Analog Church 05: Peter's Sermon pt. 2

Hi, Redemption Podcast listeners.

This is James Rathman.

I wanted to give you a quick heads up.

If you stick around at the end of this message, you'll be able to hear a bit more about our partnership with Queen City Coffee directly from the folks that we are partnering with.

So if you weren't able to join us on Sunday, you'll be able to hear that audio just played right at the end of this message.

Wanted to give you a heads up.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for being a part of our church community.

Hear now the word of the true and living God.

Acts 2, 22 through 24.

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

ACTS 2, 32 through 33.

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.

ACTS 2, 36 through 41.

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord in 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 promises for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation.

So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning for real.

Thank you for getting out, braving the snow.

It's the first snow of the year, which always feels particularly intimidating.

Um so thanks for joining us.

For those of you on the live stream, enjoy your sofa.

Um we are uh in the midst of our series called Analog Church.

Oh, but before we get started, I just want to say thanks so much, Scott.

Can we give them another hand?

This it's a there you go.

That applause was for you.

Enjoy it.

It's a weird thing we do, isn't it?

Let's bang our hands together for you.

All right, we don't need to diagnose it.

Um, but there's uh uh for me.

Uh there's uh I love partnerships like this, where we can be connected with folks in our community that are already doing great things.

Because look, we're a church full of experts in different areas.

Um you are those people.

And uh uh but we as a church, what we're an expert in, or at least trying to be experts in, is building a community of Christians that can have an impact on our city.

And uh in order for us to best stay focused on that as the small church we are, uh these partnerships are so important because we can see areas where God is already working throughout the world to bring about his renewal, to in to bring his kingdom into the world in all sorts of ways and shapes, just by correcting injustices.

Uh we can join those works that he's doing.

These aren't things we need to create uh as much as they can often be things that we can just support and encourage.

And so I love partnerships like this.

Um and yeah, Queen City Coffee is basically my office.

I like live there, I think.

Um the bar stool is just an imprint of me.

Um so and it also becomes a brewery in the evening, so that doesn't hurt either.

Um another quick uh announcement.

Um we have a we we've launched a new podcast.

I just wanted to mention that from up here.

So if uh you're subscribed to the L2 Church podcast, we just released an episode that basically says, hey, we're no longer placing our sermons here.

That'll remain up.

But if you're uh uh want to hear new sermons as they're coming out, just search Redemption Church Denver wherever you find your podcasts.

Uh iTunes or Stitcher or wherever.

Um also in terms of giving.

So if you've been giving, we've we've been requesting continue to give uh to L2 Church.

So when you're filling out your checks and things, continue to give to L2 Church.

So now is the time.

Start writing Redemption Church Denver.

Woo!

Woo!

Yeah, cool.

Nice.

Um that went that went really well.

Uh the applause.

The uh I'm gonna mock applause.

There's gonna be no clapping and no feedback, and it's gonna be really uncomfortable.

Um let's uh let's you can you probably can write R C D.

Um I don't know.

We'll check let me we'll write our accountant um and we'll find out.

Let's stick with Redemption Church Denver for now.

Um we'll play it safe for a couple of weeks.

I want to get paid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um so which is a which it does bring up a good point that's probably worth making.

W we run on donations um as a church.

And uh millennials are great at a lot of things.

Uh giving to the church is not one of them.

If you want us to pick a beer for you, we can do that.

If you want your cheese to be more artisanal, we can do that.

Uh but uh as far as giving to the church, this isn't a habit that we've cultivated.

And a lot of it's because we've sort of removed that from our immediate act of worship.

And there's been a church culture in the United States with a health and wealth and prosperity gospel, which are basically structured like Amway.

You know, there's one guy at the top who's making a ton of money, and then and ever in the line is like if you just give to me, then uh uh you'll get a lot of money too, and it sometimes works and most of the time doesn't.

Uh and so because of that prosperity gospel, this false teaching in Christianity that John Oliver has probably explained better than anyone, uh we've really strayed in in churches like ours from teaching anything about giving.

It's because we just haven't wanna touched it.

It's it's something we just don't want to turn people off.

But this can really be and is really a part of your worship.

Where you place your value is demonstrating what it is you really worship with your heart.

And so to express your worship in terms of giving is is a good thing, something that God honors.

And today we're asking you to give to multiple things, right?

To our church, which that was kind of a bonus, but to Queen City.

And I know that I I know what we're like as a church, right?

You come and listen to me, and I'm kind of a geek.

And so I I know, I've got to know our personality.

And we're a structured people, uh, in my experience.

And there's oftentimes in our lives where the structure of our finances that we've put together comes in conflict with a call to generosity.

And a lot of us are living very unadventurous lives because we aren't really generously engaging with them.

Now, that can be in terms of our finances or it can be in terms of our time.

We we can't be interrupted.

Um, and so our lives are completely unadventurous.

And that can be true for our finances as well.

So I just want you to consider uh interrupting your structure so that you might give generously.

Uh, that we might be a group of people who are loose in a sense when it comes to generosity.

Uh because we trust that that God re rewards that generosity.

And in maybe not in some direct one-to-one way, but in a way that by expressing our worship through being generous, what we're saying is this life isn't all there is.

And there are things more important than my finances, and I can demonstrate that with them.

So that's a that's a spiel on that.

Um, all right, let's pray and get into our text.

Father, I pray that you would show us your word by your spirit.

Lord, I pray that you would give us hearts that are inspired by the generosity that you've shown us.

Lord, that we would not be irresponsible, but that we would be compelled by the uh by this this certainty of care that you offer us, that we can be, in a sense, reckless with our generosity.

Father, I pray that you would uh open our hearts to hear your word and transform us by the message of your gospel this morning.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So this is the second ser the second part of a sermon.

This is part two, where we're going over Peter's sermon in Acts two.

Now, the first week, what we did is we looked at Peter's sermon through the lens of the Old Testament scripture that he quotes in that sermon.

And so what we're looking at is just his quote of Joel and his quote of the two separate Psalms that he quoted.

And we saw that he was explaining this crazy event of Pentecost, which is when the Holy Spirit falls on the church and people are speaking in all sorts of different languages.

He explains this event through the lens of the Old Testament.

And he uses this format where he says, this, this thing that's happening is that, that thing that was said, that was prophesied in the Old Testament.

And so we're sort of splitting his sermon in two, looking just through the Old Testament lens, and then this week we're looking through the lens of Jesus.

And what we're seeing is that Peter brings these two ideas together, this Old Testament prophecy and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as an argument for or an explanation of what is happening at Pentecost.

And we'll see this morning that as we look through this second lens of Jesus, that what gets answered is one of the deepest questions in our lives.

It's one of the deepest uh explanations of one of the harshest problems of what it what it means to exist in the world.

So I've been thinking a lot lately, or I've been sort of meditating quite a bit lately, just sort of back on Psalm 23.

Uh my I have a couple of scriptures that in times of stress my mind just kind of goes to.

Um they're just like deeply carved ruts in my brain.

And at times of stress, it's it's nice, it's helpful to have those kind of built into your head.

And one of those has been Psalm 23.

And I've been thinking about that phrase, uh, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

And this past week was just kind of like with a pencil going through that, and I was like, hey, the valley of the shadow of death, what is that?

And I think we often look at life in terms of this metaphor of there's peaks and there's valleys.

And so the valley of the shadow of death is probably just those seasons of life when when we're we're having that like valley experience.

Things are hard, we're low.

And then there's other times where we're sort of on a peak experience, a mountaintop experience, when applause is given to you.

But then I was considering, right?

Like I I think it actually means something bigger than that, something broader than that.

Because my phone, uh, the photo app pulls up memories randomly.

And it pulled up these memories from my wife and I's first anniversary trip.

So, like the trip we took on our one-year anniversary.

And we had a free place to stay in Rome because of my mom's high school friend.

It's a very weird story.

But anyway, we got what I told Megan will absolutely be our best anniversary trip.

Because like we I think the year after that we'd like, I don't know, went to Carabas or something.

Um uh and we uh which are both Italian.

Uh so I'm looking at these pictures, and they just look they just look so happy.

I mean, it's crazy.

Um, you know, you're in front of the Colosseum and it's like, wow, think of all the bloodshed, and you smile and you take a picture.

And there's uh uh and I remembered over the course of that whole trip, I had these terrible, uh, this is kind of gross, but these terrible canker sores, like mouth sores.

Um and I get these it during times of stress, like if you know me, you know that like when I'm really stressed, I get canker sores.

That's like my thing.

Uh you gotta have a thing.

And we uh in looking at these pictures, you can't tell looking at them, and I remembered this whole great, magnificent trip.

I was in this really uh like excruciating physical pain where it just hurt to talk, hurt to chew and eat.

Um so is that a is that a valley experience?

Or is that a peak experience?

Now I I bring up that example because I think that's more like what life is typically like.

Not that it's always like trips to Rome, but that even the best peak experiences, they always seem to be tainted.

They're always in the shadow of this other thing.

It never quite gets there.

Other days are just pure valleys, right?

Like I get canker sores because I I'm a deeply anxious person.

Uh mornings are hard for me.

And that just tends to be when my anxiety comes.

And uh there are some days where I just want to be like Jonah and find a ship and crawl into the hole of it and sleep while I sail away from whatever God is calling me to.

I really relate to that.

So that feels like a real valley as well.

And some days are like that.

My point is, I think that this valley of the shadow of death is that we stand in, that we walk in, I think that's really a description of just what our life is in this world that's marked and tainted by sin.

It's like all of our lives at the end of it stands this thing that we're moving towards that is death, it's inevitable.

And it casts the shadow that hits every part of our lives, from the best parts to the worst parts, and and it adds it adds this evil to them, this injustice and this pain to all those moments.

And and yet we're called to walk, called to walk through this valley of the shadow of death, that death stands at the end and sort of punches its way forward into the present, corrupting everything.

You know, like sort of philosophically, what we're talking about is the problem of evil, right?

Why would God create a world in which there is so much suffering?

Why would God create a world that seemed inevitably corrupted to where all of our stories end in death?

One of the descriptions I heard of life lately was from one of my favorite comedians.

And uh he says, Life, a long series of disappointments that ends in catastrophe.

He meant it as a joke, right?

Why would God create such a world?

We typically put forward two answers.

One answer is, and both answers are an attempt to just get God off the hook for all the suffering that we see in the world.

One answer is that God is just acquiescing to human free will.

And that in order to maintain our freedom, he creates a world in which we have the opportunity to do evil, and by our sinful natures, we all do it.

Another is to just take the argument as a disproof of the existence of God.

There is such suffering in the world.

That's a real data point that we have, and therefore God can't be uh omnipotent, he can't be all-powerful, he can't be present everywhere, he can't know what's happening, and he can't be all good.

And so, in order to solve the problem, we just remove one of these attributes of God.

We get rid of either his power or his presence or his care or his goodness.

But both of those things, both of those approaches, I'm arguing, prevent you from walking through the valley of the shadow of death, through our lives that we know what we're walking towards.

The first one, if it is just hinging on human freedom, and this just is just contingencies that we need to be managing.

What that should lead to, if we're thoughtful about it, is a sort of paralysis where we can't walk.

Because how could we possibly know what contingency will lead to what outcome?

There's plenty of non-moral, neutral decisions that we make every day that have outcomes that we possibly couldn't manage or couldn't know.

And if any good thing or any bad thing that we did seemed to sort of cause this chain reaction of events that could end in such terrible suffering, our best decision would just be to stop.

If we were honest with ourselves, we'd realize we couldn't possibly manage this infinity of contingencies.

If it really did just hinge on the decisions that we made.

Or the other option is we disregard these aspects of God, and the what we end up with is, and these are related, in many ways they're the same, is we end up with a sort of meaninglessness in our walking.

Because we see what we're moving towards and we see this corrupted end, and so our walking proves to be meaningless.

Because it's just happenstance of whatever happened, whatever decision we happen to have made, however that impacted the millions of other decisions that would have been made by millions of other people.

And so we're stuck either paralyzed or without meaning.

In this section, in this sermon, Peter addresses this.

And he addresses it as what explains Pentecost?

And the Bible puts forward this answer that allows us to walk through the valley of the shadow of death in a way that I think makes the most sense to us.

It addresses this paralysis, it acknowledges real evil in the world, and it provides an actual hope of meaning.

So that's what we're gonna look at.

Sort of the background.

Problem we're going to be addressing.

So let's go ahead and see how Peter addresses this.

First, when he moves in on Jesus as the explanation of Pentecost, he describes Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

The sort of gospel message.

Some things are easier to preach than others.

This is easier to preach than others.

So he says in Acts 2, 22 to 24, he says, 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 raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

So, verse 22, we see his life, verse 23, we see his death, verse 24, we see his resurrection.

So in verse 22, let's look at this.

He says, Men of Israel, hear these words.

So he stands up, Peter's describing what's happening at Pentecost, and he's like, listen to this.

And his first word is Jesus of Nazareth.

See, Jesus to this group of his contemporaries was just Jesus from that small town, Nazareth.

He starts his speech with this common ground of just this man that we all knew.

But he says there was something about him that was just this man, and there are these other things that were sort of harder to account for.

We see that this man was attested to you by God with mighty works.

Now, that phrase really matters because mighty works is what the people who were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost were said to be proclaiming in their other languages.

They were said to be proclaiming the mighty works of God.

And so he's saying this Jesus, this man from Nazareth, was doing these same mighty works of God that are being proclaimed by the Holy Spirit now in your midst.

Then he says that he did many wonders.

These are events that strike this sort of awe and terror into people's hearts.

Things that are so beyond what a normal human would be able to do that it's it's wonderful.

He uh, and we can easily call these things to mind.

I mean, we remember when Jesus calms the storm, and those, his disciples that are in the boat, they're more terrified once the storm is calmed than they were when the storm was raging.

That's because who am I in this boat with?

That he stands up and like if you know the snow stops and melts at his command.

And signs.

Now, signs, what this brings in is that element of meaning, that these events are saying something.

These aren't just sort of uh random events or powers that are just demonstrations of power for the sake of demonstrations of power.

You know, it's a magician who does a magic trick.

We wouldn't say that's a sign.

Because it doesn't really have any meaning beyond the trick.

But what Jesus is doing when he touches a leper and heals them, when he makes an arm straight, when he heals the blind, these are signs that are saying something.

They're saying something about who this Jesus of Nazareth is.

And he is at least the best of us.

He is at least the best humanity could offer.

He's at least the premier ideal human, through whom these effects of sin are not being progressed, but rather the effects of sin are being undone.

Now, this Jesus, as Peter continues his sermon, he says, This Jesus, who's at least the best of us, was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Verse 23.

So this Jesus, the very best of us, is crucified and killed.

So if we're going to go back to that problem of evil, why is it difficult to walk?

How can we imagine God creating a world in which these terrible things happen?

This is sort of an archetypal example of that.

The man who was the best of us, the perfect person, is crucified and killed.

Now, how could God create a world?

How could a good, loving, all-powerful God create a world in which that happens?

This is pushing that question to its furthest extreme.

The most extreme examples we can think of are tied up in this.

And what the Bible says is not really either of the answers that we gave before to this problem, which were it's just human freedom or it's God's lack of power.

Instead, it kind of undoes both of those but includes them in this weird way.

It offers this third answer.

He says, first of all, he says, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men, which means there is a guilt, there is an accountability on the humans who crucified and killed Jesus.

Real people with real wills and volitions and the ability to make decisions and to decide between right and wrong chose to kill the greatest human who had ever lived.

At least the best of us.

So there is real human free will in this, real human accountability because of that.

And yet, he says before that statement, he says, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

So there is this human freedom and therefore accountability, and yet it's sort of couched in this idea that this was, that Jesus being crucified was according to God's definite plan and foreknowledge.

Definite.

That means it was defined.

That means the details were God's decision.

The amount of coins that Judas got in exchange for Jesus' location, God's decision.

Where the Roman soldier that stabs Jesus in the side to check whether he's dead, where exactly that slid between his ribs, God's decision.

When the nails go in, God's decision, his definite plan and foreknowledge.

The best of us, the ideal human, sinless, crucified and killed by humans that are making the decision to crucify and kill him, not outside of God's plan.

Perfectly in line with it.

Those evil intentions of men accomplishing the very plan of God.

This is a strange thing.

The most evil act in all of history, the archetypal example of evil humanity, the Bible says was according to God's definite plan and foreknowledge.

Not outside of it, inside of it.

What happens next can bring a bit of clarity and give us some more direction in terms of how we reconcile this.

Verse 24, it says, God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

This is where we get a description of Jesus that shows he was more than just the best of us.

He was loosing the pangs of death because he was not, it was not possible for him to be held by it.

He couldn't be held by death because death is a punishment for sin.

Death is a response to our rebellion against God, the source of life.

And so when Jesus dies, he's not able to be held by it because he's perfect, he's sinless, he's fulfilled the law completely.

1 Corinthians 15, 54 to 57 says, When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, which is what happens when Jesus is resurrected.

Then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This middle part, O death, where is your victory?

O death where is your sting?

The sting of death is sin.

And the power of sin is the law.

This death that stands at the end of our lives that punches back and renders all of existence to this valley of its shadow.

It has no sting anymore.

In Christ, his sinlessness was able to capture this death.

Or even better, there's it is our sin that sort of draws death's shadow back into our lives.

But standing in Christ, that shadow's power is completely removed.

The sing of death, that was sin, when that's removed from us, this death shadow no longer stretches back.

Not in any sort of ultimate way.

Not in any meaningful way.

So let's continue looking at Jesus.

It says, in Acts 2, 32 through 33, we see even more of who Jesus is.

He's this man who's at least the best of us, and then we see that he was actually, he was even sinless, and so that death could not hold him.

And then in these verses we see that he is exalted.

In Acts 2, 32 through 33, it says, This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

See, Christ has not only been resurrected, but he's been exalted to the right hand of the Father, which means that all power and authority has been given to him.

And so this is the immediate explanation of what is happening at Pentecost.

Peter earlier in last week's sermon, we looked at how he says, these Old Testament prophecies describe what's happening at Pentecost, but now through the lens of Jesus, he says, But this, this Jesus of Nazareth, this one who you crucified, who, according to the plan and foreknowledge of God, was dead and then resurrected, he is now at the right hand of the Father, and this Holy Spirit pouring out on us now is from him.

That's the immediate cause.

You can't possibly understand Pentecost.

You can't understand what's happening around us by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit if you don't understand who this Jesus of Nazareth was.

It all ties back to him.

And so we see this strange thing that the perfect, sinless person is unjustly murdered, but it's according to the plan of God.

And what is this resurrected, crucified Savior's response?

It is not vengeance upon those who killed him, but it is an outpouring of his spirit.

And so Peter concludes his message.

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

This is the turn of the message.

Says, this Jesus whom you crucified, he is Lord, which means he is the master of all things.

He is the Christ, which means he was the savior of humanity, the only one who could possibly remove the shadow of death that's cast over all of our lives.

So that our lives wouldn't end in tragedy, but might end in meaning and glory.

He is Lord and Christ.

That is who you crucified.

So I've used this example before from sort of Greek tragedy.

There's these moments in tragedies called anagnoresis, which is that tragic turn, the tragic revelation.

It's where you realize something that completely recolors the way you would experience an event.

It's when you realize, oh, Bruce Willis's wife wasn't talking to him because he's dead.

In die hard.

I think I'm got those right.

It's this incredible turn, this twist where you can't unsee it now.

It recolors everything.

And so for Peter's hearers, they they see this incredible event happen, they're familiar with the story of this Jesus of Nazareth, and then they realize the spirit that's being poured out around us is being poured out by the man who a month and a half ago we were chanting, crucify him, crucify him, crucify him.

That same guy is now at the right hand of the Father.

He was our Lord in Christ, this promised savior that we've been looking forward to, the one hope we have in the world of the shadow of death being removed from our lives.

We stood in the crowd and chanted, crucify him.

The shame is unimaginable.

Well, maybe not that unimaginable.

It's this turn that they experience where all of a sudden Peter, in his sermon and his explanation, he explains the events around them and they see, we killed our Lord.

John Calvin explains Peter's sermon like this.

He says, And now, for as much as they know that Jesus is the anointed of the Lord, the governor of the church, the giver of the Holy Ghost, the accusation hath so much the more force.

For the putting of him to death was not only full of cruelty and wickedness, but also a testimony of outrageous disloyalty against God, of sacrilege and unthankfulness, and finally of apostasy.

But it was requisite that they should be so wounded, lest they should have been slow to seek for medicine.

Calvin says, It's so that they would know to seek the medicine.

And this is what they do.

In Acts 2, 37, it says, 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?

You see, the wound makes contact.

And when that wound makes contact, when you realize that the sin that's working its way into the world, the shadow of death that is cast into the world, it isn't from outside of me.

It's from me.

That the pain that I see and often experience in my life that I put out there, this isn't something that's distant and unknowable.

Becoming acquainted with that type of suffering takes minimal self-examination.

Just moments of honest self-reflection.

When you see that, you you're cut to the heart.

And this wound cuts just in that same way.

And so they say in response to Peter, brothers, what shall we do?

You know, when we experience that wound, we've seen already in Scripture through the story of Jesus, what happens when someone experiences that wound and tries to solve it themselves.

In Matthew 27, 3 through 5, we see when Judas, who betrayed Jesus, experiences that wound.

And in the story is recorded like this.

It says, Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, so he sees the same thing that everyone gathered around hearing Peter's sermon sees.

They see Jesus, this perfect man, was condemned.

Same revelation.

He changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.

They said, What is that to us?

See to it yourself.

And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed and he went and hanged himself.

You see.

And in order to fix this problem of realizing the evil was in him, in order to escape that terrible shame and horror, he takes precisely the advice that the chief priests and the elders gave him.

They said, What is that to us?

See to it yourself.

And so he tries to solve this terrible, painful wound himself.

Return back to Calvin.

He says, We see many oftentimes pricked, who, notwithstanding, do fret and murmur, or else frowardly that's a word.

It means exactly what it sounds like.

Or else froardly strive and struggle, and so consequently go furiously mad.

Yea, this is the cause why they go mad, because they feel such prickings against their will.

Those men, therefore, who are profitably pricked alone, who are willingly sorrowful, and do also seek some remedy at God's hands.

Look, this is a wound that we can't heal ourselves.

This cut to the heart from the shame of seeing who Jesus really is, seeing it was my sin that held him there, that's not a wound we can heal ourselves.

By the power of the Spirit, these people turn back towards Peter and they say, What shall we do?

How can we attend to this terrible tragedy of seeing Jesus' death?

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

Look at the promise.

Repent and be baptized in the name of this same Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins.

This one that you crucified by your sins that were laid upon him who bore this death on your behalf is the very means of your forgiveness for that sin.

Do you see this incredible irony, this incredible twist?

Doesn't it start to make sense of what we saw earlier in Peter's sermon where he says, this terrible, most horrible, most horrific act in world history was according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

How could that be?

Because through it, because through the most terrible and horrible act in all of history, a promise is extended to all of humanity that we might be saved from death and ransomed from the powers of our sin and brought back into beautiful, perfect union with God.

How could God intend such horrible evil human actions?

What if through them he was bringing about and demonstrating his very grace in the world?

I don't know how you answer the problem of evil apart from Christ.

I don't know how other religions do it in a way that feels even remotely coherent.

In Christ, we see, and it's not like a it's not a counter-argument, right?

Like this is a difficult thing to put into a counter-argument for the problem of evil, but here's what we see.

It may not be an answer, but it's a hope for how we walk through the world.

Because we see that if the if the most evil thing that's happened, if the most evil thing that's happened ended up through God's providence, through his grace working out in the world, accomplishing the greatest grace of all time, then perhaps these sufferings that our lives are coded in, perhaps they could produce an incredible glory.

Perhaps in Christ, even our own hearts could be transformed so that we can walk through this valley of the shadow of death, knowing that He is with us, that His rod and His Staff comforts us.

To have this amazing hope against a life that perhaps shouldn't produce that.

That's what we see in Christ is this answer to one of the deepest questions in our hearts.

So that we can walk in hope.

Okay, with that, I'll take one question.

Jump again.

We'll see if we got one.

Do we have one?

No questions?

No further questions.

Great.

If you want to uh talk a little bit more about this uh sermon, uh I'll be sticking around up here.

But uh if you don't, then go downstairs, uh hang out, let's drink some coffee.

Um this is news to celebrate.

This promise is something to soak in.

Today's sermon, this is this is uh what would Paul say?

The pure gospel.

That the the very one that we killed, he doesn't turn towards us in vengeance.

It's it's the very means that he uses to forgive us.

What an amazing God.

What an amazing God.

All right, let's pray.

Father, I pray that the gospel would not be something we ever graduate from.

But that the hope that it can instill in our hearts would uh settle into such depth that we become transformed, that we are able to move through lives coated in suffering with this amazing joy.

That because of our confidence that you can work anything together for good, we we would hope in the midst of things that seem insurmountable.

Father, we praise you for the grace that you've poured out on us and your son.

We ask that we would live walking in that grace.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now a word from Scott Byington, one of the founders of Queen City Coffee.

He's going to be giving us some more information with regards to our partnership.

We are joining with them in order to raise funds for a community center that will be built on location for their Rwandan farmers.

It's a great opportunity for us to partner with a local business as well as serve in a global cause for the benefit of their farmers who we benefit from with their caffeine.

So if you'd like to donate after hearing this, please go to redemptiondenver.com, click on give, and go through your normal online giving process.

And then when it becomes time to select the fund, instead of selecting the general fund, switch that over to the Queen City Coffee Fundraiser.

And that money will be given straight to Queen City for the building of this Rwandan community center.

Thanks for sticking around.

Yeah, my name is Scott.

I'm one of the guys who roast the coffee for you that you get to drink every Sunday morning.

Uh and I'm here today uh with my wife, Sam, and uh we are here just to uh let you guys know about our business practices, I guess you could say.

Um James and Megan are regulars down at our shop, um, which is in the Baker neighborhood.

And the more we've gotten to know James and Megan as they've been hanging out in the shop, they were asking questions about Queen City and all that, and they uh got to see kind of the the heart behind the passion behind, the ethos behind why we do what we do.

Um, Queen City is owned and operated um by myself and my two brothers.

And our backgrounds are actually not in coffee um, but in international development.

Um so I spent the bulk of my 20s actually over in central and southern Africa working in rural communities and ended up uh on a research grant with the University of Zimbabwe working in rural communities and really seeing what development looked like in rural communities in Africa.

And what it really led us to to see and led me to see was that there is no answer.

Um it's a pretty uh difficult thing to go into a community and say, hey, we're gonna make things better.

Um and what we really came to find through our work in the nonprofit world, work in the academic world, it was that relationships is what matters most.

Um and so for us, uh we carried that over into the coffee world, uh, the industry.

And what we do is we partner with specific growing groups, um coffee farmers, and we come alongside them and we say, hey, we're here uh not just to buy your your coffee, but we're here to have a relationship with you.

Um and so we about 85% of our coffees right now come directly from farmers that um either myself or my brother Luke has has a personal relationship with.

Um and we go to the farms, we go to the washing stations, um, we go to the mills, and we hang out with the farmers and we get to see um what it is that they need to make coffee a sustainable livelihood, um, which in the end is oftentimes better wages and then access to better resources.

And so we use revenue that we generate through the sales of our roasted coffee here in the US, and we funnel those back to the farmers that we work with.

And one of the groups that we happen to work with that you guys have been drinking their coffee for um several months now, uh, is an all-women's growing group in Rwanda.

And this group was started, their name is Hingakawa, which in Kirawandan, the local um language in Rwanda, means uh we grow coffee.

It's an exclamation, it's a it's a proclamation, it's a celebration.

Um they name themselves Hingakawa as a way to actually uh say, like, we grow coffee and we identify as coffee farmers.

We don't identify as Hutu, we don't identify as Tutsi.

Um, it was created after the 94 genocide, um, and they created this all women's group.

It was primarily widows from the um the violence, and they said, we're gonna grow coffee and we're gonna bring social healing through coffee farming.

Um, and so we've been working with them now for I mean, honestly, they were the inspiration behind Queen City.

It's why we named the company Queen City.

Um, Denver used to be known as the Queen City of the Plains, so it was a nice little nod to Denver as a community, but the Queen moniker, we also is a subtle nod to the all women farmers that we work with in Rwanda.

Um, so I was actually over there not doing coffee um stuff, and they were like, hey, why don't you just start importing our coffee and roasting it?

It's like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Um, so that's what we do.

Um, and they last season uh we helped build some new drying beds at their washing station to improve quality.

This season, um, they asked us if we would want to help them build a community center.

And this community center, um, the president of Hingakawa, she sat us down.

They had already bought a plot of land um right by their washing station, and they said, Hey, we really want to build a center here that will provide vocational training to the women in our group that are in the off-season when coffee is not in season, they don't have uh a means of income.

And so they wanted to create a center that would have vocational training um primarily around sewing, so having a whole sewing center for the women to be able to create uh off-season income.

They wanted to be able to have nutritional inputs that would be delivered through that community center.

Um, so obviously getting a hold of uh quality food can be an issue in rural communities, and so they want this center to be a hub for uh the women in the group to be able to come and get access to uh quality nutritional inputs.

And then the third element to it is uh childcare.

And a lot of these women farmers they spend 12 hours, 14 hours out in the field working on their coffee, and they have families that need to be taken care of.

And so for a lot of women, they're actually bringing their kids out into the fields with them, which if you've been to a coffee region, it's normally very mountainous, very normally difficult to be carrying children um through the mountains to your coffee.

And so they wanted to create this center to have a place to be able to bring their kids where they'd be safe, they'd be able to have um some sort of child care, and while the women can then go to the field and and pick their coffee and work on their shrubs.

Um, yeah, so that's what they brought to us, and they said, Hey, we would really like to build this, and we already have the land, we have the architects, they have drawings, they have everything, they have a building company ready to roll.

It's all Rwandan-based, so it's improving, uh working with the local economy there.

And they just need a little bit of help to get there.

And so they were like, Hey, could you do this with us?

And we said, Yeah.

Um, and it was$10,000 that they threw out as the number to get them over the hump, to get them building and breaking ground on this community center.

And we as Queen City we were planning to engage in that and do that.

Um, and as I was explaining this to James and Megan one time in the shop over coffee, uh, they were like, why don't we bring our community into this story that's already unfolding?

Um, so for us, you know, we're we're not here to ask for um$10,000 from you guys.

Uh we're here just to ask for you to be a part of this story.

So the coffee that you drink every Sunday morning comes directly from real human beings.

Um and you might not know those human beings, uh, but through your relationship with Queen City, you have a direct connection to them.

And this is an opportunity to really make that full circle.

Um, the things that we get to enjoy on a daily basis, from clothes to food to coffee, uh, they all come from real people.

And the more we can humanize that, the more we can create a full circle with that.

I think that's um a responsible way to do business, a responsible way to do commerce and consumerism.

Um, so that's what we're doing here today.

Uh, after the service, if you guys want to come down, I'll be at the table.

We'll be serving up some of the Rwandan coffee.

Uh, we're not gonna do a full involved cupping.

Um, that's a very nerdy coffee thing.

Um, so we're not gonna do it like that.

I'm gonna be making you guys a really delicious pour over so you can sample the coffee.

And then if you really just need to get that caffeine kick to get through the snow, uh, there's the the normal coffee as well.

Uh so yeah, come down.

I would love to chat with you guys.

And yeah, thanks for having us here today.