You don't want to hear error.
It's a very sad thing. But it is a fact that every man
who comes holding the Word of God in his hands isn't preaching
the truth. It's a sad fact. And I know that's
a shock to many people because they say, well, he's a preacher.
He's a good man. He means well. I can tell he's
very sincere. And you know, Most preachers
are nice men and cordial and that sort of thing, but you've
got to be very, very picky when it comes to what you listen to
spiritually. And I don't say listen with a
critical ear. That may be a little too harsh
a word because, I mean, any of us, all of us from time to time
can inadvertently say something that just isn't exactly right. That's because we're just in
the flesh. But you've got to be very selective
in who you listen to, and you've got to be absolutely certain, as much as
you can be, that the man you're listening to is endeavoring to
glorify God. Now listen, this is what it's
all about. Really, it isn't about you and
it isn't about me. It's not about this church. It's
certainly not about the denomination or anything like that. It's all
about who's getting the glory. It's about God. It's about exalting
the Lord Jesus. Him who is the Son of God. It's
about preaching the grace of God. Salvation by the Lord. That the Lord is the one. He
purposed salvation. He is the one who purchased a
people, and He's the one who empowers us to believe the gospel. So we've got to exalt the Lord.
And when you listen, and you listen in here, and maybe you
listen to television preachers, or radio preachers, or whatever
the case may be, you've got to listen and make certain that
these men that you're listening to, setting forth the word of
God without apology and without weakening it, without diluting
the message. We've got to be like, you know,
there are some folks in the book of Acts called the Bereans. And I'll tell you, they had a
wonderful preacher. Why, he is the man who is used
of God to write over half the New Testament. This is the Apostle
Paul. They're listening to this great
man preach. And what an honor it would have
been to have listened to the Apostle Paul preach. And yet,
we read that they search the Scriptures daily whenever they
listen to him preach to make sure that those things are so.
So you better, you gotta be very careful And the scripture says,
take heed what you hear. What you hear is what you're
listening to. Does it exalt God and put man
down? I'm not here to make you feel
better about yourself. I'm here to set forth God as
He is in order that we would worship. And if we would worship,
God's got to be presented as all, and we're presented as nothing. He must be lifted up, and we
must be put down. Or we could put it the way John
the Baptist said, he said, the Lord Jesus, he said, He must
increase. I must decrease. Decrease. Less of me, less of
you, more of Him. That's the goal. See? That's
the goal in every message. That's the goal in every service
that we have here. So take heed what you hear. And then here's something else
for you folks. Take heed. Our Lord Jesus said
not only what you hear, but how you hear. He said that too. Take heed how you hear. Don't adhere with indifference or with a lack of concern. Listen with this desire, Lord,
speak to me through the message of this man. Lord, I need to hear from you.
I need to hear from God, and I do, and you do as well. And
if I'm going to hear from God, I'll tell you this, if the Lord's
going to speak to me, first of all, He'll speak to me under
the sound of His Word. Right here, under the sound of
His Word. And that's the reason I tell
people, I don't know whether God will do anything for your
children or not, for your grandchildren or not. I don't know, but I do
know this. He won't do anything for them
if they're not underneath the sound of the Word of the Gospel.
They've got to hear the Word of God. They've got to hear.
Faith comes by hearing. It comes by hearing. Hearing
by the Word of God. They've got to listen to the
message of Christ Jesus. And so, take heed of how you
hear. Listen with interest, listen
with a desire, a desire that God would teach you. All that
the Lord would give us a teachable spirit, a teachable spirit. Let me tell you something. I
know we've got people in here, charter members, been charter
members of this church for years and years and years. There are
people in here who belong to the Lord Jesus, that is, by faith
you believe to Him, for a long time. But we're still learning. We're still learning and we're
still taking in instruction from the Spirit of God. And whenever
we come in here to meet, it should always be with this desire. Lord,
meet with us and teach me. Teach me. Instruct me. I've got to have that desire.
I want to learn. And we're always learning. Nobody in here is an expert on
the things of God. Nobody has ever mastered God. Nobody has absolute knowledge
of the Holy One. We grow. We mature. We gather more information. And
the way the Lord speaks to His people is as we come together
and we say, speak, Lord, thy servant heareth. Let's be like
Samuel. That's his attitude. Speak, Lord. Speak, Lord. I'm your servant. I'm your servant. You're the
master. I'm ready to hear. I'm ready
to hear what you have to say to me. So that's the instruction
I would give to you, to those of you who are listening, and
to those of us who preach the word. Well, there's some instruction
for us, of course. I had Ron read that passage of
scripture there out of 2 Timothy, the last couple of verses of
chapter three, and the first few verses of chapter four, where
Paul said to Timothy, preach the word. Preach the Word. Preach the Word of God who's
entered into this world. He's the living Word. He is the
incarnate Word. In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God. The Word was God. Preach the
Word. Preach the Word. Preach Christ. Boy, if there's
anything I'd like to tell every preacher who gets up behind the
pulpit is this. You must preach Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. And Him crucified. It's not just
preach Christ. We must preach Christ and Him
crucified because it's by His death. That's how you save sinners.
And if you'd honor God, if you'd glorify God, preach Christ crucified. That's what honors God. That's
what glorifies God. And if you would desire to see
people brought into the kingdom of God, preach Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. That's the message God uses.
He makes that word effectual. Effectual to the hearts of people.
He draws people into the kingdom of God. And that's the message
He uses to feed the sheep. There's no greater message for
the people of God than to preach Christ and Him crucified. That is sheep food. That's green
pasture. Oh, tell me about the Savior.
Tell me about His work of atonement. His work of redemption. His work
of reconciling us poor sinners to God. Tell us, tell me preacher
about the work of Christ in removing all my sin. In Him paying my
debt. I was head over heels in debt
to God and I didn't have any way to pay but Jesus Christ came
down here and He paid it in full. Tell me that story. that thrills
my soul. I've got a world to face tomorrow.
I've got trials in my life. I'm going out there to face the
devil and all the demons of hell that come after me and the world
that is against me. I need a message that will fill
my heart with joy and peace in the Lord. That's the message
of Christ and Him crucified. And that's our job. Preach the
Word, he says. Preach the Word of the Gospel.
What is the word of the gospel? It's a message of finished redemption. Finished redemption. You see,
when the Lord Jesus came into this world, he didn't endeavor
to do something. He didn't just set out to make
a way of salvation. He set out to save people. Now
that's what the scripture says. Thou shalt call His name Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sins. He's got a people. God gave them to Him before the
world began. He came to save these people.
How did He save these people? By His death that satisfied God's
justice. That's what we got to preach
to people. You got to tell people that God is just and justifier
only. through the doing and the dying
of the Lord Jesus. Preach the word. Preach the word. Be instant, be urgent. Be urgent. There's an urgency
that the minister of the gospel must have. I'm not giving a lecture. I'm just not merely giving you
a little information. Take it or leave it, I don't
care. There's some urgency here. There's some urgency here. You
died. Richard Baxter said, I preach
as a dying man to dying men, and I preach as though never
to preach again. Never to, what if this was my
last sermon? What if this was my last message?
I don't know. I don't know God's will for me.
I may drop dead after the message is over, even before I finish
the message. I don't know. Maybe I'll live
to preach again Wednesday night. I have no idea. I do know this. My responsibility right now and
always is to preach the Word, to preach the Gospel, to tell
people what Christ has done, not what He made possible for
you, but what He actually accomplished. You see, the gospel is not good
advice. The gospel is good news. It's
good news of a finished work by the Savior. He finished the
work that God gave Him to do, which was the salvation of His
people. And I know He did it because
God raised Him from the dead. and took him back to heaven and
exalted him. Sit here at my right hand till
I make all of your enemies your footstool. So I know he did the
work to God's satisfaction. The instant in season and out
of season. When they want to hear what you
got to say and when they don't want to hear what you got to
say. Let's keep on preaching the same message. Don't change
the message. Don't change the message. Because
God's Word doesn't change. I'm not here to please you. I
like you. I love you. I care about you. But I'm not here to please you.
If I seek to please man, I'm not the servant of God. I tell
you, I'm interested in one person's approval. That's the Lord's. I've got to say what he said.
I've got to set forth his word. Preach the word, be instant,
end season, out of season. That's what the scripture says. Well, with that in mind, and
this subject has been on my mind this last week, I got to thinking,
you know, we would do well to go to the messages of the scriptures
and see what men preached. And so I follow this, Simon Peter's
first message. Here's his first sermon after
our Lord's ascension. Now I'm certain that Simon Peter
and the other apostles, they preached, of course, after our
Lord commissioned them and he sent them out, they went forth
preaching, but after our Lord's crucifixion, his resurrection,
and then his ascension, This is the first message that's recorded.
This is Simon Peter's first sermon. Let me give you five things very
briefly. Number one, the occasion of the
sermon. This is in Acts chapter two.
It's when the day of Pentecost was fully come. Most of you are
familiar with the fact that in Israel, there were seven great
feasts. In Israel, there were seven great
feasts. There was a feast of Passover, That was followed immediately
and kind of closely tied together, the Feast of Passover tied with
the Feast of Unleavened Bread. After that was the Feast of First
Fruits, which was the barley harvest. After that was the Feast
of Pentecost. That was associated with a wheat
harvest. After that was the Feast of Trumpets,
and then the Feast of Atonement, The last one was the Feast of
Tabernacles. That was the last great feast
of the year, seven feasts. Now of those seven great feasts,
three of them kind of rose as the cream of the crop, so to
speak. The Passover, Pentecost, Feast
of Tabernacles, those three. In fact, they were so vital that
Jewish males, all the men, had to attend those three feasts
in Jerusalem. But they all pictured something.
They weren't just feasts, kind of willy-nilly with no rhyme
or reason behind them. There's a reason. Passover. I'll be talking about this a
little bit more Wednesday night as we go back to John chapter
13. But here's the feast of Passover.
Here's what it pictured, Christ crucified. That's the Passover
because we read in 1 Corinthians, Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed
for us. And then, as I said, closely
associated with that was the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But
then, about seven weeks later, 50 days to be specific, there was
a Feast of Pentecost. That feast was to give thanks
to God for the beginning of the wheat harvest. The beginning
of wheat harvest. It's very significant, you see,
that this message and the giving of the Spirit of God in the fullness
of his authority and power. And it isn't that the Spirit
of God didn't work in the Old Testament. We know he did because
there's no regeneration, there's no life apart from the work of
the Spirit of God. And so the Spirit of God was
at work in the Old Testament, but in a fuller way, in a greater
way, his power was released on the day of Pentecost. Pentecost,
I said, was the beginning of the wheat Harvest. Even so, remembering
that the Passover pictures Christ, our sacrifice, Christ the Lamb
of God's sacrifice for us. Fifty days after that, it was
what we call Pentecost, the Feast of Pentecost. It was the beginning
of the harvest, beginning of the wheat harvest, and people
rejoiced in that. And in Acts, here's what we have
in Acts chapter 2. the beginning of a great harvest.
You know what it's a harvest of? Souls. Oh yeah, souls. Thousands, thousands of people
came to Christ Jesus. This is the beginning of what
we call the church age or the gospel age. And here's how it
starts off. And I'll tell you, it was off
to a great start. Right here in Acts chapter 2,
because here's a great in-gathering. You see, that's what the Feast
of Pentecost, if you want to think of a word that has to do
with and kind of gives fuller meaning to the Feast of Pentecost,
think of in-gathering, an in-gathering of the wheat harvest. Even so, here's an end gathering
by the sovereign grace of God of souls into the kingdom of
God. That was the second great feast
that all the males had to attend. Third one, Feast of Tabernacles. Now that was dead last. That's
at the end of the harvest. That's the end of all the harvest
that's done for the year. What is that picture? That picture
is the end time when all of the saints of God have been gathered
into the fold of salvation. All of the elect of God, all
of those redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, they
come to a knowledge of the Son of God. The effectual work of
the Spirit of God is made evident in their hearts by the fact that
they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. A great, all the harvest
of souls of all of the ages is ended with the Feast of Tabernacles. So here we are in Acts chapter
two. Here's the occasion when the
day of Pentecost was fully come. 50 days, 50 days after Passover. You know, the Lord Jesus told
his disciples to wait for the coming of the Spirit of God.
I'm sure they were anxious to go forth and, you know, I want
to get out here and preach I want to do some good in the
kingdom of God, and they're just kind of chomping at the bit to
go, but the Lord says, wait! Wait. Don't go forth until you've
got power. There's no need to go forth if
you don't have any power. And so they were assembled together
in an upper room, and all of a sudden, Acts chapter two, verse
two, Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing
wind." That's the Spirit of God. You know, in the book of Ezekiel,
and you all are familiar with this passage of Scripture, I'm
sure, when the Lord sent Ezekiel to preach to the dry bones, and
there's the Spirit and the breath and the wind, all the same word,
all the same word. And here's the wind of God. Here's
the breath of God. And I'll tell you what we need.
Here's what we need tonight, all of us, the breath of God. We need the wind of God. Nothing
of any value is ever going to come of any of our labor apart
from the breath of God. Oh God, breathe. Breathe on us. It's like the Lord there in Ezekiel
37. Can these bones live? Lord God,
thou knowest. Thou knowest. Call to the four
winds. Breathe! Breathe on these who
are slain. Breathe on these who are dead.
And that's what sinners need, is the regenerating breath of
the Spirit of God. It isn't try to talk them into
a decision or coerce them into something. It's, oh God, you
do something for them. That's what we need. And I'll tell you on this day,
they're just waiting, waiting and praying, waiting and praying.
And boy, I tell you, all of a sudden, the place began to shake. The sound of a rushing mighty
wind. And it filled all the house.
Filled all the house. And I've got to go quickly. Now
we know the occasion of the sermon is at Pentecost. Here's the second
thing, the heroes of the sermon, people from everywhere. People
from everywhere. They came in because they'd been
to Passover, and now the men have got to be there for Pentecost. And so they've come from lots
of different countries. They're Jewish people. Some of
them are proselytes. They're Gentile proselytes. come
from foreign countries whose maybe the parents moved and of
course then they're born and they have children and they don't
even understand Greek or Hebrew anymore, nor Koine Greek, the
Greek of the day. It's all a foreign language to
them. They know other languages and
here they are out there and they don't understand what people
are saying. Well, I wish people would speak
the same language, you know. Well, the Spirit of God, here's
what He did. He gave the ability to these
preachers to preach the gospel of the grace of God in languages
that they'd never studied before. That's the gift of languages. That's the gift of tongues. In
fact, look at verse 11. Here's the amazing thing. The
Cretes and Arabians and all these other people that preceded them,
here's what they said. We do hear them speak in our
tongues, in our languages, the wonderful works of God. What
were these men preaching? The wonderful works of God. The
works of God in creation, the work of God in providence, and
the work of God in salvation. and we hear them preaching in
our language. Oh, how amazing. How wonderful. I can understand. I can understand. It's a blessed day when God gives
us understanding of spiritual things. Because up until then,
it's kind of like a foreign language to us. I tell you, without the
Spirit of God dealing with us, the preaching of the gospel,
the preaching of substitution, The preaching of satisfaction,
the preaching of blood redemption, the preaching of sovereign grace. It's like a foreign language
to us. Well, I don't understand what the preacher is talking
about. He seems kind of excited about it, but I just don't get
it. That's because you don't understand
the language. But if God gives you the ability
to listen, to hear, and perceive, The message. Then you'll hear,
we're talking about the wonderful works of God. That's what we're
talking about. The wonderful works of God. Now,
here's the third thing. Who's the preacher? Well, in
verse 14, Peter's standing up with the 11. The preacher is
Peter. And I wanted to mention this
because it shows the grace of God. This is a man who really
messed up bad. And let me tell you something,
it hadn't been too many weeks have gone by since he did that.
We're talking about seven weeks or so. Yeah. This is a man who
denied that he knew the Son of God. I don't know Him! Well,
I think you do. No, I'm telling you, I don't
know Him. Oh yeah, I've seen Him. I don't
know Him. Three times. Three times. I tell you, if that had been
us, we'd have got a disciplinary committee together and said,
you are out of here, don't you ever come back to our church
again. You deny the Lord. And most surely, we wouldn't
invite Him behind the pulpit to preach. We'd say, we're done
with you. You're out of here. We deal in
discipline with men like you. You're an embarrassment to the
church. And he was an embarrassment. I wouldn't make light of what
he did. I'll tell you, after our Lord's
resurrection, he sought him out. And I'll tell you, he wounded
his heart. And he said to him, along with some other disciples
who were there, but our Lord said to Simon Peter, after our
Lord's resurrection, he fixed him something to eat. Might it nice of the Lord to
fix a man some to eat when that man had cussed his name. That's
pretty merciful, isn't it? Would you do that for somebody
who cursed you? Denied you? Would you fix them
a supper? You ought to. You ought to. Our Lord Jesus fixed Peter some
to eat, said, come and dine. See, this is divine mercy right
here. And while they was eating, Peter
said, boy, it's the best fish I've ever had in my life. And
while they were eating, the master said, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest
thou me? And boy, that dart hit his heart
three times, three questions. I'll tell you something about the
Lord's rebukes. They're always full of love for
His people. He rebukes us because we need
it. He doesn't do it in a mean way, a hateful way. He loved this man. I'll tell
you, our Lord picked him. Our Lord chose him. This is a
man who, when our Savior said, who do men say that I the Son
of Man am? They said, well, some say you're
John the Baptist risen from the dead. Some say you're Jeremiah
because you're like a weeping prophet. Some say you're Elijah,
have unusual power. Or one of the other prophets.
He said, who do you say I am? What if he pointed right at Peter?
And Simon Peter said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God. In John chapter six, when multitudes
of disciples had got offended at the words of the Savior and
left Him, they walked off and left Him. He looked at the disciples,
he said, will you also go away? And Simon Peter said, to whom
shall we go? To whom are we gonna go? I don't
have anywhere to go. We believe in her, sure. You're
the son of the living God. And then he denied the Lord. But here our Lord, who arranges
all things. This is the sovereign savior.
He's gone back to heaven. You know who's ruling today?
Who's ruling the world? King Jesus is. He could have
had anybody preach the very first sermon after his ascension. And who did he choose? An old
sinner. A sinner saved by grace. A sinner
who knew firsthand the mercies of God. And Simon Peter, he stands with the eleven, he
lifts up his voice. he begins to preach. Now, the
sermon, and I go quickly. Let's drop down to verse 22.
Here's the sermon. He says, ye men of Israel, hear
these words. Jesus of Nazareth, they all knew
who he's talking about. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved
of God among you. among you, watch this, by miracles
and wonders and signs which God did by Him in the midst of you,
as you yourselves also know." He says these people, you know
the miracles that He did. You know why many of you were
witnesses of His miracles. I'm not, if I could kind of paraphrase
Peter, he said, you know exactly what I'm talking about, because
you are eyewitnesses of these miracles. And then he gets to
verse 23. His first word is him. You see, him, he's our message. Him, he's our hope. Him, he's
our savior. Him, He's our subject, Him being
delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God. I want you all to know, He says, everything that happened
to Jesus of Nazareth happened on purpose because God ordained
it. God ordained it. Now you took
Him, He says, you've taken Him by wicked hands, you've crucified
Him, you've killed Him. But everything you did is because
God ordained it. Christ is the Lamb slain before
the foundation of the world. The death of the Lord Jesus wasn't
because God had tried other ways to save people and men wouldn't
cooperate with all them, so He said, well, finally, I guess
I've just got to kill my son. Well, that's foolishness. Before
God ever made the world, this is the way He ordained sinners
would be saved. Men don't know if they've ever
known they've forgotten that God, before the world began,
ordained the end from the beginning. That's what the scripture says.
And he ordained the death of his son. Otherwise, how can God
be just and justify folks like us? You see, he announces the authority
of God, but he also announces the weakness of men. You killed
him. You killed him with wicked hands. He didn't
back off. I tell you what, this guy who
about seven and a half weeks or not even, about seven and
a half weeks before this, who denied the Lord three times,
boy, he's not backing up now. With your wicked hands, you killed
him. In fact, he'll say in chapter
three, you killed the just one. You killed the just one. Ah, but he says in verse 24,
whom God raised up. He didn't stay dead. He didn't
stay dead. God raised him up, having loosed
the pains of death. Loosed the pain, the travail.
That word pains is travail. The travail of his death. Isaiah
53, thou shalt see the travail of his soul and be satisfied. Because it wasn't possible that
he should be holden of it. For David speaketh concerning
him. Bill read to us back in the office
a while ago on Psalm 31. He made comment that this is
like our Lord Jesus was speaking. And David spoke of the Lord Jesus. Sometimes you can't tell where
David is speaking or the Lord Jesus is speaking, because David
was, in so many ways, a type of Christ. Well, for David's
speak concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face.
For he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore
did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad. Moreover also
my flesh shall rest in hope, because I will not leave my soul
in hell." That's the place of the dead. Our Lord Jesus Christ
didn't go to a fiery place of torment. All of His suffering
was on the cross. Everything God had, by way of His wrath, His justice,
everything that justice demanded that fell on Christ Jesus on
the cross so that when He died, His dying breath was, it is finished,
it's over. And when He died, He didn't go
to a liberal burning place called hell, He went to paradise. He
went to paradise. And somebody followed Him there
shortly after that. The thief who believed. He's
talking about the grave. You won't leave my soul in hell.
You won't leave me in the place of the dead. Neither wilt thou
suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Because there was
nothing corrupt in him. Let me tell you something. When
you die, your body is going to suffer corruption. You know why?
It's got corruption in it. Well sure, there's corruption
in you. But there wasn't any corruption in the Son of God.
Never was, never will be. It couldn't be. He's the Son
of God. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life. Thou
shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance. Watch, men in
Britain, let me speak freely unto you of the patriarch David,
whom they all respected and revered. He's dead and buried. His sepulcher's
with us unto this day. You can go visit his grave, that's
what he's saying. Therefore, being a prophet and
knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit
of his loins, according to his flesh, he would raise up Christ
to sit on his throne, because you see, the Lord Jesus is the
son of David, and he's also David's Lord. He's both, he's both. Now he's seeing this, verse 31,
before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was
not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This
Jesus, this not another Jesus, but this one. It's a lot of preachers
preaching another Jesus. This is the Jesus we better preach. This Jesus, this Jesus who was
triumphant, this Jesus whom God raised again, this Jesus whom
God exalted, this Jesus who redeemed and saved and reconciled His
people, this Jesus, not another, this Jesus hath God raised up,
wherever we're all witnesses. Here's these other apostles standing
behind Him, and they said, that's right, we're witnesses. Amen,
brother, they said. Verse 33, therefore, being by
the right hand of God exalted and having received of the Father
the promise of the Holy Ghost, he has shed forth this which
you now see and hear. In other words, the one who's
bringing all this to pass is the one you crucified, who's
in heaven at the right hand of the Father. He's brought this, he's shed
forth all this. Verse 34, for David's not ascended
under the heavens, his body's in the ground. But he saith himself,
the Lord said unto my Lord, Jehovah said unto my master, sit thou
on my right hand till I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore,
conclusion of the sermon. Let all the house of Israel know
assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have
crucified, both Lord and Christ." Here's some of those idiot preachers
on television saying, you need to make Jesus your Lord now.
Won't you make Jesus your Lord? I've got news for them. They're
2,000 years too late. God made him Lord. He's already
the Lord. He's your Lord whether you bowed
to him or not. He's every man's Lord, and one
day, every knee is going to bow and acknowledge He's the Lord
to the glory of God the Father. He's both Lord and Christ. Now, here's the result of the
sermon. Now, when they heard all this,
some happened. They're pricked in their hearts.
Peter didn't do it. He can't get to the heart. And
they didn't do anything to their own hearts. You know who pricked
their heart? The Spirit of God did. That's
what we need. We need the Spirit of God to
prick people's hearts. Preachers are twisting people's
arms and trying to get them to make a decision and coercing
them and putting all kinds of pressure on them. I tell you
what we need. We need the Spirit of God to prick people's hearts.
Now that will do it. That'll do it. What you do won't
get the job done. What the Spirit of God does,
that gets the job done. We need to stop begging people
and start begging God. Lord, do something with people.
It pricked in their heart and they said to Peter and the rest
of the apostles, men and brethren, what are we going to do? We have
killed the Lord of glory. We've crucified the Lord with
our wicked hands. What are we gonna do? We're in a mess. Oh my goodness,
I've killed the Lord of glory. And Peter said to them, repent. Repent. And then be baptized. Every one
of you, and you better be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ,
the name that you despised. You despised Him. You would not
be identified with Him. You will be identified with Him
now. And I tell you, you'll be identified
with Christ Jesus or you'll perish. That's right. You will. For the remission of sins. And
I like this. Be baptized every one of you
in the name of Jesus Christ because of the remission of sins. Going
into the baptistry is not the way for the remission of sins.
You think that doesn't put sin away? I tell you what puts sin
away, the blood of Christ Jesus. The blood of God's Son, Christ
Jesus, cleanseth us from all sin. Baptism of water can't do
that. He says, you'll receive the gift
of the Holy Ghost for the promises unto you and your children and
all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall
call. Who's gonna be affected by this? As many as the Lord our God shall
call. And he says, and with many other
words, did he testify and exhort, saying, save yourselves from
this untoward generation. Save, deliver yourselves from
this untoward. The original word here, from
the original word, we get our English word, scoliosis. Crooked spine. Some people have
scoliosis, have a crooked spine. Peter uses his word, he says,
deliver yourselves from this crooked, but religious generation. I'm gonna tell you something. I chanted in this world. I know
there's truth out here being preached. Other preachers preaching
the truth. But most preachers are preaching
error. You better deliver yourself from
this perverse, crooked, religious, crooked generation. They're perishing. They're perishing because they're
making salvation determined by the will of man and not the will
of God. And they're going to perish. That's Peter's first sermon. I've never preached a sermon
like that in my life. Have you, Alan? I know my first
one wasn't anywhere near that. Boy, that was a good one. And
I tell you what, it was so wonderful. It's in here forever. Because heaven and earth will
pass away, but that sermon won't. Because here's what it did, it
exalted Christ Jesus. It puts centers down in the dust.
That's what it did. Yeah.