In the sermon 'Peter Preaches Christ's Exultation' by Peter Allison, Peter expounds on Acts chapter 2, focusing on the resurrection and ascension of Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, notably Psalm 16. He addresses a Jewish audience at Pentecost, emphasizing that Jesus, whom they crucified, is both Lord and Christ. Peter discusses the patriarchal language found in the scriptures, noting its covenantal significance. He argues that God relates to families through their heads and that societal structures crumble when this order is disrupted. Peter stresses that the Holy Spirit plays a crucial role in convicting people of sin, leading them to repentance and baptism in Jesus' name for the remission of sins. This sermon illustrates how biblical preaching involves teaching, logical reasoning, and application to the hearer's heart, ultimately urging a response of repentance.

Please turn in your Bible to Acts chapter 2. And we will begin reading at verse 29. I'm going to actually read through verse 39. Hear God's Word. Men and brethren, let me Speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.

Therefore, being a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of His body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on His throne. He, for seeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh seek corruption. This Jesus God has raised up of which we are all witnesses, therefore being exalted to the right hand of God. And having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.

Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do?' Then Peter said to them, Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promises to you and to your children and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call." May the Lord be gracious and merciful to us according to His Word. Heavenly Father, may you seal to our hearts by the work of Your Holy Spirit this word that we have read. May you give us feats to obey it and a heart that delights in it. And I ask that You would sanctify my sinful lips that they may proclaim the riches of Your grace this morning. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Well, we pick up this morning in the middle of Peter's sermon to the Jews that were gathered there at Pentecost, gathered in Jerusalem at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit had fallen upon the people in the room and they began to speak in many tongues, the wonderful proclaiming and declaring the wonderful works of God. And there were some that mocked. Some that mocked and said, no, this is what you're hearing is drunks. They're just drunk. Drunken babbling, mumbling.

And if you've ever heard a drunk mumble, and you can listen to Tucker Carlson's interview with Greg Paxton, he has a video of the Speaker of the House of Texas presiding over the house as a drunk, and he's mumbling. It's very distinctive. You'll know when you see it. And that's what these people were saying the disciples were doing, that they were slurring their words and they were mumbling incoherent thoughts and sentences, and they mocked. Peter stood up and corrected their misunderstanding, telling them that what was happening was what had been prophesied by Joel in Joel chapter 2.

And then last week we looked at Peter's part of the sermon where he proclaimed to them who Jesus was. And then he quotes again from Psalm 16 because you see all sermons that are preached by heralds that Christ sends preach His Word. They don't preach their own ideas. And so Peter goes to Psalm 16, that we looked at last week. When he finishes quoting from Psalm 16, he then continues addressing these crowd with men and brethren.

Now this address is an embarrassment for some. Men and brethren. What about all the women? There were women that were there. In fact, Acts 1 names the women, some of the women that were there.

One of the women, Mary. What about them? All the modern translations must be embarrassed by this because they soften it to just brothers. But the Christian standard Bible goes even farther and changes men and brothers to brothers and sisters. They change men of Judah in verse 14 to fellow Jews, and they change men of Israel in verse 22 to fellow Israelites.

Why are they doing that? That's not what the Bible says. They're embarrassed. It's not just here in Acts that this language is used. Men and Brethren is used some ten times, I believe, in the book of Acts to address people.

This is the language of the Bible, because the Bible teaches patriarchy. And that's not chauvinism or male prerogative, nor is it feminism. Matthew Henry says, quote, that Adam was first formed, then Eve. That's in 1 Timothy 2.13. Adam was formed first, then Eve.

And she was made of man, and for the man. That's in 1 Corinthians 11. Matthew Henry says, All are urged there as a reason for the humility, the modesty, both these points that he brings up there are urged as a reason for the humility, the modesty, the silence and the submissiveness of that sex in general, and particularly the subjection and reverence which wives owe their own husbands. It goes on, Just as man being made last of the creatures, as the best and most excellent of all. So Eve's being made after Adam and out of him puts an honor upon that sex as the glory of man.

If man is the head, she is the crown, a crown to her husband, the crown of the visible creation, the dust. The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double refined. Matthew Henry goes on to say In this famous quote you've probably heard before, Eve was not made out of His head to rule over Him, nor out of His feet to be trampled upon by Him, but out of His side to be equal with Him, under His arm to be protected, and near to his heart to be beloved." You see, God relates to us covenantally. Covenantal government is representative government. The covenantal head represents the family.

That headship of patriarchy brings a responsibility to provide, to protect, and to prize. And when you destroy patriarchy, you destroy society. Last month, Carrie Gress published a book entitled The End of Woman, How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us. And she says, the real problem is that feminism from the very start began with the wrong question, which was, how do you make women more like men? And once you start seeing that question, she says, then the whole movement makes sense.

She says, then You can get from Mary Wollstonecraft's 1792 book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Calling for Radically Restructuring society, erasing male hierarchies, and ushering in a more egalitarian vision of the sexes." She says, then you can get from that book in 1792 to the trans movement. The trans movement today tries to make women into men by cutting off their female parts and stitching on male parts. And they claim, having done that, to make a woman into a man. See, Peter here is addressing everyone through family heads. Men and brethren.

There are plenty of places where the Scripture addresses women directly. And there are many places where women are honored. But it also addresses families through their covenant head. God deals with us covenantally. That means that God deals with people as families.

And He addresses Himself to those families by addressing Himself to the heads of those families. That's why it's important in evangelism to reach the head of the family. I know a number of families where when husbands converted to the faith, their wives followed soon after. Just think of it this way, what do most churches have more of? Wives with unbelieving husbands or husbands with unbelieving wives?

You see, in addressing the heads of the families, Peter is respecting the family government that God has established. God holds husbands accountable for the actions of their families. In numbers, 30 vows that were made by a woman could be annulled without any guilt to the woman in the day that her husband or in the case of a daughter, her father heard the vow. Then she would be free of the vow and he would be responsible for that vow. That's why God came in the garden after the fall.

God came seeking Adam. He said, Adam, where are you? Not Eve. Even though Eve was the one who was deceived and fell first. And so Peter continues this sermon addressing men and brethren and goes on then to declare the message of the text that He had just read in Psalm 16, which is the exaltation of Christ.

Now, good preaching involves teaching. It involves explaining the meaning of the text, which is what Peter does here. His first point is that the patriarch who wrote Psalm 16 was not speaking of himself in this psalm. He was speaking of Jesus Christ. His second point is that David, who was both a king and a prophet, and he calls David here a patriarch.

Patriarch simply means rule by men. He says the Patriarch David was both a king and a prophet and he knew because God had promised him that from the fruit of his body, according to his flesh, God would raise up the Messiah to sit on David's throne. David knew this because he was a prophet and foresaw it. He spoke prophetically. And he wrote about the resurrection saying that God would not leave Christ's soul in Hades, nor would his flesh see corruption.

We talked last week about how that word Hades was translated into English as hell. But it's Hades. But he wouldn't leave Christ's soul In Hades, nor would his flesh see corruption. His bones would not be broken, and his body would not decay in the grave." But he said, God raised Christ up and exalted Him to the right hand of God. David knew, because God had promised to him, that one from his own body, according to the flesh, would sit on His throne.

And Isaiah said that the Messiah would sit on David's throne eternally. Jesus was descended in the flesh from David through his mother Mary, who was a descendant of David through Nathan, one of David's sons, not through the line of kings. The line of Jehoiakim, which was the line of David that descended through Solomon, and that is given as the line of Joseph, the line of Jehoiakim had been cut off because they were wicked. They were wicked kings. Jeremiah, which speaks of all the Old Testament books, speaks the most about the throne of David.

Jeremiah said in chapter 36, 29, and you shall say to Jehoiakim king of Judah, and he was to say this because Jehoiakim was the king who had, when the book had been read to him, as each page had been read, he cut it out of the book and threw it in the fire. That was how he mocked and blasphemed God's Word. And because of that, Jeremiah was told to say to Jehoiakim, Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim, King of Judah, He shall have no one to sit on the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat of the day and the frost of the night." That line was cut off. There was never a king that reigned from Jehoiakim's body. That line of David was legally cut off.

But Jesus wasn't descended in the flesh from Joseph. He was descended in the flesh through Mary, who conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. To sit on David's throne means to rule. Means to rule. It doesn't mean that someone is physically sitting on a piece of furniture somewhere.

Jeremiah uses this phrase a number of times to speak about the reign of kings, long after David is gone and the piece of furniture that he sat on was gone. See, this happened, this reigning, this beginning to reign happened at Jesus' resurrection. Peter says in verse 31 that David spoke this prophecy, quote, concerning the resurrection of the Christ. That means that Christ is reigning now. Because Christ is risen from the dead, Peter says, Christ is reigning now.

David spoke this concerning the resurrection, that when that happened, he would sit on the throne. He would raise up Christ to sit on His throne. He, He's saying David, for seeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that his soul was not left in Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. I look through John Walvoord's discussion of the Davidic covenant to see how he handled this, but he never mentions this passage where Peter connects this sitting upon the throne. He would raise up Christ to sit upon the throne, never connects it with this passage.

Good preaching instructs, it explains the meaning of the text, but it also is teaching that is directed to the minds. It uses understanding. It speaks to people's understanding. And Peter uses two logical arguments to show that this text was about Christ and not David himself. He says first that David is dead and buried and his body is still with them in the tomb there in Jerusalem.

And it has suffered corruption. It has decayed. By then, David reigned around just after a thousand. So David's body has been in the ground a thousand years at that point. It's gone.

There's just maybe bones left. It has decayed. So he uses that as the first argument. This couldn't be about David because David, he's still there. He's still buried in a tomb.

And his body's decayed. His flesh is gone. Eaten by worms. And the second logical point that he makes is that David did not ascend into heaven. Verse 34, For David did not ascend into heaven, but He says himself, David says, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.

See, David didn't ascend into heaven, so David can't be the one sitting at the right hand of God. But good preaching isn't just teaching. It isn't just teaching the propositions of the truth, propositional truth, but it also applies that truth to the hearts of the hearers. And so Peter applies these truths about Christ's exaltation to the right hand of God, to His reigning on the throne of David. He applies that to the hearers personally.

And he says, let all the house of Israel know that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah. The house of Israel believed that Messiah would come. They were waiting for the Messiah. They all were waiting. That was central to their faith.

The disciples asked Jesus if He was the Messiah. John the Baptist asked Jesus if He was the Messiah. John the Baptist asked Jesus if He was the Messiah. They just didn't know who He was. And so Peter declares to them that this Jesus whom they had crucified was the Messiah, the Christ.

He said, you've just you crucified the Messiah. He's already condemned their giving the man Jesus to be crucified as a wicked and a lawless act which their hands had did. They gave lawlessly because Jesus the man was not condemned. He was not deserving to die. But they cried for Him to be crucified.

They cried for this innocent man that even Pilate recognized was an innocent man. They cried for Him to be crucified as a man. Peter has already pointed that out. Now, He adds to that, saying that they crucified the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus wasn't just any man.

He was a man, but He wasn't just any man. He was the Christ. Peter says to this crowd of Jews that they crucified the Messiah. They crucified Christ, even though it wasn't their hands that nailed Christ to the cross. The Roman soldiers did that.

They didn't do that. These people weren't the ones that pronounced the sentence condemning Christ to be killed. Pilate, Pontius Pilate, did that. They crucified Christ because they were assenting to His death. They were the people that were Shouting, crucify Him, crucify Him.

They were the people that were mocking the coming of the Holy Spirit. And When the people heard this, they were convicted of their sin. And that brings out the second main point about what biblical preaching is. It's not simply declaring truth, but it is providing the imperative, what we ought to do. And when the people hear this message, this proclamation of the truth, there's a response in their hearts.

They are convicted. They are convicted. They are cut to the heart. They are pierced to realize that they had crucified the Christ. Now why?

Why were they cut to the heart? Was it because Peter's sermon was so outstanding? Did he make a powerful appeal to their emotions? To get them out of their seats? Did he offer them peace and everlasting joy and contentment if they just would respond?

No. He didn't do that. He taught them about Christ. He proclaimed Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. And He did it from the Scriptures.

See, the conviction in their hearts that they had just sinned is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit testifies of Christ, Jesus said. When the Helper comes whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of me. The Holy Spirit was working in their hearts. And that is why they were convicted, because the Holy Spirit was testifying through Peter's words to Jesus Christ that He was God.

The Holy Spirit used Peter's sermon to bring them to understand something that they knew before, but they couldn't understand. They knew they had crucified Christ, but they didn't understand that. It was through the conviction of the Holy Spirit that they saw their cries to crucify Christ for what they really were, a wicked sin of a corrupt heart against the Lord of glory. Notice that mere signs were not enough. These people had seen a lot of signs.

These people saw Christ rise from the dead. Peter says they were all witnesses of Christ's resurrection. They all witnessed this man Jesus who was dead and buried, whose side had been pierced with a spear. They saw this man come to life. Verse 32, of this we are all witnesses.

And Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15 that after his resurrection he was seen by over 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remained to the present, but some have fallen asleep. All Jerusalem knew about this. That's why they had to bribe the soldiers to make up an excuse for why the tomb was empty. See, they were all witnesses to this empty tomb. That was fifty days ago.

But they hadn't believed. Someone did rise from the dead right in their presence in a very dramatic way. But they didn't believe. These are the very people that were mocking. They saw these tongues of fire.

They saw people speaking languages that they didn't speak before. They didn't believe. See, signs by themselves are not enough. We read about this morning or spoke about the rich man who had ignored Lazarus, who wanted someone to rise from the dead, to tell his brothers, to flee from the wrath to come. And Abraham said, even if someone rose from the dead, that won't make your brothers believe.

Because signs by themselves are not enough. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, a sinner will simply explain away everything that he sees, all the miraculous signs. And even if they can't explain them, they will simply believe that some future explanation has yet to be found. We'll be able to explain the sign in front of them. See, it takes something else entirely.

It takes the conviction of the Holy Spirit. And that work of the Holy Spirit, Jesus told Nicodemus, it's not visible. You can't see it. It's like the wind, right? You can't see the wind where it comes from or where it goes.

You can't see the wind. What you see is the effect of the wind. And the Holy Spirit convicted them of their sins and changed their view of Christ. Two months before they were shouting, crucify Him. And now their hearts are convicted, cut to the quick.

You see, every unbeliever, whether they acknowledge it or not, denigrates Christ. If it's not in their words, it's in their thinking, but often it's in their words as well. You See, the unbeliever has no fear of God. They may see Christ as a good teacher, but He's not sitting at the right hand of God reigning in the midst of His enemies. He's not the judge of all the earth who judges with perfect justice.

They have no fear of God. They don't value, they don't put weight on His words. Did you ever wonder why the Bible talks about the fear of God and it talks about it as a good thing we ought to fear God. He even uses the same word when addressing wives. And we say, well, one is we're not to fear in the sense of a slavish fear, but we are to fear in the sense of reverence.

Okay, good. But why is there the same word that's used for both of these things that would seem to be two opposites? Because at the root, it's the same thing. It's to have respect for the words. When you fear somebody, their words, you believe that what they say they can do.

So when a little two-year-old says, I'm going to eat you up, like I think I told my dad at one time at that age. He wasn't afraid because he didn't put any weight on my words. I was never going to be able to do any of that. So there's no, he wasn't afraid. He had no fear.

But if somebody, If a Goliath said that, who was 10 feet tall or however tall he was, who could pick up a man and throw him, then people were afraid because They put weight under His words. And we're to fear the Lord, we're to weigh, we're to hear what He says and respect it. And that means that we need to follow it. And when He says He's coming again to judge the world, then those who fear God, they put weight behind those words. See, the Holy Spirit, who testifies of Christ, changed these people's view of Christ.

They now feared Him. They believed His words. The unbeliever uses His name as a swear word. They clean it up a little bit. But it's always, as my brother Bryn pointed out, it's always Christ's name that is taken in vain.

You never hear people taking other God's names in vain. Only Christ's. Well, the Holy Spirit changed these people's view of Christ. And in conversion, the Holy Spirit also changes our will, our desires. We no longer desire the things that we once desired.

These people once desired just fifty days ago that Christ would be killed, that he'd be hung on a cross and tortured in a most inhumane and one of the cruelest ways possible. They wanted him to experience that torture and to be killed. That was their desire. And That desire has changed. They no longer desire that.

You see, before the work of the Holy Spirit, We don't desire to keep God's commandments. They're grievous to us. They're a restriction. They're a pain. They're a burden.

But when the Holy Spirit works His work of repentance and faith, when He gives us a new heart, then our very desires are changed. What we once were poor, what we once don't like, we now love. And so these people whom the Holy Spirit has convicted, they cry out, what must we do? What shall we do? They realize they were in a horrible predicament.

They have been convicted that they've sinned, that they've killed the Messiah, they've crucified Him, And they wanted that. And Peter's response is amazing. He doesn't say you need to go do penance. He doesn't say you need to afflict yourself and beat yourself, you need to beat yourself up for 30 days, telling yourself how bad you are. He doesn't say any of that.

He doesn't say ignore it, it's not a problem either. He simply says, repent. Repent. To repent is to change your thinking. It's to come into agreement with the Word of God about our sin, the sin that made Christ's death necessary.

Repentance is to change our thinking to realize and to confess with the Scriptures, to realize that our sins make us guilty. That it's because of our sins that it was necessary for Christ to die. Not somebody else's sins, our sins. Not the sins of these Jews, our sins. And it's also to apprehend the mercy of God in Christ.

To know that He does forgive all those who repent. And so this repentance turning away, changing our thinking results in grieving and hating our sin, so that we turn away from what we once wanted to do, and we turn to Christ and purpose and endeavor to walk with Him and to walk in a new obedience. And This is what these people do. They repent. Peter says, repent, and that every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission, for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

That's the promise of God's Word. Repent. Turn around. Believe the Bible. Believe God's Word.

Fear God. Put weight behind what He says. It's true. And in conversion, the Holy Spirit changes our very wills and changes our thinking and makes us willing. Willing.

We'll pause here and Lord willing next week Look at the substance of this amazing statement here in verses 38 and 39 But the promise is to them this promise of the Old Covenant promise to Abraham is to them and to their children, and to all who are far off, as many as our Lord our God shall call. Let us pray. Our gracious Father in heaven, we thank you that in your mercy and your love, you have sent your Holy Spirit, you have convicted us of our sin, that you bring a knowledge of the truth and enable our minds to understand, what we cannot naturally understand. We praise you Lord for your grace to us in this. We thank you that you have loved us from before the foundation of the world.

We thank you that you give to us this gift of faith and of repentance. For we recognize that we could never produce it in ourselves. We thank you Lord that it is you that saves us. Not our faith, not our works, but it is You, the man Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah who was slain for our sins, buried and risen. Lord we commit to you our souls, our lives, our very beings, knowing that you are faithful to keep what has been entrusted to you.

In Jesus' name, Amen.