This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
They were in unity. They weren't fighting or
arguing. They were waiting on the Lord
that it wasn't their prayer that brought this power of God upon
them. This was ordained by God.
And so some people think today, well, we need to have another
Pentecost. Well, I, I don't want to depress
you, but there's only one Pentecost that happened already.
But there's plenty of opportunity for more infillings
and empowerment of the Holy Spirit throughout your life.
It doesn't just happen one time when you get saved.
Unity in faith is like a choir singing in a harmony, creating
space for God's voice. In today's message, Pastor Clark
unveils how the disciples waiting together without
conflict experienced God's ordained outpouring of the
Spirit. The Holy Spirit offers fresh
infillings and empowerment throughout your life, not just
at salvation. It's not your striving or
perfect prayers that bring this. It's God's plan.
Are you open to the Holy Spirit's ongoing empowerment in
your walk with the Holy Spirit now?
Here's Pastor Clark in Acts Chapter 2 with today's edition
of Living Waters of Grace. We're in the book of the Acts
and we're going to study Pentecost today.
Chapter 2. In order to receive from the
Lord the power of the Holy Spirit in our life daily, we
have to be in a place of vulnerability and and
understandable weakness. If we're all together and we
think we got our strength all set up and we got everything
laid out that no matter what happens we can handle it, then
we're usually not good recipients of the need for
empowerment of the Holy Spirit. We're used to doing life our own
way and our own strength, but whenever we're weak, we have a
desperate need for the power of the Holy Spirit.
And I, I love the teaching of Paul in 2nd Corinthians 12
before we go into Acts. He had this affliction health
issue, and he asked the Lord three times that it might depart
from him in chapter 12 of Second Corinthians verse 8.
And he said to me, And this is the Lord's word to Paul, My
grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in
weakness. Therefore most gladly I will
rather boast of my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasures and
infirmities and reproaches and needs and persecutions and
distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am
strong. Paul understood the principle of
becoming aware of his own inability, his own weakness, his
own situation in his own life. He could not overcome in his own
power, his own ability. And I have that verse by my bed.
And sometimes when I go to bed at night or I get up in the
morning, I sense my own personal weakness and my need of the
Lord. And I'm so comforted and
couraged that it's not a bad thing to feel weak.
Matter of fact, it's a good thing to know you're weak
because in that weakness, that's when the power of God is
manifest. That's when the strength of God
will show up in your life, when you recognize your weakness.
And so that's a promise. And so when I think of the book
of the Acts, and I also think of the promise of Jesus in regard
to the person of the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, and I read
this last week, I want to review it again in chapter 14, verse
15. If you love me, keep my
commandments. In other words, obey the Lord in
your life moment by moment. If you love the Lord, you're
going to want to do what he asked you to do and that this is
this is not in front of other people.
This is your own private life, your own integrity of where you
are with God moment by moment and the decisions that you make
moment by moment. And Jesus says the evidence of
our relationship with him and and our love for him is living
in obedience and surrender to him.
And he said, and I will pray the Father, and he will give you
another helper, that he may abide with you forever.
The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it
neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for He dwells
with you and will be in you. And I will not leave you
orphans. I will come to you.
So this wonderful work of God, the Holy Spirit in the book of
the Acts, this is the beginning of the church age.
Acts chapter 2. If you have your Bibles, you can
turn there. If you don't, you can listen or
look on your phone, whatever you app you have there for your
Bible. We will go through this chapter
of Acts, part of it at least today.
Now I just want to set the stage.
We have Passover significant in the sense of the day that Jesus
was crucified on Passover, Jewish feast, and then you had
the Feast of First Fruits was the resurrection that occurred 3
days after the death of Christ. And then you have the feast of
Pentecost which is 50 days after the resurrection.
So these were all lined up in Jewish history to show the
Jewish people that Christ was truly the Messiah.
Now they would still celebrate these various festivals and not
tie Christ into it because of the deception and the lies that
were going around regarding who Jesus was.
And did he or did he not truly raise from the dead?
And then we had the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall.
So there was three major feasts that the Jewish people took
pilgrimage. The Jewish males took pilgrimage
to go up to Jerusalem. And so here we are now at at
Pentecost and the city is jam packed.
The Jewish people celebrated Pentecost for the giving of the
law. That's when Moses gave the law.
Now we are in a different dispensation beginning at this
particular point. Now we have church history when
the church's birth and the day of Pentecost.
Now we have to think about the people who were invited into the
temple court somewhere in the temple compound to have enough
room for 120 people and that eventually 3000 people who would
listen to Peter's sermon on that day and and become Christians.
3000 people had to be a pretty big area to house all those
people. At one time.
These people that were called to go up into the room to wait.
Jesus said you go after he ascended 10 days.
They were to wait until the Holy Spirit came upon them.
What were they like during those ten days?
What, what was happening with them?
Well, we know from last week, it says they were in one accord.
They were in unity. They weren't fighting or
arguing. They were waiting on the Lord.
But it wasn't their prayer that brought this power of God upon
them. This was ordained by God.
And so some people think today, well, we need to have another
Pentecost. Well, I I don't want to depress
you, but there's only one Pentecost and it happened
already. But there's plenty of
opportunity for more infillings and empowerment of the Holy
Spirit throughout your life. It doesn't just happen one time.
When you get saved, you need to continually be filled.
But the difference between what happens in the book of the Acts
here and what happened to you and me is that I wasn't baptized
by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I was baptized by the Holy
Spirit when I got saved. The moment I got saved, the
moment you got saved, you were baptized into the body of
Christ. The body of Christ didn't exist
the way it does now until the day of Pentecost.
And on the day of Pentecost, that's when all these people who
were believers were baptized by the Holy Spirit into this entity
we call the body of Christ. And Jesus being the head of the
body, and we're parts of the body.
And so these folks that were waiting for this to occur, they
were very, I'm sure, intimidated in a lot of ways.
They were weak. They were in weakened
conditions. They were gathered together,
perhaps not knowing exactly what was going to happen and how it
was going to happen and what was going to happen to them because
of this event called Pentecost. So they weren't proud, they
weren't arrogant, they weren't independent.
They were in a place of surrender and a place of willing
brokenness to be able to receive from God the Father what he was
going to send by the Son in the person of God the Holy Spirit.
First Corinthians 12/13 for us today and those of us who are
believers and those of us perhaps maybe will come become
believers the day or in the days to come.
It says for by 1 Spirit are we baptized into the body of
Christ. So an unbeliever is not in
Christ. They're totally unaware of their
need of Christ. Most of the time they're not
even aware of the fact that there is a power called the Holy
Spirit, a person, the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the one who convicts the world and convicts
lost people of sin. They need a savior of
righteousness. They're unholy, they're impure.
And the potential judgment of dying without forgiveness from
Christ and going into eternity without a savior, that's the
work of the Holy Spirit. He's also called the Comforter
and the Helper. And I mentioned that last that
we need to continually ask the Holy Spirit for help and to
comfort us not to try to do life in our own strength and try to
make it through by our own ability on our own wisdom, but
to be humble and say, Lord, I need your help or ask someone
else to pray for you or or to encourage you and the Lord we we
that's the purpose of the church to comfort and encourage and
minister to one another to be there for one another to help
one another. That's the health of of a Bible
teaching church is to have crisis ahead and we're all
serving him and serving one another.
And so these folks now are told in chapter 2, verse one, they're
waiting and it says they've been waiting for 10 days.
And verse one, when the day of Pentecost said fully come, they
were all with 1 accord in one place.
So they're they're waiting, they're not leaving each other
during this period of time. They're staying in this place to
receive what God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, God the
Savior, told them would come to pass.
And suddenly everything's real calm and sort of normal.
And then suddenly this is this happens in a blink of an eye.
Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty
wind. They could hear this.
They couldn't see it, but they heard this noise probably sound
like 100 locomotives coming at them at one time.
And not only did they hear this wind, but everybody in that
compound that confines of Jerusalem where they were
located were also hearing the wind because it was eventually
going to attract thousands of people to see what was going on.
And it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
And so they weren't standing and they weren't jumping around.
They're they're just sitting there like you guys are sitting
here today. They're not knowing what to
expect. Nothing like this has ever
happened before in human history.
And then there appeared to them divided tongues as a fire, and
one sat upon each of them. And so you've got to visualize
this, that you've got 120 people in this room, and as you're
looking around, you're hearing this wind.
You're probably shocked and and awe and fearful.
What's going on? Is this a tornado or hurricane?
Are we all going to be killed? I mean, there had to be all kind
of thoughts going through their head.
The only was that when alarming and unlike anything they had
ever encountered. But they're looking and they're
seeing on top of each of the people's heads, the 120 there
something that appeared to look like a flame of fire.
It sort of reminded me when Jesus was baptized, it says that
the, the dove ascended, descended upon him, the Holy
Spirit to give the picture that Christ was the Messiah.
And they saw it visibly. And so in this case, they, they
see these tongues of fire. What does fire represent?
Fire represents the power to purify something.
Fire also represents the holiness of God in the burning
Bush, the fire pillar of fire by night as they travelled through
the wilderness with the Tabernacle.
Our God is a consuming fire, the Bible says So the fire of God,
the power of God, the glory of God, the the absolute holiness
of God is manifest in this picture of these fiery tongues.
You mix fire with wind and you get major energy explosion and
this is what was happening. The fire and the wind together
was creating this phenomena that was actually a physical
phenomena and they were experiencing this and and then
it says in verse 4, and they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave
them utterance. Now the Greek word for the idea
of tongues and also in verse 6, we'll get there in a minute when
it talks about them hearing the people, hearing these guys and
gals speaking in language was from the Greek word where we get
our word linguistic, we get our word.
I forget the word that slips my mind now, but it's the word that
means language. And so this was not babbling.
This was not something that was unable to be discerned as far as
what it meant. As we continue here, this is
literally a gift that they were given to proclaim the greatness
of God in the midst of all the people that would hear them.
This was something too that they weren't doing themselves.
It was the Spirit. The Holy Spirit was giving them
this utterance to do this and verse 5 and there were dwelling
in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.
There had to be at least 15 different people groups from
various places as far as Iran and Egypt and and the Roman
Empire and and and Greece and and this on and on and on.
So there was all these people with these multiple languages at
at this time in Pentecost visiting Jerusalem.
And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together and
they were confused because everyone heard them speak in his
own language. OK, this was not in Babel.
Like say I'm say I'm Greek and I'm there and I don't understand
Hebrew, but I'm part of this crowd and I'm hearing some of
these people speaking in fluent Greek.
The great acts of God throughout the Old Testament in the Bible.
The New Testament wasn't written yet.
So they would be proclaiming the greatness of God's deliverance
from the, the bondage of Egypt and Pharaoh and all the things,
the great things that God had done.
And someone else would be there and, and, and no Italian or
someone else would be there and, and no some other Egyptian
language or whatever. So the word I was looking for
was dialects. OK, That's the Greek word of
that word, language, dialects. So they were speaking in various
dialects, OK, at one time, and it's a reversal.
What happened at the Tower of Babel when they decided to use
one language to build that tower to get up to God and sort of
control things was all based on pride.
And God had to disperse the crowd by giving them different
languages where all of a sudden they couldn't understand one
another, right? Well, in this instance, now
everybody is understanding the same message given by the Holy
Spirit through these various languages.
This is the real gift of tongues.
I mean, we'll get into other things down the road, but I
mean, if I'm going to have a language, a gift to speak in
tongues, Lord, give me Italian. I'd like to travel Rome and not
have to study and be able to just talk to people and give
them the gospel, right, Without having to study, you know, this
software, learning how to speak a foreign language.
I mean, I took I took two years of Spanish in high school and I
all I can say is like buenas tarde or hostile luego como SE
almost dead. And I know that one.
I'd learned how to order breakfast a little bit because
one time I had to go to Mexico. So I wanted to know how to order
pancakes and panaceos and that kind of stuff.
Caliente chocolate. And I like that too, you know,
anyway, it's a lot of work to know a language.
Well, these people were, I learned it in regard to these
languages. Wasn't God was looking down and
said, well, you already know Italian, so you're going to
proclaim the greatness of God in this language.
And no, it was a supernatural manifestation of languages.
I talked to Mike Dawson one time and they spent many years in the
jungles. They're still there in the
jungles of Venezuela with the Anamont Indians.
He said, Clark, we prayed many times, Lord, give us a gift to
speak this language. It is brutal when you go into a
foreign country where there's no language and you have to point
at things forever to figure out does that word mean tree or
branch or leaf? I mean, it's it's it takes a
while to eventually know the language and then to be able to
write the language down in the Bible in the New Testament
translated and but he told me one time an interesting story.
His father was very pragmatic man, very balanced in his
theology, wasn't flying by the seat of his pants.
He knew the word, he knew doctor, and he understood what
the Bible teaches regarding truth.
And one time he was sitting there talking to a witch doctor,
trying to have a conversation, but there was no conversation
because he didn't understand Yanomano.
And the Yanomano Indian didn't understand him, his language,
But they were smiling at each other and talking to each other.
Well, lo and behold, years later, when this witch doctor
became a Christian, he said, I'll never forget that one time
you and I were sitting down there by the river talking, and
you were telling me about Jesus. And I understood what you were
saying. And he said what he says.
Yeah, you were talking to me. The way you were communicating
somehow was translated to me in my language, even though you
were speaking something different.
Now, that's only God. It only happened for a little
while, a little bit, but it was enough to touch that Indian's
heart and the Lord used it. I know missionaries I've talked
to for years, it's been years, you guys know, you study
language, you know to go to be a missionary.
And it wouldn't have been nice if you just would have been
given that gift and you can get on the plane the next day after
you were ready to go and just go give the gospel.
It doesn't work that way for some reason, but nonetheless, in
Pentecost here these are literal languages.
This is not Babble. If you would have been there and
said, well, these people are drunk.
And we're going to see what some of the people thought about what
was happening here as we studied this together, the the crowd's
response and when they responded to this, it says in verse 5, and
there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from
every nation under heaven. So it gives you the idea of all
these different people groups. And when the sound occurred, the
multitude came together and they were confused because everyone
heard them speak in his own language.
I mean, that would be wild, wouldn't it, just to be able to
hear every language at that particular time being spoken at
the same time. And it's only resonating with
people who are from that particular people group that
would understand. Someone over here is talking
Italian, but if I'm Greek, I'm just listening to the guy that's
speaking in Greek and I'm hearing what it is he's saying,
OK. And so it says in verse 7.
Then they were all amazed and they marveled, I should say, so
I would be amazed and marveling too.
I marvel and amaze reading this. And they said to one another,
look, are not all those who speak Galileans?
I mean, they, they only knew like one kind of dialect, the
Galileans. And how is it that we hear each
in our own language in which we were born?
That's the question. How in the world is this
happening? It's a miracle, the work of God,
the Holy Spirit. Parthians, that's the first
people group and knees from Persia and Elamites, those
dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontius in Asia,
Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya joining
Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and Proselytites, Cretian
and Arabs, We hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful
works of God. So they were able to witness of
their faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
biblically through the language to all these people who were in
town at Pentecost to celebrate the giving of the law.
No one expected this to happen except obviously our faithful
God and those he told that this was going to happen and why they
had to wait. But the world was not prepared
for this at this time nor were they expecting this.
I was listening to someone talk about this particular section of
scripture and they said Jesus one time in the scriptures was
they believe this could have happened by the portico of
Solomon with the big pillars where it had a big expanse of,
of space and cement where people could congregate.
And Jesus was over there one time praying and walking around.
And, and you would have loved to heard the conversation if you
could. But you know, he knew he was
going to go to the cross and die.
He knew he was going to suffer. He knew he was going to raise
again from the dead. But he probably walked around
that room and that big area of space.
And this was praising his father, saying it won't be too
long before they'll be 3000 people here one day.
They'll get saved by hearing the gospel from the Apostle Peter.
Thanks for joining us on today's edition of Living Waters of
Grace, a ministry of Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.
Today, Pastor Clark is teaching about the book of Acts, and as
we learn more about Acts, it becomes clear that the early
church didn't miss a single opportunity to share the gospel.
In nearly every chapter, you see apostles like Peter and Paul
stepping into conversations, crowds, and crises with
boldness, ready to proclaim the name of Jesus.
Their example challenges us to consider how we might step into
gospel moments in our own lives. What doors might God open this
week for you to speak truth, offer hope, or live out your
faith in a way that points others to Him?
The story of Acts reminds us we are part of the same mission.
Today, let's live with eyes open and hearts ready to respond.
We hope you are challenged by today's message.
If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, we'd love to see you in
person this Sunday at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St.
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