Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [13]
I grabbed a pack of cookies, which happened to occupy the same half of the store as barbecue potato chips. What a wonderful world this is—cookies and barbecue chips under the same roof! On the way to the checkout counter, I spotted some ice cream. Within a few minutes I’d filled the basket with every essential item for a happy and fulfilled life. I checked out and drove home.
Denalyn looked at my purchases, then at me. Can you guess her question? All together now: “Where’s the bread?”
I went back to the grocery store.
I forgot the big item. The one thing I went to get. The one essential product. I forgot the bread.
Might we make the same mistake in a more critical arena? In an effort to do good, we can get distracted. We feed people. We encourage, heal, help, and serve. We address racial issues and poverty. Yet there is one duty we must fulfill. We can’t forget the bread.
Peter didn’t.
Now, listen to what I have to say about Jesus from Nazareth. God proved that he sent Jesus to you by having him work miracles, wonders, and signs. All of you know this. God had already planned and decided that Jesus would be handed over to you. So you took him and had evil men put him to death on a cross. But God set him free from death and raised him to life. Death could not hold him in its power. (Acts 2:22–24 CEV)
Peter was responding to the question of the people: “Whatever could this mean?” (2:12). The sound of rushing wind, the images of fire, the sudden linguistic skills of the disciples . . . whatever could these occurrences mean? He positioned himself over the plaza full of people and proceeded to introduce the crowd to Jesus. Jerusalemites had surely heard of Jesus. He was the subject of a headline-grabbing trial and execution seven weeks before. But did they know Jesus? In rapid succession Peter fired a trio of God-given endorsements of Christ.
1. “God proved that he sent Jesus to you by having him work miracles, wonders, and signs” (v. 22 CEV).
Jesus’ miracles were proof of his divinity. When he healed bodies and fed hungry bellies, when he commanded the waves as casually as a four-star general does the private, when he called life out of Lazarus’s dead body and sight out of the blind man’s eyes, these miracles were God’s endorsement. God gave Jesus his seal of approval.
2. Then God delivered him to death. “[He] had already planned and decided that Jesus would be handed over to you. So you took him and had evil men put him to death on a cross” (v. 23 CEV).
God deemed Christ worthy of God’s most important mission—to serve as a sacrifice for humankind. Not just anyone could do this. How could a sinner die for sinners? Impossible. The Lamb of God had to be perfect, flawless, and sinless. When the Romans nailed Jesus to the cross, God was singling him out as the only sinless being ever to walk the face of the earth, the only person qualified to bear “our sins in His own body” (1 Peter 2:24). The cross, a tool of shame, was actually a badge of honor, a badge bestowed one time, to one man, Jesus of Nazareth. But God did not leave Jesus in the tomb.
3. “God set him free from death and raised him to life. Death could not hold him in its power” (Acts 2:24 CEV).
Deep within the dark sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea, behind the secured and sealed rock of the Romans, amid the sleeping corpses and silent graves of the Jews, God did his greatest work. He spoke to the dead body of his incarnate Son. With hell’s demons and heaven’s angels watching, he called on the Rose of Sharon to lift his head, the Lion of Judah to stretch his paws, the Bright and Morning Star to shine forth his light, the Alpha and Omega to be the beginning of life and the end of the grave. “God untied the death ropes and raised him up. Death was no match for him” (v. 24 MSG).
I envision Peter pausing at this point in his sermon. I can hear words echo off the Jerusalem