Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 3:12-26, where Peter addresses the crowd about their rejection of Jesus, the holy and righteous one, and urges them to repent for their sins. He emphasizes that true hope and restoration come through faith in Christ, who offers forgiveness and a fresh start. The sermon challenges listeners to examine their lives and choose to embrace the hope found in Jesus rather than trading it for temporary comforts or societal approval.
Housekeeping and Introduction
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Aren't we thankful this morning for the goodness of God and what He's done for us, and for us to be able to think about what He has done for us. If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Acts chapter 3 this morning. Acts chapter 3 verses 12 through 26.
We'll finish out the second part of the third chapter of Acts as we continue preaching through the book of Acts, as we continue looking at this first church and what it looks like and how it acts and how it cooperates and how it does things.
I'm encouraged to look at it and reevaluate and to think about what we're doing and why we're doing it.
And as we've looked through the last six weeks on the mission of the church and the first sermon there at Pentecost, and then the response and now God being glorified, and then the power of the gospel as we look at these last couple of verses in this chapter.
If you have your place there, we'll stand and read our reverence of God's word. Acts chapter 3 verses 12 through 16. The Bible says,
When Peter saw this, he addressed the people, Fellow Israelites, why are you amazed at this? Why do you stare at us as though we had made him walk by our own power or godliness? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, has glorified his servant Jesus,
whom you handed over and denied before Pilate. Though he had decided to release him, You denied the holy and righteous one and asked to have a murderer released.
You killed the source of life whom God raised from the dead, and you witnessed this.
By faith his name is made this man strong, whom you see and know, so that the faith has come through Jesus, has given him a perfect health in front of you. And now, brothers and sisters, I know that you acted in ignorance just as the leaders also did.
And in this way God fulfilled what he had predicted through all the prophets that his Messiah would suffer.
Therefore repent and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped out, so that the seasons of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus, who has appointed for you as the Messiah.
Heaven must receive unto him the time of restoration of all things, which God spoke about through the holy prophets from the beginning. Moses said, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me.
From among your brothers you must listen to everything he tells, and everyone who does not listen to that prophet will be completely cut off from the people. Verse 24, In addition,
all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those after him have foretold of these things.
You are the sons of the prophets and the covenant that God made with your ancestors, saying to Abraham and all the families of the earth, we will be blessed through your offspring.
God raised up his servant and sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your evil ways. Father, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. We thank you for the reading of your scripture. We pray that you would have your will and way and that your name be lifted high this morning. In your name we pray. Amen.
Peter's Powerful Sermon
You may be seated. As we think through this sermon that Peter gives to this church and the way he starts out is powerful, he gives some history of what has happened, he gives some history to the believers here, to these Jewish people, and he begins to start at their beginning.
Came across a story in 2010, a man named Rio Pedro was traveling through Paris and he stopped at a flea market. How many of you like flea markets or garage sales? Okay.
Well, we had a, in Salisbury, there's a massive flea market. It's gotten bigger and bigger.
And I remember oftentimes on Saturdays, we would go and we would explore the flea markets and mom and dad would give us a couple of dollars. And I felt like I was like royalty. I'd come back with like loads of stuff that I got with just a couple of dollars.
And a yard sale shopping with my grandma, we would do that often. And so Pedro was one of these guys that liked to do this. And he was browsing through different vendors and something caught his eye. A beautiful painting.
It was dusted and neglected, tucked away in a pile of junk. And the seller offered it for pretty much next to nothing.
Pedro liked it and he bought it and thinking he had found a nice piece of decoration for his home.
A few weeks later, he had a friend that was coming by and this friend was an art dealer and he visited Pedro's house and he saw the painting. And when he saw the painting, he froze.
He stopped and he asked the question, where did you get this? And he asked and Pedro explained that it was just a cheap find from a flea market.
It was a nice painting. He wanted to hang in his wall as a decoration, as a question grabbing statement there. And he said, but it's cheap. It's nothing, nothing nice.
The art dealer looked at him and said, this is not cheap. This is a lost masterpiece. This painting turned out to be an original by a renowned 17th century artist that was stolen decades earlier. Its value was over $5 million. Now imagine this. What if after learning the truth, Pedro said,
eh, I really don't care. It's worthless anyways. Does anyone have a fake copy? Can I trade something that's fake for this real masterpiece?
Can we, is there something that I can look similar to this that I can begin to make a deal with? Everyone would look at him and say, that would be unthinkable that you would trade away this masterpiece. Who would do something that would trade something that was literally priceless for something fake?
Denial of the Holy One
And yet this is exactly what we see in Acts chapter three.
Peter stands before the crowd and he says this in verses 14 and 15, you denied the holy one, the righteous one, and you asked for a murderer to be granted to you. You killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead. Now think about this.
Jesus, they had the holy one, the righteous one, the very author of life, and they traded him for a murderer. They exchanged the greatest treasure of all time, of all history,
for something that was worthless in this world. And we may shake our heads and we may say, Pastor James, this is not something that I would do and this is not the same thing. And I wrote out three simple questions. How often do we trade the eternity for the temporal?
How often do we look at the temporal of today and we trade away eternity for that?
How often do we trade away the truth for comfort?
We don't want to hear the truth sometimes and we want to be comfortable and yet the truth comes and we trade it away in order to be comfortable. And how often do we exchange our faith in Christ for the approval of people, money, status, or even a pleasure of this day?
As a young person, oftentimes I would not stand up for my faith because I was afraid or ashamed of what people would say or think of me in the school that I was at. And looking back, I traded away my faith for acceptance in this world.
And how often do we do this? And just like the church here, the people in Acts chapter three who traded away Jesus for a murderer.
This sermon was a wake up call to them to show them who Jesus really was, to expose their sins and offer them hope.
And that same hope is for us today. And the question we must ask ourself is, will we keep making the same tragic mistake over and over and over again? Or will we choose Christ?
Will we look at our life and will we say Christ is the author as we're gonna get to the author of our life? Or are we gonna look at Christ and say he's just another man who lived a good life?
You see, Peter wastes no time after this miracle directing the crowd's attention to Christ.
You see, it would have been really easy for Peter to look at them and say, man, the crowds are starting to gather.
I'm starting to get my own little father in here. I could begin to teach what I wanna teach. I could probably exploit them for some money. I could become famous through this. I could be someone that's really somebody
if I didn't bring Jesus into this. But Jesus was the main thing.
It wasn't about the things that he had done. It wasn't about the things that he was saying, but it was ultimately about bringing the people back to Jesus and saying, listen, why are you standing here? I love how he says this in verse 12. Why are you amazed at this?
This is something that is not by me, but by God and what he has done. And he wastes no time in three ultimate things. The first is he starts by exalting the glory of Christ. He starts by saying, there is this one named Jesus.
There is this one that is holier than me, that is greater than me. And I must stand before you and tell you about this man named Jesus who was a servant. And when they heard that term servant,
every good Jewish person would have went to Isaiah 52 in their mind. And they would have thought through Isaiah 52 and 53, where it said that the servant of God was going to be God's chosen holy one. And even in his rejection,
he would still be the servant that would exalt the nation of Israel. Imagine for a moment, you are dying and you're,
maybe you're in a pool and you're, for the very first time, you're trying to swim and you begin to sink and you begin to, maybe you're out in an ocean and you're in a lake and someone sees that
you're struggling and they throw you a life jacket and they come and they rescue you and they save you and they put your feet back on the solid ground and you begin to go around and tell everyone that you saved yourself. Look at how great I was.
I didn't need someone to come along and help me.
I was the, and there were crowds of people around that saw this other guy that came along and helped you and you began to deny that anyone ever helped you. Everyone would say you're foolish, that you didn't help yourself and you continued this lie that's going on and on and on.
This is what's happening here. The children of Israel, the Jewish nation was saying, we don't need a savior. We don't need someone to come in and help us. We have our own help. We have this in and of ourselves and they rejected Jesus.
Not only do we see that God's servant was in verse 13, but in verse 14, we see the character of Jesus. He talks about the holy and righteous one. Jesus was holy and righteous and he compares their decision of releasing a murderer to Jesus's holiness.
I want us to think about this because we may not exchange Jesus for a murderer.
But we exchange Jesus for a whole lot less oftentimes. For our own glory, for our own decisions, for our own status in life. And we turn away Jesus,
the holy and acceptable and righteous one before God that has never sinned and will never sin and sits at the right hand of the Father making intercession for you and for me. He sits there and he says, this is the holy one.
This is the one that my son and who I'm well pleased.
The beloved one that we see here in a couple of weeks where Stephen, as he's been crucified, as he's been stoned to death, looks up and sees Jesus sitting on the right hand of the Father and standing there and welcoming him into his presence.
This is the one, the one that is so holy and righteous before us.
How often, church, do we trade away the righteousness of Christ for convenience or cultural acceptability?
How often do we trade away what Christ has done for us for the fleeting things of this world?
So he exalts the glory of Christ, but then he begins to press in a little more and he exposes the sinfulness of the crowd. Look at what he says here in verse 15. He says, this bold accusation, you killed the author of life. You killed the one who made life.
I mentioned this morning to our young people as I was teaching that Jesus, the one who spoke the world into existence, took on the form of man to come and live and dwell with us. And in that same moment, those that were around him looked at him and said, we don't want them.
We don't want that man. He doesn't fit our model.
He doesn't fit what we like. He doesn't smell like us. He doesn't talk like us. He doesn't act like us. And therefore, the religious people that day rejected him. It would be like this. You're on an island. You're stranded. There's no way off.
There's no way to make a boat. And as you're exploring the island, you come across a bridge that is connecting this island to the mainland.
And the only way off of this island is this bridge. And you look into that bridge and say, I don't like the way that bridge is made. If I were the architect, I would design that bridge differently. And so therefore, I'm going to blow up that bridge. This is what they did.
They rejected the author of life. The only way of salvation, they rejected. The only way of salvation off of that island was that bridge and you destroyed it is what he is saying.
Hope After Rejection
And Peter says, you now have been abandoned on this island because you destroyed this, but yet there's still hope. Oh, I love that Peter doesn't just end there. He doesn't just say, you're sinful, you killed this man, but he urges them to a response. He says that ultimately there is faith in Jesus'
name. This is what healed the lame man last week as we looked at it. It was that he believed in Jesus. The miracle was proof of Christ's power to restore broken bodies, to restore broken souls, to restore broken families because they had their faith in Christ.
They had this hope in something that was greater than them. The hope that is in the name of Jesus that has power, that it has power to heal not only our physical, but our spiritual and our emotional needs as we trust in Jesus as our healing.
He says because of these things, because you've rejected him, because you destroyed your only way of salvation, Jesus came to offer you forgiveness if you will, by the faith in the name of Jesus, as it says in verse 16, trust in him.
How often is it, have we been told that there is this hope that we have and yet we reject it? We know the story of Christ. We know what he's done for us. We were raised in church.
I've been coming to church since before I was born, right? When I was born, I was born on a Thursday and on that Sunday, I was in a car seat on a bus picking up kids and bringing them to church on that Sunday. I don't remember ever missing church my entire life.
When the church doors were open, I was there on Sunday. I was there on Sunday night.
I was there on Wednesday. I was there on Thursday when the men went out on visitation. I was there on Wednesday for the Saturday for the different studies. We have been in church and we know the story, but how often do we push the response behind us?
How often do we know the story and we're numb to the story and we don't have a heart knowledge of the story of Christ? And he turns to them in this pivotal moment in this sermon and he says,
not only is there an author of life, but there is a repentance factor that comes into our life. In verses 17 through 23, he urges them to repent.
He urges them to know that there is a way out. I want us to think about this for a moment. He looks at them and he says, brothers and sisters, I know that you acted in ignorance.
I know that you have done some things that you wish you wouldn't have done.
We would all look here and we would all agree that if we could go back and change the things that we've done in the past, we certainly would.
There are tons and tons of decisions that if we could go back and take away the words that we once said or take away the actions that we once did, if we had that option, we would. And Peter here, as he's preaching, he says,
I know you're acting as a way that you didn't know. He says, but yet you were still sinful. Ignorance yet sinful.
He acknowledged their ignorance, but yet he did not excuse their sin. Sin is still sin in our day. It doesn't matter the year we live in. It doesn't matter who's in charge. It doesn't matter the country we're in.
Sin is still sin and we don't have to fully understand it, but God's grace allows for repentance. We are still accountable.
We are still accountable even though as we look at the Old Testament, where even the Old Testament Jewish nation had a sacrifice of sins of omission,
where they didn't even know what they did, but they gave a sacrifice for just because they probably did something that they needed forgiveness for. You see, if you break the law without knowing it,
even though you may not have intended it, intended to do it, you're still guilty of that law. As I gave the illustration last week of me going too fast,
there's often times where we will break a law and we don't even know we broke that law. The speed limit changed, there was construction on the highway, and the police officer pulls you over and he says, I'm sorry you didn't know that that was the law.
I'm sorry you didn't know the speed limit changed, but you still broke it.
And I still have to do my job in order to back up what I'm doing.
Now you may not like that guy, you may think that he's out to blood and he's just out to fill his quota of getting citations out for the month, but the fact of the matter, you still broke the law and you still must pay the penalty for that sin.
And this is what Peter is saying here, you acted in ignorance,
but yet you still acted in a way that was guilty and someone had to take this place. And so there is a response that we must have, a reason for repentance here. And he lays out these reasons in verses 19 through 23.
He says, as we must repent, there are blessings that follow in repentance.
I don't know if this has ever happened to you. Maybe I'm just the only one
where when I did something wrong as a kid and I went to mom and dad and I said, mom and dad, I'm sorry I did this wrong. I'm sorry that I made a mistake and Bertie's not in here and I'm not going to give the details, but he did something this week
in school. It wasn't appropriate. It wasn't the best thing. It was nothing immoral or legal or wrong.
And we found out about it. He didn't know that we found out about it. Those are always the best, right parents? When you know and they don't know that you know.
And we asked him and Ali had sent me the text of what had happened and so I picked him up. We had football practice and then had an award ceremony and we sat down and as we're coming home, I said, Bertie, how was school today?
It was good, dad. My thing was good. What happened in English class? You know about this?
Yeah, I do. And so he told me what happened. Dad, I'm sorry. I did wrong.
Shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have responded that way. I shouldn't have acted that way. And I said, son, I forgive you. Still could be consequences, right? It's how we respond when there's repentance. He knew he did wrong. He apologized.
He asked for forgiveness. He worked toward that. And this is the same thing that we're seeing here in this story. He says, God fulfilled and predicted these things and he says, therefore repent and turn back so that your sins may be blotted out. This is a beautiful picture.
The sins blotted out portion of when we accept Christ.
In the biblical days, they didn't have pen and paper like we have. If you have a pen and you're taking notes with the handout that I've given,
when you write on that, within moments or seconds, that ink is dry on that page. You can't, you can maybe wet your finger and try to mark it out, but you're probably going to have to scratch it out with your pen because the way we have ink today, it dries very quickly.
In the biblical days, they had parchment paper that was made out of animal skin and it was thick and it was almost like leather and when they would take the ink and they would write on it, the letters would literally sit on top of the page
and the ink would sit on top of the parchment and for hours upon hours, it would take for that ink to dry through the parchment. If someone were to come by, a kid were to come by and bump the table, right, all that ink would move around.
It would not be readable anymore. Someone could literally come by with a piece of paper, a sponge or a rag and they could wipe out what you had wrote and it would never be there anymore. And so when Peter says your sins are blotted out,
the best illustration I can give for you is if I were to have a whiteboard up here and I were to take that whiteboard marker and I were to write my notes up here
and Terry would come up here and say, I don't like what you're doing, Pastor James, and he would erase that with an eraser. It would be the same thing as what he's saying here. It would no longer be up there. You would no longer see it because your sins have been blotted out.
You've been wiped away. You've been made clean and whole and fresh. And this is what he's saying.
Complete Erasure of Sins
He said it's not just a covering of sins, but it is a complete erasure of your sins when we come to know Christ.
When we come to know the one who has given his life for us, he says he's not just given us a new piece of paper that still has some scratches on it. He's given us a brand new clean slate to start a new life in Christ.
All things have passed away and behold, all things have become new for the sake of Christ. So our sins are blotted out, but then he says in verse 20, the first part of this, there are times of refreshing. There are times where we get a spiritual renewal through coming to know Christ.
Look at this. The seasons of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. Has there ever been a moment in your life where you feel spiritually exhausted?
Maybe physically exhausted, but spiritually, you're just like, Lord, I've had trial after trial after trial.
I don't know where the end of the tunnel is at. I don't know where the end of my lot is at, but I'm so exhausted, Lord. I just don't know if there's another spiritual step in me. I don't know if there's another way for me to move forward.
And Peter says in this message, there are times where this is going to happen. He says, and yet there is this refreshment that the Lord brings into our soul. Right? In Psalms 23, he says, Yea, though I walk through the valley of shadow death,
I will fear no evil because there's rod and your staff is with me and you lead me beside still waters. He is leading us beside these waters that are waters of refreshment, that are waters of enjoyment because he is there for us.
He is there to give us that spiritual refreshment that only he can give. Oftentimes, we look for this refreshment in other ways and in other avenues and they just never seem to hold up because he says here again, the seasons of refreshment come from, four words, the presence of the Lord.
The presence of the Lord been in our life is the reason to repent, it's a reason for refreshment, it's a reason for a clean start and then, through the last part of this passage here, 20 to 23, he says that it is a Christ's return and fulfillment.
It is a way that we get to see something great and wonderful happen through Christ coming back and through his son been fulfilled in this Old Testament prophecy that has been given to us. In Deuteronomy chapter 18,
I'm not going to turn there but it's on the screen, I want you to follow along with me.
Deuteronomy chapter 18 verses 15 through 18. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet. Moses is speaking here, like me, from around your own brothers and you must listen to him.
This is what you requested from the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when he said, let us not continue to hear the voice of the Lord our God and see this great fire any longer so that we will not die.
He says, then the Lord said unto me, they will have spoken well.
In verse 18, the key verse here, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among your brothers and I will put my words in his mouth and he will tell them everything I commanded him. This is the fulfillment of Christ's coming. Jesus was the prophet that was greater than Moses.
He found the final judgment of the Lord and he fulfilled the promise of God by giving us this personal relationship with him. And he said, you rejected him and because you rejected him, you have eternal consequences.
In church this morning, their Christ's return is going to happen again. He's going to come back into this world. He said, I'm preparing a people to one day be in a place with me. And when that last person accepts Christ,
the fulfillment of Scripture is going to happen and he's going to return to take away his bride. And those that have accepted will go to be with the Lord forever. And those that have not and they have ultimately rejected the Lord will have eternal consequence. They will have this consequence
of rejecting Christ and living forever without him in a place called hell. We must get to the place, church, where we are so focused on what Christ has done for us and accepting him that we now must go and tell everyone around us what he has done for us so that
Encouragement and Hope
we can share with them the fulfillment of what Christ has done. So not only do we see the repentance in the author of life, but we end and Peter ends with some encouragement. The hope for a generation. The hope that is here for us. He's not a doom and gloom preacher.
I'm not a doom and gloom preacher. There are some times where it's hard to end on some things, but Peter ends this message by saying there is hope for the future. He shifts this calling to the crowd, to repentance, to offering them hope, not just from themselves, but for a future generation.
Hope in Christ, hope that is transforming, hope that is not just substance, but hope that is completely revolutionary in our life and ultimately hope that impacts individuals and children and families that we be changed by the gospel if we can do
just a couple of things. The first is hope that is rooted in God's promises. Verse 24, in addition,
all the prophets have spoken from Samuel and after those that have foretold these days. He reminds them that all the prophets from Samuel onward spoke of this man named Christ that was coming to redeem the world. God's plan for redemption was not new church.
It was here and it was promised and it was fulfilled in Jesus. Imagine going on a road trip. I know Scott and Lisa just went to California and they drove all the way out there and they drove back and I'm sure Scott, he may have, I didn't ask him this, Scott may have
memorized the route. Scott, did you memorize the route and all the roads? No. He had a GPS that was telling him where to go and when the GPS said turn right, he turned right and eventually they ended up at their destination.
location. They eventually landed, they landed at where they were going to be at and the GPS led them to that location. This is the prophets in the Old Testament. The prophets were pointing everyone to Jesus. They were pointing everyone and everything that was happening always pointing forward to Jesus.
As I shared this morning in Sunday school with Joshua leading the children from one side across the Jordan, that was a picture of Jesus leading us into the promised land. And that's a picture of what is going on. And if God was faithful to fulfill every single prophecy about Jesus,
how does that strengthen our faith and strengthen our understanding about his promises today?
Not only is there hope and is rooted in God's promises, but hope is found in Christ's blessings. Peter reminds us that God's covenant with Abraham, in your offspring there shall be families of the earth that will be blessed.
Jesus is that promised offspring. Jesus is the one bringing salvation and it's not just to Israel that we see right now, but in just a couple of chapters it's going to go out to all the world and the Gentiles are going to start
hearing the gospel and the Gentiles are going to come to knowing this faith in Jesus Christ.
And it's a hope that is a blessing because it doesn't just end with one generation.
This hope goes on for generation to generation to generation and families that have families that have families and we get to share that with others and we get to see children come to know Christ and we get to
see communities change for the glory of Christ because this hope is not bound by one generation. It is a hope that can begin to be passed on forever. You see, the world, it offers false hope.
True Hope in Christ
The world offers hope of money. The world offers hope of success and temporary pleasures, but true and lasting hope is found in one person and one person alone and his name is Jesus. Hope is found in Christ's blessings but hope often and hope will call for a response.
I get this all the time. I'm seeing it more and more as I'm studying through this. Every time we get to a message, there is a response.
There is a moment where we must understand that we must repent and we must turn in the light of what has been said. Peter is urging them, God has raised up his servant Jesus and he says, turn from your wickedness. Turn and repent and come to a Savior that is here for you.
Hope is an invitation. Hope requires action because I just taught and it's so fresh in my mind as the priests were taking the Ark of the Covenant across the Jordan River.
God parted the Jordan River only when the priests stepped into the water in Joshua chapter 3, chapter 4.
The priests stepped into the water and the waters parted and I asked our young people, I said, what's the importance of them stepping in the water? They were like, so their feet got wet?
I don't know, Pastor James, I don't know why they stepped in the water. I said, if they didn't step in the water, the priests never obeyed the Lord and the blessing of that miracle would have never happened. Obedience and response
always proceeds the blessing of the Lord and if we don't step out by faith, God says, I can't bless you because you're not trusting in me. Faith has to be there. There has to be a moment of response. It requires action.
It's not just something we feel but it's something we embrace and it's something we live out.
Life preserver only saves someone if they're drowning if they reach out and grab a hold of it.
If you look at the life preserver and you say, that's a really nice life preserver. Can you give me the doctrinal of how this person, how this life preserver was made? Can you tell me who made it? Can you tell me the origin of where it came from?
It's not going to save you if you know all those things. It's only going to save you if you embrace it and you reach out and you say, I want to trust in this life preserver to save me. And Christ is the same way. His hope is available but we must respond.
And if we have hope in Christ, it changes the way we live. It changes the way we act. It changes the way we make decisions and live our lives.
As Peter comes, last night as I was meditating on my message, the Lord gave me three things. I didn't put these in your notes because it came to me last night. The Lord gave me three things that hope does. Guys, if you put this on the screen, hope anchors us. Hope gives us anchor.
When life doesn't seem straight, when life doesn't seem right, hope anchors us to the one, Hebrews 6, 19, the one who is the author of life. Not only does hope anchor us, hope motivates us. It fuels our perseverance of faith knowing that God's promises will be fulfilled. Romans 5, 3-5.
And hope transforms us. It changes how we see suffering. It changes how we see loved ones. It changes how we love others and it changes how we pursue holiness. 1 John 3, verses 2 and 3 talk about how this hope changes us and transforms us.
In 1988, the year I was born, an earthquake devastated Armenia.
It leveled entire cities and it trapped thousands underneath the rubbles. One father, upon hearing that his son's school had collapsed, ran through the streets in desperation.
He got to the school and he saw a mountain of debris where the school once stood.
Instead of giving in in despair, he remembered a promise that he had made to his son earlier.
As he was dropping off his son for school, he would often say, no matter what happens, son, I'm always coming back to get you. And with nothing but his bare hands, he began digging and pulling rubble and hours had passed and then a full day had passed. Other people told him this,
stop doing what you're doing. There's no hope. They're all gone.
There's no point in doing it. The father looked at him and said, I can't give up.
And after 38 grueling hours of digging, he pulled back a slab of concrete and he heard a voice and the voice was his son and his son called out and said, Dad, I knew you were coming.
I told the others that were around us not to worry because you made me a promise years ago that you would always come for me. You see, the boy had hope because he trusted in his father's words.
The boy had hope because he told the others not to worry and the hope sustained him in his darkest moments, in his darkest hours of his life. He had hope.
The people listened to Peter had a choice. They could cling to their sin, they could cling to their ignorance or they could cling to the one that had hope. They could remain in darkness or they could see the light that only Christ can give.
Hope for Everyone
And this morning, we have the same response. no matter how far you've fallen, no matter what you've done in your life, there's always hope in Christ.
There's always a room for Christ to bring you in in this broken world and he says, I'm coming to heal you. I'm coming to help you. Just as the people in Peter's day, some responded
and some said, what must we do to have this eternal life? Some said, I'm going to remain in spiritual darkness.
We all have the same choice. It's not passive. It is a response and hope is a response. Two final questions as we get ready for our invitation. Will you grab a hold of this hope that Christ has for us or you walk away unchanged?
What will we do with Christ? Will we reject the author of life or will we submit to him as Savior and Lord and say, God, I'm going to give up what I'm doing.
I'm going to follow you. I don't care where it takes me. I don't care what I do. I don't care what you call me to do. I'm going to follow you to the ends of the earth no matter what the consequences are
or are we going to reject God and do our own thing? Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for what you've done for us.
Help us as we have a time of response that you would work in our hearts and work in our minds and help us to trust in you.
God, I thank you for the hope that you've given me so many years ago when I was a five-year-old little boy. I pray that if there's anyone here that doesn't know that same hope that they would come today entrusting in you. In your name we pray. Amen.
Let's pray. Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Pleasant Grove. Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week.
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