The Gift of the Holy Spirit: Acts 2:29-39

Being Pentecost Sunday, I'm going to preach you a Pentecost sermon.

We're going to read from Acts chapter 2, beginning in verse 29.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Not the whole story, but a good part of the story, one that many of you know.

What happened 50 days after the Passover?

That's what is before us.

The preacher is the Apostle Peter, a changed man.

We're just going to dive into some of his sermon that he preached that day.

Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.

Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set forth one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses.

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do?

And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

This is the reading of the Word of God.

As the Apostle Paul told us, as he said of the Thessalonians, you did not receive this as the word of man, but as the word of God.

With deep conviction in the power of the Holy Spirit, they received it.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, may we receive it.

And so we pray.

Father, we ask, we've been asking throughout the service, Holy Spirit, would you please illumine our hearts?

Lord, would you not only deal with our minds, our hearts, would we even dare say our emotions?

Perhaps we're afraid of our emotions.

Perhaps we're trying to keep control in ways that we're not even aware of of our mind and our bodies and our emotions.

Oh Lord, help us to get it out of our own way.

Help you, we pray that you would have your way with us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Pentecost Sunday.

The word in the Greek Pentecost means the 50th, the 50th day after the Passover.

This is also the time in the nation of Israel, the feast of harvest.

The first fruits of the wheat harvest were now being picked.

They were aware now of the in-gathering of God's provision, of their food.

The first fruits of the wheat harvest, the harvesting has begun.

They're bringing in their crops.

An apt description of what was going on spiritually.

I love the way that God blends in such a comprehensive way throughout the scriptures multiple layers of what He's doing.

A harvest not just of wheat, but what this message and passage is about.

A harvest of souls, of hearts into the kingdom of God.

This morning we're going to talk about a supernatural event, a supernatural message, and the supernatural effects that followed.

First of all, looking at that supernatural event that we call Pentecost, that we saw earlier centuries were prophesied before through the prophet Joel and others.

The day's going to come when the Spirit of God is going to be unleashed among the people of God in a way that it had never been before.

That's what happened on this particular day.

The disciples were all together in one place.

Apparently, there were about 120 believers that were together.

We read about in Acts chapter 1.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

The apostles were there, but they were also with many women believers.

Jesus' own mother, Mary, was there with his brothers and sisters.

It was a small church, much smaller than APC.

It was a small gathering.

But they were together.

Jesus told them, don't you dare go out and try to minister in my name until you have been empowered by the Holy Spirit.

And do you know what?

That's still true today.

Even though the Spirit has come.

You don't go out and minister without the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

Otherwise, your ministry will be futile.

Your efforts will be meager.

And you'll be underwhelmed.

And you'll wonder what ministry is really about.

Because you'll be doing it in your own strength, in your own effort.

That's not how you would do ministry for the Savior.

This supernatural event, the disciples are together in one place, waiting and praying, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house.

I mean, they felt the physical effects of that wind, which was a type.

It was pointing to, it was a symbol of what else was going to happen.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit led them.

And they went.

They went right down into center square.

And they started speaking with other foreign languages that they had not learned previously.

How did that happen?

By the work and the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so all these people that came to Jerusalem, and many people did travel to Jerusalem, all of a sudden they're standing there in the city square and they're hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ preached in their own language.

And many of the scoffers who were Jewish, who spoke the Jewish language, said, these men are drunk.

There's no other explanation for it.

This is crazy.

This doesn't happen.

And they said, no, no, no, we're not drunk.

It's 9 o'clock in the morning.

These are not words that come from a drunken stupor.

These are words that come directly from heaven by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

And they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit led them.

Verse 6, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

You know what's interesting in the languages?

Many of you have studied languages.

We have so many people that come to this church for 12 months or longer to do language training before they're sent out all over the world.

That's part of the DNA of this church.

A lot of you are into languages.

In the Hebrew language in the Old Testament, as well as the Greek language in the New Testament, there's one word that's used for wind.

The same word that's used for breath.

The same word that's used for spirit.

The context shows us what the proper translation is.

Are you with me?

One word that can be translated spirit, but also wind, power, but also breath.

It takes us back to the Old Testament, to the first chapter of Genesis.

What did God do and the world was created?

God breathed.

His breath was a creative power.

All God had to do was breathe, and the world came into existence.

In the most beautiful way, creation.

It's the same word.

So when God speaks, God breathes the wind, the source is always his spirit.

The breath of God was breathing out again, not just in Genesis chapter 1, as God had breathed life into Adam before, but now he was breathing life into his people gathered together, downtown Jerusalem, and 3,000 people were saved that day.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

I would say that's a miraculous response by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The coming of the Holy Spirit was like a violent wind.

God coming down into the hearts of his people like never before, in this way, life-giving power for the birth of this New Testament church.

We were filled with the Spirit.

Two times this word occurs in this context.

This rushing wind filled the house.

And the disciples as well were filled with the Holy Spirit.

This was not the salvation of these early believers.

This crowd was, they were already believers.

They were already saved.

But what was this feeling about?

I'm glad you asked.

Because this is important for you too.

Empowering.

If you're a Christian, once you're saved, you're always saved.

You know that, don't you?

You don't lose your salvation.

If you're a Christian and you've already been baptized by the Holy Spirit, but there's still a filling of the Holy Spirit.

The filling of the Holy Spirit is never once taught to be an automatic experience, a constant experience.

The Bible talks about how we can grieve the Holy Spirit.

The Bible talks about how we can quench the Holy Spirit.

The Bible talks about how we resist the Spirit.

You know that from experience.

I do.

But we need to be filled again and again.

But we have to be open to that and receive and yield to the Spirit.

And what that means is we need to get out of our way.

That means we can't do that if we're hard-hearted.

We can't do that if we're not believing.

We can't do that if we're complacent.

These early believers were empowered, which is why, if Peter had tried to preach that sermon two weeks earlier, I think it would have gone flat.

How do you account for that?

How do you account for the effects that the old timers call the unction of the Holy Spirit in preaching?

How do you account for the fact that two preachers can preach essentially the same message from the same text with the same outline?

And there can be two very different responses.

Because it's not the sword of the preacher, it's the sword of the Spirit.

And it's what the Spirit is doing in the preacher himself.

Perhaps in one and not in another.

Whenever Christians are filled with the Spirit, they then that day and continue, listen to this.

They immediately began to testify of Jesus Christ.

The filling of the Spirit is not for the person of the glorification of the Spirit.

The filling of the Spirit is for the purpose of glorifying to Jesus.

Yes, the Spirit is the shy member.

The Spirit is never trying to garner the glory.

When the Spirit is at work, what the Spirit is doing is he's making Jesus look beautiful.

He's looking Jesus come alive.

I can't believe that I'm forgiven.

You don't take your forgiveness for granted.

You're not casual that you've been forgiven.

Oh yeah, that was great.

As a matter of fact, if you're a spirit-filled Christian, the longer you walk with Christ, the more grateful you become for the forgiveness that was granted you.

It doesn't get stale.

It doesn't become commonplace.

And the love of Jesus and the beauty of Jesus, the diamond is flashed in new ways, and you find yourself actually falling more in love with Jesus the older you get.

Can you say that today?

When the diamond of the gospel was flashed, and the Holy Spirit is at work, Jesus is becoming more precious to you, not less precious.

That's the work that only the Holy Spirit can do.

Tongues of fire fell on these disciples.

Why?

Well, likely for at least two reasons.

Fire brings light to see in the darkness.

Fire illumines things that otherwise would not be seen because it's dark.

Like our minds need to be illumined, don't they, with the word of God?

We need to see.

For the first time, we need to see again and again the truth of God's word.

To see the truth, to love the truth, to live by the truth.

We can't do that without the Holy Spirit.

But fire not only brings light, fire brings warmth if you're cold.

How many times have you been outside in the outdoors on a cold, chilly night, and find yourself walking closer to the fire to take off the chill.

Fire brings warmth.

Yes, it does.

Not just to our skin, but to our hearts.

That's what the Holy Spirit does.

When our hearts are cold toward the things of God, and they are sometimes.

And when our hearts are cold to our brothers and sisters in the faith, when our hearts are cold to the things that ought not to be cold, it's the Holy Spirit, it's the work of the Spirit that warms our hearts, that engages our minds.

And all of a sudden we feel a warmth toward Christ that we did not.

You've had that experience, haven't you?

Isn't that a beautiful gift?

How God takes my cold heart, and through the work of the Spirit taking me to the work, the finished work of Christ, my heart just gets warmer.

And now I have a growing love, a new regrowing love for the Bible that I didn't have maybe yesterday.

I have a new fervor to evangelize, to share the gospel, but maybe I didn't have.

It's the Spirit of Christ working in us, giving us more and more the mind of Christ, so that we live like little Christians, little Christ.

That's a beautiful thing.

But Joel's prophecy in the New Testament from the day of the Pentecost on, this is gonna be for all types of people.

Women, men, servants, masters.

It's gonna bust the scales.

People all over the world, people who have had no religious training, and the world testifies of this.

Church history testifies of this.

Yes, we need preachers, and yes, we need clergy, and yes, we need educators.

For the the Bible's clear about that, to teach the body of Christ.

And yet, because of the presence of the coming of the Holy Spirit in places where there's a dearth of good teaching, where the Spirit is present, God speaks through His Word by His Spirit.

And there are communities of fervent, hot Christian community.

This is not a throwaway line.

I have no doubt that there are people worshiping today with far less Christian resources and far less Christian education who love Jesus with a passion that I don't.

They just know that Jesus is all they have.

And they just know that Jesus is all they need.

Let me tell you some of my testimony in this church as a pastor for many years, as I look into the eyes of so many of you.

Some of you have come from some of those communities around the world, some of you have come from places of hardship and difficulty that I haven't experienced.

But when I watch you worship, when I watch you worship with joy, in spite of the hardships, my heart gets strengthened as I watch you soar in your worship.

And I thank God and I praise God.

I thank God for bringing so many people from around the world to this church community.

What a gift this church has.

I'm so grateful for the diversity of this church.

That's just the way it works.

Where the Spirit is present and the Spirit is at work.

The question is not how many universities do they have, the question is not how many seminaries do they have.

The question is how much do you see your need for Jesus Christ?

How much do you see the finished work of Christ?

And then worship will explode.

And some of us lose our.

Conventional reserve, don't we?

Isn't that what Robert Murray McChane said about the revival in Scotland?

When revival came to Scotland, so many very uptight conservative Scots let loose.

It's true.

I'm going to tell you a little bit more about that in a few minutes.

Secondly, a supernatural message.

Peter quotes, there are 19 sermons in the book of Acts.

If you want to know what good preaching looks like, go through the book of Acts.

Oh, by the way, it's not filled with a lot of emotional, heartbreaking illustrations.

It's not like the preaching of today.

Oh, there could be a whole sermon on that.

The preaching was based on the truth of God's word, the veracity.

Thus saith the Lord, and people hear that.

And the Spirit takes that truth deep into their hearts.

And preaching in those pulpits is not about feeling good.

The purpose of those preachers, preaching in those sermons in those churches is not to come in.

Your goal is to leave feeling better about yourself than you left.

That's not what this is about.

Okay?

It's just not.

That's not good preaching.

I know it's building churches.

I know we have mega churches.

Just give me a really good story.

Give me something that gets my emotions all wrapped up.

That's not it.

You won't find that in the Bible.

You'll find 19 sermons in the book of Acts that are about the historical events, the life of Jesus Christ, the one who, the God who became man in the flesh.

You'll find the story about the perfect man who lived the perfect life, who died the perfect death, who was actually raised from the dead on the third day by the Father.

And he ascended into heaven.

And let's come back to Pentecost Day.

Did you catch that?

You might have missed it when I read it.

When Jesus ascended to heaven, the Father gave him the gift of the giving of the Holy Spirit.

Did you catch that?

Theologians call that the illegal enthronement of Jesus Christ.

And Jesus gave his spirit and poured out his spirit, the Holy Spirit, on his people all around the world.

And the world's never been the same since.

He preached from, he quoted from Joel chapter 2, we've touched on, that day of judgment when the locust came and ate away all the crops of the Israelites.

Joel 2 · chapter mention

That was a sign of judgment.

Things aren't right.

You know, it's not good.

It's not helpful to pretend like things are right when things aren't right in your life.

It's not helpful to say, no, no, I'm sure that there's no problem with maybe God and I are tight.

Well, maybe you're not tight.

That's what they were doing that day.

And the locust and the judgment of the locust was to get their attention that this judgment was a precursor to a greater judgment that was going to come one day.

That day has not yet come.

The day of judgment that's coming.

And every one of us are going to have to face it.

Are we going to be prepared?

And yet, in the midst of that darkness, he gave him hope.

He gave him peace.

He said, the day's coming when I'm going to pour out my spirit, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

How many people have come and called on the name of the Lord and been saved?

Oh, he said something else that was remarkable.

For those I put my favor on whom I put my favor, I'm going to restore the years that the locust have eaten.

And do you know I believe that's still true today?

The locusts have devastated some of us.

The locusts have devoured many things in our lives.

Because our heart has not been warm toward God.

The heart, the locusts have stolen our joy.

The locusts have stolen our peace.

The locusts have stolen our understanding of God's love.

And we know it.

But what do we do about it?

God says, I'm going to send my spirit.

My spirit's going to do the work in your heart.

My spirit is going to bring the light that you need in your mind.

My spirit is going to bring the warmth that you need in your heart.

And my spirit is going to make you like a new person.

That's a beautiful testimony.

How many people have I met who have testified to the years that the locust stole, that the years that the locust ate, where God gave them a whole new sense of peace, a whole new sense of joy.

Renewal.

This is all about the deity of Jesus Christ.

He said, I'm going to prophesy about one who was killed but is alive.

And they thought, well, is he talking about David?

No, you could go to, they said, you could go to David's tomb in Jerusalem.

David's bones are still there.

I'm not talking about David.

I'm talking about David's Messiah, Jesus.

He is the Messiah.

He is God in the flesh.

And he is alive, he's not dead today.

And you can go to him because he's not dead.

He's very much alive.

And then he quoted lastly from Psalm 110, verse 1, the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament, all about the deity of Jesus Christ.

Psalms 110:1

All about the deity of Jesus Christ.

The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

He wasn't talking about David.

He was talking about David's anointed.

He was talking about David's Lord.

This is a very Christ-centered sermon that he preached.

And that's why so many people got saved.

Verse 24, but God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death.

That word pangs or agony means literally birth pains, so that the resurrection is pictured as a regeneration, a new birth out of death into new life.

These are sermons based on historical facts.

Now listen to me carefully, okay, so I'm not misunderstood.

Gospel preaching is about historical facts, first and foremost.

It's not about the teaching.

You're not saved by the teaching.

Every other religion would say, if there's something, some idea of salvation, here's the rules, follow the rules.

Every other religion, here's the rules, here's the playbook.

Now follow it.

That's called self-salvation.

The Bible says, look.

If these historical events did not actually take place, it doesn't matter what the teaching's about.

But the teaching has meaning because Jesus Christ, a real person, the Son of God, God in the flesh, was crucified on the cross for your sins.

And he was raised from the dead.

And he ascended.

This matters.

We can't say, well, it's irrelevant.

We can't just say it was all about the fuzzy meaning of the teaching that we get.

It's not.

And so we get to the end.

I mean, did Jesus really die?

That matters.

Did Jesus really rise?

That matters.

Did he really ascend?

Did he really send his Holy Spirit?

We live and die on these truths.

Do you know that?

And if you believe these truths, the Holy Spirit will change your life on the truthfulness of these truths, and you'll become a new person.

The two great gifts, just to summarize the sermon in Acts chapter 2, verse 38, the removal and the bestowal, as theologians refer to this, the removal, I will take away all of your sins when you come to Jesus Christ.

Acts 2:38

But there's a bestowal, and I will give you the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Thank you, Jesus.

This is part of your mediatorial saving work.

You offer us full forgiveness, but you also give us your Holy Spirit so that we can actually enjoy the life that you've given us to live.

As I close with the supernatural effects, 3,000 people were saved that day.

Yes, God used a very ordinary person, preacher like Peter, but it was not about the person who's always ordinary.

It's about the extraordinary power that comes down from heaven.

And that's true for the man who stands behind a pulpit, and that's true for the man or the woman or the child sitting in the chair.

It's not about you.

It's not about me.

It's about the power of the Holy Spirit sent from Jesus to change us from the inside out, to grow us, to humble us, to send us on mission.

Samuel Chadwick said the church today still has a theology of the Holy Spirit, but it no longer seems to have a consciousness of the Holy Spirit's power and presence.

I think that's true.

Would you say that about you?

Would you say, oh, I have a theology about the Holy Spirit?

That's not the question.

Are you experiencing the power and a consciousness of the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life?

Nothing less will suffice.

I want to be a man who can point to the work of the Spirit in my life, a consciousness of the presence and the empowering of the Spirit.

I'm not going to be satisfied to sit back and say, well, I have a theology about the Holy Spirit.

How about you?

If Jesus of Nazareth became God in the flesh, if he was pierced for our sins, if he arose from the dead, if he ascended, and if he proved and poured out his spirit on his people, perhaps we should repent of our low expectations and little belief.

Like now.

Like today.

I'm not asking you to go home and think about it.

I'm asking you to open up to the work of the Spirit right now.

As an act of your worship.

What a gift and opportunity we have to say yes to the work of the Spirit in our lives.

As I close, two things clearly happened that day.

Sinners got converted.

They were cut to the heart.

They were stabbed.

The word means to inflict a violent blow.

Is your heart knife-proof?

You know, our hearts can get so hard that the word of God doesn't penetrate, doesn't cut.

That's not a good place to be.

Can the piercing of the sword of the Spirit this morning pierce through the truth that God wants you to take in this morning?

Sinners got converted, and secondly, saints find hope.

Romans chapter 5, verse 5 says that character produces hope, and God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.

Romans 5:5

Is that a beautiful verse?

Hope produces character when the Spirit is at work.

Hope you don't drown in your despair.

The Holy Spirit meets you in your despair and you rise up because of his work bringing you hope.

God's love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

Do you have a conscious awareness of the Father's delight for you?

That's a fair question for a preacher to ask.

Today.

Are you aware of how much God loves you?

Is his delight softening your heart?

I close with an illustration in a quote.

Let's go back to Canvas Lang revival in Scotland in 1742.

It started with a man named William McCullough, a minister.

You know what his nickname was?

The Ale Preacher.

Not because he liked ale, but because his preaching was so boring.

True.

He was such a dry preacher, people would start drinking ale.

And yet the ale preacher started noticing that there was a revival, the flame of revival was spreading throughout Scotland and England and even the United States.

It was the Great Awakening.

And so he cried out to God to give him more than what he had ever experienced, in spite of all this Calvinist theology.

And the flame came.

And people started to come and to listen and have a spiritual alertness that they had not had before.

And people started hearing the gospel like they had never heard the gospel before.

And people started getting converted, and there was a revival.

And there was a revival.

And this dry preacher came on fire.

The Holy Spirit set him ablaze.

And he saw fruit in his ministry that he had never seen before.

This is the power of the Holy Spirit.

But it took time.

And people started to be awakened.

And they knew for the first time that there was a sin problem that they had, that they had to finally deal with it.

And for many, it lasted for weeks and months.

But they knew enough to keep coming back to church.

They knew enough to not close God's word.

They knew enough that they needed something that they didn't have.

They didn't go in the other direction.

And that's a good thing.

When the Spirit of God starts working in you, don't just walk away.

They said, surely there's more that my heart needs to understand.

And they kept coming back, and they kept coming back, and more people got converted.

And it led to a glorious revival.

Some beat their breast and trembled.

Many were seized with violent contortions.

One woman said afterwards that it was far worse than the pain of childbirth.

The pain of her soul travail.

And yet God met them and God did great things.

It can happen there, it can happen here.

I'm going to close with this quote.

I don't know why, but this week the Spirit put in my mind the Good Friday service.

I don't know how many times I watched that Good Friday service, many times this week.

If you were here on Good Friday service, you know what I'm talking about.

God met us in a powerful way that night.

And the song that Emily and John sang.

It is finished.

The wonder yet to be, and in the dark your ageless voice spread out the galaxies, a sea of stars before your eyes, your glory filled the newborn skies, and you said, It is good.

And the earth bears witness, it is finished.

You looked into the crucible that burned with agony.

You humbly chose the Father's will and climbed to Calvary.

Your blood for all my sin poured out.

Your final breath that shook the ground, and you said, It is done.

And your scars bear witness it is finished.

I look into the holy place and through the open veil I see my risen King of grace who pleads my pardon still, my healing in your sacrifice, my name within your wounds inscribed.

And you say, You are mine.

And your love bears witness, it is finished.

I will look into eternity when sorrow's seas have dried.

I'll see the Lamb who died for me in beauty glorified.

With open arms you'll bring me home to bow and worship at your throne.

And you will say, Come and rest, as my heart bears witness.

It's finished.

This is true.

This is where your heart finds rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Father, we thank you for what you gave.

You gave your all, your best, and your son.

And Jesus, we thank you that you gave us life.

Jesus, would you give life today by your spirit to those who don't have it?

You know their story, you know their name, you know their load.

May some even here this morning come to Christ for salvation.

May some, may many of us come back today.

Holy Spirit, would you please give us the life that you intend us to live?

Give us the joy and the peace and the patience and the kindness and the goodness and the gentleness and the self-control that we desperately need.

Spirit of God, have your way with us, we pray.

Amen.