Conviction

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Transcript:

Well, if you’ll turn with me to Acts chapter 2 this morning, Acts chapter 2. Normally when I preach from Acts chapter 2, it’s from about verse 41 or 42 on and looking at the nature of the church, but this morning we’re going to go from verses 1 to 40. And before that scares you too much about how long we’re going to be here, we’re going to focus in mainly on around verse 37.

But I’d like to speak to you this morning about the subject of conviction. As you know, I’ve been talking to you for several weeks on discipleship. It’s been longer that I’ve been talking about discipleship, but for a few weeks we’ve been talking about the places people can be spiritually, because I’ve defined discipleship for you, or disciple making, as being taking someone from where they are spiritually to where they need to be, which is maturity in Jesus Christ. And we can start working with somebody even before they’re a disciple.

Somebody’s not a disciple until they’ve trusted Christ, that we can begin working with them and taking them where they need to be. And we’ve talked about people who are at the point of ignorance where they say, I don’t know anything about this. God, Christ, the gospel, I don’t know anything about this.

We’ve talked about people who are at the point of irrelevance who say, yeah, I’ve heard that, but it’s not even a factor in my life. It doesn’t matter. How anybody could look at eternity and say it doesn’t matter is beyond me.

But nevertheless, here we are. We’ve talked about people who are at the point of belief, and not as the Bible says belief, but who would say, I believe in God, I believe Jesus is real. And we talked about how that’s not quite enough to get you to heaven, as Nicodemus found out in John chapter 3. We’ve talked about understanding, talked about that last week, how so many people understand that Jesus Christ came to save mankind.

But that could mean any number of things. And I gave you some of those theories that people have on the atonement, what it means. and some that are pretty close and some that are just bizarre, goofball theories.

It’s not enough to understand that Christ came to save mankind. You have to understand that he died for my sins and your sins. This morning we come to the point of conviction, and conviction is an interesting thing.

It’s kind of a legal concept. You know, if we saw somebody kill another person and we started running our mouths around town that so-and-so is a murderer, Well, they could conceivably sue us for slander. I hear people say all the time, talking about O.

J. Simpson, well, he murdered his wife. Well, it wasn’t proven in a court of law.

Well, I’ll leave that up to you. But ideally, conviction is a, didn’t mean to get into that barrel of monkeys this morning, but ideally, conviction is a legal certainty. And it doesn’t matter what you saw or what you heard.

if you say so-and-so shot a man and he hasn’t been convicted, it hasn’t been legally established, you could be sued for slander. But once he’s been convicted, once it is a legally established fact, then it changes the whole ballgame. Conviction spiritually is like that too.

Conviction is a legally established fact where God, through his word, through his law, through the preaching of God’s truth, we are convicted in ourselves. It becomes legally established fact to us. It is proven to us that we have sinned and broken God’s law.

And I’ve told you before, there are some of these church words that we use a lot of times, and we throw them out because we have an idea of what they mean, but as far as nailing down a definition, if somebody asked us, what does glory mean? Okay, that’s a hard one. Somebody asked us, define blessing for me.

That could be a hard one. And so rather than just throw these terms out to you, I like to sit down and write out what I understand them to mean. Worship was another one I did this for, but conviction I’ve written here, conviction is not merely a knowledge of right and wrong, a guilty feeling, or a fear of judgment.

It is a heartfelt sense of the absolute awfulness of our sins and our utter unworthiness to stand before a holy God that compels us to throw ourselves humbly upon his offered mercy through Jesus Christ, knowing that we have no other basis on which to approach him. That’s what I understand conviction to mean. It’s not just guilty feelings, guilty conscience.

It’s not just I know the difference between right and wrong, Because you can know the difference between right and wrong and not have a problem in the world with violating what you know about right and wrong. It is a heartfelt sense that I have sinned against a holy God. In Acts chapter 2, starting in verse 2, starting in verse 1, sorry, it says, And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

That means the disciples were all gathered together. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

So what happened? The disciples were sitting around because Jesus had told them, you’re going to go and you’re going to be witnesses of me to the uttermost parts of the world, but not yet. Wait here in Jerusalem.

And so they’re sitting and they’re waiting and the Holy Spirit comes upon them. And the Holy Spirit does miraculous things and they begin to speak in tongues, not babbling like so often is thought of today as tongues, but they began to speak in languages that other people understood. If there had been Spaniards there, they would have heard them speak in Spanish.

If there had been Chinese people there, they would have heard them speak in Chinese and so on, because it gives us a list of real languages. And so people heard about this and other people began to gather and see what was going on and they were confounded. Verse 7, and they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans?

In other words, they speak the language of Galilee. They speak Aramaic or maybe Hebrew. But are these not all Galileans?

How is it that they know our language? It would be as though if we started speaking to people in Spanish and French and German and Chinese and all these other languages. And they looked and said, aren’t these people Americans?

We barely speak English. Aren’t these people Americans? And yet they’re speaking in all of our languages.

I heard that joke many times. A person who speaks three languages is trilingual. A person who speaks two is bilingual. A person who speaks one is an American. The Europeans in college love to tell us that one.

Aren’t these people all Galileans? They only speak their language, and yet we’re hearing them all in ours. And how hear we every man in our own tongue?

wherein we were born. And here in verse 9, it gives us a list of some of the languages that they were speaking in Parthians and Medes and Elamites and the dwellers of Mesopotamia and in Judea and Cappadocia and in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia and Egypt and in parts of Libya about Cyrene and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians. We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.

So they weren’t just babbling away. They were speaking in Greek and they were speaking in Latin And they were speaking in Parthian. And they were speaking in Persian.

And they were speaking in all these languages. And they were telling these people in their heart languages about the incredible things that God had done. And they were all amazed, verse 12.

And were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? Others, probably in one of the most feeble attempts ever at giving a natural explanation for what God has done, others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. Now, I’ve not been around many drunk people.

If I have, it’s been by accident. But I’ve never known a drunk person to begin intelligently, in another language they’d never studied before, be able to testify to the works of God. As a matter of fact, the few drunk people I’ve ever been around couldn’t tell you much of anything.

So it’s obvious they’re just grasping at straws here. They’re saying, these men are drunk. That’s why this is going on.

But Peter, in verse 14, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and said unto them, Ye men of Judea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, Be this known unto you and hearken to my words. For these are not drunken as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. It is 9 a.

m. These men are not drunk. But it is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens will I pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before that great and notable day of the Lord come, and it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

He said this is exactly what Joel was talking about, that one day the spirit would be poured out, God’s people would prophesy you’d see miraculous things happen, and whoever should call upon the name of the Lord would be saved in that day. And he goes on from there with the scriptures. Ye men of Israel, in verse 22, Ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you as ye yourselves know, him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.

And so he says, you knew who Jesus was. You saw the miracles that he did. The works that he did confirmed that he was sent by God.

And that’s true, by the way. If it had just been the water into wine thing, if it had just been disappearing and appearing in places, if it had just been a few things like that, people could probably duplicate that by parlor tricks. But sleight of hand doesn’t explain.

Hypnosis doesn’t explain. Gullibility doesn’t explain. Seeing people dead and then seeing them walk again after Jesus tells them to come up out of the grave.

None of those things explain people being leprous one moment and not being leprous the next. None of those things explain people being crippled from birth or being blind from birth and suddenly being able to walk and being able to see. Those are things that sleight of hand, that hypnosis and gullibility cannot explain.

Those were miraculous signs and wonders that demonstrated that Jesus Christ was sent by God and in the power of God, and they knew it. And he says, and yet, delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. He says, in other words, you knew in your heart that he was sent by God, and you killed him anyway.

But he points out, even at that, he says it was by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, this was all God’s plan all along. God knew you’d kill him, but you didn’t beat God. You didn’t beat Jesus Christ. He laid down his own life.

He went there willingly, knowing what was going to happen. That doesn’t change the fact that they were guilty. Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.

And here he talks to them about the resurrection. Jesus Christ, yes, you killed him, but he’s alive again, because it was not possible for him to spend. It was not possible for death to take him.

It was not possible for death to hold him. For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice and my tongue was glad.

Moreover, also my flesh shall rest in hope, because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life, thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance. And so he quotes David here, talking not only about the resurrection of the Messiah, his holy one, who would not see corruption, but also about, I believe, the hope that we have of a resurrection in Jesus Christ as well.

And he says in verse 29, he ceases quoting David for just a moment, and says, Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you. Says the patriarch David, he’s both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us to this day. David’s dead, David’s buried, we can go see David’s tomb right where it is now.

And therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne, He, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh to see corruption. So what he says, what he’s pointing out here to them, you killed Jesus, you don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but even David wrote about the Messiah being raised from the dead. David, who we all look to, David, he’s dead, we can go see his tomb today.

He says, but Jesus, the one written about by David, is not dead, and his tomb is empty. and David told us that it would be this way. And this Jesus hath God raised up whereof we are all witnesses.

It said he stood up with the eleven at the beginning. It said he stood up with the eleven. He says, Jesus Christ, God raised him up whereof we are all witnesses.

We have all seen these things. We’re not just talking about things that we know of second hand. We saw the man.

We knew him when he was alive. Knew him well. We walked with him and we saw him die.

We saw him buried and we saw him alive again. There’s no other explanation for that other than the power of God. Therefore, being by the right hand of God, exalted and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear.

For David is not ascended into the heavens, but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. God has made the same Jesus they had crucified to be the master of all things and to be the Savior of all. And now when they heard this, verse 37, they were pricked in their heart.

And we may think, well, they didn’t start out, I mean, it doesn’t sound like a gospel presentation. But folks, these people were there when all the events that we talk about in the gospel presentation took place. They knew how Jesus had lived.

They knew what he said about why he had to die. They saw him killed. And if he was resurrected, that changed everything.

And they heard these things and they were pricked in their hearts. They were cut in their hearts. There are times when we feel that way, when somebody says something that just cuts us to the heart.

And that’s exactly how they felt in that moment of conviction. And said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. And as I pointed out to you before, just to hit this very quickly, when I preached on the subject of baptism several months ago, this verse is not telling you that you have to be baptized in order to be saved.

The Greek here indicates, the Greek word that is translated as for is ice, which is the same as our word for. I can take Tylenol for a headache. Is it to get a headache or because I have a headache?

Well, if you’re taking Tylenol to get a headache, you’re really confused about a lot of things. This verse could mean either thing. Be baptized to get the remission of sins or get baptized because you have the remission of sins.

And the context of Scripture contradicts everything about the first, which leads us to the conclusion. He’s talking about being baptized because of the remission of sins. And ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation. Now when they heard him preach about the resurrected Christ, they knew that if he was resurrected and he was Lord and Christ, that that meant everything that they had heard about him forgiving sins, everything they had heard about him being God, had to be true. And they were convicted, they were pricked in their hearts because they understood their guilt before a holy God, and they cried out to the apostles and said, what is it that we’re supposed to do?

And he tells them to repent. And as I’ve shared with you over the last few weeks, when we see that word repent, what we think it means is turn from your sins. And that’s certainly involved, but we could take from that the idea that you have to get completely sinless and clean up your life before you can approach Jesus Christ. Folks, if you could get completely sinless, completely turn your back on your sins, and then come to Jesus Christ, then what Christ did on the cross was unnecessary.

The reason Christ died on the cross is because we could not remove our sins from ourselves. Repentance in the Greek, the word is metanoia. Kind of sounds like annoying, but metanoia.

And it comes from word parts that mean to change your mind. And when you take somebody who is headed 180 degrees opposite, away from God, does not care a thing about what God and His Word says, doesn’t care anything about Christ who came to die for Him, and is just happy to die in his own sins and stay apart from God. And he hears the gospel, and he’s pricked in his heart, and he humbles himself before God and throws himself on his mercy.

Folks, you can’t get a more radical change of mind than that. By the very fact that we are willing to come to Christ in faith, that is repentance, I believe. And so he tells them to repent.

Folks, they understood what that meant. This morning, just a few things to share with you about this place of conviction. Because conviction is an important spot on the progression of discipleship, which leads us to conversion, which we’ll talk about tonight.

But conviction comes as a result of hearing the Word of God. Conviction comes as a result of hearing the Word of God. Now, maybe we open the Bible and talk to people and quote the Bible.

Maybe we tell them what the Bible says. But I could tell somebody all day long what a rotten sinner he is, what a horrible person he is, and it’s just going to make him mad. But there’s something about turning to the Word of God and saying, This is what God says that can often soften the hearts that we never expected to be softened.

How many of you in here, and you don’t have to raise your hands, but how many of you in here have told me stories and could tell stories this morning that there was a time when you never wanted anything to do with God, and then He began to work on your heart when you heard His Word. And folks, we all know people who fall into that category. It’s by God’s Word.

It was not because Peter stood up and said, You all are horrible, turn or burn. It was because he went to the scriptures. He quoted David and he quoted Joel.

And he said, this is what God’s prophets say about Jesus Christ. He didn’t stand on his own authority. I don’t stand on my own authority when I talk to you. It’s got to be the word of God.

I have no authority of my own. It’s the word of God that brings conviction. And sometimes we’ll want to change people.

We will want to change people. We’ll want to straighten them up, clean up their language, clean up their habits, and we’ll just nag them and tell family members and such. And we’ll just tell them all the time, well, you just need to straighten up.

You need to be a better person. Why can’t you be a better person? Even if we don’t say it in those exact words.

Although I have heard women ask their husbands, why can’t you be a better person? Okay, that’s on my own authority. That’s not effective.

And we want to fix people ourselves, not realizing it’s God who fixes people. It’s God who changes the heart. And it’s the word of God who can penetrate the heart of the people around us, where all the talking we could ever do would come to nothing.

Peter said, this is what God says about who Jesus Christ is. And it says they were pricked in their heart. See, our goal in sharing Christ with people is not necessarily to push them to make a decision.

I’ve seen many, many people make decisions who I’ve talked to about Jesus Christ. But most of them, I don’t know where they are today. And I don’t mean geographically, I don’t know where they are. They are not in church.

They’re not serving God anywhere. There’s no indication they were ever born again. The emphasis isn’t on a decision.

The emphasis is on sharing God’s Word and letting God’s Word and God’s Spirit do its work and convict them so that they can be born again. And conviction that leads to real change. Conviction comes from hearing God’s Word.

That’s why the Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the Word of God. It’s not my words that are going to fix or change anybody. It’s God’s Word.

Second of all this morning, conviction is felt in the heart and not reasoned with the mind. Conviction is felt in the heart, not reason with the mind. Now, I’m not telling you this morning that we’re supposed to shut off our brains and not ever think about anything.

That leads us to deception. That leads us to fall for anything anybody tells us. I like to think.

I like to think about things that deal with Scripture and truth, and I like to think things through and analyze. But that alone is not enough to save anybody. I’m a big believer in apologetics.

I’m a big believer in learning what other people teach and how to combat that with the Word of God. But at the same time, I have never argued anybody into heaven. I have never simply through an intellectual argument helped anybody be born again.

Now, there’s a place for it still, because sometimes people get mixed up in all kinds of religious ideas, and we have to be able to give them reasons to help them get past those ideas. But ultimately, it’s not the persuasiveness of our arguments. It’s not the brilliance of our thinking.

The brilliance. Brilliantness is not a word, is it? There’s an example of my own brilliantness for you.

It’s not the brilliance of our thinking that leads people to Jesus Christ. It’s what God does in the heart. That’s why one of the best approaches I’ve ever seen to leading people to Christ is what they use in way of the Master. Now, I don’t know that I would use everything they put out.

I mean, just for my own comfort, that I’d use everything they put out. But I’ve seen where my missionary friends in Canada can sit down and witness to a waitress just by asking her, do you think you’re a good person? And they talk about the Ten Commandments, and they talk about God’s law.

And there’s something about it. There’s something about bringing up the law and saying, you know, God’s word says, thou shalt not steal. Have you ever taken anything that doesn’t belong to you, even something small? And of course, we all have.

Even if it’s just an ink pen from the bank, we all have. He says, what does that make you? What is a person who steals?

And the person says, well, that makes me a thief. And you go through this presentation, and there’s something about the realization from God’s law, I’ve sinned against God. I’m not the good person I think I am.

And something takes place in the heart that wouldn’t necessarily take place if I came to them from just purely an intellectual standpoint. And that’s borne out here when the question they ask is predicated on it, saying they were pricked in their hearts. Now we see later on in Acts chapter 17 in a passage I’ve preached on many, many times where Paul preaches to the people and some people believe, but it says because of his persuasiveness, some of them were interested and wanted to hear more.

Folks, those who believe, believe because God worked in their hearts. For those for whom it was just a purely intellectual exercise, there was nothing more than curiosity. If we want people to trust Christ, if we want people to trust Christ, We need to speak to them God’s word, but we also need to quit arguing with them and let God’s word connect with the heart.

And third of all this morning, finally, conviction compels people to action. Conviction compels people to action. That doesn’t mean necessarily that somebody feels convicted and they get saved.

It just compels them to do something. As I described conviction this morning, as it’s an overwhelming feeling of the awfulness of our sins, somebody can’t feel that and sit there very long undisturbed. You may see people shuffle back and forth.

You may see them get up and leave. You may see them grip the pew. Or you may see them walk forward.

Or you may see them hit their knees. Even when we’re not in church, conviction compels people to action. These men didn’t say, hey, we’ll think about it, Peter.

They said, what should we do? They said, there’s something we’ve got to do. You’ll see in other places in the book of Acts where they preached, and the Bible says they were pricked in their hearts, and so they sought to kill whoever it was who was preaching.

I’ve had people who were just, when I was in school especially, who were just awful, just hateful toward me. And I’d tell my mother, I just don’t understand why they’re acting this way, and she’d say, maybe they’re under conviction. And I didn’t understand that for a long time.

But when people know what they’re supposed to do, and the Holy Spirit speaks to them, and they understand they’ve done wrong against God, it either leads them to run as fast as they can toward God, or run as fast as they can away from God, but either way, it compels people to action. Conviction is not there just for us to feel and experience. Conviction is there to compel us to do something.

It should be our hope that people would be compelled to run toward God as a result of this. And everything we do and say should be designed to encourage them to run to God, not away from God. But conviction either compels people to action or it’s not really conviction.

These men were convicted, they were pricked in their hearts, and they said, What do we do now? We’ve got to do something. With what we’ve heard, we’ve got to respond somehow.

There’s got to be something we’ve got to do because we’re the ones. We’re guilty. We’re the ones who are responsible for putting Jesus Christ on the cross.

We’re responsible. And I don’t believe they were physically responsible because the Bible talks about the Roman soldiers being the ones who drove the nails and put him up there. But they realized morally they were responsible.

It was their wickedness that put him there. It was their wickedness who put the Son of God on the cross. And folks, I’ll take you one step further.

It was my wickedness that put the Son of God on the cross. We’re guilty. Each and every one of us are guilty.

And it doesn’t matter how wonderful we think we are. What a great life we think we live. We stand before a holy God with the unremovable stain of sin on our souls.

And there’s not an amount of good that we can do to undo the wrong that we’ve done. And we can say, well, I’ve gone to church this many times. Hey, I was the preacher.

I was a deacon. I was a wonderful person. I gave money to the poor all the time.

But it doesn’t change the fact that each and every one of us have sinned. We have broken God’s law. And as a result of that, Jesus Christ went to die on the cross.

We’re guilty. And it was for us. See, the reason he had to do that is because there was no way.

There was no way we could deal with our sins. There’s no way we could make up for our sins. There’s no way we could make peace with God.

And make no mistake, he’s a holy God. He’s perfectly sinless, without flaw, without imperfection by His very nature. And for us to say, God, can’t you just be okay with our sin?

Can’t you just embrace us the way we are? It sounds good and it sounds warm and fuzzy, but it’s asking God to embrace flaws and imperfection and corrupt His own nature. When we say, God, why can’t you just overlook?

What we’re really asking is, why don’t you stop being who you are? And the sin had to be paid for. It had to be dealt with.

And we could have been punished for all eternity in hell, separated from a God who loves us. And yes, it is correct to talk about love and hell in the same sentence. Because God saw that.

God knew that was the punishment that we deserved. And yet, even though we didn’t deserve His love, we didn’t deserve His forgiveness, we didn’t deserve any kindness from God at all. Simply out of His mercy and His love, He sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for us.

And when he died on the cross, he took my sin and your sin, and it was crucified with him. It was my wickedness, and it was your wickedness that put him there. And he paid the infinite penalty because he was perfect.

He was God in the flesh. He lived a sinless life so he could be a perfect sacrifice. And he paid the penalty so that God’s justice could be satisfied, so that God’s holiness could be preserved, and so God’s mercy could be extended to mankind.

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