(Today’s audio reading on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7wgUdrNcSBqtOKo4muQaEA)
“So let everyone in Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah!” (Acts 2:36)
The Preacher comes to his powerful and personal climax. “Don’t miss this!” In fact, let everyone know this for certain: this Jesus that I have described to you is the Master, and he is the Messiah!
Imagine a Jewish preacher announcing publicly to those who had no teaching, no knowledge, no personal acquaintance with Jesus of Nazareth that indeed Jesus was The One that the Jews had been waiting to meet for centuries! Peter’s description and argumentation were clear. He was not hesitating, or hedging his words with “maybe this is true; you might want to look into it sometime.” Or, “I don’t really know for sure, but it seems to me that…” No sir, none of that approach. He was 100% certain that what he had witnessed was true.
I think back to the opening of John’s Gospel account. In John 1:41, Andrew tells his brother Peter, this same Peter the Preacher, “We have found the Messiah.” Peter’s walk with Jesus began with that personal introduction. In Jesus’ first meeting with Peter, the Scripture says he looked intently at Simon, and tells him his name will now be Cephas, or Peter (or Rock).
Interestingly here, three plus years down the road, Rock the Preacher who “found the Messiah” also, pointed directly at his audience as the ones who were responsible for the crucifixion of this Messiah Jesus. He called them out bluntly with the words “whom you crucified”. This was not a letting-them-off-the-hook, third party reference “whom someone else crucified” but a second person, directly-in-their-face reference, “whom you crucified.”
This central message of the Pentecost Day sermon occurs again in Acts. Basically the presentation is: You killed Him, God raised Him. The One God raised is the Messiah. You who killed Him are responsible. You have a Messiah to deal with. You can stop your searching and your hopes to see if he might show up one day. If any one of you think you’ve done a good thing by silencing the itinerant teacher from Galilee, think again. The Messiah has been walking among us. The evidences are clear. The message is unequivocal. God has made Him both Lord and Messiah.
“Father, thank you that the central message of Jesus as the Messiah is clear, and has been delivered!”
Freddy Boswell 