Welcome to the Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. Our sermon text this morning is from Acts chapter 2, verses 36 through 41. Hear the Word of God. 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 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 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 him, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about 3000 souls. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, May your Holy Spirit come upon us today. May He be our eyes and our ears that we may see and hear the words of life as proclaimed today. We pray that these words would go forth in a truthful manner. We pray that I, as your servant, Lord, would move out of the way, that you may speak through me, and that these words would be truthful and relevant to our lives. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. Last week we saw how Peter had preached a fervent sermon to a crowd of Jewish unbelievers. I say these were unbelievers because we know that they were the ones who had rejected Jesus and that these particular men were amongst those who had been participants in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ to one degree or another. So while preaching to these men, Peter quotes from the Old Testament. demonstrating from the scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah and the Lord. And while Peter was preaching and quoting the scriptures, he confronted these men. Without beating around the bush, Peter courageously declared to them that they were the ones who crucified the Messiah. They killed the Lord. And Peter concludes his sermon in verse 36, where he summarizes his entire message with the one line, that the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. The next verse, verse 37, describes these men as having been cut to the heart with grief and conviction. They stood before Peter and the other apostles with their hands out, palms facing up, tears in their eyes, asking, what shall we do? Today, we'll pick up the story at this point, and we're going to focus on Luke's account of this episode and how he reveals to us something about conviction of sin and repentance unto God. Now, there are many gems in this passage of Scripture. Way too many for us to deal with just today in this sermon. So today, we're going to limit ourselves to the discussion of conviction and repentance. Next week, we're going to come back to the same text, and we're going to focus on what it says about baptism. And then in two weeks from now, we're going to move on to the end of Acts chapter 2, and we're going to see there that it mentions God's people coming together to break bread. And we're going to see what the Bible has to say about the Lord's Supper. So today we're going to deal with conviction and repentance. And then in the next two weeks following, we're going to deal with the sacraments of the church. In verse 37 of our text, it says that these men, that they heard Peter confront them and these men were cut to the heart. Luke uses a word picture here to describe the conviction that these men felt for the sin that they have committed. Luke is drawing an image of a knife being thrust into their chest so deeply as to pierce even to the heart of man, to the innermost being of their soul. These men were convicted of their sin because the Holy Spirit had been supernaturally working in their hearts. It's important for us to realize that the Holy Spirit is the agent who brings conviction to a person's heart. It wasn't Peter's powerful preaching that convicted these men. It was the work of the Holy Spirit that taught these men to the heart. Peter's preaching was the means that God used to deliver the Word to these men, but it was the Holy Spirit that applied these words to the life and soul of each of the men, convicting them of their sinfulness. Think back to the Gospels when Jesus was preparing His disciples for His departure from this world. And He's telling them that He's going to send a helper to them, which is the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, if I go, then I can send the helper to you. I can send the Holy Spirit to you. And there in John 16, Jesus says that it is to their advantage that He leaves. For if He leaves, He will send the Holy Spirit to them. And the Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin. That's one of the Bible's stated functions for the Spirit. He will convict people of their sin. So true conviction of sin requires the Holy Spirit to expose our guilt to our senses. True conviction of sin is a supernatural awakening to your guilty disposition before a holy God. Therefore, any reaction to our sin, which is not the result of the Holy Spirit's work, cannot be true conviction. We are emotional creatures and therefore we have the capacity to experience a variety of emotions that correspond to sin, regret and shame and humility and a variety of other emotions. These are the type of emotions that will accompany true conviction of sin. But let's not confuse or mistake these emotions with conviction. These emotions are natural to man. And they can be experienced for a variety of reasons. Conviction is a supernatural experience. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it's in an entirely different category than the natural emotions of regret and shame and humility. Let me state this a different way just to make sure that I'm communicating well. If a person is truly convicted of sin, if the Holy Spirit has acted upon that person in such a way that he has awakened to his guilty disposition before our holy God, then this person will experience regret and shame and humility. But there might also be another person who's not convicted of sin. A person who God, the Holy Spirit, has not worked supernaturally in his life. And it's possible for this person to feel regret and shame and humility as well, but for all the wrong reasons. Conviction, therefore, is more than just natural emotions. These men to whom Peter was preaching, they were experiencing all these emotions. They regretted what they did. They were shamed at their behavior. They were humbled that they had killed the Messiah. But these natural emotions are not what cut them to their heart. The only thing capable of piercing the hardness of men's hearts is a supernatural conviction brought on by the Holy Spirit. An awareness of their sin and a burden of guilt. That is what conviction of sin is. It is the burden of guilt which is placed on the shoulders of the man who is convicted by the Holy Spirit of his sin. The men to whom Peter was preaching were truly convicted and therefore they did not try to argue that they were innocent. They did not try to fight against the claim that they murdered the Messiah. They offered no defense for their sinful thoughts and actions because they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were guilty. They bore the guilt on their shoulders. They can feel the weight of their sins because the Holy Spirit had convicted them. These men could only respond with one question. What shall we do? What can we possibly do? Is there anything that can be done to fix the situation? This is the position that Christian and from Pilgrim's Progress found himself in. If you recall, Christian starts his pilgrimage with a heavy weight on his back. And his weight is growing larger and larger as he's looking for ways in which he can relieve himself of this burden. And Christian has been convicted of a sin, and therefore he is carrying the burden of this guilt, and it's a growing burden. He becomes more and more aware of his sinfulness and depravity. And through this convicting work of God the Holy Spirit, this is the position that God wants all of us to arrive at when we've been convicted of our sin. God wants us to feel the weight of our sin, to understand the guilt of our iniquities. God wants to drive us to the point of despair because it is there that we find him. It is there in the depths of our sorrows and guilt that we understand the need to repent for the forgiveness of our sins. You see, conviction of sin serves the purpose of driving us to repentance. This is an act of grace on God's part. When these men in Acts 2 were asked what they ought to do, Peter tells them that what they need to do is repent for the forgiveness of their sins. God doesn't want to hear us make excuses for why we fell into sin. He doesn't want us to try to bargain with Him to say things like, if you only deliver me from this predicament, I will serve you for the rest of my life. I will become a missionary. I will work with the homeless. I'll go here, I'll go there, I'll do this, I'll do that. We're not in a position to bargain with God to begin with. We're the sinful ones, He's not. He owes us nothing. It's not as if we can give Him our life as if He didn't already own it. When God the Holy Spirit convicts a person of their sin, the only reaction that pleases God is repentance. Has the Holy Spirit exposed your sinfulness so that you have been cut to the heart, driven to the point of helplessness and despair? Has the conviction of your sin brought about a burden of guilt, an increasingly large and cumbersome handicap that has begun to affect the way you relate to others, to your family, to your friends, to your fellow church members? If your life is so burdened with guilt, then I plead with you to confess your sins in an act of repentance to God. There is no other remedy for sin. There is no other way to escape the conviction of the Holy Spirit than to repent to God, acknowledging your sinfulness and seeking his pardon upon the grounds of the atoning work of Jesus Christ. The anxiety of unconfessed sin can wreak havoc in the mind and bodies of the sinners. Our own spiritual health is compromised if we fail to repent of the sins that the Holy Spirit has convicted us of. King David wrote about the agony he experienced as he lived with unconfessed sin. When he was convicted of the sins that he had committed with Bathsheba and yet had not confessed them to God. Listen to how David describes his life as one who is convicted of a sin yet had not repented of it. I'm going to read from Psalm 32, verses 3 and 4. For when I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. You can sense the spiritual turmoil and anguish that David was struggling with, attempting to suppress his guilt rather than to confess it to God. But no matter how hard he tried to suppress the guilt, every day the burden grew larger and larger. David writes of his eventual relief from this, continuing in Psalm 32, I acknowledged my sin to you, I did not cover my iniquity, I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. David did not find relief from the oppressive weight of his sin until he confessed that sin to God, until he repented of it. You and I are no different. You will not feel or find relief from the oppressive weight of your sin until you have confessed that sin to God, until you repent of it. It's interesting to see how God uses people to bring other people to repentance. While it is only the Holy Spirit that can convict us of our sin, God frequently uses other people to prompt us to repentance. David provides us with such an example. We just read how he tried to suppress his guilt, which only resulted in an increased life of anguish and spiritual turmoil until he finally did confess his sin to God, and then that burden was removed. But do you remember how that happened? Do you recall the story of Nathan coming before David and confronting him face to face? For over a year, David attempted to suppress the conviction of the Holy Spirit. For over a year, David thought, this is a secret sin. Nobody knows about it. I don't have to confess it. It's between me and God and somehow it's just going to go away. And then God sent Nathan to confront David. And this is what ultimately drove David to repent of this sin. It was the intervention of Nathan in David's life that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Nathan, the man of God, confronted David to his face. And this is what drove David to repent. This is what brought spiritual peace and emotional relief to David's life. Likewise, here in our text in Acts chapter 2, it was the confrontation of Peter that drives these men to repentance. Confrontation is not something most of us like. In fact, some of us run from it, avoiding it at all costs. And while it's true that confrontation is often unpleasant, it is the means by which you and I can help move our brothers and sisters in Christ to repent of their sins. We cannot convict them of their sins, but we can be an encouragement for them to repent of their sins once the Holy Spirit has cut them to the heart. When we are faithful in calling our brothers and sisters to a life of obedience to God's holy standards, then we become the instruments that God uses to drive his people to repentance. The Bible does not tell us about the emotional disposition of Peter when he was confronting these people, when he's pointing his finger around saying, you killed the Messiah, you murdered Jesus Christ. We often think of Peter as a bold man, and often he was, and maybe at this occasion he was acting in that boldness and courage. But we also know that Peter had the ability to be timid and frightened as he was on the night when Jesus was crucified. And so whether Peter is here acting boldly and courageously, or whether he is experiencing timidity and fear, we don't know. What we do know is that Peter remained obedient to what God called him to do. And because of Peter's obedience, because Peter was willing to become uncomfortable for the sake of others, A whole lot of people repented of their sins and received forgiveness from the Lord. Peter was not the only person preaching that day. The good news was proclaimed as we saw earlier in Acts chapter 2, by 120 people who were proclaiming the mighty works of God. And verse 41 tells us that 3,000 souls were added to the church that day because the good news of the gospel was preached by men and women who did not let their own insecurities get in the way of their obedience to God's call on their life. Their obedience affected the lives of 3,000 people that day, despite their uncomfortableness with confrontation. 3,000 people were truly convicted of their sins. 3,000 people of whom the Holy Spirit has supernaturally awakened to the guilt and depravity of breaking God's law. 3,000 people that were confronted to repent. 3,000 people who experienced for the first time in their lives the peace of God that passes all understanding. Now we've been talking a whole lot about repentance, but we haven't yet paused to define what we mean by repentance. Better put, we haven't paused to define what the Bible means by repentance. Repentance involves a confessing of sin to God because we understand that all sin is an offense against God. All sin is an offense against God. Going back to King David and the sin that he had committed with Bathsheba, David writes in Psalm 51, against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Now, David certainly did sin against others on this occasion. By committing adultery with Bathsheba, David sinned against Bathsheba. He sinned against her husband Uriah. He even sinned against his own wives that he was married to. So there were plenty of people that we could consider victims of David's sin. Yet David writes in Psalm 51 that it's against God and God alone that he sinned. And by doing this, what David is demonstrating is that it was God's holy law that was broken. And therefore, the primary offense is against God. It wasn't Uriah's holy law that David broke. It was God's. Therefore, the sin was against God. It wasn't David's wife's holy law that was broke. It was God's. And therefore, the sin was against God. All sin that we commit is against God and His holy law. On a secondary level, when we sin, there are implications that involve our fellow man, and there are times in which we break our oaths, we transgress covenants, we say and do things that harm one another, and for that it requires us to repent to those people as well. But ultimately, the offense, as David has shown us, is against God and God alone. Therefore, when we repent of our sin, first we repent to God. There is often occasions when it's appropriate to confess our sins to others, but we always do it primarily to God, God first. Repentance also includes a commitment to turn away from our sin, to not continue in it, because sin is abhorrent to God. Because God hates sin, a repentant person will be drawn to hate that sin as well, to forsake it, to give it up. So when Peter says to these people, repent, he's telling these people that they need to confess their sin to God. That they need to hate their sin, to turn from their sin, to forsake it. To take sin and to throw it upon the cross of Christ. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, Peter says at the end of verse 38. So we see that on this day many sinners, 3,000 of them, repented of their sins on that day of Pentecost. They received the Holy Spirit and were saved. But then what happens the next day? They're going to sin again. Do they need to repent again the next day of the sins that they committed since their first repentance? Or was their initial repentance satisfactory for all their sins, for past, present and future? Let me bring this question a little closer to home. Everybody here that has been born again has at some point in the past repented of their sins. And at that time, you received the gift of the Holy Spirit, you became an adopted child of God. You became a Christian. But since that time, you have sinned. We all have sinned. Let me use myself as an example. Since the day I first became a Christian, I have sinned. Is it required of me that I repent of those sins that I committed since I became a Christian? Because my initial repentance was either inadequate or didn't take into consideration all the sins I was going to commit afterwards? There's a Christian radio talk show host that I used to listen to on the radio, and he said that we should only repent of our sins one time. That's when we become a Christian, a new Christian. At the point of our conversion, we repent of our sins and God's grace is so powerful that when He forgives, He forgives past, present and future. This radio host went on to say that To ask God a second time or a third time or even repetitively to forgive us of our sins is to insult God. It's to say, you didn't do it right the first time. Therefore, I have to ask again. Well, there's always two sides to every coin. On the one side of this coin is the teaching of the radio host that I just described. On the other side of the coin is the teachings of Jesus, the correct teachings on the subject. When Jesus' disciples came to him and asked him to teach them how to pray, Jesus taught them a prayer that today we call the Lord's Prayer. One of the first things I'd like to point out to you about the Lord's Prayer is that it is a prayer that is to be prayed daily and repetitively. This is made clear to us in the petition that Jesus gives to his disciples when he says that we ought to pray, give us this day our daily bread. You see, in this prayer, we're not asking God to provide us enough bread for the next week. We're not praying for a month supply of bread or a year's supply or even a lifetime supply of bread. Jesus wants us to pray for one day's supply of bread. And then tomorrow we will ask him again for one day's supply of bread. So the Lord's prayer is intended to be a daily repetitive prayer. Now notice within the context of the Lord's Prayer, there is a form of repentance, of asking God to forgive us of our sins. Forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors. Or as some translations put it, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And what Jesus is teaching us here in the Lord's Prayer is to daily seek the posture of repentance before God. Earlier this morning when we read God's Law and we sang the Song of Confession, we were doing essentially the same thing in our worship service that the Lord's Prayer requests us to do as we pray to God, to forgive us of our sins. Did we do this because we don't trust that God really forgave us in a comprehensive manner the first time we repented to Him? No, we do trust that God forgave us of all of our sins, past, present, future. We do know that at the point of our conversion, that that initial repentance was sufficient for our entire life, sufficient to move us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of heaven and to give us security there forever. That was sufficient. So why do we continue to repent to God for the sins that we are already forgiven of? We continually confess our sins to God because it pleases him that we humble ourselves and admit our sinfulness. It pleases God when we repent of our sins because it shows that we are mindful of the sins that we have committed and that we are seeking his power to overcome the sinful nature that still resides within us. Why wouldn't we do this on a daily basis? Wives, how would you feel if your husband said to you that he loved you on your wedding day and then never repeated that again to you? 20 or 30 years later, you ask him, do you love me? And he says, I told you on our wedding day that I loved you. And if anything changes, I'll let you know. So until then, everything remains the same. Obviously, this doesn't work very well for healthy marriages. are such that love is expressed verbally, continually, and in other manners, that love is shown to one another. And I submit to you that repentance is an act of love and falls under the same considerations. God is pleased when we continually express our love to Him. And we do this through singing songs of praise. We do this by proclaiming the goodness of His name. And we demonstrate our love for Him when we repent of our sins. Repentance is a demonstration that God is more attractive to us than the sinful thoughts and actions that we stumbled into. Repentance says that even if there were no punishment for committing the sin, I still wouldn't do it because it displeases God. Remember, genuine repentance is a hatred of sin and a love for God. So as much as repentance demonstrates our hatred for the things that are evil and wicked, So repentance also demonstrates our love for God and all those things which are righteous and holy. So Jesus tells us that we ought to daily demonstrate our love for God by repenting of our sins. And going back to what we did earlier today, when we confess our sins, we did so by singing a song, corporately, together. The song we sang was The Church's One Foundation. where we confess to God that if not for Jesus Christ at the foundation of the church, there would be no church. There would be no bride of Christ. There would be no salvation from our sins. And we concluded the first verse of that song by singing from heaven. He came and sought her to be his holy bride with his own blood. He bought her and for her life, he died. This was our corporate confession. And then we followed up where I read from 1 John 1 verses 9, which was God's response to our confession, where God assures us that if we confess our sins, he will pardon us of those sins. And we read, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins. This is the word of God. But John here, by writing in 1 John 1 verse 9, he is not advocating that we confess only once and then leave it at that. John was one of the disciples that Jesus was speaking with when Jesus gave the model prayer, the Lord's Prayer. John teaches us here in his epistle the exact same thing that Jesus taught in regards to repentance. When we look at the grammatical structure of 1 John 1.9 in the Greek language, it reveals to us that repentance is an ongoing thing. A literal translation of this verse is, if we keep confessing our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. John is telling us to repent in an ongoing response to the Holy Spirit's conviction in our life daily. This is why we set aside a time early in our worship service every week to demonstrate our repentance before God by singing a song of confession. And this song of confession serves the same purpose as a prayer of repentance. It is a pleasing aspect of our worship. and our devotion to God. Now, children of our congregation, I know it's late in the sermon, and your minds have probably wondered, wondering what's going on outside these windows behind me. But I ask you to please pay attention to this part of the message, because God desires your obedience. Just as He desires the obedience of adults, God desires the obedience of children. And so, children, you are showing your love to God when you daily repent of your sins. You can offer up a prayer to God at any time during the day. There is never a bad time to do this. In fact, one of the best times to offer a prayer of repentance to God is at the moment you realize that you've just sinned. The moment the Holy Spirit convicts you of that sin, it would be entirely appropriate to stop and to turn to God in prayer and to ask Him to forgive you of that sin. It's a good thing to do to confess those sins on a daily basis. And I would encourage you to talk with your parents about establishing a routine time of the day when you can confess your sins to God. This might be when your family gets together to do your daily devotions, or it might be when you go and you lie down to go to bed at night. When I was a young child, I was taught that when I went to bed, when I lay down in bed, that I was to spend some time reflecting upon the day and to consider particularly those things where I felt short of God's holy law. And then I would spend time in prayer. As I'm lying in bed, I would pray to God. And part of my prayer would be a confession or repentance of those very things I acknowledged I had done wrong during the day. I'm going to confess something to you, children. What often happened when I was praying, I thought I fell asleep before I could finish. I would fall asleep right in the middle of my prayer. And then when I woke up, I would think, oh, how rude of me. I felt guilty. I thought, oh, that is a bad thing to fall asleep when I'm talking to God, right? If we're talking to one another and you fall asleep during my sermon, it's kind of rude, right? When I look out your... And so I thought that's the same thing with God, but then I realized with God it's different. I don't believe that God is offended when we fall asleep while we're praying to him. I picture more like a father holding his child in his arms, a baby, and rocking that baby back and forth. And he may be talking to that baby, that baby may be cooing and talking back to the father, but eventually that baby falls asleep. And then the father looks down tenderly at that child and thinks, I am so happy that my child is content to be in my arms, that my child feels the security and comfort of my loving arms around him, that he can go to sleep. There is no anxiety there. There is no disruption of thought there. This child is confident in his father's arms. And brothers and sisters, that is how it is when we are in prayer with our Heavenly Father. What better place of safety and security can a person find than to be resting in the arms of God while praying? And if it happens that we fall asleep while in the security of our Heavenly Father's arms, then consider it a blessing that you have received God's grace and peace in your life. Until such time as we are glorified in heaven, we will continue to sin. Let us not grow weary of the Holy Spirit's conviction of our sin. It ought to grieve us as we examine the sinful ways of our life, but because of the atoning work of our Savior Jesus Christ, we have the ability to repent of our sins. We do not need to deny that God has declared us justified at the time that we were born again. We affirm that God has forgiven us and Jesus Christ for all of our sins, past, present, future. Nevertheless, we should repent on a daily basis because this is an act of love that we show towards God. We demonstrate to God our need for him when we humble ourselves in daily repentance. We convey to God that without him we are nothing and we would be dead in our sins. This is not a morbid ritual which should be accompanied by weeping and lamentation. Instead, it is the occasion of joy and peace. Joy in the atoning work of Jesus Christ that has been applied to my life and to your lives. And peace in the assurance that we have been forgiven for all of our sins and iniquities. The burden of guilt has been removed. It has been cast upon the Christ and we bear it no more. That is our joy. This is our peace. Thank you Lord Jesus. Amen. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material herewithin, unless otherwise noted. Copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at NathanClarkGeorge.com