In the sermon 'Christ Sent to Bless Us' by Peter Allison, the focus is on the role of Jesus as a servant sent by God to bless humanity by turning them away from their sins. The sermon, rooted in Acts 3:22-26, emphasizes the continuity of God's covenant with the prophets and patriarchs, notably Abraham, Moses, and David. Allison underscores that this covenant is singular and everlasting, including both Jews and Gentiles as heirs through Christ. The sermon highlights the importance of gospel preaching as Christ-centered, with a call to action, and elaborates on Jesus as the prophesied servant who fulfills the divine will and exemplifies servanthood. It also discusses the joy found in obedience to God's commandments and the communal aspect of spreading the Gospel, illustrated by a story of a village's conversion. Allison calls believers to emulate Jesus' servanthood, find joy in service, and recognize the transformative power of the Gospel in individual and community lives.

Acts chapter 3. We'll be looking at verses 25 and 26 this morning, Lord willing, but I'd like to begin reading at verse 22 for the context. For Moses truly said to the fathers, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren. 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." Yes, and all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days.

You are 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 will be blessed. To you first, God having raised up His servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you in turning away every one of you from your iniquities. The Word of the Lord is forever settled in the heavens. Gracious Father, Thank you for establishing your Word and preserving it, and bringing it to us this morning. May you sanctify us by it.

May we be washed with the water of Your Word. May You give us faith to believe Your Word as You bring it to us this morning. And may You give to us obedience of it. And please sanctify my sinful lips to proclaim Your holy and true Word. Amen.

We looked last week at gospel preaching and some of the aspects or characteristics of it. And we saw that it always points people to Christ. It's Christ-centered. It elevates Christ. And not the preacher, not the convert, not the recent convert, not the one who's healed, not even the healing itself, but always the healer, the Savior.

But we also saw that it includes a call to action. It's not just a declaration of truth. It's not just a message of truth, but it is a call to respond to that truth. And it's that call that we want to look at in a little more detail this morning. That call to action that Peter gives here at the end of his message.

You, he says to the men that he's addressing, these men of Israel, you are sons of the prophets. These Israelites in being sons of the prophets, it means that they were the ones to whom the prophets were sent. The prophets were sent to them. The message of the prophets was a message to them. They were the recipients, the people that were standing in front of Him.

Yes, the prophets had lived generations ago. The last prophet of the Old Testament was 400 years earlier. But Peter says that you, the ones who are standing in front of me, they were recipients of the warnings, of judgments, and the promises of blessings that were made by the prophets. It was to these people that the promise was made that God would raise up from their midst a prophet like Moses. It was to them that the specific promises, the prophetic promises of God, Christ's advent were made.

An advent that would establish a reign of peace and righteousness. It was to them that the prophetic promise of Christ's victorious reign was made. It was to them that the prophetic promises were made of the Messiah who would bear their own sins in His body on the tree, and who would make by that sacrifice, who would make many righteous. You, He said, are the sons of the prophets, and you are the sons of the covenant. These men standing in front of Him who lived nearly 2, 000 years after Abraham, they are part of the covenant that God made with Abraham.

These people, notice what he's saying here. You are sons of the covenant. These people in the New Testament were part of the covenant that God made with Abraham and his descendants. It's not just because they were physical descendants of Abraham that he's saying that. Paul said the same thing to the Galatians, a Gentile church.

The Gentile believers in the Galatian churches. Remember, he wrote that letter to them because of the people that came saying to these Gentiles they had to become Jews, they had to be circumcised like Jews in order to be saved. And Paul said no. It was to those Gentiles that he said they were included in the covenant that God made with Abraham because they were in Christ. And that they were heirs of the promises that God made in that covenant.

And since you, brothers and sisters, stand in the same relation to Christ as the Christians did in the Galatian churches, the same is also true of you. You are sons of the covenant. You are sons of the prophets. And he says that this is not a different covenant. It doesn't say that you are sons of the New Testament version of the covenant that God made with Abraham.

It says you are sons of the covenant. The covenant. Notice covenant is singular. The covenant which God made. So there's only one covenant being discussed here, not multiple covenants, not two or more covenants.

This is the covenant that God made with the fathers. One covenant, singular, is made with the fathers, plural. God made His covenant with a number of different fathers, with Noah, with Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets also speak of a new covenant. In each case, that covenant that God made with the fathers was everlasting. It was an everlasting covenant.

And it also included the children. In each case, The covenant that God made with the fathers included their children. For Noah, God promised not to ever again destroy the earth with a flood. God said to Noah, As for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your descendants after you. Thus I establish my covenant with you.

I will never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And to Abraham, God promised to be God to Abraham, and to his descendants after him in Genesis 17, and I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your descendants after you." And with Moses, God also made a covenant. Deuteronomy 5, just as Moses is beginning to recount the law again, as they're ready to go into the land of Canaan almost 40 years later, 39 years later, God said, The Lord made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, those who are here today, all of us who are alive. God made that covenant at Horeb.

And there are a number of other places in the Old Testament where this same language is used. The covenant in the singular refers to God's covenant with Abraham, Moses, David, and the New Covenant where God said that He would Write His law upon our hearts so that we would delight in the inward man to walk in obedience to His commandments." See, all of these covenants are called the covenant. And what is the promise then of this covenant that God made with the fathers? The promise of that covenant that God made with the fathers is represented in God's words to Abraham, that in Christ, who is the seed, singular, of Abraham, all the families or all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That covenant promise was prefigured in Genesis 18.

When God asked, should I hide what I am planning to do at Sodom since Abraham will surely become a great nation, a mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed in Him." It was spoken to Abraham after Abraham demonstrated his willingness to obey God by preparing to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing His obedience. And Abraham passed that test. He did everything God commanded him to. Remember, God sent His angel to stop him. Right as his hand was raised, ready to kill the sacrifice, God said, stop.

And God said, in your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed My voice. That promise was spoken to Isaac when he went to Philistia because of a famine. God said, I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven. I will give to your descendants all these lands. The lands that Isaac was just a sojourner in.

Give them all these lands and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." That same promise was spoken to Jacob when he was fleeing Esau at Bethel. When he paused for that night to sleep as he's running away for his life from his brother, because he'd stolen the blessing by deceiving his father. God said, Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south, and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed." So that seed, of course, is Christ. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers.

You, brothers and sisters, are the sons of the prophets and the sons of the covenant. And to you first, Peter told the Jews, God, having raised up His servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you. Christ came as a servant. This phrase, servant Jesus, is used several times right here in the beginning of Acts. It's used a couple of times in the next chapter and in this chapter and once in the Gospels.

Jesus is called my servant Jesus. Jesus came as a servant. Jesus said that He came to serve. In Mark 10, For even as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. As a servant, Jesus did not come to do His will.

He came to do the will of His Father. He said, I can do nothing in John 5. I can of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is righteous, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me." Jesus came as a servant to do His Father's will. And He did.

He came as a servant, and He did the work of a servant. He gave Himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father. He lived as a servant. He lived under the law. But He is still the servant, Jesus.

He is our helper. Hebrews 13 says, "'For He Himself has said, "'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'" And that's why we can be content in any situation in which we find ourselves, because Jesus has said, "'I will never leave you nor forsake you.' So we may boldly say, "'The Lord is my helper. I will not fear what can man do to me." We can boldly say that because Jesus is the servant Jesus. He is our helper. And He doesn't leave us.

He will help us in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. And you see, far from being a dishonor to Him to be a servant, It is His delight. It is His delight. It is His pleasure to serve. It is no lessening of His glory that He is called the servant because He doesn't take orders from us and we aren't His master.

But He is the servant. He delights in helping us. He bears our burdens. But He isn't burdened by bearing those burdens. In fact, the more we depend upon Him, the more He is pleased and delighted that we are depending on Him, and the more He helps us, and the more we love Him.

It doesn't work that way with people, does it? The more somebody depends on us, and leans on us, we might become more tired, and more frustrated maybe, and more ready to be done with that. But no, the more we depend upon Jesus, the more He is pleased, and the more He helps us. Draw near to the Lord, and He will draw near to you." Psalm 147 says that He takes pleasure in those who hope in His mercy. He does not delight in the strength of the horse.

He takes no pleasure in the legs of man. In other words, he's not pleased with when we do it ourselves. We can't, but he's not pleased with that. He's not pleased with great armies and horses. And the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His mercy.

You see, we might not ask for help because we don't want to be a burden to others. And there's some wisdom there, but we also have to learn to ask for help when we need it. But we can be reluctant to do that because we don't want to be a burden. But that is not at all how we should look at our Savior Jesus Christ. It's not at all how we should think of God's servant Jesus.

He wants us to depend on Him. To look to Him for help. To come boldly to His throne of grace, to obtain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. He wants us to come. He tells us to come.

Psalm 55, Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you. He shall never permit the righteous to be moved. Cast your burden on the Lord. God's servant, Jesus, delights to bear those burdens. And He does.

Because we can't. But He is a special servant. The word That's used here for servant is a special servant. It's used outside of the New Testament to refer to an especially trusted servant, a noble servant. It's used in Septuagint.

That's the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It's used in Genesis 24. Remember there it describes a story of Abraham sending his trusted servant Eliezer to obtain a wife for his son Isaac. And this was the servant that before Isaac was born, Abraham was saying, is he my heir? And God said, no, one from your own body will be your heir.

This was Abraham's trusted servant. And the Septuagint uses this word, país. It's used, for example, of those who attend pharaoh at his court. It's a royal servant. And I believe it's even used in the Septuagint to refer to a supernatural servant, an angel.

But Jesus is this servant, this special royal servant. But this word also is the word for son, for child or daughter. Isn't that interesting? It's the word for son or daughter. Remember when there was a ruler that came to Jesus because his son was sick and dying?

And then they came to Him and said, well, don't bother the Master because your servant is dead. So the first time it uses the word for son, kuios. But then that last time, the servants, when they came to tell Him that His son was dead, they used this word for servant, special servant. His son was dead. So Jesus, you see, is the servant son.

Jesus takes pleasure in serving. And so should we. He's our Master. He's our example. After Jesus had washed the feet of the disciples in the upper room, He asked those disciples, Do you know what I have done to you?

You call me teacher and Lord and you say, Well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, Blessed are you if you do them.

See, Jesus came to bless us. He came to bless us by being an example as a servant. As a servant to us. To show us how we ought to serve, because it's in serving that we are blessed. Jesus said, blessed are you if you see My example as a servant and you serve others that way.

Remember, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Jesus came to give. He gave His life a ransom for many. He gives in His service. And it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Jesus came to bless us. And one way He does that is by giving us this example of how to give, of how to serve, so that our joy can be full. Because serving Christ through serving His people is the path to joy in the Lord. It's especially true in times of discouragement, in times of loneliness, in times when we feel detached, isolated, weary. The solution is often to look around for where we can be of service, where we can serve others.

It will help us to take our eyes off of ourself and to put them on Jesus. Paul told the Galatians, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ." And he goes on to exhort them a little later, "'And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially those who are of the household of faith." What's the solution to growing weary? It's to remembering that we will reap and do season if we don't lose heart. And so therefore, because this is the case, because this service is the path to joy, it's the path to blessing, We are to take every opportunity we can to do good, to serve, especially those in the household of faith.

And so when you have a need, You can bring it to the household of faith, and in so doing you can give others an opportunity to be blessed in serving. Now God raised up His servant Jesus from the dead. God did not leave His soul in Hades as we saw earlier, but He is the first fruits of the resurrection, the barley harvest. And so because we know that Christ has defeated death, we know that the debt of our sins has also been paid and that we too will rise again. And so Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in Jesus, though he may die, yet he will live. And Jesus said to Martha, whoever lives and believes in him shall never die. Do you believe this? Do you believe this, brothers and sisters? By His resurrection, He removed the sting of death which is sin.

God sent His servant Jesus to the Jews first, To you first. Peter was speaking to the men of Israel. Jesus went to the Jews first. The Gospel went to them first. And there is a theological reason for this and a practical reason for this.

The Jews were the people to whom God gave the covenants and the promises of the Old Testament. They were the ones that God chose. But practically, more people are saved through people they know than through strangers. More People are saved through people they know. Friends and relatives.

People of their own family. People of their own acquaintance. Of their own culture. That's how most often people are saved. It's not through the great evangelistic campaigns.

It's not through the foreign missionaries. The foreign missionaries go over and plant a seed and save a few, but it's those people that then in turn bring the Gospel to all that culture and that community. Most people that are saved hear the Gospel from a friend, from somebody they know. And many of the disciples were closely related or connected. Most of them were Galileans.

They were brothers. There were several pairs of brothers. They were people that knew each other. They were closely connected. And so by going to the Jews first, the Gospel is going to those who are of the same culture.

You see, many times families come to faith as families or even as villages. There's a missionary to the Muslim nations that we support that tells the account several years ago of one of the families, the son of a family, husband and wife, that had been saved under his ministry. This son, this young son, he was a little boy, younger than 10, I think 5 or 6 years of age if I remember correctly, died. Got sick and died. This family had been converted out of a Muslim background.

But they wanted Their son buried in their tribal village, not in the big city where they were living at the time. And they asked this missionary friend to go with them. It was an arduous thing. It was an arduous 10 or 12 hour car ride to get to the tribal village where they came from. But because this was a special family to him, this was one of their first converts, and because this was such a great tragedy, he reluctantly went with them to serve them.

At the end of that long drive that evening, he was taken to a room. And sitting around the four walls of the room were fifty stern-looking men, one of whom was the chief of that village. And that chief happened to be this young boy's grandfather who had died. And they weren't exactly smiling. But the chief asked, they wanted to hear this Gospel message.

And our missionary friend wondered, are they looking for an excuse to cut off my head? But he went forward and he began to share with them the gospel, the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, saying if it was a trap, then at least he would have an opportunity to share the Gospel with them. And when he was finished telling about Christ's work, the chief asked how he could be saved. So he told him that he should pray a prayer like this. And he began to pray, to lead this chief in a prayer.

And everybody else in the room started praying the same prayer. And he stopped. He said, no, no. This is a prayer for those who desire to follow Christ, not for everybody else. And they said, no, no, we all want to follow Christ.

So after he made sure that they understood what they were doing, he continued his prayer and the whole room was saved. Well, the next night that same room was filled with fifty more men. And they were all saved. And the next night, the third night, that same room was filled with 50 more men, and they were all saved. And this whole village was converted because of the death of this one Son.

God can save villages as villages. And He does. And later on, there's another connection of how God used this village. Years later, there was still a very strong church in that village that had grown. Those were not fake conversions.

See, God often saves people through families, and He saves them as families. But of course, it's when each one, Each individual member of those families turn to God. He turns away every one of us from our iniquities. See, God sent His servant son to bless his people. And there are countless ways in which he blesses us.

But this text lists a very specific way in which he blesses us. A way that we might not at first think of as a blessing, but I would say what is mentioned here is the foundation of every other way that Christ blesses us. He blesses us by turning us away from our sins. He does this in justification. Our sins are forgiven, and the righteousness of Christ is imputed to our account, and we are declared righteous by faith in Christ.

But having justified us, the servant Jesus is not finished turning us away from our sins. Remember just before this, Peter said that Jesus was a prophet like Moses. He was the prophet that was promised to the Old Testament saints that God would raise up a prophet from among you like Moses. You see, Jesus did not come to abolish the law. Sometimes the law and the Gospel are pitted against each other.

But not with the servant Jesus. Jesus said, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." What are good works? Well, good works are works that are in accordance with the law of God, the law given by Moses as God's prophet. So that law is the words of God. Remember, He wrote it with His own finger.

And Jesus said, don't think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle will by no means pass from the law until all is fulfilled." For the law to be fulfilled means that it is kept. It is obeyed. When a prophecy is fulfilled, it means that whatever is declared comes to pass.

When the law is fulfilled in this way, it means that it is obeyed, that it is kept. Jesus goes on to say, Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does and teaches them he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." You see, the law plays a very significant role in this blessing. Because it is in turning away from our sins that our joy can be full. It's in turning away from our sins that our joy can be full. Did you hear that, you young people?

Especially who might be tempted to think that the laws are keeping us from joy. They're keeping us from having fun, but Jesus says just the opposite. Our joy is fulfilled in keeping the law. By this My Father is glorified that you bear much fruit. So you will be My disciples." yes, the Father is glorified when we obey His law.

But doesn't that mean that we don't have any fun? That we don't have joy? As my Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love." So Jesus is setting Himself out there as an example for us.

These things I have spoken to you that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full." Why is Jesus telling us about this? So that our joy can be full. What is God's law? Well, it's summarized in the Ten Commandments. You shall have no other gods before Me.

There should be nothing in our life that we desire first before Him. Nothing. His worship, His praise, His people, His Word. These should be our first and greatest delight. And if we find that it's not, then we need to ask the Lord to make it that way.

So that our joy may be full, so that we may know this blessing that Christ has come to give us. It says we are to worship Him in the way that He's commanded, not with carved images. It says that we are to regard His name and His works and His ordinances as holy. It should grieve us when we hear these things taken in vain, when we hear God's holiness, or His righteousness, or His truth. His Word made the part of a joke.

His day, this day, to set it aside, to remember it as a day of rest, a day of worship. This should be our delight. This day, in stopping what we're doing and everything else, is not to take our joy away, but it is to give us joy. It's so that our joy may be full. Are you discouraged?

Is life without joy? Does life seem to be weariness day by day? Well, ask yourself, is this day a delight? Are you setting this day aside as a delight? God gave us this day to bless us.

And He came to turn us away from our sins of not honoring this day so that our joy could be full. He's given to us rulers, parents. Do we obey them? Do we honor them? He's given us, those parents, to honor so that our joy may be full.

Even parents who may not love the Lord. Even parents who aren't perfect, who make mistakes, who give bad commands, who are not worthy of being obeyed. He's given these trials to us to sanctify us. And in keeping His commandments, there is great reward. There is joy.

When we love God, His commandments are not a burden but a delight." In fact, this is how the love of God is defined. Do you think that you love God? Then you will delight in His commandments. And if you find that you don't delight in His commandments, then you're not loving God at that point. For this, John said in 1 John 5, for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome.

We won't continue to keep the commandments if we think that in doing so, they are burdensome, and they're a drag on us. If we have that attitude, then we will soon fall away. So we need to be we need to be especially concerned when we find that God's commandments are becoming a burden to us. We need to look to the Lord for the grace and the strength to keep His commandments and not to ourselves and not to our own ability. Because see, our sanctification is as much the work of God's grace in our life as is our justification.

Christ came to bless us in enabling us by His grace to keep His commandments more and more. God's law then speaks to every single area of our life. There is no area of our life that God's law does not speak to. There is no area of our life that God does not seek to bless us as we keep His commandments, as we learn, as we grow from what we eat and what we drink, and how we dress and the words we say, our conversation, what words we use, and how we speak to people, to how we spend our time moment by moment. God's Word addresses all of these things.

We have been saved to be a holy nation. A holy nation. A people that are set apart. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people. That you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, that we would be zealous for good works.

This is what Christ has come to do. He's come to bless us by turning us away from our sins. Do we seek that blessing? Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are the God of peace and that You have spoken to us Your blessing.

And we pray that Your shalom, Your blessing, Your peace, may rest upon us. That it may flow to our mouths in the words that we speak. That it may flow to our mouths and the words that we speak, that it may flow to our bodies and to our organs and to the healing. Lord, may Your Shalom fall and Your peace come to our finances and to our homes and to our relationships with one another, in our families, and within this body, and outside of this body. May your shalom fall upon the work of our hands.

May you establish it. Through Jesus Christ, we pray. We ask that your shalom might also flow to our nation, to our state, and that our legislatures and our rulers might see your law as that which is a law of blessing, a law of light, a law of truth. We ask this through Jesus Christ, By faith, in your name, Amen.