The Resurrection
Text: Acts 2:22-39
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Expository
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- Explain why Pentecost was the ideal time and place to refute the resurrection — and why the failure to refute it there is decisive evidence for its truth.
- Identify the well-known facts that both friend and foe shared about Jesus, and explain what each fact implies about the empty tomb.
- Explain the irony of the guilty testifying: how the very people who crucified Jesus, by believing and being baptized, became the strongest witnesses to his resurrection.
- State the three-part collapse of Christianity that follows if the resurrection is false (from I Cor. 15:13-19).
- Explain why the resurrection of Christ is specifically the hope of the guilty — not merely an abstract doctrine but the answer to the problem of sin.
Thesis
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a peripheral article of Christian faith — it is the load-bearing center of it. Remove it and every other claim collapses: the preaching is empty, the faith is empty, the sin is unforgiven, and the dead are simply lost. But the resurrection was first announced at the one time and place where it should have been easiest to disprove — Jerusalem, fifty days after the burial — and it was not disproved. The people who crucified him are the people who believed it.
Burden
The first gospel sermon ever preached included the resurrection of Christ. Peter did not work up to it, hedge it, or place it at the end as a supplement to a more comfortable message. It was the message. The sermon's burden is to show why: not merely to assert the resurrection but to lay out the evidentiary structure that makes it the most defensible claim in the history of human announcement — and then to press home what it means for the person who is guilty of the sin that required it.
Introduction
"Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know — this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power" (Acts 2:22-24).
The first gospel sermon includes the resurrection as its central claim. Not its conclusion — its center. Everything that follows in Acts 2:25-39 flows from it: the fulfilled prophecy, the exaltation, the identity of Jesus as both Lord and Christ, and the response required. The sermon begins with what they know — the miracles performed "in your midst, just as you yourselves know" — and moves to what they need to account for: the empty tomb.
"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures" (I Cor. 15:3-4). Paul's summary of the gospel reduces to three verifiable historical claims — died, buried, raised. The third claim is the one that distinguishes Christianity from every other system that honors a dead teacher: the tomb is empty, and the emptiness has not been explained.
I. Pentecost
Pentecost was the optimal moment to destroy the resurrection claim — and no one destroyed it.
This was the time and place to prove it false. Jerusalem, fifty days after the burial. The city was filled with pilgrims who had been in Jerusalem for Passover, had witnessed or heard about the crucifixion, and were now hearing the report of the resurrection. The tomb was a known location. The guards who had sealed it were answerable to the Sanhedrin. If the body was in the tomb, retrieving it would have ended the movement immediately.
If false, it should not spread — it should be stopped. The most powerful religious institution in Jerusalem, backed by the Roman administration that had authorized the execution, had every motive and every resource to produce a refutation. The disciples were few, largely from Galilee, without political standing. The opponents were numerous, organized, and motivated. The silence of the opposition is itself evidence.
If it could not be proved false fifty days after the burial, it cannot be proved false now. The case is not weaker with time; it is stronger. Every hostile investigation that has not produced the body, every generation that has not refuted the eyewitnesses, every century of failed attempts to explain the tomb adds to the cumulative weight of the evidence. Pentecost was the moment of maximum vulnerability, and the claim survived it.
II. The Opportunity to Refute It
The opportunity to refute the resurrection was ideal — and the opportunity was not taken.
The people present were the right people to refute it. They had witnessed his death and burial. They were not credulous outsiders who had only heard reports; they were the same population that had watched the crucifixion, had seen the body taken down, had known the tomb's location. If anyone could refute the report of the resurrection, it was this crowd. They now hear it preached — and no refutation comes.
Jerusalem was the right time. Not a generation later, when memories had faded and witnesses had scattered. Not in a distant city, where the events could be reported second-hand. Fifty days after the crucifixion, in the same city, before the same population. The window of maximum opportunity was open, and the opposition did not use it.
Jerusalem was the right place. The event had occurred there: the death, the burial, the sealed tomb. The claim is now being made there. If the tomb still contained a body, producing it would have taken an afternoon. The inability to produce the body is not an argument from silence — it is an argument from the presence of every entity that had both motive and means to produce it.
III. Some Well-Known Facts
Peter's argument in Acts 2 begins with what everyone in the crowd already knows.
They knew the life of Jesus (Acts 2:22). The miracles, wonders, and signs performed "in your midst" are not reported to this crowd as news — they are referenced as established memory. "Just as you yourselves know." The opponent who wants to argue against the resurrection must first explain how a man without divine power performed works of divine power in public, across Galilee and Judea, over three years, without being discredited.
They knew of his trial and death (Acts 2:23). The crucifixion was a public event. Roman crucifixions were conducted publicly, as deterrents. The man who died on the cross outside Jerusalem was not a rumor; he was a documented execution. The death is not in dispute.
They knew of his burial. The burial of Jesus was performed by named individuals — Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus — in a known tomb, before witnesses (John 19:38-42). The location was not secret; the women who came on the first day of the week knew where to go (Luke 24:1).
They knew the tomb was empty. No party in Jerusalem — not the disciples, not the Sanhedrin, not the Roman administration — ever claimed the tomb still contained a body. The only dispute was over how it came to be empty: the disciples said resurrection; the opponents said the disciples had stolen the body (Matt. 28:13). The emptiness of the tomb is conceded by everyone; what it means is the question.
They knew the report of his resurrection. The report had been circulating for fifty days. The women had reported it; the disciples had reported it; Paul would later report that Christ appeared to more than five hundred at one time, "most of whom remain until now" (I Cor. 15:6). The report was not a whisper — it was the city's most prominent ongoing controversy.
Friend and foe knew all these facts. The common ground between believer and unbeliever in Jerusalem in Acts 2 was substantial: the miracles, the trial, the death, the burial, the empty tomb, the report of resurrection. The dispute was not about the facts but about their explanation. And the explanation Peter offers — that God raised him — is the only one that accounts for all of them.
IV. The Guilty Testify to the Resurrection
The most compelling witnesses to the resurrection are the people who crucified him.
They were guilty of crucifying him. Peter does not spare the crowd: "you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death" (Acts 2:23). He was not speaking to a neutral audience — he was speaking to the people who had called for the crucifixion, who had preferred Barabbas, whose leaders had arranged the trial and the verdict. This crowd carried the weight of what had happened, and Peter named it.
They did not deny their guilt. "Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brethren, what shall we do?'" (Acts 2:37). The response was not "we didn't do it" or "you're wrong about what happened." The response was the response of people who knew they were guilty and were now confronted with the question of whether the one they had killed was the one they needed. The guilt was acknowledged.
In believing the gospel they believed in the resurrection. The gospel Peter preached included the resurrection as its central factual claim. To respond to it with "what shall we do?" was to acknowledge what had been preached — including the resurrection. The three thousand who believed on Pentecost were not people who somehow separated the gospel from its central claim; they believed what was preached, and what was preached was the risen Christ.
In their baptism they testified to his resurrection. "Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:3-4). Every person who is baptized enacts the resurrection claim: the burial under the water and the raising out of it is the bodily testimony of the person who has staked their life on the resurrection of Jesus. The guilty who were baptized on Pentecost became, by that act, the strongest human witnesses to the resurrection — not merely reporting it but enacting it.
V. His Resurrection Their Only Hope
The logic of I Corinthians 15:13-19 runs in the other direction: Paul does not argue from the resurrection outward but from the negation of the resurrection inward, to show what is lost without it.
If no resurrection, they have no Savior. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins" (I Cor. 15:17). The claim of the gospel is not that a good man died nobly — it is that the Son of God, having been put to death for the sins of the world, was vindicated by the Father through resurrection, demonstrating that the sacrifice had been accepted and the debt discharged. A dead Christ is a dead Savior. The resurrection is the certification of the cross.
If no resurrection, still guilty of sin. The guilt of the Pentecost crowd was specific and recent: they had participated in the death of the one who was now claimed to be the Son of God. If the resurrection had not occurred, the crucifixion was not an atoning sacrifice — it was simply an execution. The guilt was not transferred to a sacrifice that God accepted; it remained. "You are still in your sins." The resurrection is not a happy coda to the passion narrative — it is the proof that the passion accomplished what it claimed to accomplish.
If no resurrection, no hope for future life. "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied" (I Cor. 15:19). The hope of resurrection — the hope that the grave is not the end, that the body will be raised, that death has been defeated — is grounded entirely in the resurrection of Christ. "Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming" (I Cor. 15:23). If Christ did not rise, there are no first fruits; there is no harvest; there is nothing after the grave. The resurrection of Christ is the foundation of every Christian hope about what lies beyond death.
Application
The resurrection addresses the specific condition of the guilty.
The crowd at Pentecost was not a crowd of theoretical sinners. They were people who had called for the crucifixion of the one who was the Son of God. Their guilt was not abstract; it was recent, specific, and known to them. When Peter preached the resurrection to that crowd, he was not preaching to spectators — he was preaching to perpetrators.
The gospel's answer to perpetrators is the same as its answer to everyone else: the resurrection. The one they killed is alive. The death he died was not lost; it was effective. The guilt they carried — not theoretical but actual, not abstract but personal — can be forgiven, because the one against whom it was committed is the one who died for it and rose.
"Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). The response Peter calls for is the response of people who believe the resurrection: they turn (repent), they bury the old life and are raised to the new one (baptism), and they receive what only the risen Christ can give. There is no forgiveness from a dead Christ. There is forgiveness from the risen one.
Conclusion
The tomb is empty. The city that had every reason and every resource to disprove the resurrection did not disprove it. The people who crucified Jesus became, by their belief and baptism, the first witnesses to his resurrection. And the three-part collapse that follows from denying the resurrection — no Savior, no forgiveness, no hope — is the negative image of what the resurrection provides: a living Savior, actual forgiveness of actual guilt, and a grounded hope that death is not the end.
The first gospel sermon was about the resurrection. So is this one.
Invitation
"Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ — this Jesus whom you crucified" (Acts 2:36). This is the conclusion Peter drives to. The implication is immediate and personal: if he is Lord and Christ, the response is not intellectual acknowledgment but surrender and obedience.
"What shall we do?" — the Pentecost crowd's question is the right question. The answer has not changed: "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). Believe in Jesus Christ as the risen Lord. Repent. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins. And receive the hope that the empty tomb has made possible.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raised | egeirō | To rouse, awaken, raise up — used both for waking from sleep and for raising the dead. | Used throughout Acts 2 and I Cor. 15 for God's action in raising Christ from the dead. | The word is active: God raised him. The resurrection is not a resuscitation (the body returning to normal life) but an exaltation (the body raised to a new mode of existence). | Acts 2:24, 32; I Cor. 15:4, 15 |
| First fruits | aparchē | The first portion of the harvest offered to God as a pledge of the whole. | Used in I Cor. 15:20, 23 for Christ as the first fruits of those who are asleep. | Christ's resurrection is not an isolated event but the beginning of a harvest — the pledge and guarantee of the resurrection of all who are in him. The logic is agricultural: where there are first fruits, there will be a full harvest. | I Cor. 15:20, 23 |
| Pierced | katanyssō | To prick, pierce, or stab — used of sudden, sharp pain. | Used in Acts 2:37 for the response of the Pentecost crowd to Peter's sermon. | The word describes the effect of the preaching on people who were already carrying guilt. The preaching did not create the guilt — it made it conscious and acute. The same word appears in the LXX for a sting or bite. | Acts 2:37 |
| Baptized into his death | baptizō eis ton thanaton autou | Immersed into his death — union with Christ in the death he died. | Used in Rom. 6:3-4 to explain the meaning of baptism as participation in Christ's burial and resurrection. | Baptism is not a public declaration of a decision already complete; it is the point at which the person is united with Christ in his death and resurrection. The one baptized enacts the resurrection claim with their own body. | Rom. 6:3-4 |
| Raised from the dead | ēgerthē ek nekrōn | Raised out from among the dead — with the preposition ek (out of), indicating emergence from a prior state. | Used in Rom. 6:4 for Christ's resurrection as the model for the believer's new life. | The preposition matters: "out of the dead" implies that Christ was genuinely among the dead and genuinely came out. The resurrection is a historical event with a directionality: from death to life. | Rom. 6:4; I Cor. 15:20 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| Resurrection essential — system collapses without it | Intro. | I Cor. 15:13-19 |
| "A man attested to you by God" — the miracles they witnessed | III.1 | Acts 2:22 |
| "You nailed to a cross... put Him to death" — their guilt | III.2, IV.1 | Acts 2:23 |
| "God raised Him up again" — the central claim | I, II | Acts 2:24 |
| "They were pierced to the heart" — guilt acknowledged | IV.2-3 | Acts 2:37 |
| Baptism as burial and resurrection — testifying in their bodies | IV.5 | Rom. 6:3-4 |
| "If no resurrection, still in your sins" | V.2 | I Cor. 15:17 |
| "If hoped in Christ in this life only, most to be pitied" | V.3 | I Cor. 15:19 |
| "Christ the first fruits" — foundation of resurrection hope | V.3 | I Cor. 15:20, 23 |
| "Repent and be baptized for remission" — the required response | App./Invit. | Acts 2:38 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 138. Primary text: Acts 2:22-39 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "JNTRODUCTION" → "INTRODUCTION"; "lf" → "If"; "resunection" → "resurrection"; "Chril'l" → "Christ"; "sermo11" → "sermon"; "lte" → "He"; "Jf no" → "If no." Doctrinal audit: the resurrection developed as a historical claim with evidentiary structure (Pentecost as the moment of maximum vulnerability for the claim); the guilty-testify argument preserved and developed (Acts 2:37; Rom. 6:3-4); the three-part collapse of I Cor. 15:13-19 fully unpacked; baptism as enacted testimony to the resurrection (Rom. 6:3-4) affirmed without Calvinist weakening; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).
