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The message we're looking at today is in the book of Acts. It's the tail end of it. You know, we've been teaching through this for several weeks. Um, how Jesus gave his life for you and for me, how he rose from the dead, he spent 40 days with his followers, sharing, opening up the Old Testament, showing them, proof, proving to them that he was alive and had risen, watching him ascend up into heaven, and then obeying him by waiting for the promise of the Holy Spirit. So he'd spent 40 days with them. They hung out and waited for 10 more days, predominantly in a closed upper room where it was safe from the crowds that were out there at Pentecost. But the Spirit of God came down on them at Pentecost and dwelled those followers of Christ. It was literally the birth of the church. And those people that had been hiding, trusting God in prayer, gathering behind those closed doors, stepped out into that crowd at Pentecost, about a quarter million people that had gathered. And they came out and they spoke boldly about what had happened. But they were speaking to a people that had missed the Messiah. Can you imagine that? I mean, God steps down to earth, he takes on flesh, and here he is, Jesus himself, and he's spending 33 years with them. Three years in active ministry, teaching them and healing them and calling them back to a living relationship with God. And what did they do? They crucified him. Because they were looking for somebody else. They had a twisted view of who the Messiah was supposed to be. They thought this was somebody that was going to deliver them from the oppression that they were suffering under as a nation, first from the Greeks, then from the Romans at that stage of the game. And they were looking for somebody to deliver the nation of Israel, to restore them to a position of prominence, to cast the Romans out. And they were looking for somebody, basically a white knight coming in on a horse, a military leader, a governing king, to deliver the nation. And they missed Jesus in front of them. Because what they had been listening to for centuries was a twisted view of the Messiah. They were listening for centuries to a twisted view of God, and for centuries they were listening to a twisted view of what the relationship with God was based upon and was all about. My guess is they were very sincere, but their sincerity didn't make it accurate. They had begun to drift, and that's what we tend to do as people. We tend to drift over time when we start listening to people, including me. We start listening to churches and traditions and the doctrines of churches, and we divorce ourselves from the Word of God. That's one of the primary reasons that whenever we're preaching, we always put it in front of you and ask you to look at it and think about it for yourself. They had drifted. And by the time Jesus came, the people of God were out here, the nation of Israel was out here, and God's over here. And Jesus came calling them to turn back to him. And I looked at that in my life, and I thought, my goodness, you know, my life has all sorts of drifts in it, and quite frankly, my guess is so do your lives. We experienced that in physical ways, we experience that in relational ways. And physically, I was looking at this and thinking back on a time in my life, and I know I shared this once years ago, but our son John, our firstborn, our oldest kid, uh, had gone off to college in Cedarville, Ohio, Christian college, and it was a you know it was a great college. It was learning a lot, and he came home for Christmas vacation one year, and we we journeyed down into that dark land of New York City. We went to LaGuardia Airport to pick him up. And I tend to do anything I can to go to any other airport on this planet but LaGuardia and Kennedy. But that was the cheap flight, and being a cheap person, I drove to LaGuardia. Well, we picked up John, it was great to see him. We jammed him in the car, we jammed his bags in the car, and what did we do? Guess what had just come out? How many of you use GPS? I followed the blue line. We pumped in home. In fact, I want to ask you a question. How many of you can still read a map? Anyone? Yeah, okay. It's a dying heart, by the way. I'm not sure some of our kids know what they are. Follow the blue line. Trust the blue line. Well, it was crowded. It was Christmas time, and we got in the car, we're following the blue line, and all I could see in front of you was red lights and taillights. It was crowded, and it's always smarter than we are. In fact, Waze Today is pretty good at this. We followed the blue line, and it was taking us on a path that I'd never been. And I'm geographically challenged down there, so I trusted the blue line. And kept following the blue line and following the blue line. It just was a weird place. It was taking us through neighborhoods and wiggling and waggling through New York City. And suddenly I found myself literally in a funnel going into Holland Tunnel. Not my typical way home, but trust the blue line. Trust the blue line. Smarter than we are through Holland Tunnel, coming out thinking, okay, now we're gonna head north one of these days. Miss the first road, miss the second road, miss still trusting the blue line, but now we're starting to wonder like what is going on? And we're talking about it and enjoying ourselves and having a good time and seeing signs for Route 78 coming up, and thinking, she's really taking us out there. Until somebody had the bright question, whose phone are you using? And from the back seat, John came up, we held the phone up, and he said, Hey, that's my phone. And it was taking us to Cedarville, Ohio. Trust the blue line. I can laugh about that, but you know what's tragic? We do that spiritually. We trust the blue line to places that we think are right, and we end up getting farther and farther away from God. And that's what these people had done 2,000 years ago, and we do it today. We trust churches and traditions and denominations, we trust doctrinal creeds, and they can be good, but when we divorce those from this, it's deadly. Because even with great sincerity, we tend to develop rules and rituals and traditions and things around it, and we find ourselves drifting away out here. There is a huge opportunity in this passage that we're looking at today for you and for me. And I just want to encourage you to use this little gift God gave you. It's between your ears, it's it's a brain. He wants you to think, he wants you to test and assess what you believe and why you believe it, and he wants you to use his word. You and I do not get to determine what's true, we get to discover it. This concept that your truth and my truth are equally valid is terrible. There is truth. God has so loved you that he has shared his truth with you, he has shared himself with you, and he wants you to get it. So the simplicity of the gospel, the simplicity of what God has offered to you and for me to come back into a living relationship with him, it's breathtakingly simple and it's profound at the same time. Peter is stepping out into this crowd, and in these little six verses we're going to look at today, seven big sentences, you're going to see one of the greatest short stories you've ever seen. You're going to see the characters in this, you're going to see this drama in this and the resolution to it. This is life, not just changing, this is life-giving. So I want to just gently walk through these seven verses with you, these seven sentences, and unpack them. And I want you to listen to this, I want to beg you to listen to this in a way that is vulnerable and humble, and where you expect God to speak to you as you're listening to his word as we move through this. So, picking up in verse 36, it says, Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. For those of you that are a tad older, more mature in the congregation today, any of you remember Dale Carnegie? He was an author back from probably the 60s or 70s, and he wrote a book called How to Make Friends and Influence People. Peter never read the book. He steps out into this incredible crowd of people that had gathered from all around that part of the world, and he steps out into this crowd of people that had just crucified Jesus, and they're afraid that they're coming in next. And he steps out and he says this to them God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. Not trying to make friends, he was declaring the truth of God. Lord and Messiah, not a Lord, Lord. Lord. And Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ, the chosen one of God, who God had said is going to come and deliver his people from bondage to not the Romans, bondage to their sin, and bondage to Satan. He was coming to deliver them back to a living relationship with him. And Peter went out there and spoke this truth. That truth is everything. Everything else that happens, quite frankly, a good chunk of the rest of the Bible hangs on the truth and the reality of that. Jesus is Lord and Jesus is Messiah. And if we get that wrong, the rest of it falls apart. It is simple, it's profound, and it is the key to the life that He offers for each one of us. The people, when they heard this message, were cut to the heart. Look at what verse 37 says. When they heard this, they were cut to the heart. Some of your translations will say, pierced, cut to the heart. And they said to Peter and to the other apostles, brothers, what do we do? That wasn't a question of how do we hide from it, how do we get away from this. That was a question of desire. They wanted to get right with God. And I want you to crawl inside their heads for a minute because some of us are in a very similar position. What had they just done? They had just discovered to their horror they were responsible for the death of the Messiah. To kill Jesus. I mean, he gave up his life. They're responsible for putting him on the cross. Can you imagine the horror these people felt? The shame, the fear they had of the wrath of God? What do we do about that? You know who is just as guilty as they were about putting Jesus on that cross? You and me. Because he chose to come to die to pay the penalty for my sin. And if there was no need for that, he would have stayed in heaven. He literally took on flesh in order to die. And he did it for me, and he did it for you. And I want to encourage you to make that personal. And he doesn't want you to suffer this conviction of guilt. He wants you to suffer the conviction of awareness because that conviction, that piercing of your heart, when you realize that you are responsible for what Jesus did, that's a gift. That conviction from God that you would feel personally about Jesus dying for you is a gift from God. Because when you become aware of that, now you have an opportunity to respond to it. He doesn't want you burdened under guilt, he doesn't want you burdened under shame. He wants you to recognize that and turn to him to receive the offer that he lives you. The truth of who Jesus is and what he did, that conviction that we experience, that awareness deep inside of us, that gift literally demands a response. There is nobody in this room today, there's nobody watching online that hears this and doesn't respond. Every one of us is going to respond. The question is, how? Some of us will acknowledge that and say, yes, I've understood that. I've turned to God, I've received the life and forgiveness that He offers. Others will go, woof. Haven't responded yet. Been hearing about it, been searching, been thinking, but I'm not there. And that's a pretty painful reality. And what's in front of you is the opportunity to turn to Jesus and say yes. There'll be some people that hear that and say, No. Not for me. Not willing to go there. Choosing not to believe. There'll be some people that just plain ignore it and you get busy and get on with your lives. But every person who's here today is responding to that word. And even for those that have come to a saving faith in Christ, we've turned to him, we've received his forgiveness, we've received that life. We have the opportunity on a day-by-day, moment by moment basis to turn to him. And he's right there. There's people that will feel so much shame for what we've done in life. And boy, I can look back in my life and I have a big list of uglies. Things that I've done in my life that I am just dead ashamed of. Could have gone to jail. People that I've hurt, things that I've done as an affront to God. And he doesn't wait for me, and he's not waiting for you to clean yourself up before you turn to him. He's not waiting for you to get your act together. He's saying, turn to me, come to me, literally just as you are. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows the depth of your sin. He knows everything about you, past, present, and future. And he's saying, Come to me. Turn to me. And even as we go through our days and we mess up and we fail, we have that opportunity to turn back to him and to draw near to him. Not for additional forgiveness. As a child of God, the awesome thing is you've already been forgiven. He just wants you to turn back to him and to move forward with him and for him. But please do not fall into the trap of waiting to get your life cleaned up before you turn to Christ. And quite frankly, and I know there's a matter of degree when it comes to this, at some level, stop waiting for you no more. The gospel is pretty simple. God died for you to pay the penalty that you couldn't pay, and he paid it in full. And he's offering you this gift of pure, eternal forgiveness. He's offering you this gift of new life where he comes to indwell you, and a whole lot of other blessings that come with this. And it's right there, fully paid for by him. And what he wants you to do is to acknowledge that it's your sin, your personal sin, your personal shortcoming, the littlest piece of it that has separated you from God, and that you need him, and that you're dependent upon him to fix that. That you can't contribute to it, you can't earn it, you can't deserve it, that a hundred percent of your faith is going to be in Jesus, who he is and what he's done for you, and that you're yielding to him as Lord of your life, not just in word, but you're submitting to him. And what he promises is that he'll come to indwell you with his spirit, that you will become a child of God that we just sang about. Perfectly secure, not because of your conduct moving forward, but because of the character of God. You now belong to him. Perfectly secure. It's a beautiful gift that he offers you, but don't wait to know more. I mean, my gosh, there's we answer questions all throughout the week, and I'm grateful for people that engage and have questions, whether it's about are you premillennial, post-millennial, amillennial, pre-trib, post-trib, how many angels fit on the head of a needle? I mean, you know, this goodness gracious, there's lots of questions that people can have. And generally they're really great questions. But the gospel itself is really simple. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you don't know enough. If you've heard this, you do. The question is, how are you going to respond to it? These people were cut to the heart and they wanted to know what to do. They asked Peter, basically, what now? What do we do about it? And he answered them with both direction and a promise. In verse 38, he says, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and for your children, for all who are far off, and for all whom the Lord our God will call. There was a lot of meat inside those couple sentences, and I want to take a minute just to unpack it. So, what do you do? You repent. And what we've made a mess of in the American church, and I goodness knows how bad it is across the seas, but we've made a mess of repentance and we've mistaken it for sorrow. This is not turning to God saying, sorry about that. My bad. This repentance is it's metanoia. It's a transformation of your thinking. It's two words that are glued together. It is a big wompin U-turn. You're going from following your old ways of believing and thinking, and now you're going to trust in Christ. You're going to put all of your trust in him and what he's called you to do, the gift that he's offered you. It is a big U-turn in life. And almost all of us, apart from this gospel, are way out here. We're following the wrong blue line. Now, what he's calling us to do is to trust in his word, to trust in him. And what we make the mistake of doing is thinking that we've got to clean up our act, our conduct. This is not about your behavior. That is not about your sinlessness. He's saying, come just as you are. To repent, to turn to him, and to be baptized. Well, this gets a little awkward because this gets messy, because I and we don't handle this well at cross point. And I've mentioned that before, and I don't have a great answer to it, but I want to just make it a little messy and talk about this. Baptize, the word underneath it is baptizo. It was written in Greek. It's a Greek word, it means to immerse. They baptized ships in battle. They sank them, they went underwater. They would baptize their fields when they would open up the sluice gates and let the dams loose to baptize the fields. They would submerge them in water. And they baptized people. You submerge them and you bring them back up again most of the time. No. You bring them back up again. It's symbolic. That water baptism, I do not believe. There's not a bone in my body that believes that saves you. You are saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. But baptism is a big deal. It is symbolic, but it's incredibly significant in and of itself. We are commanded to go and make disciples of Jesus Christ to help people become followers of Him and to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28, 18 to 20. Commanded by Jesus, some of his very last words. And here we're called to repent and be baptized. It should follow your repentance. It should follow you coming to faith in Christ, and it should follow right on the heels of that. I and we have made it way too comfortable for you to come to faith in Christ to pray a sincere prayer of faith and submission to God with confession, with repentance, and not be baptized. To think about it, to wait for better weather, to wait for a better setting, to wait. Biblically, people came to faith in Christ, they got wet. It was an act of obedience, it was an act of worship, it was what God called them to do, and they just wanted to obey. We've made it way too comfortable, and I apologize for that. I don't know how to rectify that because we don't want to pressure you, we don't want this to be legalistic, but I do want you to be able to be challenged by God's word, not my mouth, but by God's word about his will for you. If you have never been baptized, please do. If you've come to faith in Christ, it should follow repentance. It honors God. I want you to, I'm gonna make this even more messy. I'm not even gonna have a clean answer for you on this, but I want to be faithful to what we're reading, and I want you to wrestle with it. Peter replied to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you, not some of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. I want to read what it doesn't say. Repent for the forgiveness of your sins and be baptized. It says, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. The word for in Greek is Ice E-I-S, and it typically means for. This is the purpose of it. So do you have to repent? Do you have to be baptized to be forgiven? I would say no. But am I in conflict with Scripture? I don't think so, but I want to humbly say, I still wrestle with this, and I want you to be aware of that. What did Jesus say to the thief on the cross next to him that day? Today you'll be with me in paradise. You think they yanked him down off the Christ and baptized him to be forgiven of his sins? I'm pretty sure they didn't. I don't make light of that. But you are saved by God's grace through faith in Christ in Christ alone. Baptism is an act of obedience, it is an act of worship to God. It is symbolic, it symbolizes the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is at a public identification with Christ. So three thousand or two thousand years ago, to the people he was speaking to, they were used to being baptized. They baptized. Baptized Gentile converts to Judaism. It symbolized the washing away of the old self, and now I'm new. It was symbolic. But it was sort of entry into the realm of Judaism. Baptism was a public identification with Jesus and with his followers with the church. It was a mark of the fact that you're really one of them. You'll see at the end of this, in fact, let me jump to it. Jesus had warned them, excuse me, Jesus, Peter had warned them with many other words. He pleaded with them to save yourselves from this corrupt generation. Those who accepted his message were baptized. They heard it, they responded, they were baptized. That day, 3,000 were added to their number. 3,000 people. How did they do that? I'm going to keep making this messy for you. Ready? I couldn't baptize 3,000 people here the way we do it. You know why? Because we have let our traditions get in the way of what God has called us to do. My bad. Our bad. We encourage people to share your testimony prior to your baptism. That's a good thing. It is not a requirement. If you would like to share your testimony, we encourage you. We want to support you in doing that. We'll even help you video it. And we'll go through multiple edits. Tim will even put words in your mouth for you. No, you won't. We encourage it. It's healthy. It's a beautiful part of your testimony and your witness. But is it required to be baptized? To share your public testimony? No, it is not. You think 3,000 people stood up there and shared their testimony one at a time and then hopped in a baptismal? No. I don't believe they did. What we do ask is that you share your testimony with one of us, one of the pastors, not that we're God, we're not, don't have any special position in that regard, but we love you enough to make sure that the confidence for your faith is biblically grounded. We just want to help you test and assess it based upon Scripture. We do this on an ongoing basis because we love you. Not to judge you, not to condemn you. What we don't want is for you to have a false assurance about your position with God. And the last thing I want to do is ever baptize somebody and convey the fact that we think that you're saved when we have no clue what your confidence is based upon. We just want to help you assess it from the Word of God. It's a privilege that we have to walk with you. That's how each of us and the pastors and the elders came to a saving faith by testing and re-examining what we believed. Be humble, be vulnerable. We want to support you in that process. But 2,000 years ago, that's a lot of people to be baptizing in one day. But what they had in Jerusalem as the temple city, basically, they had a lot of little baptismal places. Mikvas is what they're called in Judaism. Little hollowed-out places in the ground, basically little little bathtubs with steps going down into them. And you think that would take a lot of bathtubs? Well, they had a lot of them in Jerusalem. In fact, they have now uncovered through archaeological digs pretty close to 300 of them scattered throughout the city. Their best guess is there were probably in excess of a thousand of them scattered around Jerusalem. So they would have had some of the believers there helping to baptize people, attesting the fact that yes, Jesus is my Lord, He is my Savior, and they would baptize them. Divide and conquer. They had a lot of different people. Somebody came up after the 8:30 service and said, I would love to be baptized. I think my kids are ready to be baptized. Do you do it, or does it have to be a pastor? I said, No, it doesn't have to be a pastor. We want to make sure it's somebody that's truly been saved and that they also have been baptized, but we've had fathers baptize their own kids. There's no magic that we have because of our title or position. This is your act of obedience before God. And we're really flexible in how we practice this. So we have a baptismal that we wheel in here. Many of you have seen that where somebody steps up into it and we bring them back out again. We do it in pools, we've done it in the Hudson River, we've done it in lakes. If you find water, we're willing to come alongside you and baptize you pretty much within reason. Um I think the only time we ever said no was somebody had a little lake on top of a mountain they wanted to be baptized in. And I said, Well, we're there. We'll show up. Well, you'll have to hike the mountain. I said, We'll hike the mountain, we're there. Well, it's private property and we don't have permission. I said, Well, you got there's a limit. Um, but we want to honor you. It's a special day for you obeying God. Um, we have a beautiful setting, and actually during the 8:30 service, I got a response from our neighbor. Um, they have a beautiful setting, a beautiful pool. You can step down into it, you can step back out of it. It's heated. Um, and we'll have some people baptized there in the very near future. If you would like to be baptized, if you'd like some information about that, we'd like to provide it to you. Um we want to encourage you, we want to come alongside you, but I do believe it's symbolic. I don't want to minimize or ignore what I'm reading here. To repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. And the best way that I can reconcile that is if you're truly submitting to Christ as your Lord, you want to know his will, do his will, you're going to be imperfect at it. But coming right out of the box, you're unwilling to submit to him and obey him and being baptized? Are you truly sincere in what you're saying? Is your faith really sufficient faith that you're yielding to Jesus as the Lord of your life? I don't know the answer to that. But I want you to be afraid of that. I want you to have a healthy, reverent fear of that. It's between you and God. Our heart is to support you. I absolutely positively know the right thing to do is to turn to God, to confess your sin and separation, that you're called to repent and turn to follow Jesus, that you're changing now to trust in him and him alone, and that you're yielding to him, you're submitting your life to him as your Lord. I know that. And I know that baptism is the right thing to do. So if you're willing, I want to encourage you to keep it simple and just to say yes. I don't think you probably need to know more about this. It's a beautiful opportunity that's in front of each and every one of us today as we look at this. Peter warned them about the horrors of hell, I believe. He warned them about the wonders of life in Christ. He used many other words. Um it wasn't just these seven verses. Most of you have already heard enough. In fact, quite frankly, I would say that probably with the little bit that you've heard today, you've heard enough. If you have questions about some of the surrounding issues, ask. Keep asking, keep growing, keep testing it against the word of God. But if you know enough, please say yes. He gave his life for you. And he took on the penalty for every sin you and I have ever committed. And what's waiting for you is an eternal, intimate, living relationship with God that begins now, not just in heaven someday, that begins now, or what's waiting for you is an eternity separated from him in hell. And along the way, you get to grow, you get to live with him and for him, you get to lead other people closer to him, but it all hinges on how you're responding to this gospel. Please keep it simple. And please choose to say yes. I think it was C. S. Lewis, the author who questioned people, and it was a great little sound bite that he had. Jesus is either liar, lunatic, or Lord. No evidence that he was a liar. His character was impeccable, perfect. No evidence that he was a lunatic. He knew who he was and what he was doing and why he was doing it. It only leaves you with one option: is he really who he says he is? And I believe if you have intellectual honesty and vulnerability, you're gonna get to the conclusion that yes, he is. And now you're left with that answer, that choice, and he's given you the power to choose: will I submit, will I trust, or won't I? And the rest of your life hinges on how you respond to that. So I want to invite you this morning to do basically three things, and they're all related to the same question. I want you to ask yourself, will I make it personal? Have I or will I repent and be baptized? It's pretty much a yes or a no, because you are responding to it with a yes and no, and if it's I'm not sure or I'm not going to make my mind up, recognize the fact that you are responding even in doing that. For those of you that have come with somebody that you know or love, could be a spouse, could be a friend, could be a child, I want you to love them enough to ask them, have you or will you? Will you repent? Will you turn to Jesus for the life that he offers? Are you willing to be baptized? Not in judgment, not with condemnation, not with pressure, but with love. To love the people in your life to ask them the question. He gave his life for you. This is not pressure, this is nothing to be dreaded, this is something to be embraced. The beauty of life on the back side of the answer to that, saying yes, is breathtaking. Intimacy with God, perfect security with him, pure forgiveness with him, the indwelling spirit of God, the power of God to live the life that he's called you to, a life that matters and has true eternal purpose and significance. It doesn't mean that things are gonna get easy, it doesn't mean that you're not gonna pay a cost involved in it, but your cost is not gonna be like the cost of these people 2,000 years ago, where you were shut off from families and lost positions. The cost you might pay is gonna be with somebody who loves you, somebody who's a loved one or a friend of yours who may look at you like it's a little different, that's not for me. Suck it up and get over it, okay? Rise to this. Identify the fears that you have and recognize that you can live on the backside of that fear. Say yes to Jesus. You will honor God, you will be blessed, and you will be a blessing to the people in your life. So I'm gonna ask you if you would to pray with me. We're gonna ask for God to speak this into your life and trust that you're gonna have the ears to hear him and respond in a way that blesses. So let's pray together, Father. I um I'm awed by you, and I pray, Lord God, that um you would give each person here, Lord, um the clarity, Lord, in our thinking. So that we could choose, God, to turn. That we would turn to you to receive the life and to receive the forgiveness that you offer, that we would turn from our old ways, Lord, of death and sin and turn to you. And God, I pray for the courage, I pray for the reverence, I pray for the desire and anything else that's needed individually to respond to you in a way that honors you and brings blessing, God, to the people that are here. Lord, I pray that you wouldn't lift this awareness from anybody's heart, Lord, until they respond in a way that brings the life that you desire. I pray that you'll protect God, each person, during this time of reflection and response. And even as we turn back to you and worship God, I pray that we would do it with a sense of awe and reverence and gratefulness in such a way, God, that it honors you and blesses us. I uh we love you, Lord. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.