We thank You for this morning. We thank You for those wonderful words we can sing. They’re true. That You are God with us. That You’re here. Thank You that Jesus in the Spirit You’re abiding. We never have to know seasons where You’re not present, Lord. You’re presently with us. You’re presently leading us. Leading us home to You. Leading us into obedience and to righteousness and holiness, God. So, thank You that Your love is truly all-encompassing. And, Lord, You are always here. We bless Your name. Lord, we thank You for all the ways You take care of us. Lord, You meet our physical needs as well. And we just pray, Lord, our tithe, our offering, what You give to us, Lord. Lord, that we would with open and cheerful hearts, Lord, give back to You. And see You multiply what we give, Lord, for our church. For our church and for Your kingdom. Lord, so we love You. We pray for Nigeria as we continue to do. Lord, as praying for the church persecuted there. Lord, as many Christians will meet at the risk of their lives, Lord, today and there and Iran and other places. God, we pray that they would be encouraged in the Spirit. And You would lead them and guard and keep them. And may we be, Lord, faithful to pray for them as well. So, we love You. We pray Your Word would… Dig deep roots in us, Lord. And we would be changed and grown up all the more in Christ for Your glory. And it’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. It’s good to be with you. Thank you, Chase and Rebecca, for leading us in worship.

We’re going to be this morning in Acts chapter 2. If you have your Bible. And you want to turn there with me. I’m going to be in Acts chapter 2. Verse 36 to 41.

Acts chapter 2.

36 to 41. Verse 36 to 41. And the Apostle Peter says, Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain… that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone 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 they were added that day. About 3,000 souls.

You know, it’s one thing to hear someone. And it’s another thing to really listen to what someone says. Like my wife catches me like that often. You know, did you hear what I just said? And it’s like, no. I mean, I heard the noises, but I didn’t hear what you said. I didn’t listen. And there’s a kind of… a kind of listening, a kind of truly hearing that’s a miracle. It’s a miracle. Have you ever seen like, you know, babies who have problems and they can’t hear at birth and they have a surgery and they maybe hear their mother for the first time and they cry even as a baby because there’s a thing about hearing and truly loving the thing that you hear. And that’s the kind of hearing that Peter… is hoping that they do when he’s speaking to them. And in fact, they are. They’re not just hearing the Gospel. They’re truly hearing the Gospel right to the ears of their heart.

He says, know it. He says, know it. Know it for certain. And he’s talking to all the house of Israel. And the house of Israel is just a phrase that means… All the Israelites since God established them as a nation. And what did that nation always look forward to? They looked forward to a Messiah. And there were many, many, many prophetic passages all throughout the Old Testament about a coming Messiah. And Peter even earlier up in his sermon at Pentecost, he references one of the Psalms that refers to Christ’s coming. In Psalm 16, verse 8, he says, I have set the Lord always before, because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. This is talking about Jesus. Therefore, my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices. My flesh also dwells secure, for You will not abandon my soul to Sheol. Or let Your Holy One see corruption. Again, that’s Jesus. You make known to me the path of life. In Your presence, there is fullness of joy. At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

So they had been hoping for this greater King David that we sang about, about to come to save them from their sins, to save them from their enemies, to establish an eternal kingdom of peace forever in the presence of God. And guess what? God sent His Messiah. He sent Jesus. But they didn’t recognize Jesus. Instead, they decided to crucify Him. But you know, according to God’s sovereign plan, it was through their blindness to Christ, it was through their deafness to who Christ was, their crucifixion of Christ that Christ became. Their Messiah. And not only their Messiah, but so also Christ became their Lord. Again, Peter, earlier in this sermon on Pentecost, he reads Psalm 1.10.1, The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool.

So all that Jesus did in His perfect life, in His sacrificial death, in His glorious resurrection, it both proved and showed that He was the Messiah for Israel and for all people, but also through conquering sin and death and all principalities and all dark spiritual forces, He is forever Lord of all. He says, know it for certain. He says, know it for certain. But you have to ask the question, why would they know it for certain? Because who’s a better teacher than Jesus Himself? And Jesus had been going around Israel for three years saying, here I am, and teaching with prophetic power. We read about how the crowd say, this Jesus, He teaches like nobody else teaches. And this Jesus, He did miracle after miracle. He did signs and He did wonders. And even this Jesus, He raised people from the dead. So why would Peter have any illusions that these people are going to be saved? And to hear when Christ Himself declared plainly He was the Christ, and yet He was killed, and then even after Pentecost, many more apostles will share the Gospel and will be persecuted if not killed for doing so.

Here’s why it’s different at Pentecost. And here’s why it’s different when someone comes to saving faith. It’s because what we’re seeing here in Acts 2 is a miracle. It’s a miracle. The birth of the church was a miracle. It’s a miracle of grace. You know, when a mother gives birth to a baby and she beholds her baby, it is in its own right a miracle. Who can say how God knits together the body and the soul? It is life. It’s precious. It’s got the image of God on it. Right? As we saw in the Scriptures. Much more, what a miracle when the Spirit of God takes a dead soul and breathes spiritual life and vitality into it. It’s something only the Spirit of God can do.

Nicodemus is curious about this. And it says in John 3, Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you know not where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

So we can plainly see, well, the Spirit was there birthing people

because the crowd responded with a spiritual response. They responded in a way that they could not respond if they were only in the flesh. It says that they were cut to the heart. They, for the first time, they had feeling towards God. They had a sense of who God was. They felt the weight of who they were in relation to God. They could spiritually hear and see and feel where they were dumb and deaf and blind before. Now they’re alive and they’re awakened. They’re conscious of spiritual realities they did not know. What does Paul say to the Corinthians? He says, We teach spiritual things to those who are spiritual, the flesh cannot comprehend the Spirit. And even if the beginning of their spiritual life is painful, and it is, because it says they’re cut to the heart, it means pierced through. It’s the greatest sense of distress. What do you call that when the Spirit does that? Conviction. You call it conviction. They had an undeniable sense in themselves of God and His Christ, and now they are inescapably sinning, inescapable of their ill-standing before this holy God. They are in every way confronted with their sins and their transgressions before God.

In the Pilgrim’s Progress, which I always reference, this is Christian at the beginning of the book. Bunyan writes, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place with his face turned from his own house. In his hands he held a book and he bore a great burden upon his back. He opened the book and as he read, he wept and he trembled and unable to contain his emotions any longer, he broke out with a mournful cry, What shall I do?

See? The Scriptures convicted him of right things for the first time. He was conscious of right things and wrong things. And it’s the very same thing, and in fact, not fictional, quite historical, is the first time it’s happened in the birth and the life of the church at Pentecost. The people don’t… Don’t say, Peter, could you give us some idea? Could you kind of maybe point us in the right direction, Peter? You know, do you have some kind of prescription we could follow? Or maybe you could come over later, Peter, and give us some more. They claw at Peter. They say, what shall we do? They’re desperate to know how things can be put right.

I want to say to you this morning, truly hearing the Gospel begins with genuine conviction. And I think you could describe Spirit-induced conviction as simply seeing things as God sees things. Don’t ever underestimate what that means for you as a Christian, to see as God sees, to see rightly. It’s the grace of proper eternal perspective. What sin and Satan had blinded you to before, the cross of Christ stands to shine the light on. And who is it alone that can take that cross and shine the light of truth? It’s the Spirit. It’s just the Spirit of God. It’s the Spirit of God that can do that. But Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, he says, And even if our Gospel is veiled, it’s veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, what’s He done? He shone in our hearts. To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Conviction is simply seeing things as they are. Seeing things as they are. And once you see things as you are, you can’t enjoy things the way that you did before. You’ve got a new perspective. The life you live, the pleasure you enjoyed before, they’re just not the same. A godly man hates his sin. He hates his sin. He’s turned from it. He sees what a pig pen of filth it was that he enjoyed. I’ve heard it likened to a pig, and it’s just feasting on trash and rolling in its own refuse and just loves it. And all of a sudden, that pig is turned into a man and he starts to violently vomit. And he smells the same smells and he’s in the same place, but he’s disgusted at what he’s done.

So, you know, it should be a hard sell, I think, when someone comes to you and says, claims to be a Christian, but there’s little sensitivity to sin. There’s little sensitivity to the things of God. They can seem to talk like the world talks. They seem to approve of the going things in culture. They seem to be entertained by the same lewdness in the entertainment industry. They seem to have the same self-centered ego. They have little regard for how they treat others, little regard for who God is. They seem to like the pig pen just fine. But godly conviction says, it cannot be so. Godly conviction says, I have this new, be it surprising to me, holy hate for sin, for wrong things. And a growing interest in right things.

And why not? Because the Bible says that the Spirit of God does what in us? Makes us a new creation. And if I’m a new creation, that means I’ve got a new mind and I’ve got a new heart and I’ve got new desires and I’ve got new desires and I’ve got a new purpose and it’s not something

that we couldn’t have seen God say, this is what I’m going to do for you. Because all throughout the Old Testament, what did the law of God constantly teach the people? It taught them how to be right, but it also taught them, you can’t be right. You just are wrong. You don’t just do wrong, you are wrong. Ezekiel says in 36, I will sprinkle water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness. Uncleanness. And from all your idols, I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I’ll put in you. I will remove the heart of stone, that which cannot feel, and I’ll give you a heart of flesh, that which is sensitive and feeling. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey all my rules. You will never convince a pig that filth is filth. You will never do it. So, you see, it is an undeniable miracle of grace when men, women, boys, girls

forsake themselves to their own hurt. Forsake their life to the hurt of their own life. It can only be because they’re no longer that person anymore. They’ve become a new thing in Christ Jesus. They think, they feel unto the Lord.

Pilgrim’s Progress, Pilgrim’s Progress, It says, Christian hadn’t run far from his own door when his wife and children noticed what he was doing and they cried out to him, Come back! Come home! The man put his fingers in his ears and ran on and he screamed, Life! Life! Eternal life! He didn’t turn to look at his home or family behind him, but he fled towards the middle of the plain. His neighbors also came out to see him run. The man continued to run, even though some of his neighbors mocked him, others threatened him, and some joined with his family and cried to him, Return!

So you see, there’s no partial conviction with God. There’s no light conviction. There’s no kind of, sort of conviction. There’s just genuine conviction that comes from God and it turns your life on its head. You were going in one way, assuredly, but Christ says, no, you’re going in another. You were one thing, but no, you’re going to be another. You were about your own name and your own position and your own wealth and you lived for your father, the devil, but now, now in Christ Jesus, you will live for the Father of heavenly lights, that all things would be filled with the light and the knowledge of the glory of God. Until you cry out, what shall I do? How do I live for right things? How do I flee from wrong ones? What is to be done about all the wrong that I have done?

At the outbreak of the Civil War, there was a man in Tennessee,

and he had friends who were both in the North and the South, and he just couldn’t decide, you know, who he should fight for. So he thought he’d be neutral and wear a gray jacket and blue trousers.

But one day, he was caught in the middle of the skirmish and he shouted out, I’m neutral in this fight and expected to be left alone, but the Union sharpshooters, seeing the gray jacket, riddled it with bullets and the Confederate marks, and filled his blue pants with lead.

Friends, a conviction is an undeniable thing. And it’s a thing for which you must live. And there’s no such thing as partial conviction. I want to ask you this morning, if you’ve been a Christian for some time, are you sensitive to the Spirit in all things? Do you live to be sensitive? Do you live to be sensitive? Do you live to be sensitive? Do you live to be sensitive? Do you live to be sensitive? Darcy, I want to say this morning, you must live to be sensitive to the Word of God. You must live to listen to it. Make a regular habit and practice of letting it speak into your life. Why were the crowds at Pentecost convicted? It’s because the Spirit took the Word of God and He cut. What’s Hebrews say? For the Word of God, it’s living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It divides, cutting soul and spirit, joints and marrow. So I want to say to you this morning, if you’re following Christ, the only way to do it is in a great sensitivity towards the Spirit because only the Spirit convicts us of truth. Only the Spirit shows us right things from wrong things. Are you letting the voice of the Scriptures, are you letting the voice of God fill your ears? Is God the greatest persuasion in your life? Friends, we should never tire the grace of conviction. Sometimes conviction doesn’t feel good because it means I’ve got to do something different. I can’t keep living this way. But it’s heaven’s compass, isn’t it? It’s heaven’s compass to lead us home.

Verse 38 of chapter 2.

Peter goes on. It says, 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. The promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself. 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 3,000 souls. So God’s not just good to convict you. Because what would it be to be convicted? To be convicted of something but to know there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing for the better. Well, it would be misery. But God’s so good He doesn’t just convict us of sin. What He does is He builds our bridge to show us what we must do about it. Conviction, if it’s real, it will burst forth in repentance. They shouted, What shall we do? They were nimble. They were quick. They were ready to do whatever the man of God said that they should do to cast off their former life and begin their new one. You think we have very dangerous ideas about repentance when repentance is simply acknowledging you’ve done something wrong. We’re admitting it. Because just because you’ve admitted you’ve done something wrong or you’ve acknowledged it, it doesn’t mean you love it any less. You know, a serial killer who’s caught, who confesses to his crimes, doesn’t enjoy doing what he does any less. My dog, finds dead birds and rabbits all the time in the backyard and they stink and makes his whole mouth stink and I can rebuke him, but he doesn’t enjoy doing it any less.

Repentance isn’t even a step further in feeling bad about it. Self-loathing. Many Christians who are miles from, or non-Christians who are miles from God, they self-loathe. Many Christians deal with regret and mistakes and they’re none closer to God because of it. What is repentance? What is repentance then? Repentance is the action of becoming something else. It’s not simply changing one’s mind. It is changing your mind. But it’s changing your mind to the point where you abandon your former self, you abandon your former thoughts, you abandon yourself completely, and you become something else entirely so that it can be said about you, you are not who you were before. You are someone else. And really, Jesus gave us this key at the beginning of this ministry. What’s the very first thing Jesus said when He started His ministry? It’s really the only thing you and I need to hear. If you didn’t hear anything else, if you just heard the very first thing Jesus said when He started His ministry, it would be enough. And He said this, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It’s enough.

Convert your dead old nasty thing, turn away from it, and become a brand new beautiful thing. That’s what we need to do. Well, we need to give up on who we are. We need to give up on what we do. We need to give up on what we love. Give up on trying to defend our misdeeds. Justify our mistakes, why they’re not that bad. Turn from yourself, turn from your sin, and become a new creation in Jesus.

What does Paul say again in Corinthians? He says in 2 Corinthians 5, if anyone is in Christ, he is what? A new creation. The old, it’s gone. It’s not even there. It’s passed away. And He’s a new thing. He’s a new thing. That’s repentance. It’s repentance.

But Peter tells them to do something else. He says be baptized. Be baptized. And any time you see in the New Testament someone repenting and placing faith in Jesus and trusting that promise that if I repent and I turn towards Christ, I’m going to be a new thing. I’m going to be made new. You always see baptism right there with it. And why is it so important? To be baptized. Well, one, because God said to do it, even if we don’t understand why He said to do it, but it’s easy to understand why God says to do it. It’s because just as the Spirit has taken your dead, nasty soul and He’s identified it with the death of Christ on the cross and all your sins, now you are identified with the resurrected Jesus in His new and beautiful and brand new life. So the water like the Spirit puts you under, kills out, kills out the old man and you’re awakened to be a brand new clean man in Christ Jesus. So we can splish and splash all day long. That’s not going to help us. But the power of baptism is the power of placing faith in Christ to save His blood that washes me clean.

Baptism, I want to say to you this morning, is a declaration.

First, baptism is a declaration to yourself who you no longer are. It’s an ever-present reminder. The Spirit did move in me. I was convicted. I did repent. I did turn to Christ. The Spirit’s made me new. You know, we often rejoice to see other people baptized and we should do that. But you know, we too few, you know, don’t do enough in times of suffering, in times of trial, when sin swells up in our life. And when we are genuine Christians, sin does swell up. And when we do struggle, we don’t look back to our baptism. And say, ah, yes, I did sin in such a way. Ah, yes, I am in such a dark valley. But I remember being put under. I remember being baptized. And I was baptized because I believed the promise of God. I believed that if I were to repent and place my faith in Christ, I would be a new creation. So I say to you, take comfort from your water baptism. Look back to it and see how God’s Spirit got a hold of you and performed the miracle of salvation in you.

Second, I want to say to you that baptism is a declaration to the local church. It’s the declaration that I belong to you. You belong to me. I’m your problem. You know, and you’re my problem for better or worse.

Baptism is the visible sign by which we say, ah, God did it again. He took a wild branch and He grafted it onto the tree. You know? You know? Dirty, old, filthy sinner determined to go to hell and He shined the light of Christ in their eyes and He’s made them one with His body and that body being the church. He did the miracle again.

Friends, in this way, Darcy’s baptism this morning, and I pray many more that we see, it’s a big deal for us because we own her as a sister.

All the 59 one-anothers of the New Testament, they apply to her now. Love her. Teach her. Pray for her. Bear one another’s burdens. Correct her. Admonish her. We are obligated, joyfully so, to do that as she does that throughout her lifetime because she has been grafted into the body of Christ. Her nourishment depends on you and your nourishment depends on her. It’s how God has designed it. That’s what the Hebrew writer can say in Hebrews chapter 3. Exhort one another. Every day as long as it is called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. The body is so imperative and critical for us to hold our confidence to the end. Which harkens back to repentance. Baptism is a one-time thing, but we need to get rid of this maybe prevalent idea that repentance is a one-time thing. It’s not a one-time thing. And we’ve said this here before many times. Repentance is a lifestyle, something we grow in. What does Paul say? We’re all the different body parts and we grow up together as a mature body into the head who is Christ. So holiness, holiness is a team sport. We must have one another for this.

Lastly, I want to say to you that baptism is a declaration to the world. I’m no longer part of you. I’ve got new desires and I’ve got a new heart and I’ve got new values and I’ve got a new purpose and I’ve got a new master and I’ve got a new family and I’ve got a new kingdom and I’ve got a new destiny and I’ve got a new eternity. Baptism declares, yes, that’s who I was, but no, it’s not who I am anymore.

Friends, all the trials that will be faced for a Christian in a world hostile to the gospel, hostile, to God, hostile to righteousness, let us identify with our King in the waters of baptism. Because here’s the amazing thing. What does Peter say in 39? He says that God calls you to Himself. In other words, think about that. You are not only standing for Christ, Christ is standing for you. Think about when Stephen, when he was martyred and he looks up to heaven, what does he see? He sees Jesus standing. And I believe Jesus is standing because he sees a servant suffering for Him and he’s ready to take Him home. If Christ would so bleed and die for you, if Christ would give His all for you, friends, are we willing to compromise when the world asks us to compromise? Are we willing to say, no, I’ve been baptized into the truth of the gospel and there with Martin Luther I stand and I can do no other?

Such a wonderful Father would call us His children. Such a wonderful Father would call us His children. Such a wonderful Savior would call us friends. Such a Spirit would abide forever. Let’s faithfully, unashamedly stand for the name of Jesus in a crooked and twisted generation.

Romans 6, verses 3-11 is probably, I think, the most powerful passage on baptism. Paul says, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried, therefore, with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we’ve died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Church, you must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

You must be obedient. You must be obedient. What does genuine conviction really produce in a person? Obedience. Repentance is not an option. It’s a command. Peter said repent. He said repent. Jesus said repent. John the Baptist said repent. He said repent. All the prophets of the Old Testament said what to the erring people? Repent. Repent. Repent.

Repent your whole life until you’re with Christ in eternity. That’s the life that we live together as we grow up in Jesus.

He says in verse 41, so those who received His Word were baptized and there were added that day about 3,000 souls. So when we truly hear the Gospel, we’re truly saved. When the Gospel is truly preached, the Gospel truly produces salvation. It convicts a man of all of his sin. It stirs up obedience. It stirs up a deep longing desire to love the Lord your God for all the ways He’s loved you through the cross of Christ. It’s a work of grace. And all we can do is say, praise God for the miracle in me. Let me live in that grace. And oh God, continue to do the miracle time and time again.

I’m thankful to have my family here this morning, to have my parents here. It’s a reminder, a sharp reminder I think to all of us the value of discipleship in the home. I’m grateful for hearing the Gospel from a very young age. We have this terrible tendency in the church to like, let’s hear the testimony of the guy that killed people and did drugs. I want to hear that story. That’s a cool story. It’s a cool story. When people get saved because they would not have said yes to Christ had He not called them. That’s an amazing story of God’s grace. And so I’m grateful for my mom and dad and their witness in my life. And I’m grateful for God working in me and in my wife and just the desire to see our children come to faith. And I pray for their children’s children’s children’s children’s children. For my children and all their children and everyone whom the Lord God calls to Himself. That’s the beautiful promise of the Gospel. So I pray this morning it stirs you up to worship God. I pray your baptism stirs you up to labor for the Lord that we may see many more experience the miracle of salvation. Amen? Amen. Alright, well, Darcy if you want to come up here.

Darcy, why have you come to get baptized this morning? To show others I’ve joined God’s family by turning away from my sins and putting my faith in Him. Amen. Amen. Well, sister, it’s my privilege to baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Buried with Christ in baptism.

Raised to walk in newness in life.

Amen.

Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Praise the Lord.

Hey, I invite you to stand. We’re going to sing and worship the Lord with one more song.