Peter's Pentecost Sermon

We wondered in the Lord's mercy in part, that he is determined

on his own desire and will for his love for us to speak to us.

So I encourage you to hear the word of the Lord this morning

from Acts chapter 2. Peter, standing with the 11,

Acts 2 · chapter mention

lifted up his voice and addressed the crowd, saying, Men

of Judah and all those who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known

to you and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk

as you suppose, since it's only the third hour of the day.

But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel.

And in the last days it shall be.

God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and

your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, and your young

men shall see visions. Your old men shall dream dreams,

even on my male servants. And my female servants in those

days, I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophecy, and I

will show wonders in the heavens above, and signs on the earth

below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

And the sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood

before the great day of the Lord comes, that great and

magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that

everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And this is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Dear Father, we do pray that you

would be pleased by our obedience to you and hearing

your word and giving you thanks and praise for the wonderful

gift in which you've given to us.

And now turn our hearts, Lord, to learn and to know and to be

changed by the power of your word.

We pray through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, we ask,

Amen. Please be seated and grab your

Bibles. If you would turn to Acts

Acts 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2. Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

You are doubly blessed today, my friends.

There you go. You are doubly blessed not just

that you get to hear one sermon today, but you get to hear 2

sermons today. Or you get to hear one sermon

wrapped around another sermon, or one sermon that's kind of

built on another sermon or a sermon that's within a sermon

or, and at least one of these sermons is really, really good.

One of the sermons is going to be really so terrific that the

Scriptures itself identifies this sermon as having an impact

on 3000 people. 3000 people respond to the power of this

sermon. And so we have this sermon

wrapped around another sermon. What we're talking about, of

course, if you were here with us last week, is a continuation of

the storyline that brings us to this point.

As you remember, our Lord Jesus resurrected, spent time with his

disciples, and after 40 days he ascended into heaven, promising

them that he would bring power, the power of the Holy Spirit,

upon them so that they could be witnesses in Judea, Jerusalem,

Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, which we have

tried to capture with that 321 idea.

I hope that you're still following through with that

idea. Following that, the disciples

gather either in the upper room or more likely I think, in a

room in the temple. And there they are praying,

seeking the Lord's blessing. And at the time of Pentecost,

that wonderful, marvelous celebration in the Jewish

calendar that you have, we have the filling of the Holy Spirit.

And so they're all sitting there in the temple praying to the

Lord. And suddenly the power of the

Lord is evident in the mighty wind that blows through.

And then the holiness of God comes through, evidence of the

power of the fire that splits. And, you know, you can just

imagine saying, hey, you got that thing, guys.

Yeah, well, you should see what's happening over your head.

And the power of the Holy Spirit falls upon each and every one of

them, and they begin to proclaim the mighty works of God.

That's key to the understanding of this text.

They're proclaiming the mighty works of God through the power

of the Holy Spirit, enabling them to speak in other

languages. So they come out of the room

proclaiming the gospel message to everybody around them.

And of course, it sounds like Babble because they can't

understand one. They can't.

Well, you can understand the disciples or the the followers

of Christ as they are speaking in your language, but you can't

discern other people's languages.

And so it's one of those things where the outsiders heard it

just as a big mob. There's a bunch of babbling

going on. And So what happens is that

Peter then stands up among the people and he's begins this

sermon. And we're going to look at

Peter's sermon, this Pentecostal sermon, which I read the opening

section of here in a few seconds.

And we're going to look at that sermon and the impact of that

sermon. And I want you to note, I think

a couple things about the sermon, particularly the power

in which it carries on its own, but also the model in which it

does for all the proclamation of the gospel that we have.

For instance, this opening section that I just read follows

on with something that happens consistently within the

Scriptures and that we need to see it happening within the

Scriptures. What happens is that Peter comes

out and speaks to the people and ties what is it?

What is happening currently with the Word of God?

He sees the world through the scriptures and the scriptures

through Jesus Christ and that is something that every preacher

seeks to do. One of my my favorite professors

always said that preaching is holding the Bible in one hand

and the newspaper in the other hand.

And I thought in order to be dramatic today, I would have

hold when I said that I'd say the Bible in one hand and I'd

hold the Bible and the newspaper in the other hand, and I

couldn't find a newspaper. So what's that all about?

But the Bible in one hand, in the newspaper in other.

In other words, demonstrating every proclamation of the gospel

is not simply a proclamation of something that happened 2000

years ago. It is an identification of the

truths of Jesus Christ to the life in which we Live Today.

And a preacher is going to be at his best when he is able to

identify the power of the Scriptures with the current

events or the current life of of the congregation that he's

speaking to. One of the things that I tend to

do is I try to say something along the lines of, you know,

well, we draw on a common experience or I tie it to my

life in, in living, assuming that you have a similar life or

what it means. Excuse me, what?

What it means for us to have families or live in this world

in which we do. In other words, you try to give

a concrete example in order to tie it together.

And what Peter does here is he's about to speak powerfully about

Jesus Christ, and yet he starts by saying, hey, look, look

around at you. All these people that are that

are proclaiming the Gospel in your ears.

It sounds like they're drunk, but notice that Peter uses two

different steps on this. The first one, he says, look,

they can't be drunk. After all, it's only 9:00 in the

morning. I mean, I assume that you could

get 120 people drunk by 9:00 in the morning, but that's not

really something we experienced. And so Peter kind of says, look,

it's kind of early for that. But more importantly, what Peter

does is he takes the gospel, the book of Joel, the prophecy of

the book of Joel from Joel chapter 2.

Joel 2 · chapter mention

And he says, look, look at what you're seeing here, this

experience of life in which you are experiencing right now.

This ties directly to Jesus Christ through the proclamation

of the gospel message through the scriptures.

And So what Peter does is he says, look at what what you're

experiencing right now and see it through the eyes of the

gospel message, see it through the eyes of Scripture.

And that's something that every preacher seeks to do, needs to

be doing on at every moment of every time.

And certainly you can see the impact of this, of faithfulness

of Peter as Peter does this, where he says, look at the

Scriptures, see the world through the lens of the

Scriptures, and then see the Scriptures through the lens of

Jesus Christ. Now, what I mean by that is if

you look at this passage and what this text does is it

identifies what it's going to be like on those last days when the

Lord comes in his power to redeem God's people, to fulfill

all the promises of the Old Testament.

What is it going to look like for the people of God?

And Joel has his prophecy and he talks about old men having

visions and young men dreaming dreams, and people prophesying

in the power of the Holy Spirit that will fall upon them.

And you can see very clearly here what it means for God's

people to be proclaiming Jesus Christ and the message of Jesus

Christ in this ways. And So what Peter does is he

takes this current event in which everybody's seeing, look

at all these people babbling and says, no, this isn't babbling.

This is fulfilling the word of the Lord.

And Joel, now I guarantee you that for most of the Israelites,

when they went back and they looked at the book of Joel and

they read this prophecy, and I encourage you to do it as well,

you go back. Joel is a short book, 3 chapters

long. You read that second chapter in

particular, which Peter is referencing, and it's really

hard to read that chapter and identify it with the Pentecost

experience of the church. When you read that chapter in

Joel, it's hard to read that chapter and just say, oh, this

is clearly a prediction of the Pentecost experience, unless

you've experienced the Pentecost experience and look at the

Scripture through those eyes of redemption.

In other words, what Jesus Christ has done for Peter here

is shaped his worldview has shifted the way in which he

looks at the world and at the Scriptures and everything in his

life. And by doing so, now he's able

to look at the Scriptures through the lens of Jesus Christ

and then see the world through the eyes of the Scriptures.

And in doing so, he says, you see all this is happening around

here. This is because of Jesus Christ.

And that's why so often a lot of what I do when I'm a front or

any preacher in which you hear who's going to be effective.

Are they going to say, you see, they're going to connect

something in your life, some experience of parenting or some

experience of going to school or some experience with your

parents, elderly or something along lines.

And say, you see that event now look at it through the eyes of

Scripture, if you're understanding Scripture through

the eyes of Jesus Christ. And so once he gets this thing

going, then once he gets their attention, once he has the crowd

gathered around saying, OK, what is this going on?

And Peter says, you know, this is connected to everything that

Joel says, then he goes to his main point in the sermon.

So I would encourage you to hear the word of the Lord from Acts

Acts 2:22–24

chapter 2, verses 22 through 24. Peter continues, men of Israel

hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man

attested to you by God, with mighty works and wonders and

signs that God did through him in your midst.

As you yourselves know this Jesus delivered up according to

the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

You crucified and killed him by the hands of lawless men, and

God raised him up, loosening the pangs of death because it was

not possible for him to be held by it.

And this is the word of the Lord to God.

So what Peter does now is move from his introduction where he's

trying to capture the attention and say to everybody, look, This

is why this is important. He moves from that to his main

point. What is his main point?

His main point is the main point of every godly sermon.

It needs to be the main point of everything in your life, the

main point of every aspect of your existence, the main point

of everything we do as a church, the main point of everything

that we believe as individuals, the main point of every aspect

of our salvation is Jesus Christ.

It is all about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the heart and

soul of Christianity. Christianity begins, continues,

and ends with Jesus Christ. It is not the church, it is not

our fellowship, it is not our doctrine, it is not our ethics.

Now all of those things, our doctrine, our ethics, our

fellowship, all of that arises out of our understanding of

Jesus Christ. And hopefully it all reflects

back upon Jesus Christ if we're doing it well.

But the gospel message, every salvation story, every

proclamation of our Lord Jesus Christ is all about Jesus

Christ. And you can see how he does this

here. And we need to beware of the

distractions that come so easily into our lives.

Oh, this is important to us. And suddenly something that is

important, whatever it might be, our family, our jobs, our

finances, our political views, the society around us, our

desires for for our hopes and prayers, all of those things,

important as they are, happened to us under the umbrella, under

the primary focus of Jesus Christ.

And if we fail to do that, we fail to be biblical in our

understanding of what the scriptures say is the central

core of our life in existence. And the central core of every

reading of the Scripture, the central core of every sermon, is

Jesus Christ. But not just Jesus Christ.

Look at how he's articulated here, verse 22.

Peter says men of Israel hear these words.

OK, Very specifically, by the way, he's drawing attention to

the gathering that's gathered around.

Because if you'll remember, this crowd is made-up of people that

are scattered across the Roman Empire.

But all of them are most likely followers of Jesus Christ,

Sorry, followers of Judaism, either Jews themselves or or or

follow God followers. And so they following after the

Jewish ways of life. So they've all gathered

together. So they're all referenced here

by calling Peter says men of Israel hear these words.

Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you.

So the first thing that he talks about is his life.

What is Jesus's life? It's attested to you.

It's it's determined for you. It's manifested for you by

mighty works, wonders and signs that God did through Jesus

Christ. Now what are we talking about?

We're talking about his teachings.

We're talking about his miracles, the godly way in which

he lived his life. And you have these 3 words that

are used and mostly they're kind of understood as synonyms.

Mighty works, wonders and signs. And by and large they are

synonyms, but they do kind of have a slightly different focus.

Mighty works, the power that Jesus Christ demonstrated, the

wonders, the awe inspiring character, the attractiveness of

the wonders that got of the power that God elevated.

And then the signs, the fact that they point and highlight to

spiritual realities and spiritual truths.

And So what Peter starts here by saying, look, this is all about

Jesus Christ. And what do we know about Jesus

Christ? We know about his life here and

the power of his life. And then it moves on and he

talks about this Jesus in verse 23, delivered up according to

the definite plan of foreknowledge of God.

You crucified. And by the way, you cannot

escape the force of that terminology.

You crucified and killed him by the hands of any lawless men.

What Peter does here very clearly, is lay the burden, lay

the weight, lay the guilt and the responsibility of Jesus's

death right upon those who are gathered together.

Now, Christ would have died on the cross about two months ago.

So it's within two months, 50 days or so of Christ's death

upon the cross that Peter is making this accusation.

We all know, if you know anything about the Roman Empire

at that time, that the Roman Empire was a brutal empire and

the crucifixion was something that happened in the empire.

But, and it happened frequently, but not that frequently.

And falling coming as it did right upon the heels, Jesus's

crucifixion, right upon the heels of the massive celebration

that took place on Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday, all of Jerusalem

comes out and looks at this guy and cheers him on.

And then five days later they are all screaming for him to be

crucified. Everybody knew exactly who Peter

was talking about when Peter says this Jesus whom you

crucified. I don't know how many people

were crucified by the Romans between the time where Jesus was

crucified and Pentecost. And I suspect it was zero.

I mean, again, it happened on a frequent basis, but 50 days,

even the Romans weren't that brutal at times.

And So what you have, I believe, is a full awareness of the

congregation, full awareness of the crowd of who Peter is

talking about this Jesus. But I want you also to note the

paradox or the mystery that is present here.

Peter pulls no punches at laying the culpability, laying the

blame, laying the guilt upon the Jewish people for the death of

Jesus Christ. And yet at the same time, in the

beginning of verse 23, Jesus was delivered up according to the

definite plan and the foreknowledge of God.

Christ is no victim. This didn't just happen to him

by random. This happened according to the

definite foreknowledge and plan of our God.

How is it that God is the one who has planned and ordained

that this would take place? The foreknowledge, by the way,

is a picture of His love and His compassion and His desire for

God's people. It is out of His desire for us

that He planned for Christ to die.

And yet at the same time, the finger points directly and

specifically at the crowd of Jews who were crucifying Him,

who crucified Him. And by the way, that finger is

intended to point beyond them to every single one of us.

We know from the rest of Scriptures that Christ died on

the cross because of our sin. It was our personal sin, your

individual sin that has nailed Christ on the cross.

And so all of us feel the weight, need to feel the weight

of the center core of Paul Peters message here where he

says you were you crucified and you killed him.

And yet at the same time we have the sovereign hand of our Lord

over all things. A paradox, a mystery for us, a

puzzle, but it is held together in scriptures the way it is

always held together in scriptures.

And so too, we must hold it together.

And then he goes on to talk not just about Christ's life and his

death, but ultimately his resurrection.

Look in verse 24. God raised him up.

God raised Jesus up, loosening the pangs of death because it is

not possible for Christ to be held by death.

And so you have Christ's resurrection here, the life,

death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is the focus of Peter's sermon, and indeed it has to be

the focus of every proclamation of the gospel.

It has to be the focus of every time that you think of your own

life and every aspect of your own life.

Everything factors through that lens where we see Jesus Christ

as Lord. Having made his main point,

Peter then continues on to supply supporting evidence

similar to what you hear on a sermon all the time.

Here's the here's my main my main point Jesus Christ

crucified, resurrected, and here's the three points of

support that main idea here are Peters supporting evidence that

he has from Acts chapter 2 verses 25 through 35 for David

Acts 2:25–35

says concerning him. I saw the Lord always before me

for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken.

Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced.

My flesh also will dwell in hope, for you will not abandon

my soul to Hades. Or let your holy one see

corruption, and you have made known to me the paths of life.

You will make me full of gladness with your presence.

Peter then says, Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about

our patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and

his tomb is with us to this day. Being there for a prophet, and

knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would

have set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and

spoke about the resurrection of Christ, that he was not

abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

This Jesus God raised up, and of what we all are witnesses of,

that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the

right hand of God, and having received from the Father the

promise of the Holy Spirit, he was poured out.

This that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

For David did not ascend into heavens, but he himself says,

the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your

enemies your footstool. And this is the word of the

Lord, thanks be to God. So what Peter does here is he

backs up the main point with the best evidence that he can

possibly think of. Now, one of the challenges that

we have in today's society is coming up with supporting

evidence that everybody will embrace, everybody will accept

having an authority that you can say, hey, because they said it,

look at this. You support a primary

theologian, CS Lewis or or John Calvin, and half of the audience

kind of says, oh, yeah, that's great.

And half the congregation goes, yeah, I don't know who that is.

Or if you cite A contemporary sports icon or something like

that, you know, you got half the audience say, oh, I hate that

team, so I'm going to hate this quote or whatever it is.

You know, you have trouble coming up with good supporting

evidence here, but Peter doesn't.

Peter comes up with exactly the right evidence because he cites

back to somebody that everybody in the congregation will

immediately embrace. He looks back to Psalm 16 where

David speaks of the resurrection and David is kind of got the

authority that everybody David, Moses, maybe Abraham are the

three people that and when they speak every Jewish persons pays

attention and notices. I was trying to think of

somebody that would carry that kind of weight in our society

today. Best I kind of came up with is

if you got 3 or 4 year old kids arguing about something and

somebody says, well, mom says and OK, that kind of that that

ends the that ends the discussion.

This is Peter saying, well, mom says, David says, and what does

David say? David says, OK, look, God so

loved his people and is sending his Savior to the people that

even death will not hold them. Even death will be empty in

God's power, next to God's power.

We need to look for a savior, somebody who's coming that can

beat every sin that is out there, even the power and the

and the focus of death itself. That's the Savior in which we

need to look forward to. And then Peter goes on to say,

notice that we know where David's grave is.

We know where David's buried. We know he's still there, so he

can't be the Savior. We know all of these people who

have gone before us are dead and buried.

But guess who isn't buried? Jesus Christ.

In other words, Peter tosses out a challenge to the Jewish people

saying, if you think David is your Savior, I know where his

body is. And that explicit challenge is

set forward and it is continues to be the evidence in which we

bring forward to God's to the to God's people that we are

speaking to when we're proclaiming God's message.

I know that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior and I know it to be

true and I can prove it because you can't show me his body.

Show me his body. I can show you David's body.

I know that he's dead. I know that he's not the Savior.

The Savior is coming where death cannot hold them, Jesus's body.

And of course, this is a challenge that has come forward

from the Gospels from the beginning.

And the history is filled with people who have taken seriously

that challenge and have said, OK, let's try to disprove the

resurrection of the dead. And all you do is come away more

and more with the reality of the empty tomb.

The tomb is empty. Christ is resurrected.

Jesus is our Lord and our Savior, and this is the point,

the conclusion that Peter himself comes to.

So I want you to hear the word of the Lord from Acts chapter 2,

Acts 2:36

verse 36. Let the House of Israel know for

certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus

whom you crucified and this is the word of the Lord.

Let the House of Israel therefore know for certain.

OK, so this is now you guys all get a sense of when I'm wiping

up, I'm not by the way, but you all kind of get a sense when I'm

wrapping up. You kind of know that I'm

getting there. And when I, and one of the ways

you can is that I try to find the point again, I've I've made

that main point. Peter makes that main point.

This is all about Jesus Christ. And then he has this long

section where he tries to support that by saying, look, it

can't be David. It can't be anybody else.

It has to be somebody that's resurrected from the dead and

Jesus is resurrected from the dead.

He goes through all that. Then he comes back and he he

concludes by saying, look, this is what I'm saying.

And he sticks in the knife. That's what I try to do every

time I'm preaching at you stick in the knife, right?

At the end, you try to come to the conclusion.

And the main point, what is it that you want to try to walk

away with at the end of this sermon?

And here's what Peter walks away with at the end of the sermon.

Therefore, let all the House of Israel know, OK, here I want to,

I want you to think in the broadest possible terms, the

whole House of Israel, all those who are God's people, let all

those who are God's people know. And of course, this happens

within the context of the promise that the gospel is going

to spread from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria to the ends of

the earth. So we have all of God's people.

Let all the God's people what therefore know for certain, know

for certain. The word here is there's no

doubt there's there's no other possibility safety security, no

with all assurance and confidence with no doubt, no

question mark no for certain what that God has made him God

has made Jesus Christ both Lord and Christ.

Don't don't think here that that what the text is saying is that

Jesus wasn't Lord in Christ before this and it gets to this

spot where where God the Father kind of says, hey, I really like

what this guy Jesus is doing down there.

I'm going to make him Lord in Christ.

That's not what he's doing here. This is manifested to make it

evident to all to to demonstrate it in a way that you cannot deny

it. Why?

Because the grave is empty. The tomb is empty.

And so he manifests this to everybody.

Know for certain that God has made him what Lord and Christ.

He is your King, He is your Savior.

He is the boss, He is the lover, He is your friend, He is the one

you follow. He is the one that we are

discipled by. He is our master and our Rabbi.

He is the Lord and He is Christ know for certain that that's the

case. This is the power of Peter

sermon coming together with that emphasis with a little bit of a

jab. Look at the very end of that

verse. This Jesus whom you crucified,

and again, if that jab is for us, if this Scripture, if this

sermon is not something that Peter just preached 2000 years

ago, but it is a sermon that preaches to us today too, that

you crucified is pointing to all of us.

All of us know for certain that God has made him both Lord and

Christ. No good sermon ends without

forcing you to ask a question. If I'm preaching well, you're

walking away with a question. If Danny's preaching well,

you're walking away with a question.

If you're listening to sermons on the radio on your podcasts,

you're walking away with a question.

This is the application part that every good sermon is going

to have. Hear the word of the Lord from

Acts chapter 2, verses 37 through 41.

Acts 2:37–41

Now when they had heard this, they were cut to the heart and

said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, here it

is, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, Repent

and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus

Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins.

And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promises

for you and for your children, and for all who are far off,

everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

And with many other words he bore witness and continued to

exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked

generation. So those who received his word

were baptized, and they were added that day about 3000 souls

as before. This is the word of the Lord

God. Brothers, what shall we do, what

shall we do if I'm not leading you to that question from the

front? Peter clearly led his

congregation to that question. You're hearing Peter's sermon

here. I hope you are being led to that

question. If I don't lead you that way,

Peter certainly should. But here's the reality.

Every time we open the Scriptures, we are led to that

question. James promises that.

Paul promises that. The Old Testament seems to

indicate that powerfully. Isaiah certainly indicates that.

When we open up the Scriptures, we are led to the question, what

shall I do? What shall I do?

And Peter answers in a way that I believe is answered for every

one of us. Two things that you do and two

gifts that come because of it. Two things that you do.

First in verse 38, repent. Repent, repentance, to turn and

to go the other way. Now when we think of repentance,

if you listen to my repentance, I'd have a big long list of all

the things, horrid things that I do and horrid things that I

think of my attitude problems and stuff like that.

You know, that's when we think of repentance, that that's what

we think. Take my moral character and turn

and say I shouldn't be like this anymore and I need to be

different, so I need to repent that.

That's too broad for this picture.

Peter has been pointing their finger at them.

Saying what to them? What is he pointing his finger

saying to you? He's not saying, look, you're a

moral failure. Look, you've got problems with

your lust. Look, you've got trouble with

your your attitude. Look, you've got gossip issues

or anything like that. God's not doing any of those

kind of things. Peter's not doing any of that.

He's pointing his finger right at you and saying what?

You crucified Jesus Christ and we do that.

We have done that. And that's what repentance is

here in this context. Repent, turn from a position of

rejecting Jesus Christ and instead turn and embrace him.

That's what repentance means is to turn moving in this direction

where you repent, where you are rejecting Jesus Christ and turn

and embrace him as your Lord and Savior.

And for those who are here in this room who are not followers

of Jesus Christ, how can you miss this point?

Repent not of your ungodliness. You'll have time to do that

later. Repent of the ungodliness that

you turn your back on Jesus Christ and his salvation.

And for all of you who are secure sitting thinking, I've

done that long time ago, I'm safe, are you kidding me?

Repent of the ways in which any little part of your life

reflects a rejection of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Any little part of your life, you are turning your back upon

Him. You must repent and turn to the

Lord. Brothers, what shall we do?

Repent. Secondly, be baptized.

This is not the time to talk about baptism, to go into what

all of it is, but at the very minimum, it's a humiliation.

It is an identification. I must be cleaned.

Lord clean me and it is an identification with the new

people of God. Repent, turn from what you were

and join those that are seeking to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Repent and be baptized and the gift that will come.

Verse 38 Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for

the forgiveness of your sins. Your past is forgiven, your

present sin is forgiven, your future sin is forgiven.

Repent, be baptized, and you will be forgiven of your sin.

And secondly, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

You will be brought into fellowship with God Himself.

What more could you want for if you're moving away from Him, and

you are too, to repent and to turn towards our Lord and Savior

than to be promised, And this is a promise from Peter's lips,

from God Himself, to be promised that you will be blessed with

the presence of God himself, the blessings of the Holy Spirit.

That is a promise that awaits for all of us who hear that

message and may we all be like the crowd here.

So that day, verse 41, so those who received the word were

baptized and they were added that day about 3000 souls.

I want my heart to be added again to those who repent of

rejecting my Lord, and so that I might a new experience the

blessings of forgiveness and the blessings of the presence of my

God and Savior. Let's pray together.

Lord in heaven, we do ask for Your blessings to come upon us,

to fill us with the power of Your spirit, that we might turn

from that which we have done before, the way in which we have

rejected you, that we might turn and embrace you as our Lord and

our Savior. God is in your hands that we

place our lives now and forevermore.

Amen.