Appointed For You

Welcome to Verse by Verse. Thank you so much for joining us as we take a look at the book of Acts. We take things nice and slowly as we look and see what God is doing in the big picture of expanding the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea and to Samaria and to the ends of the earth. My name is David Humphrey and I'm the pastoral care and missions pastor here at United City Church in Humboldt, Texas. We're excited to be your church family while you're incarcerated, but we're going to be even more excited when you get out and you can come and be a part of our church in person. We love you very much. Please grab your Bible and a journal, perhaps a pen, and be ready to take some notes and let's learn together through the book of Acts. We love you. We are just grateful, grateful for your son Jesus. We crown him king of our lives and Lord we just want to declare that you are worthy. You are just so worthy. You're worthy of all of the glory. Lord, there's not enough glory for me to give to you for what you deserve. Thank you for saving all of these souls that we've heard about, Lord, and many souls that I have seen in those waters. And thank you, God, for all of the people who give their lives week after week to kids who are often very disconnected from churches. And I pray that there would be families who would come under the sound of the gospel tonight and would even desire to come and be a part of a church that would go to all these links to love their kid. God, that's really a lot. And so I pray for that. All those families, God, may they just experience the love of Christ in a really special way and may many of them accept our invitation to Christmas Eve and show up and just experience your love. Lord, we just love you. We bless you. We thank you. Thank you for your word. We can't wait to get into it. So God, just speak to us now in Jesus' name. Amen. Are we running? Yes, sir. You said they were indigenous? Indigenous. What that means is they are from that area where they serve. Like I am indigenous to the United States, right? These are missionaries, not missionaries sent from other countries like the West where we live, but these are missionaries from those regions. And when they're indigenous missionaries, that means they

have access to places that we could never go. Okay. Sometimes the very color of our skin would prevent us and the passports that we carry don't allow us into places that other people do have access. One of the reasons why we are investing now in Egypt is because Egyptians have more access to the Middle East than most of us. Egyptians can go as missionaries into other Middle Eastern countries that we can't. So that's just something that we do. Absolutely. Glad to clear it up anytime. Thank you. For those of you who are joining us online tonight, we're so glad that you've made it. Everybody in the room, say hello to everybody online. Yeah, we're surrounded by a whole lot of people that are in here tonight. We're going to be back in Acts chapter 3. Last week, we began looking at Peter's speech after the lame beggar was healed. That started in Acts chapter 3, verse 11. And two weeks ago, I reminded you of some very important principles for reading the Bible from Eugene Peterson from his amazing book, Long Obedience in the Same Direction. I'll share these over and over, but I love these. He said, read it slowly. Read it imaginatively. Think as you read it. Read it prayerfully and read it obediently. That's what we're going to try to do. So tonight, we are going to just go back and read, starting in verses 11, chapter 3 and verse 11. I'm going to read all the way down to chapter 4, verse 4, just so we get the big story. And then we're going to pick up where we left off last week as far as our study, and we'll be picking up in verse 19. But let's get the picture here. Again, this man had been lame from birth, and now he has been healed in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth through the words and the hand of Peter and John. So then while he, verse 11, that's the lame beggar, while he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon's. And when Peter saw it, he addressed the people, men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided

to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted justice. to you, and you killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And his name, by faith in his name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. And the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all. And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all things, about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Moses said, The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people. And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days, You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. God having raised up his servants, sent him to you first to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness. And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed, because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand."

So there it is. And as we can see, I've mentioned this last week, but the similar pattern as chapter two had been, miraculous occurrence happened. Peter stands up to explain what's going on and to help them get an understanding biblically of how what happened at that moment was actually part of something that God's been doing throughout all of history, and that God is actually unfolding until the end of time. That's really what he does. This particular speech here, we're going to talk a lot about the end times, because Peter's trying to help them understand, yeah, this is exciting that this guy got up to walk. Let me tell you what's way more exciting than that. Jesus Christ came for you. He died on the cross for you. And he is going to come back for you if you give your life to him. So that's a little bit about what he's going to be talking about. And we left off last week with this stunning statement in verse 18. What God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that is Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. So we looked at this whole idea that Christ's virgin birth, his perfect life, his sacrificial death, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension to the father, all of those things were prophesied in the Old Testament. And we even talked a little bit about the fact that there's this mathematical improbability of Jesus fulfilling even eight of those prophecies. And yet we can clearly delineate in Jesus's life on earth, at least 109 specific prophecies from the Old Testament that he fulfilled in his lifetime. But actually by what we'll see tonight, we're just barely, that barely scratches the surface of the prophecies about Jesus from the Old Testament. So during his first advent, you know, we're in the season of advent and advent means coming. So during his first advent, at least 109 prophecies fulfilled. Now what we're going to see, what Peter has to say about the message that he shared so far, he then goes straight to it in verse 19, repent therefore and turn back that your

sins may be blotted out and that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus. He keeps going, but we'll, we'll pick it up in just a second. Basically in his prior sermon in chapter two, you may recall the men stopped and said, what shall we do? And then he gets pretty much the same thing. He said, you need to repent. This time he doesn't wait for them to ask him, what shall we do? He just kind of beats them to the punch. He just says, Christ suffered. He fulfilled all these things. So you just need to repent. You need to turn from what you were doing and specifically what you were believing. They needed to repent their belief because they killed him. Why? Why did they kill Jesus? Yeah, because they didn't believe who he was. If they would have believed he was the Messiah, they wouldn't have killed him. They killed him because they said he's blaspheming God, and he's claiming that he's God. And if he wasn't God, then that would be a problem, right? If any one of us in the room walked in saying we were God, that would be a problem. But Jesus had the right to say he was God, because he was God. So they killed him, and he basically says, you need to repent and turn. That is, by the way, a double imperative. You know what an imperative is? Some of you English people? A command. Exactly. An imperative is like, you ought to do this is not an imperative. Do this is an imperative.

As parents, we often use imperative, right? We're like, I didn't ask you if you wanted to do it. I just said do it, right? And so that's what he uses here is a double imperative. This isn't like, well, think about it. He's like, repent and turn. You need to do this. You need to turn around, change your view of Jesus and who he is if you want to be saved. Because here's the thing about God that we're figuring out, or we've surely have figured out by now. God's not going to change to line up with us. We need to change to line up with him. It doesn't matter what this government or that government or this people group or that people group think about God. We have to line up with him. He doesn't change with the shifting shadows. So that's super encouraging. So then he says something will happen if they do that. Okay, turn back, repent therefore and turn back so that what? Verse 19. Your sins will be blotted out. Okay, blotted out is a really interesting terminology because how many of you guys, you guys have used a white board before, right? White boards are cool. Like they're, they're really neat. They're, you know, it's kind of a new thing in history, right? I mean, we haven't had white boards for 50 years, but white boards actually are, work a little bit like papyrus, which they were very familiar with. Papyrus is like a, is an organic material that they use to write things on. Okay.

So the way that papyrus worked was kind of like a dry erase board because the ink didn't soak in to the papyrus. So it could actually be blotted out and wiped off. So that's what they could do is they could wipe away something that they had written on the papyrus with a certain technique. And so it's, it's another word that kind of means like when it says blotted out, it's another word for kind of like obliterated. It's like, leave no trace. Like your sins can be gone. He's like, you know, you, the ones who've killed Jesus, that can be struck from the record as if it never happened because that's, that's powerful. He goes on in verse 20 to say a little bit more about Christ's work and the consequences of Christ's work. Not only can your sins be blotted out because of what Jesus Christ did. Look what else? It says that the result of that is that times of refreshing may come from where? From the presence of the Lord. Now, I don't know if you know, if you've read the Bible very much, you may have noticed there's a pattern of where things will be said that are like, they mean, yes, this is happening now. And it's also not yet. You understand what I mean? It's like, okay, yes, you can be refreshed from the refreshed by the Lord in this moment, but not the fullest refreshing that we're speaking of. A lot of, I used to think when I was younger and that, okay, prophecy in the old Testament, okay. It's prophesied in Daniel three, this, it takes place in Acts chapter two, whatever. But it's just always both like this, but a lot of old Testament prophecies actually are prophesying about Jesus's first coming and his second coming, right? So it's like, yeah, it's fulfilled partially, but not yet fully fulfilled.

So, so look at this. When we think about this idea that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus. Now, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We just got finished talking about that. Jesus was already sent. Now he's talking about that. He's going to send him for you, Jesus. Well, I thought he already sent him for them. Yeah. Now he's, now you see what he's talking about. He's like, wait, let's, let's fast forward to the future. This is not just talking about, oh, this is wonderful. God sent Jesus for you. He says actually what you need to do is you need to repent and turn back so that your sins will be blotted out, so that this time of refreshing is not only like a present time refreshing from the presence of the Lord, but so that when he sends the Christ who was appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Okay, that's a mouthful, but let's try to unpack it one step at a time. Number one, look at this phrase that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus. That's something worth just meditating on. The Messiah was appointed for you. Isn't that amazing to think? God appointed him for me. He wanted to send him for me. Jesus came from God just like he promised to obliterate my sin as if I had no sin ever, as if I had never sinned. I love that word justification. Yeah, I know y'all have heard it right, just as if I'd never sinned. That's a really good way

to describe it. He also sent the Christ from God so that we could be refreshed by God's presence now. I would say that is evident through the Holy Spirit who lives with us and is refreshing us right daily. We can be refreshed and refreshed. He also had to do that. He had to send him and call out his bride so that he could send Christ again. You understand right now what's happening is the bride is being gathered together and when the bride has made herself ready, the groom will come, right, and it will be the time of great celebration. So it says that he may send the Christ appointed for you. That reminds me of a Christmas, one of my favorite Christmas prophecies in Isaiah chapter 9. I'll start saying it and you'll know exactly what it is. For unto us a child is born. What does it say next? Unto us the son is given. You see it? Unto us the child is born. It didn't say unto the virgin the child is born. The child was born to all of us because the child and the grown man, Jesus Christ, was appointed for us. And so look, I love verse 21. Heaven must receive him until the time for restoring all the things. So you see, heaven has him right now because heaven had to receive him for a period of time. This is still that period of time, friends. Jesus is where in heaven? He is seated at the right hand of authority. He is there in heaven. And so we know that Jesus is there, but guys, he's only there for a certain time. He is there until the time for what? What's it say? Okay, restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Well, if he is in heaven for now until he restores all things, and we've just been looking at he has restored some things, right? He has restored

us that we can actually have relationship with God, right? He's made us holy and able to interact with God, his father, but now heaven has temporarily received him until the time for the restoring of all things. So what time is that? When is the restoring of all things? It's the second coming of Christ, right? So it's the second advent that's the restoring of all things. You know, I was listening to a podcast of one of my favorite podcast guys this week. His name is John Eldridge, and I speak about him sometimes. And he said, I think if we're going to be biblical in our celebration of Christmas, we need to spend at least half our time thinking about the second coming at Christmas. He said, we spend so much time thinking about the first coming, and that's great, like praise the Lord that Jesus came. But guys, we haven't even seen the good part yet. Like the best is still coming. And if you look in the Bible, the Bible focuses a lot on the second coming. We focus a ton on the first coming. You might think they know why that is. I don't know the answer, but does anybody think you might know? Why do you think we focus more on the first coming than on the second coming? Because it's already happened. Okay, that's good, Tom. That's a good logical response, right? We can, we can, okay, yeah, that happened in history, so we know what happened. Yeah, we can grasp that, right? Like, we can grasp baby, born, teenage girl. What do you think, Greg? Okay, so, yeah, it is first coming salvation. Yep. Yes, he did. Yes, yes. For a thousand years. Yes, there's so much, so, so it's interesting if you put yourself, we're waiting for the second coming, but the Christian, one of my favorite Christmas hymns is, O come, O come, Emmanuel, right? And that's, we are always thinking about, oh yeah, that's all about Christmas. Well, yes, but it's not just about Christmas, right? We are also

singing, O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, right? Who mourns in lonely exile here. Like, we are in exile, people, until the Son of God appears. So, it's not just about waiting for the little baby to show up. It's like, we're waiting for the warrior king to ride through the clouds. So, this is what the whole idea is here, that heaven had to receive Jesus until the time for restoring all the things, which I would also say, if it means he, at that time, he's going to restore all the things, that must mean that all the things have not yet been restored. That's why we have grief, right? Because in heaven, there will not be grief. In heaven, it says that he will wipe away every tear from our eyes. So, we will not be grieving the loss of this one and the loss of that. You know, we had some services of comfort on Sunday, because many of us are grieved at Christmas time. Like, Christmas is hard, because we want more people that we love who are not with us, especially those who have gone and departed. So, we have to remember, guys, that Jesus is going to restore all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Now, what are some of the things that Jesus is going to restore at the second coming? What's going to be new? I'll give you a hint. Oh, there we go. New heaven. New earth. Yeah, new bodies. Guys, we live on a cursed planet. Exactly. Back to the garden. Guys, it's all going to go back to the way it was in the beginning, except better. Because Adam and Eve walked with the Lord in the garden and had a beautiful relationship with God that was unhindered by sin. And then, Adam and Eve walked away. And then, Adam and Eve walked away. God never walked away from them. They went their own way. And so, as a result of that, we're still paying the consequences of it all these years. But God's already got it worked out, guys. It's just a matter of time. And so, all creation has not yet been restored, but the curse will be reversed. And our mortal bodies, as you said, will be restored to Adam and Eve. I like to use Eden as an adjective. Edenic. That's an adjective for you. That'll impress your friends, won't it? We will be restored to Adam and Eve's Edenic glory. Can you imagine? Wow. So, that is the truest sense of what he meant when Peter said, Seasons of refreshing may come from the Lord. Talk about refreshing, guys. I mean, the whole thing's getting like a full makeover, right? And we're not going to have to have all these aches and pains, Michael. We were talking about it, right? Michael was telling me, his body's just falling apart. I said, well, you just keep going, right? Because these bodies that we're in are not made to last

forever. But we're going to get new ones. And they're not going to have pain, and we're not going to wake up with a crick in our neck, and we're nothing like that, guys. Nothing but perfect. It must be a perfect mattress in heaven. I don't know how it's going to work. But anyway, we at Salvation. Yes, sir, Greg? Another thing, this is showing kind of the difference between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Okay. The Father is the leader. He planned all this. Yes, he did. And he told his Son to enact it. He told him to create the heaven. That's right. And provide for salvation. And then he's going to be the ruler over a thousand years. And when he gets to heaven, he's going to be the judge. Amen. And then the Holy Spirit. kind of guarantees things and dwells. That's right. Guarantees, seals. Yes, he is God in us. Yes, absolutely. Yes, they've all got their roles in the plan that the father always had. It was the plan that, as he says here, the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Guys, God tells his prophets what's gonna happen because God knows what's gonna happen. So he just kind of whispers to them, just says, hey, this is coming. I love the verse. It's in Psalms, and I'm not sure what the reference is, but the Lord confides in those who fear him. You know what it is to confide, right? That's like tells you secrets. That's what it means to confide. God can tell you a secret,

and he might not tell everybody else. Sometimes you listen to his voice, he might tell you something that's going on. He might tell you something that's coming up. That's what God gives us. Remember we talked about old men see visions and young men and dream dreams. Guys, God can confide in us what's coming, but a lot of the confiding has already happened. We just gotta get in here and dig it out and find all the treasures, which is why we're here, right? We're finding the treasures. Okay, so here we go. Not only was the first coming of Jesus spoken by the prophets of long ago, so was the second. Listen to this. We have found hundreds, perhaps as many as 1,800 mentions of the second coming in the Bible. Of the four, listen to this. Of the 46 Old Testament prophets, less than 10 speak of events in Christ's first coming. Guess how many speak of events connected with his second coming. So hear me, 46 Old Testament prophets, less than 10 talk about the first coming. 36 speak about the second coming. There's actually more told to us about the second coming than the first coming.

But we don't have a holiday for the second coming, do we? I guess, because we don't know when that's gonna happen, right? We're doing our best with December 25th on Jesus' birthday. So some of the ones that speak of his second coming are, let's see, I wrote them down here. Isaiah, Zechariah, Daniel, Amos. We've studied some of those. We did a long study of Daniel here a few years ago, which was a lot of fun. Christ's second coming is actually, if you look at the New Testament as a whole, the most dominant theme in the New Testament next to the subject of faith. This was interesting news to me, guys. I did not understand how much. It even says Christ's return is the personal, so here's a good way to sum it up. Christ's return is the personal, physical, visible return of the Lord to the earth in resplendent glory. There are at least 333 prophecies concerning Christ in the Old Testament. 109 were fulfilled in his first advent. If you wanna do some quick math, that still leaves 224 to be fulfilled at his second advent. God gave twice as many nuggets about the second coming as he did about the first coming. So you think we're not ready to see the best stuff coming yet?

The best is yet to come, friends. You know, Christ, of course, the Old Testament teaches us that Christ had to die to pay for our sins. He had to be raised from the dead to conquer sin in the grave. He had to ascend to the right hand of the Father so that he could pour out who? The Holy Spirit, that's where he poured him out from. We had to repent and believe to receive the Holy Spirit and to be refreshed, to get this refreshing from the Lord. Now, listen to this. We've just talked about earlier unengaged, unreached people groups. Every people group on the planet will be given the chance to hear the gospel. That's what the scripture says. How do we know that from scripture? Even if you don't know the exact address in here, how do we know that every people group on the planet will be given the chance to hear the gospel? Isn't it to say every tongue in every nation? Yes, because every people group will be represented at the throne of God. I think God is fair in his judgment. He is. He's human, so you might say, well, they hear somebody that didn't hear about God, but they can look at the heavens and realize that. Exactly. That there is a superior God.

That's right. Romans chapter one talks a lot about that, that they can look at the heavens and even just see that God has written. I mean, Psalm 19 talks about it too, right? That the heavens are declaring the glory of God. And so we can see it. So that's one of the things that we are waiting for. Because guess one day guys and I've said this before, but I'll say it again in this lifetime. Many many missiologists that track the numbers and the people groups that are being saved all over the world. Just like some of the things I told you about believe that it is very foreseeable according to the data that the last unreached people group can be reached in the next 50 years. We don't know. Jesus doesn't even know when he's coming back guys. So I'm not going to start making claims of exactly when. All I know is according to the Bible, I believe he will come when the last member that was appointed to be a part of the bride of Christ says yes to Jesus. I think that's the moment. God knows when that moment is. I don't need to know when that moment is. I need to know who is in charge of that moment and serve him. So once that last final member of the universal church of Jesus Christ repents and believes, I don't know if they're going to be in the mountains of Burma or if they're going to be on the streets of Houston. I don't know who that, but guys, there will be a final person that will repent of their sins and when that person does, the Christ appointed for his bride, where it's going to hear the father say it's time. Yes Michael. Question real quick like, okay.

What about the, every people will have the opportunity to hear. What about those of those people who are already deceased? Right. Well, it does not ever say in the scripture that every person on the planet at all times in every single season will have heard of the gospel. What it does promise us is that there will be a representative from every nation. And that is not just like, as I've said, China and India, things like that, because it's people groups. So God doesn't look at the world just in the enlightened nation states. Like, you know, we're thankful to be part of the United States of America, but the United States of America is not a people group. We are made up of a lot of different people groups, right? You know, we're the melting pot as it were, but you know, the, the, the people groups are different. The Bible doesn't say every person who has ever been on the planet earth will hear the gospel explicitly. What it does say back to your point, Greg, is that they will have had the opportunity even just through the witness of creation. What we get to do is go and help them see what they can. They get like everybody just know, guys, everybody knows there's something they do. They know there's something going on. It's up to us to go and clarify and enunciate and help them see. This is what it is. And see, that's exactly what Peter is doing. See, he takes what's happening around them and he helps them see how that fits into the big scheme of things. That's all witnessing is. I think of the American Indians and many of the tribes spoke of the great spirit. Maybe God knows, right? They undoubtedly believed.

That's right. That there was a great spirit greater than themselves. That is right. And you see that in missiologists study these things across cultures all over the planet earth, that they all have origin stories. You can go into a deep tribe in the heart of the Amazon jungle and they've got a story of how this whole thing got started. And some of them are uniquely connected or even have little hints of the story that we see in the old Testament. Right? So it's fascinating. So when we, when we see what is happening here, the Christ who is appointed for his bride will eventually hear the father say it's time. And that's when they'll get back to where we were. That's when he will come and he will restore all the things about which God spoke that he's going to restore. That's when the restoration time begins. Now we live in this, this time, this period of history where the gospel is still spreading. The bride is still being assembled. Okay? So we are not yet ready for that. So if you go on to verse 22, we can begin to see, he starts to list some of these old Testament examples. Moses said, the Lord will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And every soul that does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people. Now, wait, who is Moses talking about? Look at it again. He's saying, Moses said, the Lord will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. Listen to him in whatever he tells you.

Who is Moses talking about? He's talking about Jesus, guys. He is speaking. He knew there's a Messiah coming. You notice he says he's going to be kind of like me? Because what were these people wanting to do? Oh, let's worship Moses. Moses is so good. Moses is so great. Guys, that's all this pastor worship stuff. You know, oh, the pastor, he loves the Lord. And guys, pastors don't need to be worshiped. Pastors don't need to be put up on pedestals. We need to worship the Lord Jesus Christ alone. So Moses is just deflecting the glory, just saying, look, God's going to raise up somebody way better than me. And he says, from your brothers. Remember, Jesus is from the line of David, right? So he says, you should listen to him and whatever he tells you. Kind of like what Mary said, just do whatever he says. You remember that? I love that. That was at the first miracle. She's like, just do whatever he says. I don't know what he's going to say, but just do it. And I just can't even, that whole thing is just an amazing story. But, and then he says, verse 23, it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people. Oh, see what he's saying? If you reject Jesus, whoever rejects Jesus, they will be separated from God forever. Destroyed from the people, right? Look at verse 24. All the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaimed these days. What days? The last days. Yes. I think both the last days, which begin with Jesus's ascension. And now we are in the last days. That's been since Jesus went to heaven. We've been in the last days. So that's not like being presumptuous, but yes, all those prophets, he said, Samuel was one of them and all the others proclaimed all of these things. Look at him, verse 25. Now he's kind of going for the jugular here. You are the sons of the prophets. Remember he's talking to the children of Israel. He says, I know the covenant that God made with your fathers. Do you hear this? He's connecting them to this, to those who he said, you of all people should have received the Messiah. Like he came from your flesh and blood. He came from your lens. You guys are the ones that God made the covenant with your father saying to Abraham, look at this in your offspring, shall all the families of the earth be blessed. That is one of the most powerful promises in the old Testament. Guys, that's in Genesis. You can see it over and over. I think the first time is in Genesis 12 at the calling of Abraham. And he begins to say in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed in your offspring. What does it mean when he says to Abraham in your offspring, shall all the families of the earth be blessed? Who was

Abraham's offspring? I mean, you got Isaac and yeah, but the Jesus came from that line, right? So Jesus is from that son of the promise. He came from the line of Isaac, not the line of Ishmael. We could really go somewhere there. Couldn't we? Because the line of Ishmael created a nation too. And that's the nation of Islam came from the line of Ishmael. And that's a nation that is diametrically opposed to the kingdom of God and to Jesus Christ, his son, who is the son of the promise. So that's a, that's another story for another day. But what Peter's trying to appeal to them is you are the sons of these prophets. You're the sons of that covenant that God made with your father's saying to him in your offspring, shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Now he says, God having raised up his servant, see, just like Moses said, he's going to raise up a servant. He said, well, he did. He raised him up in your generation. He sent him to you first. Who is that you that he says right there? He sent him to you. He's to Israel, right? Exactly. Jesus came to his own. And what, what was the result? They received him. Not that's right, Ruth. He came to his own and his own received him not. So God sent Jesus first. And that's actually how Jesus sent us out to first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. He says here, God, having raised up his servant, Jesus sent him to you first to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness. Wow. That was a pretty heavy statement. He's saying, you of all people should see this. You're the ones I made the covenant with. You're the ones you've been studying it. You've been looking at it. You've been talking about it. You've been celebrating Passover, putting that blood on your doorpost since as long as you can remember. How can you not see that Jesus is the fulfillment? He's the lamb of God, like John the Baptist said, who takes away the sin of the world. He was here and you crucified him. Well, now we see what happens in chapter four. As they were speaking to the people, what was the result here? The priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. Interesting to me, I think this is a little hint to me

that there was more to this sermon than what we have recorded. Because he didn't mention anything in that sermon explicitly about the resurrection from the dead. Unless he is speaking of them in general, like, you know, they've been talking about this resurrection stuff all this time. But nonetheless, whether that's the case or not is not as important. So the result is they arrested them. Who is they and who is them? Who arrested who? The Sadducees arrested all, I mean. Exactly. The priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees arrested Peter and these guys. Put them in custody. What were they guilty of? Being in the church. Yeah. I mean, literally, what were they doing? What were they guilty of? Well, they were preaching something that wasn't what the Sadducees were preaching. And what did you say, Gerald? Oh, they didn't have the authority to teach in the temple. So they're like, who are these people? Unauthorized teachers. Yep, that's another piece of it too. They didn't have the authority to do it,

but they're also teaching things that are contrary to what the temple, the way we've always done it, right? You know, the famous last words. Well, we've never done it like that before. I said many a church, right? And so, yeah, so they went into custody until the next day for it was already evening. But as you can see, verse four, and we'll see it, the words are literally spoken later. The gospel will not be chained. But many of those who had heard the word believed. And the number of the men came to about 5,000. Now, it's impossible for us to know if that means literally just the men. There may have been more women involved. This is a number that looks like it is cumulative, not an additional 5,000 on this day. It's just like, okay, we had 3,000, and now we grew at least a couple thousand more, or however many had come in between there. I think what we're trying to say here in verse four is not as important that about the specifics. It's the fact that you can put the men in prison, but nothing's gonna stop the gospel. It is spreading, and it's spreading like wildfire. And you can see that the religious leaders are feeling threatened. They're like, we killed him. We thought that was gonna shut him up. Actually, the opposite occurred, right?

We thought, okay, we're done with this guy. But now, those little wimpy fishermen and all the other crazy crew are here, and they're on fire. And now everybody's flocking to them, and there's more of them than there was of Jesus. So now what do we do, right? I mean, they're scrambling at what to do. They're trying to control this thing, but there's no control in this thing, because this thing is bigger than them, right? This is kingdom, what is happening here, guys. So this is just an incredible picture of what happens when you just proclaim Christ. When you just lift up Christ, God draws people to himself. I love that. Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself. Guys, if you just lift up Christ high enough, he shines and he draws people to himself. So we've got just a couple more minutes. I would love to take any other questions or comments before we wrap up tonight. Anybody else got a thought or something that came to you as we were looking at this great passage tonight, Michael? I can't help but think of a song that one of the verses says, and it goes back to your sins, we blotted out. Yes. My sin, not in part. That's right. But the whole is nailed to the cross.

And I bear it no more. And I bear it no more. That's right. Praise the Lord. It is well with my soul. Exactly. That's so good, Michael. Thank you. That's beautiful. Absolutely. Somebody else, something that stood out to you tonight or that was just something beautiful that you came across this evening. I will say one of my takeaways from this study myself. that there's more prophecy about the second coming than there is about the first. Yes, Paul? One in 20 verses in the New Testament mentioned the second coming. Guys, if you, I don't know if you're like me, but if you are like me, I need to be paying a little bit more attention to what the Bible says about the second coming. So let's kind of perk up our ears a little bit, and maybe you're convicted by the statement that I made earlier that I heard from one of my digital mentors, John Eldridge. Are we spending as much time thinking about the second coming as we are just reminiscing and being thankful for the first? That's fascinating, isn't it? Like, that's how they got tripped up, because they were looking for the second coming Jesus. They weren't looking for the first coming Jesus. That's right. That's right. That's exactly right. Well, guys, there's so much more to see, and we're gonna continue our journey, but we're gonna do that in a few weeks, right? Because, obviously, next Wednesday night we will be off. The following Wednesday night we will be off. We got some holidays coming up, so we will be back in this room in three weeks. But, Greg,

what were you gonna say? I heard somebody say, let's keep our eyes to the skies, right? That's right. That's right. That is a good word. If any of you that happen to be watching online from our prison systems, I want you to hear that Ms. Jamie was reminding us that we've all, not just those of us who are in the free world, but those of you who are still incarcerated, need to be about our Father's business and sharing the love of Jesus Christ with those around us. I'm gonna close us with a word of prayer tonight, and we will be dismissed. Father, thank you so much for sending your Son to be our Savior. Thank you, Jesus, for all the ways that you have revealed yourself to us. God, how you revealed more of yourself tonight than even we knew before we walked in. God, we want to have our mind and our hearts set on the second coming of Christ. God, if we believed it. God, help us to believe it so we will be more about our Father's business like Jesus was, God, so that we can see more lost souls saved, that we could even somehow, I don't even know, could we somehow speed your coming as we see more and more lost coming to faith. Thank you for all the brothers and sisters in this room, for those who are watching us online. Thank you, God, for those overseas whom our privilege has been to pray for them, God, and to somehow, with the finances that you've given us, Lord, that we would somehow empower the messengers to get out there and share the gospel. We just thank you for that, and we love you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Thank you all, and we'll see you on Sunday. Thanks again for joining us verse by verse through the book of Acts. I hope that you have learned a lot. More importantly, I hope that you'll apply these things to your life this week. Share it with a friend. Great thing for you to just have some discussion with the other people around you. Share the things that God is doing in your life. Again, remember the Bible is a book about God, far more than it is a book about us, so let's learn about him. Let's grow to love him more and more. This is not the only thing that we have on the Pando app. We would love for you to follow some of our other content, watch some of our worship services,

along with the music and the messages, as well as podcasts. We've got a lot of great content and we would love for you to follow that. Also, if you would like to be in touch with us here at United City, the best way to do that is by writing us a letter. You can address that to Prison Ministry at United City Church, 1-9901 Townsend Boulevard, Humble, Texas, 77338. We'll read that, we'll pray for you, and somebody will write you back. God bless you, and we'll see you in the word.