And so we can kind of use this message as kind of a guideline for how we ought to Preach if you're one who preaches or teach the Bible if you're one who teaches or even just witness to others If you're one who obeys the command to do that, and so I hope it'll be informative and I hope it'll be a blessing for you this morning Let's start with a word of prayer. Lord, we thank you for this day. Thank you for your word. Please help me now as I seek to uh teach it. Help me to do all I can to honor and glorify you in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Acts chapter number two is where we have left off in this study. Acts chapter number two and uh we we left off at verse number fourteen. Now, I'm going to, we're going to read quite a few and then we'll back up and we'll make some points on how, on some of the details of the message that he preaches. But starting in verse number 14, the Bible says, but Peter standing up with the 11, lifted up his voice and said unto them, ye men of Judah, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words. For these are not drunken, as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And I will my servants, and I will my handmaidens, Well, I will pour out in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesy and I will shoot wonders in heaven above and silence in the earth beneath blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before that great and notable day of the Lord come. It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know, him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face. For he is on my right hand, and I should not be moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad. Moreover, also my flesh shall rest in hope, because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell. Neither wilt thou suffer thine only one to seek corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life. Thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance. Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne, he seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens, but he saith himself, The Son of my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made the same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Now when they heard this, they were gripped in their heart, and said unto Peter, and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, What shall we do? Now, I know that's a lot to get through, a lot to read there. We essentially just read the transcript of a sermon. This was the message that Peter spake in Jerusalem on this day of Pentecost to all the people that were there present and I want to break down kind of how he preached to them. in order to help us to know how to communicate the gospel to others as well. Obviously, you don't have to pattern every message the same way. I am not one to do that. I don't know the ins and outs of even sermon preparation, if I'm going to be honest. I didn't take hermeneutics and homiletics, and up until very recently, I had no idea what those words meant. I still probably don't have a good grasp of what those words mean, but the study of how to prepare messages and how to deliver sermons I didn't go to I didn't get graduate Bible school. I didn't go to the seminary. I don't know all those things but I have my Bible and so with my Bible, I can look at the sermons that people preach like Peter here at the day of Pentecost and see kind of how did he do it and maybe pattern some of my messages after that. Not every message has to be the same. Not every message has to look the same but but it's it's at least a guide at least a start somewhere to look at to start with. So, if you think about The beginning of his message, verses fourteen through twenty-one, he refers to and uses the Old Testament, the prophet Joel. There are some who say that the Old Testament is no longer useful or important. In fact, my pastor, Pastor Somers, He was eating at a Wendy's, I think, one day, in our town up in Chelsea, Michigan, there, and he was reading his Bible, and somebody came up to him and asked him what he was reading, and I forget what book the Old Testament was reading, but he told them, and they said, well, what are you reading that for? And he said, well, it's the Bible, you know, and they could not fathom why a preacher would waste time reading the Old Testament when we have the New Testament. And that's actually a relatively prevalent thought today, of just leave the Old Testament be, because there's scary, bad things in there, and God kills people in the Old Testament, New Testament's all this grace and love and all, and you know, people have that mindset that the Old Testament should just be done away with, because it doesn't really fit the narrative of culture anymore, which we've, in the last few weeks of Genesis, we've seen that there's some things in the Old Testament that people probably won't like today, but It's still Bible. This idea that we should only focus on the New Testament, there's many reasons why that line of thinking is wrong. The first, in Proverbs 30, verse 5, the Bible says, every word of God is pure. Every word of God is pure. He has a shield unto them that put their trust in him. All of God's word is important. In fact, turn with me to Psalm 138, in verse number two. Hold your place in Acts chapter two. We will be back there later on. Psalm 138. verse number two. Now, if you've been coming here any length of time, you know what I preach. Even when I'm preaching New Testament truth, I don't know that I ever have a sermon where I don't reference the Old Testament at some point in some way. There's always something there to help us. Psalm 138 verse 2, Bible says, I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth, for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. Now it does not say thou hast magnified the New Testament above all thy name. Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. The word of God, whether Old Testament or New Testament, is something that is extremely important to God. And it ought to be important to us. The New Testament speaks of the Old Testament, not as something that is no longer useful, but something that is very useful. Turn with me to Galatians 3 and Colossians 2. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Galatians 3 and Colossians 2. Read a couple of passages here in the New Testament about the Old Testament. get an idea of whether or not we can just throw it away. Galatians three, Colossians two, if you're there, say amen. Amen. All right, before we get there. In Galatians chapter three, verse number, let's start with verse 23. The Bible says, but before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ. Now, we might be justified by faith, but after that faith has come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. The idea here, the teaching here, is the law, the Old Testament law, the scriptures of the Old Testament, is what brought people to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, is what proves Christ. It's what showed people who to look for when looking for the Messiah. It proved Christ, brought people to Christ. As a schoolmaster teaches children a new truth, the Old Testament teaches Jesus Christ. And it says, now that we have Christ, we're not under the law anymore. We don't have to obey the dietary laws of Leviticus. We don't have to live by that letter of the law. It's not a bad idea to try and do, but we have grace now. And so it doesn't say that we get rid of the law. It just says that the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It is still having that effect on people today. Depending on the culture, especially with Jews, how are you going to witness to a Jew without the Old Testament? That would be the best way, I think, to witness to an Israelite, is to use scriptures that they deem as holy, and use those scriptures to prove Jesus Christ. It's exactly what Paul did in his ministry many times when he would be preaching to the Jews. He would expound scriptures to them, and those weren't Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those hadn't even been penned down yet. scriptures he would expound to them were or the Old Testament. So, very important there, Colossians chapter number 2 and verse number 16. The Bible says in Colossians 2, 16, Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days. So, holy day, new moon, sabbath days, those are all things found in the Old Testament. which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ, like no man beguiled or reward in voluntary humility in worshiping of angels, introducing into those things which he hath not seen vainly pumped up by his fleshly mind." He says here that the Old Testament law, the things we find in the Old Testament, are a shadow of something to come. They're a shadow or a glimpse of what would be in the future. We've looked at many different things in the Old Testament in Genesis already, in our study through Genesis, where we've said this is a great representation of Christ, where this is a good image of Christ, or a good image of salvation, many times we've had that situation. You think about Isaac being sacrificed on the mountain, or offered on the mountain. Of course, Abraham didn't go through with it, but the whole picture there, the whole idea there, and Abraham's statement there that God will provide himself a lamb, there's so many different things in the Old Testament that we see that are a picture of, or a shadow of, things to come. Which, of course, for us, the things to come are in the past now, because the things to come were Jesus Christ. But we can look back in the Old Testament, knowing Christ, and see, yep, that's a shadow of Christ, that's a shadow of Christ, that's a foretelling of Christ, that's a prophecy of Christ. And we can use the Old Testament to further prove the New Testament. Hebrews 10, 1 says, for the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the covers thereunto perfect. Again, the law was a shadow of good things to come. It wasn't Christ, it wasn't salvation, but it was a shadow, a glimpse or an image of those things. Essentially, the Old Testament scriptures lead us to Christ. Without the Old Testament, there is no New Testament. Without the Old Testament, prophecies of Christ, how would we know that he was the Messiah? How would we prove that he was who he said he was, and not just some other guy? There have been so many people throughout history who have made themselves to be God, or the Son of God, or an angel, or something, and all these cult leaders would eventually lose their following, or be found to be frauds, or they would just die and fade away into history. But the Old Testament prophecies, the fact that Christ fulfilled every single one of them, over 300 Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, we can look at the Old Testament and say, yes, He did this, check the box. Yes, He did that, check the box. Yes, He did that, check the box. And we can look through and we can see Jesus Christ is the Messiah, based on what the Old Testament says. I forget the exact numbers when we looked at it in our Fundamentals of Faith study with the youth group, but it's... if you were to... a statistician's Statisticians did a research on the probability of any one person in history fulfilling even only eight of the major prophecies of Christ, which there are hundreds of them, but any one person fulfilling eight of them, and the odds were, the way the probability worked, if you took silver dollars, covered the entire landscape of Texas with them, and rose them up two feet of silver dollars all over Texas and picked one, That's the probability that a person would fulfill eight of the prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament. That's pretty low odds. But to fulfill all of them, Christ did that. So essentially, that Old Testament is very good proof and evidence for us today to give us confidence that yes, this Christ really is the Savior. He really is who we claim to be. You think about passages like Isaiah 53, where it's so often quoted, so often went to, to talk about Christ and his crucifixion, his sacrifice for us, and many, many others, you take that out and you are essentially cutting a vast portion of God's word out of your life. That's going to be a very anemic Christianity. And so, the Old Testament's very important. In the very first sermon of the very first church age, we see the very first, this preacher preaching, we have the first thing he goes to is the Old Testament. to show them who Christ was. And then in verse 22 of Acts chapter 2, go ahead and turn back there with me, as he's preaching he talks about what's going on being prophesied by Joel, he kind of explains the situation, and then in verse 22 he moves into what we call the Gospel. He says, you men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. So now we've turned from the Old Testament foretold what's happening today, and we're explaining what's going on here, and now we're turning to, let's talk about Christ. I was told one time by Pastor Jack Story, preacher in his 80s that started our church up in Michigan. He he said, if you don't know what to preach, just preach Jesus and that's I don't know if it's original with him but it's it's a very good advice because you can never go wrong preaching Christ. He's this in his favor, the spotless lamb of god, the redeemer, god manifests in the flesh, the door, the light, the miracle worker, the healer, the razor of the dead. He's he's everything to all men. He's the solution to all And when we preach, we must preach Jesus Christ. We must not preach politics or preferences or personal views, but the preaching of the perfect Lamb of God, that's the only way. Jesus Christ is the most important topic we could ever preach on or ever convince people of. John 14, 6, Christ himself says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. That verse alone should tell us that any other topic takes second place to Jesus Christ as a topic of our sermon, topic of our conversation, topic of our witness. It should always be Jesus Christ. Now, obviously, there's times when you preach doctrines and things like that. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when we're witnessing to people or when you have an opportunity to speak to people and there may be some lost people there. It's far more important. I've been to a lot of youth rallies over the years, and there were some that I just thoroughly enjoyed. The preachers were great. It was good preaching. The Spirit was there. Everything was good. There were some that would have been great if the preacher preached Christ. instead of preaching something that he knew would get a bunch of amens and everybody liked it. I was at a church service one time, it was a youth rally, and this preacher, which some of you may know his name, he's a pretty well-known, independent, fundamental Baptist preacher. He's preaching salvation, and it's going great, and then he just completely does a pivot and goes off and starts talking about women in pants. And he said, said that the reason there's so many people that don't know what gender there are today, they are today is because they grew up with mom and dad both wearing pants. And it's like, wait, weren't we talking about salvation? And then he just jumps over and goes way over to the other side of this thing. And I get it, there's a place and a time to preach standards, but this was a youth rally with hundreds of kids, half of which had probably never been in church before in their lives. And so, we go from preaching the truth they need to hear to just jumping off onto the standards that most adult church members don't abide by. And so, I was like, that guy just killed this message. He just annihilated any chance he had. And we actually had one time, even before that, when I was one of the youth kids, when I was, when Pastor Thomas was my youth pastor, he took us to a rally one time, and after the rally, The way that the preacher had preached, he had brought up standards and stuff, and we had brought some girls that had never really been to church, and they had come and they had kind of short skirts or pants or whatever on, and they told Pastor Summers on the ride home, they said, we wanted to go forward and ask about salvation, but we were embarrassed about what we were wearing and we didn't do it. And so it's like, I get it, there's a time and a place for every topic, but when you're talking to the lost, when you're trying to reach people who don't know any better, preach Jesus Christ first. That was the entire idea of the message that I gave at the Republican committee opening. I said, you know, regardless of the politics, Christ is the answer. If you get people to come to Christ, then the politics and all the other policies are going to follow along soon. but Jesus Christ has to be the first and foremost thing. And so he starts preaching Christ's life, and then in verse 23, he says, him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, he hath taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. So he preaches Christ's life, and now he preaches Christ's death. We know that the penalty for sin is death, Romans 6, 23. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, and Jesus Christ our Lord. multiple references for this. Let's look at Colossians chapter two and John chapter nineteen. We'll skip a couple of references for for time's sake. Colossians chapter two. John chapter nineteen. This the death of Christ is a very important topic. He can't just can't and was this good guy and did a lot of good things, and it's cool to be a Christian, you gotta preach the whole thing. Christ's death had a purpose to it. Colossians chapter 2 and verse number 13, the Bible says, And you, being dead in your sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, have he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailed it to his cross. That's one of my favorite verses, which I probably have 500 of, but that's one of my favorite verses. He took the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, all the laws that we broke, all the sins that we committed, he took that piece of paper and he nailed it to his cross. Now, you think about, well, he hung on the cross. Yeah, he nailed our sin to the cross in his own body. He became sin for us who knew no sin. I believe this first Corinthians tells us that. He was made sin for us. That death of Christ is the atonement. John chapter 19 and verse number 30, the Bible says here, when Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, it is finished, and he bowed his head and gave it to the ghost. Some people mistakenly believe that Christ going to hell was the payment for sin, but what's the payment for sin? What's the penalty for sin? It's not hell. Hell is a byproduct of dying without Christ, but hell is not the payment. The payment is death. Whether or not you're saved will determine where you spend eternity after death, but Christ paid the penalty for our sins on the cross and said, it is finished. And so that death of Christ is very, very important. part of our message. We can't just preach that Christ lived a good life and was a good guy. We gotta preach that he died and that death was for us. He took our sin on his body and allowed that body to be nailed to the cross and died that perfect, sinless sacrifice for you and for me. Without the death of Christ, we don't have sanctification. Look, Hebrews 10.10 says, by the witch will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. That's a good one for all those ones that don't believe in eternal security. So you can have it, lose it, have it, lose it. Well, Christ died once for all. And also, that's a good one for those who think you have to be a certain type of person to get to heaven or have to be one of the elect. I'm pretty sure all means all, all throughout the Bible. But we won't harp on that today. Verse 24. So verse 22 preaches his life. Verse 23 preaches his death. Verse 24, what's next? Acts chapter 2 verse 24. whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. I like how he words it. It was not possible that he should be holden of it. It's not possible for Christ to be held in death. And so he preaches the life of Christ, the death of Christ, and the resurrection of Christ. I want you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Just a couple of books over in your Bible, Romans, 1 Corinthians. chapter number 15, here we find, in 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse three, we find a good summary of what we call the gospel. This is a guide for what our message to the lost should be, 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse three. For I delivered unto you first of all, so meaning this is the most important, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, And then he was buried, and then he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. And so, a couple of more things there. First of all, the Gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And second of all, the Gospel, it specifies it here twice, according to the Scriptures. Everything Christ did was according to the Scriptures. And what Scriptures is he talking about in 1 Corinthians? The Old Testament Scriptures. So again, further evidence that you need that Old Testament. Because if it wasn't for those Old Testament Scriptures, then Christ dying according to the Scriptures couldn't be in the Bible there, because what do the Scriptures matter? So, very important to keep that, and very important to realize that in the very first sermon we have Peter preaching the life of Christ and the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, which is the Gospel. That's the most important message. Those three elements are very important for our witnessing, for our preaching, our teaching, whatever it may be that you're doing. And then we come to Acts chapter two and verse 25. We won't read this portion again. For time's sake, we already read it the one time. But in verses 25 through 36, he essentially expounds scripture. He quotes King David, in one of the Psalms, and he says, you know, and then he, instead of just quoting it and leaving it there, he quotes it, and then he explains, David was a prophet, he was prophesying of one to come, he wasn't speaking of his self, he goes on, he doesn't just say the scripture, he explains the scripture. It's said that, that Charles Spurgeon, one of the great preachers of yesteryear, that he got his start by going and re-preaching messages from the big preachers, but re-preaching them in common, everyday language. Because these preachers would get up and they'd preach and they'd be so elegant and so affluent with their speech and with the words they used, good old boys like us, we'd listen and be like, what is he saying? I don't know that word. And so Charles Spurgeon, what he would do is he listened to those messages and he would translate from English to our English, from, from fancy to everyday common man. And that is how he got his start. And he would preach to tens of thousands of people because people don't want to just hear the Bible read to them. They want to understand it. They want, they want to get it. They want to explain to them. and you don't need a preacher for that. If you got the Holy Spirit, you can study and pray in the Holy Spirit, but a preacher sure helps. A good one, a good one. So, he expounds scripture. Preaching does little good if no one understands what's being said. Explaining the scriptures and being sure that people can relate the message to their own lives is vital for preaching. It's also where you start running into some troubles when you're preaching, me preaching a message from the Old Testament doesn't really convict hearts but me preaching a message from the Old Testament and explaining why it matters to you today and what you can learn and how you can change your ways because of the message from them today, that exposition and that explaining and that making it personal, that all of a sudden now means it's not just some story from yesteryear, it's something that I need to worry about. and not everybody likes that, but that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to expound Scripture. And so now we get to verse 37 of Acts chapter number two. Well, I just want to read verse 36 one more time because I like it. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. He does not pull any punches. He just tells it exactly how it is, straightforward and honest. You crucified the Savior. That's the, that's the end of his message. That's the invitation call is you, you guys killed Christ. Look at verse number 37. Now, when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do now? This, this is a wonderful response to final preaching. We will see later on in Stephen's message that people can get pricked in their hearts and go the other way and not respond well. But here, these people, they have a wonderful response. They say, all right, preacher, you're telling us these truths from the Bible. You're expounding these things. You're telling us about Christ and who he is. What do we do with this information? What do we do to, you know, what's the purpose of all this preaching? What do we do in response to it? That's a good response. verse thirty-eight and Peter said unto them, Repent, be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Verse number thirty-nine, for the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are at far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call, and with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation. Now, a couple things I want to point out, verse thirty-seven, the proper response to preaching, verse thirty-eight through forty-one, Repentance and baptism, I want you to notice one thing. First of all, the baptism takes place after repentance, after salvation. When somebody decides to be saved, when somebody chooses Christ and repents of their sins and calls on the Lord to be saved, the next step in that progression is to go and be baptized. It's a first step in obedience to the Lord. It is not part of salvation. Repentance also is preached alongside salvation. Salvation isn't just ask God for forgiveness and He'll forgive you. There's a part of repentance. It's not a works thing. It's a changing in your heart. When you truly get saved, you will tell God, I'm yours now. Do with me what you will. You'll repent of those sins and get right with God. And repent doesn't mean ask forgiveness. Repent means turn away from. So when somebody says that they were saved, but there's absolutely no evidence in their life, and there's absolutely never been any evidence in their life, then that doesn't really give you much confidence in that profession of faith. But when somebody says they got saved, and you can see they were going down this direction in life, and they turned towards a more righteous direction, towards God, that turning, that work doesn't save them, but it's kind of an evidence that, yeah, maybe they really did mean what they said when they prayed and asked God to save them. I have witnessed many professions of faith, some that I thought were legit, some that I thought weren't, but I don't know. Only God knows, and the individual. Only Brother Ken and God know whether Ken is saved for sure. Only I and God know whether I'm saved for sure. Everything else is speculation. It may be an educated guess, but it's still a guess. But I've had people that, that, hey, they made a profession of faith, and later on you found out, and they maybe even admitted that it was just to impress a girl. You know, because they got all the cute girls at church. And so they made a profession of faith because their daddy wouldn't let her date a non-Christian, so hey, I'll become a Christian. That's not a profession of faith that's going to take that person to heaven. That's a profession of faith that sadly will probably take them to hell because they think, oh I'm saved because I walked the altar and did that and the preacher said I was saved and then I got baptized and now I'm really super duper saved. And they never realize I didn't actually believe, I didn't actually put my faith and trust in Christ, I didn't actually repent of any sins, I just did it because Sally's cute and her daddy wouldn't let me date her because I wasn't a Christian. We gotta be careful with that. I'm always very careful not to tell somebody you are saved because I don't know that. I'll tell them if you truly believe what you just said, or if you truly are honest with what you just told me, then the Bible says you're saved. But I don't want to be guilty of giving anybody false security if they really didn't believe what they said. So, anyways, that baptism after salvation, the behavior of new believers is found in verses 42 through 47. That's where we're going to finish off for this morning. Verse 42, And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. And all that believed were together, and had all things common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking of bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved. Now, earlier in the chapter, we saw that 3,000 were were added to the to the church that day after that preaching. That's a pretty good message. I'd say preach a message and 3000 people get saved but that sounds good. Amen. But but here in verse 47 says and and and the lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. It's not in my notes but I think it's important to point out that the lord does the saving. such as should be saved. Everybody should be saved, but those that accept Christ and allow God to save them, allow and respond to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, are saved and added to church. And so we gotta remember, it's not Peter that is choosing and saving people, it's not Paul that is choosing and saving people, it's the Lord. We do, essentially we do the groundwork here of spreading news and then the Holy Spirit convicts the people's hearts when they hear the news and how they respond to that. will determine whether or not they get saved. We don't do the saving. We just give them the direction. We just give them the path. We just say, hey, you know, there's there's this road or this road. Here's what's going to happen. And if they believe what we say and the Holy Spirit convicts them, they call up, they get saved. Praise the Lord. We led them to Christ. We didn't say, Lord, we got to be careful not to get too proud or arrogant about that. Or maybe the Lord will just stop using us if we're trying to take the glory for ourselves. But you notice they're faithful. They continued steadfastly. Seems to me that no matter what would happen, they continued together. Whether it was bad weather, or whether they slept in, or whether, you know, whatever happened, they were together. They did these things together. They were faithful in doctrine. So it wasn't just fluff messages. It wasn't just, oh, Christ did this and Christ did that, and all these things were so wonderful. There was doctrine, teachings. prayers, fellowship, breaking of bread. That's an easy one, right? Not for everybody though, but it's an easy one. Fear of God. Fear of God was an important part of the early church. Unity, selflessness, and praise. All these things are things done by the early church. Now, based on the wording, this is one of those passages, and we're not studying verse by verse through here, but I have a few moments left. Based on this passage, some people try to say that the Bible teaches socialism, because they sold their possessions and they distributed to everybody such as there was need. This is all within the body of believers. This is all within the church. And as you'll find out later in the book of Acts, this is all by their own free will. Nobody is telling them to sell their possessions and do anything with them. Nobody is forcing them to do anything. Socialism is nowhere in the Bible at all. This is all freewill giving, this is all within the church, and this is all completely separate from government. Now, I don't want to turn it to politics, but I will say a lot of damage has been done by people trying to promote their political ideology through the Bible. And that's not, that's never worked, that's never gone well, it's never stayed true to Scripture. I don't want a government that is controlled by religion. You look at governments controlled by religion all throughout history, they don't turn out well. Rome, the Catholic Church, they control many governments, and it often turned into the slaughter of people. And you look at Islam today, it controls many governments, and it's often the slaughter of people, and it's just not a good idea. And so I'm thankful that our nation has this idea of keeping church and government separated in that regard, because if the government tells the church what to do, we're in trouble. If the church tells the government what to do, we can still go down a bad road. Now, we're the church, so we like to say, yeah, let's tell them what to do, but that's not really how the Bible wants it done, how the Word of God wants it done. The Word of God teaches us how we should behave as the church, and you can't force righteousness onto unbelievers. You say, well, wouldn't it be better if the government lived by the Bible? Okay, yeah, that would, but how long do you think that would last? I had somebody tell me a while back, you should run for president. I said, I would be impeached day one. Because you cannot force Bible doctrine and Bible truth and Bible righteousness and Bible holiness on the people that don't want it. There would be rebellion and uprising day one if you tried to implement the Bible in government. Now, do we want that? Yeah, it'd be great. It'd be wonderful. A Christian is a good citizen. is a wonderful person to have around, and the more Christians there are, the better things will be in any nation. But, the goal, the onset of the Christian Church isn't to change government to match Christianity, it is to save enough people, to lead enough people to Christ, to where the government is forced to make those decisions. If enough people are saved and believe that the Bible is true and abortion is wrong, we won't have to try to cram legislation down everybody's throats to make abortion illegal. Everybody will want that. Because we've gone door-to-door, we've witnessed, we've promoted Christ, and Christ has saved souls, and now there's more Christians than non-Christians. You see that we're going about the Baptist churches for the last couple decades have gone about this the backwards way. They've tried to change government in order to promote Christianity when really the only way to have a righteous or even a sort of righteous governmental body is by having it comprised of and filled with Christians. So, let's focus on Christ and giving people the message of salvation, and then if enough people get saved, that'll take care of all the political mess. So, we've got to be careful not to get sucked into the wrong battles and the wrong points of emphasis. We ought to do exactly what Peter did. He didn't preach anything about Rome. He didn't say anything about the Jews other than what they did to Christ. He just preached Christ. The life of Christ, the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ. and how they needed to be saved. And that's exactly what we ought to do. Alright, let's pray. Lord, thank you for this day. Thank you for your word. Thank you for all that it teaches us. Help us to please abide by and live by those teachings of your word. Lord, help us to be witnesses for you. Lord, we love you. We pray that you please be with the service to follow. If there be anybody here today that does not know you as your savior or maybe they're backslidden or away from you, Lord, I pray please help today to be the day of restoration and Lord, help it also be a day of encouragement for those who are dueling with us to follow you. Lord, we love you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.