Peters Sermon at Pentecost — Westlake Bible Fellowship

0:19 Opening prayer and introduction

Good morning. Good to see all the smiling faces. Well, all the faces. So father, we do come before you and just ask for your blessing on this time. Lord, we know that you have, orchestrated this time.

You've, brought us here together, for a specific purpose. Lord, we pray that that might be reached. We pray that those words that I say that are beneficial are from you, those that aren't will be cast away. Lord, we do pray that you will guide and orchestrate. It's in your son's name we do pray.

Amen. Okay, so as I was preparing for this time today I thought of oops we got a thing Samuel. Alright. There we go. Always good when the technology works right away.

But I thought of the... I thought of a joke. Has anybody ever heard these light bulb jokes? You know the one. The one that says, how many Harvard students does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Anybody know the answer? It's one because he holds the light bulb and the world revolves around him, right? I could say that about the Carnegie Mellon students too. Right? Because I went to Carnegie Mellon.

I'm not picking on anybody else. Or how about this one? How many Christians? This will be close to home. How many Christians does it take to change a light bulb?

Well it's three but really they're just one. You get that one too? Okay. All right. So my all time favorite all time favorite and maybe many of you may have heard me say this one before but how many elders does it take to change a light bulb?

Change. Really? Change? We gotta do something? We gotta change?

Well here we go through the book of Acts. In some ways when you approach this as an elder, there's like, oh my gosh, there's a lot of things to weave through here. But really, I think we can trust the Holy Spirit to guide us and that's really gonna be a lot about our conversation today. Let's say thirty two is the number of years from the beginning of the book of Acts to the end of the book of Acts. It covers a thirty two, thirty, thirty two years, you could argue, that I'm just putting a number up there, plus or minus.

Okay? And it's incredible the amount of change that happens in that thirty two years. Okay? Massive change. The changes, it leads to changes throughout the world.

In the known world, the gospel spreads from Jerusalem to the edges of the world. Paul makes journeys. There's just so much that happens in those thirty two years. So really this is a time of change and we're just starting the book of Acts and so get ready. Here we go.

There's also this idea you've heard of every president that comes in what does he think of? What am I gonna get accomplished in my first hundred days? Right? We always hear about that. Well this is what's happened in the first fifty days right?

Now we talked a little bit about that. John talked us through that last week but the day of Pentecost is when the events of today's discussion happen. Okay? The day of Pentecost was set in Leviticus. It's recorded as the day after the seventh Sabbath from Passover.

Okay. So Passover is on the seventh day, seven weeks later, and the day next day is Pentecost, the fiftieth day. That's where the word penta comes from. So it's fifty days. So what's happened in that fifty days?

Well, a day before the Lord's crucified, on the day after Sabbath, he rises again. That's what the scriptures tell us, right? And then we go on, he shows us himself on that day after and then for forty days he's in and out of the disciples lives, right? He demonstrates that he's alive. He shows himself, and we hear later, to up to 500 people that were alive at the time when Paul was writing in first Corinthians.

So it's just this amazing idea that he was in and out for forty days after he rose again. And then on the fiftieth day, so that's 40 plus 10 is 50. It might be 40 plus one in there. Call it ten days later, that's when these events happen. So that's what's been happening.

4:50 Jesus' ministry and ascension

He comes in and out of a room uninvited or unknown how he got there. Those kind of things happen, but it's relatively low key and says he taught them. We know that he opened up the scriptures to those who were on the road to Emmaus. We know that he taught the apostles in that period of time. But it's not a real public time.

But then he left. Says he ascended into heaven as they watched him. An angel said, why are you watching for him? That same Jesus will come again. And so they thought, oh, it's gonna be soon.

But Jesus had also told him, what? Wait in Jerusalem for the power will come to you. The helper will come. Okay? And so there's this idea of expectation.

So we can't walk through the book of Acts without this idea of expectation, right? Expectation when will this happen? When will we see him next? What's gonna happen next? There before the day of Pentecost here we're gonna talk about that John talked about a little bit last week.

They were waiting. What's gonna happen next? When's it gonna happen? Lord said it was gonna happen. It was only a few days or a couple days later when He rose again.

Is it gonna be a few days? Oh that went past. Maybe a few more. No that's past. When's it gonna come?

When are we gonna see what he said? Well, here it was, the day of Pentecost. So what we really see when the day of Pentecost comes and that amazing miracle, we'll talk a little bit more about it, is that there is demonstration of the power of the spirit and I think that's what we're gonna see throughout the book of Acts, okay? And I wanna talk a little bit about this phrase. It's God through, manifested as the Holy Spirit working through people.

Okay? This is what he chose to do. There was Moses he sent up on the mountain. What did Moses come down off the mountain with? A tablet.

Right? One man brought a tablet down. This is what's written. These are the 10 commandments. But now the Lord's choosing to work through people.

Okay? Indwelling those individuals with the Holy Spirit. And this is the way it's gonna work. And we have to trust that that's okay. Sometimes it's hard.

See a little bit about that in the initial verses here when we talk about it. So let's move on and talk. I'm gonna start Acts chapter two verse 14. Just gonna read this one verse and park there for a little bit. It says, but Peter standing up with the 11 raised his voice and said to them men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem let this be known to you and heed my words.

Listen to what I have to say. Okay. So here's Peter and maybe that's maybe that's what it looked like. I don't know. I asked Chad GPT to draw me a picture and there it was, you know.

So I don't know how I feel about that. I'm just admitting it. Okay. He, she, it drew me this picture. Right?

That's Peter as he was preaching. I don't know. Maybe it looks something like that. But but there's this idea that it says, but Peter, and I want just dwell on Peter for a moment. Okay?

We know Peter. Right? We know a lot about him. We all just spent a year and a half going through Luke. Right?

And Peter pops up regularly there. He's the leader. He's the one that's gonna open his mouth when nobody else wants to. He's gonna be the one that's gonna stick his foot in his mouth. He's the one that eventually ends up, you know, walking on water.

He was there for the transfiguration, saw many things. Some things that maybe many others didn't see. So Peter is a special guy in many ways. Okay? But he also denied the Lord.

When when the chips were down, even though he said, I'll never do it. I'll die before that happens. He did it. Okay? Caused him great anguish, put him in a position for the Lord to be able to restore him.

So there's... This is the Peter we're talking about. Right? He led in this idea of replacement of Judas, the first chapter of Acts, and and sort of said, this is what we should do. So he's stepping out.

He's he's... I don't know what you're say, but distancing himself. He's showing himself to be different than the rest of the apostles. And here we are. He's giving the first sermon of the church.

That's gotta have some significance to it. And the next eight chapters of this book of Acts are really focused on what he's doing. He's a pretty special guy, we'd have to say. So we could we could come to the conclusion just by the way this is starting out and knowing what we know that we went from one man, Jesus, to a new man, Peter. Right?

It's one for one. That happens a lot. Right? We know the CEO of whatever company happens. He's the leader and the next one comes in.

Now he's the leader. Right? So we could ask is this the new special leader? Okay. And you stick with me because I'm trying to make a point here.

10:24 Peter stands with the eleven

So here is Peter standing up before this whole audience. Okay. Thousands of people by the time he's speaking it would appear. And he says, we. We did this.

I'm speaking on behalf of, as a representative of these 12. Of one, I'm which. Of which I'm one. That's the right way to say it. Of which I'm one.

So he stood with the 11. Now don't forget there was a 120 people in the upper room at some point. And we know that this this miracle happened where many spoke in a language they didn't know before. And they spoke many languages all at the same time. We'll talk a little more about that.

We know later in the book of Acts that when they had a problem, you know, they said, gee, we gotta talk about this works and grace thing. We need to talk about this returning to the customs of the Jewish people. What did they do? They called together the council of elders and apostles. They had a council that was many people, Okay?

Many people that were working this together. Don't forget Paul or Peter was challenged by Paul. We heard that in, I think it's in Galatians where he said, I had to stand up to Peter. I had to, know I had to set him straight. Okay?

There's also nine authors. Well Peter's only one of them in in the New Testament. We can't forget about the the contributions that Stephen made or Paul or Philip or James for that matter. They killed James, right? Thinking he was the leader of the group.

We hear about that in Acts. So the point is, even late in in the New Testament we hear John and Peter referring to themselves as elders because they were into the church. So there's a lot of transition going on. But the Holy Spirit indwells all believers. Okay?

All believers. And even though this is... You might look at the book of Acts and see it's a little bit messy as we get started here. We have to remember the context in which we're talking about here, okay? It's not just one man, Lord Jesus, transferring the ownership of the church or transferring the leadership of the church to one man.

It's the Lord Jesus leaving, sending the Holy Spirit and transferring leadership to the Holy Spirit who works through many people. Okay? Very important point to make. I wanted to make that as we start off here. This idea of plurality is important I think throughout the scriptures, throughout Acts.

We need to think about that. Watch how plurality plays as we study the book of Acts. So now we have go back to this statement. God in the form of the Holy Spirit is working through people. Okay.

Continue on in verse 14. It says, Peter said, men of Judea and those who are dwelling in Jerusalem, right? He goes on, he said it also in verse five. He said, Jews, devout men in Jerusalem. Verse 22, men of Israel, men and brethren, David's descendants essentially in verse 29.

House of Israel, verse 36, and then promise to you and your children. He's basically speaking only to a Jewish crowd here, okay? We could find... We could conclude from this. This is a sermon, right?

This is his first sermon. We could conclude that this is it. It's only to the Jewish people that this message is only intended for the Jew. And that's not true. If we go to Acts chapter 10, it's not too far along here.

We know the story of Cornelius and how the the Holy Spirit showed himself again in a miraculous way. And there we have the Gentiles pulled in. We know that Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles. There was constant constant struggle over going back to the Jewish traditions and this temptation to to want to to return to the works of the law throughout Acts. We're talking constantly about grace versus works.

There's geographical expansion that happens throughout the book of Acts. There's this idea that the Jews believe they're gonna be released from oppression. Constant transitional thoughts. These are ideas that they're thinking about and think, and then they act upon, things change and things happen differently. So this is a transition that we're having through the book of Acts.

Very important to watch that as we go through. But this constant expectation of the return of Jesus is always there. And that's here today too, isn't it? What Don, what is it? Perhaps today?

Perhaps today. So it's all types of people he's working through and there's all types of transitions that are happening throughout the books of Acts, book of Acts. Let's not pass that up. There's a refining process, if you will. Peter's message just to the Jew, which he firmly believed and is not untrue, was modified.

It was changed. It was grown as the Gentiles were brought in. So the God through the manifestation of Holy Spirit working through people, these were individual people. Okay let's read verses 15 through 21. For these are not drunk as you suppose since it is only the third hour of the day but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel and it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall see dreams, shall dream dreams. And on my men's servants and on my maidservants, will pour out my spirit in those days and they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven above and signs... Heavens above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord and shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

17:09 Context of the sermon: Jewish crowd

It was multiple languages that they previously didn't know and they spoke about the wonders of God, right? And some people were pros... Had the idea that maybe these folks were drunk and that was what was happening. And Peter says, hold on. There's there's a couple problems with that.

Number one, it's not uncommon for this festival to people people to be drunk at the end of the day. That's I think what he's inferring. But it's the beginning of the day. It's only 09:00 in the morning. Right?

They're not drunk. That's not the point. He says, we have to go to Joel. There's this prophet Joel. He said something about this.

It has something to do with what we're talking about today, okay? This would have been something that was written, I don't know how many years before. But hundreds of years before the time that Peter is actually speaking, this was written. Okay? And it says, I will pour out my spirit on all types of people.

He says, eventually your sons, daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. It talks about blood, fire, darkness, moon, a day of the Lord. Okay? So essentially, without... I'm gonna...

Not gonna go into this in deep detail, but the point is that there's a cause and a reason for this and a partial fulfillment of this prophecy is what happened when the Lord poured out his spirit. Okay? And I think you know Peter probably read to the end of this or he read in his mind, he quoted it to get to this point says whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's really important for us to remember. He poured out the spirit.

This is evidence of it. It was foretold. It was told about hundreds of years before. But I want you to know, don't forget, don't walk away today, Peter says, without knowing that all who call in the name of the Lord shall be saved. Don't you walk away from this today knowing that all who call in name of the Lord shall be saved.

So it's important to understand the context. Context is that the believers here, those that were listening to this were Jews and that they have this Old Testament. They have this history of the way that they have been brought up. They're looking for a Messiah and they get to the point now where they're under Roman oppression and this all plays in to what we're hearing being taught in Acts. Okay?

And so we have to remember the context that we're hearing this in. It doesn't mean that what we hear doesn't apply to the context of where we're at today. But we can say that now we can see that God... There's no other explanation but that God was in this through the Holy Spirit working through people. How how else can you explain something that's written a couple hundred years before comes through today.

Okay verses 22 through 24. Men of Israel hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through him in your midst as you yourselves also knew. Him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of god, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death. Whom god raised up, having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be held by it. So he's talking about Jesus of Nazareth.

Okay. This would have been somebody that lived among them. They knew. The people around him had been there. They had seen him.

They had even touched him. They they heard of his deeds. They watched as he had done many things. Okay. He was had proven credentials, if you will.

God had given him this power to do things that were amazing. He did miracles, wonders, signs. How do else can you explain the miracle of raising somebody from the dead that he did to Lazarus, right? Or feeding 5,000 people with two loaves and fishes. How does that happen?

How does he walk across an angry sea and then tell Peter to get out of the boat? That's what we learned about in the book of Luke. And the other gospels tell the very same story, that this man was only, he was God. Okay? He is God.

And there's only way you can explain the things that he did on this earth. Okay? And he had been seen by this crowd for sure. And then according to God's plan, this didn't surprise God, this man was delivered up for something he didn't do. He wasn't dealt with as a Jew under Jewish law.

He was handed over to an ungodly people, to the Romans to be executed. He was executed through torture. Torture on a cross. He was crucified and he died. And by implication, we talk about David's tomb in a minute here, but his tomb is empty.

22:48 God raised Jesus from the dead

Okay. He's no longer dead. He could not stay dead according to what Peter says. It's verse 25. Verse 25 says, for David says concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken.

Therefore, my heart rejoiced and my tongue was glad. Moreover, my flesh also will rest in hope. For you will not leave my soul in Hades nor will you allow your holy one to see corruption. You've made known, you have made known to me the ways of life. You will make me full of joy in your presence.

Verse 29, Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David and he is both dead and buried His tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body according to the flesh, he would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne. Verse 31, he foreseeing this spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ that his soul was not left in Hades nor did his flesh see corruption. A summary basically is Peter says, let's have a candid conversation. Let me just tell you the facts, okay?

That is that we know that David is dead and gone. Matter of fact, you can go see his tomb today. He said David was a king and they would have all known about David. He was a famous one, had great resume, right? But he was also a prophet and he wrote much of what he prophesied in the book of Psalms, Okay?

He could see what was gonna happen into the future. The Lord had given him those gifts. So he was anticipating or predicting when he's talking like this. My soul was not. My...

I was not left in Hades. You would not leave me. He's predicting as if his descendant, through him, as if it had already happened, what he's talking about. This is what will happen in the future. He's not saying that David's talking about himself, he is talking about the Christ when he's speaking of this.

Okay? He basically prophesies about the resurrection here. Again, hundreds of years beforehand. Okay, so we know that this Jesus was proven by God, right? We know that this Jesus was delivered by God to be crucified and then finally we know that he was raised by God.

This is the truth. This is what the scriptures tell us. This is what the New Testament writes. This is the story. It happened.

They're not making up a story. It is what is being told there. And more importantly, Peter says, and we are witnesses. We are the witnesses of what happened. We are witnesses of all of this.

And I'm standing here with these other 11 guys and we are willing to witness and you have seen much of it. Verse 33, Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he poured out this which you have seen and what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens but he says himself, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ. So if that was Jesus of Nazareth Nazareth, here's Jesus of heaven.

26:58 Where is the Lord now?

He has to say and I saw him. So the question is where is he? That's the question. Where is the Lord at this moment when Peter's talking? And he's saying he's exalted to the right hand of the Father.

In other words, he is in heaven. He can say I was there when I saw him rise up into the clouds. Okay? He can say not only that, but that David forecasted this or prophesied this, foretold it if you will, that David didn't ascend to heaven. Here's another Psalm 16 where...

I'm sorry, this is Psalm one ten. Where he says, look, I saw into heaven. I saw Lord said to my Lord. He's saying, the Lord Jesus went to heaven and he now has... Because he's there, the evidence of him being there is that he has now sent the spirit which he told us he was going to send.

What you saw poured out, what you saw in that miracle, what you've seen in the last few, you know, minutes, hours, whatever it took, is what he has done. He is in heaven. He's poured out the spirit and he is demonstrating that he has fulfilled his promise. And then Peter says, God has made this man whom you crucified Lord and Christ. That is what the Jews were looking for.

Period. They were looking for the Messiah. They were looking for the Savior and and we will see that he didn't just leave them to the Jews, it's for everybody okay? But he made him both Lord and Christ, ruler and savior. As an aside, this is a great way to present the gospel Okay?

You start off with relating to listeners. Know, these people were right there, right then. Peter was in a perfect spot to do that because he was a Jew. He had lived through these things. He knew these people.

Many of them knew who he was and So he could relate to listeners. Frequently we're in that position. We can relate to the folks that we know. Okay? And something happens and we say, oh, let me explain that to you.

Let me let me lead you to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. There's the heart of the gospel. He lived, he died, he rose again. You can't get around that. If you go around that we don't have much.

There was scriptures that had supported it, right? More scriptures that had foretold it prophesied it. Then Peter gives his testimony. Me and all these guys are witnesses of it. We saw it.

I know how it changed my life. I know what I saw. And then it really leads you to a call of action. We have to get to that point where you say what does it mean to me? I'm not gonna go into the application portion.

I'm gonna leave that to Andy next week. But he'll pick that up right where it says what shall we do, right? But it's a conclusion. This is the conclusion of the sermon in a sense it brings you to the peak here to say now you must make a decision. Verse 37.

Now when they had heard this they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles men and brethren what shall we do? We're cut to the heart. You know cutting means like dividing one piece from another. To to slice out confusion from knowledge. To slice out doubt.

To slice out all that you've seen before. What you you would you have trouble believing now. It cuts you... It cuts right to the heart. Okay?

It went right to the core of the matter. Right to where the people had to make a decision. Okay? He presented a whole bunch of evidence here. And I just want to review it because it's important for us to remember today too.

And there's lots more evidence as we go through this book and we study more the scriptures to see what this evidence is. You can't get past. This is a historical fact that the man named Jesus lived on this earth and he died. He did miracles, wonders and and had many signs, okay? The claim is and it's verified that his tomb was emptied.

31:45 The foundation of Peter's sermon

So it says, he died and he rose again. That's what that's what the Bible teaches us. That he rose again the third day. And there's witnesses of it. Peter is standing there amongst the 12 saying, I saw him.

He stands here today with the record of time saying, I saw him. There was two prophets that we talked about, Joel and David in three different passages who wrote things about this resurrection and about the Lord Jesus hundreds of years before it happened. There's a prophecy of Jesus. He said the helper will come. And he did.

He said you will witness for me in Jerusalem first, right? And Peter is. That's what's happening. There was this miracle of the the speaking in many languages. There was this tremendous noise, right?

There was divided fires over each one of their heads. Multiple people spoke in multiple languages. If I read, if I added them up correctly in Acts chapter two there, it says 15 different people groups. So maybe up to 15 different languages were being spoken at the same time. At the same time.

How does that happen? Languages that they didn't know before but were the heart languages of the individuals that were hearing it. And then we've got this idea of the response of the crowd. Now we have to go a little bit farther to find that up to... It seems that 3,000 people believe this message like that.

That's gotta mean something. That's gotta mean something. You can fool a couple people. You don't fool 3,000. You don't you don't just snap and that happens.

These people were moved by what had happened. And this pile of evidence that comes up here, it just keeps piling up. Okay. So now I have a challenge for you. What if that's true?

What if it's true? What does it mean to you today? If all of this is true, it's gotta mean something to us. Now if this is the first time you've heard it, I want to consider what does it mean to you? If this is the hundredth time you heard it, you should still consider what does it mean to you?

What does it mean that all this happened and there's much more. There's much more. We go to Romans, one of my favorite verses. If you confess with your mouth, believe in your heart, confess with your mouth, Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. That means eternity with the Lord.

There's a lot to be said. But before you go home today, I have a challenge for you. What if all this is true? What should you do? Let's pray.

35:26 Closing prayer

Lord, take us forward in this in this thought. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Peters Sermon at Pentecost — Acts 1-2

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Peters Sermon at Pentecost — Acts 1-2

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Questions about this message?

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