Acts Chapter 3:11-26

Jesus in Matthew 7 says this, Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied your name and cast out demons in your name and done many wonders in your name?

Notice that little phrase, in your name, they've thrown that name around, weren't they? They didn't know the nature of the personality of God. And then I would declare to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. It's not what you know about Jesus, there's theologians that know so much information, it's staggering. But they don't know Him. We need to know Him. How do you get to know Him?

Well, you ask Him to forgive you of your sins, and you ask Him to give you the power to follow Him, tell Him you're sorry for what you've done, and you begin to get to know Him. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. Today, we have on the program with us D.A. Brown, one of David McGee's associate pastors here at the bridge.

Welcome to the program today, D.A. What's the difference in knowing Jesus and knowing about Jesus? Bob, someone can tell me all about you, but until I meet you personally, I'm missing out on who you really are. It's important that we get to know Jesus personally, to be the most blessed. D.A., I think that's a great analogy as David McGee continues teaching, Sharing Your Faith, on the program today. Last week we saw that Peter was used to heal this guy that was lame.

It's an amazing thing. So that's kind of what's going on now, and everybody is celebrating that this guy was healed, and we'll pick it up in verse 11. It says, Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch, which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed. So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people, Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? Verse 13, The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go.

Now I want you to notice something. The first thing that Peter does here is he ties in Judaism, or the Jewish faith, with a belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Now we need to understand, at this point, there are no Gentiles in the church. The church is just Jewish people believing in Jesus. The first missionaries were Jewish people. Jesus was a Jewish man born into a Jewish family.

He was the Jewish Messiah. And we need to understand that. So what Peter does is Peter finds the common ground, and he talks about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's so important when you're trying to share with somebody, when you're trying to build a bridge with somebody.

That's the first life lesson. Find the common ground when sharing your faith. Verse 14, But you denied the Holy One and the just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. Verse 16, And his name, through faith in his name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know.

Yes, the faith which comes through him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. Yet now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers. He's talking to the people that played a part in the murder and the execution of his spiritual teacher.

They killed his friend. The mercy and the grace of God. It's just pouring out of Peter right now.

May it pour out of us. Verse 18, But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all his prophets, that the Christ would suffer, he is thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. Now, we've talked about this word repent before, and probably need to revisit it.

It means to turn around, or to think differently afterwards, or to change your mind, literally. Understand, again, Peter's audience, is it a bunch of guys that are, man, they've been out partying and shooting dope and all kinds of stuff the night before? No.

These are the religious leaders. What's he saying? Repent. Change your mind. Now, here's the deal. As we turn from our sins, we turn to God.

But what's the important part? It's turning to God. See, you can turn from your sins and still not be saved. And what happens is, we often put the focus on turning from our sins when the focus should be on turning to God. What happens as you turn to God, you turn away from your sins. But oftentimes we go, well, you've got to repent. What does that mean?

You never do anything wrong ever again. And then a person goes, I can't do that. And what did we just do? We just made the gospel unattainable. What if that was the gospel that God presented to you?

I would have had to say, I'm sorry, I can't do that. But as I turn to God, continually, I continually turn away from my sins. But again, these guys aren't hardcore partiers or anything, so what is it that they're turning to? What is it that they're turning from? They're turning to God. What are they turning from? Religion, self-righteousness, thinking they can earn their way.

So you've got to turn from that. In order to trust Jesus, you've got to quit trusting in your own good works. A lot of people in churches this morning, they're trusting in their own good works. Ask them how they're getting to heaven. Well, I'm getting to heaven because I'm a good person. I can go to church and keep the Ten Commandments and this and that. It has nothing to do with the Bible.

It has nothing to do with the Bible. You've got to give up on you earning your way before you understand you have to have another way. Why you think you can earn it, you're going to try. Years ago, it took like first aid and a lifeguard thing, and one of the things that they tell you is when you're going to save somebody before you do, you've got to let them quit struggling. They've got to quit struggling. You wait until they realize they can't help themselves, they can't save themselves, and then you can help them.

Well, the same is true with the gospel. See, why people think they can earn their own way into heaven through their own good works, they're going to try. But the moment that it happens, and it's happened in so many lives of people here, the moment you realize, you know what, I can't do this. I'm not living a perfect life.

I keep messing up. And in that moment of despair, hope walks into the room in the form of Jesus Christ. And he goes, you know what, I've been waiting for you to come to this point to realize you can't do it.

I've been sitting off to the side watching you struggle, watching you think you can do it, and now that you realize that you can't do it, I'm here to forgive you of your sins, that you can have a relationship with me. So we can't be trusting in ourselves. We need to trust in the Lord. It speaks of refreshing, and refreshing often comes with repentance. In John 7, 37, 38, it says, On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. That's a great verse, great verses.

And understand, I mean, this is a desert community. So imagine, if you will, a desert, no water, talking about water flowing out of you and speaking about the Holy Spirit. And we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit for those times of refreshing. We need to ask the Lord to fill us with the Holy Spirit, that we might be filled, that we might be refreshed so that we can be empowered, according to Acts 1a, to be witnesses, that we would receive the power to be witnesses. And we talked about the Greek word there for power is dunamis. That's where we get our word for dynamite. Filled with the power, filled with times of refreshing.

We need that. Each person has to have personal accountability, asking God, Fill me with the Spirit, Lord. Jesus said, I'm not going to give you a serpent or a stone or something if you ask. He was dealing with that fear thing that so many of us get concerning the Holy Spirit. And he says, how much more will the Father give you the Holy Spirit to those who ask for it? So it's important that we all ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Verse 20, that he may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

Now, Peter does such an awesome job here. He lays out, builds the bridge, brings in personal accountability, says you messed up, but here's your out. Here's your out.

Believe in Jesus. You know, he's saying something's going to be blotted out. Either your sins are going to be blotted out or your name's going to be blotted out.

That's a decision for every one of us. The day is coming, like I said before, the day's coming where you're going to stand before God. What will defend you on that day? One of two things. Either your actions, your works will defend you.

Let me suggest you not try that. Part of your actions are your sins. I don't want to be standing before God trying to explain to him why I messed up so many times, over and over and over again. I want to point to a son and say, I'm with him. He's defending me.

My counselor, my attorney. Jesus, my attorney, what do we say to this? And Jesus says, this is one of mine. The question is, do you want your sins to defend you or Jesus to defend you?

That's the question. See, if you reject Jesus as your Messiah, you reject Jesus as your Savior, you're saying that on that day you want to stand before God and give a full explanation of everything you've ever done and all your wrong actions. Good luck, buddy.

Not me. On that day, I'm going to say, I'm with him. I'm with your son. I asked him to forgive me of my sins. He took off my nasty, stinking, filthy garment and gave me a robe of righteousness.

That's what we need to do. And you know what? Understand, when you're talking to people about salvation, that's the deal. Even getting to the point where you ask them, do you want to defend yourself on that day? I mean, nobody goes to court over a serious offense without a lawyer that's in their right mind. Who wants to stand by themselves on that day?

Not me. And, friend, I sure hope you don't want to stand there alone on that day. You're listening to Pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge.

He'll be right back with more in just a moment. I want to remind you of the free resources available to you on crossthebridge.com. There's a team of hundreds of people that will pray for somebody to be saved. You have a loved one that needs to know Jesus as Savior. You need people to pray for him.

You need someone to present God's word to him. Every day, we're presenting God's word to him here on Cross the Bridge with Pastor David McGee. We can pray for them as well just by simply going to crossthebridge.com and click on the Pray for the Lost button. What I want you to do is put in the first names of the people you love that need to know Jesus as Savior, click on Submit, and immediately hundreds of people will begin praying for your lost loved ones. And what an awesome way to bring your loved ones to Jesus. Here's a word from Associate Pastor D.A.

Brown. I want to take just a couple of minutes to pray for some cities in our listening audience, specifically, Chickasha, Durant, Edmond, Oklahoma City, Woodward, Oklahoma. Lord, thank you for the people in these cities.

Thank you that we get to broadcast in these areas. God, I pray that you would plug people in Bible-believing churches. Lord, I pray if people haven't put their trust in you yet that today would be the day. Lord, we pray for the city leaders, the mayor, the police chief, the fire marshal, Father, all those in government. Lord, we ask that you give them wisdom and discernment and that they would look to your word for advice on how to lead and how to serve the people in their communities. And God, we pray that your Holy Spirit would be poured out on these cities and that many people would be changed forever. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

Thank you, brother. And now, let's get back to David Magee as he continues teaching verse by verse. In verse 21, there's an interesting phrase. It says, One heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things. Now, there are some people that have really tortured that verse. A lot of people can get a lot of verses that say a lot of things.

My favorite saying is you can always torture the data until it confesses. Now, it says times of restoration of all things. There are people, they call them universalists. These people believe that everyone, all people, will be saved. They get that in part from this verse. But you know what?

That's a rather obscure reference to be getting that. Not only that, but there's a lot of scriptures in the Bible that talk about not everybody's going, that some will not go to heaven. Now, Jesus did die for all the sins of the world, but it's also plain from the Bible that you have a personal accountability that you have to ask Jesus to forgive you of your sins. And if you reject Him, the Father will reject you.

So let's understand that. Now, then what is it talking about, restoration of all things? If it's not all things, well, it tells us, it clarifies, it says, all things which God has spoken by the mouth of all of His holy prophets since the world began, since all things which God has spoken. Well, why did God speak? Well, He talked about the restoration of the world.

You can go look at the book of Revelation and see a lot of that. But He also talked about the restoration of the nation of Israel. I don't know if you understand the significance of the rebirth of the nation of Israel.

You need to understand, in the history of mankind, it's never happened. There has never been a nation that ceased to be a nation for almost 2,000 years and then became a nation again, that their language wasn't even what they called a living language. And then the language was rebirthed, and the Bible told this was going to happen before it happened. And I've read older commentaries, and it's interesting, some of the guys are like, well, no, it's more of a, it's not really a physical rebirth of Israel, it's a spiritual rebirth of Israel. But I love the guys, the older guys that I read, and they're like, yep, it's going to happen. Don't know when, but Israel is going to be a nation again. To read that 100 years ago and go, yeah.

Why? Because it's happened. Never happened before in history, but it happened. And the Bible talked about the fact that it was going to flower and bloom. It talks about the fact that it was going to have this bounty of fruit. And guess what? Do you understand?

The nation of Israel, which is about the size of New Jersey, which is a desert country, exports flowers and bulbs to Holland, is the number one provider of fruit to Europe, and God said it was going to happen. So guess what? God says in the book of Revelation how the whole thing ends up. And you know what? If somebody comes to me and goes, hey, this is going to happen to you tomorrow, and the next day that happens, and they go, and this is what's going to happen to you tomorrow, and that happens, and this is what's going to happen to you tomorrow, and then that same thing, guess what? By the time they come to me the fourth or fifth time, and they go, hey, this is going to happen, when's it going to happen, where, let me know.

Why? Because they have a track record. God has a track record. The Bible has a track record.

Mostly accurate, 100 percent accurate about all these things. You can trust the book, and you can trust the Lord. And if He says these things are happening, are going to happen, they will happen. Verse 22, For Moses truly said to the fathers, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brother. Him you shall hear in all things whatever he says to you, and it shall be that every soul who will not hear that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.

There has only been one prophet that this description fits, and that's Jesus, not Allah, but Jesus, that if you don't listen to Him, if you reject Him, you will be separated, you will be judged. Every one of us gets to make that decision, whether we want to receive the forgiveness of God, or whether we want to receive His condemnation. We all make that decision. Now, that day is coming. I don't know when the day is for you. In a twisted way, I wish I knew. I wish when I looked at each person there was just a calendar on their chest. That way I could go up to them and look through the audience and say, Oh, he's close.

And then try to catch him after service. Dude, we've got to talk. But I don't know, and you don't know. God knows, but He's not telling.

But that day is coming. The question is, do you know Jesus? Now, how do you know about Jesus? In America, it's hard to find people who don't know about Jesus, but I mean, do you know Him? Do you know Him in your heart?

Because that makes all the difference in the world. Jesus in Matthew 7 says this, Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied your name and cast out demons in your name and done many wonders in your name? Notice that little phrase, in your name.

They've thrown that name around, weren't they? They didn't know the nature of the personality of God. And then I would declare to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Never knew you. That old adage is true, it's not what you know. It's who you know. It's not what you know about Jesus. There's theologians that know so much information, it's staggering. But they don't know Him. They don't know Jesus. We need to know Him. How do you get to know Him?

Well, you ask Him to forgive you of your sins, and you ask Him to give you the power to follow Him, and you tell Him you're sorry for what you've done, and you begin to get to know Him. Now, here's the thing. Peter's saying these things to this crowd, 33 AD. These guys are less than a generation, less than 40 years away from an incredible national disaster.

The siege of Jerusalem, the Romans taking over, they're leveling this temple that they're standing in. And on that day, there were some people that, they accepted Jesus as their Savior, and that day was different. But there's also some people at this point here that rejected Him.

Oh, I'm sure they kind of, they probably felt the tugging of their heart, and they resisted it. And there's going to be people here this morning. Some people say, you know what? I've been trusting in my own good works.

I know about me, myself, and I, and my sin. And some will turn to God. But some will say, no thanks. And many people here may be on the brink of some serious personal disaster. And I'm not a doom and gloom preacher. But there's a reality that if you keep rejecting the Lord, sometimes you begin to reap what you sow. And some this morning, if you accept Him, He'll keep you from some of those personal disasters. Now, He won't keep you from every personal disaster. Some of us will go through some things.

But let me ask you a question. Do you want to go through them alone, or do you want to go through them with Jesus? I want Jesus to walk with me through those things that life is bringing.

None of us know what's around the corner, but we can know God who does know what's around the corner. Verse 25, you were sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, and in your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. To you first, God, having raised up His servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, turning away every one of you from your inequities. Notice it says, in your seed. Seed is singular.

It's not seeds. It's not saying that the people of the earth will necessarily be blessed through all of the Jewish people. It's saying through that one seed of Abraham. What one seed of Abraham? Jesus. All the nations will be blessed because of this one seed of Jesus. And that's why we can sit here this morning, because of this seed of Jesus, because Jesus did what He did, and now we can do what we dared not dream before.

And that's stand righteous for a holy God. In this teaching, Peter just, oh man, he hits a home run. He starts out kind of like as the prosecuting attorney. It reminds me of a story of a guy's in jail and an attorney comes to see him and he goes, hey, you know what, I've studied your case and I'm willing to represent you. And the guy says, well, I don't have any money. And he said, well, I'll represent you for free.

He says, I don't think so. He goes, you know what, I've studied your case. If you allow me to represent you, you'll be declared innocent. The guy goes, eh, I don't need your help.

The next day, the attorney comes back. Hey, seriously, I'm willing to represent you for free and I know you'll be declared innocent if you allow me to do this. Now, I don't need your help.

I don't want your help. Day after day this went on and day after day, the man rejected the attorney. Then the day of the trial, this guy calls the attorney. He said, well, maybe I need his help.

Maybe I'll just see what he was going to say. And he calls the attorney and he goes, hey, you know what, I'm going to trial today and I'm thinking I'll want you to come with me and be with me in court. The attorney goes, you know, day after day I came to you, asked you to allow me to represent you. Told you that if you did, I would see that you were declared innocent.

I was willing to do it for free. And now the day of your trial, you call me up to ask me to be in court with you. Well, I'll be in court today. But I've been appointed to be your judge. I won't stand with you as your attorney, but you'll stand before me to defend your actions. That's the offer that God gives us, to either him to be the judge or for him to be our counselor, our attorney. That's the decision everybody in this room has to make.

And Peter so shows Jesus in this chapter starts out kind of the prosecuting attorney and then kind of moves almost into defending what happened and then moves into being the pardoning judge, just like Jesus. But each one of us has to make that decision. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Now, God wants you to pray this prayer so much that he died to give you the opportunity and the ability to ask him to forgive you.

Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me, that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead, that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned, and I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things.

Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name, amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. So congratulations, friend.

You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. You can visit crossthebridge.com to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ.

Or you can write to Cross the Bridge at P.O. Box 12515, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 27117, and share how God is working in your life. You know, the Bible tells us that the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. But it does cost for us to come and bring that message to you and to others in your neighborhood through radio, through the internet, and through the mobile technologies that God has gifted us to be able to use. So if you'd like to support this ministry, please go to crossthebridge.com, click on the donate button, and ask God how much he would have you give, either on a one-time basis or a continuing basis each month to help ensure that the teaching of God's word continues to go out through Cross the Bridge.

Thank you so much. Well, D.A., before we go, what are some ways that we can bless our listeners? Each day you can wake up with encouragement from Pastor David through the Word of God with his email devotional, life lessons to consider, a daily reading plan, and a thought to meditate on throughout your day from the heart of David McGee. Those are terrific, and it's easy and it's free. So, folks, sign up today at crossthebridge.com. Thanks again for listening, and join us next time as David McGee continues teaching verse by verse in the book of Acts.