Abounding Grace

Guest (Male): God's undying love for you and the lost. Today on Abounding Grace...

Guest (Male): What makes a sermon good and effective? Today on Abounding Grace, we'll take a look at Peter's sermon as recorded for us in Acts Chapter 2 and delivered in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the church. What made it so good is what it was all about, Jesus. It was rooted in scripture and fueled by the Holy Spirit. Here's Pastor Ed Taylor to highlight it for us and show you God is ready to save and use you.

Pastor Ed Taylor: In verse 21, before we move on, I just want you to take the simplicity of the Bible before man messes it up. Because that is what happens, we mess things up. We take something that's so profoundly simple and we make it so profoundly complex that we miss the point of what God is trying to tell us. Notice what he says in verse 21. This is Joel, Old Covenant, speaking forth the words of God, now being applied in the New Covenant in the beginning of the last days. And now it's bringing home to us right now.

He says this, "It shall come to pass," mark that word, "that whoever," is that what your Bible says? If you have an old King James, "whosoever." "It'll come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." So just take it for what it says. Anybody that calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's what the Bible says. This is the infancy of the church. This is the baby church. This is before any man has developed systematic theologies where there's a million volumes up on your library.

This is before school was invented. This is before seminary. This is before anything before men has totally rearranged the Bible. This is what it says: whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's what it says. And one of the things you need to learn in the progressive revelation of God through his word is that scripture always interprets scripture. This is before John Calvin came along and said, "Well, there's elect and non-elect."

This is before teachers and professors go, "Well, you know what? Some people are destined to be saved and some people are just going to go to hell." That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That should encourage you. And it should also show you that it agrees with the teachings of Jesus. How many of you have memorized John 3:16? What does it say? "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever," whoever, "believe in him."

None of these other categories. Nothing yet. And when you see the other categories, the elect, those that call upon his name, those that God calls, they all are submissive to this truth: whoever. They don't change this truth, they're submissive to it. So important that you just, church, take the simplicity of what God says. You're praying for someone right now? They call upon the name of the Lord, they'll get saved.

You're praying for someone you have someone that you're just like, I don't know if they'll ever, I don't know, maybe they're beyond. You pray for them. If they call upon the name of the Lord, they'll be saved. That is the truth of God's word. I was sharing recently some things going on in my life, testimonies, and I was just thinking, my testimony, as much as I've ever shared with you, is way worse than I've ever shared with you. Way worse. Deeper sin, dumb things.

God is gracious that even in my memory, he doesn't allow me to remember just how bad it was, but I do know this: it was bad. It was challenging. It was hurtful and harmful. It was far deeper than any of us can remember, and yet, while I was still yet dead in my trespasses and sins, God saved me. He saved me. Nobody's beyond the reach of God. Nobody's beyond the reach of God. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord. Don't lose hope.

And this is what he's telling everybody that's listening. All you guys can be saved. I'll say that to you today, like Peter standing here. All of you guys can be saved if you just call upon the name of the Lord. All of you. All out on the internet, on YouTube and on our stream, listening on Grace FM, listening in a jail cell, listening in a hospital, in a kitchen somewhere, jogging through one of the parks in Denver, wherever you are, all of you can be saved if you call upon the name of the Lord.

It's a beautiful truth. Don't let anybody talk you out of it. Don't let anyone come with all this complex theology and before you know it, you're just confused. You go, "Okay, I guess you're right." No, no. It's simple. Simple here. Verse 22. He says, "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. Him, being delivered by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, you have crucified, and put to death.

God raised him up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be held by it." Interesting how this message is, "You guys, you guys killed Jesus." That's a pretty profound statement to make. We know there's at least 3,000 people here, so he looks at 3,000 people and says, "You guys did it." Which is where you can also say, it was your sin and my sin that nailed Jesus to the cross. It wasn't just a select few people. It wasn't just a select group of people. It was our sin, and that's really what he's saying here.

They didn't physically do it with their own hands. It was their sin. But not only that, he's saying, "You guys missed your Messiah. You missed your Savior. And instead of receiving him, you killed him. You crucified him." But that wasn't the end because God raised him up from the dead. And it's interesting too as you see this together, the infancy. This is Peter, he hasn't been to school yet. This is Peter teaching some of the most profound doctrines in all of the Bible.

If you notice in verse 23, he speaks about the sovereignty of God and the free will of man in the same verse right out of the gate moments after being baptized by the Holy Spirit. Why? Because that tension's always been there. God's sovereignty, man's responsibility. It's been there from the Garden of Eden. You have God creating this pristine environment and Adam and Eve making very poor choices but not taking God by surprise because he has foreknowledge.

I mean, this is some heavy stuff, but it's not so heavy when you just accept it for what it is. This is what God is teaching through Peter. It's amazing. Then he appeals to David in the Psalms, verse 25. "For David says concerning him: I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore, my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad. Moreover, my flesh will also rest in hope. Because you will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will you allow your holy one to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life, and you will make me full of joy in your presence."

"Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body according to the flesh, he would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus, God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses.

Therefore, being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he poured out this which you now see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says: The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool." So the audience has a knowledge of the Bible, they would be the Old Testament, they would be in synagogue all the time, and he's appealing to their knowledge. He says, "You guys know this. You know about the resurrection, you heard about it, and you also know what David wrote.

But I want you to understand," Peter says, "what David wrote wasn't about himself. It was about Messiah. David's dead, he's gone. But Jesus Christ is alive." And notice now verse 36. "Therefore," now's the conclusion. And what Peter's doing right now, by the way, is teaching a Bible study just like we've been trained to do it. He's reading the text, giving the interpretation, and then he gives the application. That is every single Bible study. Go through the text, read it, give the interpretation, what does it mean?

And now, what does it mean for you to take action? So that's what the "therefore" is. You notice he says that's his conclusion when he comes in verse 36. So now he's taken that plane and he's taken off and said, "This is what the Bible says and this is what it means." And now he's going to land that plane in a place where he's going to give them: "This is what you need to do." "Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."

And now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" And Peter said to them, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you, to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call." And with many other words, he testified and exhorted them saying, "Be saved from this crooked perverse generation."

And those who gladly received his word were baptized and about that day 3,000 souls were added to them. That was the result of this quick out-of-his-mind memory message. 3,000 people got saved. What an increase and what God has done. Therefore, because of your sin, Jesus Christ died and rose again. And they were cut to the heart. Cut to the heart. This is something you need to understand. You and I, when we talk, we talk to the head. It's the spirit that gets to the heart.

That's why when you use the Bible, it cuts to the heart because God uses it. When you and I just share what we think and share our feelings and stuff, that's mind to mind. It's only God that cuts to the heart and that's the key. We want to get to the heart of the matter because the heart of the matter is always a matter of the heart. It's not just some mental agreement. "Yeah, you know, I believe in God, maybe he's out there somewhere." No, they're cut to the heart.

And notice now, remember their first question back in verse 12: "Whatever could this mean?" In a matter of moments, they change their question to, "What shall we do?" That's pretty powerful. "What does this mean?" and then by the time God is done using Peter, "What should we do?" They gave their own altar call. It's like, "What are we supposed to do? How are we to respond?" And Peter tells them, "Hey, you know what? You need to repent. You need to call upon the name of the Lord."

Why? Because anyone that does will be saved. You need to turn away. That word repent is a Bible word. It means to turn away from. It means to go in the opposite direction. It means that you recognize where you are and you give up at that moment. You turn away from your sin. So important to do that. God is giving the increase here. Peter's planting, watering, but it's only God that gives the increase according to 1 Corinthians Chapter 3. And it wasn't his eloquence, it wasn't his speaking skills, it wasn't his polished presentation.

It wasn't anything but the word of God in the hands of the spirit of God through the mouth of Peter that cut them to the heart. And God is ready to add thousands to the church even now, he's ready to use you. It's not only me that gets used by God, we all get used. We all have our place in the family of God, we all have our position, we all have our mandate, and God wants to use us all. Why? Because he loves you and he loves the lost.

And he wants to use us. He wants you to step in and present yourself open. To come to him not with closed fists but with open hands, having your hands open, ready to receive from the Lord. Let go of your preconceived ideas. Let go of your man-made religion. Let go of your attachment to men and your attachment to teachers and come to God with open hands, and I know that he'll affirm his word to you. I know it. I know you can take everything that I shared, test it by the word of God, and I know God will give you clarity on what he has for you.

I know that. It's the testimony and faithfulness of God from the very beginning of the church and we're living it out right now. And it's truly exciting to be used in these last days to train our ears to hear the voice of God, to train our eyes to see where he's working, and to get jumped right in the middle of it and allow the Holy Spirit to use us in ways we never thought. Now before we leave, I want to address this. I don't have time to develop it all but you can go to our website, go to the app, search, just put the word baptism.

I did a full study on water baptism. But I do believe since we're going verse by verse, I need to address this so that you can leave here confident in the word of God and not be stumbled by someone along the way. It's in verse 38, very controversial verse. Anytime you find a controversial verse, I want you to set it aside for a second and look what's happening around it because somebody made an argument about something and while you're arguing about it, you're missing the point.

And the whole point of Acts Chapter 2 is God is ready to save. He's ready to save, he's ready to explode on your life, he's ready to use you, he's ready to use you despite you, he's ready to change you from one person to another person, he's ready to grow the church and reach a community, he's ready to see generational change, he's ready to touch your kids and your grandkids and your grandma and your nieces and nephews. And then what do people do? They stop in Acts 2:38 and they argue about it the rest of their life and they miss the whole point.

So let me help you with this verse in case somebody wants to argue with you about it. Acts 2:38 has developed a false teaching known as baptismal regeneration. That's the fancy phrase for it. And what is meant by that is very simple. There are people today that believe that only water baptism saves a person. That baptism saves you. That you're not saved until you're water baptized. Or even more, some churches say you're not saved until you're water baptized in our water by our ministers.

Now when we water baptize and we put the baptisms up here, it is filled, the water's not special. It's Aurora municipal water. We run a hose all throughout that door, turn it on, and we fill it up and warm it up for you. And then think about this, when we go back to our baptisms, because we want to do this in the reservoir next year, we go back to the reservoir and you're baptized in your reservoir water, you are baptized in the water that you're going to drink.

Think about that. Whoa. There's nothing special about the water. If you came to us in Israel and you were baptized in the Jordan River and you see how murky and muddy and dirty it is, you see there's nothing special about the water. Water doesn't save you, ever, never, never. It is solely the blood of Jesus Christ that forgives you and cleanses you from all sin. Water doesn't save you ever. If an unbeliever gets in the water, exactly one thing happens: they get wet. And that's it.

So they say, "Well, what about this verse, Ed? What about this verse?" Because as you read it, it says, "Repent, and let every one be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins." Now that word "for" is very important and that word "for" can actually mean a couple of things. Number one, it can be causative. It can cause salvation. The word "for", you're baptized so that you're saved, it causes it. Or it can also be resultant. Now remember, the Bible interprets the Bible.

And as you read through the entirety of the Bible, you see the grace of God. You're not saved by works lest any man should boast. Baptism is a work, something that you do. We learn in Titus that it's a work of righteousness. You're not saved even by good righteous works, you're not saved. So the word "for" could also be resultant. And what I mean by that is that you can be baptized so that you're saved or you can be baptized because you're saved.

And that's what we hold to here, that only believers are water baptized. They are baptized because they are already saved. Let me give you an illustration. In a military town here, thank you for your service, we have people come in and out and we had a lot of people deployed. So let's just say that we had a sister deployed to Afghanistan and while she was in Afghanistan, she expressed these major acts of courage and bravery and she was used greatly there and a tremendous brave deployment.

So she comes back from deployment and we welcome her back and because of her bravery, they're going to give her a medal. And so they're going to have a big service and we're all invited to the service. We're going to cheer her on and she's going to get a medal for bravery. That's right, she gets a medal for bravery. So you're at the ceremony with me and let's think this through. If she received a medal for bravery, was that for bravery that already occurred or was the medal going to make her a brave person?

No, the medal doesn't make her a brave person. They are simply commemorating and appreciating bravery that already happened. So she was receiving a medal because of her bravery. In that particular ceremony, if she was not brave on deployment, she would not receive the medal. Are you guys with me so far? So with baptism, it's the same thing. When you are baptized for the remission of sins, the baptism is because you've already been forgiven.

Otherwise it doesn't mean anything. What's the point? Just walking in the water? "I think I'll just walk into the water, go ahead and dunk me." Why? "Because I think everything happens when I'm underwater." No. It is because you are already saved and it has great meaning to you. Let me show you a couple more things. Turn over to Acts Chapter 10. So let's just play the devil's advocate for a moment ago. Let's give you the argument, baptismal regeneration, okay.

So if you truly are saved by water baptism, then Peter has a big problem when he's preaching the gospel to Cornelius. Same guy, same Bible, same book of the Bible. Acts Chapter 10, notice verse 43. Peter tells them, "To him," and speaking of Jesus, "all the prophets witness that through his name, whoever believes in him will receive the remission of sins." No, if you didn't turn your Bible you didn't see that's not there. I added it. It's not there. It's very simple: whoever believes in him will receive the remission of sins. Belief equals forgiveness, not works of righteousness. Jesus said, "Whoever believes." Joel said, "Whoever calls." Peter now says, "Whoever believes receives the remission of sins."

Guest (Male): Hey, thanks for listening to Abounding Grace with Pastor Ed Taylor. You can hear these radio programs on our website anytime at aboundinggraceradio.com. Another way to go and grow in the word is by downloading the Calvary Church app. This is a great way for you to take in the word of God wherever you may be.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Hey, this is Pastor Ed. I want to let you know about my brand new book, *Letting Go of Your Past*. It's only a few months old, but it is being used in wonderful ways in so many lives. When we gave it to the publishers for their editing, they said, "Pastor, you need to add a couple of chapters." So when I was praying about what chapters to add, there's such a warfare that's attached to moving forward and receiving the healing and forgiveness of the Lord and dealing with things like anger, resentment, bitterness.

There's such a battle. So the two chapters we added, the first one was eight ways the devil attacks you, and then the next chapter was eight ways to defeat the devil. And those two go together and they fit so well in this book on how to help you move forward. God doesn't want you stuck. And whether that's for you, whether that's for now or the future or even a friend or a family member, be sure to get a copy. Get one for you, get one for someone else.

It's great for small groups, there's a little study guide involved, it's great for one-on-one discipleship. We were really blessed, I'm very happy with how this came out and I'd love to get it in your hands. You can get it at our store here at the church, calvarystore.com, or you can get it wherever you get books, it's available everywhere. And here's the thing: all the net proceeds go to missionaries. Isn't that cool? It's a double win. And there's an audiobook. But thanks for supporting us and praying for us. All the resources here just continue to go out in the word, in worship, and so many lives are changed, and what an honor to be a part of it all.

Guest (Male): Request a copy of *Letting Go of Your Past* today when you give a gift of $25 or more to Abounding Grace. Call 877-30-GRACE or order online at calvaryco.store. And please remember we are listener-supported. We'd very much appreciate your standing with us. If the Lord is leading you to take an active role in this ministry through either a one-time gift or ongoing support, please visit us online at aboundinggraceradio.com or call 877-30-GRACE. Well, that'll do it for today. Come back next time when Pastor Ed will pick up where we left off here on Abounding Grace. Abounding Grace is brought to you by Calvary Church Colorado here in Aurora.