Attacking the Gates (Part B)

Before man sinned, the remedy had already been provided. Before paradise was lost, paradise had already been regained. Because Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world, and in the mind and purpose of God, Christ had already died before he was born. In the purpose of God, Christ had already died before Adam was created.

In the purpose and plan of God, the world had already been redeemed. We're in the age of faith, according to the truth of the word, not the age of miracles. We're not running around waiting for some Elijah to come up and do miracles so that we can believe. Miracles. That is power in action. Now Satan is capable of doing miraculous things too when granted by God.

The story of Job teaches that. Antichrist will come with lying wonders, signs and lying wonders, lying in the sense that they're going to mislead people, those who want to be misled. Because the deciding factor with Antichrist is he's going to be unrighteous. He's not going to be a decent person. So anything he does is disqualified. But those who will fawn over him, that won't matter.

Indecency won't matter. Sodom and Gomorrah should have been preserved, according to the mindset of those who will be around Antichrist and many today. The signs, first the miracles. That is the power in action and the wonders. The wonders are the effects of the miracle. They're experiencing that here in Acts chapter 2. With the mighty rushing wind, with the tongues, they were experiencing something that was not normal. There was spiritual, this spiritual activity taking place.

And Peter will let them know that spiritual activity is from heaven, not from hell. The signs here are the value of the miracle. The effect is the wonder. The sign is supposed to create a response. This is not to be wasted. It's meaningful.

It's connected. It's connected to God's word, not outside of God's word. Miracles today, they're still granted. They're just not as widespread or dramatic as in biblical times, much of biblical times. Because there are periods in the Bible when miracles were not pronounced either. But miracles tend to breed a craving for more miracles.

Okay, you've seen a miracle, now you want another one. And God will not be reduced to that and he gives us a special beatitude on this very subject. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. It's the age of faith. It's disappointing when people try to tell you that you're going to be healed when you're not going to be healed.

When you're not going to suffer this or that and you are going to suffer this or that. That's not what we're supposed to do. We don't know the mind of God. It would be quite presumptuous on many things to just insert into somebody's life what God is going to do for them. What happens when he doesn't?

I've seen it so many times. We are here to subject ourselves to the will of God because we cherish him. And we cherish him because we know who he is. We know what he is about.

We know where he's taking us and we know where we are going. And we are not apologizing to anybody for this and we're not backing away from it either. Apostates, they will come. That's them. That is them.

That is not me. And you've got to have that foundation in your heart. Are you two going to leave? Where are we going to go? You have the words of life. Well, coming back to this and I'll quote that again from Peter. Here in verse, we've only got the first verse so far.

You guys got to hurry up. Verse 22 is where we are. He says, Which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves also know. Well, Jesus was well known to this crowd. John chapter 12 verse 19, The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, You see that you are accomplishing nothing?

Look, the whole world has gone after him. Yeah, those miracles up in Galilee and Syria and Jerusalem and Judea were just a word that was spreading all over the place about Jesus. Peter knew that they knew. And he was going to take advantage of that to their edification. They knew the character of Christ. Even if they never saw him, they heard. They knew about the sermons and the miracles and the murder. They heard of his resurrection also. Peter is about to bring to them right up close these facts.

He's going to back them up from the Bible and they're going to be converted. The signs were evidences made necessary in order to grab their attention, the sign of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Those signs never produced conviction. They stayed lost. They had the signs. They saw the miracle.

But they still were lost. This was the case in the days of Christ. It was the case in the days of Paul.

It is the same way to this day. Miracles are not enough to convert a soul. Just ask Judas Iscariot.

But you can't ask him. Because he became an apostate. Peter's preaching, his witnessing of the truth with reason, produced conviction. Look with me at verses 37. Now when they heard this, they were cut to heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? How do we fix this? You've convinced us that we are guilty and that's conviction.

Felons are convicted when found guilty. Verse 23, him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified and put to death. What is boring about this kind of preaching? Peter, do you know that Stephen's going to do the same thing and they're going to kill him for doing this? Peter points out here what he says in verse 23, him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God. He's pointing to the mystery of sovereignty and free will in human choice. But God's decided will, him being delivered by the determined purpose. God decided how he was going to deal with our sin. Jesus became the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

According to other passages then, Revelation 13, 8, which says it just like that. The lamb slain from the foundation of the world. God the Father delivered Jesus Christ to the cross that we could be delivered from the judgment upon ourselves because of our sin. Now this crucifying of Jesus did not absolve those responsible for their ghastly crucifixion simply because God had purpose to deliver humanity by delivering Christ to the cross. The Lord used what he had and what he had were guilty people who many of them opted to remain guilty. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus speaking to the naysaying religious leaders essentially said to them, you've got plenty of religion, you've got plenty of culture, but you're going to hell anyway because you don't want to believe the truth. Luke 13, 28, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and yourselves thrust out because you'll have no one else to blame.

And the fact that they will be gnashing their teeth indicates they will be angry at God for having the audacity to be God and to judge them for their wickedness even though God had offered them salvation. Jesus, forsaken by his Father for not abandoning us to sin, taking our sin upon himself according to his Father's will, according to the will of Christ. Every time you see the cross of Christ, remember it was no accident. Whether you see it on a piece of jewelry, whether you see it on a roadside altar, whether you see it in the church, on a church, wherever you see the cross of Christ, it was not a mistake. It was planned by God, him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, Isaiah 53, 10, yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him.

He has put him to grief when you make his soul an offering for sin and that has happened, it's done. Not when Isaiah wrote those words, it was still over 700 years away. Even in the millennial age, according to Ezekiel, what Christ achieved for us on the cross will be commemorated with bloodless sacrifices. They will act out the crucifixion because there will be people born in that age that really don't understand it and they're going to get a lot of help with that and some will still reject in the end. The foreknowledge of God, first of all, all knowledge with God is foreknowledge.

It is almost a redundancy. God knows everything, he cannot learn. This foreknowledge of God, A.W.

Tozier really just lays this out so wonderfully. He says, before man sinned, the remedy had already been provided. Before paradise was lost, paradise had already been regained because Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world and in the mind and purpose of God, Christ had already died before he was born. In the purpose of God, Christ had already died before Adam was created.

In the purpose and plan of God, the world had already been redeemed before the world was ever brought into being. Where did Jesus die? In the will of his father. Where did he rise to?

The throne beside his father. These things were predestined. They did not evolve in the mind of God.

They did not develop. Christ did not come here and sort of just stumble into these things. The choreograph was by God in the Godhead. You have taken by lawless hands and crucified and put to death. Taken, tortured, and terminated. That's what he just said they did to Jesus Christ and they had no right to do it.

There were others who were blasphemers and they had a right to do it but Christ was no blasphemer. Peter here charges the crowd, the multitude with murder. They are on defense at this point.

Peter is on offense. As long as he is preaching this sermon, they've got their backs up against the ropes so to speak. Being instruments through which the will of God was accomplished did not again relieve them of their guilt. Those who applauded the death of Christ, those who dismissed it and ignored it, knowing his miracles and his life and all these other things that belong to the ministry of Jesus Christ, they were guilty. Sovereignty and free will in action. No one forced them to side against Christ and God uses people nonetheless whether you are for him or against him. Now, he mentions here lawless hands.

It has a dual application. The Gentiles who crucified Christ, they were lawless. They were not under the law of Moses and then the Jewish intelligentsia who arrested him and brought him to the Gentiles, they were guilty too. So if you said, I don't know why it's even a debate in some circles, who is responsible for the death of sinners, death of Christ, that's an easy question. Me, sinners are responsible for the death of Christ and it is the love of God that decided to do something about it before the foundations of the world were made. Verse 24, whom God raised up having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be held by it. Well, God is stronger than death. Death is painful even if not for the individual who dies for those left behind. Death is an opponent of love. Death hurts. Death is always wrong even when you kill a mosquito because it's a demonstration of the curse.

Things die now without the curse. I mean, I don't know. There wouldn't be any.

I don't know. I wasn't there but I know there wouldn't be a problem and I wouldn't have to kill them. Now it's kill or be bitten. It was not possible that he should be held by it. Well, God is invincible and Jesus being sinless had no wage to pay. He was going to be the recipient of no judgment. Death could not defeat him. That's why on the cross he gives up his spirit.

He was in total control. He was sinless and to be sinless is to be outside of the curse of sin which is death. Mary died because she was not sinless just like the rest of us and that is not an insult. If she were listening to the sermon now, she'd be applauding. At the end of the service, she'd say that was one of the greatest sermons I ever heard you preach.

I mean, we just know this is true, right? Verse 25, for David says concerning him, I foresaw Yahweh always before my face where he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Verse 26, therefore my heart rejoiced and my tongue was glad.

Moreover, my flesh also will rest in hope. Well, the resurrection of Christ was both prophetic and fact. There's not always the same because until Christ was crucified and risen, it was just prophetic but now it's taken place.

Now it is a fact. Peter quoting Psalm 16, a messianic psalm. He's going to dart between three different psalms in this one section of his sermon. He's already laid out Joel to them and now he is, as I said, speaking from the books of wisdom in the Old Testament. A barrage of scripture to support his points.

It's not his opinion. He's giving them the word. He's applying to Christ what David, some of what David saw concerning himself, making it a dual fulfillment. Christ being the greater fulfillment. For Christians, the Old Testament pointed forward to Jesus Christ. It is, in fact, the Old Testament meaningless without him. What could you get from the Old Testament without Jesus Christ? He brings life to it all because it's all about him and that's why when he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, that goes back to Genesis 1. Where God says, when the Bible says, God speaking through Moses, in the beginning God, or in the Hebrew, God in the beginning created the heavens and earth and everything forward. Psalm 68 verse 2, our God is the God of salvation and Yahweh the Lord, and to Yahweh the Lord, the long escapes from death.

Well, I'm having a hard time reading some of these things so I want to hurry up and get to what I want to say and not what I want to read. It is a dilemma. But back to that verse again, our God is the God of salvation and to Yahweh the Lord, the long escapes from death. Only God could be the Savior. So when you come to the New Testament and Jesus is referred to the Savior, that makes him equal with God by design. Verse 27, for you will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption. Hades, or Sheol, was the Old Testament, in the Old Testament the place of death, and in the New Testament the minds of those two. He's quoting verse 10 of Psalm 16. And David indicates that he will be in Hades, he will be in the underworld, and Sheol, the righteous side of it, but he will not be left there. Psalm 68 verse 18, another Psalm of David, you have ascended on high, yet you led captivity captive.

What that Psalm is saying is that God is the one that will take those who are in righteous Sheol who died before Christ and he will bring them into heaven. Paul uses this in Ephesians 4. Now this he ascended.

What does it mean? But that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is also the one who ascended far above the heavens that he might fill all things. Isaiah 61 verse 1, speaking of Jesus, that he came to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison door of the prison to those who are bound. And so again before the cross of Christ when someone died, a righteous person such as Abraham, they went to Sheol, which was divided into two compartments. The wicked side where they were doomed and the righteous side where they had no Savior because heaven was not open to sinners until Jesus descended and then ascended with them.

And that's why we read, and Jesus said to him, assuredly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. You won't be taking a dirt nap as that theology that teaches we're in a sleep state. It's a doctrine that hopefully you've never heard of.

It's out there though. I think the Jehovah Witnesses are the big ones that push that one, that when we die we're not conscious. But the Bible says otherwise. Nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption. Well David saw beyond himself but yet he's speaking also of himself. The paradox that the prophets brought to their day was Messiah would die but his throne would last forever. When Christ came, many of the Jews lost sight of that. Revelation chapter 1 verse 18, I am he who lives and was dead and behold I am alive forevermore.

Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of death. Total control, total fulfillment of Isaiah 53 and all the messianic Psalms and the writings of the prophets like Ezekiel and Isaiah that mention Messiah will reign on earth nonetheless. We have to learn to discover and understand dual meanings and dual applications and dual fulfillments in the scripture because there's quite a few of them. Now the idea of the resurrection from death is where Peter finds ultimate and significance in these words of David. That there is a resurrection and so he's telling his Jewish audience, you know there's a resurrection because our Bible preaches the resurrection when David said you will not allow your Holy One to see corruption. He's holding them to the scripture, the scripture they claim to believe. David did not mean that David would not die but that his death would not be permanent.

His original reference has in it a reference to himself. You will not leave your Holy One, himself being separated when Samuel anointed him. There is a dual application there but it's greater fulfillment is in Christ and David would have known that. Many of his Psalms do just that. Many of the prophets when they speak of their prophecies they bounce back and forth through different ages of their prophecy, different stages of its fulfillment. And we see the New Testament writers explaining these things to us as Peter is doing here. Peter is saying David is talking about this Jesus even though there was a present meaning, its fuller meaning is now and his audience had every chance to refute Peter, to scoff at Peter at this point and they don't because they can't deny it. This Holy One of God, even the demons recognize Jesus to be the Holy One. Isaiah 49 speaking of Messiah Yahweh, the Redeemer of Israel, their Holy One, the Holy One of Israel. Well, you're not going to say the Holy One of the church because the church didn't exist. It was a non-idea.

They could not even imagine it. To this day there are amongst the Hasidic Jews this passion to reach other Jews and zero passion to reach Gentiles. That is unbiblical but they're listening to their rabbis, their Talmud, their Mishnah and their other writings and they've departed from them. They bring up the law and they bring up Moses and the characters in the Bible when convenient for their points but they're not adhering to their own scripture.

I mean, for instance, Messiah cannot come right now. There are no longer the records of the genealogical records to prove that he's from the line of David. So that little section, that beginning of Matthew's gospel in that third chapter of Luke, they're critical. They're saying here's his royal line from Matthew, from Joseph, in Matthew, from Joseph to Solomon to David and Luke we have the bloodline going from Mary all the way back to Nathan and David.

This covers it all in the mind of the Jew. So they've missed that window but many of them don't want to hear this. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply visit crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Acts, right here on Cross Reference Radio.