WWUTT 1033 Saved by the Definite Plan of God?

Peter preached at Pentecost, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit when we understand the text. You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to the sound teaching of the word of God.

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.com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Well, we're gonna finish up Peter's sermon at Pentecost today and I'm gonna start in Acts 2 29 and this time read through verse 41.

Peter preached, brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day.

Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the

Christ that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

This Jesus, God raised up and of that, we all are witnesses.

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the father, the promise of the

Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, the Lord said to my

Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both

Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now, when they had heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the

Lord our God calls to himself. And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation.

So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls.

So as I finished off yesterday talking about David, how Peter had said,

I know this for certain, I say to you with confidence about the patriarch David, he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day.

And then the way Peter finished up that section on David, he said in verse 36, let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both

Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Just as you can look at the evidence and you can know for certain, there was a king named

David, he died, he was buried, his tomb's right over there. You can know that for sure.

You could look at the evidence for yourself. So you can also know that there was this man whom

God had appointed, had chosen, had approved and demonstrated that he was attested by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know.

That was back at verse 22. He was buried, but his flesh did not see corruption.

He was raised from the dead. And of this, we are all witnesses. Peter goes on to say, he is even ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God.

Again, witnesses to this fact that Jesus' feet had lifted off the earth and he ascended into heaven.

So then he concludes this apologetic argument by saying, just as we can prove that David was a man and was buried and was dead.

And we can know that for certain. So we can say for certain that Jesus Christ was attested by God, was buried, but did not stay buried.

He rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven where he is seated at God's right hand.

This Jesus whom you crucified. Peter comes back again to making sure his audience knows you are guilty of this man's death.

The one whom God had chosen, had approved and was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. This Jesus whom you crucified.

God is sovereign over all of this. This was foreordained from before the foundation of the world.

It was in God's decree that mankind would be redeemed by the son of God, taking on human flesh, living a sinless life, dying the death that we deserved, buried in a borrowed tomb, rose again on the third day.

All of this had been predestined. It was predetermined. Though God's sovereignty had decided this, though he in his sovereignty had decided this, that doesn't mean that man is no less responsible for his own actions.

So we read in Romans 9, man says, well then, how can God find fault for who can resist his will?

And Paul responds to that hypothetical question with this answer. Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God?

Well, what is made, say to its maker, why have you made me like this?

God is sovereign over all and mankind is still responsible for his actions.

This is gonna come up again, by the way, in the Apostles' Prayer to the

Sovereign Lord, which comes up in Acts chapter four. So here,

Peter brings back once again the responsibility that has fallen upon his audience. You know that this is the

Messiah that God had talked about through his prophets in the Old Testament, David being one of them, that Jesus Christ would come, that he would die, but he would not see corruption.

Peter is pointing back to the scriptures. He is showing in the scriptures that all of this has been testified according to the prophets of God, which of course, the

Jews, they're knowing the scriptures, they're there celebrating the giving of the scriptures, specifically the giving of the law, when

God gave the law to his people at Mount Sinai, that's what's being celebrated at Pentecost, as they are there celebrating the fact that God has spoken to them and they have his words written down in the

Mosaic law. So Peter is pointing out to them that this

God had taken on human flesh. This God who had spoken in ages past had been speaking among you in all that he had taught.

This God whom God had talked about, had prophesied about, would become God incarnate and would dwell among us.

This was testified about all throughout the Old Testament. Peter points back to the scriptures. So he doesn't just merely point to the evidence and say, here's the evidence, so therefore follow the evidence.

The evidence is insignificant. It doesn't mean anything without the scriptures. The scriptures give the evidence meaning.

Evidence itself is not gonna convert anybody. We understand that conversion happens by the power of God through his

Holy Spirit, which is done through the hearing of his word. Romans 10 .17 says, faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

So a person comes to faith in Christ because he heard his word. And that's the case here with this sermon that's being preached at Pentecost.

Yes, Peter is pointing to evidence, pointing to physical evidence and saying, here's the evidence, here it is.

Here are the witnesses, they can testify to this. But the meaning and significance of all of this only comes through his quotation of the scriptures.

Jesus himself said in Luke chapter 16, if you do not believe Moses and the prophets, neither would you believe someone if they should rise from the dead.

Now, after Peter preaches this, the people are convicted. They're cut to the heart.

They repent and are baptized. And it says at the end of this section, at the end of the sermon at Pentecost, it says in verse 41, so those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3 ,000 souls.

Now, that's awesome. We always see that number 3 ,000. We're like, that's incredible. 3 ,000 people come to Christ that day.

That is indeed incredible. But also consider for yourselves how many people did not come to Christ that day.

There were tens of thousands in Jerusalem for Pentecost. 3 ,000 came to Christ.

So even though Peter pointed to all this evidence, even though there were witnesses that were there, even though the Holy Spirit had come upon them, even though he cited the scriptures, so on and so forth, 3 ,000 came to Christ, not the entire city.

It wasn't that revival was awash in Jerusalem because what would end up happening after this is that Jerusalem would actually become very hostile toward anybody who would come preaching the gospel.

So 3 ,000 souls are added. And those 3 ,000 actually go back to their places that they came from when they came to Pentecost.

And we read about all the different locations that they came from back at the early part of verse two, verses five through 13 is where we have kind of all the nationalities and languages that are mentioned there.

So they went back to their homes in those various respective locations and they planted churches there.

And I mentioned to you back when we were in the early part of chapter two, that's how the church in Rome came to be.

No apostle had been there yet, but there was a flourishing church because of the

Jews that heard the gospel here at Pentecost and then went back to Rome with the gospel, planted a church, celebrated

Christ while they were in that church, preached the gospel to Gentiles. And there were Gentiles who became

Christians, became part of that church as well. That would be kind of a tangent side note to do all the background in that.

I think I talked about that when we were doing Romans, which is where I'm going after we get done with Acts, by the way. Anyway, so the people who are there, who hear the gospel preached, they go back to their respective places where they live and churches are planted.

But again, it's 3 ,000 souls in the midst of tens of thousands if not a hundred thousand people that would have been present at Pentecost on that particular day.

So there were many others who were not convinced by the evidence, were not convinced by the preaching and were not convinced by the witnesses who were there.

And it's because it was not the will of God for them to believe. The Holy Spirit caused regeneration in 3 ,000 souls, but the rest continued to mock or be puzzled just as we had read about them when they first heard the apostles preaching in tongues.

That was in the early part of chapter two. But let me come back to verse 37 here. Now, when they heard this, when the people of Jerusalem heard this, they were cut to the heart and they said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

We have Peter's response, but it's basically what the rest of the apostles would have said to those who asked them.

They would have said the same thing. Verse 38, Peter said to them, repent and be baptized.

Every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit for the promises for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the

Lord our God calls to himself. All that statement right there is beautiful, a beautiful answer from Peter, convicting answer from Peter.

But these words are unfortunately piecemealed a lot of times and taken out of context and spun to mean something that they do not mean.

So let's look at these carefully. Verse 38, Peter said to them, repent and be baptized. Every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. That one verse right there, Acts 2 38, there is a church in my community on their little invite cards that they'll hand out all over town.

It has Acts 2 38 printed on it. It'll either have the entire verse, it'll just have the reference, but every one of the cards they hand out inviting somebody to church has

Acts 2 38 on it. The reason why they do that is because that church believes that you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, not according to Matthew 28, where it says baptized in the name of the father and of the son and of the

Holy Spirit. They say, no, no, no, no, no, need to be baptized in the name of Christ. And unless you were baptized by somebody who baptizes you only in the name of Jesus Christ, then you have not received a real baptism.

And they use Acts 2 38 as their proof of that, apparently at the exclusion of Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20.

This is probably our largest church in town. This is what they believe and teach. It is their core doctrine.

So then going on from there, it says, be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. The other thing that this church teaches is that you will verify that all of this has been authentic and real because you'll come up out of the water speaking in tongues.

And if you're not speaking in tongues, therefore it wasn't real and you haven't received the Holy Spirit. So that's one of these ways that this passage,

Acts 2 38 gets taken out of context. But Peter is not preaching here salvation by works.

What he's saying is that if these men are genuinely cut to their heart, if they genuinely realize that they have done evil in the sight of God and that they must do something, something must be done to atone for the sins that they've committed against God.

They go to the apostles and ask, what shall we do? Well, if there is a change of mind that has happened, a change of heart, then this is what will be done to demonstrate that.

They will repent. They will turn from their wickedness. They will call out to God for forgiveness.

That's essentially what Peter is meaning there when he tells them to repent. Like he's not saying, well, stop killing

Jesus. Okay, that's already been done. Jesus ascended into heaven. There's no way that could ever happen again.

So that isn't what Peter is suggesting, but that they're gonna call out to the Lord and ask for his forgiveness.

They're not gonna go on thinking that just because I'm a Jew, I'm saved. Or just because I'm here worshiping at Pentecost, I'm saved.

Peter is saying, you're gonna demonstrate a life change. So you need to repent and be baptized.

You're gonna demonstrate outwardly what's going on inside your heart. By being baptized, you symbolize being buried with Christ in your sins and raised again to new life.

Now, of course, that's not being said here, but it's not like I'm reading something into the text that isn't there either, because we can understand this through other passages that talk about exactly what these elements mean.

I'll expound on that a little bit more here in a moment. So Peter said, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ.

So you're no longer against Christ, you are in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. There's not a sequence that's going on here. Peter is not laying out, first do this and then you will get this.

For when you go through the book of Acts, sometimes faith alone is the thing that is necessary for salvation.

That's in Acts 16 .31. That's what Paul and Silas said to the Philippian jailer when he asked what he needed to do to be saved.

And they said, believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. So there the demonstration was by faith you are saved.

But then there are other times when repentance alone is the thing that's mentioned that is needed to be saved.

When we get to Acts 3, we'll see that there. And sometimes both are named. In Acts 20, verse 21, it says, and this is

Paul speaking to the Ephesian elders, he said, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our

Lord Jesus Christ. So sometimes it's just repentance, sometimes it's just faith, sometimes it's both faith and repentance that are talked about.

We cannot take Acts 2 .38 in a vacuum. There are other passages that help us to understand what

Peter was meaning when he was preaching there at Pentecost. And we should not assume by these words that he's talking about some sort of order or sequence of events that will take place to guarantee or verify a person's salvation.

So then in verse 39, Peter says, for the promise is for you and everyone whom the

Lord, and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord, our God calls to himself.

Now that passage is, it's beloved by people who practice infant baptism, who are paedo -baptists, because it seems that Peter is saying here, you must be baptized and your children must be baptized.

That's absolutely not what's being said here. And it's very clearly not being said when you understand the context, you understand other statements that are said in the same verse.

Verse 39, for the promise is for you. You who are hearing me preach on this can receive the promise of God through his son,

Jesus Christ. It's also for your children. So it's not for this generation.

It's also for those who will be descended from this generation. Not just your immediate children, but your children's children's children, okay?

And also in the sense that it's for your spiritual children as you will go out preaching the gospel.

Those who will come to faith will be spiritual offspring and they will receive the promise also.

And then next, for all who are far off. And that's talking about the Gentiles.

So this message of the gospel is not just for the Jews that are being addressed here at Pentecost, but it's also for you, it's for your children, your descendants, and also for those who are far off.

The message of the gospel is gonna go into all the world. The apostle Paul talks about in Acts chapter three, how those who are far off have now been brought near through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's a reference to the Gentiles. So that's what's being talked about there. You can't isolate that passage in a vacuum either and say that children is talking about infant baptism.

No, it's for you, it's for your descendants, and it's for those who even exist in a different land that the gospel should go out being preached everywhere, that all who believe in the name of the

Lord shall be saved. Very similar to what Jesus said to his apostles in Acts 1 .8,

when he said, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

And so Peter here is saying the promise is for you and to your children and for those who are far off.

Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. So those who are saved that day were called by the

Holy Spirit. They experienced that effectual calling in their heart and they repented and believed and with many other words.

So notice here, Peter didn't just say that. And he didn't just say the things that we've been reading here from verse 14.

From verse 14 through 36, it's not like Peter's sermon was only that long, but Luke caught the highlights in what it was that he wrote down here concerning that sermon at Pentecost.

Because as we read here in verse 40, with many other words,

Peter bore witness and continued to exhort them saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation.

So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls.

Once again, those who received the word were baptized. Those who had faith were baptized.

Wasn't saying be baptized first and then you'll receive faith. Then you'll receive forgiveness. No, it was those who were changed in heart, whom the

Lord God had called to himself, obeyed and were baptized.

Those who had faith were baptized. That's clear from this passage and demonstrated that they indeed had the forgiveness of God through the hearing of the gospel.

Romans 10, 17, once again, faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. My friends, we also grow in our faith the same way.

We came to faith this way. We grow in our faith by the hearing of the word.

And I hope that's the reason why you listen to a program such as this, so that you might grow in your understanding of God's word.

You mature in him. You become more and more like Christ. You draw closer and closer to your savior through this process that we call sanctification, growing in holiness, being sanctified, being made holy.

As Jesus had prayed in John 17, 17, father sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth. So may we continue to be devoted to this word and grow in our faith that we might be presented mature men and women of God in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation.

Let us pray quickly here at the close. Our heavenly father, we thank you for calling us.

We thank you that your spirit effected that calling in our hearts, regenerated our hearts so that we might see you and know you by your will.

And I pray Lord that it would be your will. We would have courage to preach your gospel to others so that they too may turn from their sins and live.

Grow us in holiness. Help us to hate the garment that is stained by the flesh and grow in those righteous robes.

Grow to fit those righteous robes that we have been clothed in by Christ our savior so that we may be presented before him pure and spotless on the day of redemption.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.