[0:00] Man, that was fun. Thank you, thank you. Parents, thanks for bringing your kids again today. That was a lot of fun. We had a great week at VBS, and the energy in this room was different all week.
[0:11] And Charles leaned over to me after the song and said, you know, if we did this every Sunday, then they'd get all their energy out, and then we could have the sermon and everybody would just stay in their seats. So maybe we'll have the adult choir do it sometime. I don't know.
[0:24] Maybe the men's choir next week, guys. Okay. No, just kidding. Okay. Well, open up your Bibles to Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2. And we are going to be talking about the day of Pentecost.
[0:38] And I want to ask a question, and I want you to know that this is a genuine question. I'm open to responses, to interaction here. Does anybody in this room have a particular birthday party from your childhood that you look back on as, man, that was the best birthday party? Anybody? Anybody have one?
[0:55] Okay. Everyone's like, yeah, but I'm not saying it. All right. I remember my 11th birthday party. It was a lot of fun. I played baseball. After the game was over, me and a bunch of my teammates, and then, you know, my other friends who weren't on my baseball team, my parents took us out to the Springfield, Tennessee Movie Theater, which at the time was a dollar theater.
[1:14] So, you know, that was great for my parents. Took us out to the movie theater. We watched a movie. And then afterwards, we went and stayed in a cabin that some family friends had. So it was my brothers and my friends and my dad.
[1:26] It was like just the best birthday. Actually, I remember distinctly one of my friends who was there, Carter Lawless is his name, loved Carter to death. Still, actually, he's one of my best friends.
[1:37] I was just recently in his wedding. Carter had never had Mountain Dew. Was not allowed to have Mountain Dew. Now, I don't know if you know this. Mountain Dew has a really high caffeine content, okay?
[1:49] And so my dad, you know, he's a cool dad. It's a birthday party. Everybody, you know, drink whatever soda you want. Eat whatever junk food you want. You know, it's a birthday party. So Carter, I'm pretty sure, had an entire 24-pack, not a 12-pack, 24-pack of Mountain Dews himself that night.
[2:04] It was like unleashed the beast, okay? This man, he was a kid. This kid did not sleep. I'm pretty sure he didn't sleep for two days. He was amped. It was hilarious.
[2:14] It was hilarious. And that has nothing to do with the service other than, that was a great birthday party. That was a lot of fun for me. We had fun. We laughed. We had a good time. Today is a birthday party of sorts because it's the day of Pentecost.
[2:26] It's Pentecost Sunday. It's the day we would celebrate Pentecost. Pentecost means 50th. It's the 50th day after the Passover lamb was sacrificed. And on the day of Pentecost, in Acts chapter 2, what we see is the birth of God's church.
[2:42] Jesus came to establish his church. He did so with 12 disciples. And then he did establish it, finally, by his death and his resurrection. But then on the day of Pentecost, what we have is the inauguration of that church.
[2:54] It's the birth of the church. In fact, we're here today worshiping together the Lord Jesus Christ because God moved mightily on the day of Pentecost 2,000 years ago.
[3:07] It's a birthday. This is a birthday party. It's a lot of fun when you think about church as if it's a birthday party, right? It's a good time. So Pentecost, like I said, it means 50th.
[3:19] Pentecost was celebrated 50 days after the Passover. And it was one of the three feasts, festivals, that people made their way into Jerusalem to celebrate.
[3:29] In fact, I read this this week, kind of blew my mind. Generally, more people celebrated Pentecost in Jerusalem than Passover in Jerusalem.
[3:40] And the reason was because it was 50 days later, which means the weather got a little bit better before they all traveled in. So weather prohibited people from coming in for Passover at times, but not Pentecost.
[3:50] Pentecost was a day, a celebration, a harvest celebration. And so the people would come together to celebrate. And so on this day of Pentecost, there were plenty of people to hear and see what God was going to do as he started his church.
[4:10] And there's this other aspect of Pentecost that, truthfully, I didn't know until I was studying this week, but it's really interesting. In Judaism, at some point in time, before the time of Jesus, they began to see Pentecost as the day that Moses received the law from the Lord on Mount Sinai.
[4:30] So you remember the Exodus event, right? Moses was called, went to Egypt, deliver my people. You know, God says, let my people go. You know, Charlton Heston, let my people go.
[4:42] And then he goes from there with the people into the wilderness, and they meet up at the base of this mountain, Mount Sinai. And Moses went up on the mountain and met with God, and God gave him the law, right?
[4:55] And so that was believed to be 50 days after the first Passover event. And so there's a really neat connection here when you think about that, that 50 days after the first Passover, the first big act of deliverance of God, he delivered his people from captivity.
[5:12] 50 days later, he established his covenant with them. And then now, the second massive act of deliverance in human history, not just for the people of one nation, but for the entire world, Jesus dying on the cross and raising again three days later, 50 days after that, God establishes his new covenant church to go into all the world and to be his witnesses.
[5:40] That's a pretty neat connection. And then on top of that, as I was studying this week, and I knew we were going to be here in Pentecost, I did not know how it would connect to VBS. But there's a really cool connection here too.
[5:53] So as I was studying this week, I was just so overjoyed with all of these things. But the thing is that we have to understand is that God acted in a powerful way here to start his church, to begin his church, and since then has in power kept his church going.
[6:10] This is the day that the Holy Spirit made his appearance. And so there's three things about the day of Pentecost that I want us to see today. The first is the presence of the Spirit. The second is the power of the Spirit.
[6:21] And then the third is the persuasion of the Spirit. I'm going to pray for us, and we will go through this text. I'm not going to, just so you know, I read all of Acts chapter 2. I can't preach the entire chapter.
[6:32] That would take like two weeks or something. So I'll preach the passage, but we're not going to cover every single, we won't be here all day, okay? You'll have lunch. That's what I'm getting at. All right, let me pray together.
[6:43] Let's pray together. Oh God, thank you again for the opportunity to gather in your name to worship you. Lord Jesus, we pray that you would be magnified in this place, that you would be glorified among us.
[6:54] We pray, oh God, that we would have deeper hearts of understanding your truth as we leave here. Transform us by your word. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray these things. Amen.
[7:06] So we have the presence of the Spirit. And the first thing that I want you to notice is that the presence of God's Holy Spirit in the church was very clearly known.
[7:17] It was not a secret, hidden event by any stretch of the imagination. This wasn't something that took place in a private room that then these fanatics came out of and began shouting in the streets of some mystical, magical experience that they had had.
[7:31] This was a very public event. Something that God made very public intentionally to demonstrate the fact that he was the one at work. There's three different accompanying signs with the Spirit's presence.
[7:44] There's an audible presence. There's a visible sign and the individual sign as well. And so look at the first four verses with me, and we'll look at each of these. It says, So from the very moment that the Spirit of God made his appearance, he made his presence known.
[8:21] Why? Because this is the inauguration of God's church. This is the moment that God, by the work of Christ, began his church that we're now a part of. The Spirit was the fulfillment of the prophecies in Jeremiah and Isaiah.
[8:36] And one thing that you'll notice, too, with these visible and audible and even individual signs, is throughout Scripture, God had a history of when he called people to do great things or he called for great things to take place or does great things, he always validates the call or the action with signs or wonders or miracles.
[8:58] In fact, in Peter's sermon, he explains that Jesus himself was validated, attested to by God, by the very nature of his miracle signs and wonders.
[9:08] So consider, you know, just for a second, in the Old Testament you have Abraham. He was called by God to be the father of a nation. But he was old. He was old.
[9:20] And God, miraculously, gave him a sign. Told him that he would have a son and then gave him a son. It wasn't just that he was old, his wife was old. And still, God provided, miraculously, a son to continue this promised line through Abraham.
[9:36] You have Moses. Moses, the call to Moses was pretty impressive, right? The burning bush. I always loved the movie The Prince of Egypt. I thought it depicted that scene in a really neat way.
[9:48] You know, you have this bush that's burning but it's not consumed. God validated the fact that he was calling Moses by showing him something powerful, showing him something miraculous, showing him something that didn't make sense.
[10:02] Then, of course, he had the ten plagues. He had the signs in the wilderness like water coming out of a rock and parting the Red Sea and quail from heaven, manna from heaven.
[10:12] All of these different accompanying signs, not to mention the Shekinah glory of God and the pillar of fire at night and cloud by day. These accompanying signs that proved God had called Moses for the special act of deliverance.
[10:25] Then you have Joshua. By the way, just a little, here's a little plug. Our next book that we're going to be studying through is the book of Joshua. I'm really excited about that. It'll be a lot of fun. But when God called Joshua, you'll remember Joshua had a big task.
[10:38] He was supposed to be the leader of these people after Moses. Moses, who had seen all of these things happen and had given the law from God and was such a humble leader, right?
[10:51] Now Joshua's called to take them into the promised land. He's called to conquest this land. So God speaks to him and tells him, be strong and courageous. And then God tells him, I'll be with you.
[11:03] You'll have victory. And then God showed everyone in the nation, all of the people, that Joshua was his chosen person by parting the Jordan River so they could walk across on dry land.
[11:14] You remember that? Then you have David. David was called, anointed to be the king of Israel while King Saul was still reigning in Israel. And then God validated this anointing with David killing Goliath and having military success when he was just a young man.
[11:29] And then here we have in the church this clear and undeniable presence of the Spirit of God. These miraculous actions, these miraculous visible signs. In fact, throughout the book of Acts, when the gospel goes to a new place, whether it's here in Jerusalem in the day of Pentecost or Samaria or Judea or anywhere, when the gospel goes to a new place, it's always accompanied with signs and wonders of some sort.
[11:56] God validates his message with signs and wonders. But the day of Pentecost is not a repeatable event. This is a one-time event.
[12:06] The church has begun. Believers are filled with the Holy Spirit when they believe in Jesus Christ for the salvation and forgiveness of their sins. God inaugurated his church.
[12:18] He displayed signs and wonders. And he made it very, very clear for all who could see and all who can hear that it was him at work. And now we get to reap what they witnessed, what they experienced in power.
[12:33] But the Spirit of God wasn't given so that these thousands of people who heard this could be amazed for 20 minutes at some event. Right? It wasn't just that these really neat things happened, that this tornado sound came from heaven.
[12:47] It wasn't, you know, Luke's not describing that the weather was windy that day. He said it sounded like a rushing wind came from heaven. And then he didn't say that it was fire on top of their heads.
[12:58] They didn't all look like me after the tongues of fire rested on them. It was like fire, similar even to Moses in the burning bush, where it appeared like fire, but it wasn't consuming.
[13:10] So you have these massive things, but it wasn't just so people would be really impressed for a brief moment. The Spirit of God came in and dwelled these believers so that they could proclaim the works of God, so that they could proclaim the gospel message.
[13:28] So it wasn't so much that they proclaimed in these impressive and wild ways. It was what they proclaimed that matters. Look at verses 5 through 11 with me.
[13:40] It says, Now there were Jews staying in Jerusalem, devout people from every nation under heaven. When this sound occurred, a crowd came together and was confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
[13:51] They were astounded and amazed, saying, Look, aren't all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that each of us can hear them in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus in Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and all the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts.
[14:11] That converts, just so you know, is not Christian converts. These would be proselytes, Gentiles who had accepted Judaism. Cretans and Arabs, we hear them declaring the magnificent acts of God in our own tongues.
[14:26] So did you catch that? But the people of God who were filled with the Holy Spirit, the 120 who were gathered together, now empowered by the Holy Spirit, proclaimed the magnificent acts of God so that everyone who was present could hear and understand.
[14:47] It wasn't so just amazing that they could speak in these different languages, although the people were stunned by the fact that Galileans were the ones doing it because Galileans were seen, how do I put this, they were seen basically like how Tennesseans are seen by people from, you know, California or something.
[15:06] You know, kind of looked down on, you know what I mean? They, you know, the hicks from Galilee, you know what I mean? That's how they, that's how they were thought of. And so they were stunned. How are all these Galileans speaking?
[15:17] Speaking, and it doesn't just say in my language, it's actually in my native dialect. So how are they speaking my language, my dialect perfectly, where I can understand everything that they're saying?
[15:29] But it wasn't that they were doing that, it was what they were proclaiming. And this is why I was so amazed, as I was considering this, I was looking through this passage this week, and I read this verse, and I've read this a hundred times, a thousand times, I don't even know.
[15:41] But when I saw that, and you know, I haven't ever read it coming off of VBS, the theme for the week was magnified. This word, it's the same word, magnificent acts of God. They were, listen to this, made new by the Holy Spirit, and as new creations, as new creatures, they were made to magnify God.
[16:00] That was the VBS theme, made to magnify God. That's, the reality is, we're all made to magnify God. The kids learned that this week. We are made to magnify God. But the only way that we will fulfill the call to magnify God in all the earth, is if we're made new by the Holy Spirit.
[16:18] We can't magnify God on our own. God makes us new by the Holy Spirit. So it's important to understand, the Spirit of God will not always empower people to perform specific, you know, visible, audible, or even linguistic signs.
[16:39] That's not always going to be an accompanying sign of salvation. Okay, there's people who teach that, that if you haven't, you know, spoken in tongues or whatever, then you're not truly saved. Here's the thing, that's not a proper way to read this text.
[16:52] What you will see, what the discernible sign will always be, is that when a person professes faith in Jesus Christ, when the Spirit of God makes up, takes up residence inside of a person, that individual will consistently proclaim the works of God, proclaim salvation, tell people, tell the world about the work of God in salvation in their own heart, and how they can also join in, right?
[17:20] How they can also be saved. So have you ever wondered, I mean, this is a big question, have you ever wondered if you're truly saved? You ever wrestled with that? How do I know if I'm saved?
[17:32] In youth ministry, that's a big question. You know, you have high schoolers who are going through some really hard things, and then they also begin to question, how do I know for sure that I'm saved? Now, we don't have the day of Pentecost every single day, and if you believe in Jesus, your skin doesn't turn to purple, so that you have this really easy, discernible sign.
[17:49] How do we know that we're saved? I'd suggest that if we examine our lives with the mirror of Scripture, if we read Scripture, and as we're studying God's Word, look at our lives, if we're not living our lives, whether it be at sports, home, work, you know what I mean, anywhere, wherever we are, wherever we find ourselves, if we're not living to magnify God, to glorify God, then I would seriously pray and ask God to one, forgive me, and then two, to show me how I can do that, and then three, whether or not the Holy Spirit has taken up residence, if I'm truly saved.
[18:26] I'm not saying that 100% of the time we'll be perfect. I'm not saying that we'll always live perfectly once we're saved. That's not what I'm teaching. What I'm saying is, our hearts, as people who have been made new by God, as the Spirit has indwelled, should be focused on God before other things.
[18:42] Right? On proclaiming Him before we do other things. There has to be a sincerity to our faith, a sincerity to share this gospel message. So the Bible says that when we wonder about, or we say, we should look at the fruit that we produce.
[18:57] So examine your life. Examine the work of the Spirit in your life. Are you producing fruit, righteous fruit, fruit that leads to righteousness, or are you producing the fruit of your own works? Whether it be at home, or at work, or at school, are you producing the fruit of your own works?
[19:11] That's what we have to consider here. But there's two other aspects of the day of Pentecost that we need to look at. You have the power of the Spirit. The power of the Spirit.
[19:23] The Spirit of God is present, but He's also filled these believers. And I want us to see just a few things about the way that God empowered the apostles, because I think that it should give us all hope.
[19:34] I'm not saying that we'll be able to do the apostolic signs and wonders or anything like that, but I think there's things that God called, or prepared, or used them for here, as soon as the Holy Spirit filled them, that can be and should be true for all believers.
[19:48] Okay? The first is that with the Spirit's empowering, there's a God-given boldness. A God-given boldness. These men and women were recently hiding for fear of the Jews, that they would suffer the same fate as Jesus, but then they met the resurrected Lord.
[20:06] And then they were empowered by the Holy Spirit. And now, they're standing in front of thousands of people, boldly proclaiming the most magnificent act of God, which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[20:19] How did that happen? Think about Peter, for example. Peter, 50 days ago, denied Jesus, publicly. He was a shame-filled, sobbing, you know, lunatic after that.
[20:33] He was broken over the fact that he had rejected Christ publicly. He denied Jesus. And then here, in this passage, he was the one who stood up and boldly proclaimed the gospel message to everybody who was there.
[20:47] It's an amazing thing. Listen, I'll say this. We need to be more bold today. We need to be more bold in our faith. We need to be willing to tell people that sin is sin, and that life is available in Christ.
[21:03] We need to be willing to share the gospel. We need to be more bold in our faith. Don't be ashamed to stand firm in the truth and to faithfully share God's good news. The other part here is the God-given witness.
[21:19] The Spirit of God gave the apostles the words to say. Think about this. Peter didn't prepare a sermon. He was moved by the Spirit and stood up and preached. In Luke, Jesus told his disciples that they shouldn't prepare when they're called to stand trial, that the Holy Spirit will give them what to say.
[21:35] It's Luke 12, 12. I'll put it up here. Now, that's talking about being on trial for your faith. When someone is questioning you, you're arrested. But I think this is still a fulfillment of that very same thing.
[21:46] The Holy Spirit will give us the words to say. For those who are in Christ Jesus, where the Holy Spirit has taken up residence, we have a Spirit-empowered witness that we get to point to, which is the work of God in Christ Jesus and how it applied to us personally.
[22:03] So Jesus told them to be his witnesses, and they were. They were witnesses to proclaim a divine message. They knew that Christ had died, and they knew that he had raised again three days later.
[22:17] And then what's really neat here, is you remember these mockers, they said they're drunk on new wine. They tried to see what God was doing and give the credit to something else.
[22:28] And in this sense, in this particular instance, they were mocking them. Look at these guys. They're drunk. And Peter stood up, and he wouldn't let that happen. He would not let God's glory go to something else, especially not in this insincere, mockery way.
[22:43] He said, no, look, we're not drunk. It's only 9 a.m. Right? That's just good logic, right? Bars aren't open yet. You know what I mean? We're not drunk. Look, this, what you see and what you hear, is not intoxication.
[22:55] This is what God had prophesied. This is the Holy Spirit of God coming, and this is what it looks like when God takes up residence inside of a person's heart. This is the transformation that takes place when someone goes from death to life.
[23:10] That's what Peter told him here. He's like, look, it's not alcohol. It's nothing like that whatsoever. We have to stop giving the glory and credit that should go to God to other things.
[23:21] That's what these mockers were doing. He explained to them the truth of what God was doing. And he goes on throughout. He explains this is the fulfillment of the prophecy.
[23:32] He tells them, Jesus, fellow Israelites, you knew him. You saw his signs. You saw the miracles and the wonders that God did among you through him. And you saw him die.
[23:43] Think about this. All these people who came in for Pentecost, probably, you can imagine, many of them had been in town for Passover. Take it a step further, many of them could have been in the crowd shouting, crucify him, to Pontius Pilate.
[23:57] But Peter wasn't dismayed by that. Jesus wasn't put on the cross and killed because the Jews convinced a Roman official to crucify him. This was part of God's determined plan and foreknowledge.
[24:08] So he boldly stands before these people that just a few days earlier, he was terrified of. He was hiding from. And he stands up before them and he says, you killed the Messiah.
[24:21] You killed Jesus. You killed the Savior of the Lord of the earth. You killed him. But then he goes on in Acts 2, 32 and 33. God has raised this Jesus.
[24:32] We are all witnesses of this. Again, this empowered, God-given witness. Therefore, since he has been exalted of the right hand of God and has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, he has poured out both what you hear and what you see.
[24:46] And so we, you know, look, we worry so much about what to say. So many of us, like, paralysis by analysis, right? Like, I want to share the gospel with this person, but what if they ask me a question I don't know the answer to? I'll just pass.
[24:57] I'll let somebody else do it, you know? Here's the thing. We don't have to worry so much about what we should say because the amazing thing is being empowered by the Holy Spirit is that God will give us the words to say.
[25:10] So we don't have to have all of the answers. We don't have to have all of the solutions for life's problems. What we have to have is a sensitivity to God's Holy Spirit and a willingness to be obedient. When God leads us to be his witnesses, to proclaim, we should be willing to do that.
[25:24] We can't let ourselves be scared because we don't have the right words. So instead of worrying about what to say, pray for opportunities to share the gospel. And then when God does present those opportunities, be faithful.
[25:37] Look at this. I love this witnessing technique that the apostles used here. They pointed to what God did in their life and how he did it. That's all it comes down to. What's the gospel? What is the gospel?
[25:48] Well, I was in sin. I believed in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who lived a perfect life and died for my sins and rose again three days later. And then he changed my life. That is a powerful witness.
[26:02] That's what the apostles did. So they had this empowered boldness, this empowered witness. And now I want you to see also this God-given certainty. There's this really cool thing here about Peter's sermon.
[26:14] He was not unsure about what he was saying. He spoke with conviction. Acts 2.36, it says, Therefore, let all the house of Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.
[26:33] Not made as in he wasn't the Lord and Messiah before, but in his fulfillment of these things, he was confirmed, made known, clearly seen as the Messiah and the Lord.
[26:46] Peter was convicted that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who deserved all the praise, honor, and glory. It's a powerful, powerful thing.
[26:58] As people who are filled with the Holy Spirit, for Christians today, we should leave no doubt with what we believe. Right? We should leave absolutely no doubt. If you are convinced and convicted that the only way to have a right standing with God is through faith in Jesus Christ, then tell people that without any fear.
[27:17] If you're convicted, and when I say convicted, I mean if you have faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, if you believe, and that's your only hope of salvation, then with that same conviction and belief, share that message with others.
[27:30] That's what Peter did. He was convicted. He was convinced. And from what he was convinced of, he told others. That's what we're called to do, spirit-filled believers. So here's the thing.
[27:42] If you don't know with certainty what you believe about Jesus, or what the gospel message is, let me give you just a quick piece of advice. Don't rest there. Don't stop and say, well, I don't know enough, so I'll leave that up to other people.
[27:54] No, study God's word. Study God's word. As you study God's word, as you seek him through his word, the Holy Spirit will open your heart, open your eyes, open your mind to understand who Jesus is. So with the same conviction that Peter had here in this moment, we can boldly proclaim Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
[28:10] He died on the cross for our sins. He was raised to life three days later. And there is hope in no one else. There is salvation in no one else. With the same conviction.
[28:21] But there's one last part of the day of Pentecost that I want you to understand. And this is where we'll wrap up today. The persuasion of the Spirit. Look at verse 37. It says, Here's the thing.
[28:50] Without the Holy Spirit at work, there will be no response to the gospel message. You were not saved apart from the work of God, the Spirit. He opened your heart to understand and receive the truth of God's word.
[29:04] Peter, in his own strength, was not going to convince these people that Jesus Christ was the Messiah that they wrongly killed. But by the work of the Holy Spirit, the people in the room understood and believed.
[29:18] And they were convicted. It says they were pierced to the heart. They felt the pain of being stabbed in the heart. Their chest hurt. They were broken.
[29:29] What do we do? What are we supposed to do with this? We know we rejected Jesus. I know we shouted, Crucify him. I had no idea that there was all this to him.
[29:39] I had no idea. What am I supposed to do? And here's the thing. The response from Peter is the same answer that we need today.
[29:50] Maybe some of you in this room are hearing this, the gospel message, and you know you've rejected Christ. You know that right now you are living in sin, separated from the love of God, not in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
[30:01] Here's the thing. The answer that Peter gave to their question is the same answer that you need today. Look at verse 38. Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
[30:17] For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call. With many other words, he testified and strongly urged them, be saved from this corrupt generation.
[30:30] So there's two commands. Repent and be baptized. And let me explain real quick what Peter means here. Repenting of your sin means that you turn away from your sin. It means literally a change of direction.
[30:42] You were living in sin and rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and now you turn and you go the other way, and you are now living in faith and acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Lord of all.
[30:53] The Bible says that everyone has sinned. Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. God has a standard, and we're not there. We're imperfect. We've sinned. We've made mistakes.
[31:05] The wages of our sin, Romans 6.23, the wages, what we earn for our sin, is death, eternal death, separation, apart from God, completely for eternity, in a physical, literal place called hell.
[31:18] But God is rich in mercy, and He doesn't want any to perish, but all to come to repentance. So God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.
[31:31] So we recognize our sin. We recognize that our sin separates us from God, and we repent of our sin. The second step there is baptism. The baptize, that word there, it's funny, we transliterate this from the Greek.
[31:45] We don't translate it. Translation is immersed. Okay? Immersed. We're Baptists. Can I get an amen? Immersed. Go under the water. Okay. What Peter's saying here is not, it's not only the physical, active obedience of baptism.
[32:03] That's not salvific. What he's saying is, the reality of full acceptance, being completely immersed in the name of Jesus Christ, being completely consumed by Jesus, faith in the Son of God, believing in Him as the Son of God, that He's the only one who can save, the only hope of eternal life.
[32:19] That's how we are fully immersed, saved by Jesus Christ, is by putting faith in Him. And then, that reality, that inward transformation, is displayed publicly through the physical act of baptism.
[32:32] In baptism, we're buried with Christ, and raised to walk in newness of life. It displays very clearly, dying with Christ, and living to walk with Christ, yet again. All right? That's the beautiful thing about the physical act of baptism.
[32:44] So when Peter says, be baptized, what the assumption is, is that you receive Christ on His terms. You believe in Him as the Son of God. You believe in Him for salvation. And the next step is believer's baptism.
[32:57] And just by the way, this is just a side note. The New Testament does not teach any concept of unbaptized Christians. Just so you know. This is just to be clear.
[33:08] The New Testament teaches that when people are saved, their hearts are transformed, and in excitement and joy, they publicly confess Jesus Christ as Lord through believer's baptism.
[33:19] There's no 20-year gap because we don't want to stand in front of people. Okay? I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just telling you, the New Testament talks about people who are saved as baptized believers.
[33:31] That's the reality. So if you have believed in Jesus, but you've been putting off baptism, I'd encourage you to take that step of obedience and follow the biblical call of believer's baptism. But the work of the Spirit is powerful because when Peter gave them this answer, repent and be baptized, 3,000 people accepted that message and were baptized.
[33:56] You see, there's no gap. There wasn't a gap. It was the same day. 3,000 people believed and were baptized. The Spirit of God opened their hearts to receive the gospel message. And by faith, they believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
[34:08] They believed in Him for eternal life. And so the question that I have to ask you now, 2,000 years later, on this Pentecost Sunday, have you repented of your sins and believed in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins?
[34:23] If the answer is anything less than yes, then I'm going to encourage you that you settle that today. We're going to sing a final song here and we're going to have a time. And what I want you to do as we have this time is I want you to stand and reflect on how the Spirit of God might be leading you.
[34:41] Maybe you need to be taking a step of obedience in believer's baptism. Come talk to me. Maybe for the first time, the idea of believing in Jesus has been made clear to you by the Spirit of God.
[34:54] Come talk to me or pray and receive Christ. Here's the thing. The day of Pentecost, the neatest part about Peter's sermon is that this was 2,000 years ago. He called this then the last days.
[35:07] There is an urgency to this message. Don't delay and don't miss what God has for you in Christ Jesus. I'm going to pray for us and I'll ask that you stand and sing and reflect on how the Spirit of God might be leading you today.
[35:20] Let's pray together. God, thank you for who you are. Thank you, oh God, for your truth. We love you. We praise you. I pray now that your work would continue by the work of the Spirit.
[35:31] Take your word and transform hearts. God, it's only by your truth that we can be saved. So God, now I pray that you would bless this time as we close in song and think about who you are.
[35:43] We love you, Jesus. It's in your name that we pray. Amen.