So Acts chapter 2, and we'll be looking at the sermon that comes after the great event of Pentecost, Peter's sermon. I'll begin reading in verse 14 and continue through verse 41. But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you. Give ear to my words, for these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel. And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions. Your old men shall dream dreams. Even on my male servants and female servants, in those days I will pour out my spirit. They shall prophesy, and I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. 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 the gladness of 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 are all 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. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. 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. Let's pray briefly and ask the Lord now to bless as well the preaching of his word. Almighty God, you have perfectly inspired and preserved your word for your people because of the great Concern you have that your people have your word and have that word preached to them. Now attend the preaching of that word with the power of your spirit, that your people might not hear the mere voice of this servant, but the voice of the true servant of the Lord, the voice of Jesus Christ. And hearing his voice, may they have all of the life found in him. We ask these things in his name. Amen. Well, the sermon that we have here following the great event of Pentecost, Peter's sermon, is one of the most, if not the most important sermons preached in the history of the church. As I searched my Logos Bible study tool, I found no less than nine commentaries which refer to this as the first Christian sermon. It's not that there weren't faithful sermons preached. There was preaching even in the Old Testament, by the way. There were faithful sermons before this. Nevertheless, this is the first Christian sermon because it's the first sermon which occurs after the once for all completed work of Christ in living, in dying, in rising, in ascending, and climactically in the outpouring of his spirit, in his pouring out of that spirit whom he received in his ascension. as his reward, as his accomplishment for doing all of the work that the Father gave him to do. Guy Waters speaks of this sermon this way. This sermon is the first Christian sermon. That is, it is the first sermon preached after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. In that sense, it is the mother of all sermons. Indeed, there is a sense in which this is the mother of all sermons. The sermon is a special gift from God to his church, which causes his people, as Peter is filled with the Spirit, that Christ, the ascended Christ, has poured out, and as Peter preaches in the power of the Spirit, causing the people of the Lord to behold the glory of the ascended Christ. In one sense, it is a true model for what all Christian preaching should be like. Not every sermon should be like this sermon in every particular detail. But in the broad strokes, all Christian preaching, all Christian sermons should look to this as the model. Not so much because we will see, and this is nice, Peter's sermon does fall distinctly into three parts. He has a three-point sermon because his sermon is built around three Old Testament texts, which he quotes and exegetes. And so as now I preach a sermon, his sermon, my three points will follow those same three points, those three key Old Testament texts, which are, first of all, Joel 2, then Psalm 16, then Psalm 110. By the way, of course, one of the distinctive ways in which this sermon is the model sermon is the way in which it is built again and again upon God's Word. The preaching of the Word of God depends upon the inscripturated Word of God. But now following those three texts, those three Old Testament texts, let me give you the names of my three sermon points. They'll be more than just Joel 2, Psalm 16, and Psalm 110. First of all, looking at that first passage, I'd like us to consider the day of the Lord. Secondly, I'd like us to consider, as we look at Psalm 16, the face of the Lord. And finally, Psalm 110 in Peter's sermon, the throne of the Lord. Joel 2, the day of the Lord. Psalm 16, the face of the Lord. Psalm 110, the throne of the Lord. And I want you to notice as we work our way through Peter's sermon, there is a definite logic. There is a progressive sequence. There is an irreversible order to these three texts, leading from one point to the next, as these texts line up with an irreversible order found in the life of Jesus Christ. Well, first of all, we consider his first point built around the main text quoted there. First of all, Joel 2, the day of the Lord. Now, we won't be able to go into everything found in that Joel 2 section. Of course, it explains what's going on in the speaking of tongues and the prophesying. But as great as the signs of the Spirit are on this day, The work of the Spirit as Christ pours out His Spirit on Pentecost, the Spirit does not magnify Himself. The spirit as Christ gives the spirit to his church magnifies and exalts the ascended Christ. And we see this particularly in this idea in which Joel 2 sets forth the day of the Lord. That it's focusing on the day of the Lord is made clear down in verse 20, where Peter, quoting from Joel 2, says, the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day. The day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. Now, Peters quotes this passage to show in one sense, in one sense, the day of the Lord has dawned. What is the day of the Lord? Well, if you look at the Bible, the day of the Lord is always both a day of judgment and a day of salvation. The judgment side of things comes into view in verses 19 and 20, where we read that it's a day of, listen to this, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. A day in verse 20 where the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood. The reason why Peter's signaling to us that the judgment of the day of the Lord has in one very real sense already dawned, that's found as we line up what we find here in Luke's second account. with his first account. You see, in the gospel of Luke, in a way that doesn't quite show up in the other three gospels, the language here of judgment found in Joel 2 appears at the, well, it appears when Christ hung on the cross. We read in Luke 23, 44, the New English translation I'm giving here, it was now about noon and darkness. We just heard about darkness. Darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon because, and Luke alone says this, the sun's light failed. Darkness and the sun being blotted out, that's an indication that the day of the Lord has dawned, it dawned in the judgment, the judgment which fell first of all upon Jesus Christ at the cross. The day of the Lord is the day of judgment and salvation. But it's only salvation because it, as the day of judgment, falls first on Christ. It falls on Christ, not because he was a sinner, of course, but because he stands in the place of sinners. He takes the place of guilty sinners on the cross and all the wrath, the full wrath of the day of the Lord falls upon him there as he is the quintessentially cursed man. Note again the language describing the day of the Lord in verses 19 and 20, a day of blood. A day of smoke, a day of fire and darkness. Does not blood, smoke, fire, and darkness perfectly point to the kind of judgment Christ faced as he is the first victim of the day of the Lord there at the cross? The first Christian sermon begins with Christ and his cross. begins with the day of judgment falling upon Christ there. The day of the Lord is the day where judgment come, and that day first dawns for Christ at his cross. So the first point in Peter's sermon, the first Christian sermon, is the day of the Lord, which shows us Christ and his cross. The second point is the face of the Lord. You'll see why I call this the face of the Lord as we move now to his second text, his second Old Testament text, Psalm 16. As we do move to Psalm 16, the movement going on is like this. It's an ascending movement. We move, we ascend, as we move to the second text, from earth to heaven. The sermon of Acts 2, here as we come to the second part, the sermon pierces the cloud of Acts 1, into which Christ was received. And we are told in chapter 1 that he is received out of their sight. This sermon, in the Psalm 16 portion particularly, pierces the cloud, which is impenetrable to human sight, that we might see into heaven now. that we might see beyond the cloud veil, that we might behold that scene in heaven through preaching, through Peter's words as he sets forth the Old Testament scriptures. And he does this as he begins in verse 25 this way. Listen to this. I saw the Lord always before me. Now think about this. When Peter quotes Psalm 16 and says, I saw the Lord always before me, who is the I that is being spoken of there? Let me give you a moment to reflect on that question. It's quite important. Who is the I who says, I saw the Lord always before me? While David may have written this, it's not ultimately David who this is about. And we know that because Peter introduces Psalm 16 this way in verse 25, for David says concerning him, David says concerning him, that is someone else, not himself, beloved, the I and the him being spoken of. It's not David, it's Jesus Christ. And follow me here, what Peter is doing in his sermon is Through preaching, he lifts us up into heaven, not to show us just Christ, though he is showing us Christ, he shows us what Christ is doing there. He shows us who it is that Christ sees. Again, verse 25, I saw the Lord always before me. Don't let that be confusing to you here. as the I is Jesus Christ, that is Christ as he has returned to heaven in a new way. He returns not merely as God, but as the God-man, as mediator, the one who enters heaven clothed in our humanity with our own flesh and blood. And Peter's declaring to us that this Christ, he sees the beauty He sees the glory of the living and true triune God. I saw the Lord always before me. Peter's sermon moves from beholding Christ as our representative on earth as he hangs on the cross at the beginning of the day of the Lord He moves us from that to beholding Christ as our representative as he enters into heaven. And as he gains for us the greatest blessing, the blessing of the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord is a day of judgment and also a day of salvation, a day of blessing. What's the greatest blessing? The greatest blessing is God himself. The Lord Jesus clothed in our flesh and blood as our mediator, He sees the Lord always before him. This seeing of God, it's sometimes referred to by theologians as the beatific vision. It's found all through the Bible. And in a real sense, it's the greatest blessing God ever gives his people because it's God's giving of himself to his people. Seeing or beholding God is set forward innumerable times in the scriptures. Let me just give you one instance, which we'll sing in just a moment, in Psalm 27, verse 4. The psalmist says this. One thing I have asked of the Lord, that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life." To do what? To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. He wants to gain This glorious vision, he wants to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. And here in Acts 2, what Peter shows us is that Christ is our representative, the God-man. He gains for us not just, if I can put it that way, just the forgiveness of sins. He gains the greatest of all blessings. He gains for us God himself. He gains for us perfected face-to-face communion with the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable Triune God. He gains for men as He first, as a man, beholds the beatific glory of the triune God, possessing, as I said a moment ago, that face-to-face communion with the Lord as mediator, as God-man. He gains what the Westminster Confession of Faith 7.1 says is, he gains as his blessedness and reward, God himself. that it is this that he gains and that is being shown to us in this second section from Psalm 16 that he's gaining God in this in this glorious vision that's made clear and beyond dispute from Peter's uh the last verse that he quotes from Psalm 16. In verse 28 he says, listen to this, you have made known to me the paths of life You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Something that's very interesting. On occasion, Greek and Hebrew words are similar in that they have the same meaning. And here it is the case. The word here translated present, both in Greek and in the original Hebrew, is the word face. Christ has been made full with the gladness, with the joy of the face of God, eternal face-to-face communion with God, internal face-to-face enjoyment of God as his blessedness and reward. Beloved, that's been the hope of the believer from the earliest of times in the Bible. Note the great benediction, the great Aaronic benediction of Numbers chapter 6. The priest who had gone into the holy of holies and the high priest who would go in, excuse me, the priest who went into the holy place and the high priest who would go in once a year to the holy of holies would come out and after going in to God's presence would with upraised hands declare, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up, the ESV says countenance, but actually it's the same word again. The Lord lift up his face upon you and give you peace. In his ascension, Christ as man ascends the mountain of the Lord. He enters into God's holy place and the glory of God which he beholds, not merely as God, he had that from all eternity, but now as our representative, as God-man, he radiates back to us his people. And while in one very real sense, the great hope of beholding God's face is future, it's future with these eyes. There's a sense in which beholding God's face, it's already begun with another set of eyes. It's the eyes that Paul refers to in Ephesians 1.18 as the eyes of the heart. In other words, the great blessing that Christ secures as he ascends into heaven and sees the Lord set forever before him, that beatific vision is communicated to God's people. And here I'm going to distinguish the Protestant and Reform way from the way it's understood in other traditions. For example, the Roman Catholic Church says, yeah, that's future, and we'll realize it one day as we behold God's essence and are divinized. Or as the East thinks similarly of such divinization, which they call theosis. That's not the Protestant, that's not the Reformed notion of beholding God. Rather, we presently see him, we presently behold him as we hear him. As we hear him in the preaching of the word, our already enjoyment of God's face is described by Paul in 2 Corinthians 3.18 this way. Listen to this. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. And then just a few verses later, Paul makes crystal clear that that beholding of the face of God, which is already happening, is done through preaching. We see as we hear, as he says this, For what we proclaim, what we preach, is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. And then he says this, for God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The greatest blessing The blessing of communion with the Lord is granted to us through Jesus Christ who endures the day of the Lord at the cross and who enters into heaven to behold the face of the Lord. And as he is our representative, behold the face of the Lord, we behold the glory of the triune God in the face of Jesus Christ and commune with the Lord through the preaching of the word first and foremost. We move from the day of the Lord to the face of the Lord, and now we're continuing moving upward and into the innermost sanctum, if we were, to the throne of the Lord. Peter's third and last point is found as he quotes Psalm 110 and verse 29. He begins this way, David both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. And then in verse 30, Peter says how David prophetically foresaw God placing one of David's descendants on his throne, by which he doesn't mean David's throne. He means God's throne. Verse 34 and 35, 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. Beloved, as we come to this third and final text, this third and final point of Peter's sermon, again, we begin on a journey that starts on the earth, with the day of the Lord, which visits Christ on the cross. Then we move into heaven, quoting Psalm 16, as Christ sees the Lord forever before him, as he is full of the joy of God's face. And now we go into the innermost recesses of heaven, into the most holy place. And these three points really do align with the three sections of the temple, right? That first outer section was the place where the sacrifice was made. thought of as setting forth the cross of Christ. And then the priest entered into the holy place. But then the high priest entered once a year into the throne room of God. Well, the copy version of it, anyways. The place where God's throne was, the mercy seat above the Ark of the Covenant. That's where Christ goes in. He does not go, as the writer of Hebrews says, into the copy. As the earthly priest and high priest did, he goes into the heavenly reality. He sees God. He enjoys perfect face-to-face communion with God for those he represents. And now, on this third and final stop, he takes his seat. where the high priest would never have sat when he went into the most holy place. He would never have sat down on God's throne on the ark, but Christ takes his seat there. He brings God's people into that innermost place of communion with the Lord. In one way or another, this is what Christian preaching should do, not in every detail, But it takes us, it begins with Christ, it begins with his cross, it takes us into heaven. It shows us how Christ as mediator, as our representative, beholds the Lord. As Larger Catechism 54 says, as God-man, he is advanced to the highest favor with God the Father. with all fullness of joy and glory, and it shows us Jesus Christ seated at God's right hand, ruling and reigning. And what is the proper response, the only proper response to such Christian preaching? There's one word for it, worship. I just talked to one of my elders some time ago, and he was reflecting on how, in different Christian traditions, worship is thought of as like, like preaching is not worship, right? The worship is the other parts, the singing. No. Preaching is the place where we are lifted into heaven to behold the ascended reigning Christ. That's the preeminent place where God's people worship. There's only one proper response to such preaching, doxology. worship of the triune God through Jesus Christ. Is that your response? Do you have the hope of this Christian preaching as Christ is your representative, as he suffers for you on the cross, as he enters into heaven and gains God as his blessedness and reward and as he is enthroned? Not every Christian sermon needs to have three points, as I have said a couple of times now. But it's nice when sermons have conclusion statements, and Peter's has that. And a pastor gives a long-winded sermon, maybe like mine this evening, and he sums it all up at the end. Peter's conclusion statement comes in verse 36. It wraps everything up. Let all the house of Israel Therefore, know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you've crucified." If you're following, that conclusion statement moves you all the way from his first point, Jesus crucified, to his enthronement as Lord at the right hand of the Father. God has made him Lord. The language of Lord actually, it doesn't just summarize, it takes us back to another beginning part of Peter's sermon where he, the end of his quote from Joel 2 ends this way in verse 21. Peter says, and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now we're ready to understand, well, who is the Lord? that we call upon and are saved. It is Christ. He is Lord. He is Lord not only as he was eternally the second person of the Godhead, but he is God's messianic king enthroned on high for the sake of God's people. What about application in preaching? If this is the model sermon, is preaching to have application? That's one of the debates, and exactly how is it to happen? Well, of course there must be application in preaching. And in Peter's sermon, we see that. The application, the proper response to true preaching flows from Peter's response to his hearer's question once he says, this Jesus whom you crucified God has made Lord and Christ and they realizing that they are doomed cry out brothers what shall we do? Peter's application is found in verse 37. Repent and be baptized. How is that application? How is that the proper response to true preaching? Well, true preaching does demand, first of all, a response of faith. We've seen that. And while faith is not the same thing as repentance, all true faith embraces repentance. Peter says, repent and be baptized. Now, as Reformed people, we understand that a person is baptized only once. So what's the ongoing application for those who have already been baptized? It's what our standards quite clearly talk about in Larger Catechism 167, which speaks of improving our baptism. Listen to this. Larger Catechism 167, how is baptism to be improved by us? The needful but much neglected duty of improving our baptism is to be performed by us all our life long, all life long, not just once, all life long. And then the catechism says, especially in times of temptation, Why do we need to think about our baptism, especially during times of temptation? Well, because, as the answer later says, because we need to draw strength from the death and resurrection of Christ into whom we are baptized for what? For the mortifying of sin. Repentance, quickening of grace, and by endeavoring to live by faith and to have our conversation in holiness and righteousness as those who have therein given up their names to Christ and to walk in brotherly love as being baptized by the same spirit into one body. In other words, the application is a life of baptismal repentance, if I can put those two things together. Repentance. baptismal repentance. In conclusion, Acts 2 gives us the model Christian sermon in the sense that, in one way or another, all Christian preaching takes us through the cross of Christ, into heaven through Christ's resurrection and ascension, to behold the glory of the triune God in the face of Jesus Christ, to worship through Christ as Christ has gained access into heaven and is seated as our enthroned king. All preaching should call for a response of faith and a response of baptismal repentance. I think this is a wonderful sermon to guide us and to help us. It's helped me as I've thought about this. May God grant us the proper understanding of Christ as he's set before us in this gospel first Christian sermon. And may he grant us the response that is proper as Christ has set forth as well, faith and repentance. Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you for Jesus Christ who has ascended into the heaven in that cloud which veils him from the sight of the eyes in chapter one. We thank you that through preaching, through this first Christian sermon, the veil is pierced and we enter into heaven and behold our savior there high and lifted up. We pray that we would rest on this Christ, that we would find our all in all in him, that we would yield our entire lives in worship to the triune God through Christ. that we would have lives of faith, lives of baptismal repentance. Grant us these things by your power and for your glory. We ask them in Christ's name, amen.