Acts 2:14-41
Let’s give our attention to the
reading of God’s word. Before we do, let’s pray together. Lord, we need eyes that see,
and so give us sight. We need ears that hear, so unstop
our ears. And we need hearts that perceive
this to be the very word of God. And so soften our hearts, free
us from the cares of the world for a few moments, so that your
word may be deeply implanted into each of us. and that we
may receive it with joy. May we go from this place and
diligently think on it. Be good Bereans who went and
searched the scriptures to see that these things were so, and
may we live these things in our daily living for your glory and
the good of our neighbor. Help us now as we come to your
word. We pray this in the name of Christ,
amen. Beginning at verse 14 of chapter
two of the book of Acts, we read of Peter’s preaching at Pentecost. Peter, standing with the 11,
lifted up his voice and he addressed them, men of Judea and all who
dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear
to my words. For these men are not drunk as
you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But
this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel. And in the
last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit
on all flesh. and your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your
old men shall dream dreams. Even on my male and female servants
in those days, I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the
heavens above and signs on the earth below, smoke and fire and
vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the
great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that
everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Men
of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested
to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God
did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this
Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge
of God. You crucified and killed by the
hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the
pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held
by it. For David says concerning him,
I saw the Lord always before me. For he is at my right hand
that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad,
my tongue rejoiced. My flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul
to Hades or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made
known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness
with your presence. 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 has sworn with an oath to him
that he would set one of his descendants on the 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 all that we are witnesses. Being therefore
exalted and at the right hand of God, and having received from
him the Father, the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured
out this that you yourselves are not seeing or 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 of 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 heard
this, they were cut to the heart “‘and said to Peter and 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 promises
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. The word of the living God, you
may be seated. Well, I’m one of the fortunate
ones who had a childhood outdoors. Kids these days, they’re locked
up in the house, school all day on the video screen. They’re
locked up at the video game console. They don’t go out and play. I
can remember being sent outside. We weren’t wanted in the house.
We were in the way. But just come home for supper.
And so we loved exploring the woods and the natural things
of our neighborhood. We used to play in a creek that
my mom did not know about until recently. Somewhere over there
near Waccamaw Pottery, there was a bridge that went under
the highway and there was more water in the creek so it was
more fun to play there. But at this particular creek
crossing where we would play, I think my battery just died. At this particular creek crossing
where we would play, it was a wide and deep creek, and so we would
find a path of stones and skip across. I’ve got this one on
here. There we go. We would find this
path of stones and skip our way across this wide expanse of water. We did not want to get our feet
wet. We would skip across the stones. And that’s, in a sense,
what we want to do with this passage today from Acts chapter
2, 14 to 41. It’s a big passage. It’s both
wide and deep. It’s too much to say everything. You would lose your head. I would
get in big trouble, I think. So I want us to look at some
of the highlights of this passage, this wonderful passage where
Peter’s Pentecost preaching explains all that has taken place in the
life and in the ministry of Jesus as he ascends to heaven but gives
his Holy Spirit. Remember in the week past when
we read the beginning of Acts chapter 2, the account of Pentecost
was of certain sounds, a mighty rushing wind came into the room
where the 120 were gathered. a mighty rushing wind came in,
and not only did that sound appear, but the sight of tongues, flames
of fire appeared on the heads of each Christian disciple. And the result of that mighty
rushing wind, those flames of fire, were that the Galileans,
unschooled, uneducated people, could speak the languages of
the nations that had gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost. Now, the people who heard these
Galileans were quite amazed. They were amazed that they heard
their own language spoken by these unlearned people, but many
received and heard the gospel. They heard the words of salvation,
but some were perplexed. Some were confused. Some were
greatly troubled. And then there was the accusation,
which Peter addresses in his Pentecost sermon, It’s nine in
the morning. There’s no other explanation
except you’ve been drinking new wine. You’ve been drinking the
good stuff and you’re inebriated. And so Peter stands in the midst,
in the midst of the temple at Jerusalem and proclaims to this
crowd who gathered at the sound of the wind and who have come
to see the sight of this Holy Spirit event. Now stop and think
for just a moment. It was just 50 plus days ago
that Peter denied Jesus. It was just 50 plus days ago
that when Jesus was led into the high priest house, he cowered
in the corners, he hid in the shadows, he denied his Lord and
Master, he denied his Savior whom he had previously said,
wherever you go, I will follow. And now Peter is standing in
the temple. He’s standing in the temple,
empowered by the Holy Spirit, schooled in the Old Testament
by Jesus himself, and he preaches and proclaims the goodness of
God for salvation with faith in Jesus Christ. Now, Peter,
who was formerly weak, who was formerly unuseful was now the
most useful tool. In fact, we’re going to see by
the time we get to the end of this passage, over 3,000 people were
saved that day. Now let me make a note of encouragement
here. We live in a world where we want
to see sensational. We want to see numbers and numbers
and numbers added to our days. We want to see Revival we want
to see people come forward. We want to see our churches full.
I was listening this week to a interview with Leighton Ford. He was one of Billy Graham’s
right-hand men and he came to faith through the efforts of
his mother. His mother prayed for him. He
had a difficult childhood. But he says in his own testimony,
I came to faith and began to be involved in Youth for Christ
and then went off to Wheaton College, went to the, along with
a lot of the Billy Graham crusades. But he said, I was, I was sitting
at a, at a Billy Graham crusade where Graham preached and nobody
came forward. And he said, I was so discouraged.
God must not be working. But he said, I noticed Billy
Graham’s face. He was not discouraged. And so
we have to take great care to understand that this is a particularly
special time where God’s spirit was moving, much like the great
awakenings in the early part of our history. Sometimes we
see the spirit move and sometimes we see nothing. But we continue
to preach, we continue to proclaim, we continue to be faithful. Well, Peter, bold and useful,
opened up the scriptures and explained, as he calls them,
men of Israel, brothers. He’s preaching to the people
of God who had just rejected Christ. And in fact, not only
had they rejected him, they crucified him. Remember Jesus’ parable
as we got towards the end of Luke? God is like the man who
owns a vineyard. And he sends his caretakers into
the vineyard and says, hey, it’s time to send a little benefit,
a little profit to the owner. And so they send a servant and
they run them off. They beat him. Another servant,
hey, it’s time to pay up. The owner needs a little profit
on his business here. They beat him up. And finally,
I’ll send my son. Oh, this is the son, this is
the heir. What did they do? They killed him. This is the
fulfillment of that very telling parable, that prophecy Jesus
told before his death. You, Israel, are stewards of
the vineyard. and you killed the owner’s son. That’s what Peter is going to
preach and proclaim, but call them to repentance. I want us
to think just a few things about this passage. Let’s skip on the
stones across the creek. I know some of you will feel
left unsatisfied. We’ve not covered everything.
Well, maybe another day we can do that. The first thing I want
you to notice, Peter is a Bible preacher. He is preaching the
Old Testament, Joel chapter two, Psalm 16, Psalm 110. He is preaching and proclaiming. It reminds us of what Paul will
later say to Timothy. All scripture is breathed out
by God and is useful for teaching and rebuking and correcting and
for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be
thoroughly furnished, fully equipped for all godliness. Before Paul
says that to Timothy, he reminds him how he came to faith, your
mother and your grandmother, they read to you the old covenant
scriptures. And so we ought to take great
joy in the fact that we have copies of God’s word in our own
hands, in our own language, in our translation that for the
past five, 600 years, since the reformation era, through the
work of Wycliffe and Huss and Luther and and Calvin and on
and on through the ages to today, we have the word of God in our
hands for in the medieval church in the dark ages for nearly a
millennium, God’s word was held captive. The word of God was
not translated into the language, the tongue of the people, and
it was chained to the pulpit. People did not have copies of
God’s word on their phones and in their hands and on their night
tables and wherever you may have copies. but Peter was a preacher
of the word. And that’s what we want to be
here in this congregation. That’s why our morning services,
our evening services, our Sunday school, our Wednesday Bible studies,
that’s why we are saturating you with the word. It is the
word that leads you to repentance. It is the word that strengthens
your faith. It is the word that shows us
in the Old and New Testaments, both the complete Bible, who
God is, what God has done, and how he will act as promised in
the future. And so here, Peter preaches and
proclaims and explains Joel chapter 2. He’s saying to the people
in his hearing that day, what you’re seeing is what God said
would happen in the Bible through Joel. God said there will be
a day where people, all people, even the servants, male, female,
young, old, they will receive the outpouring of the spirit
and the church will fully possess God’s spirit and proceed ahead
from Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth.
Peter is saying, this is that. This is what you are seeing.
it’s been foretold of in the Scriptures. So, Peter is a preacher. He’s a preacher of the Scripture.
That’s the first thing we want to step on as we cross through
this raging torrent, so to speak. The second thing we want to see
that the Scripture points out to us, not only is it important
to preach the Scripture, it’s important also to see, secondly,
redemptive history. If you read the Bible from start
to finish, you see that God is at work creating the world. and redeeming the world. God
has made the world and everything in it. He’s made his people. He’s put us on this earth to
work, to keep, to be fruitful, to multiply, and to fill the
earth, and to live in submission to him as king of the earth.
Well, we know since Adam and Eve, we have wanted to do it
ourselves. We have wanted autonomy. We have
wanted independence from God, independence from his law, independence
from his ways, yet he has continually sought sinners and brought them
to faith in Jesus. And we thank God for this understanding
of redemptive history from the Garden of Eden. Through the history of Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob and the kings and the prophets and the exile
and the return, the life and ministry of Jesus, the early
church, the middle ages, the reformation, and now our era
of history, God is at work in human history, redeeming men
and women and boys and girls who’ve shaken their fist at him
and said, no, I’ll do it my way. And what is Peter saying? All
that you see taking place, All this Holy Spirit excitement is
not drunkenness, it’s just the powerful plan of God and the
providential outworking of these things. Isn’t it interesting
to read? It was in the definite plan and in the foreknowledge
of God that Jesus would go to the cross. Probably 15 years
ago, some of you remember the debut of Mel Gibson’s film, I forget what it was even called.
Passion of Jesus Christ. John Piper took the opportunity
to print a book, 50 Reasons Jesus Came to Die, and one of the first
of his 50 points, it might be the very one, not looked at in
a really long time, but it says something like this. Who put
Jesus on the cross? Well, we say Pilate. Who put
Jesus on the cross? Caiaphas. Who put Jesus on the
cross? Well, I did. And he says, no,
God put Jesus on the cross. And Peter affirms that here.
It was in the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. We could
spread it out backwards and say for sin. and for sinners and
for human history to lead up to the point of the cross where
someone had to pay the penalty for sin so that God’s wrath would
be satisfied. And so Peter here preaches, he
proclaims the work of God in redemptive history. And he continues
to say that all through history, even to 2021, we who sit here
today, as we listen to the scriptures, And as we understand redemptive
history, we understand that we can repent and we can believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. That leads us to the
third stone we want to step across as we skip across this sort of
raging torrent of truth. Not only does Peter preach scripture,
he proclaims redemptive history, he preaches Jesus. And that’s
really the center of this passage is Christ. It’s where Psalm 110,
it’s where Psalm 16 come into play. Peter is explaining the
events of Pentecost, but he’s stretching back to the cross
and he’s saying, this should not surprise you who are Old
Testament people. If you’ve read the Psalms, if
you’ve read Joel, if you’ve read the whole Old Testament, you
know that the scriptures and redemptive history point to this
central moment of Jesus. coming into the world, being
the true prophet, being greater than Moses, preaching repentance,
preaching faith, preaching hope, preaching the kingdom of almighty
God. He says, you should know this
Jesus. And you should know of his life
and his death and his resurrection. And you should see the power
of God overcomes the wickedness of men, what they meant for evil
and killing Jesus. God has meant for good as he’s
raised him up. Death could not hold him. And
now we are here proclaiming him to you. We are not drunk. but
we are empowered by His Holy Spirit. Well, there’s a fourth
stone we must step across as we jump across this great creek
of truth, this great torrent of God’s redemptive work, and
it’s the gospel. Now, you’ve read Acts chapter
two. We just read it a few moments
ago, and you were probably scratching your head thinking, now, Peter,
Peter’s really bold here. Peter’s not being politically
correct. Peter’s stepping on some toes. Peter doesn’t know
who his audience is. Peter’s gonna run some tithers
off. Peter would probably sit in somebody’s seat in the Presbyterian
church. I mean, you could go down the list and say, he shouldn’t
be doing any of this. He’s breaking every single law.
But you don’t, friends, tell the good news of the gospel unless
you tell the bad news first. And did you notice he is very
pointed in saying to them, men of Israel, you have done this. Men of Israel, you have forsaken
God. Men of Israel, you have taken
the holy one of Israel. And as he entered your gates,
the king of glory entered his gates. You weren’t even there
to sing his praises. As he entered the gates and you
failed to sing his praises, you were plotting to put him to death
and you did so. And while you were dancing on
his grave, God kept him from Hades. He kept his soul from
Sheol and he has raised him up in power. He has ascended to
heaven. He’s given us this spirit. We proclaim this to you. Friends,
if we want the world to change, we need to preach the gospel.
And we need to stop with all this doing it little bits here,
being friendly there. We need to say to people, you
know you’re sinning. We need to say to people, the way you’re
living is gonna lead to eternal damnation. We need to say to
people, you are living in foolishness and God offers wisdom. We need
to present the black and white truth. There is sin and there
is salvation and the two don’t mix. We’ve become a popular psychology
world today. When I explained to you during
the confession of sin, that I’m sorry if I offended you has now
warped into, I’m sorry that I offended you. We have no concept this
day and age of truth and falsehood. We have no concept today of offense. And fixing it and making it right.
But that is the center of the gospel. You have broken God’s
law. You have broken God’s heart.
You have put your fist in his face. You have said to God, I
can live on my own. I don’t need you. And in the
spirit of Adam and Eve, really in the spirit of Satan, you’ve
told God, go away, buzz off. And then we expect him to bless
us. We expect him to make us whole when we’re sick. We expect
him to give us traveling mercies or to get us through college
or get us that job or whatever. We don’t wanna call on his name
or worship him. We want him like Santa Claus to bring the gifts
we want when we need them. And Peter is saying, if you don’t
repent, if you don’t believe, you’re responsible. There will be a day of judgment.
That’s what Joel predicted. the age of the locust, the day
of the Lord. And that’s what Peter is preaching.
There is good news, but you’ve got to embrace the bad news first.
That’s the gospel. And the last thing in this passage,
we see Peter preaching scripture. We see the redemptive history
of almighty God in this passage. We see Jesus front and center. We get the gospel, the good news.
But the last thing is there is an urgency. There is a must. And did you catch the wonderful
phrase in Acts chapter two? They were cut to the heart. They
were pricked. And do you see the urgency in
their question? What must we do to be saved? He has presented
to them this divine and eternal predicament. He has presented
to them like, like, um, Edwards did, sinners in the hands of
an angry God, your foot shall slip in due time. You are walking
over a rock. You are walking over hell on
a rotted bridge. And what is their response? What
must we do to be saved? Repent, be baptized. All of you, the promises of God
are for you and for your household. Therefore, those who are near,
but also those who are far off. Dear brothers and sisters, we
ought not to lose sight of these elements in this passage. We need to continue preaching
and proclaiming the scripture, not only in this church and in
this pulpit, but in our lips. as we go bear witness to God
in the world. We need to see God’s hand in
human history. This is our father’s world, and he is at work saving. It may be dark, the news may
be depressing, there may be things that are taking place in our
local, state, and even national government that we do not approve
of or do not like, but there is a kingdom that is bigger and
is not of this world, and we need to see God at work, Jesus
as the center, We need to see the gospel as the only hope.
It’s not through political action. It’s not through donating to
this fund or that fund. It’s only when the gospel comes
and changes the hearts of sinners that we have hope in this world.
But we have the same Pentecostal power. You do not have to persuade
men in your own strength. This church, though it is small,
can do mighty things in a community that, as the rest of the world
is going, continues to disregard God, continues to think it does
not need a gospel. We can pull ourselves up by our
bootstraps. We can be good enough. We need
to continue in the same power that came at Pentecost, that
we have received ourselves by faith in Jesus to go into the
world and to do ministry. So let’s pause and pray and ask
for God’s grace to do that. Our Lord, we pray that we would
not lose hope or lose heart, We see around us, as Peter has
stated, a crooked generation, a depraved generation, a dark
generation. And we also see the brightness
of the hope of the gospel. It’s in your word, but we’ve
experienced it in your life. And so we pray that this Pentecostal
power, this Pentecostal gospel hope would be ours as we walk
through the dark city streets. that we would see the glimmer
of the light of heaven and offer it to those who are in great
need. Hear us and help us as we ask for your strength in the
name of our Lord Jesus. We ask it in his great name.
Amen. We want to commit ourselves to
the Lord by singing Psalm 110, one of the Psalms that Peter
spoke of, and we’ll stand together to sing 110B.