Acts 2:37-41 - Hearts Cut Open, Lives Made New

Turn to Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

We're back in our study to the book of Acts.

A couple of weeks of having others share with us, and I was encouraged by those, was able to hear David right here live, and then listen to the recording of Banu from last week.

We are back in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The text for this morning comes from verses 37 through verse 41.

Acts 2, 37 to 41.

This is what Holy Scripture says.

When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what should we do?

Peter replied, 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.

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, saying, Be saved from this corrupt generation.

So those who accepted his message were baptized.

And that day about 3,000 people were added to them.

Lord, we seek your help again.

We can't pray often enough.

We can't express our dependence on you too much.

And we need the same spirit that was bringing conviction and renewal these thousands of years ago.

We need that same spirit to work among us today.

So we're pleading with you, O Spirit of God, to come.

In the name of Jesus Christ, for the glory of God, we ask these things.

Amen.

The Lord Jesus Christ says something incredibly sobering in Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

Listen to what he says there.

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?

Then I will announce to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me.

According to Jesus, there are many people who say they're Christians.

They might even to some degree believe that they're Christians, but they're not.

They don't know the Lord in a personal and saving way.

And that brings up a very important question.

What is real Christianity?

What does it mean?

What does it look like to be truly converted, to know Jesus in that personal and saving way?

We must embrace real Christianity.

And our passage today in Acts gives us a picture of what real Christianity looks like, of what true conversion looks like.

We have clearly the Spirit of God at work in our text and bringing people to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So this passage in Acts is not a complete picture of all that real Christianity is.

We need the whole Bible for that, but it's an important picture.

So if we're going to embrace real Christianity, we're going to look at this passage.

I want to give us three words to think about.

Conviction, that's the first word, reception, that's the second word, and recognition.

If we're going to embrace real Christianity, let's think about those three words: conviction, reception, and recognition.

And we'll look at the text starting with that first word, conviction.

That's the first thing we see in verse 37.

Look there in your Bibles.

When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart.

Real conviction is a heart piercing that's based on the message of the Bible.

When they heard this, it says, they were pierced to the heart.

When they heard what?

Well, when they heard the message Peter had just been preaching, the Bible message.

The Bible is the thing God normally uses to bring conviction.

I'm going to be making some clarifications today.

Not this, this.

Here's an initial clarification.

Merely feeling bad is not necessarily biblical conviction.

Biblical conviction should include that, but it's not merely feeling bad.

Let me give you an example.

In my basement, the laundry room has a low doorframe.

It's lower than my head, so I have to duck.

You know where this is going.

He knows where this is going.

More than once, with a basket full of laundry, I've either forgotten to duck or I thought I ducked, but I didn't duck enough and I smacked my head on the doorframe.

I feel bad.

I think, Micah, you're an idiot.

You need to change your ways.

That in and of itself is not necessarily biblical conviction.

Now that's a silly example, but we can give more serious examples.

If you go home and find a note from your spouse that they are leaving you, that that should bring some kind of heart piercing.

But where does that intersect with the message of the Bible?

Or you might have woken up yesterday morning and hung over again.

And you felt horrible.

And you thought, this is messing up my job, and I need to turn over a new leaf.

We applaud that desire.

We wish you the best.

But what Acts 2 is talking about is more than just feeling bad.

People of all religious persuasions or lack thereof can feel bad.

Here, they're pierced to the heart from Peter's message.

So let's take a little time to review Peter's message.

It's been a few weeks.

Let's go back, look at verse 15 of chapter 2.

There, Peter begins his message by explaining what is happening with the outpouring of the Spirit, and then he goes on to quote the prophet Joel and announce the fulfillment of what Joel said.

Pause right there.

He's giving a Bible message.

This is what Scripture says.

Now it's being fulfilled.

Look at the Bible.

It's based on the Bible.

Then, verse 22, Peter moves on to speak about Jesus.

Whole Bible's about Jesus.

So it's hard to give a Bible message without talking about Jesus.

And Peter says in verse 23, God had a plan for Christ to be crucified.

And the very people who crucified Jesus were lawbreakers, the very kind of people that Peter's speaking to here in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Then Peter announces that Jesus is risen, he's the promised Messiah, he's reigned at God's right hand, he's triumphed over his enemies.

And then in verse 36, Peter brings that Bible message home by telling his audience that the very person they crucified is now Lord of all.

So Peter does pick up on something wrong that they've done, but he uses the Bible to show them how they've sinned not just by making a mistake, they've sinned against the Lord of all who is at God's right hand.

The conviction that leads to real Christianity is not just, I've made some mistakes in life.

It's I've sinned against God Almighty and He stands against me.

Think about it this way.

Who's the one bringing the conviction here in Acts 2?

It's the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit falls on these people, they don't erupt in fits of laughter.

They're pierced to the heart, the text says.

John 16, 8, Jesus says the Holy Spirit will convict the world about sin and righteousness and judgment.

And we see that happening right here in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Now, who wrote the scripture?

Holy men spoke as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit.

So the Spirit that brings conviction gave us this word.

It makes perfect sense that he's going to normally want to use this word to bring conviction to our hearts about how we've sinned against the Lord.

Let me go back to some of those examples I gave.

God's word says, You should worship and serve the Lord only.

The alcoholic who can say, you know, I've been worshiping this substance.

I haven't been worshiping the God who made me.

I see the wrong I've done in substituting something else for God.

Now we're starting to smell something more like conviction, biblical conviction.

The man who can say, God says for husbands to love their wives, and I've been neglecting my wife.

And, you know, I've I've actually been neglecting not just God's plan, I've been neglecting God.

And I need to have my relationship restored to God.

Now we have something that sounds and feels a lot more like conviction from scripture.

Maybe you're here and you say, Micah, if I'm being honest, I don't really have anything in my life to have this heart piercing about.

Not under the influence of substances, I have a happy marriage.

Sure, I've got to apologize to people here and there, but I this isn't really for me.

If that's you, then you haven't yet fully grasped the nature of sin.

It's about who we are, not just the occasional wrong things that we do.

And it goes down to the very heart.

Jesus could say, You've heard it say, Thou shalt not kill.

I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother in his heart has already committed murder.

It's a heart issue.

The Bible says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

So listen to messages about the Bible that will expose your sin and not just tell you you're a wonderful person and everything's great.

Holy Spirit, grant us conviction.

Real Christianity always involves conviction.

Real Christianity also must include reception.

That's the second thing we see right here.

Verse 41, you can look there in chapter two.

So those who accepted his message were baptized, accepted Peter's message.

It's not enough to simply sense the piercing conviction of the Holy Spirit.

We have to respond by accepting that message, agreeing with God and trusting in what he says and who the Lord Jesus Christ is alone.

In Acts chapter 7, we're going to come there in a few months, Stephen preaches a sermon.

Acts 7 · chapter mention

And at the end of the sermon, he says to the crowd that's listening to him, You are always resisting the Holy Spirit, just like your ancestors.

The Holy Spirit probed, touched generations, pushed him aside.

And when the crowd hears Stephen, they don't respond in the way that the crowd here in Acts 2 responds to Peter.

When they hear Stephen, they become enraged and stone him to death.

Why such violence?

If Stephen's just making up a story about who Jesus is in the resurrection, if he's making up a story, they can safely go on their way.

They are enraged because they're convicted, but they don't receive the message.

They reject the messenger, but more importantly, they reject the God who was speaking through Stephen.

When you're pierced in your heart, receive all of what God says.

And that does begin with a message of condemnation.

The Lord does stand opposed to all the wicked, and that's all of us.

But this is where the good news of the gospel comes in.

The message is not, in the end, one of condemnation, but for those who embrace the free gift of God, it's salvation.

The Lord God sent his one and only Son to live and die in the place of sinners.

He lived a perfectly righteous life.

None of us can ever do that.

He took the penalty that we deserved.

He rose again, the payment's been completed, and we have left nothing but to accept the free gift of salvation.

So receive that message today.

If you haven't received it before, receive it today.

If you're trusting in Christ, keep on trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In verse 38, Peter emphasizes repentance.

Reception must include repentance.

Repentance is simply turning from sin to Jesus.

I'll say that again.

Repentance is turning away from sin to Jesus.

Some people like the idea of adding Jesus into their lives, seeing what that might do, but they don't actually want to turn away from their sin.

That's not real reception of the Lord Jesus.

If you're not viewing your sin the way Jesus views it, then it doesn't seem like you actually want to receive him.

You want Jesus on your terms, but that's not reception in the way that the Bible speaks of it here.

1 Thessalonians 1, 8 and 9, for the word of the Lord rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has gone out.

Therefore, we don't need to say anything.

For they themselves report what kind of reception we had from you, how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.

There's Paul writing to the Christians of Thessalonia and saying, This is real.

And I know it's real because you received it in a way that you turn from idols to trust the true and living God.

Okay, so another clarification at this point.

I'm not saying that you have to get your life all cleaned up in order to qualify yourself for salvation.

We're saved by God's grace through faith, not our own doing.

We sing that song: if you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all.

So come to Jesus, come with your sin, come ready to lay down your sin.

It's not about being qualified enough, it's about a willingness to trust and obey.

Andrew wonderfully brought out in his scripture reading that truly receiving the Lord is not just acknowledging that that sounds good, that sounds right.

It's resting and relying on Jesus.

It's trusting in him.

And if you're trusting in him, you'll want to turn away from all that displeases him.

I don't know what each one of you is battling today.

Maybe there's some of you here, and you feel like I've tried to receive Christ, and it seems like it just never works.

And maybe you're fearful that I haven't felt enough conviction.

I haven't turned from my sin enough.

It's not about the amount.

It's about the person you're relying on.

Receive his promise.

His mercy is there for you.

You can repent and believe this day because his promises are sure.

It's not about the perfection of our repentance, but it is about the sincerity of our turning and trusting in Jesus Christ.

Verse 39 says, the promise is for you.

It's God's word.

And notice how generous God is, verse 39.

The promise is for you.

It's for your children.

It's for all who are far off.

Children here today, listen up.

It's been great having all of the children with us throughout the whole service over the summer.

Children, you've got an amazing opportunity from the Lord.

You have the gospel set before you week after week in this church, day after day in your homes.

What are you going to do with that?

Don't despise God's grace.

Listen and receive.

Maybe you're here today and you think, well, I'm not a child, but I am far away from the Lord.

You're not too far away from his grace.

Come and receive it.

Come and trust in him.

Promise is for you.

But there might also be some of you here today, and your battle is there really is no battle.

You assume, well, I'm a Christian because, you know, I'm I'm I believe in God and I'm not a Muslim, and I live in America, and Jesus seems like a pretty nice guy, but you've never actually repented.

You've never turned from your sins.

That's not real Christianity.

You too can turn and accept the Lord Jesus Christ today.

There's some churches that they scrutinize the quality of someone's repentance more than they preach the life-giving mercy of Jesus Christ.

And that's a danger.

But I think it's a danger, probably in more churches, that they just don't talk about repentance.

They want to receive people, they don't want to offend people.

So at best, they talk about sins that are not a problem in our culture.

And sometimes they'll say things like, well, nobody's perfect, we don't judge here.

And yes, there's a way you can say those things, and it's true, but there's a tell when you never ever speak about repentance, and the Bible does it over and over again.

Peter's message couldn't be more clear.

Repent.

That's part of what real accepting looks like.

The gospel's free, it's not cheap.

Jesus paid for your sins.

So take your sins to Christ and leave them there.

Last element we'll look at this morning.

Real Christianity leads to recognition.

Verse 41.

So those who accepted his message were baptized.

And that day, about 3,000 people were added to them.

People who have this conviction, who receive the message, they publicly showcase that embrace of the Lord Jesus Christ through baptism.

Baptism is a gift from God.

It's a wonderful way in which God reminds us that He's promised to cleanse us and purge us and forgive us with the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's also a way for us to testify before others that we are trusting in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.

Let me again clarify that recognition that I'm trusting in Christ alone, that I'm being received and counted among his people, that doesn't save you.

There are some traditions that teach that baptism is the thing, the mechanical act, the work that justifies you before God.

That's wrong.

We're saved by grace through faith, not from ourselves, not by works that none of us can boast, Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

So if you think you're a Christian merely because you've been baptized, you're mistaken.

Don't read verse 38 and think that baptism causes the forgiveness of sins.

It doesn't cause it, but it is an important picture of it.

And we get to see and celebrate what God has done as we see people baptized.

Without personal conviction, without personal reception of the message, it doesn't matter how much water has been sprinkled on you or how much water you've been dunked in, you're not a real Christian.

But while we're on that note, you did come to a Baptist church this morning.

Why don't we baptize babies?

Can babies feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the need to embrace Jesus Christ?

Maybe.

I don't want to limit God.

But I do know that I've never had a baby get up and tell me that they're feeling conviction of the Holy Spirit and that they're receiving.

I can't verify that.

The pattern here in Acts is conviction, reception, and then recognition.

Same pattern in Matthew 28.

We'll see it again in the book of Acts.

In verse 38, Peter tells those listeners who are receiving the message to be baptized.

Verse 41, the passage says, those who accepted the message were baptized.

You don't baptize yourself.

Have you ever thought about that?

Now, we don't baptize people against their will.

This isn't natural libre.

We want people to actually want to be baptized.

But it's one thing for you to say, I'm a follower of the Lord Jesus, and I want to confess him publicly.

And that's another thing for God's people to say, yes, we want to recognize you as a follower of Christ and baptize you into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And of course, we can't perfectly see the heart, but we've got a solemn obligation and responsibility to recognize and publicly affirm as best we can who are these people marked out as those belonging to God.

Look at the final part of this recognition at the end of verse 41.

It says that day about 3,000 people were added to them.

Were added to who?

There's some kind of existing group there.

Turn back to chapter one or look back.

Verse 14 tells us they were all continually united in prayer, along with the women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brother.

So there's a group of believers who are there united for prayer.

Then look at verse 15 of Acts 1.

In those days, Peter stood up among the brothers and sisters.

The number of people who were together was about 120 among the brothers and sisters.

So they're recognizing themselves as part of the family of God, and they're meeting together to hear teaching and to worship and pray.

What does that sound like?

Sounds like a church.

And then here in Acts chapter 2, the people that hear the gospel message and embrace it and receive it are baptized and added to that group, the church.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

They're publicly numbered among the people of God.

Where the body of Christ on earth and churches like ours get to be visible displays of the glory of God and of changed lives and of belonging to the Lord Jesus.

What a privilege that is.

Once baptized, always baptized.

But maybe for you, the church where you were baptized, that was years ago, and you're numbered among the people of God there, and then you moved away.

So you couldn't really be with that church.

And maybe you've kind of lost that connection.

You know, you visited this church, uh, you visited that church, you visited Internet Church, you visited NFL pregame church, but you're not really publicly numbered among the people of God.

Join a church.

That's a wonderful way to live out the application of this passage.

And once again, being a member of a church doesn't save you.

Not at all.

But it's a wonderful way for other Christians to be able to know you and care about you.

It's a wonderful way for the watching world to see who represents Jesus.

It's a wonderful way for you to say, I want my heart commitment to Christ to be reflected in a public commitment to his people and to his body.

I'm Lil Hesant to say this.

It sounds like a shameless plug.

We've got our membership class coming up in a couple of weeks.

Oh boy, here it is.

I listened to public radio, I've got to hear the membership drive.

Now I'm in church, I've got to hear the membership drive.

We sincerely want to help you follow Jesus.

It's not about our numbers.

There's many faithful churches in the area.

Uh, we're not trying to hit 3,000 new members by the end of the year, we're gonna fold.

We just want to help you follow the Lord Jesus.

So come with your questions and let us talk with you and pray with you and help you as best as we can.

Wouldn't it be amazing, though, if all of the gospel proclaiming churches in Metro New York, if by the end of the year there were 3,000 people coming, confessing, that would be incredible.

And God still saves people, he still does it.

We know that he can't.

Real Christianity is a glorious thing because it's God who's at work.

And uh we need him and we need his spirit, and we see here the spirits surely at work.

Conviction, receptance, recognition.

So far on this series in Acts, we've done a fair amount of zooming out, trying to see the big picture, and that's good, that's necessary, that's important.

What's happening at Pentecost is the fulfillment of God's promises, the inaugurated reign of the Lord, the Old Testament promises coming to pass, the last days beginning, those are big things that take us away from ourselves and our own lives to God's plan and pattern of redemption in the world.

That's amazingly important.

In this message, I've zoomed in a little more.

What does the Spirit's work look like in your heart and in your heart?

What does real Christianity look like in this church, in that church?

But as we're closing today, I want to I want to step back and zoom out again.

We don't know how many people will be converted in this church or any church in the next year.

But it is interesting in verse 41 that Luke tells us about 3,000 were added to the group.

That's not common in the New Testament.

Read through Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, all these letters to the churches.

Do they recount the numbers in those other letters?

No.

That's not to say they didn't care or they didn't know who was a part of the church.

Corinthians speaks of insiders and outsiders, but we don't get the number report here in Acts.

Luke is inspired to say there was 3,000 people in one day.

Remember that Pentecost reverses the Tower of Babel.

And the Old Testament people exalt themselves in pride, and God scatters them and scatters the languages.

Now at Pentecost, through this miracle of interpretation and understanding, the languages are brought back together.

3,000 added in one day.

Remember what happens on Mount Sinai when the old covenant is first given to the people?

And the very first commands worship the Lord your God.

Don't make any graven images of them.

And the people say, Yes.

Oh, the Lord has spoken.

Yes, we're real Christians.

And then immediately, what happens?

The golden calf.

And then what happens?

It's not as familiar to some of us, perhaps.

Moses tells the priests to go out among the people and bring God's judgment to bear.

And it says, after the slaughter, three thousand fell dead among the people that day.

You see what God is doing in history to bring glory to himself?

Judgment is giving way to salvation.

The mountain of trembling and fear has become Mount Zion, the place of festal celebration.

And there are these specific priests that are called to bring God's sword in that day in the old covenant.

Now, we who know the Lord are a kingdom of priests, and we're called and have the opportunity to go out not with the sword, but with a message of salvation.

So don't want you to leave today mainly fearful, but mainly encouraged.

Let's pray.

Oh Lord, we are so weak.

We don't receive the movements of the Spirit to the degree that we should.

We're not sensitive to Him, but we want the Word to so fill our lives more and more that we're walking in lives of repentance, that we're walking in lives of faith, that we're walking lives in love with your people, in love with your church.

We thank you that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who rules and reigns.

And so our hope is not in ourselves, but our hope is in him, and it's a great hope.

It's a sure hope, it's a confident hope.

We're so glad for his promises.

So we pray that even as we sing this morning and leave, that our singing will be a testimony of our desire to receive anew your promises of cleansing, your promises of forgiveness, your promises of life that's meaningful because it's a life found through our identity and union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Jesus' name, amen.