Men of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man attest to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst. Just as you yourselves know, this man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to the cross by the hands of Godless men and put him to death. But God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says of him, I saw the Lord always in my presence, for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart was glad and my tongue exalted, moreover, my flesh also will live in hope, because you will not abandon my soul to allow your holy one to undergo decay. You have made known to me the ways of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Rather, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. And so because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him and oath to seek one of his own descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh suffer decay. This Jesus, God raised up again to which we are all witness. Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this which you both see in here. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, said at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Therefore, let all the House of Israel know for certain that God has made him, both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter in the rest of the apostles, brethren, what shall we do? Peter said to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and all who are far off, as many as the Lord God will call to himself. The grass-weathers and the flower fades. Thanks forever. Please pray with me. Father, my confidence, our confidence as a people now is not in ourselves. We look away from who we are, and now we trust you when you tell us in your Word that your Word is living an active, and it is sharper than any two-edged sword. There is no blade on earth that can cut, like the blade of your Word. That blade cuts as far as the division of soul and spirit, joint and marrow, and it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. There is no creature hidden from your sight, every one, and everything about everyone is open and laid bare before your eyes. And so, Father, with such power that you wield, I am so grateful for this final verse that you wield that assures me and us here that you wield your power in promises. For the promise is alive and living this morning. So Father, I pray for your people now that you will make them more alive in Jesus Christ. And I pray for those who remain far off, that you would show your Son to be the Lord, that you would attest Him yet again with the sign and wonder of conversion this morning, far greater than any physical healing or feat in nature. The conversion of a soul is precious and produces joy in the presence of the angels of God. And so, Father, this is what I ask for a harvest of increased faith for those already belonging to Christ, and the first fruits of faith. From soil that until this morning have been rocky and hard. Magnify the seed of your Son's Word now, Father, I pray, in His name, Amen. Well, three weeks ago, we looked at the beginning of Acts, chapter 2, verse 13, verses. Let's remember where we are. And we looked at the events of Pentecost. What happened on Pentecost? And what we saw then two weeks ago was that God did not leave His people on Pentecost with just the events, nor does He ever do that in our lives, right? He always gives us His Word as the definitive interpretation of those events, because we are flawed in our thinking, we are fallen still in our minds, and situations are often ambiguous. So always the authoritative rule is God's Word, and so He does then on Pentecost this utterly critical time in the history of the Christian church, and He supplies the explanation for the events on Pentecost through Peter's sermon. So two weeks ago, we began to look at that explanation, and we took the first half of Peter's sermon, which was roughly verses 14 through 21, and remember what we saw then was that the first explanation that the Apostle Peter gives to help His people and help us today understand the significance of Pentecost, the first thing, as he says at Pentecost, is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. In other words, the art pouring into Holy Spirit was not some new innovation, but it had been a long-standing promise throughout the Old Testament that God, in the last days, in the definitive climactic, I guess is the word climactic, age of history, that God would act to bring His kingdom, and the sign of that kingdom above all other signs would be the king coming, and we know that that happens in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, but the sign that the king is present is that the Spirit has been poured out on God's people. Peter takes Joel 2, 28 through 32, and says, this is exactly what is happening on Pentecost. He's saying, do you see what God is doing? He's pouring His Spirit out in breadth. It's not limited to a few people like it was in the Old Testament. It's also being poured out. The Spirit is also being poured out in depth, poured out. The image is, here you go. Here He is, and we saw that this age above all other ages was an age of salvation. That's where we ended on verse 21, that the Spirit Himself is not an end in Himself. His presence signals the age of salvation, the age in which now the gospel, the good news of God's saving acts, breaks out to all peoples everywhere, so that everyone, according to verse 21, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Now, I deliberately broke the last message there at verse 21, so you would have, well, first of all, I'd never get through this whole sermon in one sermon, I may forget it, right? You know me well enough, but there is a question that verse 21 raises that should have been hanging in your minds, and that is, who is the name of the Lord? That's the name of the Lord who saves. You see, verse 21, where He's quoted the last verse from Joel 2, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. What does that have to do with the outpouring of the Spirit? The question that raises is, what's the name of that saving Lord? And now, that's exactly the question that the second half of Peter's sermon is devoted to explaining, and the explanation comes in verse 36, so I want to take you immediately to the conclusion of Peter's message, so you can see where we're going. Here's how Peter concludes, therefore let all, so therefore signals that he has just demonstrated that what follows is a conclusion from what he has just put forth, right? Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him, this is Jesus, with Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. You see, so the conclusion now is he's saying the Lord who pours the Spirit out, the Lord who saves, Yahweh, is incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. It is an amazing conclusion, now how does he get there? That's what our outline is going to be this morning. We're going to follow Peter's outline, and then we're going to, which we'll take us verses 22 through 36. God has done certain things according to Peter in and through Jesus Christ, through his life, verse 22, his death, verse 23, his resurrection, verses 24 through 32, his exaltation, verses 33 through 36, and those things that God has done demand, and I want to say it as strongly as I can, demand and command a response from everyone who hears of them. Now, unbelievers, there's something for you in this passage, the greatest treasure in the universe, and believers, there is something for you in this passage, the greatest treasure in the universe, believers, I just encourage you not to tune out, okay? What we're looking at here this morning, just so you know, is the first recorded Christian preaching. This is the first recorded, distinctively Christian sermon. And so my friends, what you are looking at, either as an unbeliever, as a believer, is the advantage that this passage gives you and me, is we get to look straight into the heart of what Christianity is. And so if you came in here as an unbeliever and you want to know what the church is about, that's the DNA right there. And if you're a believer, and you have drifted, and your life is cold, and your affections for God are drifting, and your look warm, and your perplexed about what Christianity is about, this is where you need to go to recover and to rediscover what the church of Jesus Christ is about. So this is a hugely advantageous opportunity. So let's look first at what God has done in Jesus Christ, first his life, first 22. Verse 22 is all about the life of Jesus, man of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man, attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know. The first thing that Peter is doing is saying Jesus was a man. Jesus was a real man. He was a Nazarene, which means he had a hometown, which means he had friends and acquaintances. He lived like a man. But for us to feel the force of what he's saying, you have to notice two things. Not only is he saying he's a man, but he's also saying he's exactly the same kind of man as you Israelites who are listening to me. One of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man. The first thing he says is he was just like you, a man. But the staggering thing that we get to celebrate in Advent is that not only was he a man, but he was also Yahweh, the great God of Israel. He is the Lord of verse 21. Now that's exactly what this, you know, I hadn't noticed that this was in here. This just shows you. I don't pay attention to things. You know for many months now, actually for a couple of years, we've had up here, does anybody know what verse we've had up there? Romans 10, what? 10, 17, and what does that verse say? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ, right? It's what you need to know. And Jane and Bob asked me if there was anything else I wanted up for Advent. I said, how about John 114, during Advent, to keep us focused? And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is exactly what Peter is declaring to the Israelites that God himself, the living Word, became a man and dwelt among men. It is an awesome thing that he says. Now that life that Jesus had, that he lived, had two great purposes. We learn in the New Testament and the first purpose is to reveal God to us. This is first purpose, right? And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and that's verse 14, verse 18, that same chapter says, and no one has ever seen God at any time. But the only begotten God who was in the bosom of the Father, he has what, explained him. So Jesus's life, first purpose, was to reveal God to us, to show us God's character and his heart. And that is exactly the function of Jesus' miracles. They are so often misunderstood as magician's tricks. They are not magician's tricks. They are not some kind of cynical power play. What God is doing in the attesting miracles of Jesus Christ is He's revealing Himself to the world. He's saying, this is who I am. Jesus, when He does miracles, is not saying, look at me, I'm powerful. It's not what Jesus is doing. That is what magicians do, by the way, right? Jesus would never have a billboard like I saw in downtown Orlando the other day driving through. Blank, somebody's name, Miracle Crusade, because Jesus would always be wanting to draw the attention to His Father, always to the Father. And so what these miracles do, that God used to attest Jesus and to reveal His character, what those miracles do. Think about what those miracles are. Did He create a lot of money for somebody? Did He build Himself a big house? Did He put a bunch of people in subjection to Himself so that He had an army? Now, what were the kinds of miracles that Jesus did? He healed. He took people who had suffered from dropsy and palsy, who had withered hands, and what did He do? He's straightening them out. He took involates who had been paralyzed from birth, and He gave them, as we'll see in chapter three, through the apostles, He did this in His own ministry. He would raise them and give them the ability to walk again. He would raise some from the dead. He would give dead children back alive to their parents. He would still the waves and the storms and show His authority. What Jesus was doing through those miracles was showing us not only God's power and authority, but also the heart of God and His purposes. And those purposes are what the kingdom of God that Jesus Christ has brought through are about. That is a purpose of restoration and renewal. You see a hand that is palsied needs restoration. And that is a microcosm of everything that Jesus is about. He is renewing the cosmos. That's what God is doing through Him. So His life was incredible in revealing God's purposes. But the other thing about Jesus' life, the other main purpose that we read about in the New Testament, is that Jesus' life was given to recover sinful humanity, us. Now we normally think just about the death of Jesus Christ in that respect, and that would be a huge, huge mistake to limit that recovery purpose just to Jesus' death. Because Jesus lived a life of perfect righteousness. He lived a life of perfect righteousness. You and I have two massive needs before God. Every human being has two massive needs. The cross answers one of them, which is write the payment of the penalty for our disobedience to God. What the cross is is the place where God's justice against our rebellion against Him is answered. But you see, you and I have another need, which is not only that the penalty for our rebellion against God would be paid, but the positive righteousness which we've failed to produce in our lives, the positive fulfillment of all righteousness, we're poor, we're impoverished. We haven't done that. It's not enough to say, well, I haven't committed adultery. The law demands that you have a fruitful marriage, so you can't say, well, I don't mess around my life. God will say, have you loved your wife? I've got to have positive righteousness. And Jesus Christ lived a life so infinitely wealthy in righteousness before God. You and I, we are such poor evaluators of the significance of our lives. We tend to think about our lives, we don't think about our lives the way God thinks about our lives. You know, we think about our lives in seasons, you know. I enter college and the reason I enter college is to graduate, right? There's a goal, there's some goal down the line, but there's a lot of Him between time, between starting and finishing. You know, God's view of our lives is that it's not just the junctures in life where we make the big decisions that are important. It's every single instant that is eternally significant. And so in order to recover sinful humanity with a life, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live a human life through every phase of human life, an infant, a toddler, a young child, going through puberty, a teenager, a young adult, a man into adulthood. Why? Why did He have to do that? Why couldn't He just come down five minutes before the cross and pay the penalty? Because there's another massive need out there that you and I have, which is that there has to be a man to answer for what man has failed to produce for God. And that is a righteousness through every phase of life. And Jesus was so infinitely wealthy in righteousness. So He could present every phase of life. He could recover it, having lived through it, having fought all the battles that are characteristic of every age and face of life, having fought them, having succeeded, having been tempted in each one of them, and having defeated that temptation, now He is in a position to present every one of those ages back to God as a glorious redeemed trophy. And that's what Jesus does in His life. It's a very different kind of champion, my friends, from the one that we tend to glorify. I personally think that Lance Armstrong is unbelievable. I mean, I just cannot imagine that somebody could win the Tour de France six years in a row. I don't care what anyone says, and I'm a baseball fan. That is way harder than hitting 750 home runs. And you know what? The righteousness of Jesus Christ is so far beyond my ability to achieve that I have way more chance of repeating Lance Armstrong's feet than I ever do of repeating Jesus Christ's righteousness. And so my friends, you have the same challenge because we need to face that Jesus Christ had accumulated a great wealth of righteousness in the eyes of God, such perfection, sharing our nature, tempted in all things as we are, and what is the point of all that? Why did God do that? To answer, I'll tell you why, to answer for your poverty, to answer for my poverty and righteousness. Because we got nothing, my friends, when it comes to positive righteousness before God. Jesus never had a selfish motive, never had an unkind thought or unkind word, right? He was tempted, he Bruce tells us, in all things as we are, yet what? Without sin. Oh, maybe we look upon the perfection of Jesus Christ in his life and bow ourselves before him, bow in humility and gratitude that God would supply that righteousness. My friends, you'll know you're getting this if your response to what I'm saying is not, oh, I gotta make a list. I gotta screw my willpower down and I'm just gonna gut this out and I'm gonna be righteous. You're not getting it if that's your response. But if your response is, I'll receive that. I'll receive the perfection of another in my behalf. I'll receive a righteousness of another, that's the gospel response. Now the righteousness of Jesus Christ, his work is so perfect and that means that everybody in this room has hope. Levels the playing field. No one is too far gone, too deep or too long in sin. You see that if it's all dependent upon another's righteousness, then all that God is requiring is that you look to Him and you look away from yourself, which is what the essence of faith is, not looking in, but looking away to another Jesus Christ. Now that righteousness is so great in Jesus Christ that it makes the next verse verse 24 and what Peter tells us in verse 24, all the more shocking because notice, here is a life, here is a life of singular character. God attested this life. God said this life above all others is valuable. And then in verse 23, what do we read? This man delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God you nailed to a cross by the hands of Godless men and you put him together. We put him to death. There are two shocking disclosures there, two things that ought to just take your breath away. And the first is the contrast that's there between the quality of his life and his death, right? Just that alone ought to get your attention. How could it be that one who lived such a life and whose life had been attested by God? How could it be that he would die if he was sinless? How could it be that that would be the outcome of his life? How could it be that Jesus Christ, the most singular of all men ever, the one who never sinned and therefore never earned the wages of death, right? Roman 623, how could it be that he died? What is wrong with that? I have to take your two steps beyond the fact that he died because that alone is shocking enough. Let's go two steps further. Not only did he die, but he was killed. See there are ways of dying that we recognize, right? Even ways of being killed that we recognize in the world as being statements about the value of a life, right? If you die and you're in the Marines and you die in action pulling one of your comrades bodies across the street in Fallujah, that death is honored, is it not? We honor that kind of sacrifice, rightly so. But Jesus was not just killed, right? He was murdered on a cross which was the cruelest and most despicable means of torture and execution that men have ever devised. There was no greater symbol. Men could not identify, you and I could not identify a way of putting someone to death that would say more dramatically than the cross, this life has no value to the world. No symbol compares with the cross as a statement of the world's verdict on the valuelessness of a life. Nothing compares with the cross and that is how Jesus died, my friends. So this life of infinite value, this fortune of righteousness, this air of the world, Jesus Christ, it's not just that he dies, it's not just that he's killed, it's the way that he dies. He dies in the hands of godless men on a cross in a way that says to the whole world, by men, not by God, that says to men and women and children all around the world, this of all lives is valueless. How could people be so wrong? How could the world be so wrong? Do you not feel the tension there? How could a life be attested by God with miracles and signs and wonders and yet have the world respond to that and say, this life has no value. How could that be? If that tension does not grab your heart, I ask you to pray that God would make it grab your heart because that right there, that tension is what Christianity is all about. If you will engage that tension, you will discover what grace is. Because ultimately what the gospel calls you to do is to leave behind the wisdom of man, which means your wisdom and to embrace not your opinion, but God's. Because as between you and God, there is one opinion in that pair that trumps the other always. And it is God's. And God attested this life. Well, what is God doing? I mean, how could it be that God would put Jesus into the hands of godless, lawless men? The wrong guy is dying. When you read verse 23, do you have that feeling? What's going on here? The wrong one is dying. It's the lawless man who ought to be put on the cross. What is God doing? Well, that's really the second shocking disclosure, right, is that not only does Jesus die and is he murdered on a cross, but that was God's intentional act. You see what verse 23 says? God is not looking on the sideline saying, oh, my beloved son, they've taken him. He's going to die on a cross. Verse 23 says, I planned it. I planned it. He was delivered up and don't, don't, don't be cowardly and run away from these words. We're in a Presbyterian church. You can be bold about these words delivered up by the pre-determined plan and foreknowledge of God. Any way you say it, that means God planned it. Which means that Jesus's death was God's intentional act. So what is he doing? What is he doing? How could he let one so innocent die like that? How could he plan that? How could he plan the suffering of an innocent one because he had a deeper plan? That's how. He had a plan beneath the plan and the plan was that not only would Jesus's life serve as the substitute for people who lacked righteousness, but his death would also be an act of substitution. So that when you look at the cross and you consider through the lens of verse 23, the death of Jesus Christ, what you are looking at is not God's verdict on Jesus's life. What you are looking at is God's verdict on your life. Do you see that in the cross? Do you see God's verdict on your rebellion against him on the cross? Don't, don't be a spectator here because what the cross is is the demonstration of God's righteousness against your and mine unrighteousness. And in Jesus, what he is doing so graciously, just think about the kindness of God here. Don't make light of it, please. The kindness of God in giving each of us a preview of what awaits those outside of Christ. Because your sin will be judged with a fierceness and a ferocity that you can only get a glimpse of on the cross. What if God, my friends, was not helpless here, but what if God was deliberately and intentionally and graciously giving you a preview of what his judgment would be on your life and holding out in the cross and the death of Jesus this great substitute for you to embrace? And they say, yes, I'll receive, not only his payment of my penalty, but I'll receive his righteousness as well, and I'll rest on there. What if God had a deeper plan, who does, who does, remember, remember, remember how wrong this text tells us the world is about Jesus Christ. The world is wrong about Jesus still today just as they were when they crucified Him. And what matters is what God thinks about Jesus. How do we know what God's verdict of Jesus is? We know from verse 24 through 32, which is all about the resurrection. But my friends, before I get there, let me make this point, Jesus's death was not only the Father's planned intentional act, but it was also Jesus's intentional act. In other words, it's very important to see that Jesus was not simply a victim of another's plan. Jesus himself offered himself to God willingly on behalf of sinners. Would you like to know a love like that? Can you imagine a love that would sacrifice what Jesus sacrificed and that love being personally for you? Is that something you can even have a category for that kind of love that some promise like that would be held out to somebody like you? That's exactly what the gospel is, my friends. So Jesus presented Himself and I want you to hear this. He presented Himself as a willing sacrifice to sinners so that He might hold Himself out now to you this morning and in the rest of history as a willing Savior for sinners. A willing sacrifice so that He might become a willing Savior. Have you taken Him up on His offer? Where are you with Jesus? Neutrality is not an option. God's verdict of Jesus is seen in the resurrection and that's what Peter talks about in verses 24 through 32. Now, we're going to see this later on as we go through acts. You cannot preach the gospel without the life of Jesus Christ. You cannot preach the gospel without the death of Jesus Christ. You cannot preach the gospel without the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And as we go through acts and we watch the apostles' method of ministry and the way that they proclaim Christ, you will see that the resurrection particularly in Paul is always central. It is far more central than it is in most of our discipleship and in most of our gospel presentations. Here's how we present the gospel. You're a sinner. God put a lamb forward to take the penalty for your sin, believe in Him and your save. What about the resurrection? What does that have to do with Him? A lot. Because how do you know, my friends, that the payment, the sacrifice has been accepted by the Father? How do you know that Jesus Christ is the one who can effectively vanquish sin and death unless He breaks free from its clutches and rises again? And that's why Peter spends so much time on it. Now, he does it an interesting way and I just want to walk you through the text because what often happens with people is they see those, those all caps, indented quotes in the New Testament. They go, okay, that's something from the Old Testament. I'm going right next to that. I'm going to right pass it, okay? Please don't do that. Please don't do that. What Peter's doing here now is he says, okay, I know you're a little skeptical about the resurrection. Let me show you that the resurrection was predicted by David in Psalm 16. That's what he's doing now, okay? So he says, now David, now notice this, notice this incredible assertion he makes in verse 25. David says of him, right? I was always beholding the Lord in my presence where he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exalted more over my flesh, also will abide in hope. Now here's the key verse because you will not abandon my soul to Hades, the realm of the dead, shale, nor allow your holy one to undergo decay. Now see, what Peter does with that is he hears that declaration of Psalm 16 and he's saying, now wait a second, right? Wait a second. Verse 29, brethren, I can confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. In other words, what he's saying is there is no way that the promise of verse 27 was for David because verse 27 says, you're not going to essentially allow me to die. I'm not going to stay in the realm of the dead and my body will not decay. So you know what, if David's tomb is still there, David's body is decayed. So Peter's saying, this promise has to be about someone else. It has to be someone toward whom David is looking forward and he is saying just that. He's saying David, right? He looked ahead, verse 30, excuse me, verse 30. And so because he, David, was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seek one of his descendants upon his throne. He's thinking there of Psalm 132, verse 11, where God has made the promise again to preserve the throne of David by seeding one of David's descendants upon that throne and making him king. And who is David's greatest son? Jesus, right? This is fulfilled in Jesus, Peter is saying. He looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh suffer decay. Now look at verse 32, the summary, excuse me, this Jesus, God raised him up again. This Jesus, God raised up again to which we are all, we as apostles are all witnesses. Now see God's verdict on Jesus, what God does in the resurrection is he reverses the verdict of the world on Jesus Christ. He overturns the verdict. He is the Supreme Court. We are the trial courts, and what we say matters not about Jesus, what matters is what God the Father says about Jesus, and in the resurrection, and then the exaltation which is His movement after the ascension to the right hand of God the Father. Those are like ends of the same process of advancement of Jesus to the Father's right hand. Those two things are demonstration, they are God's public declaration that the world, you and I, before we come to Christ, were utterly wrong about Him, and then David quotes Psalm 110, verse 1, and verse 34, to prove that Jesus is the Lord, for it was not David who ascended into heaven, but himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make my enemies a footstool for your feet. Before I let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him, both Lord and Christ, this Jesus who you crucified. So friends, what I want you to see in the movement of Peter Sermon is he is saying the Lord who saves is Jesus Christ, and the way we know that is He has been raised from the day. He lived a life of perfect righteousness. He was crucified as a substitute, and in the place of sinners, God set His seal upon His death by raising Him from the dead and seeding Him at the Father's right hand in the heavenly places. And now He is coronated and enthroned at the Father's right hand, and now, as Lord and Christ, He issues commands to everyone, and you'll notice that that's exactly how the people understand it, verses 37 and 38, my friends, you see, when they had heard this, they were pierced to the heart, literally means stabbed, stabbed, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brethren, what should you do? Oh, I hope you're asking that question. I have been praying all week that that question would pour forth from your mouth. What shall you do? You see, they know. They know what drives that question, the roots of that question, are there sudden recognition that there is this huge gap between God's opinion of Jesus Christ and their own? And that is exactly the gap that I am praying, the Spirit will reveal to you in your own life. And Christians, you need to remember how big that gap was. You need to remember that you're a Christian by the grace of God. You did not get a reward for good behavior when you brought into the kingdom of God. You are a recipient of grace, my friends. You didn't close that gap, God closed it for you. And what drives their question is the recognition that to be on the wrong side of God's opinion is to be unsafe. In fact, the definition of danger in a universe that God has created, that He orders, that He maintains is not to agree with Him. And that's the ultimate issue in every unbeliever's life. Will you be humble enough to submit yourself to the opinion of another, not of your own making? And then, will you be humble enough to recognize that His opinion of your condition as far worse than your opinion is of it? And will you be willing to submit and humble enough to submit to His solution for your condition? Which involves His grace being magnified and all the trophies being taken off your shelf. If you are humble enough to be in that place, you become the wealthiest person in the universe. But you must come, confessing that you agree with God. See Peter says, notice the first thing that Peter says, he says repent. He says repent. The first thing that they have to do is to turn from their reliances and their confidences. They have to turn away. They have to change the direction of their lives. A life that has been a God-ignoring life, a life that has been a Christ belittling life, a life that has been a sin-ignoring life, has to be changed. See, repentance is many things. I want to give you five things that it is. We'll go through these very quickly. The first thing is repentance is agreeing with God, already addressed that, about who you are and who His Son is. That's what Peter is summoning them to do. Repentance is also a confession of absolute despair, absolute despair. And what I mean by that is absolute despair that any shred of the solution for your condition would come from yourself. See, if you're not at the point where you realize that alongside Jesus Christ, both in His life and His death, that you are helpless and powerless to reconcile yourself to God, if you don't recognize how impoverished you are in terms of your unrighteousness, how impoverished you are in your own ability to withstand God's judgment for your sin. If you don't realize that and you're not despairing about that, then you haven't reckoned with the message of Peter's Son. You need to reach the end of yourself, and the best way I know to encourage people to reach the end of themselves is to look at God. Look at Jesus Christ, spend time thinking about His life, who He is. The best way to maintain a very confident opinion of yourself is to just look in the mirror, which is how most of us live anyway. But if you will dare to look at Jesus Christ, He will take you to a place where you realize that the answer is not from within, it must be from without. Now, the reason that that won't lead you to the edge of a cliff is because repentance is also a confession of unshakable hope, right? Because what do you see when you see Jesus Christ and when you look upon Him? What do you see? You see a perfect lamb, perfect lamb, a perfect substitute, and what does God call you to do? Does He call you to be perfect in order to enter the kingdom? No, what does He call you to do? He calls you to touch the lamb by faith, right? Do you need John Calvin's faith? Do you need the Apostle Paul's faith? You just need a little faith. I read something this week of so encouraging from John Owen, most of his sentences are about 700 words long, and they're really difficult. And so there was one about, I don't, six words long, so I was just really happy. And I just want to encourage you with this, a little faith, just a little, gives a whole Christ, all the wealth of Jesus Christ. If you come to Him with a little faith, we'll be poor. And so it doesn't end in despair, it ends in unshakable hope. Would you remember who Peter is talking to here? Just remember, remember who he's talking to here. He's not talking to a fleet of righteous people. He's talking to the people who crucified Jesus. You see that? And he's saying, you, you can be saved. Your sins can be forgiven. Yours. The guilt in that room was really high. It's an imaginably high. And the offer of pardon is extended in that room by Peter, which means that that offer of pardon goes loose in this room and is ready for you, any of you to take it up and receive it. And be united to God through Jesus Christ. So I encourage you to do that. Repentance is a command. So don't make light of this. God is issuing a command to you. And the refusal to repent of your sins is disobedience. It's not just the foreclosing of an option. It is disobedient to God, to not repent of your sins. And repentance is also the gateway to a living, reconciled relationship. Notice that Peter has a vision. What dominates his sermon is not a historical figure who's gone, right? But a living Christ who's enthroned, right? That's his picture. He is summoning them to repent, not in a historical concept, but in a living king. And the gateway that he opens is a gateway to a living relationship. We were reading with the kids last night in Philippians 1, it just hit me with such force. When Paul says, I always think about Philippians 1, 21, the second half, which is the first half of the verses for me to live as Christ and to die as a game. I always saw when I was talking to the kids about it. I tend to immediately go to that second half of that verse. But to live as Christ, that means that I have a living relationship with this one who lived so perfectly in my behalf and endured the plottings of sinners and was raised from the dead. I know him. I talk to him every day. He lives inside of me by his spirit. This is not a historical phantasm. This is a living union with a king and that's what he holds out. That's what repentance is the gateway to. And so friends, in Advent, let's not worship a historical artifact. Let us worship the living king who is the saving Lord and throened in the heaven right now and holding himself out as a willing savior to everyone in this room. So will you take him up and receive him? I pray, let's pray. But now I pray that the seed of your word will have found good soil and that for your own glory, you would raise up a harvest 30, 60, and 100 fold. May the nets be too full. May we have to call in other boats because of what you bring forth as a yield in our lives. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.