Sunday Worship: The Gospel Proclaimed
2021-01-31
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22xRwHVTgLo

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

good morning everybody good morning and good morning to everybody watching online on this snowy day we're going to have kind of an edited service today just so everybody can get home safe that decided to come do in-person service today. So let's get started. Brandon's continuing to preach from the Book of Acts today, and he's going to be going into Peter's sermon, who shows us who Jesus is and what God has done and how this should encourage us. And so in the text that is going to be read later, Peter quotes Psalm 16 with that. And we read part of that together last week. and we're going to be reading the rest of that together today. I thought it would be kind of fitting. And one of the verses that stuck out to me from that psalm is verse 10 through 11,

where it says, You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your Holy One see corruption. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. And so as a personal thing, as an adopted kid, the thing, one of the things that always seemed to stick with me was this kind of a small sense of abandonment. When I was a kid, I would just stuff it down, which was not healthy. And then as I got older, it would just manifest into anger towards everyone and dangerous habits. And finally coming to depression and thoughts of unworthiness and things like that. So when I finally got to a point to have a better understanding of the gospel and to understand the one who never abandons me, not only in this life and all the struggles

we have, but also in death. In verse 10, when he says, you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, I looked up Sheol, which means darkness or place of death. And so he doesn't abandon us in the one place that none of us can escape, which for me at least that's where I can find my fullness of joy and why my heart can be glad and why my whole being can rejoice even in the times when only half of my being wants to rejoice and the other half is dealing with all the things that come from a broken world and and to be able to show others this gospel or good news that as Peter is will share with everyone and he'll say in our reading later that it was a definite plan that God made and it's a promise for everyone. And so I hope

today as we go through this psalm, as Brent reads what Peter is preaching, as Peter himself goes through this psalm, we can find that encouragement in knowing who Jesus is, what God has done, and to know that life and death, he's always with us. And so if we want to stand together, we are going to read the last of Psalm 16. I believe we're starting in verse 9. Yes. Okay. So we're going to start together in verse 9 and finish it out through verse 11. 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 you make known to me the path of life in your presence there is fullness of joy at your right hand are pleasures forevermore this is the word of the Lord let's pray

God we thank you uh for this time that we can be together we thank you for the safety of those who have come out to be here. And we ask that you bless our service today, bless those that are watching and help it to be encouragement to them and help it to be an encouragement to those that are here. We thank you so much for the gospel. We thank you for your goodness and your closeness and your steadfastness and love and steadfastness and always being with us, God. thank you for the hope and encouragement that the Bible brings to us thank you for the hope and encouragement that it gave to Peter to preach the gospel and just be with our service today and we just pray it glorifies you in Jesus name amen so with our shortened service today we're going

to do our first Song and then we're going to move into our prayer time if we have anything to share with that. And then we'll have the slide up with the information to text if you have prayer requests watching online to let us know so we can be praying for you. So our first Song is going to be Joyful, Joyful.

Joyful, joyfully adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love. Hearts unfold like clouds before Thee, opening to the sun above. Melt the clouds of sin and sadness, drive the dark of doubt away. Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day. All thy works with joy surround thee, earth and heaven reflect thy rays. Stars and angels sing around the center of unbroken praise. Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea. Chanting bird and flowing fountain, call us to rejoice in thee.

Thou art giving and forgiving, ever blessing, ever blessed. Wellspring of the joy of living, ocean depth of happy rest. Thou art Father, Christ our brother, all who live in love are life. Teach us now to love each other, lift us to the joy divine. Mortals, join the mighty chorus in which the morning stars began. Father, love is reigning o'er us, brother, love binds man. And to my ever singing, march me onward, victors in the midst of strife. Joyful music lifts us onward in the triad song of life. We'll see you next time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, as we move into our time of communion, we're going to be singing Behold Our God.

Who has held the oceans in his hands? Who has numbered every grain of sand? Kings and nations tremble at his voice. All creation rises to rejoice. Behold our God, seated on his throne, come let us adore him. Behold our King, nothing can compare, come let us adore him.

Who has given counsel to the Lord? Who can question any of His words? Who can teach the one who knows all things? Who can fathom all His wondrous deeds? Behold our God, seated on His throne. Come, let us adore Him. Behold our King, nothing can compare. Come, let us adore Him. God has felt the nails upon His hands, bearing all the guilt of sinful men. God eternal, humble to the grave. Jesus, Savior, risen now to reign. Behold our God, seated on His throne. Come, let us adore Him. Behold our King, nothing can compare. Come let us adore Him.

i've always uh liked the snow because you go from a kind of a brown um depressing visual to everything's being nice and white and clean in Isaiah chapter one in verse 18 God says to his people this come now let us reason together says the Lord though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. And I love that picture that God takes our sins and makes them clean. And there is one difference between how we see snow and what God does with our sins is because when we look outside right now in the midst of the snow, the snow has covered everything up. God doesn't simply cover our sins up with a coat of paint to make them look presentable but rather he cleans them he purifies us and he makes us new and so as

we gather around the Lord's table and we break this bread and we drink this cup we come to consider the good news of the gospel to be reminded that God takes our sins and makes them white as snow and even though they are the the darkest darkest red he makes them like pure white will through the blood of His Son. I'll pray, and then we'll read from Corinthians and partake together. Father in Heaven, thank You for allowing us to gather. Thank You for Your church and Your people and Your Word. Thank You most of all for the good news of the Gospel. I thank You for Jesus. I thank You for His sacrifice, for His death on the cross, that He took our sins on His shoulders, that he paid the price so that we could be made clean.

I thank you for this salvation. I thank you for this bread and this cup. May you bless it, and may we be a people who proclaim your son until he comes again. It's in his name we pray. Amen. Paul said that when Jesus had given thanks, he took bread and he broke it, and he said, this is my body, which is for you.

In the same way, also, he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Father, thank you for this proclamation of good news. We thank you for the gospel that gives us hope and transforms us and changes us, and that you have equipped us with your spirit. Encourage our hearts, strengthen our resolve, give us courage in the face of our discouragement. We thank you so much for Jesus. It's in his name we pray. Amen.

This morning's reading is from Acts 2. 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, as you yourselves know. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him, I saw the Lord always before me, for he is my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore, my heart was glad and my tongue rejoices. My flesh also will dwell in hope, for you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your Holy One see corruption.

You have made known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up and of that we all are witnesses, being therefore exalted at his right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit. he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. This is the word of the Lord. Praise be to God. I just want to say hello and welcome to those of you who are joining online. We are thankful that you are with us. If you would like to follow along with our sermon handout, they are available on our website, front page of our website, just collegeparkcc.com. And if you're here at the church, they are available on the back table where the communion is. So we'll go ahead and have a word of prayer and dive into what we like to call on these

days our four-wheel drive service, I guess, except for Brent and Cody, neither of whom have four-wheel drive. But they have good tires. let's go ahead and have a word of prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for allowing us these moments to gather with your people and around your table and with your word. May you strengthen us. May you encourage us. May you help us to see the good news of the gospel. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So there are times when I think we don't value things because we don't understand them. One of the reasons I like to watch Antiques Roadshow is because you get some guy who has found something in his grandma's attic that the family forgot about, and it's junk, and they come out and they say, well, that's worth $50,000, this piece of undervalued, what everyone else

overlooked, merchandise. Like the guy who had the $35,000 sword, they said, well, what do you do with it. Well, I cut watermelons on the 4th of July because it's America. And so there are times when we take things for granted. And I feel like that the church maybe has missed the value of Peter's sermon here in Acts chapter 2. Because we sort of tend to jump right over the sermon. We go from the miraculous power of God descending on the disciples and them speaking in tongues and we're all excited about the gospel going to the nations and then we jump down to the end where everybody becomes Christians and 3 000 people are baptized and the church meets together and they they deal with the apostles teaching they break bread together they fellowship and they pray and we

sort of miss this wonderful gospel sermon that is right in the middle of acts chapter 2 and we've missed the value of this because without the gift of tongues and the power of the Holy Spirit the disciples don't have anything to declare. This gift of the Holy Spirit was so that Peter could declare this sermon. Additionally, those 3,000 people who come to Christ, they come to Christ because of this sermon. And I think this sermon by Peter is a wonderful declaration to the grace and the goodness of God. Specifically, the fact that Peter is the one who gets to preach this sermon. Remember, Peter is a Galilean blue-collar fisherman. He's a guy who actually works for a living. He doesn't sit in a desk chair behind a computer, but he goes out and he gets his hands dirty

and he works and he works hard. He's a rough and tumble guy. If you remember in the garden as the soldiers come to arrest Jesus, Peter, the fisherman, pulls out his sword. He's not very good at sorting people, so he accidentally cuts off a guy's ear instead of actually killing anybody. He's a rough and tumble, hard-working, blue-collar guy. Likely not very highly educated. In fact, in Acts 2, verse 7, is all of these people are declaring the good works of God in all of these different languages. Everybody's kind of eyebrows go up and they say, are these not all who are speaking Galileans? Galileans were not known for being highly educated or highly sophisticated. Peter is also the first one to confess that Jesus is the Christ. Remember when Jesus asked that question, who do people say that I am?

And the disciples give all of these different answers. Some say you're a prophet, some say you're Elijah, some say you're John, the baptizer who's come back. And then Jesus makes the question a little more pointed, and he says, well, who do you say that I am? And Peter says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. and it's Peter's confession upon which the church is built upon, because Jesus will say to Peter, upon this rock I will build my church. And he's not talking about Peter himself, but rather what Peter has said about Jesus, that he is the Christ, the Son of God. But Peter is also the one who denies Jesus. In Matthew 26, Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And he went out and wept bitterly.

It is Peter who is restored by Jesus, as Jesus says to him three times, Feed my sheep. And I love the fact that Peter is the first to preach a gospel sermon, because here's the rough and tumble blue-collar guy, and God takes all kinds of people, and he uses them. He uses the rich and the poor. He uses men and women. He uses those who are highly educated and those who aren't educated at all to proclaim the good news of the gospel. And he even uses the denier to preach the good news about Jesus. So I want to take a look just briefly this morning at this sermon. And I want you first of all to see that Peter's purpose in preaching this sermon is to direct us to Jesus with certainty. And we've all had that feeling of uncertainty.

I remember in college, I was supposed to meet up with my cousin. We were going on school break, and I was going to meet up with my cousin. We were going to go on this little trip. He had a job. I was going to go help him with it. And he said, all right, we're going to stay at my brother-in-law's house. He gives me directions. There's no GPS. And so I show up at this house of people that I have never met. I'm not even sure it's the right house. And it's a weird feeling to go to somebody's front door, knock on their door and go, hey, I'm supposed to stay here tonight. You've never met me before. You don't know who I am. But congratulations, that couch is now mine, right? It's a feeling of uncertainty.

And I sat in the car going, is this the right house? It's going to be kind of weird if it's not the right house. And it turned out to be the right house. Now, Peter's purpose here is not that we would sort of sit there in our cars and feel uncertain about the decision that we are to make. But rather, he wants us to be certain. Look at verse 36. This is the center, even though it's the very end, this is the center of Peter's point. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. And he says, first of all, I want you to have a secure knowledge. And it's interesting that this Greek word for certainty is the word from which we, in our modern day times, get the word asphalt.

And, you know, the Romans would use it to hold things together and to seal things, and we do the same thing with our roads. And Peter says, I want you to be stuck to this. I want this to be a firm foundation. I don't want you to be uncertain about who Jesus is and what he has done. And so what Peter does, and let me show you how he secures us or glues us to this knowledge about Jesus. He does so by calling witnesses. And you probably know that under Jewish law, in order to convict somebody, you had to have two witnesses, and importantly enough, these witnesses had to agree. And Peter doesn't just call two witnesses in this sermon. He calls four. And he starts by this, in verse 22, 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 as you yourself know. And so the first witness that he calls is God himself. He says, attested by God. Specifically in three ways. Mighty works, this is the power of God. And so when you see Jesus calming the storm with a word, when you see Jesus healing with a word, When you see Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead by simply saying, Lazarus, come forth, what you are seeing is God's power made evident. The word wonders is a picture to grab our astonishment, to grab our attention, and third, the signs that these things all point to a spiritual truth. And so you see the power of God that grabs our attention

and points as just like credentials to who Jesus is. And we see this throughout the Gospels, right? The wise men say, we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. At his baptism, you hear from heaven, behold, this is my son with whom I am well pleased. At the cross, the sun goes dark, the ground shakes, and the temple in the curtain is torn in two. In Jesus' healing, in his provision to feed the crowd, in his power over evil, in his power over nature. God the Father is testifying to the identity of God the Son. The second witness he calls is the crowd themselves. Look at what he says in verse 22, as you yourselves know. You saw this, right? I'm not just telling you a story. I'm not just telling you something that I heard,

but you, there in the front row, and you back in row four, you guys were there, and you saw it. You witnessed what Jesus did. And then he points to the witness of Scripture. From the 16th Psalm and the 110th Psalm, and as we saw last week in Joel chapter 2, Peter calls the witness of Scripture to point to the reality and the truthfulness about his testimony of Jesus. And then in 2.32, he'll say, This Jesus who God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. As this group standing behind me and next to me and around me, speaking in tongues, proclaiming the goodness of God in all the languages from east to west and north and south, they all saw it too. And so what Peter starts by doing is saying, there is a foundation here that we can be secure in.

That God, through the miracles that Jesus performed, testified to his identity. That you who hear this thing, saw these with your own eyes, that the Word of God testifies to the goodness and the reality of who Jesus is, and ultimately we all saw it as well, is what Peter says. Now, Peter's purpose here is not simply an intellectual knowledge, right? Not that they would just know about Jesus, but they would know Jesus. And look at how well Peter walks through the life of Jesus. In verse 22, we have sort of a quick summary of the life of Jesus, the signs and wonders of his ministry. In verse 23, we have his crucifixion. In verses 24 through 32, we have his resurrection. In 33 through 35, we have his ascension. Now, I'll say this. This is likely not the entirety of Peter's sermon.

So when we record our sermons, the program that we use to display slides also records our sermons. And so when we go to upload that, the program says, a snippet, a 30-second snippet as a preview of the sermon. And you say, how do we know that we don't have all of Peter's sermon here, that we have sort of the big point that he declares? There's two reasons, I think. First of all, I don't think that there has ever been a preacher given a crowd of thousands of people that only preached for like three and a half minutes. That's about how long it takes to read through this, right? And so when I was younger, you'd have a preacher come, and he'd stand behind the pulpit and a lot of them would take their watch off and put it on the pulpit

and my dad would always say you know what it means when the preacher takes his watch off and puts it on the pulpit absolutely nothing and so one from our experience we know that Peter likely said more but but there's more look at what it says in acts chapter 2 verse 40 and with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying save yourselves from this crooked generation And so Peter, we have recorded this part of his sermon, but he continues and he explains and he goes in depth, and his purpose in all of these words, and what we have recorded and what he said on the day of Pentecost was specifically so that these people and us could know Jesus, his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, his empowering of his church by the gift of the Spirit.

Peter doesn't just want us to have a firm foundation. He wants us to confront our brokenness. 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, as you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. And then in verse 36, let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. So you have to understand that God's people have been hoping and waiting for the Messiah since Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15, right? The first gospel, when God makes that promise to Eve and that judgment to the serpent,

there would be one born of woman who would crush the head of the serpent. God's people since that time have been waiting for the Messiah. And I don't know if you've ever been excited for something to be delivered and you're waiting in anticipation. And I've had that happen a couple times where we've ordered something and we know it's coming by UPS. And it always annoys me when our packages come by UPS because everybody else comes at like 10 in the morning and then UPS can come anywhere from like 5.30 to 9.30 at night. And so you'll be waiting for your package. You'll be tracking, check the tracking, still on the truck for delivery. Stick your head out the door and you hear a truck, oh, there it is. And then it's some guy in a dump truck or a garbage truck.

And you're just constantly in anticipation for something that you want. Now, Israel is like that, but times a hundred million, right? This isn't just an anticipation brought over a few days, but we are talking about an anticipation that has been growing in God's people for not just decades or centuries, but thousands of years. They have looked forward to the time when God would come and redeem his people. Now, I don't know if you've ever gotten something that you really wanted and then immediately broken it, but it's a pretty terrible feeling. I remember I was probably like fifth or sixth grade, and I got this really cool watch. Now, in retrospect, it wasn't really cool. I just thought it was cool. In fact, it was probably pretty dorky. We got it from our guy who delivered Pepsi to the store,

and it said Pepsi on it. And I remember, oh, yeah, I'm cool. I've got a Pepsi watch. And I wore it to school, and the first day I was walking down the hall, and it was a brick hallway, and scratched the face of my fancy, really dorky Pepsi watch against the wall. And I looked down, and there's, like, this big scratch right down the crystal. And, like, little, like, sixth grade Brandon was just really sad, right? Because here's something that I love, and then I immediately get it, And then I ruin it with a big scratch. Now times that, by a billion, God has promised his Redeemer, and then you've killed him. Look, that's what Peter does. He makes it personal. You have crucified. You crucified. Verse 23 and verse 36. Now why does Peter say it that way?

Why does he point the blame at the crowd and say, you're the ones who crucified him, right? This was a plot carried out by the religious leaders. The actual execution was brought about by the Romans. Now, certainly some in this crowd likely called, crucify him, crucify him, but not all of them. Why does Peter accuse this crowd of crucifying Jesus? It's because Jesus goes to the cross for our sins. that every sin that you've committed, that I've committed, that they committed, led to the cross of Christ. And what Peter does is he forces us to look our sin in the eyes and realize its consequences. But he doesn't leave us in brokenness. He points us to hope. Look at what he says in verse 23. This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,

you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. So notice what Peter says, that this was not an accident. Yes, Jesus did die because of your sin, but this was God's plan to redeem his people. In Luke chapter 24, Jesus himself will say it this way. He opened their minds to understand Scriptures, and he said to them, thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, And on the third day, rise from the dead. And verse 47 is the important part. And that repentance and forgiveness of sin should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. There is forgiveness for the crucifiers. There is forgiveness for the broken, for those who look at what they have done and they feel the weight of that brokenness. There is hope. Isaiah says this,

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, and we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And God is at work in the midst of this brokenness and the ultimate fulfillment of what Joseph said to his brothers, what you intended for evil, God used for good. Peter will continue this. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

And then he goes and he quotes David from the 116th Psalm. And I love how this is put together because we end up in the verse right before this, We have the evil man who have taken Jesus, and they have crucified him. And then what do you have in the very next verse? God raised him up. That evil does not triumph. That there is victory over death. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us our victory through the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what Peter does is he exposes our brokenness by pointing to the fact that Jesus died for our sins, but he points us to the fact that there is hope and that Jesus died for our sins. There is victory.

And what I love about this sermon is that God uses people. He wants to put us on a firm foundation. He wants to take the broken and the searching and to bring them to him. There is hope in the midst of our brokenness. One of my favorite things about snow days is that my favorite preacher, and I tell this every church snow day, my favorite preacher, Charles Spurgeon, was 15 years old. And he was walking to church, and it was snowing really hard, and he didn't think he was going to make it to church, so he ducked into this little chapel on the side road. And I'll just read to you what Spurgeon says. Sometimes I think I must have been in the midst of darkness and despair had it not been for the goodness of God

sending me a snowstorm one Sunday morning when I was going to a place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a court and came to a little primitive Methodist chapel. In that chapel, there might be a dozen or 15 people. The minister did not come that morning. Snowed up, I suppose. A poor man, a shoemaker or tailor or something of that sort, he went up into the pulpit to preach, And he was obliged to stick to his text for the simple reason he had nothing else to say. And he preaches from Isaiah 45, 22, and his text was this, Look unto me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. And Spurgeon will say this, he did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought,

a glimpse of hope for me in that text. Look unto me and be ye saved. all the ends of the earth. Isn't that what Peter is proclaiming into the brokenness and the darkness of the world? Look to Jesus and see his salvation. Look to Jesus. He is the one who brings hope and peace and a future for our lives. Let's pray. Father, help us to look to your Son. Help us to confront our sin, to repent of our sin, to follow you. Bring us hope. Bring us healing. Remind us of your forgiveness. Bring us to the good news, the gospel. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We're going to cut things just a little bit shorter than usual. So just a few announcements, and then we'll sing the doxology and be dismissed. We'll be here Wednesday night.

In John 15, Jesus talks about the vine and the branches. this parable or illustration that he uses on the night before he is crucified. So that's at 7 p.m. You can join us in person or online. Also Thursday, 1 p.m., ladies are meeting for their Women of the Bible study, so we encourage you to come and join them for that. Also tomorrow morning on our Facebook and YouTube and website, we will have our Monday Psalms to spend some time just being encouraged by the Psalms as we start our week. So I'm going to go ahead and pray one more time, and then we'll sing the doxology and be dismissed. Father in heaven, thank you for the good news of the gospel. Thank you for your church. Thank you for those who have joined us this morning, both here at the church and online. We ask that you bless and watch over and encourage. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him, above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Thank you. Transcription by CastingWords