The Gospel According To Peter

before the the directory is out there you might hold the tape for a second we are in acts the book of acts chapter two so turn there with me if you would as we are called to be witnesses of jesus christ the birth of the church is here yes the continuation of the church is here and we are part of the church through our birth and rebirth in jesus christ and as such called to be witnesses and so we'll see the the effects of this throughout the book of acts the fact of our being called to be witnesses we'll see that example then encouraged over and over and over in the book of acts i read a story where a grandmother had her little seven-year-old grandson spend the weekend with her and one morning she got up and

her little seven-year-old grandson was bringing her a cup of coffee that he'd made and she said that it was the worst cup of coffee that she'd ever had in her life and as she was finishing that cup of coffee down at the bottom she noticed in the cup were three little of those little green soldiers so green army men and she said she looked at her grandson and son and she said honey what are these army men doing in the in my coffee cup and he said oh grandma you know the the commercial on tv that that says the best part of waking up is soldiers in your cup many times we need clarification to make sure we're understood properly and that's true of what happened here in the book of acts in chapter two as well and uh

peter stands up here we see beginning in verse 14 to give that clarification peter stood up with the 11 and raised his voice and addressed the crowd now last time we saw that peter is an example to us as a witness we are called to be witnesses well what's that like well we can look at peter here in the book of acts who is just a man forget that he's an apostle forget that he's a disciple you are an apostle and a sent one as such you are a disciple a learner a follower of jesus christ so you qualify uh he's just like you and me and i'm going to give you a little bit of a and last week we saw that he demonstrated uh what a witness is and does three ways first of all

he followed the the and believed in and trusted in the empowering and leading of the holy spirit now you and i as believers in jesus christ the moment you receive jesus as your lord and savior the moment you asked him to come into your heart and forgive you of your sins you receive the gift of the holy spirit and peter's going to emphasize that in the text again today and as such all he wants you to do now is to trust his leading now unfortunately many christians come to the point of salvation and they get stuck and they end up just doing religious things churchy kind of stuff uh they just come to church uh they they try and do good things for others uh but there's no relationship going on they have not learned to follow the

leading and to trust in the empowering of the holy spirit and peter does that here and he demonstrates that and that's one of the first things that we're called on to do as witnesses god has not called you to go be a witness and just expect you to go out on your own and and just do it he has empowered you to be able to do it he's given you the power of the holy spirit to lead you to encourage you to prompt you to teach you how to do that secondly we saw that that peter was in the word of god he he spent time with the word he had spent those three years with jesus and and jesus opened the minds of the disciples to the things that he taught much like the holy spirit will do when he comes into our lives as we take time to be with the lord in his

word that's what jesus said he would do he would bring to our understanding whatsoever he's told us but i believe that also peter had just spent the last 49 days in preparation for the feast of pentecost spending time in prayer in the study of the word which was part of the procedure in preparation for pentecost so he what he's sharing here i don't think is just mysteriously oozed out of him it's something that he'd probably been reading and studying during this 49 day period and he shares from joel and he shares from psalms what the lord had impressed upon his heart and that's what god does with us if we take the time to spend it in his word and that's what peter does with us

in his word so you have to trust in the empowering and leading of the spirit you have to spend time in the word of god and then thirdly we saw last time that we have to see the harvest you and i have to have a vision for the harvest and that's the people and that's probably the hardest part of it i can trust the holy spirit to a certain extent i can know that he'll he'll teach me he'll show me god's word uh i know that that i need to spend time in the word of god and i can take time to do that but man there's just people around me that i don't like there's people that just rub me the wrong way there's family members that you know i don't like to spend time in the word of god

to be around and we have to take the time to see them as the harvest they are part of god's harvest now that mean we have to enjoy our time with them i didn't say that we have to see them as the harvest they're in need of a savior they're in need of the lord jesus christ and peter looks out and sees this vast amount of people that have responded to where the disciples are in this upper room because they've heard this sound as like a mighty rushing wind and they gather around and they hear these disciples praising god in their various languages that they can understand from their different regions and peter comes and he seeks to speak to them and he sees them as the harvest he sees them as a

people in need and anybody without jesus is somebody that's in need and the time is so short and they may be taken so quickly either we're going to be taken out of here by the rapture or they may be taken in a sudden death thing this deal with princess diana being killed last night in the car happened so quickly um it can happen to those real close to us real fast we don't know we have to see them as part of the harvest so peter did that now we come to uh the rest of chapter 2 and we see that peter gives us now an example of his gospel how he presents the gospel of jesus christ peter stood up with the 11 and raised his voice and addressed the crowd fellow jews and all of you who live in jerusalem let me explain this to you listen

carefully to what i say these men are not drunk as you suppose it's only nine in the morning no this is what was spoken by the prophet joel in the last days god says i will pour out my spirit on all people your sons and daughters will prophesy your young men and your young women will prophesy will see visions your old men will dream dreams even on my servants both men and women i will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy i will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below blood and fire and billows of smoke the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the lord and

everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved now we're going to take this in segments and the first thing i want you to notice that peter does as he begins to speak to the crowd to clarify what's going on is he tells them the signs of the time he defines for them the signs of the time now as you and i are called to be witnesses for the lord that is more often than not going to be an opportunity for us to begin to give the gospel to begin to share the gospel because everything that's happening right now is so awesome that people are are in awe the brutality of of the way people are responding in different situations and taking a gun and shooting everybody and then killing themselves

it's so awesome and and people everywhere are talking about those things can you can you believe that this is going on and when you are engaged by someone in a conversation like that it's an open door for you to do just what peter did to begin to define the signs of the time can you believe that this is happening well as horrendous as it is yes i can believe it because god told us in his word that in the last days these kinds of things would happen paul wrote to timothy in second timothy chapter three and said in the last days of his life i will give you the signs of the time and in the last days men were going to become brutal without love and we see that parents

killing their children siblings killing one another and you can use that as a springboard you help to clarify the situation help clarify what's going on by presenting an area of defining the signs of the times and peter says that here he says these are the last days in the last days verse 17 god says and he excuse me he takes this passage out of joel chapter 2 verses 28 through 32 and he quotes it here in verses 17 and 18 and he says these are the last days in the last days through 20. now it's interesting and i encourage you to take some time to read joel today if you can or this week at least just take some time to read it it's only a few chapters long and you will find

that joel is writing his prophecy concerning god's judgment of the nation of israel that's what joel is about that god is has called to his nation of israel and they have rejected him and so he's bringing in the army of judgment and they're as numerous as the locusts and they're going to sweep through the land and they're not going to leave them and they're not going to leave them and they're going to leave anything and then you get through joel and you'll find that god is then bringing restoration to the to the nation of israel after he brings judgment and uh he talks about that that he is able to restore what the moth and the canker worm have have eaten as as joel speaks of

the devastation of judgment that's coming is not going to leave any grain or any wheat just like a plague of locusts devouring the wheat well god says i'm able to restore that and so you see defined in joel god's promise of judgment and destruction but then god raising up the nation of israel again god restoring israel to the land and restoring himself as their god now this happened just uh around the time and yes it has a historical fulfillment that has gone uh in the days past with god bringing the babylonians in to finally judge the nation of israel and to disperse them but it also has a future application during the time of the great tribulation when uh we've already gone through that in our study of the

gospels and the study of the book of revelation and thessalonians but the time of the great tribulation when god is again focusing his attention on his people israel that's important to understand there are people today within the church who condemn the idea that israel and the church are separate entities many in the church today want to see israel and the church as combined israel was given the opportunity to serve god and they failed god sent the messiah and they rejected him and they crucified him so god set them aside and he's raised up this entity called the church and so all of the prophecies and the prophecies of the church are going to be the same as the

promises that were regarding the nation of israel now belong to the church and they see the church and israel as intermingled together and that's not so that's not the way it is in scripture read romans 9 10 and 11 you'll find paul arguing a very good case against that idea matter of fact he says that blindness has come to israel now only for a time that god's not done with his people israel he's going to draw him back that the church has merely been brought in to make israel jealous of the relationship that we have with the god they thought they had and have found that they don't have but that god is going to restore them to the church and they're going to restore them to the

church he says or you're a wild branch that's been grafted into the olive tree you've been given god's grace to be part of this blessing but don't think that you or have anything great or mighty because god will rip you off the tree if you think you're better than israel if you get this haughty attitude he'll rip you off the vine so we are separate we're a separate entity from the nation of israel and so as you read joel you'll find that this is a prophecy concerning god's judgment and restoration of israel now that's interesting to me because i don't know too many segments within the church look at acts the second chapter of acts as some mystical kind of ooey thing with the spirit of god and and they look at this these

verses uh regarding your spirit being poured out on all people's sons and daughters prophecy young men see visions old men drink greens we're going to talk about that in just a minute but they fail to see that that's part of god's judgment on the nation of israel god didn't isn't just giving us some ooey gooey feeling now that we've got the holy spirit and what we do you know it's part of the judgment that he's bringing on the nation of israel and it signifies the fact of the last days and peter shows us that these last days begin with this outpouring of god's spirit verse 17 and it happens he says on all people i will pour out my spirit on all people or on all flesh depending on what translation you're reading and this is this is something new

uh up to this time it was it was specifically to the jew that god's spirit came and only to selected people specifically to the jews and it was specifically to the jews that god's spirit came and only to the prophets and king david and king saul god's spirit came on saul once and he he prophesied with the prophets that were there but it was a selective thing and was only there temporarily and only primarily on the jew and for the most part only on the man it was occasionally that deborah the women were anointed with god's spirit but it was primarily at that time very selective and so the idea now that it comes out on all flesh is something that's new matter of fact

it's defined here in this second chapter as uh you're it's on me and it's on all people and it's on men and it's on women you're young and you're old your servants shall prophecy as well so in just this few statements god is showing us that his spirit now is available to everyone there's no restriction by age there's no restriction by gender there's no restriction by class it's not for the jew only now it's for all who come to believe in the sacrificial death and the atonement of jesus christ through jesus christ now he says that with this outpouring of the spirit your young men will see visions your old men will dream dreams again the church see satan seeks so often to distort the reality of of god and we'll talk more about

this a little bit later on today as we get into more of this we get down a few verses we'll talk some more about this but and you know that but we see this in acts chapter 2 and so now the church seeks this emotional spiritual experience and i want this i want to see visions i want to dream dreams i want this vision of god i want this this experience of the holy spirit and so the church gravitates towards the spirit of god and i want to see visions i want to dream dreams i want this spiritual experience of the holy spirit and so the church gravitates towards seeking that experience seeking experiences as if you know somebody has a vision oh i saw a vision of a pumpkin and it was

flying through the air you know and i had this wonderful thing or i dream i dreamt that i dreamt a dream and i was so strange you know this dream and all these funny things in the dream can interpret my dream because when the whole context again of joel is on the judgment of god the judgment of god is coming and it culminates with the coming of the lord verse 20 before the coming of the great and glorious day of the lord so the visions and the dreams that god says he's going to pour out are in context related to these last days to the judgment of god and the coming of the lord and i believe it has to do with god giving wisdom to his church to discern the days the visions that

we receive from the spirit and the dreams that are dreamed are are god clarifying his word in light of the days that we're living in it's not so that we get some ooey's experience it's so that we get clarification for the application of his word because god's judgment is fast approaching and the coming of christ is fast approaching so god is clarifying his words he's opening up his word so that it's more easily understood as we come close to his to the coming of his son he gives us wisdom he gives us hope and he's giving us insight now the these last days the clock began on the last days with the pouring out of the spirit of god when when the spirit of god was poured out here at pentecost peter gets up and says i'm going to pour out the spirit of god

and says the clock's ticking we're in the last days and his last days are beginning with the outpouring of god's spirit they're going to end verses 19 and 20 with him showing wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below blood and fire and billows of smoke the sun will be turned to darkness the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious or great and terrible day of the lord depending on what translation you're reading so it's going to culminate with the coming of christ during this cataclysmically dreadful time the moon being turned to blood the sky will be turned to blood the moon will be turned to blood the sky will be the sun darkened the sky filled with many wonders smoke uh billowing and and signs on the earth

below a dreadful cataclysmic time and jesus talked about that time in matthew chapter 24 and luke chapter uh 21 verse 11 talked about these days of god's judgment so the last days began with the pouring out of god's spirit it will end with the cataclysmic destruction of the earth and the coming of the son of god the revealing of the son of god and his coming and the purpose of all of that is in verse 21 that everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved god is revealing himself through his people more and more god is revealing himself in his creation as these signs begin to happen that his church can help define clarify to the world around it's going to continue to increase

in intensity until finally there is the cataclysm of armageddon there will be wars and rumors of war there will be the war where russia comes down against israel soon i believe it will ultimately end in the battle of armageddon and then it will end in the battle of israel and then it will end with the coming again of jesus now as we see these things beginning to happen in these last days the purpose is that we might tell others about jesus verse 21 everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved so church that's our call we are called to be witnesses we're called to clarify what's going on and we begin and we will most often begin in sharing the gospel defining the signs of the times yeah this is amazing this has happened but imagine what's

going on in this particular time and we're going to be saved and we're going to be saved and we're going to be saved and we're going to be saved and we're going to be saved and we're going to be saved area now because this is what god said would happen but that we don't have to worry because those who call on the name of the lord will be saved well then comes the question which is naturally in the minds of the people and will be in the minds of those that you're sharing with what must i do how do i call upon the name of the lord and so peter clarifies that now in verses 22 through 41 how can i call on the name of the lord well first of all he says you must believe that

jesus came from god the first thing before you can call on the name of the lord is to believe that jesus came from god look at verse 22 he says men of israel listen to this and you will be saved jesus of nazareth was a man accredited by god to you by miracles and wonders and signs which god did among you through him and you yourselves know this first thing you have to do is the first thing you have to believe before you can call on the name of the lord is that jesus came from god that he was fully man verse 22 peter says that jesus of nazareth was a man accredited by god to you that he was fully man you see there there were those who began to build a heresy around the first century of the church that said that jesus

messiah wasn't really a man that he was an apparition that he came and he was this spiritual thing that appeared and disappeared at will that when he walked he really didn't leave footprints at all that he was this he was an angel jehovah's witnesses build their theology on the fact that jesus was an angel created the same as michael the archangel wasn't god the mormons say that he was a god not the god but well peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter

handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter

handles it all right now peter takes care of that too a little bit later on but right now peter he was fully man and he dwelt among us john said we beheld his glory too the glory is of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth our eyes beheld him he writes again and our hands handled him he was real he was a man fully man but not only was he fully man peter says he was attested and accredited by god to you with miracles wonders and signs which god did among you through him he not only was fully man but he is also god and peter's going to emphasize this a few verses down he starts off telling us that now though god did miracles through him not only was he fully man

he was messiah from god himself and actually is god now if you go back into the old testament and you see the prophecies concerning mashiach messiah you'll realize that he was indeed god go to isaiah behold the virgin shall be with child and she shall bring forth a son and she shall call his name emmanuel which is god with us later on in isaiah he shall be called wonderful counselor the mighty god the everlasting father he is indeed fully god he's fully god and he's fully man now the theology of that is hard to understand god doesn't ask you to understand it he just says this is what he is and you need to believe that he's from he came from god was fully man was fully god he was accredited

to that by god verse 22 by the miracles wonders and signs that he did now as you read through the gospel accounts which many of the people here in acts had experienced firsthand they had followed jesus probably to some extent many of them they'd seen him do the miracles why did he do the miracles why did he do that why did jesus when you read about him feeding five thousand as steve sang about this morning or healing the sick or opening blind eyes or raising the dead why did he do that because he was a good old boy when the disciples of john the baptist came to jesus because john was imprisoned and soon to die john sent his disciples to jesus to ask him are you the one

we've been waiting for are you mashiach or should we be expecting another one and jesus told those disciples go and tell john what you have seen the sick are healed the lame walk the blind receive sight the dead are raised why did he say that because that's what the old testament prophets laid out as what messiah would do when he came those were signs to attest to the fact of messiahship jesus himself says in talking to the pharisees in john chapter 10 verses 37 and 38 do not believe me unless i do what my father does but if i do it even though you don't believe me believe the miracles that you may know and understand that the father is the one who will save you and the one who will save you and the one who will save you

is in me and i am in the father in other words i'm saying i come from god i god is my father i am from him he's in me and i'm in him we're one which means that i'm god the pharisees understood what he was saying they sought to stone him for that and he says if you don't believe what i'm saying believe the miracles believe what i do because they're attesting to the fact of who i am so the first thing in our gospel presentation is that we tell people that jesus lived and he was fully man and yet he came from god and that fact was attested to by the miracle of jesus and he was fully man and the miracles and the signs and the wonders that he did secondly and in light of that jesus had to

be more than just a good man he had to be more than just a prophet he was the god man secondly as part of the gospel presentation we need to realize that we must believe in his sacrificial death how can i call upon the lord well first of all i need to believe that he came from god and secondly i need to believe in his sacrificial death verse 23 this man was handed over to you by god's set purposes and foreknowledge and you with the help of which you are going to be able to worship him Jesus went to the cross and the wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross i'll read that again this man was handed over to you by god's set purposes and foreknowledge god

planned for jesus to go to the cross now that's simple for those of us who are christians and believe that but it's something that satan very easily puts a little bit of a twist on and starts a whole different cult starts a whole philosophy that leads into not only the cultism but occultism as well. Satan just twists it a little bit and says that, well, Jesus was a good man and a good teacher and a prophet, but his life was cut short. His mission was cut short. And so the Christ, as some force, has been given and bestowed now to someone else. That was the

philosophy of Sun Muyong Moon, the founder of the Moonies. He said, the Christ has now rested upon me. Jesus was a good man. He was a good teacher. He was a prophet, but his life was cut short. And so the Christ has been bestowed now upon me, and I am not the Christ. I have received the Christ. They say, well, the Moonies are pretty well dead, but the theology isn't. Shirley MacLaine

et al., all the New Agers, take that theology now, and they say that the Christ has descended, and the Christ is really in you. That all of us have the Christ, and that all we need to do to succeed in life is to release that Christ within us. We need to just release that power. We need to come in contact. We need to focus on. We need to get in tune with that Christ in you. You are God because God is in you. That's all a

product of that idea that, well, Jesus was a good man and a good teacher and a prophet, but his life was cut short. So now the Christ has been removed. No, Jesus is the Christ. The Christ is not some essence. The Christ is found in the person of Jesus. He is the Savior. He is Mashiach. And God, it says, and I really like this, God set purposes and foreknowledge,

mean the fact that he would be handed over to wicked men and die on a cross. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't know how I could live a day of my life without believing in God's plans and his foreknowledge, his set purposes and his foreknowledge. I don't know how you view life. I don't know how you see your day to day. If it's just out there as some blank slate, and you're

just going now to make your destiny, and your destiny will be whatever you determine it to be, and whatever you're going to do out there, and you have no idea what's ahead, and you're just going off. Into this blank slate of darkness out there to determine your own destiny. If I had to live like that, I'd be scared to death. In the light of what's going on in the world, I would be literally scared to death. Drive-by shootings, poisoning in the water, the landfill problems here and there,

the people going crazy. I would, I would hole up in a house. But see, I believe the Bible teaches that God is a sovereign God. He's over everything that there is, that God has set purposes and plans for everything there is, that when you came to Jesus Christ, He's bestowed you with this mercy, and that grace will be bestowed upon you in this world. He's saying that the Lord in the book of Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter two,

that He has ordained a path for you to walk you're His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained. That means God has prepared you for a path, prepared a path for you too. And the things that you encounter along that path have been prepared by God to bring you into the image of his Son. That relieves me of a whole lot. I can go out today, and whatever

or that goes wrong, or whatever seems to happen, I can come into it and I can say, God, I don't understand it. And maybe I've made a foolish decision that wasn't the best, and you're using this now to turn me back to the path. But maybe it's not, and maybe this is just something that's happened, I couldn't foresee it. I didn't know this was gonna happen, but you did.

And you allowed it. And I can trust you now to bring me through it. So show me what to do, and believe that he will. And that's a whole lot better. That saves on the ulcers, that saves on a lot of medication by just trusting in the foreknowledge and the set purposes of God. According to God's set purposes, he was going to send his son to hand him over to wicked men to be crucified for our sins.

Already determined, before the world ever was ever formed, the Bible says. Now, I mentioned last week about a book, and I wanna mention the book, but I don't want to necessarily encourage you to go buy the book. It's a book called The Bible Code, and it's written by a fellow named Michael Drosnin. It's not just a book to sit down and read. It's Michael Drosnin.

Michael Drosnin is a Jew by birth. He is a reporter for The Washington Post and The Washington Times. He's an investigative reporter, and he has written this book. These are not simply his discoveries. He is writing about the things that have been discovered encrypted in the Word of God, encrypted in the Bible. Now, the study is something that the rabbis have been doing for centuries.

A couple years ago, a few years ago now, I guess, on Easter, I shared a study about how, in the Old Testament, the rabbis had taken, and beginning in Genesis and Exodus, they'd taken and just counted every 49th letter and circled it or wrote it down, and then counted every 49th letter and wrote it down, and they found out that recurring over and over, doing that just by logging every 49th letter in the Old Testament, and Genesis and Exodus was the word Torah, which is the Hebrew word for the Word of God. And then they went to Numbers and Deuteronomy, and they found that the same thing was true, only in reverse. Starting from the ending of those books and counting backwards every 49th letter, they came up with the spelling of the word Torah.

They went to Leviticus, and they counted and counted, but they didn't find the word Torah. But they went through Leviticus, and they counted every 7th letter, and by placing every 7th letter together, over and over and over, they were receiving the tetragrammaton YHWH, or Yahweh. And as you look at that, you see that the Word of God itself has encrypted in it the statement that the Torah from Genesis and Exodus points to Leviticus. The Torah from Numbers and Deuteronomy points back to Leviticus, which Leviticus highlights the name of God.

So the Torah, the main significance in the Torah is God, is God's name, is God's Word that's found in Leviticus. Then when you study Leviticus, and you realize everything about God that's revealed in the practices of tabernacle and temple worship, it's awesome. So the rabbis have been doing this for centuries. The thing is, is that it normally took them years, if not decades, decades to figure all these things out, because they would figure them out mathematically by hand.

Well, there are a couple of mathematicians in Israel who have documented and verified these things, now that they're using the computers, the things that took years and decades, now computers are doing in seconds and minutes. And they have found amazing things encrypted using mathematical formulas in the Word of God. Now, I'm going to say these things, and they're going to be fascinating, but I also then want to issue a warning. They are finding mentioned, encrypted in certain sections of the Word, things that are astonishing.

They have found, like down historical events, they have found, for example, the name Napoleon encrypted, and right there with it is the word Waterloo, and the date. They have found the word America, and with independence, and with the date in the Hebrew, that equals 1776. They have found encrypted the word Nazi and Hitler, along again with the Hebrew dates encrypted right there, that equal the dates back from the 30s and 40s. They have found, they have found things, amazing things.

One of the most remarkable and one of the most current is that encrypted they have found the name Timothy McVeigh, and there with it the word Murrah, and there with it the word Catastrophe, and there with it also the time, the exact time and the date of the bombing. Remarkable things that they're finding encrypted in this. Now, warning, Michael Dresnan, although born a Jew, is secular and an atheist, but affirms that this has to be the work of a higher intelligence. Only man could not write something that from this long ago that made sense in one direction as well as in another in its writing.

So it has to be a higher intelligence, but he's not ready to attribute it to God as such. You will see as a result of this, a higher affirmation of alien life somewhere that has done this. And you're going to find, unfortunately, you'll find popping up one 900 know your life, you know, fulfilled prophecy where you will be able to call a 900 number and give them your name and they will promise you they'll encode it into the computers and if your name is found, they'll tell you what's around it so that they can kind of see maybe what's for your life on around that mark that they'll they'll do it. So they'll misuse that.

We've already seen areas where this type of misuse has already occurred. You remember back during the 60s and early 70s when the high drug usage was going on, what was a big thing to do back then with Beatle records laying backwards? Why? Oh, because they said messages back mask. Where did anyone ever come up with the idea to do that? It wasn't original. See, Satan just in his drug induced states perverts.

Well, let's see what else we can get from backwards. John is dead. John is dead. Paul is dead or something like, you know, number nine, number nine, number nine. God's already done it. The exciting thing and one of the one of the authors who writes about this book, who critiques the book, says if God is is declaring his sovereignty and his foreknowledge through unbelievers and his coming must be amazingly close.

Daniel was told to seal up the visions and prophecy until the time of the end, when knowledge and travel would be vastly increased. We're there. And God is there. He's unlocking amazing things, amazing revelations about himself. He sets times and seasons. Someone thirty nine says he recorded all the days of your life before there was one. He knows the beginning from the end.

He sets these purposes and he purposed that Jesus would come and go to the cross sacrificially to save us from sin. That's the second thing that we have to believe before we call upon the name of the Lord. Oh, an important detail here that I need to impress upon us is it says this was handed over. Man was handed over to you by God. Set purpose and foreknowledge and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death.

Let me read that with more of an inflection. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death. Let me read that again. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing into the cross. It wasn't the Jews that hung him on the cross.

It wasn't the Romans that hung him on the cross. It was you and me that handed him over to wicked men. Our sins are what sent Jesus to the cross. Jesus went to the cross. for you and for me. And we handed him over and Jesus hung there to die for us. Thirdly, we have to believe in the resurrection. We have to believe in his resurrection. Now, if you're reading

anything that's going on with the Jesus Seminar and the modern day theologians that are seeking to corrupt God's word and to say that only parts of it are really from God and other parts are written by men and there's Q and there's Y and there's the Yahwist and there's this one that wrote, there's even a woman that wrote the Pentateuch now. And they say, if you're hanging into all of that stuff, one of the things they're perverting too is the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They're saying it's really unnecessary. Well, not if you want to be saved. Resurrection is absolutely necessary. You must believe in the resurrection. And Peter says

that. He was a man that was attested by God. He came from God. He was nailed to a cross by God's purposes and foreknowledge. But, verse 24, God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death. To keep its hold on him. God raised him from the dead. It was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. Why? Number one, he was pure. He was sinless. It's only at the point of the cross

that God somehow took our sins and placed them upon him. Now, we talk about that, but we don't understand it. It's another one of those theological things we don't understand. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, I believe, verse 21, that God made him to be sin. How did he do that? How did at a time 2,000 years ago, God take our sins? We weren't even born yet. We were born in the

early days. We weren't born yet. And he put them on his son. He made him to be sin. He took all of the sins of those that had lived the 4,000 years prior to that and placed them on. How did he do that? I don't have any idea. Because Jesus was sinless in and of himself. He was perfect. But God made him to be sin. Placed that sin upon him and then judged him. Killed him on that cross for

you and me. But he was sinless. Death could not hold him because he was sinless. Secondly, he was God. Only God could do this. There isn't a person that would have ever lived sinless. There isn't a that would be strong enough to do this. That would be pure enough to do this. That would be able to take sin and have God put it on us. And we have problems with our own. I mean, I've got enough of

mine. I don't need yours. Thank you. I can't carry the sin that I have. It's too awesome. It had to be God that died for us. It had to be. And so God raised him from the dead. And then Peter takes Psalm 16, verses 8 through 11 to justify Jesus' resurrection. Because of that, I saw the Lord always before me. He is at my right hand. I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my

tongue rejoices. Jesus was in the tomb. He rose on the third day before the body would have actually physically started to corrupt and decay. So his body did not see decay. He raised again. You have made known to me the paths of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence. Then he goes on to say, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried and his tomb is here

to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life and we are all witnesses of that fact. So Peter takes Psalm

16 that David wrote and he makes application of it. And he says, David wasn't writing about himself because David's still in the tomb. We could go to his tomb today. You know where it is. We'd go see his decaying body. He's still in the tomb. But he was writing this about the Christ, the one who would come. God would raise from the dead. And he says, we as the disciples are witnesses of this fact. Now,

the times that they're in, remember the official statement of the nation, the official political statement, the official governmental release, the press release from Pilate's headquarters was that the disciples had come and stolen the body. You remember that? You remember that the soldiers came to Pilate and they said, earthquake, flash, angel, well, don't. We were like dead. Pilate

says, here's money. You guys just say that the disciples had come and stolen the body. And he said, here's money. You guys just say that the disciples had come and took the body and I'll cover it for you. Remember that. That was the official release. That's what all the people that were here had heard had been told officially from the presidential press corps. Now, if that was indeed the case, then also there would

have been rumors that Pilate would be willing to give a king's ransom if somebody could produce a body. Now, up to this point, the disciples had been very elusive. They were scared. Remember, they hid themselves in the upper room. And even after the resurrection, now they're getting a little, they're seeing, been seen out a little more, but they're still kind of holding tight. Now, here they are, they're

are peter stands up with the other 11 that means matthias or matthias is with them they're boldly standing there and he says he's raised from the dead and we are witnesses of that fact now if there were an offer of a king's ransom for somebody to produce the body knowing our flesh one of those guys would have worked it out i mean look what's happened when a magazine offers two hundred thousand dollars for photos of people like princess diana and the paparazzi were chasing her on motorcycles in this car at speeds of up to a hundred miles an hour when they slammed into a tunnel i mean people will do a whole lot for money and you got these disciples thinking king's

ransom produced the body if they had stolen the body somebody would have cracked for the money but they didn't okay that's fine but now they start killing them now if we put the plan together to steal the body so we could get some notoriety and they start killing us i'm gonna talk because i'm not gonna die for no hoax it wasn't a hoax and they said we all attest to that we all establish this fact we are all witnesses of this fact and not only peter says was he raised from the dead verse 33 he says but he's now exalted to the right hand of god and has received from the father the promised holy spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear for david did not ascend to

heaven and yet he said and here he quotes psalm 110 and applies that the lord said to my lord sit at my right hand until i make your enemies a footstool for your feet and so he said not only did he raise jesus from the dead but he's exalted him now to the right hand of the father and the evidence of that is that he sent the spirit like he said he was going to and that's what you're seeing and hearing today it's a result of the direction of jesus christ this is what's happened it's the result and it's evidence to you and what you see in the person of the holy spirit manifesting himself through these believers now he doesn't stop there he says in verse 36 therefore let all israel be assured of this god has made this jesus

whom you crucified both lord and christ now that would have stunned the jews in that day they made him both kurios in the greek lord and mashiach the messiah not only was he raised from the dead peter says but he's lord and savior now all you have to do is go back into the old testament and the jews would have heard this over and over in isaiah chapter 43 verse 10 and 11 god speaking through the prophet isaiah says before me no god was formed nor will there be one after me that's takes care of the mormons who say that jesus was just a god he's created but he's a god he's different from from god yahweh jehovah god he's a god well god says himself no god was made before me no god going to

be after me i'm it i even i'm not a god i'm not a god i'm not a god i'm not a god i'm not a god i am the lord and apart from me there is no savior i'm the lord only and apart from me there's no savior nobody but now peter says god has made jesus both savior and lord so peter says jesus is god he's got to be the only way he would be raised from the dead that's he's exalted to the right hand of the father he is god now you have to catch the emotion of the people because many of the people that were here now listening to this were there when they brought jesus out when pilot brought jesus out and they were there when they brought jesus out and they were there when

he would have been beaten and flogged and pilot stands jesus before the crowd and many of these people here would have been in the crowd and said crucify him many of the people here would have been along the road when they brought him down to take him out to crucify him and they would have seen that many many of the people would have seen because where golgotha is in jerusalem it's a hill right there and it's a there's a stone face on the wall which if you look at it from a certain angle it looks like a skull but it's set up on top where there you can be in jerusalem and you can see golgotha and you can see jesus and you can see jesus and you can see jesus and you can see

golgotha and you could see the crosses on top of there so they would have seen him crucified hanging on the cross they would have known that many of them affirmed that they said that yes do that that's great and now peter says he's both lord and savior and he's coming again soon in judgment and so they say when the people heard this verse 37 they were cut to the heart they were scared to death and they said what shall we do they see you and me are the we we are the you who hung him on the cross and we should be crying out if we have not already lord what must we do and peter says in verse 38 it's real simple repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of jesus christ with forgiveness

of your sins and you will receive the gift of the holy spirit repent and be baptized the word repent you know this if you've been around very long means to just turn around go in the opposite direction it doesn't mean to say you're sorry i'm not quoting from love story but too often we think of repenting as just going sorry lord you know and now i'm going on about my business oh yeah i did that and that was terrible with me too i'm sorry lord and we go on that's not where repentance is see repentance is a sorrowful heart that realizes i've violated my fellowship with god i have i have violated not only his word but i've broken that fellowship and i am now going to turn from what i did to do that

and seek to walk in a different direction that restores that fellowship see it's it's it says i'm going to do whatever is necessary to turn away from that and walk in the other direction that's what repentance is if i have a problem with a person that i've not done anything to lust, I don't excuse myself and say, well, I have a problem with lust. I have a disease. I cut off whatever I need to cut off to keep lust from being set before my eyes. Job said, I've made a covenant with my eyes that I'll not look lustfully upon a woman. Well, that's a nice

thing to say. It's a difficult thing to do. It means you have to cut off every, you take out the TV if you're prone to look at things lustfully. You take out the magazines. You don't put yourself in situations where you're sitting in a swimming pool looking at half-naked women, guys, if you have that kind of a problem. You repent. You turn and go the other way. If you have a problem

with relationships, getting physical, you don't put yourself in the position to let them do that. You're around other people. You take, you go out on dates with lots of others so that you hold yourself accountable. You don't put yourself in a car in a dark street late at night. That's stupid. That's not repentant. That's seeking to fulfill the lust of the flesh. If you have ought against

somebody else, you don't go, well, I'm sorry. I just, don't like them and I'm not gonna like them. No, that's sin just as much as lust is. And you seek to turn from that attitude and minister to them. Love your enemies. Do good unto them that despise you and persecute you. Bless them that curse you. See, there's activity that happens in a repentant heart. Peter didn't say, okay, just tell God you're sorry and let's get baptized and go. He said,

turn around. You got a whole different direction to walk. And then be baptized. Now, unfortunately, it looks like he links baptism with salvation here. This is the only place in scripture where it looks that way. Everywhere else, you see that it's a, it's a gift of God with grace through a repentant heart. And baptism then is simply a mark of identification of what's already transpired. We had a baptism last Sunday. The people that

already received Jesus Christ into their heart, they were already saved, but they were now using the baptism and obedience to Christ as a point of identification, identifying the activity that transpired in their heart. Baptism was a big thing in the Jewish culture. It was indeed a mark of identification. You went through all of the washings and what the priest did at the temple.

It was a mark of cleansing and purifying and active identification of what was happening with the sacrifice. They understood baptism very well. This is something that as believers, we need to do in obedience to the Lord, to follow the Lord in, in this identification process. Then he says, repent and be baptized. Every one of you. One of the things I want to point out,

there is it's an individual decision. I can't be saved for you. I can't repent for you. Your parents can't repent for you. I don't care if you were born into a Christian home, that doesn't save you. I don't care if your parents were, were pastors or evangelists, that doesn't save you. I don't care if you come here every week and sit and listen to all the messages and you're faithful to

church services and you come on Wednesday nights, that doesn't save you. It doesn't, that doesn't mean anything until you first repent. You repent and turn to the Lord. It's an individual decision that nobody can do for you. You have to do it by yourself. You have to do it by yourself. You have to do it by yourself. Repent every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ. Be baptized in the name

of Jesus Christ. Be identified with Christ. That's who you're identifying with. For the forgiveness of your sins, he says. So that implies that first of all, you have to realize that you are a sinner. Not that you've just done a few things wrong. You may have had a bad thought here and there. No, you are, you are corrupt with sin. That song that we taught this morning, uh, I'm calling out light

to fire again. I have come to buy gold refined by the fire. I am naked and blind, wretched. I come naked and poor, wretched and blind. I come, I am consumed with sin. Not because of any action I did at a certain point in my life, but because I was born in sin. I inherited it from Adam. I was a loser from the minute I was born and only Jesus saved. I need that. That's it. He says, that's it.

Repent. Be baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. That's it. And then if comes into effect, you see the workings of faith in your life. You see the change in your life. The results, Peter says, you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. You, it's available to you and your kids and to those far off who will be called. He said, that's us. So that's available to us

today. And then he says with many other words, verse 40, he warned them and pleaded with them, save yourselves from this corrupt generation. So he did, he just had a two minute sermon here, but then I was blessed to read verse 40 because he, he kept talking just like we kept going here, both services today. And with many other words, it says he warned them and he pleaded with them, save yourselves from this corrupt generation. I appeal to you this morning, whether you're here

or whether you're listening by tape or whether you're listening on the radio, in any way that I could, save yourselves from this corrupt generation. Repent. Call upon the name of the Lord. Believe that God sent Jesus, that he came from God, that he's fully God and fully man, that he came to die on the cross for your sins. It was God's predetermined purpose that he do that

has raised him from the dead. He has victory over death. And through that, he is unable to impart to you who believe the gift of the Holy Spirit, who will, who will seal you and guide you until you go to be with the Lord, until he presents you to him in his, in the presence of the Lord. I appeal to you. Things are happening so fast. It's faster than we can even comprehend how fast things are

coming together. Things are falling into place. Please call upon the name of the Lord if you have not done so. Let's stand together.