Easter Credentials

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“This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.”

Acts 2:23-25

Main Readings: John 20 & Acts 2:21-40

I assume that, like me, most of you will have, at one time or another, compiled a CV in preparation for applying for a new job.

On that CV, you will have listed all your credentials. You will have talked about your education. You will have outlined your previous employment. You will have even shared your hobbies and interests.

And you will have done this because you want to demonstrate to a would-be employer that you are fit; that you are worthy; that you are well-suited for the role for which you are applying.

A CV is a vital first step in the process of finding a new job.

It usually even precedes any kind of conversation with an employer. Their first impression of you will be based on this piece of paper.

And because that document – your CV – is a mixture of your qualifications and of your own testimony about yourself, what we tend to add at the foot of a CV are one or two references for good measure.

These are usually former employers, or a line manager who knows you well; who has worked with you closely; and who can vouch for your worthiness or fitness as an employee.

Your future employer can call on these references to get a deeper and more convincing idea of your character and your suitability for the role.

It might seem strange to kick an easter message off with talk of CV’s. But it is because, what we have here in Acts chapter 2 reads a little like a CV for the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

So, I want to use this passage to commend Jesus to you.

I think there’s enough here in Acts 2, about Jesus, for every single one of us to walk away totally convinced that he is who says he is.

So, what is it that he says he is? What role does Jesus claim to be fit for?

We can see it for ourselves in verse 38 – at the end of the passage – and in verse 21 at the beginning of the passage.

The one at the end of the passage names Jesus and the one at the beginning of the passage refers to him as ‘Lord’, which is one of his titles.

Verse 38 (the one at the end) says, ‘Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins’.

So, right there, the claim is that there is ‘forgiveness of sins’ to be had for anyone who repents and, by baptism, shows their heart-felt faith in Jesus.

And by ‘faith’, what I mean is, embracing everything that we’re about to encounter about Jesus as being true, and being for you personally.

So, in verse 38 Jesus (in the mouth of his follower) makes this bold - potentially life-changing claim - that he is fit for the role of providing forgiveness for sins.

But verse 21 adds an extra piece of information about the role Jesus claims fitness for which is also essential.

It says, ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’.

The extra dimension here is that forgiveness of sins means salvation.

In verse 38, forgiveness of sin came through the name of Jesus. Here in verse 21, salvation comes through the name of Jesus.

And this is essential because the phrase ‘forgiveness of sins’ is not telling us why that is something we need, but the word ‘salvation’ absolutely is.

The word ‘salvation’ conveys to us that we need to be saved fromsomething. Namely we need to be saved from the consequences of unforgiven sins.

If sins go unforgiven then we must be punished.

And if sins get forgiven then we get to go totally unpunished.

A crucial truth that we’ve got to see!

Forgiveness of sins - or as verse 21 puts it, ‘salvation’ -is the greatest need of every single person on the planet now. And Jesus is claiming to be the one person in all history who is fit to fulfil the role of saviour!

That’s a very bold claim! I dare say, few in the history of the world have made such a bold claim! Nevertheless, this is Jesus’ claim.

And what we must ask ourselves is, does that claim have a CV and references that endorse it?

Acts chapter 2 here is telling us that it does. Jesus is really who he says he is. He is really fit for the role of Saviour.

And because that is true, we really do have a sin problem to face up to, and we really can receive forgiveness for those sins and salvationat the hands of Jesus.

So, I want to lead you now, down a path – a good path - showing you how Jesus is fit for the role of your personal saviour.

And my prayer is that at the end of the path you will all be convincedthat you must call on the name of Jesus, if you haven’t already.

Or if you have already, you will rejoice all over again at how fit he is to be your saviour; and how worthy he is to be called your Lord!

The account we have in front of us is the record of a speech made by the disciple of Jesus, Peter – the one who famously denied Jesus three times because he was afraid of being counted with him.

But, whilst the speech belongs to Peter, the record of Acts belongs to Luke, who was not one of Jesus’ disciples. But who was a doctor and an historian; who wrote one of the four gospel accounts; and who witnessed first-hand how the good news about Jesus spread from Jerusalem after the death of Jesus.

So, we have two references right here to kick us off.

This path I’m leading you down has four paving stones that I want to take you along. The first is right there in verse 22.

It says, ‘Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him’.

So, the first thing on Jesus’ CV are accreditations as to his fitness to be saviour.

God worked by Jesus to accredit to us this Jesus. Miracles, signs and wonders.

And these are not difficult to find record of. The gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - are jam-packed full of details about Jesus’ life and ministry that show that signs, wonders and miracles worked by Jesus were part of the everyday experience of being with him.

These diverse witnesses attest to the same miracles and wonders that Jesus performed, showing himself to be the divine Son of God with power.

He fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes for example. He raised a dead man called Lazarus to life. He healed the sick and made the lame to walk. He cast out demons and walked on water.

He also spoke like no one before him or after him.

He spoke to forgive sins.

He called out the empty religionists of his day; and He embraced the wayward and the defiled sinners who looked to him for help.

And in it all, no sin was found in his mouth.

He even revealed himself to a man called Paul after he had departed this world, and both Paul himself, and Luke here in Acts, bear witness to the fact separately.

There is simply not enough space to talk about all the accreditationsthat Jesus has to his name from separate and reliable sources as to his signs, his wonders and his miracles.

But, whilst the signs, wonders and miracles accredit him to us - in the sense that we might believe him to be who he says he is - they alsoaccredit him in the sense of his worthiness for the next steppingstone.

As Jesus undertook all the signs, wonders and miracles; and as he did them engaging with, well, thousands of people; and as he did them with perfect motive and perfect execution, he was qualifying himself for the work he had come to do – namely to die.

Nobody needs to qualify themselves for death; everyone is bornqualified for that. Yet not one of us can die with a purpose equal to the purpose for which Jesus died.

Because the purpose for his death was to bear away the sins of his people. Nobody else ever has, or ever will, die with that impossiblepurpose.

When verse 38 talks of ‘forgiveness of sins’ it does not mean that God just imagines our sins away.

That can’t happen!

God would not be God in that case!

When we are sinned against, we are well aware that we have sinned against others ten-thousand times.

That’s not the case with God!

He has never sinned against anyone. He is holy, and upright, and good; and the sins people have committed against him must be satisfied or God’s righteousness and holiness can’t be upheld.

No satisfaction for sin / no peace with God!

No peace with God / no hope of heaven.

In short, the sins that need to be forgiven need to be punished somewhere. And that ‘somewhere’ is on the cross; it’s on Jesus.

For him to qualify for that role, he had to be a sinless sin-bearer. God’s holiness could not have been satisfied; sins could not have been forgiven, had Jesus not been qualified as a sinless sacrificial lamb.

So, Jesus’ sinless, holy, accredited life befits him for his sin-bearing cross-work and his death on behalf of sinners so that their sins can be forgiven.

Verse 22 says that ‘God accredited Jesus’. That’s a big deal because it means that, as Jesus went to the cross, he was endorsed by God.

And to add weight to that idea, verse 23 says that God, having accredited Jesus, made sure that he was handed over to those who would put him death.

It says it was by God’s ‘deliberate plan and foreknowledge’ that he was handed over to the Jews and with ‘the help of wicked men’ they ‘put him to death by nailing him to the cross’.

So, all of Jesus’ credentials here are serving God’s amazing plan to rescue sinful people by sending Jesus to the cross for them.

Is it any wonder this is called ‘good news’? Any wonder we call the day Jesus died ‘good’ Friday?

Jesus’ death was steppingstone number two on the path.

Steppingstone number three is there in verse 24.

We think of death as so final and that’s why Luke starts verse 24 with the word ‘But’. ‘But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him’.

Here we are! It’s resurrection Sunday! And steppingstone number three is Jesus’ resurrection.

You know, when Jesus went to the cross, he went silently, and he went willingly. As a sheep is silent before it’s shearers so he did not open his mouth. He fulfilled his work on the cross to absolute perfection.

He hung there from 9AM until midday when the darkness covered the land. And then he hung there from noon until 3pm bearing the horrorsof God’s anger and wrath against sin.

He could have called a legion of angels to come to his aid, at any moment, if he had wanted, but in that case, he wouldn’t have completed his work.

And so, he bore it, and bore it, and bore it, until finally he could say, ‘itis finished’. The work was done, his body was broken; his blood was shed; he was numbered among the transgressors; and his life was spent.

And at that moment, when he died, God was perfectly delighted in Jesus. He was well-pleased with him.

And it was as if all creation from that moment of his death and for the next three days was groaning.

There was an unholy agony – is the word verse 24 uses - about the holy one of God being held in bondage by death. In fact, verse 24 saysdeath couldn’t hold on to him any longer.

Jesus was so holy; death could not have its way with him. And so, God raised Jesus up from the grave.

The grave was no fit place for Jesus.

As Peter says in verse 31, ‘he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it’.

The fourth, and final, steppingstone on the path is that ‘this Jesus’, accredited to us through the signs and miracles; qualified as a lamb without blemish for the cross; completing that work faithfully and perfectly; qualified to receive life from the dead; by his victory over death, was the first fruits from the grave, and is therefore qualifiedto be exalted to the right hand of God.

He was raised from the dead with power – with an indestructible life! And by his resurrection he guarantees life from the dead for his people also.

Therefore, his is, a kingdom, and a power, and a dominion that will last for ever and ever because death could not conquer him.

Verse 33 calls this position, ‘exalted at the right hand of God’. Verse 36 describes it like this, ‘God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah’.

Quoting one of the Psalms of king David, Peter describes it like this, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’.

Jesus is exalted at the right hand of God. He is Lord and deliverer - the messiah - of his people!

So, what does all this mean for us?

It means that Jesus is the perfect Son of God who has lived a perfect life; died a perfect and effectual death; whose holiness death could notcontend with; who is risen and is exalted at the right hand of God.

It means his CV bears every single last necessary quality of someone who is fit to present himself as our personal eternal and essential saviour.

Verses 25-28 are from another Psalm of David. When David wrote them, he wrote them based on the promise God had made to him that God would place one of his descendants on his throne forever.

And so, Peter quotes the Psalm to support the truth that God raised Jesus from the dead.

In other words:

It is Jesus who was not shaken from completing his work, because God was at his right hand when he went to the cross.

It was Jesus’ body that rested in hope of his resurrection.

It was Jesus who was not abandoned to the realm of the dead.

It was Jesus who God would not allow to see decay.

It was Jesus to whom God made known the paths of life.

And it was Jesus who was filled with joy in the presence of God when he was exalted.

And that’s gloriously good news for us!

Because Jesus was all of these things, they also then apply to all the people who belong to him.

So that means:

By faith in Jesus, we will not be shaken in the face of death.

By faith in Jesus, our bodies will rest in hope of the resurrection from the dead.

By faith in Jesus, we will not be abandoned to the realm of the dead.

By faith in Jesus, we will get resurrected bodies that can never die again.

By faith in Jesus, we will know the paths of life.

And by faith in Jesus, we will have fulness of joy in his presence for ever more.

In our sins we cannot have the hope of any of these everlasting realities. But with our sins forgiven all these are ours!

Peter wanted forgiveness of sins and peace with God for all his audience. So, Luke says in verse 40 that with many other words ‘he warned them; and pleaded with them, “save yourselves from this corrupt generation”’.

In every generation, people think that the generation they live in offers them everything they can possibly expect to receive. But Peter says, ‘save yourselves from this corrupt generation’.

In reality, every generation only sells a better kind of misery that results in the same thing: death.

By ‘save yourself’ he means: do what verse 21 and verse 38 say to do. Believe in this Jesus with all his perfect credentials that fit him for the role of your personal saviour; repent of your sins; call on the name of Jesus for forgiveness; and be saved.

He says in verse 39, this promise if for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.

There is no one who is excluded from God’s offer. It’s a promise that can be taken hold of by anyone.

God is calling everyone in this room, in this town, in this generation to call on the name of Jesus and be saved.

And in Jesus, everything necessary has been done.

All we must do – and we must - is call on the name of Jesus and we will receive the promise God has guaranteed for us through the worthiness of Jesus.