The New Testament Gospel from the Old

If you remain standing, we'll read from the book of Acts, chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 2, the focus will be verse 6 through 38, but I will be reading

Acts 2 · chapter mention

from verses 24, or yes, 24,

20, yes, 22, I'm sorry, 22 through 36.

Listen carefully because this is the holy and inspired word of God.

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 by the hands of lawless men.

God raising him up loosed the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

For David 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.

You have made known to me the paths of life, and you will make me full of gladness with your presence.

Brothers, I say to you with confidence about the patriarch David,

that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.

Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him

that he would set up one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke

about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades,

nor did his flesh see corruption.

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

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the

Father the promise of the Holy

Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

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

The Lord said, Sit at my right hand.

Until I make your enemies your footstool. Let all the house of Israel therefore

know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ,

this Jesus whom you crucified.

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

to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

And Peter said to them, 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.

This is the word of the Lord. You can be seated.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, as we do from Sunday by Sunday,

we ask for your spirit to come down to be with us, that you would guide us and

direct us through this particular passage so that we might understand it.

And even as the apostle Peter was preaching, that we too may be called to repentance and faith.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

How did people in the Old Testament get saved?

I used to wonder that when I was a little boy, because in my church,

we used to preach from the New Testament.

And when we would once in a while delve into the Old Testament,

it would be more for stories of courage and bravery and faith and the like.

But I wondered more and more, and this is actually what moved me to this very

church, to be preaching from a Reformed church as opposed to where I came from.

I wonder, how is it that people in the Old Testament got saved?

I used to think they got saved differently, that maybe they were faithful and

they did works and they were hoping in those works and as they were faithful, I wasn't quite sure.

But I hope it's evident to you today as we go through Peter's sermon that people

in the Old Testament were saved in the exact same way that we are,

by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

Yes, they were looking for the Messiah who was to come and we now look to the

Messiah who has come and has ascended and will come again.

But in both Testaments, the gospel is the same.

There is a unity to the Bible. And I'm mentioning this not just for today's

sermon, but for next week's sermon.

So that if you have next week's sermon, you'll notice it said, repent and be baptized.

I'm saving the baptism part for next week to devote an entire sermon to it.

So if you have a Baptist friend or maybe deep down in your heart,

you're still kind of a Baptist, you need to be here next week.

And I'm going to really just kind of try my best to open up the gospel of the

Old Testament as it's connected to the New Testament, because that's going to

be the key to a lot of the niggling questions that we have, you know, why we baptize babies,

what do we believe baptism does, and all these other things.

But for today, I want to look at the unity of the Bible and the Old Testament

gospel that Peter preached that led the people as it should leave everyone to repentance, and,

We look briefly at the book of Acts. It's kind of amazing. Maybe as you're reading

through the New Testament, you miss this, but much of the New Testament are

either direct quotations of the Old Testament or allusions, and all of the New

Testament is a teaching that comes from the Old Testament.

Even at the book of Acts, we see at the beginning, Luke points us to Jesus,

who is continuing to do through the church after the resurrection and the ascension,

what was promised in the Old Testament.

Acts 1-4 teaches us about the coming of the Holy Spirit, which was promised

in the Old Testament and in the ministry of Jesus.

Remember, there's no small coincidence that Pentecost didn't come out of the

blue. Pentecost came from where?

The Old Testament. Only one person is even paying attention.

It came from the Old Testament. That's right. All the way through the book of

Acts, you have this very clear connection between everything that Jesus does,

and he did and does and continues to do, is the fulfillment of the Old Testament,

all those promises, all those prophecies.

When you move to this particular sermon, you see Peter actually preaching a sermon from the Psalms.

The way I used to read the Psalms, they were simply prayers or praise songs

that we sung or something along those lines.

I never thought of them as having much to do with Jesus Christ.

But here in Peter's sermon, Peter just takes, as if out of thin air,

if you don't believe in the unity, out of thin air.

The Psalms that teach of Jesus. But you'll notice it's not out of thin air.

It's because the Psalms were teaching of Jesus and the Psalms were focusing on Jesus.

And all of the Old Testament was about Jesus Christ and bringing us to the particular point we are.

As a helpful rule of thumb, and that's not only for today, but for next week's

sermon, we should look at the Old and New Testament together as one book of redemption.

Everything that's true and valid in the Old Testament continues to be true and

valid in the New Testament unless specifically and deliberately changed through

the ministry and work of Jesus Christ.

It's all the same, except insofar as Christ has fulfilled it and has brought us here.

I wanna remind you of the passage we read from Luke, which always,

after I moved from seeing the Bible as two separate books, Old and New Testament,

this particular passage always moved me.

It always made me wonder, do I really understand the Old Testament?

Do I really understand the connection between the Old and New Testament?

Because Jesus, when he met these people on the road to Emmaus,

began to say to them, remember, they were down, they were downcast,

they wondered, Jesus died and we don't know what to do.

But what he said is, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all the prophets have spoken.

Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and then enter into his glory?

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them all the scriptures

and the things concerning himself.

In other words, the whole of the Old Testament is centered on Jesus Christ.

It's what we would, in a fancy word, say it's Christological.

It is centered on Jesus Christ. The central focus of all of the Old Testament is Jesus Christ.

And we see it here in Peter's sermon rather dramatically, because he doesn't

just say, well, this is the New Testament and that was the Old.

Maybe you've heard that.

I don't know how many times I've said something, and we'll say it next week

on baptism. and will children of the covenant receive the sign?

And people will say, that's the Old Testament.

That's the Old Testament, as if the Old Testament is separate and distinct from the New Testament.

The early church fathers, I think, understood this well. When you read sermons,

particularly for the first maybe four centuries of the church,

they did use what was called allegory.

Allegories were basically words or images and pictures. But they weren't always allegorical.

They were many times trying to focus on what the New Testament said.

And they would look at themes that are helpful, like themes that,

How many times do you see in the Old Testament a champion or hero or man of

faith who looks like he's going to save the people of God thrown into a pit?

Daniel with the lion's den, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they're thrown away.

Joseph, all these people are thrown into the face of death, and God,

by his sovereignty, raises them up and saves them and continues to make his promise faithful.

So these people are not just allegorical symbols. They are types.

They're shadows of what was to come in the New Testament. Well,

that's what Peter does here. Peter actually preaches the gospel from Psalm 16.

He quotes Psalm 16. It's interesting. He uses the Septuagint,

which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

Not that it matters that much, but it's helpful.

Peter asks his listeners a rhetorical question. He says, may I speak freely

about the patriarch David? He's preaching to a Jewish audience.

So he says, may I say something about David from Psalm 16?

Peter mentions this. He mentions even a well-known tomb.

The kingdom of David was probably the most loved kingdom of all the kingdoms

in the history of Israel.

Yes, Solomon built his kingdom to a vast expanse, but it was to David that the

messianic prophecies were given, that your sons, one of your lineage,

will sit upon the throne of the kingdom of David forever.

David was so vastly popular in Israel that an entire tomb was erected to him

to which everyone was aware of.

It's mentioned in Nehemiah 3.16. It says, then Nehemiah, the son of Asbuk,

leader of the half district of Beth, Zor, made repairs as far as the place in

front of the tombs of David to the man-made pool, etc., etc.

The tomb of David marked a continued hope of the people of God that God,

through his promises, would bring a Messiah to sit on the throne of the kingdom of David.

Since every Jew knew David's tomb, none of them would claim that David had been

rescued from death, right?

There's a tomb there, and David's supposed to be in it.

David has been founder of the dynasty of the promise.

Now, Peter paraphrases another Psalm. This is amazing how Peter does this.

He jumps from Psalm 16 to Psalm 132 and begins teaching.

Again, like Jesus said in Luke, all the things from the Old Testament were always

pointing to Jesus Christ.

So he goes to Psalm 132, verse 11. The Lord has sworn in truth to David. He will not turn from it.

Psalms 132:11

I will set upon your throne the fruit of your body. So Peter uses the tomb to

teach that David could not have been referring to himself.

Because he was dead and in the tomb. On the other hand, Jesus' tomb was empty.

So it wasn't something you could ascribe to the trickery of the apostles or

the lies of the guards. Jesus had been resurrected from the dead.

Furthermore, an interesting side note, Jesus was placed in the tomb of Joseph

of Arimathea, a brand new tomb into which death had never entered.

In other words, his body would not meet or touch corruption.

This was a brand new tomb, newly hewed out, and Jesus was the first body.

Had it been a tomb that it would have been used, then Jesus' body would have

come into contact with corruption.

And as Peter is saying all these things, you imagine these Jewish people thinking,

wait a minute, David, what this kingdom needs to be someone who's different from Jesus.

Has to be different from Jesus because Jesus died and our king was going to

live and our king was going to overthrow the Romans and our king was going to

kill our enemies and our king was going to conquer the land and eventually the

whole world so that all the world would come to Jerusalem and pay homage to

the great children of David.

And yet, as their minds are going through this, they're like,

wait a minute, what if what the

Psalms were pointing to and what Peter is saying is true, we kill Jesus.

You can see in the passage, especially as they get to the end,

when it comes to a full realization that one greater than David had come to

them and they had crucified him.

They had taken them with their own evil hands and their own evil intentions,

all because they wanted a kingdom for themselves.

They didn't want the kingdom that Jesus brought. This is a kingdom of crucifixion.

This is a guy, remember, from Nazareth, a place of humiliation and shame.

That place in Nazareth will keep popping up everywhere through the book of Acts.

This is the king to whom Messiah had, or David pointed in terms of Messiah.

And we need to keep thinking about that. One greater than David has come.

The king of David had become a paradigm of hope for Israel All their hopes was

wrapped up in Messiah coming And fulfilling the promises to the kingdom of David

But what if they had been wrong?

What if this king was different than the king they were demanding And the king

they wanted to fulfill their dreams and their desires And their hopes What instead

if this king came to be a sacrifice for their sins?

Then it would mean that they were the ones that placed him on the cross.

And I might add, as we hear in some of our songs, it was also our sins that held him on the cross.

This is where they began to experience sorrow, sorrow to the point of repentance.

And by the way, I love this because also as a kid, when it came time for the

end of the sermon, when I grew up, there was always a time of what we call an altar call.

And we sang softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling. We sing just as I am.

And if no one came forward or no one raised their hand, it wasn't enough that

we sang all the verses we would hum and bow our heads and close our eyes until someone finally came.

And I mean, our preacher, by the time, honestly, by the time he was finished

with the altar car, everybody should have come forward.

You know, is there anyone who's tired, lonely, sick, you know, sinful?

Yeah, everybody should have come. Peter didn't do that.

Peter just presented the power of the gospel to these people.

This is why Messiah came. This is the Messiah, Jesus.

And you took him and you crucified him.

And yet in the process, he was dying for your sins.

It reminds me a lot of what these apostles said at Luke 24, when they said,

when they reflected, they said, did not our hearts burn within us?

And it says here in the passage that their hearts were convicted.

In fact, there's a powerful Greek word that could be translated,

they were stabbed in the heart.

They were jabbed, as it were, by a knife. Fulfilling also the prophecies of

Zechariah 12, verse 10, which says, I will pour out on the house of David and

Zechariah 12:10

on the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication.

Then they will look on me whom they pierced.

Yes, they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son and grieve as one

grieves for a firstborn.

This is exact fulfillment of Zechariah. But my friends, this idea of repentance

and sorrow for the death of Jesus Christ doesn't just apply to the Jews who

literally took him, took him and crucified him, or the ones shouting,

crucify him, crucify him. It was our sins.

It was our sins that put him there, and they were struck by it.

I guess the question is also, are you struck by that?

Does this idea of someone coming to die for you, to be raised,

to take for you what you could never take for yourselves, strike you to the heart?

And the answer that Peter said, because they didn't need an altar call.

That's what I love about this. They were just like, what do we do?

Brothers, what should we do? They were cut to the heart. You can imagine weeping

and tears and crying out.

What do we do? which also should very much be our response to the gospel itself as well.

What do we do? And the answer, Peter says, repent.

Repent and be baptized is what he says. So he tells them very quickly, repent.

What does repent mean? I've touched on it a few times, but repentance isn't

just being stuck to the heart and feeling sorry for something.

A lot of people feel sorry for things that happen. Multiple times,

my children felt bad because they got caught.

Oh no, I know I'm going to get a spanking. So we're very sorrowful.

It's not enough to be sorrowful. It's not enough to feel emotions or to feel pain.

That's not repentance. That's a part of it.

Repentance involves sorrow that leads to change.

It's not even just sorrow that I got caught or sorrow that I'm embarrassed or

embarrassment in general. You feel bad.

Almost everyone who's sitting in prison feels some sorrow, some remorse, some emotions.

If sorrow alone was all you needed for repentance, then Judas is in heaven.

I wondered that too when I read Judas. It says Judas felt remorse, very powerful.

He wished he wouldn't have done what he did, but he didn't go to Jesus Christ.

He didn't go to God. He went to the Sanhedrin and tried to get the money back.

And in the end, his sorrow did

not lead to repentance. His sorrow led to self-pity and he killed himself.

His sorrow led to despair. The sorrow that Peter is preaching and preaching

to all of us is that sorrow leads to repentance and salvation.

It's connected to the motive. Why are you sorry? You should ask your children that.

We did, oh, I'm so sorry. Are you going to spank me?

I'm so sorry. Why are you sorry?

And then you have this whole process of how we work through repentance.

Sorrow leads to us to confess.

Sorrow has to have a reference point. And it's not us. It's God.

God is the reference point. So when we're sorrowful for something we've done

wrong, we have to confess it.

And the word is homologeo. It literally means to say the same.

The same as what? The same as God.

I don't know how many, I'm trying to avoid the whole make everything about Charlie

Kirk this week, but it's on my mind.

I don't know how many tweets, people getting fired and then,

oh, I'm sorry I made fun of someone dying because it was an inappropriate time. What?

It's not sorrow and that's not repentance. I'm sorry I got caught.

I wish I wouldn't have made it public. something. That's not sorrow.

Sorrow that leads to repentance is sorrow that causes us to confess what God says.

We and all of us, all of our children, when they do something wrong,

when they lie, they should say, I lied.

When they stole, they should say, I stole and God doesn't want me to steal.

And I'm sorry for that because I've offended God.

The reference point is absolutely critical. And if we do confess our sins,

praise be to God, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

That's what the people were experiencing in this sermon. That's what we should

experience when we confront the reality of what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross.

There's even a section of a song. It was my sins that held him there.

Our sins placed him on the cross. Sorrow is not enough. To be sorry for your

sins. All right, I'll test you children for your children's catechism.

Because I'll be asking you little people when you come into our office for an

interview for Communicate membership, what does it mean to repent? Get ready for this.

I'm a good teacher. I'm already telling you what your exam is going to be.

And you at least need to know what the little children's catechism says,

where it says to be sorry for your sin, to hate and forsake it because it's displeasing to God.

Repentance is a remorse and a sorrow because you've offended God to confess your sins.

And it also includes a turning around, a complete change of mind,

a complete change of direction where you once lied.

Let him who lied no longer lie, but let him speak the truth.

Let him who stole now labor and give to those who have need.

It's a turning away from the sin and a turning unto Christ and his word.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us

of all unrighteousness.

One of the most central differences between simple remorse and true repentance

is the reference point. It is Christ Jesus.

Sorry that I did that. It was a wrong thing to do. Here's what I did and I'm going to stop it.

Are you repentant? This isn't just, I think it was Martin Luther that said,

repentance is not a one-time action that leads us to Christ.

Repentance is a lifetime of repentance.

It's a lifetime of constantly being reflected on what we're doing and how we're

living and where we're going and having the reference point of Jesus Christ

and his work and his life.

And from that reference point, constantly being sorry for our sins,

constantly repenting, and constantly coming to the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sorrow. We actually should have that too. I know we're Presbyterians.

We had a few of you doing that today. Clap your hands. We don't clap our hands very much.

We hardly ever cry in public. But you see these people, they're crying.

They're sorrowful and they're crying out. It's an emotion that moves you inside.

Again, it's not just mere emotion, but emotion with a reference point in Christ

and his work and his word.

I have sinned. I'm sorry. I deserve what Christ took for me, and I'm going to change.

Judas went to the wrong people to seek renewal and forgiveness.

The Pharisees rejected him. They told him, deal with it.

That's what our culture would say. You're sorry, deal with it.

And in despair, he threw the money at them and killed himself.

His sorrow was a self-centered despair.

Turning inward in remorse led only to further despair and no relief.

When we're confronted with what Jesus Christ has done on the cross,

his love, his crucifixion, his resurrection, his death for our sins,

there should be sorrow, but it should be a sorrow that leads not to despair, but to hope.

Because as Peter said in this sermon, everyone who calls upon the name of the

Lord will be saved. Amen? Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the preaching of our apostolic father,

Peter, whose words moved thousands that day and whose words also move us this morning.

We thank you, Lord, for the love of Jesus Christ displayed in his crucifixion,

willingly walking his whole life towards that cross,

willingly taking up that cross, willingly giving his life for us because he loved us.

Lord, we pray this morning that our church would be a church that's filled with

the same kind of sorrow and remorse and repentance for sin and also leading

us to joy and hope in Christ.

Cause us, Lord, by your words to constantly be repenting and constantly be driven

to the cross of Christ and to the hope that we now celebrate in his supper.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.