back to the Old Testament.

“This work was done by the One who glorified His Servant Jesus,” identifying Christ with the promised Messiah of the latter portion of Isaiah, the ebed Yahweh, the Servant of the Lord, the One whose exploits are set forth before us in Isaiah 53—the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief, the One who bears the sins of His people. That is the Servant of the Lord whom every Jew expected to appear on the scene of history in the future.

Peter was saying, in effect: “Don’t look at me. Don’t look at John. Look at the God of our fathers, who in this act glorifies His Servant, the Servant of the Lord whom you delivered up.”

The Prince of Life Murdered

At this point in Peter’s sermon, he makes a sharp contrast: “Our God is glorifying His Servant. But you did not glorify Him. You delivered Him up, and then you denied Him in the presence of Pontius Pilate when Pilate was determined and resolute to let Him go. You denied the Holy One.”

Another Messianic prophecy from the Old Testament was that the Messiah would be known as the Holy One of Israel. The first to recognize the identity of Christ in the gospel record were the demons who cried out at Jesus, “Why do you come to torment us before the time, O Holy One of Israel?” They knew who He was.

Peter essentially said, “God glorified the One you denied, the One you betrayed in front of Pontius Pilate, the One who is the Holy One and the Just One, the Righteous One.” Peter was trying to communicate something about the One they had crucified. He is the Servant of the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, the Righteous One who is to come, the One who is our righteousness.

Peter said, “In His place you asked for a murderer,” whom Peter did not have to say was not holy and not just. He went on: “You delivered Him, you denied Him twice, you chose a murderer in His place, and you killed Him. You put to death the very Prince of life.”

Some people can remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But few can instantly recall the name of the man allegedly killed by Lee Harvey Oswald the same day in Dallas. His name was Officer Tippet. People remember all the details of the death of John Kennedy but forget the name of the man who was killed by the same assassin that same day in the same city of Dallas. Why? It is a terrible crime to murder a policeman. It is a crime to commit homicide at all, but the crime escalates in significance the higher the office of the victim. When a president is murdered, it becomes an assassination. It is an unforgettable moment, a decisive moment in a nation’s history. But the assassination of a president is nothing compared to the murder of the Prince of life Himself.

John begins his gospel: “In Him was life” (John 1:4). Later, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (Rev. 22:13). In this text in Acts 3:15, Peter called Him the “Prince of life,” and said to the people, “You murdered Him whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses.” This is preaching with conviction.

Essentially, Peter was saying: “Are you surprised? When you take the Servant of the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, the Righteous One, the Prince of life, and you deny Him, deliver Him, and murder Him, do you really marvel that the Son would be raised from the dead and that His power would heal people who are crippled? What you ought to marvel at is that you’re still alive.”

On that fateful day in Enfield, Connecticut, when Jonathan Edwards preached his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” he said in the midst of that sermon, “Oh sinner, you cannot give any sound reason why you have not dropped into the pit of hell since you rose from your bed this morning except that the grace of God in His hand has held you up.”

Can you give any reason for God to keep you from everlasting destruction? Do you have any merit by which you can stand in front of God and say, “You owe it to me, God, to raise me up like You raised Jesus; You owe it to me to give me the same glory and the same honor because I have the same worth”? God forbid that any of us would ever talk like that before God. I doubt many of us would say that to God, but we think that way all the time.

The text continues: “And His name,”—not Peter’s name, not John’s name—“through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.”

Ignorance without Excuse

I must cover this brief parenthesis before we end: “Yet now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.” Do you see the exceptive clause in this text? Maybe it is the thing you are counting on. Maybe you see it as your ticket out of hell at the last judgment that God might give you a free pass based on your ignorance.

I was talking to somebody recently who told me, “My friend is not an atheist; he’s an agnostic.” I said, “An agnostic is the worst kind of atheist.” He asked, “What do you mean?” I answered, “Theism means that you affirm the existence of God or gods. Atheism covers everything outside the category of theism, and the agnostic is outside the category of the theist because he will not affirm the existence of God, and then he blames God for it. The agnostic says, ‘The reason I can’t affirm the existence of God is because I am agnōstos, without knowledge.’”

The Latin translation of agnosis or agnostic is “ignoramus,” “I am ignorant.” The plea of the agnostic is this: “Oh God, if You just would have made Yourself known to me. If You just would have shown me a miracle. If You just would have given me sufficient data to make a rational judgment, I would have been Your most faithful supporter.” The agnostic makes that plea despite the reality that every moment of his existence, heaven is declaring the glory of God, and God is manifesting Himself plainly and clearly in His eternal power and deity before that person’s very eyes and soul. Every human being knows with certainty that God exists. The sin of man is not that we do not know Him, it is that we refuse to acknowledge Him even though we do know Him.

When Paul says in Romans 1:18–20 that men are without excuse, what excuse do you think men attempt to rest upon? It is the excuse of every self-proclaimed agnostic: “If I would have known You were there, I would have repented. I would have embraced the Savior, but I missed it. I didn’t get it. Please forgive me for my ignorance.”

Paul warns that ignorance is not going to be an excuse on the day of Judgment because that claimed ignorance is not true. We are not ignorant. We are not without knowledge. We are not agnosis. Yet in the early days of Christendom, the reality of a certain kind of ignorance played a role. On the cross, our Lord cried out in front of His murderers to the Father: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Father, be merciful to this mob. Lay aside Your wrath at this time because of their ignorance. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Following on that, Peter said to this crowd: “You murdered Him. You killed Him. You betrayed Him. You denied Him. But I know you did it in ignorance.” Then he went on to say, essentially: “While you did this in ignorance, it was not an invincible ignorance, the kind that excuses. It was evincible ignorance. You were ignorant because you ignored the plain teaching of the Word of God.”

Peter went on to say that all that had happened in Jerusalem at that time had been predicted in detail in the Old Testament. Peter was basically saying, “Had you been diligent students of the Word of God, you would not have been surprised by the death of your Messiah, nor would you have participated in crying out for His blood.”

God Certifies the Truth

We are surrounded by people who are ignorant of the things of God, and it is not because God has failed to plainly reveal the truth or manifest the true identity of Jesus by raising Him from the dead. God never did that for Muhammad, Confucius, Buddha, or anybody else. God has raised Christ from the dead, certifying Him as His only Son.

But our ignorance says: “It doesn’t matter what you say or believe. You take whatever religion you like. You can trample the blood of Christ into the ground, hang on to Confucius, hang on to Muhammad. Claim they are good people following God to the best of their ability.” No, they are running away from God as fast as they can run into a religion of idolatry. Anything but the true God will satisfy the hearts of wicked people.

When God shows plainly the truth of His Son, we are amazed: “How could this be?” Peter could have said: “Why aren’t you running around the temple jumping, leaping, and praising God? It’s your God, the God of your fathers, the God of your heritage, who is glorifying His Son.” What did the people do? Tune in for the next episode to see what the response was to Peter’s sermon.

The last thing I want to say about this sermon for now is this: You may think what Peter said to the people was insensitive. You may think it was harsh. You may say it was offensive. But what you cannot say is that it was false, because he spoke the unvarnished truth to those people who had in fact denied the Son of God, betrayed the Son of God, and murdered the Prince of life. We, by extension, are a part of that mob until we cling to Christ like the man healed clung to Peter and John, praying that He will never let us go and we will not lose our grip on Him, because He alone is the Holy One, the Righteous One, the Prince of life Himself.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.