Lechem Panim #130 "Peter Indicts The Crowd" (Acts 3:12-16) Pastor Cameron Ury

Hello, and welcome to Lechem Panim. We are glad you are with us today as we continue looking at Acts chapter 3 together. 

A Beggar Healed— You will remember that we have been talking about Peter and John’s healing of a lame beggar outside of the Temple Gate Beautiful in Jerusalem following Pentecost. And the crowds are amazed at the healing, so they are running together to share in this miraculous event. But (like we said before) Peter responds by guiding their focus towards the source of the healing, which wasn’t either him or John; no, it was the name of Jesus Christ. He says in…

Acts 3:12b-16 (ESV) Peter Speaks in Solomon's Portico— “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? 13 The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. 14 But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15 and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. 16 And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

Guilty— Now Peter uses the word "you" four times here to confront his listeners with what they had done to the Messiah. And he doesn't pull any punches. He wants them to feel the enormity of what they’ve done. And this wasn’t to be cruel, but rather flowed from his desire for them to find the healing and forgiveness that comes through faith in Christ. But before they or anybody can do that, there has to be a reckoning. We have to come to terms with our guiltiness before God and the severity of what we have done.

Peter’s Names for Jesus— And in order to highlight what they had done not just to a man, but to the Messiah, Peter uses several different names and titles for Jesus that each had significant Messianic meaning for those in his Jewish audience. And the first of these is: 

His “Servant” Jesus— “His (God’s) Servant Jesus”; a title that is only used four other times in the New Testament (v. 26 ; 4:27 , 30 ; Matt. 12:18 ), but many more times in the Old Testament in reference to the Messiah who was to come. Especially in Isaiah 52:13–53:12 (the last and most memorable of the 4 Messiah/Servant songs) we see the Messiah depicted as God’s Suffering Servant. 

Isaiah 53:2 talks about how the suffering servant had no special beauty or majesty to attract others to him. Now this doesn’t mean Jesus was ugly or anything like that; but there was an ordinary-ness to Jesus’ appearance. He wasn’t a supermodel or anything like that. He didn’t glow, as he often does in the paintings. No, there was this beautiful ordinariness to Jesus. He didn’t come to wow us with His appearance, but rather to identify with ordinary people like you and me, which is pretty extraordinary when you think about it.

Isaiah 53:3 discusses how mankind despised and rejected this servant of God. And when Jesus was on earth, we do see that many (including His own people) rejected Him; because Jesus wanted more than just to save them from Rome. He wanted to confront and deal with their sin. And many people (just like nowadays) didn’t want that; and so they rejected Him and handed Him over to be killed.

Now in Isaiah 53:4-5 we find that it is through suffering that the Messiah would take our place as the recipient of God judgment against sin and bring us ultimate healing. And when you think about it, this really could not be used to describe any of the Old Testament prophets. Although many of them did suffer, Israel (or the world in general) wasn’t healed by their wounds. And that’s the distinction. Isaiah is very clear that by the wounds of this suffering servant, we would be healed.

In Isaiah 53:7 we see that the Suffering Servant doesn’t open his mouth in the face of execution. And you’ll remember that when Jesus was on trial, he didn’t answer any of the charges (Matthew 27:14) brought against Him. No, He remained silent.

In Isaiah 53:9 we find that the Suffering Servant would be assigned a grave with the wicked and yet in death he would be assigned with the rich. And we see that when Jesus dies, He does so between two thieves (the wicked), and yet He is buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea (the rich). Now the chances that any man could fulfill all these prophecies without actually being the Messiah is astronomical. [The details are so minute that no human could have predicted them by accident, and no imposter fulfilled them by cunning.] 

Surprised By Prophecy— In fact there’s a true story of a Christian man I heard of who took a piece of paper with Isaiah 53:5 on it to his secular place of work; only he left out the reference. But he took that piece of paper to all his coworkers and asked them to read it and tell him who the passage was writing about and where it came from in the Bible. And of course the passage reads…

Isaiah 53:5 (NIV)— 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

And without fail, every one of his coworkers said that that passage was about Jesus and it comes from the New Testament. And the Christian man would smile and say “No, that’s what’s so awesome. It’s not from the New Testament at all. It is from the Old Testament, written 700 hundred years before Jesus was even born.” And when he said that, he could tell that many of his coworkers were a bit jarred by this, seeing in this prophecy such a clear description of Jesus. And that’s why Peter draws his people’s attention to it; because it so clearly reveals how Jesus is the Suffering Servant that Isaiah had prophesied about.

The Holy One— Now the next title Peter uses is the title “The Holy One”; and “The Holy One” is another Old Testament title for the Messiah, seen particularly in Psalm 16:10, which Peter had quoted in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost. It reads…

Psalm 16:10 (ESV)— 10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.

And we see that even during the ministry of Jesus, Peter already recognized Jesus as the fulfillment of this title. Speaking for the rest of the disciples, Peter had said to Jesus in…

John 6:69 (ESV)— 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

There was not a Jew alive who would not have recognized the Messiah by that title.

The Just/Righteous One— Next, Peter calls Jesus the Just/Righteous One. And this title [carries the idea of being innocent of any crime.] You will remember that Pilate would at every Passover release to the Jews a prisoner. And so he had given them a choice between Jesus, their innocent Messiah, and the guilty murderer Barabbas. And (instigated by the Jewish leaders) the people chose Barabbas. And what makes this story so unbelievable and tragic is that even pagans, such as Pilate, Pilate’s wife (Matt. 27:19) and the Roman centurion (Luke 23:47) standing near the cross recognized what Israel could not; and that was that Jesus was innocent and righteous. And so Peter’s indictment here of this grave sin of hiss people is both devastatingly direct and convicting.

Prince of Life— And the next title Peter uses to describe Jesus is “The Prince of Life.” And the Greek word here for “prince” actually [means originator, pioneer, or beginner of something. Both Heb. 2:10 and 12:2 translate it “author.” {And your translation may have that here as well. But} It describes Jesus as the Divine Originator of life (cf. Ps. 36:9; Heb. 2:10; 12:2; 1 John 5:11, 20 ).] [That is a claim of deity for Jesus, since Psalm 36:9 describes God as the “fountain of life.”] He is the source of all that is living. 

The Resurrection— Now in verse 15 Peter shifts from talking about the gravity of their sin (the murder of the Messiah) and states two very important facts. The first is that God raised Jesus from the dead and the second is that they (the apostles) are witnesses of that. Now you’ll notice that every sermon in the book of Acts is built around the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That historical event was the foundation of everything else. And the reason for this is most clearly stated in…

1 Corinthians 15:17 (ESV)— 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 

Validation— If Jesus has been raised, His claims to be the Messiah, the Son of God, and his ability to forgive sins would all be validated. If Jesus was not raised, Christianity would fall apart. Now Peter is able to proclaim the resurrection boldly because really at this point it was undeniable. If Jesus had not been raised (because the disciples went to the wrong tomb or some other mistake had been made) all the Jewish leaders would have had to do would have been to produce the body; to say “No, wait! Here it is!” But they never did. And what would have made Jesus’ resurrection even harder to refute at this point was the fact that this lame beggar was healed. You see Peter and John had healed this man in the name of Jesus. And they themselves were only ordinary fishermen. How could they do this unless God was with them; and God would not validate men preaching in the name of a false messiah. And so what we see Peter doing is he’s basically turning the temple here into a courtroom, laying out clearly irrefutable evidence that Jesus is that very messiah. And I mean it would have been pretty hard for anybody to argue against their claims because (think about it) the beggar was standing right there in front of them all in (the text says) “perfect soundness” (Acts 3:16; 4:14). And yet if they were to accept this miracle, they would have to accept what this miracle pointed to; namely that Jesus is the Messiah and the very Son of God.

​Believe in His Name— And similarly with us, our salvation must begin with our belief in Jesus as the Resurrected Son of God. If (as John 20:30-31 says) we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, we will have life in his name. Let us believe in Him today. Amen.