Acts 2:37-42
Please turn in your copy of God’s
word to the book of Acts, to the second chapter. Our reading
today will be Acts chapter two, verses 37 to 42. We began a few weeks back, a
little sermon series on the means of grace, the means whereby God
communicates his grace to us. Remember, in our shorter catechism,
as you make your way through all the truth is about man, the
scripture, God, salvation, you make your way all the way through
the Ten Commandments. There’s this one big question
that says, is any man able in this life to perfectly keep God’s
law? And the answer is no. We do daily
break God’s law and thought, word and deed. Then the next
question asks something like this, what is the punishment
due to us for our sins, the punishment due to us for our sins? is eternal
separation from Almighty God. And then there’s a wonderful
gospel question. What must we do to escape God’s
wrath and curse that is due to us for sin? Well, we come to
faith in Jesus Christ. We turn from our sins and we
desire to live a life of obedience. Now, the way that God has designed
in his providence to nurture Christians The way he communicates
the means of his communication of his grace, we like to say,
are the word, the sacraments. prayer, fellowship, suffering,
and then we may have a few other things like personal devotions
or family worship, Sabbath, Lord’s Day. But these are the things,
these are the exercises, these are the disciplines of grace.
And so a couple weeks ago we looked at the Word of God, particularly
the Word of God preached. Last week we looked at the sacrament
of the Lord’s Supper and then we had communion together. Today
We’ll consider the subject of baptism, particularly as it shows
us our entrance into the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. But
also we’ll note since it’s Mother’s Day, the importance of the covenant
family in the life of believers, particularly the children of
believers. So let us together hear God’s
word from Acts chapter two, beginning at verse 37. Now, when they heard
this, they were cut to the heart. And they 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 the Lord Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of 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 he 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. And they devoted themselves to
the apostles teaching and to the fellowship and to the breaking
of bread and to prayers. This is God’s word. Pray with
me for a moment. Our Lord and God, we ask that
you would give us eyes that see, ears that hear, hearts that understand,
and most of all, that you would give us hands and feet. Give
us wills that are ready to hear your word, to believe it and
to obey it. We need your help. We need your
grace. We need your mercy for this. So we ask that you would
give it in abundance and we pray it in Christ’s name. Amen. Where did these words that we
read just take place? Where were these words given? Well, these words were given
as a part of Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. You will remember
that the city of Jerusalem was the center of religious, of cult
exercise in the nation of Israel, that Jerusalem was the holy city. It was Mount Zion. It was where
God dwelled among his people. The city of Jerusalem, about
the time of Pentecost, about the time of the death and crucifixion
of the Lord Jesus Christ, was a city of about 100,000. Now
that was its population under normal day-to-day circumstances. Now, the city, as you know, would
swell with population as Jews from around the nation of Israel
and as time passed and people around the world began to call
on the name of Jesus or call on the name of the Lord, the
pilgrims would come from far and wide for the feast. And the
city would swell as people bumped as they stayed wherever they
could. There were people sleeping in the pantries and doubling
up in the beds and camping outside the city. The ends would be full.
Well, we know that the city about the time of Jesus’ holy week,
his passion week, it swelled with extra residents, with people
who had come to observe the feast of Passover. And so at Holy Week,
the city was full of people. And we know that Jesus came and
he preached. He had his triumphal entry. He
suffered. He died on the cross. He was
buried. And on the third day, he rose
again. And for the next 40 days until
the ascension of Christ, Jesus spent time with his disciples. He spent time encouraging them
in the way of the church, in the ways of gospel living. And as he was ascended into heaven,
he reminded them just before he left that they needed to stay
in Jerusalem and await the promised Holy Spirit. And so we read in
the book of Acts from the pen of Luke, the physician, we read
that the disciples The 11 were in Jerusalem. They were in the
upper room. They spent time in prayer with
one another. They elected Matthias to replace
Judas, who had betrayed Christ and who had taken his own life.
And that sometime after Jesus ascension, the Holy Spirit came
among them as a mighty rushing wind. And these Poor, uneducated
Galilean fishermen, these ragtag disciples of the Lord Jesus who
were eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Christ, were given the ability
by the power of the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues or languages
they did not know. And if you read through Acts
chapter 1 and 2, you will read that people from all over the
world who are now God-fearers heard testimony of the risen
and exalted Christ. from the mouths of these simple
Galileans. Now, there were some who received
the message of Peter and these others with great joy. But as
is often the case, as we’re told in the word of God, and it’s
in our own experience in life, there were those who hung around
the fringes or even participated in the life of the church who
did not believe. And so we’re told that some scoffed
and said, these men are drunk. And so in Acts chapter one and
two, we read the account of this wonderful event of Pentecost
where the Holy Spirit that was promised came to rest on those
who believed in Jesus. And Peter defends the actions
of those who preached in tongues. And he reminds these Jews, he
reminds those who have grown up in the knowledge of the Old
Testament, He reminds them of the promise that Joel, the prophet,
gave many years ago, where he said that the spirit of God would
come to rest on believers and that old men and young men and
old women and young women, even children, would receive this
promise blessing and that they would speak words of God to one
another. And then he goes on to explain
that the Christ The son of David must come in the flesh and that
he must suffer for his people, that he must take on their sins
as the great and final Passover lamb, and that he must die a
sacrificial death that would atone for the sins of the people. And then in good preacher fashion,
he goes from preaching to meddling and he points his fingers at
the Jews in his audience. And he says, it was you, it was
you who 40 days ago put the son of God to death on the cross. It was you who nailed him. It was you who did the dishonor
to the son of God. And as we pick up in verse 37
of chapter two of the book of Acts today, we read that this
word, this preaching, this sermon from Peter. Now this is the same
Peter who just 40 days or so ago had denied Christ. Who three
times before the rooster crowed had denied him and had run out
into the night in despair. This same Peter now preaches
boldly under the power of the Holy Spirit. And the response,
as the word of God does his work in the life of this Jewish audience,
it says they were pierced in the heart. They were cut to the
heart. They were, as we might say here in the South, they became
under conviction. The word of God was doing its
work. It caused them to tremble. And
their response to Peter and the apostles was this, what shall
we do? And you may not think of this,
but I want you to consider today as we look at the subject of
baptism, but I want you to consider how this would have been received,
the response that Peter is going to give, how this would have
been received by a Jewish audience. We hear about baptism today and
we run it through our basically 250 years of American history,
our 250 years of American history, where in the life of the church,
there’s been this The difference between Baptists and Presbyterians,
some baptize babies, others baptize only believers who have professed
their faith. And you see the original Jewish
audience, even the original Christian audience up until a couple of
hundred years ago, would have not thought this way or under
these circumstances. But as the Jewish audience was
cut to the heart, as they heard the word of God preached, by
Peter, the apostle, and they gave the question, what then
shall we do? We come to three, I think, wonderful
things we ought to consider today as the people of God, as we consider
the means of grace, as we consider today, it’s Mother’s Day, the
Christian family. Consider a couple of significant
things this passage brings up to us. The first is the sign
of the covenant. Look, if you will, at verse 38.
This is Peter’s response. When they asked brothers, what
shall we do? In 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. Now you understand that this
Jewish audience. had been in their holy city,
they had just experienced Holy Week and the passion of Christ
and heard of the tumult among the Romans and the Jewish citizens. They understood the old covenant.
They understood the laws and the practices and the cycle of
feasts that would have come year round. You would have known if
you were one of them that God in his centuries of dealing with
his people, he gave them signs that represented that showed
the realities of his covenant with them. And so when Peter
says repent. They’ve heard that before, they’ve
heard it from a man named John, the baptizer, the one who they
thought was Jeremiah or another prophet reborn or raised from
the dead again. They’ve heard this word repent,
but be baptized. That was a new command for the
command that they had heard before was be circumcised. The sign
of the covenant, the covenant sign placed on families was that
of circumcision. Remember that when Abraham was
called out of Ur of the Chaldeans and he made his way with his
family and his servants and his caravan landed in the land of
Canaan, one of the first things he did was built an altar and
worship God. And then God came to him and
made promises, covenant promises. He said, I will be your God and
you will be my people. And from you, out of your loins,
Abraham will come offspring that will outnumber the sand on the
seashore. They will outnumber the stars
in the heavens. I will be your God and you will
be my people. I will make you into a great
nation. I will bless you.” And then he goes on to say, and all
the peoples of the earth will be blessed by you. Now there comes a day in the
life of Abraham where Abraham is commanded by God to take all
the male servants, all the male children, all the males in his
household and circumcise them. And we read that Abraham did
so. And when Isaac was born, it became
the custom on the eighth day for all males born into the house
people who feared God and were children of Yahweh, that they
would be circumcised on the eighth day. And so now, as we saw last
week, that Jesus transformed the Passover into the Lord’s
Supper, an old sacrament became a new and better sacrament. We
now see through the preaching of Peter that the covenant sign
for the people of God was no longer circumcision, but baptism. We read in places like Colossians
where the Apostle Paul says in a rather wonderful way, he says
that at the cross of Christ. On Calvary. you were circumcised
in your hearts. The dead flesh of your heart,
the sin nature was cast off at the cross and God gave you a
new heart. And so now the sign of the covenant
sign for Christianity, for the people of God is no longer circumcision
of flesh that is done in real space and time at the cross when
God circumcises our hearts. But it is now the washing with
water In baptism. And so in the name of the Father
and in the name of the Son and the name of the Holy Spirit,
as Christians, we put water on people. We put water on people
and we give them the sign of covenant realities. Now, the
water does not do anything in baptism. It doesn’t cleanse.
It doesn’t wash. It doesn’t make new. But it is
a sign or a symbol of the reality that has taken place inside us.
It is a sign of the covenant promises of God. We have been
washed. We have been cleansed. We have
been regenerated. We have been made new creations
in Christ Jesus. Our sins are forgiven. Now you also have to remember
this Jewish audience is they hear these words, repent and
be baptized. They also have echoing, at least
in their minds, maybe their hearts, the preaching and the ministry
of John the Baptist. I mean, in the last, what, three
years circling the land of Israel, John the Baptist went around
preparing the way of the Lord, saying, repent and be baptized. And he baptized for the forgiveness
of sins, but he did not baptize and give the Holy Spirit. He
promised that would come. And so now the covenant sign
for the people of God representing this cleansing and this forgiveness. was a water sign. It was no longer
a ceremony of the cutting of the flesh, the removal of uncleanliness,
for that took place at the cross. But it was this water sign that
shows our visible entrance into the covenant community. Now,
some of you at various points in time have been members of
clubs or maybe a fraternity or a sorority or some sort of organization
where you were inducted Maybe some of you went through a little
hazing, you went through a little probation period, you were voted
in, and there was some sort of sign put on you. There was some
sort of pin placed on your lapel. There was some sort of ceremony
where you were brought into that family, that club, that organization. And friends, that is what baptism
is. It simply is a sign showing our inclusion into the covenant
community. It doesn’t save us. But it points
to the reality of the God who saves us. And so this covenant
sign of baptism to this Jewish audience who would have expected
maybe repent and be circumcised. They saw the word of God, the
hand of God at work. And they now knew that as they
cast off their old ways and became part of the called out people
of God, that they were included in the family of faith. Now, every Presbyterian meeting
we go to, And I think it happens at every one. I don’t think I’m
exaggerating, but there’s always a young man or two who is transferring
in our Presbytery to be a minister, or he’s being examined for a
new ministry, new ordination. And one question that’s always
asked is this, who is baptism for? Now, for a lot of them,
that puts them on the spot, because it sounds like a trick question.
But if you’ve read your shorter catechism, or even your larger
catechism or your confession of faith or theological documents
of our church, you understand that baptism is for believers
and their children. Baptism is a covenant sign placed
on believers and their children. Now this works itself out in
all kinds of ways. I have a baptism folder. I keep
it in my worship drawer. And I save every order of service
where a person was baptized. And this week as I was peeking
through it, it was interesting to see all of the people in the
last 15 years or so that I have baptized. I baptized men in their
50s or 60s who came to faith in Jesus. They professed their
faith and they were baptized for the first time. I baptized
a number of infants born into Christian families. But some
of the most special ones, Some of the most special ones are
the baptisms of children who were recently adopted by Christian
parents. And I was looking at some of
the children from Eastern Europe, their names, or Korea, or some
domestic adoptions. And it’s wonderful to see how
God’s promises, God’s covenant sign is placed on the families
of those who believe. What a wonderful inclusion it
is to see that when we adopt into our family, God then adopts
into his family. And it’s a wonderful thing to
be a minister and to place this covenant sign on children, on
adults, on adopted children. And so this passage shows us
the covenant sign the first time it was ever demanded of new converts
and of their families. Repent and be baptized. Well, the second thing this passage
brings up to us is the importance not only of the covenant sign,
baptism, but the importance of the covenant community. Look,
if you will, with me at verses 39 through 42. Verse 39 says,
for the promise is for you, it’s for your children, and it’s for
all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord calls to himself. And with many other words, he
bore witness, and he continued to exhort them saying, save yourselves
from this crooked and depraved generation. So those who received
his word were baptized, and those who were added to that day, about
3,000 souls. And they devoted themselves to
the apostles teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking
of bread and to prayers. The covenant community, the church,
is one of the most important institutions that God has created. We believe simply that God created
three institutions, the church, the family, and the civil government. The church and the family and
the civil government are those three areas where God has ordained
authority and he’s ordained nurture so that the church and that society
may be furthered. It’s why most every Sunday in
the pastoral prayer towards the end, I pray that we’ll obey our
parents. It’s why I pray that we’ll follow
our elders. And it’s why we pray together
that we’ll obey those in authority over us. We are living in an
anti authoritarian world. We are living in a world that
loves anarchy. It loves protest. It loves speaking
against those who rule over us. But as children of God, we are
under authority. The covenant community, the church,
is one of the most foundational institutions that God has created. And we know what culture is doing
to the home. We know what culture is doing to the church. We know
what the church is doing to the church. And we know where government
has led us. One of the great difficulties
I think that the church faces this day and age is it has become
an age segregated community. But as you read through the whole
span of the Bible, including Acts chapter two today, you realize
that the covenant community participated together. Go read through the
book of Ezra and Nehemiah. When Ezra came as a priest and
scribe. And the people of God gathered
together to hear the law of God, which had not been read in Israel
in maybe centuries. When they came together to hear
the word of God read, they gathered together. And they gathered together
and they stood in the square of Jerusalem. And Ezra and the
priest, they put a raised platform up and they read the law of God
all day long. And there were priests and scribes
who were around to give instruction in the meaning of what they were
hearing. But the people of God gathered.
And you read example after example of that throughout the scriptures.
But today, you know, we segregate the kids. I remember early in
my ministry, the elders of our church got to thinking about
this junior church thing, this children’s church thing. And
we got to begin to realize that children of the covenant were
not in worship. until about the age of middle
school. And they began to scratch their heads and say, what’s wrong
with this picture? And so they decided they would
lower the age. Any child who was able to go to school and
maintain and manage an eight hour workday at school, who was
able to join chess club and sports and music lessons, they ought
to reasonably be able to sit in the covenant worship with
their family. But we had one elder protest.
And you know what his protest was? His protest was this, my
children will be a distraction to me in worship. That may be,
in my experience, one of the worst things I’ve ever heard
an elder say. And another wiser man in the
room spoke up and said, well, your children, when you’re an
old man, and they’re not walking with the Lord, they’ll be a distraction
to you, my friend. And that settled that matter
with that brother. Friends, the promises are for
us. They are for our children, and
they are for those who are far off. The covenant community is
a rich and wide body of people, and it includes our children. And we who gather in the covenant
community are those who call on the name of the Lord and we
cast off the world. We cast off sin and we cast off
the ways. Other people who do not call
on the name of the Lord, we cast off the ways that they may live.
What is the church? The church in the New Testament,
the ecclesia, the called out ones, the assembly of those who
have been called out of the world to live unto Christ. And so we
read in Acts chapter two in our passage today that there to the
church in Jerusalem were added that day thousands of souls who
repented and believed and were baptized and their families with
them. Now I want you to think for just
a moment about the influence of the church. When we baptize
a baby, When we baptize the children of believers, we ask the parents
questions. Do you know the Lord? Do you
believe the Bible? Do you reaffirm your membership
vows? And then we ask them something like this. Do you promise to
raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? And we’re looking
on and saying, good for them, go for it. It’s gonna be hard
and all the rest. And then there’s a question turned
on the congregation. Do you promise? Do you promise
to help this family raise these little ones in the nurture and
in the admonition of the Lord. You see, friends, when the church
surrounds a family, the family and the church strengthen one
another. And as pilgrims striving to make
it towards heaven in a dark and dying world, we have two very
strong influences surrounding us and making faith in our children
possible. The question then comes, how
do our children come to faith? How do we nurture faith? We baptize
them. We’ve placed the covenant promises on them. Well, we put
them in the path of God’s people. We put them in the path of God’s
word. We put them in the path of the ordinances or the means
of grace. Recently, one of the great theologians
of our time, one of the great teachers of many men in gospel
ministry that maybe some of you even know, He was asked, what
was your secret to 50 years in ministry? He said, I went to
church morning. I went to church in the evening.
I went to prayer meeting. I read my Bible and I knew my
catechism. Then they asked him a second question. What was your
secret to raising children? Well, I took him to morning church.
I took him to evening church. I took him to prayer meeting.
I read the Bible and taught him the catechism. In every question
they asked him, what was your secret to success? It wasn’t
a technique. It wasn’t a skill acquired or
another degree earned. It was morning and evening church,
prayer meeting, Bible reading, and catechism. It was the means
of grace. You see, dear friends, we need
the influence of the means of grace. Isn’t it interesting?
And I observe this more and more as my children are getting older.
Oh, we want our children to succeed. And so we’ll put them in the
best school. And if school’s not doing a good enough job,
we’ll put them in after-school tutoring. And we want the best
piano teacher, the best strings teacher, the best soccer coach,
the best basketball coach. We send them to hour after hour
and dollar after dollar of things that we think will help them
succeed. But have we taken them to morning
and evening church? Have they sat with the saints at prayer
meeting? and begged God weekly for his
missionaries, for his persecuted saints, for the sick of the church,
for the growth of the gospel in the world. Have we read the
Bible to them? Have we taught them the catechism?
Oh, they’ll be good at soccer and they’ll be wonderful at their
musical instrument. Their SAT scores will soar high. But what of their spirituality?
Friends, the covenant community is for every member of the covenant. It’s for believers and their
children. I want to mention just briefly
a third thing. It doesn’t come up in this passage,
but I think it’s connected and it implies is implied well by
a study of the old Testament, the importance of the covenant
home. There’s the covenant sign baptism. There’s the covenant
community, the church. But there’s also the covenant
home. We read in the book of Deuteronomy in chapter six, that
the way the people of old were to raise their children, they
were to teach them night and day. They were to teach them
as they sat, as they walked, as they lied down, as they rose
and all around. Remember Deuteronomy six, here
old Israel, the Lord, your God is one and you shall love the
Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul,
with all your mind and with all your strength. And Jesus adds
to that commandment. The second is like it. Love your
neighbor as yourself. Children not only need the covenant
community, they need a covenant home. They need a home where
there are parents who love the Lord, who read the Bible, who
teach them the catechism, who hum the words of the saints in
their hearts, who show them ethics by the way they drive on the
road, who show ethics when at the checkout line, something
slips into the bag that wasn’t paid for. And they say, oh, look,
this was not paid for because we believe in honesty. And on
and on, you get the picture. Our children, as they live with
us, as we sit, as we walk, as we lie down, as we rise, and
all around, they see how we live, what we believe, and what we
do. We’ve been reading through the
book of Proverbs, maybe since January in our morning service.
And the Proverbs began this way, my son and implied my daughter. Do we have little talks with
our children? My son, my daughter, if you want to die, if you want
a miserable life, you’d be a fool. Oh, but my son and my daughter,
if you trust in God, If you put your faith and your hope in Jesus
and allow him to forgive you of your sins and give you eternal
life, and you walk in his ways according to his commandments,
you put yourself in his church and under his means of grace,
oh, life will be hard. No one promised it easy in a
bed of roses, but you will get safely to heaven. and you will
be a child of God forever in his glorious presence. Oh, dear
brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus, do you see, do you see
the value of the church, the covenant community? Do you see
the value of the home, the covenant home? For these are the things
that can change a culture. These are the things that can
change the trajectory of the world that we live in, but it’s
by faith in Jesus. And it’s with a diligent use
of the means he gives us. Pray with me. Our Lord and God,
we thank you from the bottom of our hearts that you have raised
us up. You have placed us in your church
family. And that you’ve placed us in
families here on earth. And we pray that as we are nurtured,
whether young or old or in between, as we are nurtured, we would
always look to Christ. We would always remember the
promises that are ours in his covenant and that we would look
back, that we would think on our baptism and that we would
want to improve our baptism as we desire to live for you, as
we desire to obey your law, as we desire to be repentant and
humble and faithful to your kingdom and its ways. Lord, give us your
grace and your strength. And we pray for the children
of this church, the grandchildren of this church, those connected
to us, that they would hear from our lips and see from our lives
what it means to fear God and to keep his commandments. Lord,
this would be a great blessing, so we ask for it. It would be
for your glory and our good. So grant that we pray in Christ.
And all God’s people said, Amen. Let us respond to God’s word
as we sing together from our hymnals, number 44, Children
of the Heavenly Father.