“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. 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. 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.’

“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. Being therefore a prophet, and 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. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 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. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,

'The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”’

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 when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.—Acts 2:22–38

Introduction

Today, we begin a series of three sermons on telling the gospel. I will preach this morning on telling the gospel freely. Next week, Kenny Stokes will preach on telling the gospel intelligibly. Then Dan Shambro will end our gospel series by preaching on telling the gospel gladly.

My hope and prayer for you in this first message is that God would set you free to tell the gospel.

This is what we will do this morning: We will look at our text and its surrounding context. I want us to get a grasp of the circumstances that caused Peter to stand up and preach the message we just heard. Then I will make some observations about our text, and then I will make applications of how we—as a church in 2015—tell the gospel in the Twin Cities. I will close with a call for you to tell the gospel freely, and we will take Communion together.

Let’s ask for God’s help together as we begin.

Looking at the Context

In the events leading up to Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection, we find in Luke 22 that Jesus predicts Peter’s denial. Shortly after this, while Jesus is praying with his disciples on the Mount of Olives, he is arrested. In that tumultuous time, Peter is accused three times of being associated with Jesus, and all three times he denies it. That third time, Luke reports that “while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he [Peter] went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:60-62).

After his arrest, Jesus was crucified and buried. On the third day he rose again. Jesus then spent forty days with his followers before ascending into heaven. But before ascending, he told the disciples to stay in Jerusalem to wait for the Holy Spirit to come “not many days from now” (Acts 1:5).

So let’s look at the calendar. Jesus is arrested shortly after the Passover meal with his disciples. He is crucified, buried for three days, and resurrected. Then he spends forty days with his followers. His followers then stay in Jerusalem not many days.

In Acts 2, Luke tell us that it is the day of Pentecost. What is that? Pentecost is the Greek name of the Jewish Festival of Weeks, which was established by God in Leviticus 23. God commanded Israel to “count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath” (Leviticus 23:16). Pentecost means “fiftieth day.” It was on this day after Jesus’ arrest that Peter gave the sermon which was read to us this morning.

Looking at the Text

Let’s turn our attention now to the text that we read. I want to help us identify some key elements in this passage. Since we’re looking at Luke’s report of events, we should identify at least who is speaking, whom he is speaking to, and what he says. 

Luke tells us that the event which took place on Pentecost was that God sent his Spirit, as predicted by Jesus, to his church.

Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.—Acts 2:1–6

Our speaker is Peter, and our audience is devout Jewish men. What Peter delivers in his message to these Jewish men is this: “Jesus, who was God’s approved man and David’s anticipated Lord, was killed by you because you did not receive him for who he was. But because it was not possible for death to hold Jesus in the grave, God raised him from the dead and exalted him as Lord and Christ at the right hand of God and poured out on us his very own Spirit.” 

The result, in this case, was magnificent. Luke says that in the hearing of this message, about three thousand souls were cut to the heart and asked Peter, “What shall we do?” (v. 37). Our passage ends with Peter telling them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (v. 38).

So there’s our text and our context. Let me make five observations and apply them, one at a time, to the way we tell the gospel to the Twin Cities in 2015.

Observation 1 (v. 14)

Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them.

Peter is not alone. He is with the eleven disciples and the church. Evangelism is the work of the whole church. Don’t imagine evangelism as the work of a lone wolf. We need one another in the work of telling the gospel. Telling the gospel is a community project.

Let me take a few moments here to talk about some of the ministry initiatives that we’ve been doing at the Downtown Campus. Here are just a few of them: Sunday Morning Pastries, Sunday Brunch, Sunday on the River, SnowDay, Crowded House, and Meetup. All of these ministries fall under an initiative that we have labeled “Bringing Bethlehem Together.”

Because I head up these ministries, a few people in our congregation have accused me of being the Fun Pastor. And while I plead guilty as charged, I want to make sure that we are clear on why I–as the Neighborhood Outreach Pastor–am focused on Bringing Bethlehem Together.

This passage is an example of why. It is not enough for the church to come together once a week to worship. Corporate worship is an indispensable part of who we are as a people, but it is not the sum total of who we are. In addition to gathering each week for worship, we need to be intricately involved with each other’s lives—and intricately involved in the lives of unbelievers. So Sunday Morning Pastries, Sunday Brunch, Sunday on the River, SnowDay, Crowded House, Small Groups, and Meetup are all avenues leading to the same place. Their goal is that the people of Bethlehem would be well connected to one another, and that we would be a healthy, loving community that would be well connected to the dying world.

I envision a church that lives the new commandment. 

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.—John 13:34–35

If your involvement at Bethlehem is limited to weekend worship, I have two things to say to you. First, we love that you are here. We love to love Jesus with you week by week in this room. Second, we need you. You are not a small or unnecessary part of our community. Every person in this room is important. You are important, and we want you in our lives.

As Bethlehem grows in connected, gospel living, we will be better equipped to welcome others into our gospel lives together. This is how I see it. In corporate worship, our pastors and elders proclaim and apply the gospel to us. This is called proclamation. As we have this training week after week, we learn to apply the gospel to ourselves. This is called meditation. As we grow closer as a community, we begin to apply the gospel to one another. This is called encouragement. And finally, as we learn to apply the gospel to ourselves and to one another, we will increase in our ability to apply the gospel to unbelievers. This is called evangelism.

Gospel telling should not be like throwing a truth grenade into the foxholes of the lost and then running away, hoping that our proclamation will be enough to save them. Unbelievers are not our enemy. We have an enemy—and it is not them. Unbelievers are our neighbors, whom we are called to love.

Let us instead be like the Apostle Paul, who was able to say to the Thessalonians, “Being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). Or to say to the Colossians, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known” (Colossians 1:24–25).

Observation 2 (v. 22)

Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.

Peter began right away with two characters, Jesus and God. Peter knew his audience well. They were all devout Jews. This meant that they knew whom Peter meant when he said “God.” They knew that he meant none other than Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Peter’s audience also knew Jesus. They were his contemporaries. Many would have seen Jesus in person and witnessed his miracles. They heard his claims to be the Son of God. They heard his claims to be equal with God. In fact, when Peter accused them of killing Jesus, it was because of how familiar they were with Jesus’ claims. These two characters, God and Jesus, were specific, well known characters in the story that Peter was about to tell. 

But let us take a moment to contrast Peter's sermon in this passage with Paul’s sermon in the Areopagus. Paul was an early missionary of the gospel. He was often chased from place to place, and in this particular moment Paul found himself in the city of Athens, Greece. Let’s listen to Luke’s account of what happened there:

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers conversed with Paul. Some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.—Acts 17:18–21

Unlike Peter, who launched right into his strange new teaching about Jesus, Paul took the time to introduce the true and living God to the Greeks, calling him “the unknown God” (Acts 17:23), the “maker of the world and everything in it” (Acts 17:24), the “Lord of heaven and earth” (Acts 17:24), and the “giver of life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). Then he introduced Jesus as “a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). Paul knew that the Greeks did not know God or Jesus, so he began with identifying and characterizing both God and Jesus. He identified and characterized them well before he told the gospel.

Likewise, we as a church must be sure that we know the people we are talking with before we begin to share the gospel with them. Who is our audience? What do they know about God? Have they ever read anything from the Bible? What do they think about Jesus? What biases or fears do they have? What knowledge do they possess about the Bible?

Increasingly, our society is a post-Christian society. Long ago, it was expected that American households attended church and put their children in Sunday school each weekend, but that is no longer the case—and it hasn’t been for quite some time. Many Twin-Cities people have never been to a gospel-preaching church and do not know the God of the Bible or his son Jesus.

Unlike Peter, we must not assume that our audience knows whom we mean when we say God or Jesus. In fact, we must begin to assume the opposite. A great principle in counseling says, “Avoid assumptions by asking questions.” This is what we must do. The work of telling the gospel begins with asking good questions. What is your experience with God? Have you ever wondered or read what the Bible says? What do you know about Jesus? What do you think about him?

If telling the gospel is beginning to sound more like a relationship than a declaration, then you are beginning to understand what I am saying. In this relationship, we want to clearly communicate the character of God as revealed in the Bible, and we want to carefully tell the story of Jesus as recorded in Scripture.

In all our gospel telling, we must not forget to include these two things. They are the first two of what I want to call the four main parts of telling the gospel. 

Observation 3 (v. 23)

This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Peter makes the role of man in the death of Christ very clear. The sin and brokenness of man is the third essential element of the gospel. Peter does not mince words in attributing fault in who killed Jesus. He says, “You crucified and killed Jesus by the hands of lawless men” (v. 23). Peter makes certain to communicate that man is sinful and that this sin killed Jesus.

But lest you think that you are being called to go around shouting condemnation at random strangers, let’s take a moment to remember what day Peter preached this sermon on. It was the Pentecost—fifty days after Jesus was arrested and crucified right before the eyes of his followers. Fifty days after Peter watched this happen and denied knowing his own Lord three times. Fifty days after Peter went out and wept bitterly over his own sin. Just fifty days.

You see, when Peter tells them that they crucified Christ, he knows something else. He knows that he crucified Christ. It was his sin that put Christ on the cross. He knows the guilt, and he proclaims the guilt, but he also knows the pain and the shame. We talk often about how sin makes us guilty before a holy God, and it does. But did you know that sin also causes pain and shame? We know that the blood of Jesus washes away the guilty stain of sin, but did you know that the blood of Jesus also covers over your shame and heals you from your pain? 

Like Peter, we need to tell the gospel from a firsthand perspective, not with an outstretched finger to condemn, but with a humble and honest demeanor about our own sin and shame—and the pardon and healing that Jesus gives us. 

Observation 4 (v. 37)

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?

I have two observations here. First, Peter’s audience was cut to the heart. This is a passive-voice construction in Greek and in English, which means that someone else did the cutting. This does not rule out Peter’s involvement, but I believe that the main actor here is the Holy Spirit. Second, a very similar cutting is recorded in Acts 5 and Acts 7, but the people there responded not with repentance but with murderous rage.

Second, I want you be free from the notion that in telling the gospel, you must also cause conviction. You can’t. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told Nicodemus, “the wind blows where it will” (John 3:8). Only God can choose who will be saved and when. God shows mercy to whomever he wills, whenever he wills. So do not grow weary in telling the gospel. It is the telling that God uses, and his Spirit will cut into hearts of stone and turn them to hearts of flesh.

Even faithful telling can at times yield another kind of cutting. Paul talks about godly grief and worldly grief. Godly grief is just that—grief that is given by God and that leads to repentance. But there is another kind of grief that Paul talks about. That is worldly grief, which is a grief that leads to death.

Here in Acts 2, we see godly grief at work. Peter’s audience is cut to the heart, and their hearts are filled with faith. How do we know that? Their response towards Peter is a humble plea for mercy: “What shall we do?” (v. 37).

However, in Acts 5 and Acts 7, where the gospel is preached and Luke tells us that the audience was also “cut to the heart,” the people did not respond with faith. Instead, they responded with hatred. They tried to kill the apostles—they even succeeded in doing so to Stephen in Acts 7.

We will not always see a wild outpouring of salvation as Peter saw at Pentecost. We may occasionally see the opposite. But we press on to make Christ known. 

Observation 5 (v. 38)

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” 

Peter calls them to repentance and baptism. He offers them forgiveness for sin and the Holy Spirit. This is the last of the four main parts of telling the gospel. We must call people to respond to the gospel with repentance and faith.

Let me tell you a story about how I failed to articulate this last part of the gospel. Last week, my cousin Bonnie made her first-ever trip to America. She spent time with my parents in NYC, and then she made her way here to Minnesota to visit my family. We spent three days traipsing around the North Shore, and along the way she had many questions about God. By God’s grace—and in answer to many prayers—I was able to share the gospel thoroughly with Bonnie. I told her about a sovereign God who made heaven and earth and who rules them completely. I talked to her about his holiness and perfection. I told her about the broken, sinful nature of man and our inability to commune with God. I talked to her about the love of God and his brilliant plan to save his people from the wrath to come by providing a substitute—Jesus on the cross. But I failed to call Bonnie to personal faith and repentance. Our conversation hovered on a fact-finding level.

This last element of gospel telling is crucial. Mack Stiles says that when we share the gospel, we must not tell only the facts—we must aim to persuade. To do this, we must know this God. We must know this Jesus. We must turn from sin and worship God in faith.

I don’t want you to memorize anything I’ve said this morning. I want you to increase in gospel fluency. Just as foreign-language learners move from rote memorization to fluency in a new language, we must know God and Jesus and our own sinfulness and what it means to repent in such a way that we can tell the gospel freely—not in a way that is chained to a set of rote principles. We must learn to talk about Christ and his work in all arenas of our lives.

Conclusion

A Call to Tell the Gospel Freely

I began this sermon by saying that my prayer for you is that God would set you free to tell the gospel. I pray that you will be free from lone-wolf truth-grenade tossing and instead jump with your Bethlehem family in the foxhole of lost people to teach and persuade them of the gospel. I pray that you will be freed from the pressure of bringing conviction and instead know that this is role of the Holy Spirit. And I pray that you would be freed to not be perfect anymore but to be able to share the gospel from the firsthand perspective of a sinner saved by Jesus.

Let me close with this short gospel story. One day, Ken Currie came into my office. Ken is one of my very best friends, and he is a veteran gospel teller. On this day, he needed to confront me on my sin. He told me, “Mike, you set me up.” I had asked Ken for help and had unintentionally misrepresented the situation. After he explained to me what I had put him through, I was appalled by my own actions, and I apologized to Ken. I was horrified by my sin. I felt terrible. He told me that he forgave me, and we went on to discuss some other things. At the end of our meeting, I apologized again to Ken and told him that I still felt terrible for what I had done. Do you know what Ken said to me? It has stuck with me like few things do. He said, “Well, brother, now you’re not believing the gospel.”

At first, I was shocked. That’s a pretty direct way to apply the gospel. But I learned something that day. I learned that the gospel is a real answer for a real problem, and we need to live like it’s real.

Sin that has been paid for has been paid for. Here at the table, we have bread and juice. Jesus said that this bread is a reminder of his body that was broken for us. And it was. And it was for us. He said that this juice is a reminder that his spilled blooded covers our sin. Our sin is gone. It has been washed away. We will never reap the due reward of our sin. We have been set free.