Our God is present with us, and He speaks to us.
Please, please be attentive to the Word of the Lord.
When the day of Pentecost arrived, the disciples were all
together in one place, and suddenly there came from heaven
a sound of like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire
house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of 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 of
every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitudes
came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was
hearing them speak in their own language.
And they were amazed and astonished, and said, Are not
all these speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each
of us in his own native language?
Parthians and Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia,
Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus in Asia, Firegra, Pamphylia, Egypt
and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome,
both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear
them telling in their own tongue, in our own tongue, the
mighty works of God. And they were all amazed and
perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?
But others mockingly said, they are filled with new wine.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Gracious Father, once again, grant to us an understanding of
your word. Transform us with it, shape us
with us, mold us with it. We pray, Christ our Lord, we
ask, Amen. Please be seated.
If you would grab your Bibles, turn to Acts Chapter 2, Acts
Chapter 2 as we work through this passage of text together.
I am not a super great fan of of of holidays, particularly of
birthdays. I'm not a big celebrant of
birthdays. I know that other people are.
They get really excited about celebrating a birthday and I
appreciate that. I'm just not that way.
I'm much more cavalier when it comes to a birthday.
Indifferent if it happens. If it's passed and not even
noted, that's fine by me. If you celebrate it, I
appreciate that as well. I just don't pay a whole lot of
attention to my own personal birthday.
Now, unfortunately, that kind of flows into other areas of my
life, and so I tend not to make a big deal out of other people's
birthdays as well, including my family's.
Some cynics in my family might say that's because I forget
those birthdays. I don't know about that, but I
don't know because a whole lot upon the birthdays because
that's just not something that I get really excited about.
I want to contrast that though dramatically with the actual
birthday. We celebrate the anniversary of
a birthday, but the birthday is totally different.
For me, the birth of my two children was dramatic events in
my life. Earth shaking, world rattling
events. They shifted my life
tremendously, dramatically, only second only, I believe, to my
coming to know the Lord and Himself and my conversion to
faith. It was the experience of birth
of my kids that rattled things around.
The actual birthday was incredibly meaningful to me,
even though the birthday itself, the celebration of the birthday,
sometimes passes me by and I don't pay a whole lot of
attention to it. Scholars, churchmen through the
ages, common folk who read this text often understand this
passage, Acts chapter 2, as the birthday of the church.
It is the birthday of the church.
It's the day of birth of the church.
And within the context of redemptive history, I think we
can see that to be true. You've got the life, the death,
the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you've got the ascension
of Jesus Christ, and it all culminates to some extent in the
birth of the church in this passage in which we just looked
at Acts chapter 2. Now, unfortunately for me, when
I have read that and I've heard people talk about the birthday
of the church, I appreciate it intellectually, I kind of go,
that's kind of cute, that's kind of neat to look at this passage
and kind of understand it in terms of the birth of the church
and those kind of things. But I think in part because I'm
so passe or indifferent to birthdays in general, I haven't
taken the time and I haven't spent the focus that I should
recognizing, no, no, this is a birth.
Just like the birth of my children were earth shattering
events for me, this birth of the church should be earth
shattering. This should be a dramatic moment
that I spend a lot more time focusing on than what I actually
have in the past. So what we're going to do today
is we're going to focus upon this event as a birth and so
that we can see it. We're truly, I believe, as we
are intended to and recognize it as.
So if you have your scriptures open for us available again, it
begins when the day of Pentecost arrived, verse 1 of chapter 2,
when the day of Pentecost arrived.
Pentecost is 50 days or so after the death and the resurrection
of Jesus Christ. So 50 days after Christ's death
and resurrection. Now you remember for 40 of those
days Jesus was walking with his disciples and teaching his
disciples as that resurrected Lord.
And about 10 days ago they saw Him ascend into heaven.
And right before he ascends into heaven, He gives them their
marching orders. That command that is shaping the
way in which we understand in the book of Acts as a whole.
Really the rest of the narrative story in which we're going to
talk about this idea that we are to wait in Jerusalem for the
power of the Holy Spirit and then we are to go to Jerusalem,
Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
We have brought that forward with a challenge for the 321 you
remember the 3213. Pray for three people close and
near and dear to your life. 2 institutions or or organizations
that are functioning to carry the gospel forward and then one
area of the way. OK, so if you've been praying
for three people, give me a thumbs up.
OK, if you've been praying for two institutions or
organizations in the area, give me a thumbs up.
OK, if you've been praying for one part of the world, one
nation of the world, give me a thumbs up.
All right, thank you. That kind of follows a little
bit I think of the pattern of which we are to move forward as
we see the Spirit, the church and the world here in the book
of Acts. So following that, Christ's
ascension into heaven, following that final command to the
disciples and Christ's ascension into heaven, now you've got a 10
day period, that 10 day gap between the ascension and when
this moment of Pentecost arrives, When the day of
Pentecost arrives, Pentecost was a famous feast in the Jewish
calendar system. It was one of the three main
feasts where everybody from all the world was to come if they
could get to Jerusalem and celebrate together.
And it was marked particularly by the notion of harvest.
It was an, it was an agricultural feast.
It was a, hey, let's celebrate the fact that God has provided
us the food that we need to eat. And so it's a harvest kind of a,
of a celebration. And of course, that fits
perfectly with the events of Chapter 2 of Acts, a harvest of
sort, which we will look at today a little bit, but
primarily next week together. When the day of Pentecost
arrived, they were all together in one place.
The day is is nebulous in this passage.
If you go back to the previous text right before that, it's
pretty clear that it's 120 of Christ's nearest and dearest
followers, obviously his disciples, and then 120 or 100
other folks that were also gathered together.
So you've got a large grouping together.
They're gathered together in one place, maybe in the temple.
We've already been told in Acts chapter one that they spent a
lot of time in the temple. That would have fit to have 120
people together. Could have been the upper room
where they celebrated the Last Supper.
All the disciples are together in one place.
Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like the mighty rushing
wind that filled the entire house where they were sitting
and divided. Tongues of fire appeared to them
and rested on each one of them. Now, for a Jewish reader of the
Scriptures, that brings back a crucial memory.
I hope that you're able to grab it a little bit.
If you read the Old Testament very frequently, you are going
to see the notion of rushing wind.
The power of wind is representative of the power of
God. When God appears, he most
frequently appears with a sound of the rushing wind.
It is just characteristic of the Old Testament, but specifically
one moment in Israel's history where the power of rushing wind
and is most evident equally the power of fire is recognizing
divine fires, recognizes that holiness, the the righteousness,
the justice of our God. It carries A moral quality of
God. And it shows up one particular
place as well with the sound of rushing wind and the power of
the fire. And this of course was Mount
Sinai. At Mount Sinai, the culmination
of the Exodus experience, where the Israelites were let out of
Egypt and then they were brought to Mount Sinai and Mount Sinai
they meet with God. And on the top of the mountain
you have the wind that is rushing, you have the cloud that
represents the glory of our Lord, and you have the fire that
is present there representing His goodness and His Holiness.
And in all intents and purposes, it serves as a birth of the
Israelite people, the birth of the Israelite nation right
there, the culmination of Exodus into that birth narrative.
And the Israelites saw that and recognize that as their
birthing, that everything before that kind of leads up to that
culminating spot at Mount Sinai where the fire of God in the
presence of God through the wind of the Lord and the Shekinah
glory is present. And here you have the birth of
the Israelite nation. Very intentionally, God is
repeating that event, and Luke tells us that event in such a
way that we can see that being repeated.
Just like in the Old Testament, you had the fire of God's
presence in the wind of God's power present.
So here in the upper room or in the temple, wherever the
Israelite, the disciples are gathered, you have this power
that is arising again and the presence of God being here,
forcing us to think here, we're having a new moment, a new, a
new birth of a new group of people, a new following of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, we're talking here
about the church. Divided tongues fell around
them, rested on each one of them, and they were filled with
the Holy Spirit. We have a definition here, a
description of what happened, an explanation of what happened.
The author explains to us what's what is these tongues?
What is this wind that is rushing here?
It is the presence of God himself.
The Holy Spirit fills them and they begin to speak in other
tongues as the Spirit gives them utterance.
Now, there's some question about what that might look like, but I
think it's clarified very much so in what follows, because
there have been all these Jews that are dwelling in Jerusalem
from all the way around the world.
And of course, the way that it's described here is all over the
world. I think that's a bit of
hyperbole. I don't think there were any
Native Americans there or Aborigines or anything like
that. But rather what you have here is
throughout the known Roman world, representing the entire
world. You've got these different 15
different areas that are mentioned.
And if you take the time and line it up with chapter 10 in
Genesis, the table of nations, if you don't know that text,
look it up. You'll, you'll see it a little
bit. You can tell that the author is
going through saying here and here and here and here, put a
map and you can see that you're covering the entire world,
giving a picture of the entire known world is all present in
Jerusalem in one form or another.
And all these people speaking different languages all come to
Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover together, the feast of
the Passover together. And instead what they witness is
people speaking clearly not of their people group, nevertheless
speaking their language. You've got people that are being
able to talk with them about, and what do we tell?
What do they speak of? Look down in verse 20.
Look down in verse 11. They are Speaking of the mighty
works of God. They're telling the gospel of
Jesus Christ in there in languages where everybody can
hear, and you have this marvelous birth now of the
church and the power of the Holy Spirit on day one is not the
miracles. It's not shooting repulsive rays
out of your hand. It's not judging or passing
judgment upon the God. It's not a witness to the Lord's
power. It is a witness to the gospel
being spread throughout the world, the redemptive work of
Jesus Christ. That's the power of the Holy
Spirit that Jesus has anticipated that Jesus told the
disciples to wait for, wait for the power of the Holy Spirit so
that it does now. Will there be healings?
Will there be mighty acts of God?
Of course there will be, all through the power of the Holy
Spirit. But here, on day one of the
birth of the Church, it is witnessed through this
expression of the gospel crossing called cross cultural
boundaries going throughout the whole world.
Now the meaning of this, the power of this comes when we take
a step back and set it within the context of what any birth
has to be, set in context with the whole narrative of a life.
And here we have the narrative of redemptive history as a
whole. One of the most devastating
consequences of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
was the curse that was that came upon them.
And you see, the curse worked out, of course, most powerfully,
most negatively in the presence of evil and of the presence of
death that comes upon the people because of their fall in the
Garden of Eden. But also you had the suffering
that was presence. You have the rejection of the
relationship that existed between Adam and Eve.
You had the the conflict that exists in between God and man.
You have the problem that Adam struggles then in his work that
there's a rejection between the ground itself, creation, and the
human being. You have all of these
experiences of the curse that takes place, and yet it comes to
its fruition at the very end of that chapter, chapter 3 of
Genesis, where God banishes Adam and Eve from the garden.
This is seen as a culmination, as a high point of the curse of
God, because what happens, they're being banished from this
beautiful, wonderful place. The Garden of Eden is this
glorious magic, majestic wonder wonder spot.
It is paradise itself, and yet they are kicked out of it.
But what made it paradise? It was not the beauty of the
trees, was not the innocence of the creation.
It wasn't the perfection of all that was around them.
What made it beautiful and perfect was that's where God
was. The Garden of Eden was the
temple whereby God would meet with His people, and by being
banished from God's presence, the people were separated in a
very tangible way from the Lord. Now so much of the Old Testament
is God's promise and way of working itself out to solve this
problem. Hence the birth of the church.
And in the birth of the church we see now the fire settling
upon God's people, God's presence coming here once again
to surround his people. By the way, I think that we get
confused a little bit sometimes with God's omniscience or,
sorry, God's omnipresence. God is present everywhere.
That is part of what it means for God to be God.
God is always here. God is always.
But when the church identifies this birth narrative as
something special, what we're identifying is that the Holy
Spirit himself now no longer just as present everywhere,
etcetera, but rather the God now dwells within his people in a
way that did not happen before, in a way that separates us from
the Old Testament, believers from the Old Testament.
There is now an indwelling of God himself with his people.
Every believer in this room is filled with the Holy Spirit in a
way that was not present before. You were a follower of Christ.
Now for many of us, we can't distinguish a difference between
one life and another. But that doesn't mean that
there's not this massive difference that the birth of the
church has brought about. That massive difference being
the fact that God himself dwells within us.
It is to our shame if we are unable to tell the difference
between a life that is where God is present and one where he is
not. It is to our great shame.
So out of their arrogance and their pride, the people gather
together at the plain of Shinar. And, and I don't mean an
aeroplane, I mean a geographic plane, a flat, a flat area, a
flat area. So all the, all the people, out
of their arrogance, their pride, with their confidence in their
self determination and their self-confidence, they gather
together at the plain of Shinar and they want to demonstrate
their independence from God. They want to demonstrate their
authority over all the world around them.
And so they build a tower, they build the Tower of Babel, and
there they exert themselves and they say, see, we are
independent, we are on our own, and there are no consequences of
our sin. And God comes down and says, no,
there were consequences of our sin.
Our sin is that which separates us and causes us to be
problematic with one another, to be at odds with one another.
The conflict that exists here is parallel to the conflict that
exists between US and God. And so the Lord confuses our
languages, confuses the languages of the people who
gathered at the plain of Shinar, turns the land which would have
been full of people asserting their self-confidence and their
self power, now suddenly are unable to speak with each other.
And the devastation that is wrought about by their sin, now
comes the consequences of that comes full bore upon them, and
they are consequently scattered among all the people of the
earth. And then you have the birth of
the Church, and in the birth of the Church, which follows, of
course, Christ's death and resurrection, the redemption of
our souls, the consequences of all of our sin falling upon
Jesus Christ. Now suddenly the consequences of
sin no longer fall upon the Church.
And you see people who come scattered from all these
different nations, 15 different languages are listed here,
nevertheless are able to come together and be united.
How? By the gospel of Jesus Christ,
through the mighty acts of God. What mighty acts are we talking
about? Of course, they could be talking
about creation. They could be talking about the
flood. They could be no, they're
talking about the work of Jesus Christ.
They're talking about the redemption that is ours in Jesus
Christ that has removed the consequences of sin.
And you can tell that because suddenly now the curse, the, the
manifestation of the curse of Babel, the fact that we have all
these different languages is overcome in this marvelous way.
God didn't suddenly make everybody speak the same
language, but He made them able to understand powerfully the
same gospel message so that the curse is no longer with us.
The fact that so many of us live still to this day under the
bearing of the curse of our Lord, of the of the curse of our
sin, that is shameful to us, for we have been forgiven.
And the evidence of that, the manifestation evidence of that
is in the power of the church to cross cultural boundaries, that
there is no limitation to the gospel message as it spreads
throughout this world. That's the power of the church.
Four years later, the Israelites are wandering through the
wilderness, 40 years of wandering through the
wilderness. And while they're wandering
through the wilderness, they're being led by Moses.
And Moses is the one who has the ear of the Lord.
He's the one whom God is speaking through and
communicating with. And so you've got 2 million
Israelites, 2 million Israelites wandering through the
wilderness. You can imagine how often they
had troubles and problems with each other and needed guidance.
They needed wisdom, they needed to hear from the Lord.
And so they would go to Moses consistently.
Moses in the morning would set up a chair and people would line
up to speak with him because they needed guidance from the
Lord. And Jethro, Moses's
father-in-law, sees this happening and says, MO, that's
not he called him MO MO, that's not good.
You can't do it like this. Gather together the elders of
Israel and give them the ability as well to speak the power and
the authority of God. Give them the ability to live
righteous lives. Give them the ability as well to
live holy in their sight. And so Moses gathers 6 people
from each tribe. So 172 people, sorry, 72 elders.
He gathers the 72 elders together, 70 of them show up,
and the power of the Holy Spirit falls upon them.
And suddenly now they too are able to witness.
This is what a godly life looks like.
This is what holiness looks like.
This is what righteousness this looks like, and the 70 people go
into God's people and help lead them and take some of the weight
off Moses's shoulders. But two guys weren't able to
make it. There was a traffic jam of
camels or something. Two guys weren't able to make it
to the meeting, but the Holy Spirit fell upon them as well.
And they too were able to speak of the holiness and the
righteousness of God. And people looked at them and
said, hey, you guys weren't at the meeting.
You didn't get the secret handshake.
You're not allowed to do that. And they go to Moses.
And Moses says, what, are you kidding me?
Wouldn't it be great if everybody, everybody was blessed
by the power of the Holy Spirit? Enter the birth of the church,
and at the birth of the church, we are told very clearly that
the power of the Holy Spirit fell upon each and every one of
them, all of them together, and each and every one of them.
This blessing of the power of the Spirit, this ability to live
a holy life, this ability to witness wisely, this ability to
discern what is good and what is right, this is something that
God has blessed every Christian in this room with.
Now, do we need to learn from each other?
Do we need to grow with each other?
Of course we do. All that is true.
But it is also true that the very power of God himself
indwells every believer in this room.
You can live a righteous life. You can live a godly life.
Why? Because God's power is within
you. You are the fulfillment of that
desire that Moses had. Oh, wouldn't it be great if
everybody knew the power and the blessings of our Lord Jesus
Christ? Centuries later, the Israelites
in Judea were failing massively to honor and please their Lord.
They were chasing after idols. They were rejecting God as their
leader and their and their guide and king.
They turned their back upon the Lord and as a consequence they
are facing annihilation by the nations around them.
The nations around them had gathered the armies and had
surrounded the people of Judah and were threatening them with
with with elimination as a whole.
And the godly people went to the prophet Joel and said, Joel, is
this it it are are we done now? Are the people of Israel about
to be eliminated? Are the promises of God no
longer true? And Joel says, let me tell you
about a vision of the future. Let me tell you about the power
of God's blessings. Let me tell you about what it
means to live in the last days, the last days, the days where
the whole world is turned from here, this broken world, into
the world which is ahead for us. And when the last days come,
we're going to see the beauty and the power and the majesty of
our God. We're going to see the blessings
that the Lord pours out upon us consistently and totally in
those last days will be the beauty and the gloriness of
everything that is hoped for and anticipated.
Enter the birth of the church and at the birth of the church
we have the power of Lord Jesus Christ coming and witnessing to
the last days, that the last days are here.
Now that the world has turned, that really what was in the Old
Testament is no longer so now in the New Testament, in the New
Testament era, that the world in its brokenness and in its
fallenness, in its commitment to Satan, in his evil, is no longer
have bearing upon the church and the people of God because the
people of God now represent that in breaking into this world, the
dawning of a new era. Yes, it's not fully day yet, but
the dawn has come and it is creeping.
And we, the church now are living that renewed life, a new
world and in the new age that is yet to come.
Yes, we're still living in the old age.
Yes, we still suffer this, the trials of the old age, but we
are representing and we are living that new age of a new
people that God has called into existence.
Existence. Something new has happened with
the birth of the Church. Something radically new has
happened. And it is to our shame that way
too many of us continue to live as though we are part of the old
order, the old world. It is the birth of the Church
that represents that culmination, everything that
Jesus has done upon the cross, everything that Christ has
enabled for us to do and to live our lives.
It is because of the birth of the church that we get to
experience what the very presence of God, the very
presence of God, the ability to discern and to do that which is
right and pleasing in His sight. A new life that is able to cross
boundaries with the gospel message of Jesus Christ.
And we are now living in the new era, the last days of our Lord
Jesus Christ. A new world is before us and
it's before us because of the birth of the Christ.
I'm sorry, the birth of the church and the birth of the
church is possible because we have the table of the Lord.