"The Reign of the King" (Acts 2:14-36)

Transcript:

Well, last week we talked about a couple of aspects related to the day of Pentecost in the text that preceded the text that I just read of Peter's great sermon on the day of Pentecost. And last week we talked about the fact that the mission of the Holy Spirit is to save people from all nations of the earth by applying what Jesus Christ accomplished and his birth, life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension. And we also talked about the fact, secondarily, that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit fulfilled, or in that word that's given to us In Acts chapter 2, verse 1, it means to fill up the meaning of the feast of Pentecost. But as we think about all that we saw in the last passage, that that happened on the day of Pentecost, all that those original witnesses on the day of Pentecost were witnessing firsthand, we want to ask, how do we know that this is truly rooted in Scripture? You know, how do we know that this was indeed always God's plan?

Because if God existed eternally in three persons, and he did, and if God had decreed that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit would happen on this day in history in Pentecost, and he did, shouldn't we see this plan laid out beforehand, foretold in the Scriptures? We talked about the symbolic filling up of the meaning of Pentecost, but shouldn't we see this more explicitly laid down in Scripture? Now, that's a kind of question that the church, in the church, we must never lose our eagerness to answer. Where do we see that in Scripture? And certainly we have the benefit of the New Testament.

But Peter, in the days before the New Testament had been written, is standing up to explain from the scriptures of the Old Testament that this was not something that God had just decided on a whim to do, that this had always been the plan, that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was the fulfillment of all God's promises brought to their head in Jesus Christ and now freely bestowed on his people. And so, as Peter preaches from three great Old Testament texts, from Joel, chapter two, Psalm 16 and Psalm 110, we're going to listen this morning to hear him explain not just that these things should happen, but why. Our theme then this morning as we understand why these things must happen, that King Jesus reigns through His Holy Spirit. King Jesus reigns through his Holy Spirit. So as we look at the three parts of Peter's sermon this morning, and by the way, it is a great comfort to me that even if the sermon is bad for my Part you will get an inspired sermon from the Apostle Peter himself.

And we're going to follow his outline of the sermon this morning in these three parts. And he's broken it up so well for us. In the first section, in verses 14 through 20, 1, the rush of the Holy Spirit. The rush of the Holy Spirit. Two, the resurrection of Jesus.

The resurrection of Jesus. And three, the reign of the king. The reign of the king. So as we come to this first section, the rush of the Holy Spirit. Obviously, I'm trying to alliterate with Rs there, but the rush is actually what happened back in chapter two, verse two, that suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind as the Holy Spirit filled the entire house where the disciples and the apostles were sitting.

And it's this sound that the crowd had heard. If you look back in chapter two, verse six, at this sound, the multitude came together, and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. Now, these events had caused great confusion. As extraordinary as they were, the people did not know what to make of what they were seeing and hearing. And so in verses 12 and 13, they were saying together, what does this mean?

But others were pretty cynical, and they were mocking what was happening, saying, well, they're just drunk. These people are filled with new wine. Well, Peter, we read in verses 14 and 15, as he stands with the 11, Peter is not an apostle separated from the other apostles. He is standing with the 11. He may be the lead, but he is the first among equals.

He is the spokesperson for the entire company of the apostles whom Jesus Christ had appointed 11 during his lifetime. And in a previous passage, as he appointed by Lot Matthias as a replacement for Judas. Now Peter standing as the spokesman with the other 11 on behalf of the 12, we read that he lifts up his voice to address them, to explain exactly what has happened. And so he declares, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. He said, you want to understand what's happening?

Listen to what I am about to say. And the first thing he does is to very quickly dismiss. There's probably a little bit of humor intended here, the idea that these people were simply drunk. He says, these people are not drunk as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. It's very early in the morning, nine o' clock in the morning.

There has not yet been enough time to get drunk, even if that's what they were about. But rather, verse 16, he declares that what you have seen and what you have heard, that rushing of a mighty sound of wind coming in the preaching in other tongues, the languages that you yourself know to hear the mighty works of God declared in your own tongues. This happened in fulfillment of what was uttered to the prophet Joel. And then Peter proceeds to quote from Joel chapter two, and saying that this is a fulfillment of that prophecy. And we're going to look very carefully through this.

As we see in verse 17, the first thing that Peter does says, and in the last days. If you read Joel's original prophecy, he says, later on or in the latter days. But Peter interprets this and applies what's happening. He says, these are the last days. In the New Testament, whenever we read about the last days, we are not talking about just the final handful of days before the final return of Christ.

The idea of the last days is the entire period of time between Christ's first coming and his second coming. And the reason these are called the last days, even though there are many of them and there have been many of them since Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, because this is the very last era of redemptive history. If you're reading the Old Testament, they're always coming into new periods of redemptive history. God is continuing to move forward. The great promise he gave in the garden, that he would one day crush the head of the serpent, even as the heel of the seed of the woman would have to be bruised in the process.

One day, the serpent's great tyranny over this world would be crushed forever. And he's continually moving forward that process through every administration of the covenant of grace, all the way to Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of all the great promises. But now that Christ has done all that had been foretold, we are now in the last days. We are waiting only for the final return of Jesus Christ on the last day of his return and the final judgment of the world. These are the last days, however long they extend.

And he says, in the last days it shall be God declares that I will pour out my spirit. Now, again, this is interesting. One of the questions I raised last week is what exactly are we to do with the Holy Spirit? We think often and rejoice often, and we should, in what the Father has sent the Son to do in the world. Because the Son is the pinnacle of history.

Jesus Christ is the hope of the nations. But notice here that the Holy Spirit is identified as the great fulfillment of the promise. In the last days. The thing that God was going to do is to pour out His Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the fulfillment of the promise. He is the chief remedy to the problem of sin and death.

And in saying that, I am not demeaning what Christ has done or separating what Christ has done from the forefront of our attention. Indeed, there is a direct continuity. The whole reason that Jesus Christ died was in order to give us the promise of the Holy Spirit, as Peter is going to explain later in this passage. And so this is what you are seeing in those latter days. In the last days I will pour out my Spirit.

Note, he says, all flesh. Now, in the Old Testament we see the Holy Spirit at work and active at several points. But the ministry of the Holy Spirit is always very selective. We see him particularly acting to come upon, to equip those anointed officers, those who were set apart by the anointing of oil for their fulfillment of their offices, namely, those who were anointed with oil to be prophets, to be priests, or to be kings. And largely, although with a few exceptions, the Holy Spirit restricted his ministry to those particular individuals.

The great difference in the New Testament administration of the covenant of grace from the Old Testament administration of the covenant of grace is that now all God's people have the Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Spirit is given to all flesh, not all flesh indiscriminately, but all those who are looking to Jesus Christ in faith. And the sign of this, at least the sign that was given in the early Church to authenticate that something great had changed, is prophecy, far flung prophecy. Prophecy had always been restricted in the Old Testament. But in this initial scene we are seeing all of the disciples of Jesus prophesying.

And so Joel goes on and says, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, even those of low class. Even on my male servants and female servants in those days, I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy. You see these speaking in other tongues, prophetically, and the prophecy declaring the magnificent great works of God, God's mighty works. This is a manifestation that the Holy Spirit had come for all. Now we know that this was a temporary sign that was given.

This does not continue. We have the scriptures of the Old and New Testament given for us. This is the final word of God's prophecy written down and given to God's Church in love. But this was a temporary sign that was given, as in the Old Testament, signs and wonders were given to authenticate the to authenticate what the Holy Spirit was actually doing in the world. And here it's to authenticate that the gift of the Holy Spirit was permanently given to all believers in this New Testament era in these last days.

Now, this prophecy was not the only kind of temporary signs. We read also about temporary signs that happen in verses 19 and 20. But now it's shifted from prophecy to signs and wonders that we see in heaven above and on the earth below. We read in Joel that Peter is quoting, and I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below. Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood. Before the day of the Lord comes the great and magnificent day. Now, this is really important to understand how Peter is interpreting this and how Peter is applying this, because what he is pointing to is some of the things that they are seeing on this day as part of the great and magnificent day of the Lord. Remember, the people had seen fire manifested on this very day. If you look back up in chapter two, verse three.

And divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. Just as the prophecy is a sign that this is the great and magnificent day of the Lord, so that fire was a part of it. But we should also remember that there are some other things that had happened a little more than seven weeks earlier in Jerusalem that are also listed here. Joel. And then Peter quoting Joel speaks about blood.

And we're told earlier about the blood that flowed from the cross of God's only begotten Son, who took flesh for us. And we read, the sun shall be turned to darkness. Those exact words appear in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 23, verse 44, to talk about the day of the cross, that there were three hours where the sun was turned to darkness. Now, we know that that was not just a solar eclipse. And one of the reasons we know that was not a solar eclipse is that Passover feast when Jesus Christ, our Passover lamb, was sacrificed.

That Passover feast would always happen in the middle of the month, on the 14th day of the month. And they did not have a solar calendar as we have. They had a lunar calendar. Well, the 14th day of the month was a day of a full moon. Well, the full moon is where the sun is over here and the moon is here with the earth in the middle.

And so, because the sun is shining and we have the entirety of the moon lit up, we're able to see a full moon. Which means that if the moon is over here and the sun is here, there's no way that the moon can be here to blot out the sun. And besides, that solar eclipse don't last very long. This was a manifestation of the great and awesome day of the Lord, the great and magnificent day of the Lord, as a great darkness settled on the earth, as Jesus Christ was crucified as a day of judgment against Christ, but because of our sins. Well, how then, if some of these things happened on the day of Jesus crucifixion, if some of these things happened on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, which Joel prophesied in Joel Chapter two, how then are we talking about a day that is still to come, the great and magnificent day of the Lord which is still to come?

Well, to understand this, it's important to understand what theologians call prophetic foreshortening, that all of these things, they might be put together in one passage, but there is a foreshortening where it seems like just one set of things that all are going to happen at one time. And yet as you get into it, there's real depth to it. Maybe you've had the experience of driving to the mountains. I used to be a lot closer to the Rocky Mountains. We went a little bit more than we'll probably be able to go now.

But there are other mountains in other directions. I think. I'm not very good at geography. But if you've ever traveled to the mountains, you know that you're traveling, you're traveling, driving, driving, driving, driving. There's nothing, nothing, nothing.

Maybe you have children in the back seat, as ours were, saying, are they there yet? Why can't we see the mountains yet? In is this trip a bust? Because the mountains are clearly not there. And you keep going and going, and then suddenly there they are.

You just see them. You can't really track when you couldn't see them. And then they are there, but they just are there all of a sudden. And as you look from that great distance, it looks like one long range of mountains. But you know, as you get to the mountains that what you initially saw as one single range of mountains was visually foreshortened.

When you get there, you realize that it wasn't just one single flat range. You get there and you start realizing that the mountains have a great amount of depth and you're driving in them. And it takes a great deal of time. In fact, I've never actually driven. Once I drove over the mountains, it takes a tremendous amount of time to actually get all the way through the mountains.

Well, the same thing is true of the day of the Lord. There was the first great installment of the great and magnificent day of the Lord at the crucifixion of Jesus, when God's wrath was poured out from heaven, not against you and me, but against the perfect, righteous, Holy One of Israel. And on that day, as Jesus Christ took the punishment for our sins, God was manifesting a foretaste of the wrath that is coming on the final great installment of the great and magnificent day of the Lord. What we are seeing here is a foreshortened version, everything mixed up. Part of this is also happening at Pentecost, and we are seeing all of this at once.

But all of this is to drive us to one particular conclusion which is laid out for us in verse 21. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved as we are in these last days. Between the first great installment of the day of the Lord and the final great installment of the great and magnificent day of the Lord, we are called to repent. We are called to call upon the name of the Lord with the great and magnificent promise that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

What this crowd, therefore, has witnessed in the rush of the Holy Spirit that they heard, and as they heard, people preaching to them in each of their own languages, again, we're seeing this day of the Lord along with Christ's judgment at the cross that will be completed in the future. But there's a question that we have to answer, because again, Peter stood up to speak about what they were seeing on this day. It involves. It connects to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But he's trying to give explanation to the events and the phenomena that they are seeing on this day, on the day of Pentecost.

So what then is the relationship between the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the work of Christ at his cross, death, burial, and resurrection? Now, Peter has to turn to two texts to answer that. In the first text in Psalm 16, which we're going to look at in the next section, what he is going to do is to go a little bit deeper to explain God's plans and purposes in handing over his Son, Jesus Christ, to be crucified before then moving on in the final section to go to Psalm chapter 110 to teach us about the connection between the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the Cross. So let's start with this second section, verses 22 through 28, where we're reading Psalm 16, where we are seeing a deeper dive into not only the cross, but particularly the resurrection of Jesus. The second point is about the resurrection of Jesus.

In verse 22, we read Peter addressing the crowd, men of Israel. Now, again, there is a sermon that we are reading in the sermon that I am preaching here. And Peter has been very kind to signpost each of his transitions in this sermon with this address of the word men. And so in verse 14, he said men of Judea. And now in verse 22, he says men of Israel.

And if you skip ahead in verse 29, he also says men there. However, the ESV does not translate it literally. It says men, brothers. But it's there nonetheless. And the reason for saying men is because this was a great this is a time when the males of Judea, of Israel were all called to present themselves to the Lord.

And so he's talking to this great crowd of men. There were probably women there too, but he's addressing them as men because they were the ones whose attendance was mandated. So men, we read, and he talks then about an additional set of wonders and signs. Now remember, in verse 19, we're when we were talking about this great and magnificent day of the Lord, I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below. Now look at verse 22.

Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man, attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs. Well, now we're talking about the earthly ministry before the cross and the resurrection of Jesus. During those days, God attested Jesus. He validated, he authenticated him by mighty works and by wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.

As you yourselves know now, in the scriptures in the Old and New Testament, the purpose for wonders and signs is, as I mentioned earlier, always to attest to God's favor, to God's approval of a prophet. How do you know that you can trust the word of a prophet? Well, do the things that he says comes true and perhaps is he authenticated by signs and wonders that he's able to do to demonstrate that God is in his midst. When Moses goes to Pharaoh to say, let my people go, he says, how is he going to believe me? I'm just a man.

And that's when God tells him about the signs and wonders that he's going to perform. Like the throwing of the staff to turn into a snake, like the turning of the waters of the Nile into blood. And on and on and on. Those were the signs and wonders to authenticate. You may not like it, but this message comes from God himself.

And for these people, again, they're probably ambivalent. They don't quite know what to believe about Jesus. They've heard many things about him. And what Peter is resting upon is the fact that they have indeed heard about the great signs and wonders that Jesus performed during his lifetime. Whatever they think of Jesus, they cannot dismiss those things as you yourselves.

No. But there's a major question then that Peter has to answer. If Jesus is indeed attested or approved, authenticated by God, how then could he also be cursed by God at the cross? Because we're told in Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 23, that whoever is hanged on a tree is cursed by God. How can he both be approved by God and cursed by God?

Did something change? Did we misunderstand the nature of the signs and the wonders? And what Peter says in verse 23 is one of the most profound descriptions in the Bible of God's plans and purposes in giving Jesus over for the crucifixion. He says, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless.

Now, we have to break this apart a little bit first by talking about God's part in this. Peter attributes Christ's crucifixion to both God's definite plan that deals with the will of God, the decrees of God, what God wills, what he purposes and sets in motion, and the foreknowledge of God. This deals with the intellect, the mind of God. And what this means is that God, starting with the foreknowledge, not only knew this plan, that is, he knew it in an intellectual sense, but the idea of foreknowledge is more than that. He knew it in advance in the sense that he not only knew about it.

Well, I am aware this is going to happen. He knew it in the sense that he admired the plan. He loved the plan. And we have a sense of this. This is what it means in Isaiah 53:10 when it says that it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

Literally, it means that it pleased the Lord to crush Jesus. It was the pleasure of the Lord. That does not mean that our Lord enjoyed inflicting pain upon His Son. But the plan was this plan of such admiration of God to bring him glory and to exalt His Son Jesus over all the earth. That the Lord loved this place.

He admired it, and therefore he decreed it. He willed that it would come to pass. But again, the pleasure of the Lord in This plan is not pleasure in the injustice that was perpetrated against the spotless, innocent Lamb of God, the Lord of Glory, for the sake of its injustice. Indeed it wasn't. The Lord was taking part in the injustice.

There's a great tension here, a mystery and interaction between the sovereignty of God and the sin and wickedness of men. But indeed we see the Lord's plan that is worked out by wicked men. Peter doesn't pin the blame for this on God. He turns around and says, you crucified and killed. That is this Jesus by the hands of lawless or wicked men.

So the sin belongs to the Jews who were gathered there that day, who demanded his crucifixion. Crucify him, they demanded. And the sin also belongs to the Gentiles who were part of condemning him, nailing him to the tree and making sure that he ended up dead. Now, again, there's a great mystery here in the interaction between God's sovereignty and human sin. And there are more sermons to be preached on that point for more days.

But the key points that Peter, because Peter's not getting into philosophical speculation here, the points that he wants to make is that Jesus was innocent. You may be confused as to how a man attested to God by these signs and wonders could be crucified. Understand, he was innocent. He was approved by God. This was a part of God's plan.

God was pleased with him in sending him forth into this place. The guilt then rests on you. And you'll come back to that point a little bit later to further prove that God did authenticate him. God did find him innocent. He speaks of God's vindication of Jesus.

The resurrection, verse 24. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held.

Now what he is saying here is, he is saying, not possible for him to be held by it. Part of this is a just declaration that the Lord of life could not be pinned down by death. But then he's also moving in to speak about this as a necessity of the fulfillment of Scripture. Fulfillment of Psalm 16. And as he begins to quote Psalm 16, we read, For David says, these are the words of David.

For David says, concerning him, I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. My flesh also will dwell in hope. Now these two verses make good sense. If you read the biography of David, you can track the way that David fellowshiped with the Lord.

Throughout the course of his life. But we cannot so easily map the words of 27 and 2028 onto the life of David himself, because David speaks, continuing saying this for you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Now, as Peter will go on to confirm in the next section, David was left in the word is Hades or the grave.

David was given over to corruption. So this wasn't a prophecy. Even though these words came from David, it wasn't a prophecy about David. We'll look at more explanation in the next section. But for now, what's so important, what Peter is addressing here is he wants us to consider the cross.

That although the cross raises serious questions about why Jesus had to be cursed by God by being nailed to a tree, what Peter is going to explain in the next passage, the passage we're going to look at next week, Lord willing, is that Jesus death on the cross and God's pleasure in this plan, this definite plan that he foreknew, was that what Jesus did at the cross was to purchase the forgiveness of your sins, as we read in Acts 2:2, verse 38. Because as Jesus suffered, it was the righteous one suffering for the sake of us, the unrighteous. But even if Peter has not yet closed all of the open loops of our understanding of the effects of the cross, one thing is very certain so far. What Peter is identifying here is that the resurrection of Jesus vindicates Jesus as God's anointed Messiah. So we've seen these two events, the rush of the Holy Spirit and the resurrection of Jesus.

How then are they related? And this is what brings us to the final section where Peter wants us to show the connection between these two events and the implication of these two events as helping us to understand what we need to know about the reign of King Jesus through his Holy Spirit. So now we come to the third section, the reign of the king. And in verse 29, again, the phrase is literally men brothers. There's a transition here to this third and final section.

Three point sermons have a very ancient pedigree in the church. Men brothers. I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. Again, the prophecy of Psalm 16 was not fulfilled by David himself, even though it was a prophecy that he himself. So what's happening here?

How do we interpret this? Well, in verse 30, he says, being Therefore, a prophet. David was a prophet. We know he was a prophet. And he knew, knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

Now, again, there's a bit of prophetic foreshortening. Here we are told about God's sure promises for David, and these will indeed be fulfilled for David, but not the original man David, but one descended from David's own body, and one who possessed the legal right to inherit and to ascend and to sit upon the throne of his father, David, the one who was pronounced would be greater than David, as the Lord said to my Lord, as we'll see a little bit later in verse 34 from Psalm 110, we are seeing here a prophecy that was fulfilled to the Davidic son, to David's heir, to Jesus Christ. And notice the way in which the Davidic heir, David's son, Jesus Christ, comes to his throne. Again, this is a prophecy about one of his descendants sitting on his throne in verse 30. And the way this was fulfilled was by the resurrection of Christ, because he was not abandoned to the grave because his flesh did not see corruption.

Therefore, because of that, he has now ascended to his throne in heaven, in the heavenly Jerusalem, on the throne of David, at his Father's right hand. What a blessing this is. And he's explaining that this is what is coming to pass by everything that they have seen, hearing. And in verses 32 to 33 we see the real connection. So in verse 32, again, Peter, the mission of the apostles, the role was to be witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus.

This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. The apostles are standing together on that front. But then in verse 33, we read about what happened at Jesus ascension. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. You probably know what happens when a president is elected and inaugurated as president.

One of the first great things they do in great pomp and circumstance is they sit down with a stack of existence executive orders that try to fulfill all the promises, or at least a good chunk of the promises they made on the campaign trail. And the first thing the president does is sign those things into effect. Now, of course, those are a bit limited because some promises made on the campaign trail require acts of congress or potentially Decisions of the Supreme Court. And some, even though a president might try to sign an executive order, maybe don't always pass the scrutiny of the court. Regardless, we live in a system that has a separation of powers, and all of those things are working out there.

The great news of the Gospel is that our Lord is not a president. He's the King. And as the first great act of his inauguration as king, what did he do? He fulfilled the promise, the promise set down in the Old Testament Scriptures that on this day he would pour out on all flesh his Spirit. And he did exactly that.

And we are still the beneficiaries of this promise as we receive the Holy Spirit unto this day. Well, then, in verses 34 and 35, Peter's not done. He wants to talk about with the rest of the king's agenda now that he has ascended and is seated on his throne. He says, for David did not ascend into the heavens. We've ascended, ascended beyond the reign of David himself.

But he himself, David himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, speaking of Jesus, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. What Jesus is doing to this very day is making his enemies his footstool. And he is doing so by his Holy Spirit. Now, the Holy Spirit does not represent one of the three branches of the government of of God, as though there is a separation of powers. The external works of the Trinity cannot be separated.

They cannot be divided. What the Holy Spirit does in the world today, he is doing in perfect union with Jesus Christ, who is seated in heaven at the Father's right hand until the final and ultimate day of the Lord. And what all of this is tracking for is what Peter leaves on a cliffhanger in verse 36. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. This Jesus whom you crucified.

Now, as we'll see next week, this pricks their heart. This leads them to want to know, how then can they be saved if the weight and the guilt of the crucifixion of the spotless, blessed Jesus Christ hangs upon them, if his blood is on them, not for their salvation, but for their condemnation, then what must they do to be saved? Well, Peter will give them an answer, and we will study that answer in more detail next week, Lord willing. But Peter has already given him the answer when he quoted Joel. The promise is actually contained in Joel, chapter two in the great prophet of the Old Testament, recorded here in Joel or in Acts 2, verse 21.

Originally in Joel, 2, verse 32. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. What's our application? Call upon the name of the Lord again. We are in the last days of redemptive history.

There may still be hundreds of years left on the clock before Jesus return, but Christ's return is imminent at all times. There's nothing left in redemptive history that precedes his coming. Jesus. Jesus Christ has also ascended to the throne of David in the heavenly Jerusalem. And he's right now subjugating enemies by His Holy Spirit in this world.

The question is, will you remain then his enemy? Will you continue to mount your feeble war against his kingdom, the kingdom of the Lord of glory? The Gospel has a good word. There's a great paradox in the Gospel. Normally, if you are going to resist or to stand against an enemy who has it out for you, you have to mount some kind of defense or you have to mount a counteroffensive.

But the fact is that Jesus will certainly one day come to put his enemies under his feet as his footstool forever. But on his first coming at the beginning, the first installment of the great and magnificent day of the Lord, he himself suffered judgment. He himself died for his enemies. So you have no hope in running from the King. There is no salvation found in resisting Christ and His kingdom.

Your only hope is to repent, to turn from your sin and to call upon his name with the promise that all those who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. You can't do enough good works to earn something from this God. You can't run far enough from him to escape the jurisdiction of his kingdom. You cannot hope to prevail against him in the strength of whatever alternative pursuit you give yourself to. Because the great and magnificent day of the Lord, the final installment of it is coming.

And for those who are still at war, at enmity with King Jesus Christ, it will be a day of darkness and not light, a day of gloom with no brightness in it. Will you not then surrender your warfare against the King? Will you not swallow your pride and submit to his rule? Will you not embrace the rest and the refuge for your soul to the King promises and provides well for all those who turn from their sin and sorrow and who receive Jesus by faith, that is for all who call upon the name of the Lord. The promise is that you will be saved.

Have then you received the King's pardon? Or do you continue to resist him? Hear another word of the Lord. Let all the house of Israel. Therefore know for certain that God has made him both.

Lord in Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Let's pray.