Want to make sure I got the right
number for the last hymn. Suddenly occurred to me I hadn't
checked that out. I was doing that from memory.
Believe me, at my age, doing something from memory is dangerous. Acts chapter 2. I love that hymn. Ye servants of God, your master
proclaim. Is there anything else worth
proclaiming? Really? I feel sorry for those who go
to church this morning and they're going to hear messages from their
pastors urging them to vote for this or that candidate or why,
you know, we need to rise up and take hold of the reins of
government as though we can establish the kingdom of God that way.
I feel sorry for those who are going to get a lesson on nothing
more than how to live your day-to-day lives. May God grant that this
morning I'd be enabled to proclaim the master, to set him forth. Because when people see him,
and I realize I can't make anybody see him, only the spirit of God
can do that. But he does it through the preaching
of Christ. That's why Paul said, I'm determined to know nothing
but Christ and him crucified among you. But if the Spirit
of God is pleased to attend the preaching of Jesus Christ, wonderful
things happen. Last week, I preached a message
about the crucifixion. And I started by saying that
there never was a more notable day in all of history Nor has
there been a day like it since that day. That the most serious
matters of time and eternity were decided and handled on that
day. Even though so far as a historical
event, it did not register as the tiniest blip on the world's
historical radar. Really, it wasn't until much
later as the gospel was sent out that any significant portion
of the world ever knew what happened that day. But this day, the day of Pentecost,
some 50 days later, was a day I would say nearly is momentous,
and the only reason I use the word nearly is this, what happened
on this day could not have happened were it not what happened on
the day of crucifixion. The events of the day of Pentecost
are rooted deeply in the events of that last Passover, when the
true Passover lamb was sacrificed as a redemption price of God's
people. If the crucifixion had never
happened, Pentecost never would have happened. If Jesus Christ
had not suffered the righteous for the unrighteous, there would
have been no reason for the Holy Spirit to come, because the job
of the Holy Spirit is to testify of Christ, and if Christ had
not done what he did, there would be nothing to testify about.
There would be no message to bring. And so this is a momentous
day. And once again, it was probably,
you'll have to forgive my cough, and it's allergies. As far as
I know, I'm not dying of the present plague. But if this is
the plague, I've had it for the last 25 years. But it was quite an event. It was
spectacular to behold, but it did not, the news of it did not
get very far quickly. And once again, the only reason
you and I know about it is because the men whom God called to be
his apostles, they wrote it down and they declared these things. But I call this message, I've
entitled it, Full Blown Gospel. And the reason I entitled it
that way is because this is the first time in all of Earth's
history that the gospel of God's grace is told and experienced
in its fullness. Now, I'm not saying that there's
nothing to be learned about the gospel that you won't find in
here. After all, the rest of the New
Testament adds some doctrinal matters to it. But this is the gospel. It's
the whole gospel. Within what we have recorded
here is everything that a person needs to know in order to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ to the saving of his soul. There's more that could be known,
but there's nothing more that has to be known. These men, the
apostles, the Holy Spirit came upon them in a way that it did
not come upon anybody before that time except our Lord Jesus
Christ. Our Lord was given the Holy Spirit
without measure, says the scripture. That is in unlimited amounts. I know he's God and he could
do whatever he wanted as God, but he didn't use, if I can put
it this way, he didn't use his own divine power. He says the
Spirit of the Lord is upon me to do this, that, and the other. So aside from our Lord Jesus,
no man ever had the Spirit of God as these apostles experienced
on this day. And wondrous things happened. Now the wondrous thing that happened
that caught the eye of the people there, or caught the attention,
was that these men, who had not been educated in a formal fashion,
began to speak in languages that they had never been taught. They were all declaring the same
message, the wonderful works of God. But they were speaking
in languages that were foreign to them. And we have no indication
that once this day passed, that they retained the ability to
do that. It was for this moment that it happened. But there was
something even more glorious than that that went on on this
day. Something that makes the ability
to speak in foreign languages just a minor little thing. God's gospel was preached with
power. God's gospel was declared in
its fullness. People who were dead and their
trespasses and sins were made alive unto God. They believed
the gospel. They repented. They confessed
Him in baptism. And 3,000 people, 3,000 lost
souls were gathered in by the Lord on that day. I've never
seen anything like that. I've never seen anything close
to that quite a day. I would like to know the message
that produced that, wouldn't you? Well, it starts in verse 22.
Paul explained to them why they were able to speak in these foreign
languages. But then he gets to the serious
stuff. That is the vital message that he and the other apostles
and every believer since has been sent to declare. Men of
Israel, listen to this, all that men would listen to the gospel
of Jesus Christ. Just sit still and let it enter
their mind and not judge it by everything they have known before,
but judge it by the only standard with which we can judge truth
concerning God, and that's the Holy Scriptures. had a fella call me when I was
on vacation. And he'd come by the church,
and then of course no one was here, and he wanted to know about
the church, and wanted to know if we were denominational or
not, and what kind of creed we had. I said, we got one creed,
it's the scriptures. That's our creed right there. If it's in
the Bible, we're gonna believe it to the best of our ability.
And if it's not there, not going to feel bound in conscience to
follow it. Men of Israel, listen. Listen
to this. Now, notice what he begins with,
Jesus of Nazareth. I was brought up in a form of
religion they kept talking about the plan, God's plan of salvation. And it's set forth, and I guess
the way they perceive it, plan's a good word because it's very
much like an insurance plan. And faith to them becomes very
much like signing on the dotted line. It may not be something
you really want to do, but you do it because it seems the wise
thing to do. You know, the apostles never
set forth a plan of salvation. God did plan salvation, but the
plan is never presented to us to fulfill it. The plan of salvation
is Christ, and he himself fulfilled that plan in being the Christ
and doing those things that Christ was sent to do. And so when Peter
begins to preach, he doesn't say things like, you know, I
remember one of the tracts that was handed out, this would have
been in my late teens, early 20s, you know, it starts, it's
called Four Spiritual Laws, and it starts with God loves you
and has a wonderful plan for your life. You'll notice nothing
like that is declared by the apostle in all of this scripture
that we read. He does not set forth a plan,
he sets forth a person. declares Jesus Christ for who
He is and what He did. Jesus of Nazareth was a man. Now here's something I can tell
you, but I can't explain it to you. Jesus of Nazareth is God in the
form of a man. He is the eternal God of confined
to space and time. He is that spirit that Brother
James read to us about. God is spirit and they who worship
him must worship him in spirit and truth. He is that eternal
spirit, the Word, who was with the Father from the very beginning
and indeed was with God and is God. And yet you go on, and that's
from John chapter one, you go down to verse 14, and the word
was made flesh, real flesh. He didn't just look like a man.
He was and is a human being. He did not descend from heaven
as a human being, but God, by a miraculous work, caused a human
being to be conceived within the womb of Mary. I don't know where the father's
side of the DNA came from. After all, if God can speak a
universe into existence, he doesn't have any problem creating DNA. All I know is no human male was
involved in our Lord's conception. But God caused conception to
occur, and in time, a male child was born, and he grew,
and in everything he did, he pleased his father. But he lived
entirely as a human being. A man, but not just any man,
a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs. So he's a man. And so much a
man that if you had seen him, you would not have perceived
anything unusual about him. In fact, in Isaiah chapter 52,
it says of him, There is no beauty, or the word
might better be translated majesty, that we should desire him. There was nothing in the appearance
of our Lord Jesus that would make you think that he was anything
other than a natural man. There was nothing in him that
would make you realize that he is the Christ, God in human flesh. However, God did accredit him.
And he accredited him by miracles, wonders, and signs. As I said,
our Lord, inasmuch as he is God in human flesh, he could have
done anything he wanted to under his own steam. But you and I
can't do that, so he didn't do it. He lived his life like you
and I have to live life. When the devil said, turn these
stones into bread, the Lord could have done it, but you and I can't. And if he is going to be our
substitute, if he is going to be the one who represents us
in the presence of God, he must do so as one who has lived under
the same conditions that you and I live under. But God accredited him, gave
him the measure of the spirit so that he performed miracles
that had never been performed before and wonders and signs. Our Lord Jesus Christ, you know,
there have been miracles like his done by others. After all, Elijah raised the
dead. Elijah ascended up to heaven
without dying. Moses stretched out a stick and
the Red Sea opened up. But no one did them in the quantity
he did them and in the unmistakable nature that he did them. It was
rare for any of the prophets to be given the Spirit of God
in order to perform a miracle. Our Lord did them multiple times,
evidently just about every day. He would go through a city and
the people would gather around Him and He's wading through them,
touching them, speaking to them, and people are being healed by
the hundreds. And it's being done in such a
way that no one can deny that that's what's going on. You see
today, so-called miracle workers, You can tell pretty quick, there's
some trickster or trick going on a little slight of hand going
on. They've got it set up. You know,
you, you can't get to the so-called, uh, healer until you've gone
through one of his, you know, people that filter who gets to
be up there. And if you've got some kind of
disease that they can't fake it, you don't go up there. You
got a genetic defect. You're not, you're not going
to be allowed to go up there. Now if you say, well, I got lung
cancer, they'll let you go up because they can touch you, say
you're healed and you move along and everybody thinks you were
and nobody can check on whether or not that's true. But if you
go up there missing a leg and you want another leg, they're
not going to let you up there because they can't do that. Our
Lord could. Our Lord opened the eyes of a man born blind. And I read about this business
of seeing. It's not just, you know, the
operation of your eyes. A little baby is born, his eyes
work, and it's sending signals to the brain, but the brain's
got to be taught how to interpret those signals to turn it into
vision and understanding of what's being seen. Well, that means
that when our Lord came to this man born blind and made him able
to see, it means he not only fixed his eyes, he wired his
brain so that his brain knew what he was looking at. Our Lord
did that with a word. Elijah may have raised the dead,
a young boy that had been, excuse me, Elisha, a young boy that
had been dead for just a little while. Our Lord went into the
tomb of a man that had been dead four days. And you know full
well what condition a body is in after four days. And he just spoke, Lazarus, come
forth. Told a dead man to do what dead
men cannot do. get up and walk out of the tomb.
But with the command to do it came the power to do it, for
the word of Christ had life in it. And Peter says to these people,
God accredited him, revealed who he is by these signs and
wonders and miracles. He did them among you. You saw
it. You know this happened. He could
say to them, I'm not, you can't accuse me of making this up.
You saw it. After all, Peter had been there
when it happened. Maybe he recognized some of the people standing before
him. And he could have said, I remember that you were there
the day he fed 5,000. You saw it, didn't you? And you
were at Lazarus' tomb, weren't you? And then these things were
reported. sets forth Christ as He was in
this world. And then He said something to
them about themselves. He told them what they were.
Now this man, verse 23, was handed over to you by God's set purpose
and foreknowledge and you, you Jews, You special people who
think so much of yourselves and think you're so good, why you
were born into a Jewish family, you were initiated into the covenant
of the Jews, you're God's people, didn't the Bible say so? Aren't
you something? You, with the help of wicked
men. Strictly it says with wicked
hands. What it's talking about there was the Gentiles. because
the Jews couldn't crucify anybody, so they got their Gentile friends
to do it. That didn't matter. It was them that did it. It was
them that was behind it. The Gentiles had no interest
in crucifying Christ, but they did. You, with the help of wicked
men, put him to death by nailing him to a cross. Now, I was taught early in preaching
that before you can preach the good news, you've got to preach
the bad news. What's the bad news? The bad news is us. The
bad news is who we are and what we've done. And actually that
comes, you know, even in my childhood when I was in free will fundamentalism,
you know, they'd always talk about sin first and then, of
course, the remedy for sin. But when they would talk about
sin, they would bring up moral issues. Drinking, you know. carousing, just all kinds of
immoral actions. Well, there's no question that
these things are sin, certainly if they're abused. Immorality is sin. But you know,
Peter didn't confront them. immorality, at least not in the
sense we normally think of it. He didn't pull out the Ten Commandments
and say, now you all broke this, this, this, this commandment.
Even though they broke commandments that's not how He put it. He
described their sinfulness in their attitude towards God's
Christ revealed in how they treated Him. You see sin is at its root
and heart and its very source. It's not about individual points
of conduct. It's about what you think of
God and his son and how you react to him. And brethren, this is
the nature of every one of us. So I wouldn't crucify the Lord
if you were there, you'd have done it. The only reason that
you and I were not in that multitude crying out, crucify him, crucify
him, is because we were born 2,000 years too late and born
in the wrong country. We just weren't there. In the
heart of everybody here, including the man preaching to you, In
the natural heart of every one of us is a hatred for the God
who created us and a hatred for His Son who redeems us. And unless
and until God reveals that to us and then by His Spirit delivers
us from that hatred, reconciles us to Himself, we go on that
way. We'll be religious, we may be
moral, but we are wicked as wicked can be. Remember, the ones who
did this or were at the forefront of doing this were the most moral
men in Israel on that day, the Pharisees. They're the ones primarily
responsible for stirring up the crowd to have Jesus Christ crucified. This was the crowd from whom
Paul came, and he said of his experience as a Pharisee concerning
that righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless. Well,
how are you going to convict a man like that of sin? Right
like this, right like this. And Paul understood that because
he's, even though you could have gone down to 10 commandments
and you couldn't have pointed to a time he ever outwardly broke
any of them. Yet he said, I am the chief of
sinners. And then he returns to our Lord
Jesus Christ, but God raised him from the dead. I like the
way Peter just, he didn't build them up to that.
He didn't prepare them for that. He said, you killed him. God
raised him from the dead. Shows you how much our attitude
and our choices affect the purpose of God. God has declared all things from
the beginning. He has a purpose and he works
all things according to the counsel of his own will, and it was his
will that these men do this to Christ. And even though they
did it from the hearts of wickedness, and even though they did it in
a desire to get rid of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I'm sure when
Jesus Christ said, it is finished, Father, into your hands I commend
my spirit, and he died. They may not have done it audibly,
but boy in their hearts, they, oh boy, we did it finally. We
got rid of this guy. He's dead. He ain't coming back.
He's not gonna bother us. We can go on and keep our position
of the high and mighty among the people of God. But God raised
him from the dead. God raised him from the dead,
freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible
for death to keep his hold on him. Now, why is that? Why was it impossible for death
to keep hold of Christ? Well, you see, death is the consequence
of sin. And that's why our Lord died.
Because sin was laid to his account. All we like sheep have gone astray
and the Lord had laid on him the iniquity of us all. And God
made his soul an offering for sin. He bore sins that He Himself
had not done, but according to the prophet Jeremiah, He owned
them as His own sins. In Lamentations 1, the Lord Jesus
is speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, and it says, He has
tied my or woven my sins around my neck. Oh, what grace of the
Lord that he not only bore our sins when he bore them, he bore
them before the Father as his own sin. And inasmuch as he came
before the judge of all the earth bearing sin, the wrath of God
fell upon him and he died. He died completely. He died in
a way that nobody else has ever died. He's the only one that
could say, I finished dying. That's what he meant by it is
finished. Those who perish in unbelief,
perish under the wrath of God, they go on suffering forever.
Why? Because they never get done dying. They can never die to the end
of death like Christ did. Christ completely fulfilled and
finished death. And when he did, all the sins
that he bore, had been paid for. And he himself now was free of
the sins that he had freely accepted in behalf of God's people. Therefore, death no longer has
a claim on him. You see that? The only ones that
die are sinners. The only ones that die are the
guilty. Death comes by sin. Well, death
came by sin to the Lord, but such was the glory of his person
and the nature of his death that when he was done dying, the sins
were gone and death had to say, well, I got nothing on this guy
anymore. And he was let go. And then he goes on to speak
of our Lord's glorification. He said in verse 32, God has
raised this Jesus to life and we are all witnesses of the fact.
Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the
Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now
see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven
and yet he said, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Here is the full-blown gospel
message, as Peter has declared it, the person of Christ, who
he is, what he did. He perished, he died under the
wrath of God, but did so successfully, so that the sins that he bore
were actually put away, they'll never be brought up again. And so great was his work that
God raised him from the dead, but that wasn't it, that wasn't
the end of it. He raised him to his right hand and he said,
you sit here until I make all your enemies a footstool for
your feet. When I was in Bible school, one
of the evangelists that came through later became the president
of that school. And again, I came from a form
of doctrine that I no longer believe. In fact, by the time
I heard this guy, I was no longer following that pattern. But it
was typical of today's Christianity that believes that God's doing
everything he can to save everybody if you just let him. That's really
what it comes down to. And he told this story. He said
that when Jesus Christ was about to ascend to heaven, the disciples
were gathered around and he said, go into all the world and preach
the gospel. And then he ascended to heaven.
And when he got up there, The angel said, OK, you ready for
us to go down there and tell the whole world the good news?
He said, no. What? Well, what are you going
to do? He said, well, I've chosen 12
men, and I've sent them to preach the gospel. One of them already
betrayed me, but I've got another one that I'm going to call. And
they said, but if they don't get it done, what's your plan? I'm not lying to you. This evangelist,
you know, he, of course, you know, he got all personal, you
know, came over the side of the pulpit like that. So he said,
Jesus just hung his head and said, I have no other plan. Does
that sound to you like what Peter says here? God said, sit at my
right hand till I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. There's
nothing going on right now that's upsetting the Lord Jesus Christ.
God is not saying, things just aren't working out like I wanted
to. Jesus is not crying because people won't believe him. God is right now bringing everything
into subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ and every rebel's gonna
be put under his feet. Everybody's going to be brought
into submission to Jesus Christ. Paul, in speaking of our Lord's
glory, says this of him, that every knee shall bow and every
tongue confess that Jesus is what? Savior? Some of us confess that. Lord. And believe me, this isn't
a Lord in name only. This is a Lord who rules in absolute
unrestrainable power. You're here this morning because
Jesus Christ said you would be here. I don't know why he brought
you. I hope he brought you for good
purposes. But I know this, you wouldn't be here if he hadn't
brought you. And as you hear the gospel being
preached, you are either one of his precious elect being brought
to him, or you are one of his enemies being trampled under
his feet, one or the other. So in verse 36, Peter finishes
up his message with this declaration. Therefore, let all Israel be
assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom
you crucified, both Lord and Christ. Now, since we weren't
raised as Jews, we can't enter in to what that must have meant
to them. First of all, they knew what
a Lord is. And they knew what Christ meant. Christ is just the Greek version
of the Hebrew word Messiah. And there they're standing there,
they're at the temple on the day of Pentecost, they're doing
what they think they need to do to please God. And they're
all full of joy, and they think everything's working out wonderful,
and they're seeing some spectacular things, and suddenly this untrained
preacher, this guy without a seminary degree, without the approval
of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, or anybody else, stands up and
says that Jesus of Nazareth, God has made him to be Lord and
Christ. And you're standing there and
you got his blood on your hands. What Peter said to them is the
very one God sent to be the Savior. You killed him. Now friends, that's guilt you
can't wiggle out from under. That's sin that you can find
no way to justify. There's no excuses for what they
did and they knew it. And it says that they were cut
to the heart. Oh, this is when you know that
the Holy Spirit is doing something. Cut to the heart. not because
of how badly they've treated other people, but because of
their attitude towards God's Christ. And I think that these
people, that his words took all hope out of them. Because they
said, brothers, what shall we do? And I get the sense they
weren't asking because they thought there was an answer. What they're
saying was like if we said, oh, what in the world are we going
to do? I'm sure these men thought themselves
beyond redemption, beyond grace. They had crucified the Lord's
Christ. What can be done to fix that? I'm sure glad the sermon didn't
end there. Peter replied, repent and be
baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for
the forgiveness of your sins. I'm sure many of them thought,
what? There is a remedy for this? There is a way out? God has done a work of salvation
that could save someone like me. I love people. I've run into
a few of them. I love people that think they're
too bad for God to save them, because that's the kind of people
God came to save. There's a lot of people too good
for God to save them. There's nobody too bad. The word gospel is a translation of the Greek
word meaning good message or good news. And this must have
been the best news these men had ever heard. They had been
cut to the quick. They had been put in the bottom
of a pit from which they could see no way out. And someone said,
there's a way out. There's a way out. Repent and
be baptized, every one of you. in the name of Jesus Christ. Now, today we're going to observe,
if that's the right word, a baptism. And I want to tell you this,
neither this scripture or any one other scripture that people
have twisted, none of them mean that by the act of baptism anyone
is saved. Peter said baptism really doesn't
wash dirt off of the flesh, it's certainly not going to wash away
your sins. Repent, he says, and this phrase,
in the name of Christ, I think what he means by this is not
any formulary for baptism, any words you're supposed to utter,
he's saying, in the name of Christ, I say to you, repent and be baptized,
every one of you, for the remission of sins. And his point is, repent,
and having repented, be baptized because your sins have been forgiven,
not in order to have your sins forgiven. The word that's translated
for, carries the range of meanings that our English word for can
carry. And you know, sometimes like,
you know, we take medicine for healing. And so it's a medicine
unto healing. But this word is also used to
say, do this because of something that's already happened. And so he says, repent. What does it mean to repent?
It means to change your mind. Change your mind about yourself.
Change your mind about Christ. And thus your sins are forgiven
through the Christ. And then be baptized because
you have been forgiven. Not in order to be, but because
you have been forgiven. And I say this, and I love to
say this. It's good. I hope you love to hear it. Your
salvation's got nothing to do with what you do, nothing. That is, so far as the obtaining
of it's concerned, nothing you do or somehow another avoid doing
has any effect upon whether or not God has saved you. Salvation's an eternal thing.
Paul said to Timothy that the grace that God's people have
was given to them before the world began. But this grace given to us before
the world began is revealed in time through Christ. And the fact that it was given
to us is revealed in this. Grace is given to us to repent.
This doesn't mean you say, oh, I've been an awful sinner, or
I've been a drunk, or I've been an adulterer, or I've been a
murderer, and I'm going to quit doing those things. That's not
what repentance is. I hope you do quit doing those
things if you're doing them. Especially if you live next door to me. But you can quit all those things,
still go to hell. Repentance, changing your mind about God.
Be reconciled to God. Let me finish up here in a couple
minutes. Who's this for? Peter replied, or Peter went
on to say, Verse 39, the promise is for you and your children
and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God
shall call. Now, people like to wrestle over
that text. Some would like to take it and
say, well, you know, this is just a continuation of the way
that God worked with the Jews because the promises were for
them and for their children. And therefore the church should
be set up after the old covenant pattern that somehow the children
of believers come into this world with a little advantage, you
know, a little step towards glory that others don't get. No, that's
not the way it's worded here. The promise is for you and for
your children, sure, but look here, it's for all those who
are far off. Who's he talking about? Gentiles. Gentiles who to this point had
never heard anything about the God of the Jews. for all whom
the Lord our God will call. But here's the important thing
for you to hear and for me to hear. We can talk about who the
children are or who the people are far off. Here's the thing
that should interest you. The promise is for you. Do you hear that? It's for you. It's easy to sit
in church, particularly young people grow up in church, and
you hear these things, and you never stop to think for a minute,
that word is to me. Has God ever spoken to you in
the gospel? Has there ever come a time when
the promise of God, you saw it not as some general thing out
there for anybody that wants it? You ever see that it was
for you? What do these people do? I don't know how many were actually
there, but 3,000 of them heard that word, realized the word
was for them, repented, gained the forgiveness of sins,
and were baptized to declare to all that through the death,
burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, their sins have been
put away. And in the sight of God, they
have no sin. You believe that? Do you believe
that when God looks at you, he sees no sin? Maybe he does. I don't know your
heart, but I know this. If grace has been given to you
to hear the promise and to believe it, God sees no sin in you because
you died with Christ. You're buried with him and you
rose again. And you know why you rose again
in him? You have no sin. Say, but I keep sinning. Yeah,
but you have no sin inside of God. And that's the only one
that really matters when it comes to eternal things. Well, I could
go on. I better quit. God give you grace,
though, to see your need of Christ, see the sufficiency of Christ,
and in faith lay hold of Him and then confess Him before this
world. All right, Garrett's going to come up and lead us in our
final song.