God Planned That He Would Live

The following is an excerpt from a recent sermon I preached on Acts 2:22-28. The prose has been slightly edited for ease of reading, but I’ve tried to retain the sermonic, spoken feel as much as possible.

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It was not possible for Jesus to stay dead because God had already planned that he would live. We see in Acts 2:23 this picture of a big sovereign God, a God who accomplishes whatever he purposes.

Now yes, there’s always human responsibility. The Jews who crucified him, the lawless Romans who nailed him up on that tree, they were guilty, they were sinners. But this was under the plan of a mighty, sovereign God.

This Jesus delivered up. . . .now what would you say? This Jesus delivered up by a strange twist of fate? This Jesus delivered up by one of the great tragedies of history? This Jesus delivered up in what was a colossal mistake, a huge misunderstanding, a terrible accident? That’s not what Peter says: Jesus was delivered up by according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

Whatever God plans cannot be other than he has planned it. And God planned for Jesus to die. And planned that he would not stay dead. He had to be raised.

When you think in your life “How could God possibly bring good out of this situation? How could he possibly be sovereign over this much pain in my life? You can’t possibly be telling me that somehow God has planned this or God has sent this to me?” When you think all that, remember: he planned the cross. He planned every bit of it—the betrayal, the hatred, the arrest, the flogging. And he planned it all for a glorious purpose, that Jesus would die and he would not stay dead.

You can listen to the entire sermon and watch the whole thing here.