Peter's Sermon

Today's text comes from the Book of Acts, chapter two, verses fourteen through forty-one.

But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them.

Men of Judea and all 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 is 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 prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy.

And I will show wonders in the heavens above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.

And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Men of Israel, hear these words.

Jesus of Nazaret 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 raised him up, loosing 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 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.

You will make me full of gladness with your presence.

Brothers, I may 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 one of his descendants on the 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 to my Lord, 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 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.

For the promise is for you, and for your children, and for all who are far off, every one whom the Lord 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 there were added that day about three thousand souls.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Good morning.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's great to be gathered together with you all.

It's uh happy race day, everyone.

The um uh uh I wanted to say before I get started, today it kicks off uh the foundations class right after church this morning.

If you're just thinking about uh joining that, I just let this be the final encouragement that you need.

This is going to be a really, really helpful class.

I think if you're uh a young Christian, a recent convert, if you are just coming back to your faith, it's coming back into a season of uh exploring your faith, if you feel like uh you had a faith that was sort of simple and easy to understand, but then over the past several years, uh, I don't know, maybe since like, I'll pick a random number, like 2020, you know, you you felt like, where am I?

What is this?

What does this mean?

What is what how does this fit anymore in the world that we're in?

This class I think will be so, so helpful in providing that that sort of return to shore up your foundation.

So I want to encourage you to stick around after church today, participate in that class.

Let's pray and we'll move into our text.

Holy Father, we praise you that you are our strong foundation.

Lord, that we can have houses that are built on the solid rock of Jesus Christ.

Lord, as we hear this first sermon preached after the coming of the Holy Spirit, this explanation of what it means that the Holy Spirit has come, what it means that Jesus Christ is Lord and Christ, and that in him we find forgiveness of sins.

Lord, I pray that that that we would be cut to the heart.

In the same way that the 3,000 that were listening to Peter's sermon on Pentecost were cut to the heart, and that we might receive afresh this wonderful news that we can repent and that Jesus, you are there for us, and that we find forgiveness in you, that there is forgiveness and reconciliation to God in our Lord Jesus Christ, that we might receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Lord, we praise you for this unthinkably good news, this uh amazingly glorious proclamation.

And Lord, I pray that we would hear it and be reminded of it this morning by the same spirit that empowered Peter's preaching, by the same spirit that cut to the heart his listeners, Lord, would that same spirit attend us this morning?

We lift that up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we pick up right where we left off last week here in the book of Acts, and what we saw last week was the Holy Spirit fall upon the apostles as they were gathered together, and the 120 that were gathered together with the apostles, and the Holy Spirit falls upon them, and there's this very dramatic scene.

There's this wind that rushes into the house that they were gathered into.

There's flaming tongues of fire that come and apportion themselves and rest upon the apostles.

And then they all start speaking in the native languages of all the people that had gathered together for Pentecost.

And so everybody is hearing in their own native language, uh a vast diversity of languages were gathered together at Pentecost.

And they're hearing in their own native tongue, described by the apostles, the mighty works of God.

And there's this wonder amidst this dramatic scene, because although there is uh a sort of wonder at being able to hear the mighty works of God described in each of their own native languages, the event does not speak for itself.

Just witnessing this glorious event, it does not explain what this means, what exactly happened here.

What does it mean that we're hearing the mighty works of God described to us in our own languages?

And the crowd then begins to sort of grope for this answer.

And they grope for the answer like this.

This is the end of last week's portion, which wasn't read this week.

Acts 2, 12-13 says, and all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?

But others, mocking, said, They are filled with new wine.

So everybody's hearing each other explain the mighty works of God in their own languages.

There's this dramatic event that they had just borne witness to, of the rushing wind and the fire.

And the crowd is wondering, what does this mean?

And what does this mean is that is a question that you ask when you've encountered an event, you've encountered a circumstance, and it doesn't fit within your normal take on what you thought reality was.

You have this now outlier data point, which does not corroborate with any else of anything else that you've experienced in your life.

And so there's this strange event, and they're wondering, what does this mean?

And when we have events like that, when we have, it can come in terrible forms, it can come in the form of a diagnosis that you didn't expect.

And all of a sudden it comes tearing into your life, and it doesn't fit with any of what your plans you thought they might be.

It can come in the form of a job loss.

It can come in the form of a promotion that you sought out, and then it ended up being a worse situation than you had expected.

It can come in the form of a realized dream that you finally receive of a marriage that you longed for, and then now that you're in it, it doesn't fit with the story in the way that you had expected it to.

Now, these moments where we have experiences that do not fit within the stories that we are living in, within the expectations of what we have, these are wonderful and terrifying events.

These are or hor the these are like horror stories in a sense.

You know, when you watch a horror movie, which you may do, then you'll see you'll what happens is there's this way that you think things work.

And then all of a sudden there's a there's a shadow that moves across the window.

And the shadow does not fit in with the way that you thought the world was, with the way that you thought things would would take place when you moved into this old storied Victorian mansion that looks terrifying, you know.

But you got such but, you know, because of interest rates, you had to buy a fixer-upper.

And interest rates are the real horror story.

They don't fit in with your life's plan.

But that's a terrifying, a terrific event, an event of terror.

And so it makes you ask, what does this mean?

What does this mean for the rest of my life?

What does this mean for the story that I had been living in?

And you have an option when you have an event like that that you can encounter.

And one of the options is seized by the mockers in the crowd.

And they say, This wonderful experience that we've borne witness to, here's one way of interpreting it.

They're drunk.

What have you never seen drunk people?

They think they understand all kinds of things they aren't really understanding, and they just kind of babble in these things, and everybody here is obviously just drunk.

You know, they're filled with new wine.

That's one way of addressing it.

And a way of addressing a rogue data point like that that you're unable to integrate into your story is just to render it absurd.

And that's what they're saying when they're saying everybody's drunk at this miracle that they're witnessing.

Because uh a drunk person, well, we have a category for that.

And what you can do with the things that drunk people say is you can say, who cares what they say?

They're just drunk.

You know, they can even say later, like, ah, come on, who cares what I said then?

You know, I was drunk when I said that.

It doesn't matter.

It's a way of just rendering the whole experience absurd.

And that's what an outlier data point is.

It's it's an absurdity.

And one way of dealing with a situation like that is to say, well, isn't it all absurd?

Isn't all of life just strange and absurd?

And aren't there just terrible things that happen?

And doesn't nothing mean anything?

Isn't there no meaning to anything in life?

And we can render it all just absurd.

And there are ways that we're able to do that when we confront, you know, the these terrors that come into our life.

Is we can we can just all put it, one way of coping with that is to put it all under the category of the absurd.

We have all kinds of words for doing that.

The words that they chose for this, that the mockers chose for this, is that they are filled with new wine.

You know, we can be confronted with terrible data and say it's just a conspiracy theory.

You know, it's a way of saying it's not worth looking into.

It doesn't really matter.

There's nothing, there's nothing actually there.

You know, there's there's nothing really there.

That's what they're trying to do with this miracle.

That's the that's what miracles are like.

That's what revelations are like.

They're they're they they are not just plain to you.

They do not thrust themselves upon you in such a way that that they're undeniable.

They're always deniable.

And the way that we deny them, those situations, those circumstances that we we think might speak for themselves, is we can just say it's just absurd.

It's just they're just drunk.

It it appears like there's something meaningful here, but it's not actually meaningful.

You have those, you have that same option with any of these rogue moments that come into your life, any of the miracles, even that you experience, you're always able to say, Well, it was just happenstance.

You know, they they healed and got better, but lots of people heal and get better.

We haven't borne witness to a miracle.

You know, I we were on the limit and we we were in this, you know, trap of debt, and it seemed like we were gonna finally hit the bottom and our life would collapse.

And it didn't.

It didn't, but that's not a miracle, right?

That's just the the way things happen sometimes.

You always have the option of saying it's just absurd.

But what Peter does here is he provides exactly what's needed when they witness this miracle.

And what's needed for all of us when we witness a miracle is for somebody to stand up and rightly interpret it for us.

And that's what the Holy Spirit empowers Peter to do.

He is able to look at the very same data that they all see.

The speaking in other languages, the wind that came rushing in, the fire that came down from the heavens.

And he's able to look at that same event.

And by the power of the Holy Spirit, he's able to say, this isn't meaningless.

This isn't just a strange meteorological event with some fire that happens to maybe the fire one that might thrust itself upon you a bit more.

But the the speaking in languages or that sort of thing, this is uh this is not just some absurdity that doesn't matter and doesn't uh uh map on to any real meaning.

Instead, he's able to offer by the Holy Spirit the true interpretation of the story.

And the true interpretation of the story, what it will show all the listeners is that what the history that they thought they were living in was wrong.

And there's a true history that they are living in.

But the revelation of the true history that they are living in reveals a terror that can hardly be looked at.

But on the other side of that terror that can hardly be looked at is a glory that is unimaginably good.

And that's what Peter shares in this first sermon.

I was um talking with Blake before he came up and read the sermon today, and I was like, I'm just preaching on a sermon, and the sermon that Peter gave is very good.

And so this is basically just like a cover sermon.

And Blake was like, yeah, like what are you gonna do?

Improve it?

What are you just gonna improve upon Peter's sermon at Pentecost?

And no, I'm not going to improve upon it.

But hopefully, we're able to access this morning the glory of what Peter proclaims.

Because it's the same words that he said, it's the same Holy Spirit that applies it to our hearts.

So I hope that we can look at it this morning.

And Peter begins by standing up amidst the crowd, and he says to he he gathers all of their attention.

He says, Men of Judea, listen up.

Listen up, I can explain this.

And he starts with what I think is a joke.

He starts and he says, I they're not drunk.

And he doesn't say, they're not drunk, we aren't that type of, we're not like, you know, that's not like us.

He says, we're not drunk, it's 9 a.m.

It's 9 a.m.

Which means it's a perfect way that Peter does this, I think, because he he makes light of the objection, and he's he's saying, you know, I know the things that you're seeing here, they seem absurd, right?

We're all speaking in each other's languages magically.

There's this great wind of the this fall of the Holy Spirit that's taking place.

We don't know how that's happening, but it's not as absurd as being drunk at 9 a.m.

You know, like let's let's be fair about this.

That that would be absurd.

Instead, he's able to step in and explain that this is exactly what the scriptures had said would take place.

And so this is something worth noting.

When filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter's first instinct becomes to go to the scriptures.

The Holy Spirit always works through his word.

The Holy Spirit, when when what he draws to mind is the word of God, so that we might have his understanding.

Peter doesn't begin innovating at the fall of the Holy Spirit.

Peter begins by rightly interpreting and applying the word of God to the present moment that they are in.

That's what the Holy Spirit empowers us to do.

And so he takes them to Joel chapter 2, and he says, this is exactly what was laid out in Joel's prophecy.

Joel 2 · chapter mention

And so he he recites to them in Acts 2.17, this is quote, this is Peter quoting Joel chapter 2.

Joel 2 · chapter mention

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 prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

He says, Look, just as it says here, the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy.

And Peter says, Look around.

This is that day.

You're in that day.

He goes on, quoting Joel, and I will show wonders in the heavens above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.

And in verse 21, continuing quoting Joel, it says, And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

This is the whole sermon.

All of Peter's sermon is in this text of Joel, and he'll explain this text of Joel to us as the sermon continues.

But you can see what he's saying is, just as it was written in the scriptures, look around.

You can use your eyes and tell.

What do we see?

The Holy Spirit has been poured out on all flesh.

We see the sons and daughters of God are prophesying, they're declaring the mighty works of God.

We see these wonders from the heavens that have taken place.

This is the day of the Lord.

This is the great and magnificent day that was prophesied.

So no longer is this strange event some rogue absurdity that doesn't fit into any of your experiences or any of the experience of any of the experience of the people that are hearing Peter speak.

Now it is in the true story.

He is showing them you are experiencing the day that was foretold in the scriptures.

Just look around, the Holy Spirit has been poured out.

So how Peter interprets this and how he opens up the scriptures to the hearers is he immediately brings them to Jesus of Nazareth because he knows that they won't be able to understand what has taken place here if they don't understand how it relates to Jesus of Nazareth.

Now we have to remember where we are.

We're only 50 days after the crucifixion.

And we're in the same city that it took place.

This was the news of the city.

This was the drama that took place at the Passover that this group was previously there to celebrate only 50 days earlier.

They know who Jesus of Nazareth is.

We know that they do because do you remember what it was like when Jesus of Nazareth entered Jerusalem only 50 days before?

The crowds gathered.

They were celebrating him.

They were chanting together Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

They were calling him the Son of David.

They were reciting his name and chanting it together, only to see him crucified, and to chant against him later that he might be crucified.

Only a couple of days after that.

So he brings them to Jesus of Nazareth and he explains to them that Jesus, he is the one who came.

He is the one who was attended by signs and wonders that God did through him.

They've seen the signs and wonders that Jesus had done in his ministry.

And then he shows them exactly what happened to Jesus.

He reminds them of what the story of Jesus of Nazareth was in Acts 2, 23 through 24.

He says, This Jesus, by the way, it's worth saying, to mention, to begin this sermon by saying Jesus of Nazareth, it's one of those things where everyone's on edge now.

You have to feel in the room that everybody is now on edge.

We can't really talk about him.

We can't really talk about that event.

It would be like me beginning this sermon and saying, Donald J.

Trump, can we talk about him?

You guys, can we talk about him and keep our wits about us?

I bet we can't.

You know, we it's like, take your positions.

That's what he says when he says, Jesus of Nazareth.

The whole room is like, oh man, am I gonna have to fight about this with my family?

Like I did at Passover.

This is this is this is that type of divisive character.

The stakes are high because all of their leaders who have the power were the ones who crucified Jesus.

Many of them joined in to celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus.

Others of them lamented and mourned it and are in a state of confusion about who Jesus is.

So you have to hear that that's what's in the room when he immediately brings them to Jesus of Nazareth.

It's not like how we hear it.

We're like, yeah, a sermon from an apostle.

He's gonna talk about Jesus.

This is not, this is a low-risk situation.

No, no.

He is bringing them right out of the gate to the tension point, which is what do you think about this man?

They all have skin in the game for that.

And this is what he says to 23 through 24: this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

It's like, do you want to know what happened there?

They would have been talking about it.

You know, what really happened with that Jesus of Nazareth character?

You know, as we've gotten the reports of what happened at the trial and things, like it does seem like he was a blasphemer.

And it does make sense, like we're we we we've actually been maintaining the purity of our faith as we sought to kill the blasphemer at Passover.

That might have been something that some of them thought to try and integrate this story in some way.

Well, Peter says, here's the matter of fact.

Here's what happened with Jesus of Nazareth, that man, none of us can talk about.

This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

Why is it that Jesus was delivered up to be crucified?

He explains to the listeners, it was the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

Why was Jesus killed?

Because God planned it, he foreknew it, he intended it.

It was the hand and plan of God which led Jesus to the cross.

Says that's why it happened.

This was no outlier, this is no absurdity, this is no mere accident.

God himself intended the crucifixion of his son from eternity past.

It is his definite plan.

And then the second part, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed.

This is what the crowd is hearing.

You crucified and killed him.

How did they do it?

By the hands of lawless men.

They turned him over to Pontius Pilate.

They even they even had somebody else do the dirty work for them.

You killed him, and you used the Romans to do it.

The Jews killed him, and they collaborated with the Gentiles who killed him.

This, however, was the plan of God.

It goes on.

Here's some news for them as this continues.

God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

The rumors were traveling.

Did you hear what they're saying about Jesus of Nazareth, whom we all saw crucified?

Some of this is gonna sound weird.

Some of his apostles, some of his disciples, are saying that he's alive.

The guy that we all saw dead, the one that we know was buried.

Some of them are saying that he's still alive, that they've seen him, that they've eaten with him.

We have to understand how it is that the foreknowledge of God, the plan, the intentions of God works with this terrible evil that we have done.

What's described here is the plan of God was that Jesus would be killed.

But Peter is explaining to the crowd, you are responsible for the death of Jesus of Nazareth.

He lays the responsibility for that on the crowd.

Now, how can this be?

How can it be both?

This is the way that the scriptures describe this.

And just as Joseph says to his brothers when they are seeking his forgiveness at the end of the story of Joseph, and they describe how sorrowful they are for having betrayed Joseph, for having sold their brother into death.

And Joseph says to them, What you intended for evil, God intended for good.

Precisely what happens in the same exact event, in the event of the crucifixion of Jesus, what this, what Peter can look at and say, What you intended for evil in him being crucified, God intended that very same event for good.

The same event.

How can this be?

The way that the Bible describes to us this relationship is this the evil that you do is really yours.

There is real evil in the world.

There is real sin in the world.

You have real freedom to commit real and terrible atrocities.

You have real freedom to sin against the Lord.

But that freedom to sin never overcomes the plan of God.

It always perfectly executes the plan of God.

And that is true in the worst sin, which is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which means it is true of all of yours as well.

They are real evil and they never overcome the plan of God.

They always work out for the good that God intends.

This is a deep mystery.

I'm not able to describe it in any clean way.

I can't make this, you know, map perfectly.

All I can say is that God is the type of God who is able to make creatures like us that have real will, that have real accountability, that can commit real evil things.

And he is the type of God who is so far above creatures like us that by our real will we are never able to thwart the will of God.

And that's shown to us in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

And so, with that understanding that they have committed this real evil, he drops this news.

You think you have something that's difficult to explain in your story, something that's hard to understand, that doesn't fit with the rest of how you thought the world work works.

Well, the man you murdered is still alive.

That's a twist.

That's a wild ending of a movie.

The man you thought was dead, he's still alive.

So now this is the world that they're living in.

The world that they thought they were living in was one of a strange event.

Here's a strange event.

We can all speak each other's languages now, or at least these people can speak our language.

That's a weird event.

Well, what's the explanation of it?

Well, there's a far weirder event.

It's that Jesus, whom you killed, is alive.

And then Peter will go on to explain how these stories connect.

How the story of Pentecost, this weird event, can only be explained by the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

And he does so, of course, by returning to the scriptures.

So he explains them.

He says, listen to this.

In Acts 2, 27 through 28, he quotes Psalm 16.

He says, just as David said in Psalm 16, 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.

You will make me full of gladness with your presence.

He's saying, You remember how you've read Psalm 16?

And they all say, Yeah, yeah, we've read Psalm 16.

He says, You know, David says this.

David says, You will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your holy one see corruption.

That means David is saying, You will not abandon my soul to death.

You will not let your holy one, who they might have thought was David himself, the anointed king of Israel, who is writing this, you will not let your holy one see corruption.

What corruption is, is decomposition.

Your body decomposes when you die.

That's the corruption that's being referred to here.

He's saying, you won't let your holy one see corruption.

And then Peter, for the second time in this sermon, is funny.

And he's funny when he says, whoops.

I'll just read it to you, because I I'm sure he's being funny here.

Brothers, I may 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.

I think he's like, I'm saying a lot of things here that are hard to get your mind around.

But in order for me to interpret this appropriately, you know, it's not controversial for me to say that David died.

David, the guy who says, You will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your holy one see corruption.

Well, guys, he died.

His soul was abandoned to Hades.

His tomb is with us to this day.

His body, David's body, saw corruption.

So how do you think we should interpret this?

He would say to them, he's like, You thought you'd interpreted this well the whole time, but don't you see?

That doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make any sense to think that David was talking about himself.

When he says, You won't abandon my soul to Hades, you won't let your holy one see corruption.

Do you see how grounded and like like grounded in normal reality Peter's interpretation is?

This is the way your Bible interpretation should be.

That's what I'm saying.

It should just be grounded in normal reality stuff.

When you read weird things like you, like David saying, I won't decompose, you should think, yeah, yeah, but but he did.

But he did decompose.

That's the way Peter teaches us to interpret the Bible by the Holy Spirit.

And so what Peter is saying is, you see, he wasn't talking about himself.

He was prophesying by the power of the Holy Spirit that was in David.

He was prophesying to show the one to come, the Messiah who was to come.

And in Acts 2, 30 through 31, this is how Peter interprets it.

He says, Being therefore a prophet, David, speaking of David, David being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set 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.

See, he says, just look, this is what the scriptures have been saying.

David was promised that his offspring would sit on an eternal throne.

And then by the power of the Holy Spirit, he is given this insight into what that might mean.

As David looks down and he says, one of my offspring will sit on an eternal throne.

That means there would be a throne that transcended death, a throne that overcame death itself.

That's an eternal throne.

And looking down at this promise, meditating on this promise, empowered by the Holy Spirit, he's able to say, that means that there will be one whose soul is not given to Hades.

That means that there will be one whose body never faces corruption.

And Peter is saying here, that's Jesus.

This prophecy of David is fulfilled obviously in Jesus Christ.

And so he goes on in verse 33, and he says, 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.

Here is what has happened with Jesus.

This is how he connects them together.

He says, Jesus is that promised one that would sit on an eternal throne that David prophesied about.

And this Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of God.

And he received from the Father, just like he said he would, the promise of the Holy Spirit.

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

So here's the experience of Peter's listeners that day.

They themselves are hearing the proclamation of the Holy Spirit.

They are seeing the Spirit-empowered witnesses to the glories of God in the apostles and amongst the men and women that are with them, who are able to relay miraculously in their own languages the glory of God.

And Peter says, This thing that you are seeing and hearing, this is the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon us.

How is the Holy Spirit poured out upon us?

Jesus, whom you crucified, is the one who was who David prophesied about, and he was raised up to the eternal throne, to the right hand of God the Father, and he was given the Holy Spirit by the Father, so that he might pour his Holy Spirit out upon his people.

What you are seeing is the plain scriptural evidence that you can look at with your own eyes that testify to this: Jesus Christ is Lord.

The one whom you crucified is the Lord of all.

What you should hear is an oracle of Yahweh to my Lord.

Sit at my right hand.

This is kind of hard to understand, so let's try and understand this together.

David is the Lord.

He's the king.

Okay, those are those are interchangeable terms here.

So David is writing this, right?

David is the one saying, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand.

David is the one saying that.

So what David is saying is, there is someone who is my Lord.

David is David the king, is saying, My the Lord Yahweh said to my king.

And all the people of Israel should think, you're king.

You're the king.

Kings are guys that don't have kings over them.

That's what a it's one way to define a king.

If you have a king over you, you can know for certain that you're not a king.

Sorry if you had all find this out this morning.

So what David is saying here is that there is a Lord over him, his Lord.

And what Yahweh says to the Lord over him is this sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

David is looking down through the promise of the generations that will come from him who resolve finally in Jesus Christ.

And God the Father makes this declaration to Jesus Christ, who is the offspring of David, but who is David's Lord, and says, Come sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Jesus Christ is the one who has received all authority in heaven and on earth, because it was given to him by the Father.

He is the one that David is talking about here.

He is the one who receives the oracle from Yahweh, who says, Sit at my right hand.

He is the line of David who sits on the The eternal throne.

What is the eternal throne?

There's not like, it doesn't even make any sense for there to be two eternal thrones.

You know, because then they because then there'd be like thrones.

You know what a throne is?

It's the highest chair.

You know what, you know the chair that sits above the highest chair?

No, you don't.

Because that's not what highest means.

It means that then that would be the throne.

So for there to be two, there's not two eternal thrones.

That doesn't make any sense.

So for him to be seated on the eternal throne means that Jesus Christ is God.

He has all of the authority of God.

So what have we learned today from Peter's sermon?

These strange things that you have witnessed.

What you've witnessed is the prophecy of Joel that was given to us by the Holy Spirit.

And this was able to be given to us because it was given to us by Jesus of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but that was not outside of the plan of God.

It was perfectly within the plan of God, a terrible evil that you did, but it was perfectly within the plan of God.

We know that Jesus lives now because we have witnessed it with our own eyes, and the scriptures testify to it.

Psalm 16, David explains that there will be one who never sees corruption.

You're seeing that now.

Psalm 110, there is one who would be David's Lord, who now sits at the right hand of the Father.

This Jesus has poured out his Holy Spirit just as he promised he would.

What you are looking at now is the declaration of the Lordship of Jesus of Nazareth.

And then so Peter ends it with this conclusive statement, this final revelation of what they can understand from what they've witnessed at Pentecost.

In Acts 2.36, he says, Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

How do you understand this event that you've seen?

Do you remember Jesus of Nazareth?

The man you crucified?

God has made him both Lord and Christ.

The Messiah has come.

He was sent to you.

You killed him.

You chanted for his death.

The one that you crucified, the story of Jesus of Nazareth that you thought was over because you saw him dead.

God has made him both Lord and Christ.

What do you do with news like that?

Think of the condemnation that falls on the crowd.

Think as they remember their own chanting for his crucifixion.

Think of all that they didn't say with regards to Jesus of Nazareth.

And it settles in on their hearts.

It is a terrible revelation.

A horrifying revelation.

It is more terrifying, more of an outlier data point than them all being able to understand the others in their own language.

Here's the revelation.

You are so corrupt in your own heart that you would participate in and seek the death of your Creator.

That's who you are.

That's what you're like.

This is, Peter stands up, and you can imagine a situation like this.

Like, imagine like a bunch of files were released.

Have you ever heard of files being released?

And he turns, and it's like this great reveal, you know, this terrible reveal.

And he stands in front of the crowd and he stands up there and he starts reading names of what's released in these files.

And everybody in the crowd, they listen and they hear their own name.

It's this revelation of atrocities, atrocities that are beyond reckoning, beyond imagination.

And they hear the names read.

And I'm standing and I'm listening and I'm hearing, they said, and you killed Jesus of Nazareth.

Here's the list of the people that are responsible for the death of Jesus of Nazareth, James Rathman.

And this Jesus whom you crucified is Lord in Christ.

And you think it's over.

They're right.

It's revealed.

My heart is laid bare.

The truth of who I am is laid bare.

And our only hope in the world that we might receive the mercy, that we might receive mercy from the Messiah, we murdered that Messiah.

We abandoned that God.

Our sins stack up and testify against us.

And who makes the ruling on what our sins testify to?

How about the one who is made Lord in Christ by the Father?

Who enacts the vengeance?

What is the promise?

Your enemies will be made your footstool, God tells the Lord.

And what does Peter announce?

Who are the enemies of the Lord?

You who killed him.

This is where you stand before Jesus Christ.

This is where our sins place us before Jesus Christ.

This is the revelation.

This is the files dropping.

This is the real one.

Acts 2.37.

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

What can you what can they do?

Can they uncrucify Jesus?

Can they go to him and say, you know, I just got swept up.

I didn't really mean it.

And Peter said to them, Listen to this news that this crowd receives.

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, for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

He might have finished it and said, Because what you intended for evil, God intended for good.

Because this Jesus whom you sinned against in crucifying him, this very Jesus is the one who offers you forgiveness.

He is eager to show you his mercy.

And what did he accomplish on the cross at the crucifixion, which you did for evil?

His very blood that was poured out there is a payment for your sins against him.

He receives his punishment as just payment for the punishment that you owe him.

The punishment that you ought to receive at his hands, he received on your behalf on the cross.

The very one who you sinned against is the one who is eager to show you mercy.

This Jesus, whom you killed, his mercy stretches out to you.

All you need to do is come to him.

His grace is sufficient for you.

All the promises that David proclaimed to us that we looked forward to, the promises of the Messiah, all the promises that Joel relayed to us of the Holy Spirit being poured out this great and magnificent day of the Lord, that that would take place, and that anyone on that day, anyone who called upon the name of the Lord would be saved.

That day is today.

You need to be saved.

And you can be in the blood of Jesus Christ.

This is our story.

It's that same old story.

It's the one that keeps working, it's the one that keeps bringing people into salvation.

And here on this first day of Christian church, it is proclaimed.

And we proclaim it again to you today.

I say, save yourself from this wicked generation.

And the way that you save yourself from this wicked generation is you come to the Lord Jesus Christ.

It was your sins that held him there until it was accomplished.

But his dying breath has brought you life.

It is finished.

It is finished.

Repent.

Receive Jesus Christ.

Tell your friends.

Because this promise is for them.

Tell your children.

This promise is theirs.

It is to all who God calls to Himself.

It doesn't matter how far you've strayed.

It doesn't matter how much you've done.

It doesn't matter what your sins are.

I was talking with Aaron this week.

We were recording a podcast which will come out for you all soon.

And I'm going to ruin a part of it, but I want to tell the story.

We were talking about the king Manasseh.

Manasseh was the worst king in Israel, the worst king in Israel.

It says that he he filled Jerusalem with blood from one end to the other.

He sacrificed his own children to Moloch.

He filled the temple with shrines to Baal and to Moloch.

Manasseh was very, very bad.

And then he gets surrounded by the Assyrians.

And in fear, he he comes to the Lord, who he'd barely remembered.

His name means forget.

That's what Manasseh means.

So he didn't remember stuff.

And who he barely remembered, he turns to the Lord.

And the Lord forgives him.

He spares him.

He offers him mercy and grace.

Manasseh is in heaven.

Doesn't matter what you've done.

Your name can be on the list.

Your name is on the list.

But because of Jesus Christ, he will put, he will count you in his number.

Three thousand souls were added to the church that day.

Three thousand souls.

Repented and were baptized to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they had crucified and whom they received eternal grace from.

Let's praise Jesus Christ.

Let's praise Jesus Christ.

He saved us.

He saved us.

Let's pray.

He who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all.

How will he not also with him freely give us all things?

Jesus Christ saves to the uttermost.

Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

Lord, we have these unthinkable promises.

Who can we hope in for forgiveness of sins other than you, Lord Jesus?

There is no revelation even of our own lives.

There is nothing that could be revealed about us.

There is nothing that we could confess that could be brought to the light, which you would not forgive.

Your blood is sufficient for our rescue.

Lord, we are cut to the heart, even by the recognition of the height and breadth and depth of your love towards us, your enemies.

We praise you for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, for his resurrection, for the ascension, that the Lord reigns in heaven now, and that by grace we are counted in his number.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.