A Repentant, Baptized, Church

[0:00] We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christchurch. This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication, redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christchurch.

[0:15] Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristchurchEastBay.org. Good morning, everybody. I'm Shantanez, Shantanez Jacob, and I'm going to read with you today from the Acts of the Apostle, chapter 1, verse 8, then verse 14, and 36-42 of chapter 2.

[0:45] Let us begin now. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all of Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

[1:04] Then Peter stood up with the eleven, raised his voice, and addressed the crowd. Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this.

[1:16] God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, Brothers, what shall we do?

[1:33] Peter replied, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

[1:45] The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call. With many other words he warned them, and he pleaded with them, save yourselves from this corrupt generation.

[2:03] Those who accept his message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teachings and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

[2:20] This is the word of our Lord. You may be seated. Well, it's been said already, but happy Pentecost Sunday, Christ Church.

[2:35] Today, we are joining together with the global church, every tribe, language, people, and nation, to celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit.

[2:46] When Jesus was resurrected, and he was enthroned at God's right hand, he poured out the Holy Spirit to put new life, to put the divine life of God in our souls, and to empower us across all of our differences to be the one family of the Father, and to be witnesses of Jesus.

[3:15] That's what Pentecost is about. And, you know, at Christmas, God proved that he's with us. At Easter, God proved that he's for us.

[3:27] And at Pentecost, God proves that he's in us. And how amazing would it be if we came up with some new and creative ways to celebrate this amazing gift of Pentecost, the way we celebrate Christmas, and the way we celebrate Easter.

[3:43] So I want to invite us to open our pew Bible today. You've heard this text read, but on page 888, you'll see that this is not a floating text without any context.

[3:58] And page 888, we've been slowly just exploring Acts chapter 1 and chapter 2, because we want to better know and we want to better experience the person and the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit.

[4:14] And we want to be able to answer this question, what does the Holy Spirit do to make a person a Christian? And having made a person a Christian, what does the Holy Spirit do when he fills that Christian with himself, when he fills a collective group of Christians, the church, with himself?

[4:32] And what I want to do today is talk about four things. I want to talk about how God calls you, God baptizes you, God saves you, and God adds you.

[4:44] Okay, God calls you, he baptizes you, he saves you, and he adds you. And I want to start with God, how God calls you. And I want to bring us to verse 38, where Peter replied, after having preached this first Christian sermon ever, on the day of Pentecost, he replied, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

[5:12] The promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call. And if you want to underline that last phrase, you can.

[5:24] For all whom the Lord our God will call. A Christian is someone who's been called by God. If you're a Christian, you know that God has called you by name into a living relationship with himself.

[5:40] And how does God call us? Well, he calls us in the same way that he called those people on the day of Pentecost. God poured out his Holy Spirit, and that Spirit is a Spirit of truth.

[5:51] And so the Spirit of truth spoke through Peter's exposition of the Bible. The Spirit spoke through Peter's exposition of the Gospel, and led them into the truth about Jesus.

[6:03] The truth of his life, the truth of his death, the truth of his resurrection. And the Spirit was driving the words of the prophets. He was driving the words of this apostle into the minds, and into the hearts, and into the wills of everyone who was listening.

[6:21] That's how God was calling them. And when God calls us, the first thing he does is he causes us to think. Right? In verse 36, it says that, Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this.

[6:35] God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. The Holy Spirit caused them to start thinking with their minds about Jesus.

[6:46] And the Holy Spirit caused them to engage with the objective historical facts of the person and the work of Jesus. And the logic of Peter's sermon, because of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, it began to work in their minds.

[7:05] And they said to themselves, Hmm, okay, if God raised Jesus to life, if God made this Jesus whom we crucified, both Lord and King, then we are in deep trouble.

[7:16] Why? Because we crucified him. And we live in a world that when God comes in the flesh, it crucifies him. And they realized that, Oh my goodness, this whole time I've been neglecting and ignoring Jesus.

[7:32] I've been thinking that I had no need of Jesus. I've been completely unconcerned about Jesus. And they realized that if I've not actually accepted Jesus, then I've been rejecting the one that God approves and that God raised and that God has exalted.

[7:51] And it says in verse 37 that when the people heard this, what happened? Well, God began, God's call began to work through their minds down into their hearts.

[8:03] And it says they were cut to the heart. They were convicted. They were disturbed. They were caused to feel this intense inner pain that we talked about last week.

[8:14] They were made uncomfortable and they began to grieve. Why? Because they realize, again, if I've been stiff-arming Jesus, that means I've actually been stiff-arming God. And you see, the Spirit of God is applying the Word of God to their minds and to their hearts.

[8:30] And they experience pain because they realize, we treated God's Messiah so unjustly. They realize that if we've hurt Jesus, we've actually hurt his Father.

[8:42] And they realize that, oh my goodness, our greatest need and our greatest sin is that we failed to see our need of Jesus. We thought so little of Jesus.

[8:56] And it caused them to cry out for help. And they say, brothers, what shall we do? And doing is about the will, right? So God's call to these people in the gospel has penetrated their minds and their thinking.

[9:10] And it's gone down into their hearts and their desiring. And now it's getting down into their wills and their doing. And they say, what shall we do? What should we stop doing? What should we start doing?

[9:22] They realize this truth of Hebrews 9.27 that says, people are destined to die once and after that to face judgment. And they realize that we need to be rescued from the judgment of God.

[9:34] We need to be reconciled in a relationship with God. They say, we absolutely do not want to be separated from God and to go on into an eternity of ever increasing misery.

[9:48] And if we don't do something different than what we're doing now, that's what's going to happen to us. But rather they say, we want to be with God. We want to enjoy the pleasures of God for all eternity.

[9:59] And so they cry out, brothers, what shall we do? So what's happening on the day of Pentecost is that this community of 120 Christian disciples, they're bearing witness to these 3,000 people about Jesus.

[10:14] A crowd of more than 3,000 people, but to these 3,000 in particular. And through the witness of this spirit-filled, spirit-empowered church, God is calling these 3,000 people out of condemnation and into a reconciled relationship with himself.

[10:32] So let's pause here for some brief application. Some of us are here and we're exploring Christianity. And what I want you to hear is that God is calling these 3,000 people to come home to him.

[10:48] Right? Just like that prodigal son in Luke chapter 15. This young man who turned his back on the father. He went off to a far country and he plunged himself into a life of self-centeredness where he just did everything that he wanted to do.

[11:06] And one day he got down to the very bottom of his misery and he came to his senses and he remembered his father. He remembered, oh my goodness, my father is rich and my father is generous and if I just turn back to my father, everything may be okay.

[11:22] And so he turns and he realizes as he's walking up the road to go home that this whole time the father's been looking for him, the father's been calling him and the father's now running to him to embrace him and bring him home.

[11:38] And if you are hearing the external call of the gospel in your mind and if you are sensing the internal call of the father in your heart, then your next move, your next step is to answer that call with your will to do something different and that is to turn home to your father and to his embrace.

[12:05] And to apply this for you, if you identify yourself as a Christian, I want you to know that this call of God is a powerful call. That when he calls you, he's exercising and manifesting the same power that he exhibited in the creation of the universe and in the resurrection of Jesus.

[12:25] And here's how the New Testament describes this powerful calling of God. It says, Peter, who's giving this sermon, says in his first epistle, he says, God called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

[12:40] The God of all grace called you to his eternal glory in Christ. The apostle Paul says to the Thessalonians, he says, God calls you into his kingdom and glory.

[12:53] He called you through our gospel that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so the question for you is, has that powerful call happened to you?

[13:05] Have you been called out of darkness and into his wonderful light? Has God called you by his grace into his eternal kingdom to share with you the glory and the honor and the majesty and the beauty of Jesus?

[13:20] Because that's what a Christian is. A Christian is a person who knows that they've experienced this powerful call of God. But it's more than that. God not only calls you but God baptizes you.

[13:35] God baptizes you. If we can go back to verse 38, it says, Peter replied, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

[13:50] See, Peter's describing what is involved in being joined to this community of Jesus that's had the life and the power of God poured into it by the Holy Spirit.

[14:02] And he's telling us what's involved in this tremendous change that takes place within us and how this inward change begins to show itself outwardly in our lives.

[14:14] And Peter's saying that this Jesus who God raised from the dead, right, this Jesus who God exalted to his throne, this Jesus who God now calls Lord and Messiah, he's there and he's actually making both promises and demands.

[14:30] And what are his promises? Well, he promises forgiveness and the freedom that comes with forgiveness and he promises the Holy Spirit and the power that comes with the Spirit.

[14:43] To be forgiven is our greatest need and it's the thing that we cannot do for ourselves. Right, all the stuff that you've done and that you said and that you've thought of which you're totally ashamed and would want no one to know about.

[15:01] All the things that you've failed to do and failed to say and failed to think of which you are guilty, it's possible to be released from all of that. And that's the great message of the Christian gospel that Jesus bore the condemnation that we deserve so that we could receive the forgiveness that we do not deserve.

[15:22] And he came to liberate us from our shame and from our guilt and from the penalty of our sins. And again, this is how Peter puts it in his first letter. He says in 1 Peter 1, you were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

[15:39] He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sins and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

[15:50] the first promise that Jesus makes from his throne in heaven is that you can be forgiven of your sin. The second promise that he makes is that you can have the Holy Spirit living within you.

[16:06] That the Holy Spirit can come into your heart and when he gets into your heart he regenerates you. He gives you, he brings about a new birth.

[16:16] He plants the life of God in your soul and he makes you a new creature and he causes the presence of God and the power of God to permanently reside within you.

[16:31] And so the question for you is do you have this promised freedom of forgiveness and this promised power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus has promised to us?

[16:43] But you see, Jesus doesn't just make promises. The resurrected Lord from his heavenly throne he also makes demands. And what are his demands? Well, it says in verse 38 Peter replies speaking for Jesus he says repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ.

[17:02] And we talked about this word last week repentance metanoia metanoeo means to change your mind entirely. To have a radical about turn in your attitude.

[17:13] gratitude. To repent is to turn your allegiance away from yourself and away from your sin and away from all of your God substitutes.

[17:27] And repentance is always combined with faith and with trust. It's turning away and turning toward and faith is implicit here. There's no possibility of turning from sin negatively unless we turn to Jesus positively.

[17:42] and this double turn from sin to Jesus from self to the living God that's what we call conversion. And it's such a radical turning away from ourselves and a turning toward God that it bears fruit in changed behavior.

[18:01] So that people who previously repudiated God's Messiah are now brought to a place where they publicly affirm their dependence on Jesus by undergoing baptism in his name.

[18:16] Be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Peter says. The New Testament knows of no unbaptized believers.

[18:28] Baptism is the means and the medium by which the promises of Jesus and the demands of Jesus are expressed in our lives. Baptism is how we publicly demonstrate our repentance and our faith.

[18:44] And baptism is this outward visible public act symbolizing the washing away and the forgiveness of sin the pouring out of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit are being united to the death and the resurrection of Jesus.

[19:00] We say when we baptize you you've been buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him to walk in newness of life. Baptism is humbly submitting to a name and to an authority that's symbolized by that name into which you are being baptized.

[19:24] It's a change of your identity and a change of your allegiance. It's saying to the world and to yourself I'm under new management. I have a new Lord.

[19:36] I'm no longer identified primarily with my own name. I'm no longer Jonathan as it were. I'm no longer identified primarily with my agenda and my will for my life.

[19:48] Rather he's my new identity and his agenda is my agenda. This is where some churches go amen just a little amen. Just for some application if you're exploring Christianity have you considered that the freedom and the power that your heart wants the freedom and the power that you're spending your time and your energy and money trying to get for yourself through your work and your career through your success and your financial security through friendship and romance through your family through your kids through new adventures and travel and experiences that none of these are going to be enough for you in this life and they're certainly not going to be enough for you in the life to come.

[20:40] There's a freedom and there's a power that your heart desires that only Jesus can give to you. The freedom of divine forgiveness the freedom of living in a reconciled relationship with the living God.

[20:55] the power of divine indwelling the power of having God the Holy Spirit permanently residing within you your heart will forever remain restless and will keep restlessly searching for freedom and for power that this world simply promises to you but will not give you.

[21:17] And Peter says that this freedom and this power it's yours for the taking. It's a free gift that all you have to do he says is just change your mind. Stop putting your faith in yourself start putting your faith in Jesus and start saying you know what you're my Lord and you're my King that's your next move.

[21:39] But secondly if you're a Christian to apply this to you do you understand what it means to be baptized? Do you understand what it means to be a baptized Christian? And here are some tests.

[21:52] Are you going to him daily the one in whose name you've been baptized are you going to him daily and saying Jesus would you please apply to me the freedom of the forgiveness that you offer?

[22:05] I'm not living in freedom. Were you going to him on a daily basis and saying Jesus please refill me with the power of the Holy Spirit? I want to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

[22:17] Are you going to the throne of grace with confidence so that you may receive mercy and find grace to help you in your time of need? Is your prayer life evidence that you have received these heavenly promises and that your baptism is expressing itself in your life?

[22:37] And we need to remember that for these 3,000 converts in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost and for many of our brothers and sisters around the world in the global church today being baptized meant risking everything.

[22:53] It meant being separated from your nearest and dearest relatives. It meant being renounced by your family. It meant being ostracized by society. It meant that people began to despise you and no longer want to do business with you or have anything to do with you.

[23:09] Sometimes it meant going to prison. Sometimes it meant dying for your faith to be baptized was a costly thing. And I wonder if sometimes we forget our baptisms.

[23:24] I wonder if we love the one in whose name we've been baptized so much that we'd be willing to experience discomfort and inconvenience for his sake.

[23:37] I wonder if we take our relationship with Jesus so seriously like our mothers and fathers in the faith that we're willing to suffer for him and even to die for him.

[23:51] That's what baptism represents. Dying with Christ. Being raised with Christ. Repent and be baptized every single one of you Peter says.

[24:04] But God not only calls you and not only baptizes you but God saves you. And look at verse 40. It says with many other words he warned them and he pleaded with them save yourselves from this corrupt generation.

[24:16] Jesus trained Peter for three years. He equipped Peter. He authorized Peter as his apostle to say things like this. Right?

[24:27] To speak words that not everybody necessarily wanted to hear. And what's Peter pleading with them to do? He says save yourselves from this corrupt generation. Save yourselves from this crooked and twisted generation.

[24:42] Some translations say be saved from this generation. And that's an equally legitimate translation. Be saved from this generation emphasizes that salvation is a rescue operation initiated and accomplished by God and God alone.

[24:59] We do not save ourselves. God is the one who saves us. And if you look in your Bible down at verse 47 it says the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. Saved by who?

[25:10] Saved by God. The difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is that a Christian is among the saved and a non-Christian is among the not saved.

[25:23] And you can imagine a house on fire with a bunch of people inside of it and a ladder is put up to the window and the firemen come and there's a certain number of people that are rescued that are saved.

[25:35] Out of that house and then there are others who are not. Or you can imagine a shipwreck where some people are saved to shore and then others are not. Or you can imagine a courthouse where some people are accused and they're going to go home acquitted and set free but other people are not going to go home.

[25:54] They're going to be condemned. And that's what Peter means when he says be saved from this generation. A Christian is a person who has been saved and is being saved and will go on to be saved.

[26:09] And that's what the Apostle Paul means when he talks about you've been justified and you've been sanctified and you've been glorified. A Christian has been saved and put into a totally new position and standing where you already stand justified and righteous before God.

[26:25] God. And a Christian is also being saved from the remnants of sin and evil that remain in our mortal body. We are slowly, gradually being prepared for the glory into which we are going.

[26:41] And a Christian will one day be saved completely, delivered from the pollution of sin and the power of death to enjoy and to glorify God and a resurrected body in his new creation.

[26:54] That's what it means for God to sovereignly save you from this corrupt generation. So, is our translation correct or incorrect? Well, yes. It's right.

[27:07] Be saved from this corrupt generation and save yourselves from this corrupt generation. And when Peter says that, he's just quoting his Bible. He's quoting the Torah. Deuteronomy 32.5 talks about living in a corrupt and warped and crooked generation.

[27:26] And that refers to the outlook of humanity without reference to God. That's what a corrupt generation is. It's how human beings try to organize themselves and their world apart from and separate from God.

[27:42] And Peter says there's something corrupt and there's something twisted about that approach to life. It's heading for disaster. It's driving over a cliff.

[27:55] And Peter urges his listeners to actively separate themselves and to separate and to set themselves apart from this corrupt generation. You have an active and an urgent responsibility, Peter says, to leave this human centered and God resisting generation with all of its corrupt views of history and its corrupt views of the self and its corrupt views of God and its corrupt views of Jesus.

[28:22] And you need to move into a new reality. You need to move into a new humanity. You need to move into a new creation that has a new view of everything.

[28:32] God, life, eternity, human meaning and purpose, all of it. In Acts chapter 26, verse 18, it says that a Christian is somebody who's been turned from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.

[28:50] The apostle Paul says in Colossians 1.13, for God has rescued us. He saved us from the dominion of darkness and he's brought us into the kingdom of the son that he loves. And it's the question for us, is it clear that you've been saved like that?

[29:04] Paul says to the Philippians, he says, be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.

[29:14] These apostles love quoting Deuteronomy for some reason. Be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine like stars in the night sky.

[29:28] Is your life and is your conduct a clear demonstration? Confirmation that you've been saved, you are being saved, and you are going to be saved.

[29:43] God calls you, God baptizes you, God saves you, and a final word, that God adds you. God adds you. Verse 41, we'll come back to this next week.

[29:56] But it says, those who accepted Peter's message were baptized and about 3,000 were added to their number that day, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

[30:10] So added to this number of 120 disciples on the day of Pentecost are these 3,000 newly baptized Christians, and that means that the Holy Spirit multiplied the church 26x in one day.

[30:24] I'm not a math guy. I think that's good. 26x, is that good? It's good. So, the New Testament knows no unchurched believers. They're all immediately churched.

[30:38] Your baptism adds you to the church, and your baptism adds you to the distinctive way of life and devotion in the church. And to be a Christian means that you've become a living member of a living church of the living Lord.

[30:53] And at first, you did not belong, but now you do belong. And God moved these 3,000 people from one position to another. They were over here, and now they're over here.

[31:06] And look at what happens to them. God causes them to undergo a complete change. Their thinking, their outlooks, their actions are totally revolutionized.

[31:17] They have this new life in Christ, and it immediately begins to express itself. And we can see this new life of God that's been planted in their souls being expressed in their, the quality of their life together.

[31:32] They gave practical demonstration of their faith by, it says, devoting themselves. Or other translations say continuing steadfastly.

[31:44] And again, we'll explore this in depth next Sunday, but what does it mean as we close? It means that they continued together. These people that have been called, that have been baptized, that have been saved, it means they continued together in constant devotion.

[32:00] You could not keep them away from each other. Their association with other Christians was the biggest thing in their life.

[32:11] It was the very center of their lives. And they said, we will not let any lesser things get in the way of this main thing. And what are the lesser things? Well, use your imagination.

[32:23] What keeps us away on a Sunday? What keeps us away midweek? A lot of lesser things that do not matter. And they said, we are not going to let that happen to us.

[32:34] They said, we are going to come together, and we'll see this next week. They came together regularly and willingly, not just one day a week. It says they came together day by day. They so wanted to be with each other that they, when they finished their day's work, they'd go to one another's houses, and they would study the Bible, and they would pray.

[32:53] Why? Because they realized that even though they were from different biological families, they were now part of the same spiritual family. They shared the same spiritual life.

[33:04] They were born of the same spirit. They were raised with the same Christ. They had the same life of God the Father in their souls. And they had to express it.

[33:16] They were rejoicing in the same Savior, delighting to put their trust in the apostles' teaching about Jesus. Delighting to come to fellowship in Christ Jesus.

[33:31] Delighting to come and to break that bread in communion with Christ Jesus. They were delighting to pray prayers directly to Jesus, directly to the Holy Spirit, directly to the Father.

[33:45] They fixed their eyes on the same thing. Their eyes were fixed together on eternity. They were preparing themselves for the same thing. They were preparing for the life of the world to come, to be ready to live in glory everlasting.

[34:01] That's why they came together every day and every Sunday. So the question as we come to this table, has God called you?

[34:14] And has God baptized you? And has God saved you? And has God added you to his devoted and steadfast people?

[34:26] And is that obvious? Is it obvious that you belong to this God who calls, baptizes, saves, and adds? And that you are a person of devotion and steadfast love?

[34:44] May it be so. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.