Acts 2:36

0:00 These people are not drunk. I swear, it's only 9 a.m. That's what Peter lifted up his voice to say to devout men of Israel who were gathered together in a multitude in Jerusalem on Pentecost. They'd gathered together because they heard men preaching outside in the daylight. And these devout men of Israel, the beginning of Acts 2 tells us, had come from like 15 different places, Asia and Egypt, Pontus, parts of Mesopotamia, places I can't pronounce.

0:45 And they were amazed and perplexed and astonished when they gathered together because they heard the apostles preaching to them, each of them in their own languages. They were amazed, but some of them mocked, and they said they are filled with new wine. So Peter, standing with the other eleven, lifted up his voice, and he said, no, these men are not drunk. They are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.

1:19 But, and he tells them what it really was, this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel, and then he quotes Joel to them, and they would have known the significance of this. In the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, even on my male servants and my female servants. In those days I will pour out my spirit, and they will prophesy, and I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, fire and vapor and blood. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.

2:09 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. So he tells them the what, what they're hearing. These men aren't drunk. This is the Holy Spirit poured out, prophesied hundreds of years ago. And then he preaches to them to tell them the why. Why now? Why here? And he says, men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.

2:47 you've seen it he's saying you've seen who he was he was attested by God this Jesus delivered up delivered up according to the definite plan and the foreknowledge of God this Jesus you crucified and killed he said this is the same Peter who just weeks before you remember coward in front of the servant girl when she'd merely said, aren't you with him? Don't you know him? And he said, no, I don't even know the man. And now in broad daylight in Jerusalem, he's preaching Christ crucified to these people, and he's accusing them. He's pointing out their sin. This Jesus, you crucified and killed, but God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it could not hold him. And then he quotes David too from the Psalms. The significance would not have been lost on them, devout men from every nation. He says, Jesus was not abandoned to Hades and his flesh did

3:52 not see corruption. No, this Jesus God raised up and of that we are all witnesses. So again, he appeals to what they've seen and heard. Of that we are all witnesses. God raised him up and being exalted at the right hand of the Father and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit, that's what you're seeing now. He has poured out this, this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. So, he says to them, and this is our verse for the evening, let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, This Jesus, whom you crucified.

4:38 So in light of this verse, tonight we should stand in awe because Jesus is Lord. It's instructive, I think, to look and see what these men of Israel did when they heard this message from Peter. Just a few verses later, it says that they stood in awe, they stood in fear. And it says that the message that Peter preached pierced their hearts. It cut them to the heart. And they said, they recognized their need, and they looked outside of themselves.

5:11 They said, brothers, what shall we do? They looked outside of themselves, and then they received the good news of Jesus. They repented, and they were baptized, and they were added to their number. It tells us just a few verses later that about 3,000 were added to their number that day. Praise the Lord. So, if you're here tonight and you don't know the comfort and the peace that comes from having your sins forgiven, and not only that, but being promised eternal life, and not only that, but eternal life in heaven with the Lord, with God who made you, if you don't know the joy that comes from being added to Jesus' family, to being adopted and having the riches of the glorious inheritance in the saints, If you don't know that tonight, you should do what these men did.

6:03 Look to Jesus. To paraphrase an old, old Charles Spurgeon, I think it's one of his first sermons. Do you wonder if your sin is too great? Look to him. Is there a sin you don't want brought into the light? Look to him. Do you think you've waited too long? Look to him. Do you worry he'll condemn you? Try him. Look to him. Maybe you say, I can't see clearly or I don't have a strong faith.

6:38 It's the looking, Spurgeon said. You can look and see dimly. You can look and see murkily. You can look and not be sure how much you're seeing. But look to him even in weak faith. And he promises to save. If you're a Christian here tonight, in your afflictions, in your suffering, in your doubts, in your flailings, in your failings, look to Jesus.

7:13 Look up. Because you have no other foundation that will hold you. I know I don't. Everything else that you try to put your hope in will either give way, it will erode, it will shift out from under your feet. People will fail you. your family and your friends. People here will fail you and disappoint you. But this foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ is unshakable and it will stand you through many a storm.

7:46 So look to Jesus and stand in awe of him because Jesus is Lord. Also, tonight and tomorrow and next week, We can rest because Jesus is the Christ. We can rest because, like this passage in Acts 2 says, we can rest because this Jesus God raised up. We can rest because he's exalted at the right hand of the Father. We can rest because, like we talked about a few weeks ago, he's sat down from his work.

8:17 He's accomplished what he came to accomplish. He's finished his work on your behalf. Jesus didn't have to offer sacrifices continually like the priests of the Old Testament did. He didn't have to offer sacrifices first for his own sin and then for the sins of his people. His was the final and perfect sacrifice and he's finished what he came to do and he sat down at the right hand of the Father. And because of that, we can rest.

8:49 We can rest because he's poured out the Holy Spirit upon us. We can rest because he will have the prize for which he died, the inheritance of nations. So we can know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, and we can rest. These devout Jewish men from every nation under heaven, they knew what it meant. They knew what it was like to wait for the Messiah. They might have not understood it completely.

9:21 They certainly didn't, I don't think. As they waited, their understanding of what was coming was affected by their own sin. They might have perverted the idea of what was coming by their own wants and desires. But they knew they were waiting, and they knew they were waiting for rest. They knew that the promised Christ was one who would bring peace to Israel. And they knew that the promised Christ was one who would bring salvation from their enemies.

9:56 And they knew that the promised Christ was one who would bring freedom from subjugation and slavery. He would bring them rest. They'd been looking for this rest for a long, long, long time. They'd been slaves in Egypt for 400 years. They'd wandered in the desert for 40. You hear that, right? They wandered in the desert for 40 years. And, okay, 40 years. That's decades. Most of you aren't 40. They wandered in the desert for decades looking for rest. And even when they got into the land, their enemies encroached on every side.

10:29 And then eventually one day, their enemies came in and they weren't rebuffed. And they took them off out of the land as slaves into exile. And even when they came back into the land, God still seemed far off for a long, long time. They were looking for rest. We sang this morning one of my favorite songs. I thought about this before I saw it on the bulletin this morning. Come, thou long-expected Jesus.

11:00 And thinking about it from this perspective gave me a little bit of a new insight into that, right? That these people had been waiting for so, so, so long. Come, thou long-expected Jesus. Born to set thy people free. From our fears and sins release us. Let us find our rest in thee. Then this next part, Israel's strength and consolation. Do you remember Simeon from Luke 2? He'd been waiting, for what? For the consolation of Israel.

11:33 And the Holy Spirit had told him that he would not see death until he saw the Lord's Christ. And then he saw him, remember? In the temple. And Jesus was a newborn baby. And he held him. And he looked up to heaven and he said, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace for my eyes have seen your salvation. He saw the Lord's promised rest and he could depart in peace.

12:05 He could rest. I love this picture of the nations here in Acts 2. This multitude from far-flung parts. That's the last of that first verse of Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, right? Dear desire of every nation, dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart. It's reminiscent of the nations coming in to the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21 and 22. And we see there the rest that were promised.

12:38 We see the river of life, and we see, like we talked about weeks before, the tree of life on either side of the river of life. And it says that the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. We're promised that there's no night there, that there's nothing unclean, that there's no more sin, no more suffering, no more tears, no more pain. We will have that promised rest if we're trusting in Jesus.

13:14 And I know many of you are finding it difficult to rest. This week, some of you, the last month, many of you, the last two years, maybe it's been longer than that. Some of you are saying, God, why are you doing things like this? Why are you doing it this way? Some of you have plans, even plans that are good plans that you think the Lord is calling you to, but you're stuck. Here for some reason.

13:47 You wish the phone would ring, but it hasn't. Some of you wished the phone wouldn't have rung this week, and it did. Will it get easier this week? I don't know. This month? I don't know. This year? I don't know. Will it get easier? I don't know. But I do know this. That if we are in Christ, we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he never changes, that he always keeps his promises, and that he promises to work things out for good.

14:28 So I trust that one day we can look back on our suffering, like we talked about this morning, and even though it's not small, we can look back and say, yes, it was light, and yes, it was momentary. And yes, it does pale in comparison to the eternal weight of glory that he's preparing for us. We should stand in awe because Jesus is Lord and we should rest because he is the promised Christ.

15:00 Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your promises and we praise you as a God who always keeps your promises and a God who is powerful to keep your promises. So we ask that tonight and this week and forevermore that you would make us rest in your goodness and your faithful promises. May we stand in awe of you and may we have the peace that passes all understanding because of who you are and what you have done.

15:35 In Jesus' name, amen.