As you're turning in your scriptures
to Acts chapter 2, I had a call from Peter Mennie this morning.
Montana, and we wish to expressly send their greetings to you all. So you have been greeted from
North America, where it's a little bit warmer than where Beth and
Norm are, and they sent their greetings as well. On a clear
day you can see the icebergs from down there this time of
the year. It's been midnight, you can't of course, but it's
miserable, it's cold. I think it was, was it seven
degrees or something there? No morning anyway. Anyway, we
miss them. We miss them all. There will
come a great day when we will no longer miss people. We will
no longer have any goodbyes. There is a great day coming.
I love how Revelation speaks of the Lord Jesus. Behold, He
cometh. He is on His way back. He's on his way back to gather
his bride. He's on his way back to be seen
as glorious as he really is and how we wish And I long for those
who hear my voice and hear the voice of others of God's servants
that you shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come
upon you. Simon read it earlier in Acts chapter 1. You will receive
power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be
witnesses unto me in both Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria
and in the uttermost parts of the earth. And Peter in his sermon
is doing exactly that. He has received power from on
high to preach this sermon. He has received power from on
high to bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, to witness to who
He really is. And in His sermon, as we've noted,
His witness is an Old Testament witness. He just takes the scriptures
and says, this is who God is. This is who God's Christ is. This is what God's Messiah is
promised to do and you have seen him do it. Remarkable testimony,
isn't it? And we often think that 2,000
years later our responsibility before God has diminished because
time has worn those things away and we live in this world that
says, well that was all 2000 years ago and there's only a
tiny witness. This is the witness of God. In
the last 2000 years it has just been enhanced, brothers and sisters,
and not diminished one little tiny bit. He is still the God
who sits on the throne of this universe. He is still the God
who has a people. for whom He died, He is still
the God who because of His great love for those people will come
to them. His Holy Spirit will come to
them in power and they will be made by His power to see Him,
to believe in Him. to rely on Him, to rest all of
their being and all of their eternity and all of their judgment
before God. They rested all in Him. That's power, isn't it? That's
power that I don't possess in any way, shape or form. And neither did a fisherman from
Galilee who preached these words that we read. The power is from
God. It's a power to bring people
to see who they are. It's a power to bring people
to respond. Respond in faith. We're looking
at these verses in Acts. 37, let's just read from there. Let
me go back one little bit. He has just quoted the Psalms,
Psalm 110, about the greatness of our God. And he says, therefore,
this is the conclusion of the matter. Therefore, let all the
house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this same Jesus
whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ. And there were
some there in that crowd that heard. They are called a they,
aren't they? When they heard this, there was
a group of them, we saw it last week, who were pricked in the
heart, not pricked to the heart, but pricked in the heart to be
wounded, to be greatly troubled, to be pierced, to be stung sharply. Wounded in the heart. And they
said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren,
what shall we do? What a great question. I trust
it's a question that the Lord has brought you to. And if he
hasn't brought you to that question, I trust that by the preaching
of the gospel, it might be your portion here. What shall we do? And Peter then, Peter said unto
them, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name
of Jesus Christ. And that name is more than just
some words, isn't it? It is the declaration that we've
read from Joel and read from Psalm 110 and Psalm 16 that Peter
has just quoted. It's the call upon the very character
of him as it's revealed in the scriptures. to be baptized every
one of you in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins, and
you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise
is unto you and to your children and to all that are far off."
I love that, don't you? Here we are, down here, as far
away geographically as you can get other than where Norm and
Beth are. far off, even as many, and this is a description, isn't
it, of the Lord's chosen people, those, the they in those verses
we just looked at, as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words, he
did testify and exhort, saying, save yourselves from this untoward
generation, this crooked, bent, warped, twisted generation. He's speaking, he's speaking,
brothers and sisters, to a crowd of Jews who God says are devout. He's speaking to a crowd of religious
people. Save yourselves. Today I just
wanted to spend some time, if the Lord allows for us, just
to look at repentance. The Lord Jesus said on the road
to Emmaus, He says, it was written, it was necessary, it behooved
Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day and
that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in
His name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. See, our Saviour
didn't say He died so that we could tell sinners to repent.
Rather, He died and tells us that He died to proclaim repentance,
to proclaim repentance, to proclaim the remission of sins. We are to preach repentance,
to proclaim the turning of sinners to Him by His work of the Holy
Spirit. Repentance means a reversal. It means to change. It means
to be moved in such a way in your heart that everything you
understood about God has been turned upside down. Everything
that you thought about yourself has been turned upside down and
inside out. I love what the Hebrew says of
Isaiah. Isaiah, in the first five chapters
of Isaiah, is saying woe to this nation and woe to that nation,
and then he meets the Lord Jesus Christ. And then Isaiah changes
the tune completely. Woe is me. And he says, I am
undone. It means that he's unravelled.
All of what Isaiah had thought about himself was unravelled. God wounds people to bring them
to himself. And one of the great lessons
that we see in this particular story in Acts is that if these
who were there who had crucified the Lord of Glory were brought
to repentance and brought to faith and brought to see that
in their very act of extreme wickedness God was working His
mighty deeds of salvation. There's hope, isn't there, brothers
and sisters? Every time you look at another sinner on planet earth,
you haven't seen one that's done the things that these people
have done. We are all equally guilty. There is no question
about it. Repentance is a gift. is a gift
of God, and these people that are called upon to repent, in
response to that question, are those that were wounded in their
hearts. One of the great pictures we
have in Romans 11 and other places in the scripture is that God's
children are grafted into Christ, and for there to be a graft,
there has to be a wounding. There's a wounding in both parts
of the tree, isn't there? There's a wounding to cut the
little piece off, and there's a wounding to cut the tree, and
then in that wounding of both of them, they actually join together
in a wound. And when they've grown out, you
can't tell the difference. You can't see the difference. There is, in this pricking of
the heart, there is a wounding from God. You see, the real repentance,
isn't it? Godly repentance is a heart matter. Believing is a heart matter.
Baptism that he calls upon these people to do is a heart matter. It's all in your heart. While you're sitting there listening
to the Word of God, while you're sitting there listening to the
Lord Jesus Christ being proclaimed, it's a heart matter. God is speaking
to the hearts of his people. That's why so much outward show
of religion the more it appears to be productive, often the more
dangerous it is. You see, true repentance, these
people that are called upon to repent have actually been wounded
because they've actually seen, they've actually seen that their
sin is a sin against God Himself. The very God who now sits on
the throne of this universe is the one they have personally
offended. See, godly sorrow is about the
fact that we are in God's hands and we have offended Him enormously
and we, as we saw in Psalm 51, David said, against you, and
you only have I sinned. There is a worldly sorrow, isn't
it, in 2 Corinthians 7. It says godly sorrow work as
repentance to salvation, not to be repented of. That repentance
doesn't need to be in shamed of. that the sorrow of the world
works death. Many men, don't they sorrow enormously? They do sorrow for things that
they have done. They're not sorrowing because
of their offence against God, they're sorrowing because their
righteousness has been exposed and it's been seen to be not
what they thought it might be. They're concerned about the punishment
that might come to them. They're concerned about hell.
It is a fear, isn't it? But godly repentance is the result
of love, love from God. The repentance for the consequence
of sin goes no further than it dreads punishment, said Robert
Hawker. The repentance for the cause
of sin becomes a continued gracious sorrow in the heart. It continues that way, as Colossians
2.6 says, as you have begun with Christ Jesus, so you continue. begins because it's God's work. This is the work of God the Holy
Spirit, isn't it? He opens eyes to see. They've had three years of listening
to the Lord Jesus preached. They had three years of bearing
witness to the most remarkable miracles that this earth has
ever seen. They had three years of bearing witness to the one
miracle that was reserved for Messiah particularly. They had
three years of the testimony of all those that He had healed
and saved in remarkable ways. They had a testimony in Jerusalem
and around Jerusalem. They had the testimony of Lazarus
being raised from the dead. They had the testimony of thousands
being fed from nothing. They had all of that testament.
testimony, and it can make no difference whatsoever to them. You see, it's God the Holy Spirit
who opens eyes. It's God the Holy Spirit who
wounds hearts and causes hearts to fail. He removes a heart of
stone, as Ezekiel 36 says, and He replaces it with a heart of
flesh, a heart that can feel, can feel who God is and feel
who we are. A heart to know the extraordinary
consequences of sin, the wicked sinfulness of sin. And it's only
seen, as we see in Acts 2, it's seen as a result of the proclamation
of the Gospel. And it's only God the Holy Spirit
that can cause people to see how incredibly important salvation
is. It's worth everything. It is
worth everything to be saved. It's His work. It's the work
of God. Those who love much have been
forgiven much. We have been forgiven, brothers
and sisters in the Lord, an amazing amount. We have and we are at
this very moment being forgiven. and restored. It is His work
to wound and it is His work to heal the wound. It is His work
to bring us to know, and I love what Mr Hawker says, that there
is more in Jesus' blood and righteousness to save than in all our sins
to destroy. We are ruined by our sins and
we are restored to Him. We are restored to Him as we
see Him as He is. I love what Isaiah says, doesn't
he? He says, they are your sins. He says, let us reason together.
What a remarkable thing that God would want to reason with
sinners like us. Let us reason together. He comes
near, let us reason together in Isaiah 1. He says, and then
though your sins be scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be as red as crimson,
they'll be as wool. It's God's gift to give. Repentance is God's gift. It's God's command and what God
commands He gives His people to respond. Just to make sure
that we understand that this is not something that man works
up for himself. It's something that comes from
God. In Acts 5.31, Him has God exalted to His right hand to
be a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance to Israel and
forgiveness of sins. And when Peter comes back from
his meeting with the Gentiles, having been in Cornelius' house,
and he has to answer to why he's been defiled, seemingly, with
these Gentiles, when they heard their things they held this peace
and glorified God, saying, then God also to the Gentiles as granted
repentance unto life. Repentance is unto salvation,
repentance unto life. The Lord Jesus says in Matthew
9.13, you go and learn what it means, I will have mercy not
sacrifice for I have come not to call the righteous but sinners
to repentance. It's a gift, isn't it? John the Baptist came preaching
a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should
believe on him, which should come after him, that is on Christ
Jesus. It's a repentance in the heart
and it's a repentance, as Acts 20, 21 says, a repentance toward
God. to repent, to draw all those
people to Him, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. So it's
God, as we read in Psalm 116, it's God's call, isn't it? And there is a great question
that these people ask. And the answer is to repent,
isn't it? Repentance is a turning. As I
said, it's a turning and a returning. It's a reversal, isn't it? A
change of mind regarding the character of God. A change of
mind regarding who you are at your best in religion. These
were devout people. It's a change of mind regarding
his salvation, his son. Do you remember it, brothers
and sisters? I remember the change of mind. I remember thinking, wow, that's
not what I was taught. That doesn't seem right. And
the more we searched, the more we searched, the more we found
that what the scriptures say is always true. And it is God
who has promised to be the teacher of His people and He teaches
them. He teaches them that in the Lord
Jesus Christ there is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He is
God. He's not just a man, he is God. He is God, hiding himself in
human form, but in that hiding he's revealing remarkable things
about the character of God. He is the invisible one, now
made visible. He is the infinite God, made
finite. to be touched and to be handled.
He is the Eternal One dying. He is the Immortal One laying
down His life for His people, rising and reigning. He is the
One who is God and yet He was led as a lamb to the slaughter
and He laid down His life to take it back again. That's why
there is in the scriptures this call from God, isn't it, to turn,
to come back. What a gracious God we have that
calls us again and again to repent. He says, turn at my reproof and
behold I'll pour out my Spirit upon you and I'll make known
my words unto you. I want to know His words. I want to hear from God. God's
children want to hear what God says, not the opinions of men. Come. And the Redeemer, Isaiah
59, the Redeemer shall come to Zion and unto them that turn
from transgression into Jacob. And they'll hear, they'll hear
the sound of the Gospel. As Simon said earlier out of
Joel, the Lord will roar out of Zion. There will be a trumpet
sound. The apostles gave a trumpet,
a clear sound of the Gospel. They'll hear that. And he says, they heard the sound
of the trumpet and took not warning. His blood shall be upon him,
but he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. The cry, repentance is a cry,
isn't it? Repentance, this call to repentance
is a cry from a wounded heart. What shall I do? Three times
in Acts that question's asked. What shall I do? We're in trouble. I need some direction. The Philippian jailer said, what
must I do to be saved? There he was, terrified. He came
trembling and he was about to commit suicide, so perilous was
his situation. Ours is no different, brothers
and sisters. Paul said, what shall I do, Lord? It's a great question, isn't
it? What shall I do? The remarkable thing in the Scriptures
is that the answer is never nothing. The answer is never nothing.
You see, in all of our faith, the foundation of everything
we do is the Word of God. For everything we say, for everything
we practice, for everything we believe, we just simply say,
this is what God says. Let men say what they like. This
is what God says. And the object of our faith is
always the same, isn't it? It's the Son of God. You look
to Him. We keep saying don't look to
men, don't look to your experiences, don't look to religion, look
to the Lord Jesus Christ. But the warrant, our authority
of faith is the command of God. Acts 17 says, God commands all
people everywhere to repent. God commands us to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ. Our warrant for repenting and
our warrant for coming and our authorisation for coming and
for believing is His very word Himself. We call out to Him to
Him, to honour what He's promised to do. And we do teach again
and again, and we've seen it in Acts, and we'll see it again
and again as we go through the book of Acts, that the Scriptures
teach so plainly of the total depravity of man, the total inability
of man, and the total unwillingness of man. The Lord Jesus said,
to that great crowd who'd been fed those loaves and the fish.
He said, no man will come to me unless the Father who sent
me draw him. Draw him by an omnipotent power. No man will come. No man can
come. What shall we do? What shall we do? These people
are being cut to the heart. They have now, after weeks and
weeks, have probably rejoiced with the Pharisees and others
in the fact that now their Jewish religion was preserved from this
Galilean and the gang that were with him. Now that they've made
sure that he's out of the way and they don't have to put up
with the embarrassment of having him in their midst, now he's alive. now is alive. He is their judge, he is their
God, and his life is in your hands. You, in your Father Adam
in the garden, you thought that you had a throne to sit on and
you come into this world sitting upon your little throne and thinking
that you have the right to be a king. That's exactly how we
are born, aren't we? We have the right to be a king.
I have the right to judge. These people stood in judgment
of God himself, who is their judge. Isn't that exactly what's
going on throughout this world today? Isn't that exactly what's
going on in the hearts of every unbelieving rebel in this world? They are standing in judgment
of God and saying, I will not have that man to rule over me.
I will establish my own righteousness. I will establish my own way of
saving myself. I'll make the rules for my life.
And if you interfere with it in any way whatsoever, I'll treat
you with contempt. That's what we're doing, isn't
it? See, sin is described in the scriptures as coming short
of the glory of God. Coming short. Sin is lawlessness,
isn't it? It's our rebellion against God. Some people think that to get
people to repent you have to get them to confess all of their
sins before people and then turn from all of their sins The reality,
brothers and sisters, is that before these people and before
all people to whom the Lord cuts in the heart and wounds in the
heart, they realise that the sin is enormous. The depths of
the sin are enormous. It goes not just to the things
that I do, it goes to the very core of my being. I'm in trouble. is what these people
said. I'm in really serious trouble. I've got no way out of this hole.
This hole is incredibly deep. I've dug this hole for myself.
It is incredibly deep. It is incredibly dark. And this
one that we have just crucified can send me to hell and be just
right now. No wonder it's a cry, isn't it?
What shall we do? Give us some direction, give
us some light, give us anything. Give us any way out of this situation. We're in great trouble. As we said last week, we're not
victims. We're not victims of someone
else's crime. We are personally responsible. You see, it's a heart matter. You are personally, I am personally
responsible before God. And the wonder of the Gospel
is that in that very act of that extraordinary
wickedness that these people did, was their salvation. At the very place where their
greatest wickedness was, was the very place of salvation. What are we to do? As I said earlier, some people
think that repent is being sorry. Well, how sorry do you have to
be? Some people think that you have to stop sinning. And some
people think that they've actually got to the stage of nearly stopping
all their sins. We have a fellow who told us
that he had one left to work on. It was a very big one. It was called self-righteousness
and pride and unbelief. It was huge. Another fellow said
that he nearly got rid of all of his sins, but he has the occasional
slip-up. Remarkable, isn't it? Repentance. If repentance is just being sorry
and stopping something, then we haven't done it. This is a
heart matter, brothers and sisters. You can stop all sorts of sins
outside. I promise you, you hadn't stopped
them in your heart. God could expose that in a heartbeat. Is there any sin that you wouldn't
commit but for God's restraining hand? As I said earlier, repentance
is a change of mind, isn't it? All your thoughts about God are
wrong as you're born into this world. All your thoughts about
yourself are wrong, and all of your thoughts about salvation
are wrong." These people thought that they were religious. These
people thought that they were obeying the law. These people
thought that they were worshipping God. They travelled over land
and got themselves circumcised. They thought that they were worshipping
God. Paul. I love how he describes
himself, isn't it? He speaks as one of these people
in this crowd. He says, he was circumcised on
the 8th day of the Stock Revival of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew
of the Hebrews, touching the law, a Pharisee, concerning zeal,
persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in
the law. He said he was blameless. Blameless. But what things were gained to
me I counted lost for Christ. Yea, doubtless I count all things
but lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do
count them, all that is lost he counts as done, that I may
win Christ. That's what these people are
calling out. That's what Peter is saying, isn't it? Repent.
Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins. Does baptism
remit sins? Does the act of baptism take
away sins? Brothers and sisters, you know
better than that, don't you? You know better than that some
external act, multitudes are baptised that are never saved. Ananias and Sapphira were baptised
maybe on this day, and we'll read about their sad end in Acts
chapter 5. But baptism is what baptism represents
that saves, isn't it? It represents the union of us
with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is our confession, isn't it? It's the believer's confession
of faith. It's saying when I'm baptised,
all my hope, all my hope of being accepted with God is in the finished
work of the Lord Jesus Christ and nothing to do with me. When
Christ kept the law, I kept the law perfectly, to God's standard
of righteousness. When he died as a sin-bearing
substitute, I died with him, and I was raised from the dead
with him. That's what baptism is saying, isn't it? It is a heart matter. When he
took his seat in heaven, I was seated with him. It is this union,
the remarkable union, we are one with him. Paul talks about
it in my favourite verses, isn't it? I'm crucified with Christ,
nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and
the life which I now live in the flesh. How does he live now?
I live by the faith of the Son of God. who loved me and gave
himself for me." That's how he lives. That's what baptism is
about, isn't it? It's the confession that in my
baptism, his remission of my sins was his work and he did
it perfectly and he did it completely. John came baptising, didn't he?
He baptised in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance
for the remission of sins. you to repent and be baptized. So it's repentance, you could
easily translate it inaccurately, it's a baptism of repentance
concerning the remission of sins. It's a baptism of repentance regarding the remission
of sins. It's not a baptism for us to
remit our sins, it's a baptism that signifies that it's all
done by Him. We know what religious people
do, don't they? They love to have this sort of ceremony before
baptism where you actually stand up before people and you confess
your sins. You try, you confess your sins,
And then you have to give some sort of testimony of when the
Lord saved you and what He's done with you. Our baptism is
our confession, brothers and sisters. The rest of it is religious
nonsense. It's a heart activity. These
people were pricked in the heart. They needed a heart activity. There was a physical activity,
but they needed a heart activity first. Baptism is a confession of sin. The only way I can be saved is
by the Lord Jesus doing all that he has done. He had to bear my
sins in his own body on the tree. He had to suffer the infinite
wrath of God for them until God says he's satisfied. Repentance
and the remission of sins is actually mentioned here in Acts
2.38, and it's mentioned another four times in the New Testament.
It's good to look at these things, isn't it? The remission of sins
is the forgiveness of sins, the cleansing of sins' stain, the
washing away of sin, the cancelling of sin. It's causing the sins
not to be. them taken away. You see, when
you are wounded like these people are wounded, when God wounds
you in your heart, you need something more than some external activity. I love that hymn, I don't know
who wrote it, I could find out. Dark the stain that soiled man's
nature, long the distance that he fell, far removed from hope
and heaven, into deep despair and hell. there was a fountain
opened, and the blood of God's own Son purifies the soul and
reaches deeper than the stain has gone. I love that line, deeper
than the stain has gone. Praise the Lord for full salvation. God still reigns upon His throne,
and I know the blood still reaches deeper than the stain. has gone. So that's why there's a need of
repentance regarding the remission of sins. This crowd, as the religious
crowd today, and all of us here at some stage, thought that in
some way we could remit our sins, we could reduce our sins by doing
something. We did something and religion
teaches that remission of your sins is actually the end of salvation. If you actually live this life
and you keep working and working and working and making yourself
more and more and more sanctified, eventually you'll reach that
place where sins are remitted and you're ripe and ready for
heaven. It's about stopping doing this
and starting doing that, and then they'll have forgiveness
and remission of sins. That's just works religion, brothers
and sisters. It does nothing for the heart.
It touches the flesh of multitudes and does nothing for the heart. For them, for works religion,
remission of sins is the reward. You're rewarded for something
that you've done. One of the great lessons in Acts,
one of the great lessons I'd like you to take away from this
time we have in Acts chapter 2, is that the glorious thing
here, brothers and sisters, at the foundation of the Church,
we see, I hope clearly, that salvation doesn't end. with the
remission of sins, but it's at the beginning, at the beginning
of Christian life, our sins are put away forever. We'll come
to learn, won't we, that they were dealt with in eternity.
The Lord Jesus took full responsibility for both my righteousness and
my sins before the world began. He saved his people before the
world began. But Christian life in our experience
and salvation begins with sins being put away completely. If
your sins aren't completely put away by the Lord Jesus Christ
now, they never will be in the future. His work is perfect. What does the scripture say?
We read it last week. But this man, Hebrews 10, 12,
after he'd offered one sacrifice for sins forever. I love that,
isn't it? One sacrifice for sins of all
of his people forever. He sat down, the work is finished,
he's sitting down on the right hand of God, from henceforth
expecting till he's any beauty made his footstool. For by one
offering, Hebrews 10, 14, he has perfected forever. This is what God says. These
aren't my words, but this is His words. God hath perfected,
done it and finished it completely, has perfected forever them that
are sanctified, them that are made holy. This is the covenant
I will make with them after those days, says the Lord. I will put
my laws into their hearts and in their minds will I write them.
and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." It's
remarkable, brothers and sisters. Our Gospel is a remarkable Gospel. Now where remission of these
is, there is no more offering for sin. You cannot offer anything
to God for sin ever again. To offer anything is to say that
the Lord Jesus didn't do enough. As we saw last week, when Nathan
came to David, David had sinned so grievously and he said, you
are the man, you are the sinner, David. You are the one that deserves
this wrath of God upon you. David said, I have sinned. Nathan said, He didn't say the Lord will put
away your sins when you change and become better, David. He
didn't say the Lord will put away your sins when you become
sufficiently sorry for your sins, David. What did he say? The Lord hath. The th ending means it's completed
once and it's done forever. The Lord hath put away your sin. He put it on the Lord Jesus Christ
from the foundation of the world and it's gone. No wonder God's
children are rejoicing in the freedom and the liberty and the
glory of the Gospel. What shall we do, these people
cried out. How can this awful sin be put away? How can I escape
this judgment that hangs over me? And the remarkable news of
the Gospel is that the only way it can be done is by the one
thing that you did those weeks ago in the crucifying and the
death and the burial of the Lord Jesus Christ. Your sins of committing
that. have been put away. Oh sinners, oh sinners. What an amazing Gospel for sinners. There's no benefit whatsoever
to the righteous, is there? And the righteous Pharisee went
to the temple, didn't he, and he says, well, I've done this
and I've done that and I'm not like those other people out there.
I'm not like that rotten Paul Popper, that horrible Adolf Hitler.
I'm not like those wicked people that I see around me. And the
other fellow just looked up looked to God and said, you be
merciful to me. And he called himself the sinner.
He's not worried about the sins of everyone else. You be merciful
to me. In fact, he was saying, you look
upon your son and his sacrifice on my behalf. You be propitious
to me. You look to your son and the
wrath bearing sacrifice that he will accomplish. He went home
to his house justified. He had never sinned in God's
eyes. Isn't that remarkable, brothers
and sisters? Justified. The only people who know anything
of the vileness of sin The other people never know the
vileness of sin. If they knew something of the
vileness of sin, they'd be crying out, what shall we do? They will
want to hear a word from God to bring them peace. The only
people who know the violence of sin are those whose sins have
been forgiven. There was another fellow who
was in the same situation. We can turn there in Acts 16.
And he asked the same question, what must I do to be saved? It's
the Philippian jailer. They were praying Paul and Silas
and they sang praises to God. And suddenly there was a great
earthquake, so that the foundation of the prison was shaken. Immediately
all the doors were opened and everyone's bands were loosed.
And the keeper of the prison awakened out of his sleep, seeing
the prison doors open. He drew out his sword and would
have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had fled.
But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm, for
we are all here. Then he called for a light, and
sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and
Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do
to be saved?" He was in a similar situation to those in Jerusalem,
wasn't he? And they said, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved in thy house. And he
was baptised. Straight away, he was baptised. You see, he was cut to the heart.
He was brought to a place where he would have killed himself.
He came trembling. He made that cry, didn't he?
What must I do to be saved? To believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ, as I said earlier, is just to rely on Him, to rest
in Him completely, to turn completely from anything of your own works
and your own doing and your own abilities and your own promises
for the future, and just rely on Him. Put all your eggs for
all of your life and all of your soul in one basket, just one
place. Lord Jesus Christ. He is the
one who is that sovereign. He is Jesus. You'll call his
name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins. And
he is Christ. He's God's anointed. I'm relying
on him. I'm resting on him as he's described
himself to be. He's exposed me for what I am. But in the glory of exposing
himself, He exposes me and He exposes my salvation. God has made this Jesus whom
you have crucified, Lord and Christ. And he's put his people
in him, hasn't he? But of him are you in Christ
Jesus, who is of God, made unto us wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption, that as it is written, let him
the glory, let him glory in the Lord. Paul's answer to the question
is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. There is a third time that this
question is asked. What shall I do? Let's turn there
briefly as we close. What shall I do? It's Paul on
the road to Damascus. And he saw a light. He saw a
great light. In verse 6 of Acts 22, a great
light. Who is the great light? He saw
a light. He saw the Lord Jesus Christ.
And He knows who He is. He says, Who art thou, Lord? He knows who He is now. And he
said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecuted. And they
that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid, but
they heard not the voice of him that spake to me." When God speaks,
he speaks personally, individually, and he speaks powerfully. And when God speaks, when God
meets a sinner, there is always What verse 7 says, I fell unto
the ground. When you meet the Lord Jesus
Christ, you'll fall to the ground, brothers and sisters. You will
fall to the ground. John! an old saved apostle who
called himself the apostle whom the Lord Jesus loved. And when
he was taken up into Heaven's glory, that's exactly what he
did. He fell down before him. And
the wonder of it is that everyone who falls down before him will
experience what John experienced. They'll be lifted up. He'll reach
out his hand and he lifts them up. The Lord spoke to him, didn't
he? You go into Damascus, and Ananias, a devout man according
to the law, came to me, verse 13, and stood and said to me,
and these are the words of the church, aren't they? It's remarkable,
isn't it? Now this persecutor is called brother. He's had a
complete change of name. Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same hour I looked up
upon him and he said, the God of our fathers has chosen thee. The first word that the church
speaks to Paul, he calls him a brother and the first thing
he speaks of is election. The church is never embarrassed
about God's electing love, his predestinating love. It is one
of the names of his son. We're not embarrassed about proclaiming
election. The God of our fathers has chosen
thee that thou should know his will and see the just, that just
one, and should hear the voice of his mouth. And you shall be
a witness. To be a witness is to be chosen
of God, to be a witness. To be a witness is to know His
will. To be a witness is to see the
Just One. To be a witness is to hear the
voice of His mouth. You should know his will. Just
look at these things briefly. Obviously this is not to know
the will of the future. Paul didn't have a clue about
his future until God had spoken to him. And in Acts chapter 16
we see that Paul had a will to go to northern Turkey twice and
God says, you're not going to Turkey, you're not going to Turkey,
you're going over to Greece and to Macedonia, which is where
he came across that Philippian jailer that we read earlier.
We don't know God's will for the future, but we do know God's
will in the past. All you have to do to find out
God's will for yesterday is get the newspaper and read the newspapers. Whatever happens in this world
is God's will and we're not going to change it and God's people
will rest in the fact that our Sovereign Lord does all things
will. So what's he talking about? is to know his will in salvation,
isn't it? That's the situation that lay
before Paul here, isn't it? What did the Lord Jesus say?
What is God's will? He says, All that the Father
has given thee shall come to him, and him that cometh to me
I will now wise cast out. For I came down from heaven,
John 6.38, not to do mine own will, but the will of him who
sent me. This is the will of God. This
is to know his will. And this is the Father's will
which has sent me, that all of which He has given me I should
lose nothing, not one, not one skeret of them. They'll all be
there, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this
is the will of Him that sent me, that everyone that sees the
Son and believes on Him may have everlasting life, and I will
raise Him up at the last day. That's God's will. Are you resting
in the fact that that is God's will? We can rely on the fact
that all the promises of God are yea and amen. We're resting in Him and what
He did, His death and His person, to know His will. And if you
know His will and you see Him, you'll see Him as He's described
in those verses we just read, to see the Just One. That's exactly what these people
in Acts Chapter 2 had seen. They had seen that God is now
the Just One. He's the Just One and the Justifier. He calls Himself in Isaiah 45
a Just God, a Righteous God and a Saviour. He's just. You'll see Him, won't you? God's
children see Him by the eyes of faith. We see Him in old eternity. We see Him in the scriptures
of the Old Testament, exalted and glorified and promised Messiah. We see Him coming and fulfilling
all of that. We see Him crucified, buried
and now alive and glorified. But we see that He is just, a
just God. a just God, as Romans 3.26, a
just God and a Saviour. If you see Him, you'll see Him
as just. You'll see that he can be just,
perfectly just. In the death of his son, he can
be perfectly just, perfectly righteous, perfectly holy, and
make me to have no sin in his sight. It's the glory of the
gospel, isn't it? That you'll see the just one. God's children are made aware
of their sins, and they're not proud of them one little bit. of the Lord Jesus Christ can
look at a wretch like me and say, there is no sin in him at
all. It's been taken away completely. Not only have these sinners done
nothing wrong, they've always done in God's sight what is perfectly
righteous and just before God. God smiles on them, always. God who is holy looks upon these
ones in his Son and he sees them as holy as he is. You are to
know his will, you are to see the just one and you are to hear
the voice of his mouth, to hear from God. So these people who
are cut to the heart, it says they heard, they heard a fisherman
from Galilee speaking. They heard a fisherman from Galilee
reciting Old Testament scriptures that they had known for years
and knew them off by heart, and now they heard them. They heard
them because God spoke to them. They don't come to hear the opinion
of men. Peter doesn't give his opinion.
Peter doesn't talk about Peter the fisherman. Peter doesn't
talk about anything other than his testimony of who the Lord
Jesus is. And that's what it is to be a
witness, isn't it? You witness something that you
are seeing, you have seen. You don't train people to be
witnesses. They witness naturally of what
they have seen and what they have heard. And then he says,
arise and be baptised. What are you waiting for? What
are people waiting for? Arise and be baptised and wash
away your sins. Calling on the name of the Lord.
What are people waiting for? Are they waiting to get better?
Are they waiting for some kind of experience? Waiting to understand
more, he's saying, quit waiting, arise and be baptised. Calling on the name of the Lord. Have you called on him? I'm calling
on you on God's behalf to Call on Him if you haven't called
on Him. Call on Him. Call on Him. Everything in our
Christian experience begins with us calling on Him. Lord, save
me, is what these people will say. Lord, save me from myself. Save me from my religion. Save
me from my righteousness. I can't save myself. Save me. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. This is a promise. It's not a
promise from me. None of my promises are worth
diddly squat. This is a promise from God. This
promise is for you and all on whom the Lord shall save. As the hymn writer said, While
on others thou art calling, please don't pass me by. Gentle Saviour,
don't pass me by. Let's pray.