Acts 2:1-13
Please turn in your copy of God’s
Word to Luke chapter 2. I’m sorry, Acts chapter 2. I
knew this would happen. We’re done with Luke. Well, we’re
not done with Luke because he wrote Acts, but Acts chapter
2 verses 1 to 13. And as you make your way there,
remind you we are in our studies of the first couple chapters.
Jesus has ascended into heaven. His disciples gathered about
120 of them, along with the 12 apostles are in the upper room
at Jerusalem waiting for the promise of the Holy Spirit. Before
we read God’s word, let’s ask for his help and blessing. Pray
with me. Lord, as we open now your word, we pray that the eyes
of our hearts may be enlightened so that we may be able to comprehend
with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the
height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ, which
surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled up to all the fullness
of God. We ask this in the name of Jesus,
amen. Hear the word of the living God,
Acts chapter two, verses one to 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 a 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 they were dwelling in Jerusalem,
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, Pontus,
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? But others, mocking,
said, they are filled with new wine. Amen, the word of the living
God. You may be seated. Five years ago, my children were
sitting with their great grandmother, who at that time was turning
100 years old. And they sat there with their
iPhones in hand and electric lights in the house and running
water and all these wonderful things. And they asked her, hey,
you’re this old, what’s been the greatest thing you’ve seen
in your lifetime? If I recall correctly, her answer to them
was the greatest thing that happened in her lifetime was the electric
line being brought down the country road to her house. And they had
electricity, they had lights at night. Isn’t it amazing to
think about how much has progressed really in the last 100 years,
100 plus years? In my own lifetime so much has
changed but in her lifetime a hundred years so much changed The world’s
never been the same without electricity. We ride down the streets at night
and our Cars have these headlamps, now LED. The streets are brightly
lit. If you come down the end of Saddle
Club, you think the apocalypse sometimes at night is upon you,
but no, it’s the ball fields on the edge of Elon University’s
campus. It’s as bright as the sun when
you turn that corner. The world has not been the same
since electricity and since light bulbs and now the rapid change
technology that we face. And I want to suggest to you
that the church has never been the same since the electricity
of the Holy Spirit came upon her. One of the things you notice,
you read through your Bible and you see the pattern of the story
of redemption. God made the world and everything
in it. Mankind, tempted by Satan, fell into sin and brought all
kinds of unrighteousness in their lives and in the generations
that would come after them. But God continued to love a people
and to call a people to himself and to redeem them in Christ
Jesus. And that’s the story of the whole
Bible. God is at work in this world
making all things new. Now, under the old covenant,
we might say that was the era without electricity. That was
the era without light bulbs. That was the pre Thomas Edison
era. Now, some of you younger people,
maybe you don’t remember a world without smartphones. And so this
whole light bulb business, this whole electricity thing is a
little bit foreign or even new to you. But a lot has changed
in recent years, but much has changed for the church with the
coming of Pentecost. It was as if under the old covenant,
the truths about God, the promise of the Messiah, they were they
were flickering candles. And we come today to this passage
of Pentecost, the spirit of God coming down upon the disciples,
coming down upon the apostles, coming down upon his church.
And it’s like the lights have been flipped on. It’s as if Well,
the scriptures say it so well, the people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light on them has a light shown. And so in the coming of Jesus,
all the types in the shadows of the Old Testament have been
fulfilled. And as we’ve studied the life
and teaching and ministry of Jesus through the book of Luke
and now in Luke’s account of the early church. We see, we
saw Jesus empowered by the spirit coming into the world to make
all things new. We saw him teach, heal. We saw
him go to the cross. We saw his death. We saw his
resurrection. Now we’ve seen his ascension.
Jesus says to his disciples, go to Jerusalem, wait, until
the promise of the spirit. And so we arrive at Pentecost.
Pentecost, you get from the word derivation has to do with five,
right? The Pentagon is a five sided
building. Pentecost would be the weeks
after Passover. It’s the celebration of the first
fruits. It’s the feast of weeks. And
so it’s a significant time in the life of Jerusalem. People,
as you read there in chapter two, have come from all over
the world. God fearing Jewish people scattered in the diaspora
have now regathered in Jerusalem for these festivals. And this
little known band of Galileans, the women, the mother of Jesus,
all those listed were in the upper room, praying in the upper
room, selecting another apostle and other disciple. And now the
day comes, the Holy Spirit comes upon them. Now we could say much
about the Holy Spirit. In fact, we could go on for weeks
and weeks and weeks about the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
Where does the Spirit come from? What does the Spirit do? Has
the Spirit always been around? But I want you to understand
today this basic thing about Pentecost. God was pouring out
his spirit on the believers. Jesus now resurrected and ascended
up into heaven, gave to his church the blessing of the Holy Spirit.
He gave them this rich and powerful gift so that they would have
the strength to go into all the world, Jerusalem and Judea and
Samaria and to the ends of the earth to preach and proclaim
the message of God’s salvation in Christ Jesus. We’ve spoken
in weeks past that You know, you can do church all kinds of
ways. I think I told you all last week that I worked at a
church for a time where nothing was solved by prayer. Nothing
was solved by the Bible. We just opened a spreadsheet.
That’s not a real godly way to do church work. So we’ve seen
the disciples praying. We’ve seen the apostles praying.
And now we’re going to see them go in the boldness. and power
of the Holy Spirit. The light has been, the switch
has been hit and the voltage is now coming fully into the
lives of believers. I wanna say one more thing before
we look at the wind and the spirit that come on Pentecost. This
same Pentecostal power that came on the early church continues
in the life of every believer today. If you are a Christian
and you come to faith in Jesus, you receive him and rest in him
alone for your salvation. You receive the Holy Spirit. There is no later second blessing
as the charismatics have tried to say. There is no two class
system of Christians, those with the spirit and those without
it. Every believer who comes to faith in Jesus receives the
spirit and this spirit empowers us. It empowers the church. to
live a God fearing life and to be great witnesses to the ends
of the earth. Well, as these apostles, as these
disciples are sitting in the upper room, we presume somewhere
near the temple precincts, the spirit, the promise of the father
power from on high comes as promised. And as they are sitting in the
room, it’s described as the sound of a mighty rushing wind. We’ve just been through a little
season of storms in recent weeks, hurricanes on the Gulf Coast. They brought storms up our way,
tornadoes, floods, all the rest. We’re accustomed to sound outside
the house, right? We hear the windows rattle. We hear the wind through the
screen of the chimney cap. We hear the trees and we hear
them croaking and And croaking is not what frogs do. Straining
under the wind, creaking, that’s the word I’m looking for. Frogs
croak and trees under the wind creak, yes. Sometimes they snap
and fall. I got it. But storms, they’re
outside the house. This is a mighty wind inside
the house. A mighty rushing wind fills the
house and it’s such a mighty noise. We don’t want to jump
too far ahead in the story, but it’s such a mighty noise that
people down the road hear it. And what happens in our neighborhoods
when we hear the fire truck? Well, as long as it keeps going,
nothing. But what if it stops at the neighbor’s house? Oh,
we get nosy. We got to go see what’s the fire
engine doing, who’s burned up their kitchen, uh, that sort
of thing. And so we nosy neighbors go out to see, well, that’s what
happens here. Uh, the, the people in Jerusalem hear this mighty
noise in the upper room and they come and see what’s taking place
in the house. We need wind. We need the strength
of almighty God to help us to do the work of the ministry.
You can spreadsheet it if you want, but Microsoft Excel can’t
do church. It’s the word accompanied by
the spirit. I remember several years ago
when I was a kid our extended family had a cabin on Baden Lake
south of here and my dad’s old sailboat was down there and it
was one of those flat sunfish sailboats and I had been itching
to learn how to sail that thing and so we had one of our pastoral
interns Bob Caswell living with us and he said well I’ll take
you sailing Brian and so we we got the thing out we put it on
the water we put the dagger board in, we put the mast up, we raised
the sail and we paddle out into the lake and guess what? No wind. But we floated, we went on down
the lake around the corner and still no wind. We got out in
the open, still no wind. And the most humiliating task
ever. He carried the boat home by shore and I carried the sail
and the mast. It was a pretty sad day. But
how often How often do we go doing the work of the church
without the wind of the Holy Spirit? We rely on our strength. We rely on our good looks. We
rely on our abilities, our smoke machines. We rely on our ability
to gather a crowd. We rely on social media. We rely on all these things.
And we forget prayer for sure. We shut the prayer meeting down,
what, 50 years ago in the American church? But we do so much without
the Holy Spirit, and yes, we can sound and light it, and it
can seem pretty epic to a crowd, but unless the Spirit is there,
unless the wind is blowing, our ship, the church, will not sail. And so it’s a wonderful, great
blessing of Almighty God for the wind to come, the Holy Spirit
to come. There’s a second image that comes
up in our passage, and it’s the image of fire. It’s the image
of Flaming tongues and this Sounds more like an MTV music video. Maybe some of you older folks
will understand what that is I don’t think they even show
music videos anymore on CMT or MTV, but but you know those shouldn’t
say wonderful music videos, but this sounds like something from
a kiss concert or something of that nature the the flaming tongues
this just seems strange to us and But in this room where the
wind rushed around, the forked flaming tongues rested on each
person’s head. And we have a powerful illustration
here, a powerful image of the Spirit of God, not resting on
certain ones, but on everyone. Remember from our reading of
Numbers chapter 11, remember from other places in the Old
Covenant, the Holy Spirit was really a shadow in the Old Testament.
Only folks like Elijah and Elisha got the spirit. Only folks like
Aholiab and Bezalel, the two who were given gifts of the spirit
to help construct the tabernacle in all its glory and beauty,
only they received the spirit. And we’ll see next week with
Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, the promise of the new covenant
was, no, the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all people.
In fact, didn’t Moses there at the end of Numbers 11 allude
to it? He said, hey, don’t be jealous
of those two outside the group here who are speaking and prophesying
in the Holy Spirit. I wish everyone had the Spirit. And so what a wonderful thing
it is to see in the upper room as the wind came and filled the
room with a mighty rush, a great noise. Also, these tongues, these
flames of fire rested on each. I think it’s helpful to say one
more time, dear brothers and sisters, we need to be people
of the spirit. And I know sometimes as Presbyterians,
we’re the frozen chosen, we don’t like too much spirit stuff. That’s
for the Pentecostals, that’s for the charismatics. But dear
brothers and sisters, without the flame of the spirit, without
the heat of the spirit, without the wind of the spirit, we have
nothing. Let me say something about both
of these images together, the wind and the fire. You find these
both all through the scriptures. In fact, if you read the very
second verse of the Bible. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. Verse two, the earth was formless
and void. And the spirit of God was hovering
over the face of the deep. The spirit of God that brought
chaos into order in the six days of creation. The spirit of God
that breathed life into the nostrils of Adam himself is the same spirit
that comes upon the church. And dear friends, without that
ancient spirit, without that ancient breath, there is no,
not only no creation in Genesis, there is no recreation in the
work of redemption. So the same spirit at work in
creation long ago is at work, making us into new creations.
What a wonderful image. The fire, it pops up all over
the place in the Old Testament. Every time there’s a theophany,
not every time, but most of the time. Every time there’s a picture
of God on his throne, God in heaven, or God comes down in
the form of the burning bush, there’s always fire. Our God
is a consuming fire. And so how are you gonna go into
the world that hates God? How are you gonna go into hostile
territory? How are you gonna go to the college
campus or the workplace and be a salt and light witness? Well,
it’s not gonna be. without wind and without fire,
these ancient symbols of God’s presence and God’s strength and
God’s might. So the Holy Spirit comes into
this upper room and we, we, we understand it makes quite a loud
noise. The nosy neighbors show up and as the nosy neighbors
show up, each of these Galileans, now you got to understand about
Galileans, they might’ve had what we call today in eighth
grade education. These Galileans, these disciples
of Jesus, these apostles of our Lord who are sent to turn the
world upside down for Christ are not from the faculty lounges
of American universities. These are not folks from the
think tanks. These are not folks with PhDs after their names. These are not the best and the
brightest and the elite and the high SAT score setters. These are just average Peters
and Johns. and Mary’s and, and whatever
all their names were, but they have the spirit of God upon them.
They have wisdom from on high. They have utterance. And as the,
the, the onlookers come and say, what in the world took place?
What is that noise? They speak the gospel in the
native tongues of others. Now we get a little confused.
Well, we don’t others may, and I don’t want you to be confused
about what this means. It simply means this, God by
his spirit gave them the power to say to other people who know
not their language, to say to them in their tongue, a gift
of languages, this is Jesus. This is God. This is salvation. This is the way. And what a blessing
for God to open the gospel to the ends of the earth, not only
through the Roman road, Not only through, well you think about
it, Apple devices these days. How many people listen to podcasts
and apps and hear the gospel and it goes into closed countries
through a cell phone signal, how amazing it is. But God in
this particular part of history, in this epoch, in this new era
says, I give you the ability to speak and to preach and proclaim
the gospel in a language you do not know. in order that my
glory will spread over the whole earth. Now there’s a little confusion
when you get to the end of Acts and you get into Corinthians,
there’s the tongues and the utterances and then interpretations and
all the rest. That’s a different thing than
this. This is God the Holy Spirit giving average people who need
to proclaim the gospel the gift and ability of languages. Most
of you have suffered through Spanish and French and Latin
and all the rest and you got through it to get your grade.
You can parse some verbs and you know how to do a little etymology
work. Most of us don’t even speak English
fluently. Guilty right here. But certainly
most of us don’t have the gifts of multiple languages. You saw
the list of nations. Lots of languages, lots of people
to speak the gospel to. God blesses them with this ability. This has ceased though. We speak
of it as the doctrine of cessation. This was for a particular time,
for a particular era. Now we raise up missionaries
and translators, Wycliffe Bible translators, and we translate
God’s word. We send missionaries into other
nations so that people will hear the goodness of almighty God. Well, dear brothers and sisters,
these miraculous signs have come. This power has come upon the
people of God. It continues to this day. Aren’t
we a bit more confident as we are called and set apart and
sent into the world? And as you watch the news and
see all the hostilities, and I think the coming hostilities
against Christianity to say, we don’t need to be afraid. We
have the power from God on high. and he can send his wind, he
can send his flames, he can send his word, he can send his emissaries,
his apostles, his church, and they will have success because
he is the mighty God. What a blessing we have as a
church to not be underpowered or no power at all, but we have
every blessing of almighty God. You know, we’re obsessed with
power in today’s culture. We live on a street nearby where
Come Friday night, they like to show their power. You hear
the engines revving. It’s a motorcycle. It’s one of
those jacked up trucks with the neon lights. It’s one of those
speedy sports cars. And they love to go flying by
and roaring. What does every man want? He
wants a fishing boat. And he doesn’t want one motor.
How many does he want? He wants two. I got to drive one of those
one time with the two throttles. It was quite exhilarating. We’re
obsessed with power. But when it comes to the church,
when it comes to the church, we’re just content to kind of
bump along and see what happens. Wonder what God might do if we
said, Lord, we believe in your spirit. We believe in the power
from on high. And if we want men and women
and boys and girls in this area and to the ends of the earth
to come to faith, you give us that power. We’ll use it wisely. We’ll be good stewards of your
gospel. Aren’t we thankful others have? because we’ve come to faith
in Jesus and we are downstream of Pentecost. Let’s look to our
God in prayer. Our Lord, we give you thanks
that you have not left us as orphans in this world, but you
have sent the spirit to be the helper. But most of all, you’ve
sent your spirit to be the one who gives us power, power from
on high, the promise of the father to do the work of proclaiming
the gospel to the ends of the earth. As we look around us,
it’s a scary world. We can get in trouble. We can
get poked fun at for speaking the good news of the gospel.
But who can resist your spirit? Who can resist your will? So
let us be faithful, preaching and proclaiming and telling the
world about the goodness of God in Christ. We ask for your help
and blessing and we pray it in the name of Christ. Amen. We
want to sing of God’s promises and ask for him to put his spirit
on us. So turn to 397 and we’ll stand
to sing, breathe on me breath of God.