Acts 2:21

0:00 Something that gives me a lot of pleasure in life, it's a small thing, but something that I really appreciate is when a gif or a jif, depending on how you say it, just really perfectly captures the way that I feel or respond to something. So just an example of that would be this week, my boss was out for half of the day and he messaged us on Teams that he was back in the office. And so I sent him the picture of Sam and Frodo kind of huddled there, chapped and barely making it to Mount Doom and just sort of to capture my sarcastic response that we had barely survived without him.

0:36 That kind of thing happens all the time. Sometimes it's a picture like that. Sometimes it's a quote. So if I saw you unexpectedly and told you that I wouldn't be more surprised if I had woken up with my head sewn to the carpet, it would certainly convey my surprise, but it may also make you realize that I was as happy to see you as Clark was his cousin Eddie. And it sounds like over the past week or so, several of you have expressed to Greg that the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear, and that may have come through. Well, our verse tonight is an example of a situation where a quote is used to explain a situation, and it's Acts chapter 2, verse 21. It's on the front of your bulletins. Peter says, and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

1:35 The main idea tonight could be just that, but I said it this way. Repent and believe in Jesus to be rescued from God's wrath against your sin. I think that's what Peter wants us to understand. This text is a pivotal moment in salvation history. The book of Acts is the story about how the disciples are taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. And in chapter 1, Jesus is resurrected. He commissions the disciples, and then he ascends into heaven and instructs the disciples to wait for the Spirit to come to empower their ministry.

2:12 And in chapter 2, that happens. It's the day of Pentecost. The Spirit comes with a mighty rushing wind, with flames of fire resting on them, and with the people being given this gift of language to declare the mighty works of God in foreign tongues that are not the way that they natively speak. And this makes quite the scene such that at 9 a.m. the gathering crowds interpret this event. Now, the text doesn't tell us this, but I think there's reason to think that the Jerusalem home team had a lot of noon kickoffs this season because there must have been early tailgating.

2:50 Because their conclusion to this scene at 9 a.m. is these people must be drunk. Peter offers a different explanation. These people are not drunk, and in fact, this moment is the fulfillment of something that God had promised hundreds of years before in Joel chapter 2, and so Peter then begins to preach the first Christian sermon. Now, the quote from Joel is an important one. Joel, the message of Joel is that God is coming in judgment. He's going to send this devastating plague of locusts. It's going to devour everything on the land, and that that is a foretaste of the coming judgment, the final judgment the day of the Lord and the message of Joel is a message of repentance that that God is going to come in judgment and people are called to repent and that God is also a promise that God is going to pour out his spirit before the great day of the Lord the final day and that's a day of the restoration of God's people and a day of vindication and judgment against God's enemies

3:52 and so when when the bible does that with a prophecy and uses something that happened in the old testament of prophecy and saying this is the the fulfillment it's not just quoting and relating one situation to another these events mutually interpret each other so so the prophecy informs the nature of the fulfillment and the fulfillment clarifies the true meaning of the prophecy and so it's kind of like putting two pieces of a puzzle together where it's not just that one says what the other looks like it's together they better portray the whole of the event and that's exactly what is happening here so if you read Joel and you read Acts you may think well I don't understand exactly you know how these all these details this is happening this isn't happening that's not the point the point is that together these portray the event in more clarity and the key thing that Peter wants them and us to understand is that with the giving of the Holy spirit with the pouring out of the holy spirit on the disciples the last days have begun and in

4:55 other words what he's saying is it's christmas morning you've you've come down the stairs and you're in your pjs and you've rounded the corner and you're kind of rubbing your eyes and you're looking at the tree and the gifts and it's begun and you're starting to open presents and there's There's more to come, and there is glory yet to be revealed. But right now, as of this moment, the last things have begun. And so he says, with the pouring out of the Spirit, two things are happening. First of all, judgment is inevitable and imminent.

5:30 Judgment is certain in its coming. And the second thing, the thing that we want to think about tonight, is that salvation is available. So I want us to consider three aspects of salvation. What is salvation? who is it for and how do you get it what is salvation who is it for how do you get it so first of all what does it mean to be saved well the simplest simplest way to understand it is it means to be rescued it means to be healed it means that if you're on the train tracks and a train is coming and somebody snatches you out of the way and the train whizzes by it's to be saved from the train so what what kind of salvation is Peter talking about well I think most specifically he's talking about salvation from god's wrath against sin when we hear that when we hear the idea of being saved from god's wrath i think it is tempting at least it is for me sometimes to think about god's wrath as this sort of abstract impersonal force that's out there sort of like a hurricane and as long as you're outside of the cone of certainty you know it's it's there it's

6:34 real it's kind of scary but it's very removed and and impersonal but god's wrath is not like that at God's wrath is judicial, it is personal, and it's like when you hear that somebody's done something wrong, whether it's to you or something else, you hear about an injustice, and you have that sense of, man, it shouldn't be that way. That person should be punished. There's violence, there's some kind of a violation, and it demands a response. And what the Bible says is that is God's wrath against our sin. That's our state before God. He knows every deed that we've done, every word that we've spoken, every thought that we've ever had, every intention of our heart. We've broken God's law. We failed to honor him as God, and because of that, we deserve eternal condemnation.

7:25 So that's what we're saved from, but we're also saved from ourselves. We are broken internally. We are corrupt. Just think about how often you're tempted to lie, just to misrepresent a situation a little bit, to paint yourself in a little bit better light, or to take advantage of somebody else, to take some liberty to abuse your relationship with somebody for your own privilege, to say something that just barely, just a little bit undermines somebody else's reputation, that paints yourself in a slightly better light. Think about your inability and your helplessness to change. So we're coming up on that season, right, When everybody will start to resolve to be different.

8:13 I challenge you, resolve on New Year's Day not to sin and see how long that lasts. Not very long. And it's also a salvation from our self-righteousness. Our constant mentally one-upping ourselves, comparing ourselves to the people around us. To think we're just a little bit farther ahead. We're just a little bit more deserving of God's favor than the people around me. So we're saved from God's wrath, we're saved from ourselves, but we're also saved for something, and that is for God.

8:44 Salvation is for God, but because it's for God, it results in all of these things that come to us as a result of it. So it means present blessings of the forgiveness of our sins, the fact that in salvation we can have confidence that our sin has been paid for and dealt with. We can be assured of God's acceptance to know that forever we have a right to be known by him and in relationship with him. And that is another way of saying that we are adopted, that we actually become part of God's family.

9:16 We become his children when we are saved. It's also the present reality of sanctification in the process of becoming progressively more like God, more holy in our character. There's many other things we could say. So there's present blessings. There's also future blessings of salvation. There's the fact that one day we will be glorified and have sin completely removed from us. There's the fact that we will be commended in God's presence, rewarded for our faithfulness to him and our service to him. And then finally, God himself is the ultimate reward, to have his presence and to be restored to him forever.

9:54 Sometimes when we start thinking about salvation, It can become very theological and technical or very obscure and just like something that just does not, it doesn't resonate with what is salvation in real life. And I think one way that helps me at least to think about it is to think about it like going home. For some of you, you've traveled recently or you will be traveling. You know, when you go home, you go home to family, you go home to familiarity and comfort and acceptance. You go to people who know your story, who love you and accept you as you are.

10:28 There's a great joy and relief and comfort that comes from that. And some of you maybe don't experience that at all, but you leave there and you come back to your home. You sleep in your own bed and you put your head on your own pillow and you know where your silverware is and all those other things of familiarity that remind you of home. Either of those experiences. The point is that salvation is a little bit like that. It's relief, and it's satisfaction, and it's rest. And so if you're a Christian, as you hear about this and think about what is salvation, it is a call for us, among many other things, but to a forward hope.

11:06 And as we've heard a lot of prayer requests, a lot of great things going on, a lot of difficult things going on in the life of our church, I just want to remind you that the message of salvation is one that lets you live and face life with resilient faith, that God has finally dealt with your sin, that Jesus promises to make all things new, and that one day he will raise us to be with him forever, and you can rely on that. If you're not a Christian, I hope that something about that is intriguing to you, and you're asking, well, who can participate in that salvation? And that leads us to the next point. Who can be saved? Now, Peter answers that really clearly here. The answer is simply everyone.

11:46 Everyone can be saved. Now, that may not be a big deal if you're used to being in church and hearing about that. But for much of the Bible, that would have been kind of surprising, I think, because God was focused on a particular group of people, the nation of Israel. Most of his attention for the Old Testament was on that group of people. And even within the community of faith, there were lots of distinctions, right? So there was a place where God dwelt, the temple or the tabernacle. And only certain people could get so close to God, and only certain ones of those could even get so close.

12:21 So there were all these tears and all this separation, and most of the communication was distance. But now, oh sorry, one other thing that was different is very few people had the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was given out partially for specific purposes, but was not the experience of God's people as a whole. And that Peter is saying now we experience the universal presence of the Holy Spirit among God's people. And now we experience the universal inclusion of God's people.

12:54 So young and old, men and women, Jew and Gentile, all are on equal footing, all come to God in salvation together. So everyone can be saved. And that is amazing news. So Christian, I want you to just think about this in a couple of ways. first, remember that this is a call for us to action, to outward work. So the blessing of God's salvation is given to us as something to cherish and celebrate and worship him for, and we certainly want to do that. But it's also good news that we are commissioned to take to the ends of the earth.

13:27 And so it's why we give money and cooperate with people to send them around the world to spread the gospel and to establish churches and to see Jesus's message go out. And it's also why God has placed each one of you in the place he has, in your place of work, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, in your home, all of those things, for you to spread the gospel and make that message known. Another thing, though, is something we prayed for tonight, is that we as a church, as one united people in Christ, are called to display God's wisdom and his glory in our diversity and our unity and our unity despite our diversity. And so a question for you is, do your relationships make sense to the world? Does somebody look at your life and your friendships and your Christian friendships especially and say, well, yeah, they have the same hobbies and interests and they have the same kids that are the same age and they do the same things. They go to the same schools and all of this just makes perfect sense to me. Or do you have relationships that because of their the differences that are obvious or maybe the the

14:31 way that you care for each other that says wow there's something different there's something unique about that there's something otherworldly about the way that those people love each other and if you're not a christian again i hope i hope you're hearing this message hearing about this salvation and thinking well how do we get it and that's what our last point is about how is someone saved? Peter says very simply, it's by calling on the name of the Lord. Now that's not language that we typically use. We don't say, have you called on the name of the Lord? But I think it actually is actually a pretty good way of understanding what this relationship is like, because to call somebody by name is to know that person. It's an expression of familiarity. It's something that you do to somebody that you have some intimacy with, not a complete stranger. We call them by name. And so throughout the Old Testament, this is a way to describe a response to God's self-disclosure, to his revelation to his people. God reveals himself and his people

15:35 call on him in response to that. So they relate to him personally in worship and praise and thanksgiving. They ask him to fulfill the specific promises that he's made. You know, most of the the mighty acts of God are not things that people dreamt up and said, hmm, what would be neat if God split the Red Sea? Yeah, let's ask him to do that. God, would you split the Red Sea for us? It doesn't work that way. God reveals himself to his people. God declares amazing things that he will do for his people, and then he does it because they ask him to. So it's God's idea. And then, of course, the core thing that it means to know God and to call on his name is to come to him in repentance and faith. To come to him confessing your sin, to come asking for forgiveness and seeking his help to follow him. And when we get back to Acts chapter 2, Peter's main point in his sermon is that the name that we call on in order to be saved, the name of the Lord is the name of Jesus.

16:33 That Jesus, by his resurrection, prove that he is the Lord who saves those who call on him. So if you're here tonight and you're not a Christian, we are so glad you're here to hear this message you can call on the name of the Lord right here right now and be saved from your sin that is great news it's not it's not anything that you can do to earn it's not it's not something that you work for from God it's a free gift that God offers to everyone who asks for it in Jesus's name so all you have to do is confess that you're a sinner and ask Jesus to forgive you and he'll do it so if that's you please talk to me talk to somebody else after the service we'd love to unpack that with you. For Christians, the reality of calling on the name of the Lord is a call for us to rest, to rest internally, to trust completely in Jesus's work on your behalf. So to set aside all of the attempts that you make to measure up, to make yourself right before God, all of that can

17:33 be set aside as you trust completely in the work that Jesus has done for you. But that rest is not idle. So God doesn't call us to sit around and do nothing. He calls us to hold fast and to diligent focus. And the author of Hebrews really puts it better than I can. He says, therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation it was declared at first by the Lord and it was attested to us by those who heard while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will so I think the author of Hebrews is making the same point that Peter is making and this is this is to conclude is that through the ministry of Jesus and through the coming of the Holy Spirit God has pulled out all the stops.

18:33 The last days are here. Jesus is Lord. Believe on him and be saved from your sin. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you that we live in the last days, that we know that Jesus is Lord, that we know that he has been exalted, and we know that he will return. We thank you that before judgment there is salvation, And we pray that we as your people would look to that salvation, would trust in Jesus' work on our behalf, and that we would share it boldly with others.

19:07 And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.