What must we do to be saved?

What is the most shocking thing you ever heard that changed your life?

What shall I do, what do I need to Do?

Acts 2:37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Hebrews 4:12 says that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” The Word of God is a piercing, two-edged sword that lays open the true condition of the heart

They were Cut to the Heart by the Sword of the Spirit.

Peter was preaching God’s Word, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit as he preached. So the Word of God, not Peter’s sword that Pentecost morning, it was the Spirit’s sword.

“What must I do? What must I do?”

They are saying, “I need something. What must I do to get it?” Peter said they need forgiveness and they need the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit Caused a Paradigm Shift

Principles for Change
People must have reasons for change
1. They must see the value to them of the change
2. The plan must be understood by them
3. They must be involved in the process

Hebrews 4:12 The word of God is living and active and penetrates to the bottom of our lives and rips the pleasant mask off the ugly face of sin. The only reason anybody sins is because at some level they are (culpably) deceived. They start believing the lies of sin instead of the promises of God.

What must I Do to be saved?

That is the question we must answer for ourselves personally.

Have you ever put these questions to yourselves? Have you ever asked, Why is it that Jesus really has no place in my life even though I believe I am a Christian.? Why have I been so unconcerned about Jesus Christ?

How does one become a member of this community of living people that we find in the book of Acts?

How does one become a Christian?

If you are a Christian, can you tell someone else in two or three sentences how that happened? Can you explain what your salvation depends on? If you have never done that, you need to. If you can do that, you might need to start over and get saved by trusting in Jesus.

We can emphasize enough the urgency of this question but also its solemnity. Ultimately, when we consider our final destiny in this world, does anything matter but this?

Christians, according to the New Testament, are men and women who know exactly where they are and what they believe. As the apostle Peter put it when he wrote a letter to Christians later on in his life: “Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). That is the basic point from which we start.

You can say to many people who call themselves Christians,

“What does it mean to become a Christian?” they do not know.

They have a vague notion that somehow or other you sometimes think about God and about religious matters, and then you try to do a bit of good and live a good life, and, well, that is it—you are a Christian. Or perhaps you were taken to church when you were young and you have just gone on from there. They think Christianity is a spirit of friendship and benevolence and a desire to do good. As we have seen, some modern writers say that whenever you find love or kindness, you find God. But I repeat, that is far removed from what we find in the book of Acts. Here is something entirely different. Here are 3,000 people who passed from there to here, from this to that. What happened to them?

The first thing is that the 3,000 people underwent a complete change. Their whole position was revolutionized. Their thinking, their actions, their outlook were all changed. It is as complete as

They were pricked in their heart” (Acts 2:37). The men and women standing there and listening to an exposition of certain Old Testament Scriptures were in trouble. They were disturbed, and they cried out. This was the work of the Holy Spirit, and there would never have been a Christian church but for this. This is what makes her; this is what causes her to persist. This is the explanation of the revivals and reformations down through the centuries.

Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” They said that because they had been made to think

So these religious leaders had incited and manipulated the crowd, which earlier had almost worshiped our Lord, surrounding Him as he rode into Jerusalem on the foal of an ass and singing, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” The thoughtless, heedless crowd, carried away by the clichés, not thinking at all, changed their opinions, blinded by “the god of this world,” and cried out, “Crucify Him!”

the masses in this country today are dismissing Christianity just as the Jerusalem crowd dismissed the Lord.

The first thing that happens to people when the Holy Spirit begins to deal with them is that they begin to think and to look at things as they have never done before.

That is exactly what this group of 3000 did, they begin to think through the issue of God and Jesus when they heard the full truth. They had a paradigm shift. They had filtered everything about Jesus through the thoughts of the religious leaders, and they were wrong.

It happens everyday to teens and young adults, and often older people who pay no attention. You must see the truth and often times the people, news, etc, that shout the loudest and most, do not tell us the truth. Unless we stop, think, and find out the possibilities for truth, all of our decisions will be wrong.
This group of 3000 was at that point. They said, we see it now, what must we do to correct this?

The main question for us is, have I searched out the truth concerning my life and salvation, eternity, and how should live my life because of that truth? Or do we just go along and not stop to think and evaluate what the truth really is, and how my life should reflect it.

The Biblical Hope of Forgiveness

These people in verse 37 were cut to the heart because they saw that God had made Jesus Lord and Christ, but they had killed him. They saw that they were utterly at odds with God. They were living against his will, and they were violating His Word and his Son.

What they desperately needed (and what we need), was forgiveness. They had offended God and there was only one hope, that God might find a way to be the holy God that he is and forgive. Which is exactly what he di in the death of his Son.

We need to take the words at the end of verse 40 and apply them to all of us with all the urgency that we can. Be saved from this crooked generation. You know what the most fallen mankind, our Generation. Man has created ways of salvation without God, without law, and therefore without forgiveness. That leaves man with no hope outside of God.