ACTS: Being Willing to Admit Wrong-Doing

 

Peter’s Sermon
 
22 Listen to me you devout men of Israel. Jesus, the Nazarene, lived amongst us and demonstrated many signs and miracles by the hand of God. You all saw what I am talking about. 23 You nailed this man to a cross and put Him to death. But I want you to know this was part of God’s plan all along. 24 But that is not the end of the story, God also raised Him up and has now put an end to the agony of death itself because death could not keep Jesus down. 25 Do you remember how David said of the Messiah, “I saw Yahweh in my presence, standing at my right hand, I have great confidence and strength. 26 My heart was filled with gladness and my tongue let loose in praise; my flesh will maintain hope; 27 “because I know that You will not forget Me and leave Me in Hades nor will You allow Your Holy One to rot in the grave. 28 “You have given Me the ways of life, and You will fill Me with the joy of Your presence.” 
29 I can speak with confidence and say to you that our father David both died and was buried, and we can go visit his tomb today if we so desire. 30 David spoke these words because, as a prophet, he knew God had told him that one of his descendants would sit upon his throne. 31 When he spoke these words, he saw a vision of the future when the Messiah would be crucified for all the people, “I know that You will not forget Me and leave Me in Hades nor will You allow Your Holy One to rot in the grave.” 32 I tell you today, confidently, that God has raised Jesus up from the dead, He did not rot in the grave. We have seen Him alive over the last few weeks. 33 And He has now been exalted to God's righthand and received from His Father the promised Holy Spirit, whom He has poured out upon us today. That is what you are seeing and hearing. 34 David did not ascend to heaven, but he said, "Yahweh said to the Messiah, sit by My right side 35 “until your enemies become a footstool for your feet.” 36 I want you to know, all of you who consider yourselves as people of the house of Israel, that God has made the Jesus you crucified, both LORD and Messiah. 

A Word about Witnessing
 
 As followers of Jesus, we have been given the task of going into our world and telling other people about Jesus. If you take a look at the outline of Peter’s sermon to help us in our witnessing, you will find that Peter first encourages his listeners by calling them devout. He then connects with something they know about, in this case, they know that Jesus lived, did miracles, and died. What we might talk about with others could have nothing to do with Jesus, just something that the two of us mutually know about. Then he pointed out something they did wrong, i.e., the Jews crucified Jesus. 
            
Of course, Peter does not dwell on what they have done wrong, because they are being convicted by the Holy Spirit, he does not have to linger or drive home their error. Especially because he does not really see the death of Jesus as an error but the very plan of God. And he lets the people know that God had it planned this way from the beginning. We might find ourselves talking with someone and they bring up a memory from their past where they have “done something wrong.” We can ask about how their life has changed since that experience. Have they changed their ways or been caught up in the guilt for years? We have freedom to talk with them about forgiveness and how we find our forgiveness in the teachings of Jesus. 
 
As we will see in the rest of this chapter of Acts, the people, with the conviction of the Holy Spirit, ask Peter what they can do to be forgiven and he tells them. That is the essence of witnessing; build a relationship with the people and talk with them about what we know Jesus has done for us. And then let the Holy Spirit take over the conversation. 
 
Jesus the Messiah.
 
Peter reminds the listeners that a man named Jesus, also known as “the Nazarene,” demonstrated with power and miracles that He was truly the Messiah which God had promised through the voice of the prophets. Then he reminds the Jews of how they nailed Jesus to the cross and left Him to die. But he says this was all a part of God’s plan. The story does not end on the cross. Peter bears witness to the people that God raised Jesus up from the grave and has now put an end to the agony of death. He even quotes David saying, “God will not leave the Messiah in Hades nor allow His Holy One to rot in the grave.” Peter continues saying that when God lifted Jesus up, He had Him sit at His righthand and gave to Him authority to send the promised Holy Spirit to the earth. He let the listeners know that what they were seeing before their eyes was the demonstration of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, crucified by the Jews, has now been shown to be God in human form, the true Messiah. Peter encouraged his listeners to believe this to be true. 
 
The words of Peter were very clear to the Jews of his day, however, sometimes they could use a little extra explanation to those of us who live 2,000 years later. The word “Lord” has quite a history in the Jewish world. Lord can just mean someone who is master over you. Might even just be a term of honor when addressing a person of higher rank. But there is a much deeper meaning for these words of Peter, at least in my estimation. 
 
The word for the name of God in the Old Testament was represented by four consonants YHWH and has often been referred to as the tetragammaton. The name appears in a number of shortened forms, usually imbedded into other words. For example, Halleluyah, means praise to Yah(weh). In the same way, Jesus, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name, Yeshua, or Joshua, which is the combination of the two words Yah(weh) and Shua. So, the name Jesus means Yahweh the Savior. 
 
The full form of the word YHWH appears in the Old Testament over 6800 times yet seldom shows up in English translations. This practice probably began around 400 or 500 BCE when the people of Israel were encouraged to no longer speak the name of YHWH because of the 2^nd commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh in vain.” The religious leaders thought, “How can you take the name in vain, if you never use it.” So, they began the practice of not pronouncing the name of God for any reason, even when they read the Scriptures.  
 
They changed the indications around the name of Yahweh in the Hebrew text so that they would read the word Adonai, or Lord, instead. This practice of speaking the word “Lord” every time one would come to the word “YHWH” in the Old Testament, helped readers not use the name of God inappropriately. Many of the translations in English have continued the practice and you will now find the distinction only in the type setting of the words; YHWH is now represented by LORD and Adonai is represented as Lord. Hopefully, you noticed that difference, the first has all four letters capitalized, and the second, only has the first letter capitalized. 
 
So, when Peter speaks to the crowd on the day of Pentecost, was he saying to the Jews who were listening to him, “God has now made Jesus LORD and Messiah, or Lord and Messiah.” I believe he was saying to them that God had now made Jesus both YHWH and Messiah, LORD and Christ, indicating Peter’s believe that Jesus was truly God in human flesh, come to earth to save mankind, our Messiah. If we go back to the story of the angels visiting Mary and Joseph to tell them about the coming Child, the angel told Joseph that he should name the Child, Jesus, because He would save His people from their sins. That is equivalent to saying that this Child, named Yahweh our Savior, will save His own people, the people of this world, from their sins. 
 
People respond to Peter’s words. 
 
37 This message spoke clearly to the crowd and their hearts were convicted. They asked Peter and the other disciples, "What do we do now?" 38 Peter spoke up, "Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus the Messiah, your sins will be forgiven, and you will be filled with the gift of God's Holy Spirit. 39 “This promise is not just for you but your children and any others in the future whom the LORD our God shall call to follow.” 40 He continued to testify and encourage the people, saying, "Turn away from this crooked generation!" 41 Many that day, about three thousand people, accepted what Peter had to say and chose to be baptized. 42 The disciples, including the newly gathered believers devoted themselves to what the apostles had to say, to being together with these likeminded people, eating together, and praying together. 
 
At the end of Peter’s sermon, many of the people who had gathered, believed what he was saying and wanted to know what to do next. I am assuming they felt like they had complacently allowed the Messiah to be crucified and they wanted to be forgiven for their sin. Others who were present found themselves being skeptical, and I am sure some just walked away when they found out that all the commotion was just another preacher. But those who believed that Jesus was truly sent from God to bring us salvation, felt pierced in their heart, they were agitated, their minds were somehow quickened, they saw the truth and wanted to have Peter tell them how they should respond to this burning in their hearts. They knew they needed to make some changes in their lives and take some action to respond to this feeling. Peter had just the needed response, “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus the Messiah, your sins will be forgiven, and you will be filled with the gift of God's Holy Spirit.”
 
 Many of you will remember the name Chip Ingram, who was the pastor of the Santa Cruz Bible Church, back in the 1980’s and 1990’s. I remember him saying to the pastors of this county at a meeting, “there are thousands of people in this county who are just waiting to have someone come and tell them about Jesus and the forgiveness of their sins.” When we share, some will listen, some will not. Even Jesus in the parable of the sower said that seed falls in many different types of soil, some cause growth and some do not. 
 
Our calling as followers of Jesus is just to sow the seed, talk about the message, tell others about Jesus, and let the Holy Spirit do the heavy lifting. 
 
Repent
 
So, Peter told the people to Repent. This response is near the same thought Paul talks about in Romans 12:1,2 when he says, 1 Based on this, I encourage everyone, knowing how merciful our God is, to bring our lives to God as living sacrifices. When we desire to serve God with our whole life by following what Jesus taught us, we are practicing a spiritual exercise of worship to Him. 2 Once we make this choice to follow God’s ways, we set out to avoid conforming ourselves to the ways of this world and instead become transformed in the way we think. Over time we will find that living according to God’s will is a good thing, it will be pleasing to us, and we will realize that this is what we were created to be like. 
 
Change our ways and follow Jesus. It does not matter when we realize we have strayed from the path of God; we need to ask His help to get us back on course. 
 
Paul, like Peter, wants us to change our thinking. To begin to think like God thinks. If we want to know what God is thinking we need to refer to the Bible and rest in the work of the Holy Spirit because He knows the mind of God. Paul calls it the renewing of our minds, getting rid of the old habits and old ways of thinking that we have grown up with and replacing these old ideas with the ideas and teachings of the Bible. Peter tells the people to change their ways and begin to live by a new standard. 
 
I love the concept in the times of society around when the people of Israel left Egypt and Moses received from God the Ten Commandments. Throughout societies around the world at the time there was a lot of conquering and overtaking of other tribes and countries. When a group was victorious, they imposed their laws upon the group they had conquered. It did not matter if the battle was harsh or the people willingly conceded to being conquered, they no longer had a right to their laws and must now begin to live according to the ways of the conquerors.  
 
Often, the two groups would enter into a Suzerain-Vassal treaty. Suzerain being the conqueror and Vassal being the conquered. The Treaty often stipulated that the vassals would now conform to the laws of the Suzerain and would list out some of the most important laws of the new land. When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments they were in that same form, common to the people. Although they left Egypt behind, they now belonged to a new king, God. And the rules of life would now be God’s rules. 
 
 
Back to Witnessing for a Moment
 
All we need to be a witness to Jesus is to have first accepted the story. Jesus died on the cross for me, to forgive my sins. And now my life is a life of change, repenting. I find something in my life that is not the way the Bible teaches and I, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, make the needed changes. Sounds simple, but it often takes time for the changes to sink in. So, I come back to God regularly to repent and start over. There is no limit to how many times or how often I can make that journey. God is always willing to have His children come back home and find rest for our souls. 
 
 
In the Week to Come

Find hope and comfort in your forgiveness. Give thanks to God for His wonderful gift. Read some of the Bible and ask if the teachings you read are a part of your life or are there some changes you need to make. And be on the lookout for opportunities to get to know the stories of others, so that one day you might encourage them to deeper faith in Jesus, your Messiah. 

Pastor Edd

P.S. You Can listen to the sermon on Youtube too!