Our scripture reading for today comes from Acts chapter 2. If you're using the Black Bibles that are provided for you, it is on page 1081. And we will begin in verse 14, and I'll read through to verse 41. So if you would stand with me for the reading of God's Word. Acts chapter 2 beginning in verse 14, But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and 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 people 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 servants 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, blood and fire and vapor and 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, and 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 had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his 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 that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and 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 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 them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized. And there were added that day about three thousand souls. Grass withers, the flowers fade, and yet the word of the Lord remains forever. You may be seated. So while this isn't the first speech in Acts, it's a good time before we get too deep into this passage to acknowledge that the book of Acts is kind of unique in that Luke, the writer of Acts, he doesn't ever insert himself into what he's writing as sort of an outside observer to sort of carry along any kind of theological explanation of what's going on. You see that, actually, a lot in the book of John. In the gospel of John, John will tell you what happened, and then, sort of as an aside, he'll explain it to you. He'll explain the meaning of it, or even say, we didn't understand this until the resurrection, but he'll insert himself, sort of break the fourth wall, if you like those drama terms. But Luke doesn't do that. Luke, the way he moves things along with a theological progression is through speeches of those that are already in this historical account. The book of Acts has 13 of these speeches, most of them by Peter and Paul, none by Mary, sorry, most of them by Peter and Paul, one by a gentleman named Stephen and one by James, one of the other apostles. If you take all of Peter's, Paul's, and Stephen's speech, those alone account for almost 25% of the book of Acts. The longest speech recorded isn't a speech of Peter's and it isn't a speech of Paul's, it's actually Stephen's speech in Acts 7. And the result of that lengthy speech or sermon is that he's stoned at the end of it. which caused me to think, and this isn't the point, but to realize that the desire to stone a long-winded preacher is very old. Now that's not an excuse for long-winded preachers, but it was just interesting to know that I stand on the shoulders of giants. So today's sermon, in one sense, is a sermon on a sermon. Now admittedly, at least in this one, Luke explains, these aren't whole sermons. And I hope you realize that. Like, I just read, technically, the whole sermon, and then it was over. But he at the end, he admits, now with these and many other words, Peter exhorted the crowd. So most of these speeches are excerpts. After all, Luke wouldn't have necessarily been present for almost any. of the speeches. He would have relied on firsthand witnesses who would have relayed to him their memory of these speeches, and their memory would have been sort of a summary of those speeches. And so, uh, Now, while we may not have everything that Peter said, we at least have, in one sense, a pretty good outline using Peter's own first sermon, the first sermon of the New Testament, you might say, or the first sermon of the New Covenant, or the first sermon after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And so, it would be wise of us especially for anyone who would dare to be a teacher of Scripture, for us to look at this first one and say, is this a model for how we now understand Scripture? For how we would interpret Scripture and teach Scripture? And I would say that that's at least one good use of this passage. In this passage, Peter is explaining what happened. You know, if you remember last week, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and all of the many people in Jerusalem have gathered around trying to figure out what is going on. And so first, Peter explains from Scripture, what happened? What is it they're witnessing? But then he goes on to explain, but what caused, like what was the, what is it, catalyst for what happened? Like why now is the Holy Spirit being poured out? And then he gives the, so what? His sermons are, this particular sermon is excellent in explaining from Scripture, applying it from Scripture, and then giving the application. So what? What does this mean for you? What does this mean for me? And so let's look first at what happened in his explanation. And we don't have to stay with this very long because we looked at this last week as part of last week's sermon on Pentecost and the pouring out of the Spirit. It's hard to touch on what happened there without going into Peter's explanation that this fulfills the scripture. And he quotes the book of Joel as we saw last week. And he explains that here what you are witnessing is the beginning of the last days. And so remember, we realize that this means that from the ascension of Jesus, from the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Bible views all of those things as sort of this one major event of salvation. That the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the pouring out of the Spirit is this one moment in salvation history. And it kicks off what Scripture is constantly referring to as the last days. You and I are right now living in the last days. And in those last days, There's both positive and negative, or good things and bad things. The major, the good thing, is that God himself dwells with us. Not in a tabernacle, not in a temple, not in a singular geographic location. but in every single follower of Christ. That's significant. And the way he describes it, the way Joel predicts it, it crosses gender barriers. My spirit will be poured out on boys and girls, on men and women. It crosses age barriers. The young men will dream dreams. The old men will see visions. There's no age discrepancy or difference. It crosses caste or economic barriers. Even the lowest in my kingdom, the maid servants and the male servants, they will have the Holy Spirit poured out on them so that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. This is a great and wonderful good news. Now, there's also warning this. This doesn't just mean that from the time that the last days are going to be all roses and and unicorns and and rainbows. But this can be darkness. There's going to be pain. There's going to be trial. The sun will turn dark. The moon will turn to blood. There will be difficult times. And yet in the midst of those difficult times, all the way up until the point, all the way up until that great and marvelous day of the Lord, when he returns Finally, no matter how dark it looks, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And this is what happened. This is what you are witnesses of. This is the beginning of that era has happened today. And so the natural question would be, why? Why today? I mean, what happened that this was the time that God would pour out His Spirit? What has happened to cause or to kick off what has happened? And so, Peter begins to explain it. He says, the best way to understand what happened is not through this Old Testament prophecy in Joel. The best way to understand what just happened is through the person and work of Jesus Christ. His life, His ministry, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension. So first, His life, Peter says, brothers, I may, excuse me, he says, yeah. Men of Israel, in verse 22, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God. So first he speaks of Jesus of Nazareth, And he reminds us both by naming him by township. Remember, guys, kids, people didn't used to have last names. So when you wanted to distinguish one guy from another guy, there were lots of people named Joshua in that time. That's what Jesus's name was in Hebrew, Yeshua or Joshua, or we would call him Jesus. But there were a lot of people named Jesus. And so you might call them by their occupation, Jesus the coppersmith, Jesus the ironsmith, which would then soon be shortened to Jesus Smith. That's where we get that last name. Or you might refer to them as where they're from, Jesus from Bethesda, Jesus from Jerusalem, Jesus from Nazareth. And so then you see that kind of in the Enlightenment era, remember, when Leonardo da Vinci, it wasn't necessarily his last name, it was Leonardo from Venice. So that's why he had that as his last name. Are you following me? So Jesus, this Jesus, an actual, real, live human being, he was from Nazareth. Already depicting, by the way, or at least alluding to the humility of Jesus, because Nazareth was a town that nobody wanted to be from. It was where all the hicks and the fools were from. When I grew up in Baltimore, it was Dundalk. You didn't want to be from Dundalk. Those were the guys that wore the black polyester pants and the white socks and the black shoes. When I grew up in Cleveland, it was Parma. No one wanted to be from Parma. Weirdly, I have lived here for 17 years, and I don't know where that area is, which worries me. Because if you don't know where that area is in your town, You live in that area. So I don't know. I don't know what that says about Stafford. I'm working through it. But he already admits, here is Jesus from Nazareth of all places, a man, yes, just a man, yes, but 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. And then this weird dash. And I know this is all speculation, so you can throw it all away, this part, but we were already told by Luke, with these and many other words, he spoke to them of Jesus. And I think this dash has an opportunity for some of those many other words. These things that you all saw. And then there's a dash because then it goes back to this Jesus, But maybe in that dash, he was like, I mean, how many of you, come on, how many of you were here, how many of you were at that feeding when we all ate? Like that little boy's lunch, we had everybody, there was thousands of us there. And we all had plenty to eat, anyone remember that? And some people would be like, yeah, I was there, yeah, yeah, I remember that, that was like a year, two years ago, yeah, that was crazy. How many of you were there when he walked past that funeral procession and just reached up and took the boy by the hand and got him off the wicker casket and handed him back to his mom. Because like it says, it was a great crowd. They were like, oh, I do remember that. That was crazy. Did you see that? How many of you were there when he walked past that one blind man? And just like he spits in the ground, makes mud, smears it on his eyes, and then he can see. Who remembers that? I saw that. Yeah, I remember that little girl, the soldier's daughter. What was her name? Tabitha. No, no, Talitha. No, he just called her little girl. Nobody knows her name. But anyway, then we heard that she was alive and we thought she was dead. And they would have talked about it. It's like, oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah, I did see these things. We did. We were part of this. We saw this. How many of you were there just down the road? when he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. The dude had been dead four days. When he said to open the tomb, his sister was like, but Lord, he stinketh. I love that in the King James Version. That's my favorite verse in the King James Bible. But Lord, he stinketh. And there he was, healed, raised, alive, who was dead. This Jesus attested to you by God through signs and wonders and miracles. 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. It is not only his life that explains what has happened here, but his death. This Jesus who wowed and amazed you, who fed you and cared for you, who taught you and did nothing but serve you and never did anything against anyone, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. I love how even right here, Peter is unafraid and unashamed to tell us the absolute sovereignty of God over even the worst situations in the world and the absolute culpability of man for their choices and actions. He does not shrink back from either of these, but says these are both absolutely true. God's plan and the wickedness of man combined for the death of Jesus Christ. Whatever you think of the movie, The Passion of Christ, directed by Mel Gibson, when it first came out, people were all in an uproar about it for different reasons and various things. But I don't know if any of you saw the interview of Mel Gibson by Diane Sawyer. And so part of the uproar was that it seemed as though he was putting a lot of emphasis on it was the Jews who killed Jesus and they were spinning it as this great anti-semitic movie. And so she asked Mel Gibson, so who killed Jesus? And I don't know if you remember this. But he looked at Diane Sawyer, Diane Soldier, and he said, me, you. I mean, it can't be that Peter is looking at this crowd and thinking, hey, you were all there, you all had a part in this. I mean, there's thousands. I mean, there's gotta be over 3,000, because it says 3,000, begin to follow Jesus after this. And if it was only 3,000 people there, he would have just said, and then they all followed Jesus. But there's a number, so there were some that didn't. But even in this, Peter is pointing out, you killed Jesus. You are the ones into whose hands Jesus was entrusted. You are the lawless men. Christ died because of your rejection of him. Our sin killed Jesus, and yet it was for God's glorious saving purposes. It boggles the mind if you let yourself meditate on it. My sin killed Jesus and God used his death for my salvation. It's insane. And speaking of your salvation, Peter goes on to speak of his resurrection, not just his life, not just his death, but his resurrection. 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, loosening the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. It was not possible for the son of God who did not deserve death to be held by death, and so he was raised victorious. We don't necessarily often enough speak of Christ the victor, that Christ is raised victorious, that Him seated at the right hand means that He is the victor. He is the victorious King of kings and Lord of lords and worthy of our worship and our praise. He says, listen, we are witnesses of this. This isn't just some spiritual, emotional resurrection. We saw him. He is truly, physically, actually raised from the dead. We saw him alive again. It cannot merely be that Peter's talking about he's, and so God raised him in our hearts. And so God raised him, God helped us to keep him alive in our memories. That does nothing. Living memories of a dead loved one are just that. They're just memories. And every year, they get farther away, those memories. And they don't sustain you for the next hard moment. Just remembering that Jesus was a really good friend and taught us some really nice things. And that's really all we need is to remember those things and that memory will sustain us through the hard times. Then you have never faced hard times with the memory of a loved one. Because those memories are sweet and they are nice and sometimes they make you laugh. But they don't sustain, they have no power. If Jesus is not actually alive, pretending He is alive gets you nowhere. Jesus is alive and He proves it by looking to Scripture. He looks at Psalm 16. where David talks about the Lord, you know, you will not let your Holy One see corruption, you will not let your servant, you won't leave your servant in Hades or in Sheol. And Peter, it's great, he's like, hey, he can't be talking about himself. If he is, he was wrong, because he died, he's still dead, And in Jerusalem, by the way, you can to this day go to David's tomb. He's still today buried in Jerusalem. You can tour, you can walk through, you have to cover your head, you have to wear appropriate attire, but you can ... I have done it. You can walk around David's tomb. I can imagine Peter saying, that dude's dead. It's right there! His tomb is right there. It's not open. It's not empty. We all know he's dead. He can't be talking about himself. He is realizing in this moment as he's writing that psalm, God made a promise to me that my offspring would sit on the throne forever. He says David is realizing that that covenantal promise meant that one day there would be an offspring of his who would not see corruption, who would not be abandoned to the grave. And so he trusted and he writes this song, this song of hope. He says this Jesus God raised and we are witnesses, we saw him. It's not just the testimony of the prophets. Now it's the testimony of the prophets and the testimony of the apostles. Comes together. The Old Testament points to. The Savior will be raised. Will conquer death. And the apostles bear witness. The Savior has been raised and has conquered death. And he is ascended. He hasn't just been raised, but he is ascended. He's been exalted to the right hand of God. He's received from God the promise of the Holy Spirit, and that is what you are seeing. You are witnessing Jesus gets to the right hand of the Father, He ascends to the throne, and the Father gifts Him the Holy Spirit, and He, as the benevolent King of kings, turns around and gifts it to His, gives Him, excuse me, to His people, pours out His Spirit. onto all flesh who call on his name. And that, my friends, that is what you are seeing right now. That is the catalyst. That is what started this. That is why now that is why today, because Jesus Christ, the son of God, came to earth to live and die and conquer death. And he did it all for you and me. But no, this this Jesus. You crucified, but this Jesus God has made both Lord and Christ. He's not saying that Jesus became Lord and Christ only after he ascended, but he's saying more that in his ascension, Jesus is now exalted to the place that has always been His by right, but now is His by office and by power. He is received now that for which He was born always to be. And this is a silly example, but hey, it's Lord of the Rings and it's been a while. So, you know, when, remember when Elrond, like you guys, listen, the LOTR people were already thinking this, so I'm just bringing the rest of you up to speed. But Elrond, you know, he comes to Aragorn with the reforged sword. And he says, I mean in the movie it's very dramatic and I think it happens way earlier than the movie because he always had the sword in the books and I don't understand that. Why do they have to change these things? Anyway, he hands him the sword and he says, become who you were born to be. It's not that Aragorn ever wasn't the rightful king of Gondor. Gondor, right? Gondor. He even says to him, it's time to set aside the ranger and become what you were born to be. Jesus comes to earth, takes on flesh. He is weak and he has no beauty that we would be attracted to him. He's a man of sorrow. He's acquainted with grief. And in his death and resurrection and ascension, he is seen in the glory of who he was always meant to be seen, the Lord and Christ. This Lord, this Jesus, whom you crucified, God has made both Lord and Christ. If you are not cut to the heart by that message, it is my fault, not the passage's fault, because when Peter finished preaching, they were cut to the heart and said, what should we do? We crucified the Son of God. Like on the scale of bad things to do, I think that's pretty high. We killed God's Son and none of us gets to say, well, I wasn't there. My sin killed God's Son. What do I do? Repent. Acknowledge it. Admit it. Call it what it is. I have sinned against God and neighbor. In the words of the prodigal son, I have sinned against you, my father, and against all of heaven. I am not worthy to be called your son. Repent. Acknowledge your sin. be baptized in the name of Jesus. You've got to grasp this. Forget worrying about what this means about baptism. He is saying, this Jesus you crucified, what do I do? repent and be baptized in the name of the very one who you tried to destroy, the very one who would count you as enemy. He says, just receive my name. I receive you. You will be mine. You who despised me, you who would rather I be dead, you who would have rather had the whole world and go to hell with it. I will take in. I will cover you with my name. I will wash you. You will receive two things. You repent, you will receive forgiveness of sins. Your sins will be forgiven, and you yourselves will receive this Holy Spirit. This isn't just a once-in-a-lifetime thing. This isn't just for the apostles and the close friends. You even will receive the gift of this Holy Spirit. You will receive Forgiveness. And the Holy Spirit. And it's going to continue. And it's going to go beyond this day and beyond this space when you get home. You can tell this promise to your children. This is a generational promise, this is going to continue no matter where you go. If you go back to your dispersion areas, back to all these far off places that God's people, the Jews, have been dispersed, even as far away as all that, you can take this message with you. This promise is for you, it's for your children, it's for any who are far away, for as many as the Lord our God calls to himself. And so the message is there's these two events, the death and resurrection of Christ. And it's witnessed by two witnesses. The Old Testament prophets. And the apostles of the New Testament. And we're reminded of that passage in scripture that it's only on the testimony of two witnesses that we can even receive something, and so Peter brings up two witnesses. The prophecies of the prophets in the Old Testament and the eyewitness account of the apostles in the New Testament. On the base of these events, God has made two promises, the forgiveness of sins and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. And it's based on two conditions. Repentance. And faith. And all of this, Jesus. Is shown both historically. Jesus truly came into history, broke through, God broke through into time and space, took on flesh, the Son of God, becoming Jesus Christ. The historical truth and reality of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it's more than historical. It's not less than, but it's more than historical, it's theological. It means something. It means that sin is atoned for. It means that the wrath of God is satisfied. It means that the prophecies of all the Old Testament that point forward and draw us to a Messiah have been fulfilled in this one person, Jesus Christ. And it has very contemporary Meaning, it's historical, it's theological, and it's for today. Today, if you hear God's voice. Today, when you are weighed down with your sin and ask, what should I do? Repent. And trust God. That God keeps his promises. That all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. We don't quite have 3,000 people here today, and so I don't anticipate that this would necessarily have the impact that it had on that day. But if even one of you would repent today and receive the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, It would be so much more than any of us deserve to be a part of that day in your journey. I say that, but if you do, please don't keep it to yourself. We won't take you out into the street and baptize you. We'll talk about that maybe some other time. You'd have to take me to lunch for that. 3,000 people baptized, really? All of them immersed into the water supply? I don't know. Maybe they were sprinkled. Anyway. If you are even having a moment of wondering, what should I do? Then the answer is clear. Repent. Be baptized. Receive the gift of the presence of God in His Spirit. Let's pray. God, none of us deserves this. We, as much as everyone else in that moment on that day, we crucified Jesus. This Jesus sent by his father for the express purpose of dying for our sins, and yet it was our sin that killed him. Father, we're overwhelmed at your mercy. That the very name that we despise and rejected is the name by which we might be saved. We pray, God, that you would never let us be unamazed at your salvation. That it would always be the question on our lips. Can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior's name? Did he die for me who caused his pain? For me who pursued him to death? That is amazing love. In Jesus' name, Amen.