Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:10] Know the author Cormac McCarthy?
[00:00:14] Yes, few people. All right, I'm not going to go into a long treatise, treaty treaties on Cormac McCarthy, but he is one of my favorite fiction authors.
[00:00:24] And I had a moment this weekend when I was with my family, I was with my brother in law and we were cooking steaks out on the back patio of my father in law, father in law's house.
[00:00:33] And I had this moment where I had been reading this Cormac McCarthy book and have been really excited about it. And the more I read it, the more I love it, and the more I love it, the more I want to talk to people about it. And so maybe you've had this moment in your social interactions, maybe you haven't, I don't know. But when I get really excited about something, I will find creative ways to integrate that into whatever conversation I'm having with the person, even if it doesn't totally fit. You guys ever do that?
[00:01:03] All right, so we're sitting there and we're cooking steaks and we're on the grill and I just, I kind of look over to the grill and I see the steak sizzle and. And you can smell it. It's awesome. And I just had this kind of thought that triggered in my mind of, oh, this is what cowboys used to do, like on the range, right? They would get their steaks and they'd cook it over a fire and they'd have their coffee and, and. And I was like, cowboys, Cormac McCarthy book. I'm reading westerns. It just kind of all clicked. And then I was like, now's the time.
[00:01:31] And so I just said, hey, dude, have you ever read all the Pretty horses by Cormac McCarthy? And he just kind of looked at me like, what a random thing for you to say to me. But he entertained it and we had a good conversation around it. And the point that I'm making and bringing up this silly example to you is just to say this.
[00:01:47] You and I talk about things that we're passionate about.
[00:01:51] If you love something and you're passionate about something and you're excited about something, it isn't an awkward thing for you to bring up that something to somebody that you want to share it with.
[00:02:02] You're not fearful in that moment. You're not worried, you're not insecure. You're actually finding creative ways to weave the thing that you desire to talk about because you're so passionate about it into the conversation that you're having with somebody. And so I do want us to consider. And this is going to be somewhat of a theme over the next few weeks as we continue to walk through the Book of Acts.
[00:02:22] In thinking about this question, why don't you and I share the story of Jesus more so that that question is convicting for all of us, myself included. None of us evangelize, live on mission, share the good news of Jesus as we ought. All of us need the grace of God. This is what the cross of Jesus Christ is for is our lack of evangelism, our lack of desire to evangelize. This is why the gospel is good news. But it is important for us to consider together as a body. Like what? What are some of the things that keep you and I from the good news of Jesus? More and I just want to propose five before we get into the text. Five possibilities that I think at least run through my mind and heart that sometimes keep me from being a more bold evangelist.
[00:03:14] Fear.
[00:03:15] What if I'm rejected? Or look or sound stupid?
[00:03:20] Fear of man.
[00:03:21] Apathy.
[00:03:23] The various distractions that we have in life can have a cooling effect on our affections.
[00:03:33] Cynicism maybe could be for a variety of reasons, but cynicism just asks the question, what does it matter anyways? It's not going to work anyways.
[00:03:44] Maybe it's theology. Maybe you have a low view of God being in control of everything, including the salvation of our non Christian friends and neighbors.
[00:03:54] Could be shame.
[00:03:55] And we've talked about this before. We'll talk more about it in a moment. But you know, shame, if guilt is the belief that I did bad or the recognition that I did bad, shame is the belief that I am bad.
[00:04:07] Like I am just bad, right? Shame is the thing internally that's going on in our hearts and our soul that causes us to hang our head or slunch, or slunch, slump our back, right? Like this is. This is shame. All of these things can work together to keep us from doing one of the things that you and I are on this side of heaven, on this side of eternity to be doing, which is sharing the good news of Jesus with those in our life who don't yet know him.
[00:04:39] And so today in the text, Peter is going to tell the story of God's grace.
[00:04:45] Okay? So if I had to title my sermon, which I don't typically like to do until after the fact, I would title it the Stories We Tell.
[00:04:54] So Peter is going to tell the story of God's grace to a group of Jewish Christians who are in disbelief as to what God's doing the Gospel, the good news of the life and death and resurrection of the Son of God for sinners to reconcile sinners to God forever.
[00:05:14] That good news is going to now be preached not just to the Jews, but it's going to extend into the Gentiles. And we've said this before in weeks prior, but I do want you to take a moment and consider the reality that you are here today because of what we're going to read in this passage.
[00:05:31] Like, you and I are here non Jews for the most part here because of what we see God doing in fulfilling the plan that he determined to fulfill in eternity past.
[00:05:44] It's an amazing thing for you and I to consider how we today are a continuation of the story that we see in Acts chapter 11.
[00:05:53] So Peter's going to tell a story, and one of the points that I want to encourage you with, for you to think about this week is if you're not captivated by this story. So if this story of God's grace and Jesus has yet to captivate your heart or for whatever reason is not captivating your heart today, if you feel your affections cooled, if you feel your loves all over the place, if, if those things are happening, it's going to be really difficult for you to share that good story with people who don't yet know Jesus. You have to. You have to be captivated by the story first.
[00:06:31] I have to be captivated by the story first. And that captivation, that excitement, that enthusiasm, that love is going to propel us out to share this good news with. People need to hear it. Just like anything you get passionate about would be used to propel you to share it with people that don't yet know it. Does this make sense? All right, so let's look at Acts chapter 11 together, and we'll just kind of go through it verse by verse and highlight a few things along the way. So Acts chapter 11, starting in verse one, says, now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God.
[00:07:14] So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, you went to uncircumcised men and ate with them. So we begin with a criticism.
[00:07:27] The Jewish Christians hear that Peter, and we go back to chapter 10, as Shauna Matt preached over the last two weeks. We go back to chapter 10 where God, end of chapter nine, go appears to a man named Cornelius, a Gentile centurion. He gives him a vision, tells him to go get Peter. And so he goes and gets Peter. And all the while, God's working in Peter's heart to prepare Peter. Remember Peter staying with S. Simon the Tanner, whom a. A good Orthodox Jew would say, you should not stay with that guy. Unclean things in his house. So we see God orchestrating and working in Peter's life in a way to prepare Peter for the greatest mission of his life.
[00:08:05] Okay? And so God appears to Peter. He gives Peter a vision of a sheet descending from heaven with various kinds of animals. And Peter sees it and he's like, I've never had anything unclean enter my mouth. And God says, hey, don't call what I've declared clean uncommon.
[00:08:24] God's working and orchestrating all of these things. He sends Peter to Cornelius, and it's there that we see God in his grace, Paul pour out his spirit into the hearts of these Gentiles for the first time.
[00:08:39] And so what the apostles experience at Pentecost in Acts, chapter two, now the Gentiles are experiencing, the Holy Spirit from heaven is being poured into the hearts of these Gentiles. And so the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem hear about this and are like, what in the world is going on? And rather than being excited, they immediately resort to criticism. How could you eat with Gentiles, Peter?
[00:09:03] How could you go. And keep in mind Jewish custom, like eating was a big deal. It's one thing to proclaim the good news about Jesus to a Gentile. It's another thing to eat with them, right? This is what Jesus was criticized of by the Pharisees. You remember this Matthew, chapter 9, verse 11.
[00:09:20] And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to the disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
[00:09:29] Jesus says of himself in Matthew 11:19. This is. This is just an amazing religion, shattering statement from Jesus.
[00:09:39] The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, look at him. A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Yet Jesus says wisdom is justified by her deeds.
[00:09:54] It's the same criticism that they had of Jesus. They're now criticizing Peter with, how. How could you go and eat with people like that?
[00:10:00] How could you dine with people like that? How could you walk into the house of a person like that? And so we see in the life of Peter, and we'll continue to see it more and more in the life of the disciples as we see it in our own life. For those who belong to Jesus, the Holy Spirit is at work in our heart, conforming us into the image of Jesus. And as they treated Jesus, so will they treat you.
[00:10:23] And so Peter is criticized and this is his response. Look at verse four.
[00:10:28] But Peter began and explained it to them in order. I was in the city of Joppa, praying. So Peter's going to go back and he's going to retell the story of what happened. In chapter 10.
[00:10:38] I was in the city of Joppa, praying, and in a trance. I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners. And it came down to me.
[00:10:52] Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, rise, Peter, kill and eat.
[00:11:02] But I said, by no means, Lord, for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.
[00:11:08] I've heard people say this before, but I do think it's an observational thing to take note of what's happening here in this interaction between the Lord and Peter is friend, you can't be more holy than God.
[00:11:21] So Peter's like, I can't do that. That would make me unclean. And I've never done. I've never. He's. He's referring to Jewish dietary laws.
[00:11:30] That would make me unclean by no means, Lord.
[00:11:34] But the voice answered a second time from heaven, what God has made clean, do not call common. God has made clean, do not call common. So Peter had the perspective of a traditional Jew. Certain foods were ceremonially unclean and a good Jew would not eat or intake them.
[00:11:55] Jesus says in Matthew 15, verse 11, in his teaching on this, he said, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. So if you think about the ministry and life of Jesus, so much of Jesus teaching, not so much, all of it. All of Jesus teaching is a reframing of the paradigm of what the kingdom of God is actually like.
[00:12:16] The Jews had a perspective of what the kingdom of God was like. We have a perspective of what the kingdom of God is like. And it's like Jesus takes that perspective and he totally turns it upside down. Read the Beatitudes.
[00:12:28] That is a different message than the message of the world, isn't it?
[00:12:32] Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they.
[00:12:37] Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are the meek. This is an upside down paradigm of what the kingdom of God is actually like. He needs to doing the same thing here. The Jews had this perspective that righteousness and holiness was all about the exterior is all about what you did in your actions. It's all about what you ate and what you didn't eat, what you drank and what you didn't drink. This is what holiness is like. Not too different from many fundamentalist circles within evangelicalism, Right?
[00:13:11] So Jesus says, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth this defiles a person. The message that Jesus is saying is, stop worrying so much about what you eat. Stop worrying about so much what you drink. And look at the heart. Because out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Jesus says, evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
[00:13:39] It's not about abstaining from certain things that quote, unquote, aren't clean. It's about what comes out of your mouth. Because what comes out of your mouth, friends, is what's in the heart. And when you and I examine our life that way, we recognize one abundantly clear message, and it's this, that none of us are clean.
[00:14:00] None of us are clean.
[00:14:03] If the measure of cleanliness according to God is what comes out of the mouth, because what comes out of the mouth is reflective of what's in the heart, then we recognize that before a holy God, none of us are clean.
[00:14:19] It's not uncommon. And I'll just use one example, but there are many, many examples.
[00:14:24] Okay, that. That you could.
[00:14:26] That I'll hear.
[00:14:28] I'll hear news of, like, a fundamentalist preacher who has spent the entirety of his ministry preaching against a particular sin, only to find out that at home he's bitter and unforgiving and angry and abusive.
[00:14:46] Like, that's an example of what we're talking about here. Yeah, but I never did this. Yeah, but your life is marked by unforgiveness.
[00:14:56] So it's out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And Peter and the Jews just had a really difficult time understanding this idea. Idea. So Peter stands before.
[00:15:06] Before God in this vision and he says, I've never had anything unclean enter my house. And God is reframing the way that he thinks about all of it.
[00:15:19] Every person, all of us, every person in the world needs to be cleansed before a holy God. We are, as the prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah chapter six, when he sees Jesus on his throne, we are all unclean.
[00:15:39] We need to be cleansed. And this leads me to my first point, verse 9.
[00:15:48] All who belong to Jesus are clean.
[00:15:53] All who belong to Jesus are clean.
[00:15:59] But the voice answered a second time from heaven, what God has made clean, do not call common.
[00:16:10] I think that many of us understand forgiveness, at least to some extent.
[00:16:15] We talk a lot about forgiveness, we sing about forgiveness, and we should.
[00:16:20] Hey, Romans, chapter four. Paul says, blessed is the man or woman whose sins are forgiven.
[00:16:27] It is a blessed thing to be a forgiven person.
[00:16:31] And if you're a Christian, you are a forgiven person. All of your sins, past, present, future sins, are forever forgiven in Christ. They've been taken away as far as the east is from the West. This is great news, but it's not all.
[00:16:49] The gospel isn't less than the forgiveness of your sins, but it's more in Christ. You're not merely forgiven. I'm not merely forgiven. You're clean.
[00:17:02] You're clean.
[00:17:05] And so I know, like, as a pastor, I have these conversations and I know through my own life it is possible for you to know that you're forgiven and still feel dirty.
[00:17:20] Whether it's because of something that has happened to you or something that you've done or something that you currently struggle with, you feel dirty as a result of that thing.
[00:17:36] In John, chapter 13, verses 8 and 9, we get a beautiful picture again of the heart of Jesus.
[00:17:46] And this is upper room. Jesus is on his way to the cross and he's going to take. He's already taken the form of a servant. He's going to highlight the reality that he did come as a servant by getting on the ground and washing the dirty feet of his disciples. And he doesn't just do that in order to model for them how they're to be toward one another. Which, by the way, I think is a good idea.
[00:18:12] Right? We don't do this as a church collective, wash each other's feet. But he does tell them that this is one of the ways by which the world will know that you're my disciples. It's not just a symbolic act of love, washing someone's feet. There's significance in that act.
[00:18:28] And so Jesus washes their feet and he says, now I want you to do this for one another.
[00:18:33] And as you do this for one another, then the world will see the love of God displayed through you in the way that you love one another. That's one of the things that Jesus is doing in John chapter 13. But it's not the only thing, I think in John chapter 13, Jesus is showing them symbolically what he's about to accomplish on the cross.
[00:18:52] And when Jesus dies on the cross and he bleeds out the blood of God himself incarnate, the Son of God, for all who believe was going to wash us clean and so I spoke to a good friend yesterday who was a former missionary in South Africa. He's probably in his 70s and he's a counselor in West Texas. And if you're unfamiliar with West Texas, I love it.
[00:19:20] But as with any culture, there are a variety of things that are both good and not healthy about that culture. And one of the things about that culture is a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of mentality. And so he said something he hears often in the counseling room from men is a statement like, man, I'm only going to get into heaven by the skin of my teeth.
[00:19:43] And he'll respond to them and say, don't you ever say that again.
[00:19:48] Nobody gets into heaven by the skin of their teeth.
[00:19:51] We only get into heaven through the blood of Jesus.
[00:19:55] It's the only thing the shed blood of Jesus Christ offers you forgiveness in totality and cleansing.
[00:20:07] And so Jesus can say In John, chapter 15, verse 3, already, you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. You think about Jesus interacting with lepers. Again, Jews weren't supposed to interact with lepers, certainly not touch lepers. They had to declare unclean, unclean. As the leper walked into the room, Jesus actually approached the lepers. It didn't just talk to them, he touched them.
[00:20:32] The purity of Jesus, the cleanliness of Jesus, the holiness of Jesus was like transfused onto the body of the leper. And the leprosy went away. This is what happens when you believe upon Jesus.
[00:20:45] The blood of Christ on The cross over 2000 years ago cleanses you of all sin. So that before the holy God of the universe, now, as a child of God, as a son and daughter of God, you are clean, you're holy, you're pure.
[00:21:05] Not because of your righteousness, but because of the perfect righteousness of Christ that's been imputed to you. This is really, really good for you to consider.
[00:21:15] For those who belong to Jesus, you are clean. So stop calling something that God has already declared clean uncommon.
[00:21:27] And I'm talking about the way that you talk to yourself.
[00:21:32] Certainly don't do it with other people.
[00:21:34] Yes, nobody's outside of the reach of God's grace. So this text, as Sean and Matt have talked about over the last couple weeks, they should propel us out to say that nobody's off limits.
[00:21:44] Every person alive today, breathing has to hear the Gospel. It's one of the reasons we planted the church, because we want everybody to hear the gospel.
[00:21:53] But what about you?
[00:21:57] Are you calling something, namely yourself? If you're a believer in Jesus that God has already declared clean in His Son uncommon and unclean.
[00:22:07] Don't do that.
[00:22:10] You're clean because Christ said you're clean.
[00:22:14] Not because you feel it, not because you had a good day, not because you're crushing the spiritual disciplines. You're clean because Christ has said that you are clean if you. If you believe upon him, if you belong to Him.
[00:22:31] So all who belong to Jesus are. Are clean. This is the. The first point to be made, but let's keep reading through the text. Look at verse 10.
[00:22:43] That's chapter 10. Sorry. Verse 10. Chapter 11. This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. And behold, at that very hour, at that very moment, three men arrived at the house in which we were sent to me from Caesarea. And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction.
[00:23:00] These six brothers also accompanied me. And we entered the man's house. And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter.
[00:23:12] And he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved. You and all of your household. God loves to save.
[00:23:20] God is bent to save not just Cornelius, but all of his household. If you're a parent and you're a Christian and you wonder, is God going to save my kids? I just want to encourage you to be very expectant over the reality that he will.
[00:23:38] He could have put your kids in any home in the world. He chose to put them in yours so that not only you, but all of your household, by the grace of God, would be saved.
[00:23:49] As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as on us at the beginning. And I remember the word of the Lord, how he said, john baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus. Who was I, that I could stand in God's way? So if the first point to be made is that all who belong to Jesus are clean, the second point to be made that I want you to think about in terms of the story Peter's telling as it pertains to you. This is your story is all who belong to Jesus have been given the Spirit of Jesus.
[00:24:29] All who belong to Jesus have been given the Spirit of Jesus. He quotes Matthew 3:11 when Jesus says, john baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. So what happened to the apostles at Pentecost in Acts, chapter two, is now happening to the Gentiles. This gift, which, by the way, I think is one of the most overlooked gifts in salvation. Again, we think about forgiveness, we now think about cleansing. Amazing.
[00:25:00] We think about heaven, we think about adoption, we think about justification, we think about all of these amazing things. The sweetest gift that you and I have in salvation, arguably, is the reality that in salvation God gives us himself.
[00:25:18] It's. It's the thing, guys and ladies, that David says in Psalm 23, the Psalm that we love so much, that leads him to have no lack in life, no additional want in life. I have every. I mean, you. You've had moments, if you're a Christian. Just somebody asked me this the other day. They're like, I was telling them that I, most of my life, have felt chronically stressed most of my life.
[00:25:45] So I've just kind of learned. Conditioned myself to live that way.
[00:25:48] And so somebody asked me, have you ever felt not stressed? I was like, that's a good question.
[00:25:53] Yes, I've had moments of not being stressed, seasons of not being stressed. And some of these moments I describe as when the Bible talks about the peace of God, peace of Christ that surpasses understanding. There are moments where that has happened where it's like I feel caught up in this transcendent reality where I'm like, oh, that's the piece of Christ that surpasses understanding.
[00:26:16] Right? So we've all.
[00:26:18] We've all had moments like this, but have you had a moment where you did feel content?
[00:26:25] Like, I've got it all.
[00:26:28] I've got everything I need. Well, this is what a growing recognition of the reality that in Christ, if you're a believer, you have God is intended to do.
[00:26:41] Jesus doesn't just walk beside you. He has sent his very spirit to live inside of you. If you're a Christian, all who belong to Jesus have the spirit of Jesus. The Gentiles were filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:26:59] He poured his spirit out on the Gentiles, even as he did on the apostles at Pentecost. And this changed everything. This is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant that we see in Genesis chapter 12 and Genesis chapter 15. When God calls Abram and he says, hey, Abram, I want you to come out and I want you to look at the stars of the sky, and I want you to number the stars of the sky. And Abram, just like any child who tries to do this is like, I can't. Too many. Too many stars in the sky. And God's like, that's how many Descendants you're gonna have. That's us, friends.
[00:27:32] Like, we sit here today as part of the fulfillment of a promise God made millennia ago.
[00:27:38] And God's faithfulness in keeping that promise didn't even start with Abram. It started before the foundation of the earth, when God, in love, before time existed, chose to, out of the goodness and overflow of his loving heart, create all things and save a people for himself that would consist of people from all of the nations.
[00:28:03] And so it was never just about the Jews. We don't want to belittle God's love for the people of Israel in the Old Testament, he calls them, in the Psalms, the apple of his eye.
[00:28:14] Romans 9:11 has a lot to say about this future plan that involves the people of Israel. I'm not going to go into that today just to leave you in suspense one day from when we preach to the book of Romans.
[00:28:25] But the idea is it was never just about the people of Israel. It was always about more. It's about the. He's the God of the nations.
[00:28:33] Every people, language, tribe gathered around the throne of Jesus singing to Jesus like you and I sang 20 minutes ago.
[00:28:42] Do you not. Do you not feel just, like, overwhelmed sometimes when you hear each other sing?
[00:28:48] It's. It's one of my favorite parts of the week. It is an overwhelmingly emotional moment for me to be in the room and to hear the people of God singing to Jesus.
[00:28:58] We're going to get to do that in heaven without any distraction. We're going to see him. We're going to see him on his throne. We're going to see his face. It's going to be the most overwhelmingly awesome thing you've ever experienced. Better than the birth of your child, better than your wedding day, better than all of it. It's going to. It's going to exceed in beauty and greatness all of that.
[00:29:24] God.
[00:29:25] God chose to call a people consisting of both Jew and gentile to himself. And in this text, we're seeing this come to fruition, and Peter's telling the story of it. All who belong to Jesus have the spirit of Jesus inside of them, abiding in them. Which means that the Holy Spirit today. I had a pastor did this one time. It's a little bit cheesy, but I'm gonna have you do it because it was helpful for me. He said, I want you to make a fist with your hand. Okay. So go ahead and. Yep, make a fist with your hand. Okay, Everybody got it? All right. If somebody walks in, they're going to think we're a cult. But that's okay. Make a fist with your hand and then take the fist and put it over your heart. This is God in you.
[00:30:05] God, the creator. God, the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power, the One who created the cosmos and the galaxies. He lives inside of you.
[00:30:14] It is the greatest gift imaginable. God lives inside of you. The spirit of Jesus Christ. So you can pray this when you don't know what else to pray or when you feel like whatever situation you're in is impossible. Pray, Jesus, live your life through me, because that's what's happening.
[00:30:34] Jesus himself is inside of you through the person of the Holy Spirit. He's living his life through you. And this gift is now available to everybody.
[00:30:46] Jew, gentile, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, religious, irreligious. Grew up in the church. Didn't grow up in the church. Have done wild things. You've done religious things, thinking they're going to justify you. It doesn't matter. The Holy Spirit, this gift of God is available to everybody.
[00:31:06] Do you guys think that's good news?
[00:31:08] All right.
[00:31:11] All right. Praise God. Okay.
[00:31:14] All who belong to Jesus have the spirit of Jesus abiding in them, which means that the Holy Spirit is our comforter. He's our convictor. You don't have to go search out sin in your heart. You can trust him to do that.
[00:31:27] He's gracious in doing that. He's kind and gentle in the ways that he convicts us of sin and leads us to repentance.
[00:31:35] He's our helper.
[00:31:37] Which means that we ought to learn, friends, to attune our ear to the Holy Spirit's voice.
[00:31:44] How does the Holy Spirit speak to his people? Predominantly, primarily, through the word of God. When you're in the Bible, if you're like, I've never heard God speak. Every time you open the Bible, friends, you hear God speak.
[00:31:57] So primarily and predominantly through His Word. I believe the Holy Spirit speaks through our conscience.
[00:32:02] Oftentimes, the ways that I hear the Holy Spirit, it's like a still, small voice where I'm in the middle of a decision or I'm in the middle of a particular temptation. And it's like that still, small voice that leads me to know what the right thing to do is. And then I'm confronted with the reality that oftentimes I don't want to do that thing.
[00:32:24] Okay? And again, so many of us, we're so distracted and inundated by noise, of course we can't.
[00:32:34] We're not relating to the Holy Spirit.
[00:32:38] But the Holy Spirit lives inside of every every Christian. All who belong to Jesus have the spirit comforter, convictor, helper. He empowers you to mission and to use the gifts he's given you. He emboldens you. You want to know like man. I just feel like I don't have the courage to share the Gospel. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you boldness to do it.
[00:32:56] That's what he does.
[00:32:58] He emboldens us.
[00:33:00] He teaches us, he guides us, he reminds us. He reminds us of all that Christ has done and said, which is what Jesus says in John chapter 16.
[00:33:12] He gives groanings for us that are too deep for words.
[00:33:17] Paul says, no one knows the mind of God, but the Spirit of God.
[00:33:21] The Holy Spirit knows the mind and heart of God in a totally unique way because He Himself is God.
[00:33:29] And so the Holy Spirit lives inside of you and is the one who enables you to know God.
[00:33:36] You don't just know about God, you know God intimately because the Holy Spirit lives in you.
[00:33:43] He gives groanings too deep for words. And he assures us, he testifies to our heart, preaches to our heart that we are sons and daughters of God. We want to be a people, friends, who love the Holy Spirit, who are more in tune with the person of the Holy Spirit. Not just on Sunday mornings, but all throughout daily life.
[00:34:02] In the everyday, mundane moments of life, the Spirit of Jesus lives in you.
[00:34:07] And so we want to be attuned to him. And what Peter's saying is this gift, this precious, amazing, otherworldly gift that God has given us Himself is now available to all people.
[00:34:21] And it's available to all people. He says in the text, by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can't earn it, you can't pay money for it.
[00:34:30] You can't attend enough church to attain it.
[00:34:34] Only by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. When and if, friends, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, God sends his Spirit to live in you, to indwell you, to be the guarantee of your inheritance to come.
[00:34:49] So let's look at the final, final verse here.
[00:34:52] Verse 18 says, when they heard these things, they fell silent and they glorified God, saying then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that led to life.
[00:35:06] So if all who belong to Jesus are clean by the blood of Jesus, and all who belong to Jesus have the spirit of Jesus living in them, so God in Christ has cleansed us externally, he's cleansing us internally through the person of the Holy Spirit. By making us more like Jesus. The final point to be made in verse 18 is that all who belong to Jesus are secure.
[00:35:31] All who belong to Jesus are secure. So if you have a pen or a pencil or something, I would encourage you, and just to think on this this week, to circle the phrase, God granted repentance.
[00:35:44] God granted the Gentiles repentance that led to life.
[00:35:50] The text does not say, friends, that God offered repentance to the Gentiles in order that they might have life.
[00:36:00] God granted it to them.
[00:36:02] He gave it to them.
[00:36:07] It's another good question that was asked of me yesterday to consider.
[00:36:12] For those of you who struggle with assurance or who are like man, I just don't really feel the love of God.
[00:36:18] Why are you here today?
[00:36:22] Like, why, out of all of the places you could be on a Sunday morning, you chose to come to church.
[00:36:29] Now, that in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean that you're a Christian, but I'll go a step further. Why do you ever desire to read your Bible? Why do you ever desire to pray?
[00:36:38] What is that thing in your heart that longs to know God more and love God more? Why do you have faith?
[00:36:48] You have faith by the grace of God, because of what we read in verse 18. God has granted it to you.
[00:36:56] He granted the Gentiles repentance that led to life.
[00:37:02] And you can't lose something that you didn't earn in the first place.
[00:37:08] So in other words, if God granted it, if he granted the gift of repentance that led to life, then you can't lose it.
[00:37:15] And if you could lose it, and I don't mean this harshly, just honestly for all of us in the room, if you could lose it, you would.
[00:37:22] If you and I could lose it, if there was a possibility for any in Christ who's genuinely born again by the Spirit, who has communion with God, who's a child of God. If it were possible for us to lose that great salvation, we would lose it.
[00:37:38] We'd walk away from it.
[00:37:41] This is the beauty of the hymn. Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it Prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart, Lord. Take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above. Because the hope that you and I have in making it from here to there is only the grace of God.
[00:37:56] God granted the Gentiles repentance. What preceded their repentance and faith was the grace of God.
[00:38:03] So this is our hope this morning. Our hope is not in our faith. It's not in our repentance or the Strength of those things. Those things matter the ways that we receive God's grace. But our hope is in this reality that God granted the Gentiles repentance that led to life. So I just want to end with a story that I think, that I think illustrates true repentance.
[00:38:28] So God granted repentance. What then is repentance? We use that word a lot.
[00:38:35] What is true repentance? Well, true repentance, friends, true repentance is motivated by love for a particular object more than it's motivated by the fear of consequences.
[00:38:48] Does that make sense?
[00:38:50] There's a kind of quote, unquote, repentance, sorry, that is predominantly, if not exclusively, motivated by the fear of consequences or the longing for reward.
[00:39:06] We don't want the consequence, we do want the reward. And so we quote, unquote, turn, we acknowledge the bad that we've done.
[00:39:14] That's not true repentance. True repentance. True repentance. And none of us have perfect repentance, by the way.
[00:39:21] But true repentance is a gift of God's grace. It's granted to us by God, and it's motivated by love.
[00:39:30] In other words, as Charles Spurgeon would say, preached a great sermon on this that you can find in writing. But as. As he would say, by the grace of God, and because of the grace of God, I would hate sin not because of its consequence, but because I love God.
[00:39:50] I mean, do you.
[00:39:52] Do you find in yourself when you're struggling with sin, more concerned about the potential consequence of that sin or the pain that's caused because you feel far from God?
[00:40:09] You know, like, I just want him for a moment, forget about heaven and hell and just think about God and your relationship with God.
[00:40:21] True repentance isn't just a, hey, I want to get out of hell.
[00:40:25] It's. And I want to leave that behind because I want God, because I love him.
[00:40:31] And so just to illustrate that, and this is in closing, Elizabeth Payson Prentice had never heard of this person before, but she wrote a really beautiful hymn.
[00:40:44] And her story, I really like it because I think it's quite relatable compared to some of the stories that we hear about history are so big and extravagant. We're like, man, that's tremendous suffering that maybe, or maybe not you have or haven't walked through. But some of her suffering was very, very big, and some of it was seemingly mundane. And so I think it makes it relatable. She had loving parents who loved the Lord.
[00:41:09] She had a loving husband who was a Presbyterian minister who loved her well. But she suffered with severe headaches and chronic insomnia.
[00:41:19] She couldn't sleep and almost on a daily basis just suffered from very severe headaches and migraines.
[00:41:27] She did end up losing two of her children who died at a very, very young age. And she's pinned as saying this about her home. Our home is broken up and our lives wrecked, our hopes shattered, our dreams dissolved. I don't think I can stand living anymore.
[00:41:48] And so she's seeking comfort in the Word and through various and then she comes across this hymn written by a sister named Sarah Adams called Nearer My God to Thee.
[00:42:01] And then Elizabeth goes on to pen these words of her own More love to thee, O Christ More love to thee Hear thou the prayer I make on bended knee this is my earnest plea More love to thee, O Christ More love to thee if you want to know what repentance is about, friends, it's about loving Jesus.
[00:42:28] The more you and I love Jesus, rest in Jesus. Trust in the sufficiency of what Jesus has done on your behalf. The more our hearts are prone toward affection for Jesus, the more zealous you're going to be to repent. Your repentance is going to look and feel different.
[00:42:46] And not only that, but you're going to be propelled to share this story.
[00:42:51] So what if we just made that our prayer this morning?
[00:42:54] Jesus, help us love you more.
[00:42:58] I honestly don't care as much about how big Redemption Hill gets or doesn't get.
[00:43:04] But if we could be a people by the grace of God who desperately love Jesus, the person of Jesus, trust in the work of Jesus, then it's going to be amazing to see what God does through that and through us. So let's pray toward that.
