PT-1 "The Appeal" (Acts 2:37-40)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/2/2017 7:33 AM

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  PT-1 The Appeal

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Acts 2:37-40

            Message of the verses:  “37 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?" 38 Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39  "For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." 40 And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse generation!"”

            I mentioned in our last Spiritual Diary that this section, “The Appeal,” will take us a few days to get through so we begin this journey  this morning, praying that God will open our eyes to see the truth that is found in this section, a section that will see the first believers come to a saving knowledge in the Lord Jesus Christ in the church age, so because of that it makes this section very important to all who follow in coming to know the Lord as their Savior and Lord.

            I think that we have to put ourselves in the position of these Jewish people who were listening to Peter preach this sermon, as many of them were, as he said, the ones who were out their yelling to have Jesus crucified, and yet God in His great mercy and grace, along with His great love is now, through the Holy Spirit going to open their eyes to see what they did was so very wrong, and then bring them into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.  Peter’s sermon was hard on these people, and yet there are many people today who if they were alive back then would be in the same boat as these people who were listening to Peter, as they would also desire to put our Lord to death.

            After the people heard Peter’s sermon the Bible says that “they were pierced to the heart.”  John MacArthur writes “Katanusso (‘pierced’) appears only here in the New Testament.  It means ‘to pierce,’ or ‘to stab,’ and thus depicts something sudden and unexpected.  Stunned by their inability to evade the indictment that they were guilty of heinous behavior before God, they were overcome by grief and remorse.”  I don’t think they realized it right away, but this was a very good position for them to be in.

            We can understand some of the reasons for their anguish.  The Jewish people have been looking for the Messiah to come for years, in fact all the way back to when Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament which contained first of all the first prophecy of the coming of the Messiah:  “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel’ (Genesis 3:15).”  As we have mentioned in earlier SD’s that the phrase “seed of the women” as seen in this passage as “her seed” is only found here in the entire Bible.  This speaks of the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as He had no human father but was born through a woman.  And so the One they had been looking for came and they helped put Him to death as all humans have done because “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” 

            Next reason “They themselves had done it.  It would have been bad enough to learn that Messiah had been killed.  Far worse was the knowledge of their complicity in the crime.  That no doubt produced in them a deep sense of guilt.  They could not imagine a greater sin than killing their Messiah,” writes John MacArthur. 

            The third cause of their anguish was fear of Messiah’s wrath, for after all since they know that He had risen from the dead probably thought that He may come after them for being a part of this evil task.

            The last reason for their anguish is that they were devastated by the understanding that what they had done could not be undone.  Perhaps we have all been there in certain things we have done that we know are wrong and we wished that we could go back in time and not do that certain task that we did.  I know that I have had that experience more times than I care to admit.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Just as these people were about to learn that when they did something terribly wrong that God loves them and desires to forgive them and have a relationship with them.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust the Lord to give me the grace to learn from the mistakes that I have made, to use them for His glory and my good as He works them out in my life.

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Jesus” (Luke 7:50).

Today’s Bible question:  “Paul saw in a vision a man from what place asking him to come and help?”

Answer in our next SD.

8/2/2017 8:06 AM