This morning will be in Acts chapter 2 this morning, and I
would encourage you to turn there to Acts chapter 2.
We have a number of verses that we will be reading.
If you're using one of our Bibles there in front of you, it
is found on page 909. Now, this is the first message
in in a short series that we're doing.
This two-part series, Spirit Transformed Lives.
We'll have it today. We'll skip a week.
Next week, we will not be in the series as next week is Father's
Day. So I will bring a message
related to men next week. Women do please still show up.
Hopefully it'll still be a good service for you, for you as
well. But I'll be speaking and
addressing primarily men and next week and then the week
after that on the 22nd, we'll finish up this short series.
Now, today's a special day. Many of you probably are not
aware of that, but some of you probably are aware that's today
is what we call Pentecost Sunday.
Pentecost Sunday is a day set aside to remember the life
changing events that happened on Pentecost Sunday in Scripture.
So here, as we begin our message, we're going to look at
a promised future. There was a future that had been
promised to those in the Old Testament as well as to those
who were followers of Jesus. Some seven weeks before this
moment, Jesus had been crucified and and risen from the grave,
and Acts tells us that he spent much of the 40 days following
his resurrection speaking about and telling people about the
Kingdom of God. Of course, we've just spent a
couple weeks talking about life in the Kingdom of God, life
living under God's rule and reign.
So this is what Jesus was doing and he told his disciples, he,
he said, he told his disciples not to depart from Jerusalem,
but to wait for the Holy Spirit, which he said they would receive
not many days from now. Their response to Jesus was to
ask questions about the Kingdom. Jesus are are you now going to
restore the Kingdom to Israel? You have to imagine that the
disciples were fired up. They were excited.
They're ready to storm the world to tell everyone about the
Messiah that had come, perhaps even to take on Rome.
The grave couldn't hold their leader down.
Surely Rome would be no match for him.
They were ready to take over the world and to set up the earthly
Kingdom. Jesus response to them was that,
well, this information is on a need to know basis and and you
don't really need to know what my father has planned and and my
father, he has all authority and he'll do as he desires and in
his timing, Jesus says, here's what you do need to know though
here's here's the important thing.
Acts 18 Acts 18 says you will receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the
earth. Then after Jesus said these
things, he ascended from the Mount of Olives straight up into
heaven. Then immediately a couple men in
white robes appeared to them, asked why they were staring into
heaven. Like, like you just saw Jesus go
into heaven, You know, like I think you would be, it would be
understood why you would be staring into heaven, right?
But they're asking, it's probably more like, hey, OK, now
do what you're supposed to do. So why are you staring into
heaven? And they informed and then
informed them that Jesus would be coming back in the same way
that he went. So the disciples, they
immediately after they stopped staring into heaven, they
immediately returned back into the city.
As they arrived back to Jerusalem, they started to piece
things together. OK, Judas is dead now.
So we're out one guy and and we need to replace him with someone
else. So they cast lots, which is kind
of like a, a Holy Spirit's controlled version of throwing
dice. They throw the dice, they cast
the lots, and it lands on Mattias.
And it's important to say that this is the last time in
Scripture that we see lots cast. You know, before this moment,
the Holy Spirit moved through this casting of lots.
But everything changes on this day.
So it's the last time this happens.
About a week later, people start pouring into Jerusalem from all
over the world. They were there to celebrate
Shavuot, which is Pentecost. Shavuot was was a feast.
It was also known as the Feast of Weeks.
Now this was one of three main festivals each year that
required able bodied Jewish men to travel to Jerusalem to offer
sacrifices and offerings on behalf of their families.
The purpose of this feast was to celebrate both the the early
spring harvest, the the first fruits that they had brought in,
as well as to remember the giving of the Torah to Moses on
Mount Sinai. The day of Pentecost itself was
special to the Jews as it was a tradition that they'd known
about for 1400 years. They've been practicing this
thing, well, say for, you know, some time in exile, but they've
been practicing this thing they knew about Pentecost.
So Pentecost is a Greek word meaning 50th.
So it literally refers to the 50th day after Passover.
Passover of course coincides with with our Easter season,
Jesus resurrection. Jews who had been dispersed all
throughout the Middle East, Asia and Europe had all come to
Jerusalem. They were all gathered together
in this place on the day of Pentecost.
So here we are 50 days after Jesus death, some 10 days after
Jesus ascension into heaven. So if you're able, would you
stand as we read from Acts chapter 2?
Acts 2 verses one through 13. When the day of Pentecost
arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly there
came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it
filled the entire house where they were sitting, and divided
tongues as the fire appeared to them and rested on each one of
them. And they were all filled with
the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues as the
Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in
Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven, and
at this sound the multitude came together, and they were
bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own
language. And they were amazed and
astonished, saying, Are not all these who are speaking
Galileans? And how is it that we hear each
of us in his own native language?
Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of
Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontius and Asia,
Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to
Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
Cretans and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own
tongues the mighty works of God. And all were amazed and
perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?
The others mocking said, They are filled with new wine.
You may be seated. So this moment is the is the
fulfillment of the promise that Jesus had made to them.
This is the promise fulfilled. When Jesus said they would
receive the spirit not many days from now, he meant it.
He said you'll receive the Spirit not many days from now.
And so here, just a few days later, they've received the
spirits. Jesus had told them he would
send the Spirit through the Father and it would bear witness
about Jesus and would lead them into truth.
And this may have helped them understand a little bit about
the Spirit, but something tells me they really weren't prepared
to to receive what was about to happen.
Would they perform miracles? Would they be turned into mighty
warriors like David or or Samson?
How do you prepare for this moment when the Holy Spirit is
going to come upon you? The Holy Spirit had fallen on
them as tongues of fire, so now they were indwelt by the Holy
Spirit. I suspect that some of you,
maybe most of you are like I was and are baffled by the the fire
sitting above each of these followers of Christ.
Well, you see what's happening here is this is a type of
hyperlink, if you will. When you're online, you're
reading an article or an e-mail and the text pops up often in
blue or some other way to make it stand out.
That is a sign that, hey, you can click this link and it'll
take you somewhere else. This has been written about
somewhere else, so you can go to that.
Well, this moment is a sort of hyperlink.
It's something, hey, this is happening now, but hey, this
thing, things like this have happened before.
So the fire appears above each person.
And as it does, it should draw your attention to stuff that
you've already read in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old
Testament. This fire is God's presence.
It's God's presence now. It's unfortunate, but for many
Christians, many Christians today have a nearly exclusive
focus on the New Testament because we're now, quote UN
quote, living under grace. And this is true that we are
living under grace. But this perspective can lead to
a bit of biblical illiteracy. Throw in some psalms and some
proverbs into your daily devotions and you call it good
rights. That's how so many Christians
today live. Meanwhile, they're ignorant of
what the first nearly 3/4 of the Bible has in it.
Allow me to explain some things to you, or actually to remind
you of some things that you probably already know, but
perhaps help you see some connections between them.
There were various instances in the Old Testament where fire
played a major role. When God called Moses, he, he
came to Moses in a fiery Bush and the Bush isn't consumed and
and God tells Moses that has as he's in God's presence, he tells
Moses to remove his shoes because he's in God's presence.
Then on Mount Sinai, when God made the covenant with Israel
and he and He gave them the law, there was a firestorm over the
mountain, a symbol again of God's presence.
When the Tabernacle was completed, God's glory came down
in a pill of pillar of fire, and it rested there and filled it.
And then at night what would happen?
The pillar of fire would rest over the Tabernacle.
In Second Chronicles 7, as the temple was being dedicated, fire
came down and it consumed the offerings and sacrifices.
Again, God's presence was being revealed in this place.
When we remind ourselves of the fiery moments in Scripture, and
there were actually more than even that, then it becomes
apparent that God's personal temple presence had our had
arrived on the day of Pentecost. Each follower of Jesus was now a
new temple of Jesus. They were mobile temples, if you
will, taking God's presence with them wherever they went.
So that's what the fire is that we see.
It's a sign of God's presence. Now here in verses 5 through 11,
we see God's power demonstrated, God's power demonstrated in this
moment. Now, I'd like to think I have a
natural penchant for languages. That's not to say that I'm
multilingual, but some things related to language come
somewhat naturally for me. For example, I spent a bit of
time studying Spanish. There were the three years in
high school. There was my first job at Taco
Bell. I actually did learn some
Spanish, a good amount of Spanish at Taco Bell.
That is not to say that all the Spanish I learned at Taco Bell
was good. Then I took several semesters in
college and numerous mission trips to Mexico.
I even thought I was going to minor in Spanish.
And then I had a friend who was, I don't remember if she was
majoring or minoring in Spanish. I think she was minoring in
Spanish. And she invited me to attend
Spanish Lit class. I went to Spanish Lit class and
I immediately heard from the Lord I am not supposed to minor
in Spanish. Spanish Lit is just like English
Lit except it's in Spanish. I was not signing up for that,
and then in college I had the opportunity to sing in Spanish,
French, German, Russian, Latin, a little bit of English, except
for the Russian. I could piece together some
things because of the Latin base of the Romantic languages.
I can kind of make out some of what it was trying to say.
I found that I just naturally pick up some things that are
related to language, some of its intuition and just kind of
putting pieces together, have a natural gift for language.
But what I don't have, I don't have the gift of tongues.
These people here on this day of Pentecost, they are speaking a
new to them language. And I should have, should have
added that those words to them, they're on your note sheet.
They're speaking a new to them language.
These people here on the day of Pentecost, they hadn't spent
time studying a language like like I had done.
No, they just showed up and in an instant, suddenly they start
speaking another language they've not studied before.
Now, over the years there has been a a lot of discussion as to
what these tongues are. Are these languages or is it
some sort of ecstatic speech in an unintelligible language?
There's no doubt Scripture has actual languages in mind here.
Looking at verses 7 and 8, and they were amazed and astonished
saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native
language? Seemingly the whole world had
shown up for this moment. Oh my goodness, that doesn't
look as good as it did on my computer.
You can kind of see the world. Huh?
I thought the map was really way darker than that, but I think
you get the idea. You have Italy, Rome way up
there in the left. You have the Middle East and
Asia, more on the right, of course, Africa down there.
So this is basically the known world right here.
Literally people from all of the known continents at that time
had come to Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit was poured out
on these people and suddenly there's no language distinction.
Each person, no matter where he's from, is able to understand
what's being said. They all had different native
tongues, but now with the gift of tongues, the Holy Spirit is
empowering people to speak a different language.
They're saying, aren't these Galileans who are speaking?
How is it that I can understand what they're saying?
They're Galileans, they speak Aramaic.
I don't speak Aramaic. This was truly the power of God
is each person proclaimed the mighty works of God.
Verses 12 and 13 all were amazed and perplexed saying to one
another, what does this mean? The others mocking said they are
filled with new wine. So here we have the people
amazed. The people were amazed.
Everyone was amazed. Whether it was the follower of
Christ or the person who didn't believe in Jesus as the Messiah
that was foretold. Everybody found themselves
wondering what's what was the purpose of this event?
What did it mean? What's going on?
Why this loud sound like like a storm?
Why tongues of fire? Why the speaking in other
languages? Why did all these things happen?
And were these people drunk? If we look at verses 14 through
16, we see there, we see Peter's response.
But Peter, standing with the 11, lifted up his voice and address
them. Men of Judea and all who dwell
in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words.
For these people are not drunk as you suppose.
Since it is only the third hour of the day.
He's saying, hey, it's only 9:00 AM.
These people are certainly not drunk.
Then verse 16. But this is what was uttered
through the prophet Joel. Peter was about to give them a
history lesson. This moment had been foretold.
Technically they knew this because they were well versed.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, to be a Jew was to daily be in the
Hebrew Scriptures and to commit large sections of it to memory.
So here Peter is about to deliver what I believe is the
second most famous sermon in all of Scripture.
I would say the first, first most famous sermon in Scripture
is the Sermon on the Mount, I would think.
But here's the second most famous sermon in all of
Scripture. Peter empowered and now filled
by the Holy Spirit, he got up and reminded them that the
prophet Joel. He spoke about this moment, and
he proceeded to quote Joel 2. Looking at the screen, Joel 228
through 32 reads. And it shall come to pass
afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.
Your sons and your daughters shall prophecy.
Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see
visions even on the male and female servants.
In those days I will pour out my spirits, and I will show wonders
in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of
smoke. The sun shall be turned to
darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day
of the Lord comes. And this shall come to pass,
that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
This is Joel 2. And Peter stands up.
And he quotes this nearly verbatim in his sermon.
He reminded the people, using a bit of apocalyptic imagery as
well, that this is the moment they've been waiting for.
They've been promised the Holy Spirit the the opportunity to be
witnesses to God's supernatural working.
This supernatural working, he says, was done through the
person of Jesus, who Peter goes on to say, perform miracles
among them. He was crucified and then raised
up because even death couldn't hold him down.
All this that the people had witnessed served to point them
to the Messiah, to Jesus. But this still begs the
question, what was the actual purpose of this occasion in the
speaking in tongues? Was the purpose simply to point
to Jesus or was there something even bigger going on?
Well, the followers of Jesus we're now empowered for a
purpose. There was an even greater
purpose here. Pointing to Jesus was only the
beginning. Once the Spirit indwelt people,
it would begin to change them and transform them in ways that
they hadn't expected. This was the beginning of what
we now call the church age. You see, before this moment, the
church proper didn't exist until here at approximately 30 AD.
And I know if you're doing math, you're like, hold on, shouldn't
it be like 33 AD? Yes, I know there's a bunch of
things with calendars. So they think Jesus was actually
born before 0. So that means with the calendar
things that it was probably around 30 AD when he died.
So this was a radically new thing, a new way for them to
live. In the Old Testament, the Holy
Spirit would descend on someone and would empower them for a
specific moment or purpose or calling.
It could be to lead people, it could be to do something
miraculous, to defeat an enemy, or even to play music as in the
case of David before King Saul. But the feeling of the Spirit
was something that was temporary.
The Holy Spirit would descend on someone for a purpose, and then
when the Spirit was done, the Spirit would remove himself from
that person. Thus David prayed in Psalm 51.
After he has confessed his sin to God, he prays, Take not your
Holy Spirit from me. But now everything has changed.
Everything has changed here. People are now in dwelt in a
permanent manner. They are permanently in dwelt by
the spirits and they are filled temporarily.
I understand that these things can be confusing, so I want to
help bring some clarity to the difference between the
indwelling of the Spirit and the filling of the Spirit.
The indwelling of the Spirit is what happened at Pentecost as
the Spirit came down on them in a permanent manner.
The filling of the Spirit is what happens when we're living
life according to the spirits. The indwelling of the Spirit is
what happens at the moment of salvation, at the point when we
make a decision to place our trust in Jesus.
You see, there's no subsequent baptism of the Spirit, as some
would call it. We don't place our faith in
Jesus and then seek out a special supernatural event or
moments where the Spirit comes into us.
No, the Spirit immediately indwells the heart of the
believing person. Being filled by the Spirit is is
what happens actually in our day-to-day walk with God.
Galatians 525 says if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in
step with the Spirit. This is the filling of the
Spirit, our hearts and lives surrendered to His will.
Unfortunately, unlike the indwelling of the Spirit, the
filling of the Spirit is a temporary thing.
We go back and forth between moments of living in the flesh
and moments of living in or being filled by the Spirit.
So the task ahead of us as followers of crisis to make sure
that the moments in the flesh are much more rare and short,
and that the moments in the spirits are more persistent and
common. We want to make sure that that
we're continually trying to live in the spirits, persisting in
the spirit and the moments in the flesh much more rare.
God's people all all over the world who had receive the
indwelling Spirit are now called the church.
The church didn't exist prior to this moment, but with the Holy
Spirit's permanent and dwelling presence, each of us now takes
His presence everywhere we go. So Pentecost was the dawning of
a new era, but there was also another purpose that it served.
The gift of tongues on Pentecost ultimately served as a symbol of
unity. It was a symbol of unity first
of all. Immediately speaking, people
from all sorts of backgrounds had received the same Spirit.
Regardless of whether they were Jews or or converts, they all
received the Spirit. Verses 9 through 11 told us
Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, as well
as people from Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia,
Pamphylia, Egypt, Cyrene, Rome, Crete in Arabia all received the
spirits. You saw the map a few minutes
ago. People from essentially all over
the world. Now, I can't overstate how much
some of these different groups of people disliked each other.
It's astounding that all these people, first of all, all these
people are all gathered together in one place.
It really was the work of God in them all coming together in one
place. But but then this moment is
going to serve as the blueprint as the church spreads.
Something similar to the Day of Pentecost happened three other
times in the book of Acts in chapters 810 and 19.
Now, why would God do this? Why not just say, OK, hey, this
moment on the day of Pentecost suffices.
This is the beginning of the church.
Why would he replicate this moment a few other times and
make sure that it's recorded for us in Scripture?
Well, the Pentecost experience of speaking in tongues was
replicated at each of these moments, and it's served to
authenticate the expansion of the early church.
In chapter 8, the Holy Spirit fell on a group of Samaritans,
and we're quite familiar with the feud between the Jews and
the Samaritans. In fact, this is enshrined on
our hearts through the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Good
Samaritan being the one, the hero of the day, which was
completely unexpected to save this Jew.
These two groups despised each other.
But chapter 8 told tells us that the Samaritans had hands laid on
them and then they received the Holy Spirit.
Now, the text doesn't explicitly say that they spoke in tongues,
but it's widely believed among theologians that they too spoke
in tongues when they received the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And this gift served to demonstrate that they, too,
Samaritans, were part of this new movement of Jesus followers.
You can imagine these Jews who had received the Holy Spirit.
Oh, hey, we're Jews, and we've just taken this next step of
placing our faith in the Messiah.
So we've received the Spirit, but oh, the Samaritans, we're
not as inclined to believe that they're part of this movement
that we're in. Oh, but hold on.
The supernatural thing that happened to us just happened to
them. It must be the Holy Spirit
working in them. There's always been room at the
table for the foreigner. Always.
God was always making provision in the law for the foreigner to
join them. But now, Now God's Kingdom is
going to look drastically different.
The Kingdom had started with the Jews, but that was only the
beginning of God's design, as the light of God spread like
wildfire among the Gentiles. Sure, they're different.
Sure, they speak a different language.
They have some different customs.
Maybe they'd like to have some bacon once in a while.
That was a joke. Thank you.
But no. This speaking in tongues, this
this moment when the Holy Spirit comes on to them serves to
authenticate that they truly are believers in Jesus Christ and
part of the universal Church. So as we close and consider the
final aspects of Pentecost purpose, we revisit Jesus last
words in the Gospel of Matthew. He'd been resurrected and told
his disciples to meet him at a specific mountain up in Galilee.
And there he said these famous words that you're well familiar
with. Would you read these two slides
out loud with me? All authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching
them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am
with you always to the end of the age.
This, of course, is the Great Commission.
Jesus had given his followers this awesome task.
Go and tell all the nations about him.
How in the world were these largely uneducated men from
Galilee supposed to accomplish the Great Commission?
Would it simply be telling people all that Jesus had told
them? No, that's not the full extent
of it. And that brings us back to where
we started in Acts 18. You will receive power when the
Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses.
Jesus says you'll be my witnesses here in Jerusalem,
around Jerusalem and Judea, and then even in Samaria.
Yes, they are too. And to the end of the earth.
The first half of Luke's writing the Gospel of Luke closed with
Jesus saying, I'm sending the promise of the Father upon you.
But stay in the city until you are clothed with power.
Stay there until you're clothed with power from on high.
The power Jesus promised at the end of Luke's gospel is the same
power Luke immediately picks up on in his second book, the book
of Acts. You will receive power.
Jesus was saying. I'm not leaving you hanging out
to dry to try and accomplish this task on your own.
No, I'm giving you all the power you'll need to make all corners
of the earth hearing about me a reality.
They were imbued with power from on high.
We are imbued with that very same power.
The task ahead of us is great, but the power working in us to
make it happen is even greater. That's the importance of
Pentecost. This morning as we close out my
message, I told you we would be using this prayer on the back of
the sermon note sheet. And I understand it may be a
little different for for some of you to use a scripted prayer,
but I love to incorporate scripted prayers into my own
personal time of devotion. Sometimes someone else is able
to say something in a way that they just say it better than I
than I could. So I'd love to use scripted
prayers occasionally. So we're going to pray this all
out loud together. So would you pray this with me?
Almighty God, I thank you for the presence of the Holy Spirit
in my life. I know that the Spirit is always
present, always working, but the stresses and struggles of life
can mean that I don't recognize the Spirit.
I may even close myself off from the Spirit's work.
But still, in Your grace, You promised that the Spirit is
given to me, a testimony to the covenant you made with me.
I pray that you renew me in my faith with the power of Your
Spirit. Send the power of the Spirit
over me. In faith, I open myself to the
Spirit's work in my life. O Holy Spirit, work through me.
Guide me into all truth. Lead me deeper in faith, inspire
my prayers and work forcefully through those prayers and
stretch me beyond my comforts to the places of ministry and
witness. Come Holy Spirit's come, fill me
anew, set me a fire, breathe in me and work through me.
Amen.