All right You guys know what holiday is coming up before we get together in here again Which is it 4th of July or Independence Day? Okay Independence Day it is where we celebrate and I always grew up celebrating Independence Day Let’s just say that place center is not like Overland Park And I can light fireworks off in our yard in our neighborhood around town Not bottle rockets, but all other fireworks a lot of firecrackers Some some cherry bombs that happened to go off that weren’t my fault There was a time where we were throwing we were in a small town north at some friends house And and I we were throwing fireworks my brother and I and it happened to be a black cat Have you ever tried to throw a black cat with a quick fuse? It can give you a blister on your finger. At least the fingers are all still there So we did that and growing up my brother and I I mean even as little kids We would do these things that we probably shouldn’t have done like oh, there’s a grasshopper Let’s put it in this model car and put the firecracker in it and see the car blow up as we push it down the streets and Then when we got older we were more mature and made better decisions And I was out with my friends in a field and another friend Who was all of a sudden was out further in the field Where he shouldn’t have been riding a four-wheeler that was riding a four-wheeler So we sent bottle rockets his way and he he was dodging the bottle rockets on his four-wheeler Now my favorite quote from Pope John Paul was We were set free to do what we ought Not what we want So what I hear in that is that some of the things we did to celebrate our independence We’re not necessarily things we should have been doing to celebrate our independence But there’s something even more even greater than fireworks and That’s the freedoms that we have one by the Constitution But even beyond that the freedoms that we have that are set by our creator The inalienable rights the freedoms that God gives us and the freedom that we have to be in in worship those freedoms Are what we celebrate as we were coming upon Independence Day Now Jesus Gives us another Independence Day and with that Independence he sets us free and that freedom is from something we might not even realize we have needed Peter as he wraps up his sermon in This last series that we have called the point of Pentecost Where he’s talking about the Holy Spirit all of a sudden here. He’s talking about repentance What does repentance have to do with Pentecost? What does repentance have to do with being set free? We stand as you are able our scripture comes from Acts 2 we’ll start in verse 36 and we’ll go through 41 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 sins and You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit For the promises for you and for all your children and for all who are far off Everyone who the Lord our God calls to him and with many other words He bore witness and continued to exhort them saying save yourselves from this crooked generation So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3,000 souls the Word of God Inspired by God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God. Amen. You may be seated as We have been walking through Acts 2 remember Acts 2 started with when the disciples were together in one accord It means they had one heart one mind one goal they were ready for Jesus to send the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit came down and People came up because they just heard noise.
They didn’t know what was going on Some thought they were drunk some thought it just wanted to figure out what was going on and Peter started explaining to them by sharing scripture that prophesied towards Jesus Scripture they knew from David Scripture they knew that pointed towards the Messiah and then after he says all this he says You all should know that this Jesus that I’m talking about was the Messiah and you crucified him and That’s kind of where we cut off last week in this week We see the response of the people and they say What shall we do Luke tells us they were cut to the heart Now when they’re cut to the heart it reminds me of Hebrews 4 12 where it says for the Word of God’s living and active sharper than any two-edged sword piercing to the division of the soul and spirit of joints and marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart Adam was just talking about the intentions of the heart as we were beginning worship today Those intentions of the heart is what the Word of God appeared immediately in a sermon is saying you think this is What’s going on? But here’s what the prophet Joel says here’s what David said in his prophecy and then prophesied about the Messiah They prophesied about the Holy Spirit So when the people were cut to the heart it was because Peter was given in the Word of God and the Word of God Became that two-edged sword that cut him apart Now there’s a difference between this conviction they had Which I’m going to call Prevenient grace prevenient grace is the grace of God that goes out before us It’s also called preventive grace, which is prevent us from sinning This disgrace that the God works in our lives or before we even know God That tries to show us what sin is and convict us of that sin So we do something about it people were cut to the heart The Word of God was like a two-edged sword now historically if you were convicted of sin you had to go and do what Make a Sacrifice Like since the days of Cain and Abel you make a sacrifice and with that sacrifice Something had died something had to bleed and the blood was a sign alive So by that sacrifice then you could be forgiven for your sins and now with Jesus We have this ultimate sacrifice the Lamb of God who gave everything the Lion of Judah in the line of David who gave everything so that we could be forgiven because Otherwise this next slide is what it’s like This is this is my first AI generated creation a little creepy, but a little cool Sometimes we just get so used to the burdens we carry in life And we don’t know that we have someone else to take those from us And when they were cut to the heart Peter tried to explain them that your sin Is weighing you down? Your sin is something that keeps you from being who God called you to be But God wants to set you free God wants to take all that off of you So that those burdens are easily handled by Jesus because he’s not only got your burdens, but he’s got who else’s burdens Everybody’s Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved He takes all of our burdens and we don’t have to carry that and sometimes whether it’s pride Or if it’s uncertainty or we just don’t even think about it, but all we need to do is What Peter told them to do when they felt this conviction from the pervading grace of God’s Word What shall we do? Peter simply said repent and be baptized now Now Jesus started his ministry he came in from the wilderness and he started telling everyone Repent and believe the good news Now when Peter says repent and be baptized it’s it’s basically the same thing to repent and believe the good news when we repent Was anyone paying attention at children’s time When I when I first started preaching they used to tell me Sometimes I’m glad you do children’s time on the same Lot the same lesson because I understand that more than your sermon So I was in seminary at that time So, you know you want to spill out as much knowledge as you can and I learned a lesson from that to repent means to turn Peter said okay, you did this now you turn I mean, can you imagine a greater sin and yelling crucify? him Then yelling free Jesus for us instead of Jesus of Nazareth Can you imagine a greater sin and yet every time we turn from God the sin is just like that And in Hebrews, it also says that we recrucify him when we continue to sin when we continue to do that when we decide we want to carry that burden ourselves or That we can free ourselves We continue to crucify Jesus, but when we repent instead of pushing God away we run towards God We receive the gift that God has given us in Jesus Christ And then Peter says be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus now in baptism Jesus In baptism with Jesus is an outward sign of inward grace. It’s where we publicly Acknowledge what God is doing in our hearts, you know the verse we read last week if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord if you Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead that’s a public confession when you stand before others and are baptized and So it’s repenting. It’s believing it’s receiving and there is a direct connection then between Repentance and receiving the Holy Spirit How tough is it to receive the Holy Spirit without repentance? I Don’t know how many of you guys know about it possible in the book of Acts named Apollos Apollos was obviously a Disciple but he knew John he was a disciple of John the Baptizer And he only knew of John’s baptism and he was out there preaching the good news and he only knew about What John said would come with the Messiah and so when he was out there preaching that he spoke about Jesus But then He didn’t know Jesus directly and So Priscilla and Aquila who were disciples who learned from Paul pulled Apollos aside and taught him a little more correctly in the way taught him about Jesus and showed him in the scriptures who Jesus is And so Apollos went back out and started preaching the way Correctly and when he was in Corinth, he ran into this guy named Paul and He was preaching but Paul said to the people have you received the Holy Spirit When you believed and they said we don’t even know that there is a Holy Spirit So they moved from being baptized in John’s baptism Paul said it’s a baptism of repentance but repentance without Jesus Doesn’t fill the whole picture for you So they repented and it says upon hearing this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus And when Paul laid his hands on them The Holy Spirit came on them and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying There were about 12 men at all.
Not quite the 3,000 we just heard about But there were 12 people who were learning about God who were ready to repent and when they learned about Jesus And they were baptized in Jesus name Paul laid his hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit Changed everything for them the Holy Spirit made repentance turn into freedom for them the Holy Spirit made Repentance turn into a weight lifted from them. The Holy Spirit made repentance a Whole new life You see the point of Pentecost with this is that They had conviction Now remember conviction is different than just Feelings, you know, you can you can work something up. So someone feels guilty Do you have anybody in your life? But when you feel guilty and you repent That’s a little different than when you’re convicted and repent because what do you do when you don’t really feel guilty anymore? You go back and do the same thing But when you repent because of conviction it changes everything the point of Pentecost says you convict you have conviction and you believe and your baptism is a public confession and You receive the Holy Spirit when you are convicted and believe and then Peter says the most amazing thing The promise is for you and for your children For everyone who is near and everyone who is far off for someone who May have sinned horribly and for someone who needs to realize they’ve sinned horribly The repentance the promise is Forgiveness in Jesus Christ, no matter what you’ve done You can repent and be forgiven you can repent and receive that forgiveness and the part two of the promise is the Holy Spirit and The more you repent the more you ask Christ into your heart the more the Holy Spirit grows within you so the point of Pentecost and the point of Peter’s sermon is That Luke says any more witness to many things He exhorted them with many things which means his sermon was a lot longer But I’m just going to flip it right here and give you the cliff notes And he offered salvation Because everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved in this next video we see a great connection from the skid guy’s studio to From Independence Day for our country and Independence Day with Christ Independence has never been easy Nearly 250 years ago.
It was something worth fighting for Independence has never been easy nearly 250 years ago. It was something worth fighting for The idea of a people who stood on equal footing Free to speak These were ideals worth risking everything to find ourselves fighting old battles not with past foes with ourselves We are a nation divided divided by skin It seems the very freedoms we once fought for to become stumbling blocks Are we too busy seeking ourselves to even recognize the tragedy which surrounds us Do we no longer see the profound need for the hand of God in this moment? The truth of Scripture rings, especially true It will humbly pray forgiveness and seek his face Then he will hear us. He will forgive us and he will heal this land Today may we remember this one simple truth True independence Is found only in our dependence on God If my people who are called by that by my name will humble themselves and repent And I will heal their land What is the United States need most people might tell you it needs less Jesus Chronicles The word tells us we need more Christ.
We need God’s love We need God’s grace and God’s strength We need the freedom that comes with turning and repenting and being set free by Jesus That’s the point of Pentecost So we learn lessons now as an adult you’d Assume I learned everything I needed to learn so I was passing the tradition on and Christopher and I were lighting fireworks. He was at the ripe old age of three or four It’s time he learned to light them and I handed him the punk and he grabbed the punk the wrong way and it burned his hand And I was grounded for that And I Was just saying independence Is the freedom to do what God has called us to do we resist? repentance we resist believing and depending on Jesus but as the video said it’s that dependence that truly sets us free and helps us to Walk in freedom to stand up straight To take a deep breath and realize that God has done amazing things for us