Please stay with us and at the end of the program we’ll let you know where to send your questions for Dave and Tom to respond to in a future Contending for the Faith. You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. Now our final segment:
UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
We resume our excursion through the Book of Acts. Here again are Dave and Tom:
In this, our Understanding of the Scriptures segment, we are in the Book of Acts, Chapter 5, and Dave, we are going to pick up with Verse 29. “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.”
Dave:
Now they are answering in response to the threats of the Rabbis who say, We don’t want you to do this anymore—Don’t go out preaching about this man, you’re going to bring his blood down upon us.
Tom:
And Peter speaks to them directly, Dave, this is no seeker-friendly message here. “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.” Let me just go back to Verse 30, hanged on a tree. Sometimes we were talking earlier about descriptive language and this is slightly descriptive, isn’t it? A tree, just giving the idea, well maybe not.
Dave:
You get the idea somebody was hanged by his neck maybe, I don’t know. They knew what he was saying. He said, “If I be lifted up I will draw men unto me.” They knew that being lifted up on the tree—of course it’s cut out from a tree, that was a cross, they understood that, but if you tried to visualize that you would get the wrong impression.
Tom:
Right.
Dave:
It’s interesting, Tom. Jesus, on the one hand, said, “No man takes my life from me, I lay it down of Myself.” And when He had finished paying the penalty for our sins, suffering the blow of God upon sin, then He said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” He dismissed His spirit, gave up the ghost, it says, but here it says that they killed Him. Now, the critics would say, oh, you’ve got a contradiction in the Bible. No, there’s no contradiction, they intended to kill Him and He died from the wounds, you know, from the crucifixion, and so forth, but He died prematurely. He hadn’t lost enough blood from the scourging, He wasn’t so weak, He was a perfect physical specimen without sin, His body was in perfect shape. So, although they intended to kill Him and He did, you could say, He died from crucifixion, yet they didn’t take His life, they couldn’t do it—No man takes my life from me, I lay it down of myself. So, He presented Himself an offering without spot. He offered Himself without spot to God as a sacrifice for our sins.
Tom:
Dave, you said something earlier that has stuck with me. I want to go back to “hanged on a tree”. You said if somebody was using their imagination they would get the wrong idea here. So, how do I know what “hanged on a tree” means? I’d have to read other parts of Scripture. In other words, the context, the counsel of God in other places tells me specifically, directly, even to the point of objectively, what took place. So, this is really a good example of what we’re talking about. If you let your imagination go, with regard to descriptive kinds of things, you’re going to get lost, you’re going to be far away from what the Scripture is actually saying, what it’s teaching.
Dave:
So that verse, in particular for sure. Verse 31: “Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.” Israel has condemned Him, they’ve cried, Away with Him, and yet He died for them. It was my sins that nailed Him there, and yet He died for me. If He hadn’t died for me I wouldn’t be saved. He said of those who are mocking Him and who had scourged Him, I’m sure, referring to the soldiers as well who had nailed Him there, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Well, in order for them to be forgiven, He had to bear their sins, He had to bear our sins, and it was not possible that God could forgive sins without Christ paying the full penalty. So now through what He has done at His resurrection, He has been exalted to the Father’s right hand. Prince? well, He is going to take over this world, a Savior? yes, “unto us is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” But He couldn’t become the Savior until He died for our sins. And then, in fact, was resurrected, a dead Savior wouldn’t save anyone. So, Peter is testifying again to the resurrection and they don’t like that. I often say it like this, Tom: You know, Jesus didn’t say, I want you to first of all to run off to Siberia, or get down to the Southern tip of Africa, get as far away as you can from here, because you’re going to tell people I rose from the dead, we don’t want them to be able to check up on it. No, Jesus said, You begin at Jerusalem. So, Peter is challenging these men, they know He rose from the dead, the Roman guards came and told them and they paid them a bribe in order to keep quiet or to spread this false story that the disciples came and stole His body while we were asleep. Well, where did they hide the body? nobody could produce this body. If the Romans could have produced it they would have done so. If the Rabbis could have produced it they would have done so because the resurrection is the heart of Christianity and this gospel is being preached, that Jesus is alive, He rose from the dead. It’s condemning these men and Peter lays it on them again.
Tom:
Verse 32: “And we are His witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him.”
Dave:
We’re His witnesses. Tom, we’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it a hundred times: the disciples were unusual witnesses. They didn’t just die out of love and loyalty to Christ, they died testifying to facts. They said, He did rise from the dead, we have seen Him, He did walk on water, He did feed five thousand, whatever. Everything that the gospels say they testified to under threat of death and not one of them said, Don’t kill me, you know, I’ll tell you the truth, we stole His body, we hid it in Peter’s basement, whatever it is, they all went to their deaths, horrible deaths. Tradition tells us that Peter was crucified upside down because he wasn’t worthy to be crucified as the Lord was—they all went to their deaths testifying to these facts. So, what are you going to do to these guys? Here they are, why is it that they are doing this? Earlier it says: They took knowledge of them, but they had been with Jesus, these were simple fishermen. In fact, when He was taken, when they took Him in the garden, and they knew this, the Rabbis knew this, these guys are cowards, they all took flight, you know, ran as fast as they could to get out of there to save their own skins. Suddenly, here they are, we lock them up in prison and they come right back, we beat them and they come right back, something has happened to them. What happened to them? Jesus rose from the dead, they know He is alive and He is living in them, in fact He is empowering them, the Holy Spirit is empowering them. You cannot escape it, and what are the Rabbis going to do? Well, they are furious, they are going to put Peter in prison again, an angel will take him out, they are going to kill James, Herod will, and so forth. They are going to fight against them, a persecution will arise. Saul of Tarsus, who eventually became Paul, is going to have them stoned, you know, imprisoned, arrested, he’s out to destroy the church—what are you going to do? And it was Tertullian who said, The blood of the martyrs is the seat of the church, and that has been proven in many places. So Tom, this is a powerful, powerful testimony to the facts.
Tom:
And the result: verse 33, Dave: “When they heard that, they were cut to the heart, and took counsel to slay them.” This was not some beating around the bush, or some kind of seeker-friendly deal, Peter laid it out in truth, it’s critical.
Dave and Tom will resume their discussion on the topic of salvation next week, we hope you can join us. This is Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. And now, to tell you more about our ministry, here’s TBC Executive Director, Tom McMahon: The name, The Berean Call, is taken from the Book of Acts, chapter 17, verses 10 and 11, where we find the apostle Paul entering the synagogue in the Greek city of Berea after he had just come from Thessalonica. To these Bereans he preached that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah sent from God. They were commended for being noble or fair-minded, not only for their willingness to hear what Paul had to say about the matter, but more specifically, because they searched the scriptures daily to find out whether or not what the apostle was saying was found in God’s Word. That’s what we hope to encourage through this ministry. Our mission is to alert believers in Christ to unbiblical teachings and practices impacting the church. We want to exhort believers to give greater heed to biblical discernment and truth regarding what they are accepting as spiritual. We hope to supply those who profess to be biblical Christians with information and materials that will encourage the love of God’s truth. Hopefully, we can help mobilize believers in Christ to action in obedience to the scriptural command to earnestly contend for the faith, found in Jude 3. And finally, our prayer is that we can be used of God to stimulate Christians to look to the Bible alone as their rule of faith, authority and practice in living lives pleasing to our Lord and Savior.
Gary:
If you are a serious student of God’s Word, we offer a wide variety of items that you will find helpful, from books and tracts to audio and video tapes, CD-ROM, our internet website and much more. For a complete list of materials, or to get a copy of today’s broadcast, write to us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708, call us at our toll free order number 877-882-4253, that’s 877-88Bible, or visit our website at www.thebereancall.org. If you would like a copy of this broadcast, ask for Program #2305, and be sure to mention the call letters of this station. Get a pen or pencil ready, we’ll repeat our contact information in just a moment.
Next week, we’ll continue our series of programs entitled: Selections From Beyond Seduction, and, Should seeing help you believe? In Religion in the News, Native American Attains Sainthood, we’ll take a look at that story, and address the question: Contemplating the Contemplative Movement? We hope you can tune in. If you have questions or comments about this program we urge you to contact our offices. Search the Scriptures Daily radio ministry is made possible by God’s grace, your prayers and your financial support. I’m Gary Carmichael, and for Dave, Tom and everyone here at The Berean Call, I would like to thank you for joining us and invite you to tune in again next week. Until then, if you desire to know God’s truth, search the scriptures daily. For more information about The Berean Call, write to us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708, call us toll free at our order number 877-882-4253, that’s 877-88Bible, or visit our website at www.thebereancall.org.
