Acts 2:1-47 (September 3, 2023)

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FBC Travelers Rest sermon from September 3, 2023 by Pastor Rhett Burns

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We can turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2. We are in our second week going through the book of Acts and what
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I'm going to do this morning is I want to read the first 16 verses and then I'm going to summarize the rest of the chapter and we'll come back and reference it and read a few different verses and passages throughout the remainder of the chapter as we go along in the sermon.
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But let me read the first 16 verses. Acts chapter 2 and the word of God says this.
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When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
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And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
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Then there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire and one sat upon each of them.
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And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
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And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together and were confused because everyone heard them speak in his own language.
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Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, Look, are not all these who speak
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Galileans? And how is it that we hear each in our own language in which we were born?
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Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining
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Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.
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So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another,
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Whatever could this mean? Others mocking said, They are full of new wine.
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But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and heed my words, for these are not drunk as you suppose.
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This is only the third hour of the day, but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. And then
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Peter goes on, he quotes from Joel chapter two, which is a prophecy about the pouring out of the
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Spirit upon all flesh in the last days, pouring out of the Spirit upon men and women, upon young and old, and how in those days everyone who calls upon the name of the
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Lord, verse twenty -one says, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And then
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Peter continues his sermon by putting forth Jesus Christ to the crowd. Jesus Christ, whose ministry was attested to by God by miracles and wonders and signs, verse twenty -two says.
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Jesus Christ, who was delivered unto death by the plan of God and by the hands of wicked men, verse twenty -three says.
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Jesus Christ, whom God raised up, fulfilling Psalm sixteen, which we just sang. God did not allow
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His Holy One to see corruption. We see that in verses twenty -five and following. And then in verses thirty -three through thirty -five, we see
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Jesus Christ ascended to the right hand of God, where He will reign until He makes all
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His enemies His footstool in fulfillment of Psalm one -ten, which Peter also quotes.
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And then verse thirty -six, therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this
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Jesus, whom you crucified, Lord and Christ. This is quite the statement that Peter leads up to, where he stands before thousands gathered in Jerusalem there at the temple, and he stood up and he told them that they had killed
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Jesus. Now, this wasn't very winsome. This wasn't very polite.
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It's not very seeker -sensitive, but it was true, and it was just what they needed to hear because before you can get somebody saved, you've got to get them lost.
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Before someone will see the gospel as good news, they have to know what is the bad news.
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Before one can appreciate salvation and see their need for it, they must be made aware of their condemnation.
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And so we preach law and gospel. We preach truth and grace. We preach sin and salvation.
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And we see Peter do this here. Peter told them that they had killed Jesus. When they heard this, when they heard this truth, when they heard of their sin there in verse thirty -seven, what does it say?
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When they heard this, they were cut to the heart. And they said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do?
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They were cut to the heart. The Holy Spirit had brought conviction. They were not offended at Peter's words.
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They weren't mad that Jesus, or excuse me, that Peter had told them the truth here. They were brought low by his words.
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And they were ready to do whatever was necessary to fix it. So Peter told them to repent and be baptized for the remission of their sins, and that they would receive the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. Now we'll come back to this verse here in just a little bit, but for now, we just want to see that Peter invites them to salvation in Christ by the
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Spirit. You remember Jesus, when he prayed on the cross, he said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
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And here in Acts 2, we see this offer of forgiveness from Christ by his apostle
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Peter offering them forgiveness. Repent of your sins, be baptized for the remission of your sins, or they might be washed away.
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Oh, what grace God has for sinners. They killed
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Jesus, and Jesus offers them forgiveness. And this gospel that Peter preached, we see at the end of chapter 2, it produces a new community.
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Three thousand believed and were baptized and were added to the number of the church that day.
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And verses 42 and following tell us that they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. They continued steadfastly in fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayer.
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Fear came upon them, all who believed held all things in common so that none among them should have need.
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They were of one accord, and they praised God together in the temple and in their homes, eating their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.
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And the Lord added to their number daily. Now, what I want us to do now, I want us to zoom out, and then we're going to zoom back in.
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So, I want us to zoom out and connect this passage with other passages in Scripture because there are a lot of references to other passages of Scripture, other
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Scriptures that find their fulfillment here in Acts 2. And then I want us to zoom in on this gospel message that Peter preached.
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So, we're going to zoom out, and when we do, it's kind of like standing up on Pax Mountain up kind of near North Greenville University.
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You can stand on Pax Mountain, look towards North Carolina, and you can see all sorts of mountains. You can see
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Hogback Mountain, and Glassy Mountain, and Table Rock, and on a clear day, you can see all the way to Sassafras Mountain.
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You can see all these different mountain peaks. And when you zoom out like that, what you see is that even though there's peaks and valleys and passes, they're all connected.
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It's all part of one mountain range, and it's kind of like that with the Bible. There's different peaks and valleys, different stories throughout
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Scripture, but when we zoom out, we see that it's all one big story. It's all connected together, and what we see is that some stories and their connections with others, it helps us understand the meaning by the references and how they connect together.
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And so, I want us to see some things as we zoom out on these connections, and like last week,
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I'm going to draw from Alistair Roberts' commentary on Acts, and so credit where credit is due.
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But as we zoom out, I want us to see that the first theme is that of the Spirit's work. In Acts 2 at Pentecost, this is the coming of the
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Holy Spirit, and we want to see the Spirit's work. And so, we can see connections between the life of the early church here in Acts 2 and the life of Christ in His early life.
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Because we see there at the beginning of Luke, the Spirit overshadows Mary so that Christ was conceived in her womb, and here the
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Spirit overshadows the church as they bear Christ, as they bear witness to Him, and all the world is the new temple of the
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Spirit. We see an overshadowing of the Spirit. Then, shortly after He was born, when
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Jesus was presented at the temple, the Spirit led a man named Simeon into the temple to prophesy about Christ.
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And what we see in Acts 2 is that God uses a man named Simon, which is a variation of the name
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Simeon, also known as Peter, and he preaches about Christ in the temple by the power of the
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Spirit. And when Jesus was presented at the temple, there was a woman named Anna praying in the temple, and in Acts, the church, we see at verse 1, they are all together in one accord praying.
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And that might remind you of Hannah in the Old Testament, back in 1 Samuel, praying in the temple for a son when
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Eli mistook her for being drunk when she was there praying. And here in verse 13, the disciples are accused of being drunk with new wine at 9 o 'clock in the morning.
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And we also might remember that the Spirit descended as a dove at Jesus' baptism when
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He began His public ministry. And here again, the Spirit is descending, not as a dove, but as tongues of fire as the church begins her public ministry.
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And from these connections, we learn that the mission of Christ and the mission of the church is one and the same.
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Acts tells the story, we said this last week, I'll repeat it again. Acts tells the story of the transition from Jesus' work on earth in the flesh to Jesus' work from heaven on earth through the church by the
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Spirit. And so the application for you, Christian, is this. You are on mission, the same mission that Jesus had.
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We continue. You continue. And so the question is, are you living on mission for God?
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Are you living on mission for Jesus and His kingdom? Another connection we might make is that Pentecost is kind of a mini -Jubilee.
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You remember the Jubilee in the Old Testament? The year of Jubilee when on the 50th year, all debts were forgiven, property was returned to its original owners.
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It was just reset for the people of God. It was a time of liberty. Well, Pentecost was a festival that began on the 50th day after Passover.
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It was kind of a mini -Jubilee. And you might recall that Jesus, when
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He began His Galilean ministry in Luke chapter 4, He read from the prophet Isaiah saying, The Spirit of the
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Lord is upon me, because He's appointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the
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Lord. So the Spirit comes upon Him and He proclaims liberty. And then at Pentecost, the
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Spirit of the Lord comes upon the church and they proclaim the year of the Lord. They proclaim liberty in Christ.
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Peter is preaching the remission, the forgiveness of sins in Christ. See, the shackles of sin are broken and all who call upon the name of the
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Lord shall be saved and shall be forgiven. You might think of 2
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Corinthians 3 .17 where it says, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
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So the application for you here is this. The Spirit has come and set you free.
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You are free in Christ. You are free from Satan, sin, and death. We talked about that in our
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Sunday school class this morning. Sin no longer has dominion over you. Romans 6 .14,
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we are free. The Spirit came at Pentecost to bring jubilee. So we are free.
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Now we ought to live like it. We ought to live like it. We could also connect
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Pentecost to Mount Sinai. For the Israelites, the festival of Pentecost had associations with the giving of the law at Mount Sinai to Moses and the people then.
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See, at Sinai, the people of Israel gathered together and God promised to make them a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
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In Acts, what we see again, the people of God are gathered together. At Sinai, Moses ascended into God's presence up the mountain, received the law and brought it back down to the people.
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In Acts, Jesus ascends to the right hand of God the Father and he sends down his
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Spirit writing the law on the church's hearts. The fire of God descended on Sinai, tongues of fire descended on the church.
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After Sinai, the people rebelled with the golden calf and 3 ,000 people were killed. At Pentecost, the people repented and 3 ,000 souls were saved.
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After Sinai, the people built the tabernacle, the forerunner of the temple, the tabernacle in which the presence of God dwelt.
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And after Pentecost, the people of God became the temple in which the Spirit of God dwelt.
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And so what we learn from Pentecost as a new Mount Sinai is that the Spirit is the gift of the law written on our hearts, whereas the result of the law was death, the gift of the
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Spirit is life and liberty. God has made a new covenant with His people.
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His law is written on your hearts. He is your God and we are
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His people. And so the application is this. We belong to God.
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We belong to God and that is good news. It reminds me of my favorite catechism question. It's the first question of the
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Heidelberg Catechism. It says, what is your only hope in life and death? My only hope is that I belong, body and soul,
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I am not my own but belong, body and soul in life and death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. We belong to God.
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We belong to Christ. Following Sinai, we can see a connection with a story from Numbers chapter 11.
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When God took some of the Spirit that was on Moses and put it on the 70 elders and they all began to prophesy, you know it was this, if you read it in Numbers 11, it says they began to prophesy but it did not continue.
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It was this one time event, right, except for there were a few who remained in the camp and they continued to prophesy and Joshua protested to Moses saying,
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Moses, go make them stop. And then Moses expresses his desire here and he says, would that all the
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Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit on them. Isn't this what we read about in Acts 2 when
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Peter, quoting from Joel 2, says in verse 17, And it shall come to pass in the last day, says
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God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
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Moses' desire was realized at Pentecost when the
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Spirit of God was poured out. So we have the Spirit of God and He has made us the new prophetic people of God.
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And lastly, one more connection for us, as we're zoomed out at the mountain range of Scripture, we see that Pentecost is a reversal of Babel.
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Remember the Tower of Babel in Genesis chapter 10? When the people that were on the earth, they rebelled against God's command to fill the earth.
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Instead, they sought to build a tower to the heavens in one place that they might make a name for themselves and that they might reach heaven.
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But God came down in judgment. He frustrated their plans, He confused their languages, and He scattered them throughout the earth.
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At Pentecost, Babel is reversed. The people and languages are brought in together.
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They're not divided under judgment, but they're united under blessing. And everyone heard the mighty acts of God, the wondrous works of God, each in his own language.
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And although they were Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling from Egypt to Rome, they all heard the works of God in their own language.
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You see, Jesus Christ is the true tower to heaven. Only through Him can we go to God the Father. And all peoples, nations, and languages shall serve
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Christ. So what we have at Pentecost is the reversal of Babel in Jesus.
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And it's this Jesus that Peter stands to proclaim to the people. And so what
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I want us to do now is zoom in on this sermon that Peter preached there on the day of Pentecost.
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This particular mountain peak, let's look at what Peter preaches. He ends his quote of Joel 2 there in verse 21 saying, "...and
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it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
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We're going to see at least two themes here in Peter's sermon. The first is that salvation is open for all.
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Anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, the Spirit will fall upon all who call upon Jesus.
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Jew and Gentile, Parthian and Mede, Cretan and Arab. You see, those that are in Jerusalem from all over the place, they're at Pentecost.
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They represent all nations. They represent the table of nations from back in Genesis chapter 10.
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And what we see is that the kingdom of Jesus is made up of all peoples, nations, and languages. And that Jesus had charged
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His disciples earlier in chapter 1 to be witnesses to Him in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to what? To the ends of the earth.
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And so what we see is that salvation in Christ is global in scope. Planet Earth is now the promised land and we are to go out and conquer it and take it in the name of Jesus with the gospel of Jesus.
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Salvation is global. And then the second thing we see is in whom that salvation is found in.
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Peter says in verse 22, says, Men of Israel, hear these words,
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Jesus of Nazareth. And so verse 22 starts, then the next 13 verses are kind of parenthetical describing
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Jesus. And then He ends that fault that He began in verse 22, He ends it in verse 36 when
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He says, Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus whom you crucify, both
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Lord and Christ. And those parenthetical 13 verses tell us who this
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Jesus is. See the message of Peter is, God has made this
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Jesus whom you crucify, both Lord and Christ. And leading up to that, He tells, He describes who
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Jesus is. And who is He? Well, this Jesus is a man attested to by God, by miracles, wonders, and signs, verse 22.
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That is, the mighty works of Jesus, His healings, His casting out of demons, His walking on the water,
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His feeding of the 5 ,000, His raising Lazarus up from the dead. All these are signs from God that Jesus is the
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Messiah. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the one whom you've been waiting for. Jesus is the hope of Israel.
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This Jesus is attested to by God. This Jesus, verse 23 says, was delivered unto death.
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You see, Jesus came to die. Jesus was born to die.
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And He came to die in your place as a substitute sacrifice for your sins because the wages of sin is death.
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That means somebody's got to die for your sins. It's either going to be you or it's going to be someone in your place.
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And the only one who can be in your place is the one who is sinless, and there's only one of those, Jesus Christ.
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The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus. I want you to notice something here, what
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Peter says. He says, in verse 23, Him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God.
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That is, God is sovereign over all things, including the death of Jesus.
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It was God's will for Jesus to be crucified for the salvation of the world.
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It was God's plan. And if we keep reading verse 23,
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He was killed by the law of His hands. Later in verse 36, Peter's going to say,
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Whom you crucified. And so we can see two things that are true here. The crucifixion of Jesus was
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God's will and it was done by evil men. See, sometimes people want to pit the sovereignty of God against human responsibility for sin, or human agency in real actions, suggesting that if God is sovereign, then humans can't act with genuine agency.
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Or if humans have genuine agency to act, then God is not totally sovereign. Now when asked to reconcile the truths of God's sovereignty and human responsibility,
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Charles Spurgeon said this, I wouldn't even try. I never reconcile friends. And that's the truth.
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God's sovereignty and human responsibility are friends. And we see them there, both, hanging out, having a good time, there in verse 23.
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We don't need to pit them against one another. And so this
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Jesus was delivered unto death by God and killed by lawless hands.
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This Jesus, verse 24 says, was raised from the dead by God. He is victorious over the grave and by his resurrection, this
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Jesus defeated Satan's sin and death. And in this
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Jesus, we see the Davidic dynasty raised, ascended, and enthroned.
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You see, Peter, he quotes from Psalm 16, beginning there in verse 25. He does this to show that this son of David, Jesus, is the greater
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David. You see, his body did not seek corruption. He was raised from the dead.
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And Peter told him, he says, you know, David's tomb is right over there. It's not very far. You can go over there today and you can see it and you can dig it up and you can see the bones of David.
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David's in the ground. But this Jesus has been raised. And the apostles and the early believers, they were witnesses to this fact, verse 32.
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They were witnesses to his resurrection. And then, therefore, being exalted to the right hand of God, Jesus poured out his
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Holy Spirit, which is what the crowd was, they were witnessing this when they heard the mighty works of God in their own languages and ascended into the heavens.
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Jesus reigns as king. We talked about this last week, but we see it again here in Acts 2, where Peter quotes from Psalm 110, there in verses 34 and 35, where he will reign until God makes all his enemies a footstool for Christ.
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So Peter's quoting Psalm 16, he's quoting Psalm 110, and in quoting these psalms, Peter's making the claim that this
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Jesus is the hope of Israel, that this Jesus is the hope of the world, this Jesus is the one we've been waiting for, this
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Jesus is the one who will make all things right, who will make all things new, this Jesus is the one who will crush the enemies of God and put them under his feet.
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This Jesus is the one! And you killed him,
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Peter says. They killed him. They betrayed this
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Jesus. They turned their backs on him. They mocked him. The very one sent by God to save them.
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He says, this Jesus whom you crucified, God has made both Lord and Christ, and they were cut to the heart.
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Verse 37. See, this is godly grief. There's a difference between godly grief and worldly grief.
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Worldly grief, you're upset that you got caught. It's a temporary bad feeling because maybe something's shameful.
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Maybe a little bit driven by embarrassment. But with worldly grief, that feeling goes away and we kind of get back to normal.
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Godly grief produces repentance. Godly grief is grief at the fact that we have sinned against the holy
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God and we're cut to the heart. That's what happened here. They're pricked to the heart and they said, if men and brethren, what shall we do?
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What can we do to make things right? Is there any hope for us?
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When you're cut to the heart, you wonder, is there any hope for me? Am I doomed?
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Am I damned? And Peter says to them, repent.
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He gives them a way out. He gives them the gospel.
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He says, repent. What should you do when your mouth's stopped? And you have no excuses and nothing left to say?
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When you're brought low, when you know you're guilty, when you're caught red -handed, what do you do? You repent.
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You turn from your sin and you turn to Jesus. Because there, in Christ, you'll find forgiveness.
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In Christ, you'll find cleansing. In Christ, you'll find rest for your soul. Are you guilty this morning?
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Are you cut to the heart about something this morning? Friend, turn to Jesus. Turn to Christ and find forgiveness in Him.
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Find rest in Him. Peter told them when they're cut to the heart, they said, repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins.
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Now, this doesn't mean that the physical act of going in water and out of water, the physical act of baptism is what saves anyone.
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No, faith saves. Rather, baptism here is used to refer to all that is involved in repenting of sin and believing and turning to Jesus.
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For repentance and faith are both pictured and represented in baptism and they're also required for it.
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And so baptism here is used in an encompassing way. For it's a voluntary pledge of allegiance to Jesus, the
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King, the one whom God has made both Lord and Christ. And so Peter's invitation is to forsake their old lives of sin and rebellion and join the kingdom of Christ by faith.
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And when they do, they will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, verse 38 says. And that invitation is extended to all.
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Verse 39 says, For the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are afar off as many as the
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Lord our God will call. Now, to properly interpret this verse, we need to remember the context.
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Remember the context that the nations are represented in Jerusalem at this time. Keep in mind that Peter has quoted from the prophet
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Joel about the pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh and that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
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And here he says, the promise, and that is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one that is promised. The promise of the Father, we see in Acts 1.
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The Holy Spirit which comes by faith in Christ. The promise is to you and to your children, that is to the
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Jews. To all who are afar off, that is to the Gentiles. To all, as many as the
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Lord will call. That is all who God has called to salvation. I want you to notice in verse 21, it said that everyone who calls upon the name of the
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Lord will be saved. And verse 39 says that the promise is for all as many as the Lord will call. And again, what we see here is
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God's sovereignty and human responsibility again, as friends in this passage.
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They're friends in salvation. Does God call people to salvation?
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Yes. Do people call upon the name of the Lord to be saved? Yes. And so the invitation is for all.
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That means the invitation is for you. Are you here this morning and you've never called upon the name of the
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Lord for salvation? Call upon the name of Christ and be saved. It is for you.
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Turn to Jesus and be cleansed. And for all of us, whatever you do, be loyal and true to this
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Jesus that we read about in Acts chapter 2. This Jesus who lived obediently in your place.
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Who died sacrificially in your place. Who was raised from the dead so that you could be raised to new and everlasting life.
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Who ascended to the right hand of God where He rules and reigns until the end of days.
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Devote yourselves to this Jesus. Let's pray.
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Our Father in heaven, I pray that we would indeed be devoted to Christ.
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To the one who is high and lifted up. To one who came down and dwelled among us.
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Who faced every temptation, every type of trial and temptation yet was without sin so He died sacrificially in our place and was raised on the third day that we too might be raised to new life, walking in holiness and righteousness now and everlasting life that we might dwell forever with You.
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Lord, let us be devoted to this Jesus. For our good and for Your glory.