In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of understanding Scripture and how it is the product of the Holy Spirit. He highlights the significance of Peter's realization that the experience of Pentecost was a fulfillment of God's promises in Christ. The preacher then focuses on Acts 2:36, which declares that God exalted Jesus as Lord. He explores the depths of Jesus' humiliation through his crucifixion and death at the hands of lawless men. The sermon concludes with a prayer for forgiveness and a hymn that exalts Jesus as the victorious Savior.

We return again this morning to the theme that is occupying us in these days, the subject from Simon to Peter, and we have come now to look at the ministry of the Holy Spirit in relation to this man as we have it recorded in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Currently, we have begun to look at the ministry of the Spirit in relation to Peter's mind. Last Lord's Day morning, we spent just a little time trying to emphasize the importance of the mind in Christian experience and in Christian discipleship. It's very significant that when we come to the rest of the New Testament, a man like Peter who was not a product of the colleges but a fisherman—perhaps that is as good a college as any—but he was an ex-fisherman. It was this man, among others, who summoned Christians to brace up the loins of their minds. Now, that's a very masculine phrase and meaningful. In other words, this man had learned that to be an effective Christian, you have to use your mind. When the Holy Spirit comes upon men in power and in grace, the mind is never in abeyance. When evil spirits come upon people, the mind is generally in abeyance. Now, this is a major distinction. When an evil spirit comes among men, the mind is more or less sent into limbo. But when the Spirit of God comes upon men, the mind comes to its own. And in the words of Kepler, men look at the universe and men look at the stars and men look at the world within, and they begin to think God's own thoughts after him. In other words, the Holy Spirit of God illumines the mind, brings the intellect into its proper place. Not that Christianity is all intellect, by no means. You can't read the second chapter of the book of the Acts and come to that conclusion. Christianity involves the whole man, but the mind is involved. There is no such thing as a mindless Christianity. Well now, having said that, Peter's mind has come under the inspiration and under the power and ministry of the Holy Spirit. And the very first thing that happened, and the major thing that happened, in that everything else is dependent upon this, Simon Peter, the once impetuous fisherman, now has an almost unparalleled understanding of Scripture. I'm not going to go over this this morning. This is one of my failings. I lose a lot of time going back over old things. But when truth grips you, what can you do? It is exceedingly important. The mind comes to understand Scripture, because Scripture is the product of the Holy Spirit. This is his masterpiece. And if the Spirit of God has come upon you in power, the first thing he will do is this. He'll teach you the Scriptures. Now, arising out of that, we come to what we have before us today. The Holy Spirit gave Peter a new appreciation of the Savior, but a new appreciation of the Savior against the background of a new understanding of the Scripture. Now, if I had to take one text today, I would take verse 36 in Acts chapter 2. But really, our message is based upon the preceding passage, going back to about verse 14. But let me read verse 36. Therefore—this is the capstone to it all—therefore, says Peter, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ. God has made him Lord and Christ. Now, all that Peter did, all the ministry of Peter emerges out of this conviction concerning the passion and the work of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Little else is possible until the Spirit has given us to understand the Scriptures. When once he gives us to understand the Scriptures, then we are in a position to recognize the glories of the Savior. And when once we behold the glories of the Savior as he is presented in Scripture, then we have the answer not only to our own questionings, but to the questionings of men in the world and in the church. It is most significant that one of the very first benefits, then, imparted to Peter is this. It's a new comprehension, a new understanding, something he's never had before, even when he was with Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh. A new understanding of the person and of the work of the Lord Jesus. But, of course, when you come to think of it, our Lord had promised this, had he not. He said that he was going to the Father, and having arrived, he would send forth the Holy Spirit. And he promised that one of the ministries of the Spirit would be this, he shall glorify me. And it is, of course, wherever the Holy Spirit comes in his power and in his grace, wherever the Spirit of God is, he will always exalt our Lord Jesus Christ. You may assess every spurious experience in the light of this principle. Where the Holy Spirit is, Jesus Christ will be central. He is the sun around which the whole world henceforth revolve. Well, now let's look at this. I suppose it will be helpful if we look at it in this way. There are two foci here, around which, in the first place, Peter explains how God made Jesus to be Lord. That is our first point this morning. God made Jesus Lord. This is something that came to Peter. This is something that he understood, not simply by way of a spiritual hunch. Do you use that language here? I don't think I've heard it, but it's probably used. It's not that he just thought of it, or he felt this may be so, but he was given an understanding of it from the Scriptures and from experience. God made Jesus Lord. And there are two foci that we should look at which bring this truth out. There it is in verse 36. Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him Lord. Doubtless, Peter knew this in some measure before Pentecost. I don't think we need to pause to stress that, do we? It could not be otherwise. How else could he have made that very remarkable utterance at Caesarea Philippi, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God? In a sense, that means a recognition, that implies a recognition, that Jesus is Lord. Lord upon earth, at that point, the kingdom, the rule of God has come in him. And he is there as man, but as man he is Lord of circumstances. Peter had lived with him, lived with him at close quarters, watched him. But when he had seen him die, die the cruel death of the cross, and over and above that he had beheld him again to be mightily active after his passion. Active in power, even power that he did not previously possess. In other words, Peter knew that he was risen from the dead. So he knew something about this before Pentecost. At the same time, something new happened at Pentecost. Something altogether new. And I suppose we can put it in this way. Until Pentecost, Simon Peter knew everything that he had seen and the significance of what he had seen. Jesus was more than man. Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. But what really came home at Pentecost was this. Everything that he has seen Jesus do in life, in death, in resurrection power, everything that he has seen him do, fulfills a divine purpose that had been foretold in the Scriptures. Now you see, this is really telling. It isn't simply that Jesus rose from the dead. Any more than it is simply that he died on the cross. But he died to fulfill a predetermined pattern. And he rose according to the promise. And this is the thing that comes out. This is the vision of Christ according to the Scriptures. Nothing is accidental. Nothing is haphazard. But everything that happened was foretold and is now fulfilled. Now you've only to ponder for a little while upon this theme to see what a mighty thing it is. Yes, yes, Jesus is Lord. But God made him so. God promised that he would be and God has made him so. Now let's examine this as we've indicated from the two foci that are mentioned here. We look first of all at the depths out of which God exalted his Son. And then we look at the height to which God elevated him. First of all we look at the depths out of which God raised and exalted his Son Jesus. Now if you have the book of the Acts open before you, there are some words here that are crucial. We are given some unadorned indication of these imponderable depths of our Lord's humiliation when Peter reminds the Jews of Jerusalem that day in these words, verse 23, this Jesus you crucified, underline crucify, and killed, underline killed, by the hands of lawless men, underline lawless men in your mind. Every word is meaningful. Jesus was crucified. How familiar we are with this. So familiar that perhaps we miss the real significance of it. Jesus did not simply die. Jesus was crucified. You say what's the difference? The difference is this. They arranged for him a kind of death that belongs to the accursed of God. Now if you want to follow this through, you read Deuteronomy 21 and verse 23 and Galatians 3 13 and bring these scriptures together and you will see what is implied. There is something bigger here than simply a statement that Jesus died. He was crucified. What did men do with him? They arranged for him the kind of death that is the most dishonorable imaginable. He could not go lower in death than to be crucified because it is written cursed. Cursed is every man that hangeth on a tree. This savage sentence was the most derogatory that man could meet out. They crucified him. They killed him. He was murdered. That's the word. Since the prisoner was more than once announced by his judges to be innocent, you cannot put the death of Jesus in the category which, according to scripture, permits duly constituted authorities in the realm to invoke capital punishment upon capital offenders. Now this was not that because the judge more than once said that Jesus was innocent. Now you read the records and you've got it quite clearly. Pilate said at least twice that Jesus was innocent. I find no fault in him. The accusations that you bring against him, says he to the Jews, they don't stand. I find no fault in him. What then shall I do with him? So you see, this is not the state by the power given it by God executing capital punishment upon a capital offense. It's not that. This is plain black murder. And the Bible says it. It is plain black murder. And it is the murder of the incarnate Lord. It was not legally justified. And because it was not legally justified, it was conceived by lawless men, and it was executed by lawless men. You see, it couldn't be plainer. This is not the law taking its course. This is lawless men taking matters into their own hands against one who has fulfilled the law in its letter and in its spirit. One other thing, if you want to plumb the depths out of which God raised and elevated his Son, come to verse 31. He was not abandoned in Hades, says Peter. He was not abandoned. He was not left in hell. Now, the only thing I want you to notice there is this. Not the thing, not the point, not the truth that is on the surface. He was not abandoned there. God did not leave him there. But this, he was there. There is a mystery here, and we must be very careful that we don't pretend, we don't appear to say that we understand it all. The only measure of understanding that we have of it is when we hear our Lord Jesus in that cry of dereliction, crying this, My God, my God, why art thou forsaken? And if that is what the apostles' creed means when it says that he descended into hell, then it is right. If it means anything else, it may be wrong. In other words, he knew what it was to be forsaken of God because he bore the curse of our sin. And in that experience of God-forsakenness, he entered into hell. But he was left there. In other words, he went and he tasted death for every man, but God did not leave him there. There are the depths out of which God exalted him. Now look at the heights to which God raised his Son. Here is the other foci. From the depths to the heights, God made him Lord, says Peter, verses 24 and 25, and then verses 32 and 33. I must read these. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him, I saw the Lord always before me. I'm not going further there, but on to verse 32. This Jesus, God raised up, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God. It is he who has poured forth this which you now see and hear. Here, my friends, we see the murdered, accursed victim leave behind the dark abode of the underworld to which he went, shake the chains off him, and liberated, he ascends to the highest place that heaven affords, because it is his and his by right. God made him Lord. Having laid him low, God lifted him high. Now how did Peter know this? How did Peter know? Isn't this conjecture? I hear liberal men, I hear liberal theologians coming to us, and they're saying, oh, that's all in the realm of conjecture and of fancy and of subjective thought and so forth. How did Peter know this? Did he? He did all right. So would you, had you been in his shoes? He knew it in the first place because Jesus has sent forth the Holy Spirit as he promised. Jesus said to his disciples that when he would go away and when he would come to the place of power and authority, he would do something that no one else had done or could do. He would send another to take his place, another paraclete who was like himself. But I, you cannot command deity. I have listened to my brethren in prayer, and I listen sometimes to myself. We beg and we crave and we cry and we yearn, but there is one thing we cannot do effectively, and that is command the deity. Many of us would like to do that in our arrogance perhaps, but there is one thing we cannot do when I cannot say infallibly, I'll go out through that door and God will do so and so. But here is one, son of Mary, son of God, who says, I'm going to die, I'm going to rise again, and I'm going to go back home to the Father, and when I get there, I'm going to send forth the Holy Spirit, the third person of the blessed Trinity, very God of very God. I'm going to send him forth. If you say, when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all together in one place and of one mind, and he died. But that's not the only thing. That was the experiential part of it. Then Peter, by the ministry of the Spirit, saw that all this was promised by Joel. So this again doesn't fall into the realm of accident or of something that simply happened. God purposed it. God promised it. God revealed to his son the kind of thing that would happen, so that when Jesus promised the paraclete, he wasn't saying something out of his own heart merely. He was speaking as the Son of God in fellowship with his Father. He knew what was coming. And he died. Will you note therefore that what really convinced Peter, and sorry I'm stressing this over and over again, what really convinced Peter was not simply the experience of Pentecost, that was the backlog. But over against that, he saw that this whole thing had been promised by God, had been fulfilled by God in Christ. Therefore, he put the pieces together, and he danced with joy, and he preached with conviction. God has made him Lord. I remember preaching on a passage from the book of the Revelation, which is the same theme in a Baptist church. One day, and I had no sooner finished than the organist must have passed a note or something along the grapevine, and it was a lady, and she struck up that lovely hymn. She, God has exalted him far above all. And the whole choir unannounced, somehow or other, caught the strength. Oh my friend, have you caught something of the thrill of it? God has exalted him far above all. God did it, and he promised it beforehand, and he fulfilled it in time. That's the view of Jesus Christ that sends men out into a world with conviction. Yes, there is the experience of the Spirit. I spoke with tongues. He changed me. He gave me power. He gave me grace. Yes, yes. He changed my personality in the sense that he enabled me to fit in with other people and to feel that I belonged to the fellowship. He did that. But the thing that convinced the mind was this, the Christ of the Scriptures, the vision of the promise and of the fulfillment, first of the Son, then of the Spirit, so that everything here comes into the category of divine fulfillment. And just say one word about the other matter here. God also hath made him Christ. God made him Lord. God made him Christ. Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now, you are familiar with this term, Christ, Messiah. It means anointed. When we think of it generally, we think of Jesus as the anointed one, the anointed of God. God did anoint Jesus of Nazareth to be the Savior of men. Just one reference to that. Looking down the corridors of time, as you and I can't do, God upon his throne looked down into the unborn ages. And from among men, Jews and Gentiles, all kinds of people, he put his hand, he put his mind upon one, Jesus of Nazareth. And in eternity, before he was born of the Virgin, he anointed him to be Savior. In the fullness of the time when the time was come, he was conceived of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost came out and he was conceived in the Virgin's womb. When he began his public ministry, the Holy Spirit came upon him that he should involve the Spirit in everything he did. When eventually he stood before men, he said, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach glad tidings and so forth. So as he taught and as he brought miracles and as he did this, that, and as he died on the cross, he did everything in the power of the Spirit. He was the anointed one. The anointed one. God made him Messiah. But now what we have in the context of Acts 2 is something different, related but different. What we have here is a complementary truth making the two one. The Messiah is here, not simply the anointed one, but the anointer. God made Jesus not only the anointed one, but the anointer of his body, the anointer of his church, the anointer of the redeemed, the one who shares the Holy Spirit with a whole body of believing men. If the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and his exaltation show that he was God's anointed, what happened when he arrived at the right hand of the majesty upon high proves him to be the anointer. For having received of the Father the gift of the Holy Ghost, he, says Peter, poured him forth upon whom? Forth upon his body, forth upon the believing community. He poured out the Spirit that he himself was given in order that the whole body, the whole community of redeemed men should share in the ministry of the Holy One. Now can I say one word here by way of explanation? When Jesus Christ entered the throne at his exaltation, when he returned to heaven, it wasn't simply that the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, returned home. It was that, but it was more. You know, something happened in heaven at the exaltation of Jesus Christ that had never happened before. Did you know that? He was there as the Son of God eternally, out of the ivory palaces into this world of woe. Only his great eternal love made my Savior go. That was his home, and he returned home as the Son of God. When he ascended now on high and led captivity captive, he ascended not simply as the Son of God, but as Son of Mary. He ascended in his glorified humanity. He ascended as the Lamb into the midst of the throne, and this is all different. You see, what the New Testament is trying to say to us is this. He is now there as our representative. He is now there as glorified man. He is now there as Messiah. He is now there as our Savior, or let me put it like this. He is now there as the head of the church, as the shepherd of the sheep, as the mediator of the new covenant. You say, what difference does all that make? It's all dry theology. Oh, my good people, don't talk like that. But difference it makes. Look at it. He, the exalted head who died in our place on the cross, who was buried for us and was risen for us, is now ascended for us. God gives him the Holy Spirit, and he can't keep it for himself because he represents us. So, says Peter, because he represents us, he pours the whole vial of ointment upon the head of the church, and that's what then becomes what? He received it in his representative capacity, and he shared it. We talk about that dear sinner breaking her alabaster box of precious ointment at the feet of Jesus. I'll tell you of something even better than that. Here is Jesus of Nazareth, my Lord and representative and substitute, breaking his alabaster box upon the head of the church. There's a picture of this, you know, symbolic picture, in one of the psalms. I don't know whether you like this language. Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. Remember, the psalmist describes it like this. It is like the precious oil upon the head running down upon the beard. Now, I haven't got a beard, so I can't point to it. It starts on the head and it goes down to the beard. And then, not only upon the beard of Aaron, but running down on the collar of his robes, and you can see it flowing all the way down. Jesus is the head of the church. Jesus is the Lord of his people. Jesus is the King of the redeemed. Jesus is my Savior and yours, believer. The Holy Spirit was poured upon the head on the day of Pentecost. The benefit that was poured upon the head in a representative capacity was now shared. So that the least profited on the day of Pentecost, and from that day forward, the blessing and the promise is unto you, Sister Peter, and to your children, and to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. God has made him Lord. God has made him Christ. This is our Savior. Now, can I close then? What has the Holy Spirit done for Peter, given him a great experience? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And what was the experience? Well, one facet of it had to do with a mind. Illumining the mind and illumining the scriptures for the mind. And in understanding the scriptures, the first thing that he saw was God had promised the Holy Spirit of Pentecost to his prophet. It was a plan of God. It was promised by God. It was fulfilled by God. So the whole thing is a movement of God, and that is something. The same goes for the coming of the Lord Jesus. He was anointed of God. He was the promised deliverer. He was the Savior who should die, and he was the Savior who, having died, was destined to rise again, even to the throne of the Father, to receive for us what God would give us, to save our souls and transform our lives and sanctify us after his image. God made him Lord, and God made him Christ. What shall we say to these things? Hallelujah. God be praised. May our minds be likewise so illumined that our souls may be so convinced that with an equal sense of the glory and the privilege we may go out into a dying world with a living Savior to declare and to exhibit in our lives. Let us pray. Father, we cannot other than bow in awe when we consider these things. Somehow or other, the very realization of it requires that we cause an adoring wonder. For there are no words that are adequate wherewith to express ourselves and our yearnings for ourselves and for others, especially, O Lord, that we should know the Christ of the Scriptures, and so know him that with conviction as well as affection we may declare him to a needy and a dying world. O Lord, hear these our prayers and forgive the multitude of our sin. If in any wise we have in ignorance been ashamed of Jesus, forgive us, O Lord, forgive us, forgive us. Spirits of Pentecost, burn the dross of sin from us and implant holy convictions now within that will send us out to the place of duty with joy unspeakable and full of glory. We ask it in the Savior's name. Amen. Our closing hymn is number 205. Look, ye saints, the sight is glorious. See the man of sorrows now from the fight returned victorious. Every knee to him shall bow. 205. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be with us all now and always. Amen.