Now beloved let's turn together to in our Bibles to Acts chapter 2 In Acts chapter 2, it is the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. It's been 50 days since the Jews celebrated the Passover. It's been 50 days since Jesus, the great Passover lamb, was sacrificed on the altar of the cross. It has been just three days less than that since Jesus has been raised from the dead. It's been 10 days since he ascended unto glory. And the Jews are assembled once again in the city of Jerusalem for the celebration of Pentecost. The Spirit of God comes upon the 120 followers of the Lord Jesus who are assembled in the upper room. This includes, of course, the 11 disciples. And many of them begin to speak in languages that they have never been taught. about the good news of Jesus Christ. And this gathers a rather large crowd of the Jews, likely at the Southern steps of the Temple Mount, when Peter steps forward and begins to address the crowd and to preach his great sermon of Pentecost. And that begins in Acts chapter two, Verse 22, let's stand together for this reading of God's word. Peter declares this, men of Israel listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst just as you yourselves know This man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless man and put him to death. And God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says of him, I was always beholding the Lord in my presence, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue exulted. Moreover, my flesh also will abide in hope, because thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow thy Holy One to undergo decay. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life. Thou wilt make me full of gladness with thy presence. Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried in his tombs with us to this day. And so, because he was a prophet and he knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants upon his throne, He looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh suffer decay. This Jesus God raised up again to which we are all witnesses. Therefore, having been exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this which you both see and hear, For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. The word of the Lord. Let's pray together. We are grateful, Lord, for this gospel, this good news concerning Jesus, who is indeed the Lord and the Christ of God and the Redeemer of men. So, our God, as we consider very briefly even this passage from Acts 2 in the preaching of the Apostle Peter, under the unction of your spirit, we pray the same for us this day. that we might hear the gospel, that we would hear the word of the Lord, that we would be transformed, redeemed, sanctified by that very same gospel. Would you honor yourself as we seek to worship you in the preaching of the word of the Lord, we pray in the great name of Jesus and all of God's people can say. And thank you, please be seated. A father noticed that his young son was very vigorously coloring a picture with his crayons. And the father asked his son, what are you drawing? The boy said, I'm drawing a picture of God. The father said, well, son, nobody knows what God looks like. And the little boy said, well, they will when I'm finished. We would all love that, wouldn't we? We long to know what God looks like. We would love to understand God in a greater and more fuller way. We would like to have a larger knowledge of who God is and what God is like. The scripture tells us that we are introduced to certain aspects of who God is as we look at everything that he has created, but of course the world looks at the created order and they suppress, the scripture says, and we see that in our own day, the truth about God and who and what he is and what he is like. But the scripture also says to us that we really can know who and what God is like. As we look at his son, the Lord Jesus, even he, Jesus said at one point, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. That is to say, if we've come to know Christ, then we get to know the Father as well. And yet someone has said that in the days of Israel, formed as a nation, there have been over 60 people who have claimed to be the Son of God, who have claimed to be the Messiah. of the Lord. And so how do we discern our way through all that and how do we sift our way through this? This sermon that Peter preaches on the day of Pentecost answers that question and that issue for us. you can see in verse 22 that he tells these assembled Jews concerning Jesus that he was a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst just as you yourselves know. Nobody could deny these signs, these miraculous supernatural things that Jesus, who is the Son of God, has performed. But that's not the issue of his message here on the day of Pentecost. He commends to the Jews who are assembled at the temple at this particular point in time, Jesus as Lord and Christ through the fulfillment of messianic prophecy. If you look at the conclusion of Peter's sermon in verse 36, he says, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ this Jesus. whom you have crucified. And as we look at Peter and what he is preaching in verses 22 through 35, we see that he lays out the five prophetic declarations of the Old Testament concerning Messiah who was to come and shows how these are fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. So Peter would say to us that Jesus is Lord and Christ for these reasons, first of all, because of his virgin birth. In verse 22, Jesus says, men of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene. When Peter refers to Jesus as the Nazarene, I would suggest to you, he is alluding to the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus. It's in Matthew chapter 2 verse 23 where we're told that Joseph and Mary and now the newborn Jesus came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets he shall be called a Nazarene. The very fact that he's called that that Peter refers to Jesus as this, his infulfillment of the scriptures and what it prophesied concerning Messiah, but that's a part of the whole birth narrative where Jesus is specifically stated to be born of the virginal womb of Mary. This comes to us, of course, In Matthew chapter one, beginning with verse 18, where we're told, now the birth of Jesus Christ was as followed. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, did not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son. You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. It was made very clear to Joseph, something that Mary was already very well aware of, that the conception of Jesus in her womb was not by Joseph or by any other man, but that it was accomplished by the very Spirit of the Lord. This, of course, was in fulfillment of the great prophetic statement that the prophet Isaiah made in Isaiah 7, 14, when he declared, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel. So Jesus is a virgin born. We see that clearly in the scriptures. And what is the implication of that for our understanding of who he is? He is the Son of the Living God. He is God come in the flesh. He is the Lord and the Christ, Jesus, who is born of Mary under the unction of the Spirit of God. Peter goes on next in verse 23 and says that Jesus is Lord in Christ because of his substitutionary sacrificial death. In verse 23, Peter says, this man delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. Some would say that Jesus in his death went the way of all flesh. All of us die. All of us live under the sentence of death. Every one of us from the moment that we are conceived in our mother's womb, we exist and then we are born and then we live our lives under the sentence of death. because of our sin. As the scripture tells us, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That doesn't leave room for any exceptions. It goes on does the scripture to say in Romans 6.23 that the wages of that sin of which we are all guilty is death itself. And so we live every moment of our lives under the sentence of death because of our sin and our covenant breaking. But that was not so for Jesus. That was not true for Jesus. His death was different from every other. because he did not have to die. Jesus did not live under that sentence of death because he, in his virginity of birth, had no sin. He did not inherit the sin nature of Adam as we all have. He did not have a sin nature to act upon as we all have and as we all have done. Those truths of the gospel concerning the fact of sin and the sentence of death did not apply to Jesus, for he was without sin and he did not have to die. Rather, He chose to die as a substitute for you and for me, who are His. As the scripture declares in 2 Corinthians 5.21, He that is God made Him, that is Jesus, who knew no sin to be sin. on our behalf. He became our sin. He took upon himself the guilt of our sin. And he chose to sacrifice himself for us. And he chose to receive the punishment and the just judgment that belongs not to him, but to us. But he took that upon himself. so that the Father in his holy justice could look upon us with forgiveness. There have been many analogies that have been offered for these sorts of things. It comes in different sorts of stories and so on, like a king, for example, who makes a ruling in his kingdom. He creates a law and anybody who breaks that law must be punished. And then the day comes when his own mother stands before him because she broke that law and she in justice now needs to be punished, but she is the king's mother. He does not want or nor wish to endure such punishment. And so what does he do? He leaves his throne and he steps forward and he takes her punishment so that she does not need to pay. This is in essence what Jesus And having done this, this fulfills the prophecy, of course, of again, the great Isaiah and a variety of other places, but it's clear in Isaiah 53, beginning with verse four, surely our griefs he himself bore and our sorrows he carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted, but he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our wellbeing fell upon him and by his scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray and each of us has turned to his own way but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall upon him. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. Jesus, born of Mary, takes upon himself our humanity, which qualifies him to be our substitute, but being conceived of the Holy Spirit, it is all done without sin, the implication of which he is the perfect substitute for you and me, taking upon himself the punishment that you and I deserve so that God in his mercy, in his grace, in his justice, extends to us forgiveness if we repent of our sin and accept the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf. What a wonderful message is the gospel of our salvation, but that's only a part of it. That's only a part of it. Peter goes on and he says, Jesus is Lord and Christ. not just because of his virgin birth, not just because of his sacrificial death, but also because of his resurrection from the dead. And this is the point that Peter spends most of his sermon about. It goes from verse 24 through verse 32, as you can see there. And he begins in verse 24, when he says, God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death since it was impossible for him. to be held in its power. Perhaps Peter spends all this time on the resurrection of Jesus because his Jewish audience was not so acquainted with that. They understood the issue of sacrifice and the substitutionary nature of sacrifice. They saw that every time they came to Tabernacle and Temple to worship. They saw that every time the lamb was sacrificed. on their behalf and the blood was sprinkled for them. They saw that at every Passover, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed and when the the lamb is punished in the place of the people and their sin. They understood substitutionary sacrifice. Resurrection was certainly a part of the gospel as that is preached in the Old Testament, but it wasn't seen like it was with this sacrifice. Not one of the dead animals that were ever sacrificed was raised again from the dead. They understood substitution. The resurrection was not something that they were so much acquainted with. And you remember when Jesus is teaching his disciples, he's talking about his death and he's talking about his resurrection and they look at each other over and over and say, what's he talking about? They did not get that. And so Peter spends his time here in his message on the resurrection in particular. You can see the analogy that he uses in verse 29 when he talks about David the great king of Jewish history. He says, brethren I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. And what Peter's point is here, we all know that King David died and that he was buried and put in the tomb and he's still there. But he's saying in this context, we all know also, it's only 50 days ago, Jesus died. He was buried, but he's gone. His grave is empty. David's is occupied. Jesus' grave is not. It was the great British lawyer, John Singleton Copley, who at one point said this, I know pretty well what evidence is. And I tell you, Such evidence as that for the resurrection of Jesus has never broken down. It's that very resurrection of He who was to come, the Messiah of the Jews, that David was prophesying about in Psalm 16, which is what Peter quotes in verses 25 through 28, but look at verse 28, thou hast made known to me the ways of life, I'm sorry, verse 27, because thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow thy holy one to undergo decay. Thou has made known to me the ways of life, thou wilt make me full of gladness with thy presence. Even David is saying, I know I'm going to live one day again because the Holy One is not going to be kept in the grave either. And thus you see Jesus in his resurrection fulfills that prophetic declaration of Jesus again. The implication is what? Well, there are a variety of things, but we can note this. The implication is that Jesus' death and resurrection satisfied God's justice. This is exactly, again, what Isaiah is talking about in Isaiah 53, 11, when he says, as a result of the anguish of his soul, that is, Messiah, he, the father, will see it and be satisfied. The reason that Jesus has been raised from the dead is because the grave couldn't hold him. He didn't deserve to die. and the death that he did die on our behalf perfectly and fully and completely satisfied the justice of God the Father in his holiness. Death couldn't keep Jesus. He had to be raised from the dead and because of the satisfaction of his sacrifice the father raised Jesus from the dead. In verse 32 Peter says this Jesus God raised up again to which we are all witnesses and what Peter goes on to talk about or the implication of what Peter is talking about is that Jesus has been raised to life everlasting a life that we can share through faith and trust in him As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, beginning with verse 20, but now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive because he is alive forevermore. We who are in him by faith. have the great hope of resurrection. One day, thanks be to God. Further, Peter is saying Jesus is both Lord and Christ because of his ascension unto glory. In verse 33, Peter writes, therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God, You see Jesus fulfillment here in terms of the Jesus ascension is the fulfillment of the prophetic statement that David again said in Psalm 110 verse one, which Peter quotes in verses 34 and 35. He says, it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet. So for the resurrected Jesus to ascend to heaven and be seated at the right hand of the father is to speak of his authority, to speak of his lordship, to speak of his kingship. And keep in mind this happened just 10 days before this, just 10 days ago. They witnessed Jesus ascending into heaven. It is clear in their minds. And Peter brings this out as he is laying forth the prophetic evidence that Jesus is exactly who they have been waiting for, but who they have denied. Jesus is king seated at the right hand of the father. He's not just good teacher, great model, fine example for us to follow in life. He is the Redeemer, He is the Son of God, He is the Savior, and He is King, which means at this very moment, He reigns and rules over the kingdom of God and the entire created order. And that includes me, and that includes you, and everything that has taken place in our lives over this past week, has fallen out under the authority of King Jesus. What's the implication of that for us in our lives? You either bow yourself before him in faith now, or you live in opposition every day of your life to the King. You either accept him as savior and Lord, or one day he will sit as the righteous authoritative judge of your soul. And lastly, Peter is saying that Jesus is both Lord and Christ because of his pouring forth of the spirit of God. And this is the key to the context. of Acts chapter 2. In verse 33 Peter goes on to say he's been ascended to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit he has poured forth this which you both see and hear. You see as the Jewish crowds saw all of these people preaching the message of the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth in their own language having come from all kinds of places around the known world at that time and they're hearing the gospel in their own language. It has captured their attention and they are paying attention to that and they have come And they hear this message from Peter in which he declares that Jesus is indeed the Christ, the Messiah of God. He is that because of his virgin birth. He is that because of his substitutionary death. He is that because of his resurrection from the dead. He is that because of his ascension unto glory. And the final nail for all of this is that he is the Lord who has sent forth the Spirit of God and poured forth God's Spirit upon his people in the day of Pentecost. This is not the first coming of the Spirit of God. There are so many people in the church who misunderstand and misinterpret what's taking place here in Acts chapter 2 as though Genesis 1-2 didn't even exist. It is the Spirit of God amongst the Godhead who is the one who has been intimately involved in human history and creation all the way through. It is the Spirit of God who has been redeeming people throughout the old covenant. No one can have their heart changed apart from the work of the Spirit of God under the gospel of God. But now there is a messianic formality that has been predicted by Joel chapter 2 verses 28 through 32, which Peter quotes here in verses 17 through 21, that it will be the Messiah, the Christ of God, who will one day come and he as Lord will formally pour forth the Spirit of God upon his people. And that is what you now see and hear, Peter says. The implication is that Jesus of Nazareth is Lord in Christ. He's the very Messiah the Jews have been looking for, longing for, and praying for, and they still do. Those Old Testament prophecies prove, as Peter declares it, of who Jesus really is. And notice the response of these Jews who are surely more familiar with these Old Testament passages that Peter is referring to and that we've been talking about. They understood these passages better than we do, and look at how they responded in verse 37. Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart. They were cut to the quick. Their souls were laid open by the gospel. And they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brethren, what shall we do? They were convinced. They were convinced by the preaching of the gospel. under the unction of the Spirit of God. And notice Peter's reply starting in verse 38. Peter said to them repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children. The promise is for you, the people of the covenant, and for all who are far off, for those outside the covenant promises of God. As many as the Lord our God shall call to himself, verse 40, And with many other words, he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them saying, be saved from this perverse generation. Now, how do the Jewish people respond? Verse 41, so then those who had received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls. 3,000 Jews became Christians on that day under the preaching of the gospel as the spirit of God poured forth by Lord Jesus, testified concerning Jesus. Today, you can be 3,001. If you have not humbled yourself before the living God in true repentance and faith, you can do so today. You see, the scriptures tell us and teach us that God has made him both Lord and Christ. This Jesus, whom you have crucified by your sin. It's time to repent of your sin. The time has come to put your trust and your faith in Jesus Christ. The time has come to receive eternal life through Jesus and let him be Lord and Christ in your life. The time has come. Let's pray together. We thank you, our God, that you have given to us a way of reconciliation with you, and that is through Jesus, your Son, our King, our Lord, the Jewish Messiah, the Christ of God, the one who is the Redeemer of men. And so our God, we pray that you would strengthen our faith this day in this great message of the gospel. And we pray this day that by your spirit, you would open the hearts of those who have yet to put their trust and faith with repentance in Jesus Christ. That this would be a day of sanctification for your people. We pray it would be a day of redemption. as you draw people unto yourself. This we ask in Jesus name, Amen. Our closing hymn this morning is...