Acts 2:1-13 - Jesus Sends the Promised Spirit

Well, before we get to the book of Acts today, I want to show you something.

I have an old Bible.

This is a 1615 edition of the Geneva Bible.

It's the very same translation the pilgrims brought with them on the Mayflower.

They loved its translation, they loved its notes.

They didn't like that newer one that King James I had authorized.

They wanted the old version.

And before you reach the book of Genesis, there are several pages of genealogy that runs from Adam to Christ.

And in these pages, there's a woodcut of a half-finished building.

And it's kind of crumbling under its own ambition.

And underneath it, in Old Typeface, English typeface and spelling, it says this, almost exactly what you said today, Ethan.

At Babel's building, languages divided.

And then it references Genesis 11, in the Apostles, understood.

Right there.

So 300 years, 400 years before Ethan got up to say those very words, they had already been said by a 17th century printer.

And what it tells us is that what we cannot do to bring about a spiritual life that unifies together a people who have absolutely nothing else in common, only God can do.

And so we're going to discover how that begins to happen in the book of Acts and chapter two.

So let's turn there.

As we enter into Acts chapter 2, there are three things I want us to hold on to.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And they'll help you see where the sermon is going.

They are the three points of the message.

This morning we'll discover that we need to depend on the spirit for a life that we cannot create, that we need to depend on the spirit for a unity that we cannot capture.

And we need to depend on the spirit for responses that we cannot control.

Everything this morning builds out of those three lines.

Well, let's take a look at God's word.

Let's read it together, and then we'll anchor it here in a few moments.

Here's the word of God.

When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place.

Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying.

They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each of them.

And then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Now there were Jews staying in Jerusalem, devout people from every nation under heaven.

And when the sound occurred, a people, a crowd came together and was confused, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.

They were astounded and amazed, saying, Look, aren't all these who are speaking Galileans?

How is it that each of us can hear them in our own native language?

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Pergia and Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts, Cretans and Arabs.

We hear them declaring the magnificent acts of God in our own tongues.

And they were all astounded and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?

But some sneered and said, They are drunk on new wine.

Now, Luke told us in the previous chapter in Acts chapter 1, that the risen Christ had gathered his disciples together on the Mount of Olives and gave them a command that was wrapped up in a promise.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

You might remember that in verses 4 or 5 of chapter 1.

While he was with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the Father's promise, which he said, You've heard me speak about, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days.

And then in verse 8, he says it again you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth.

Jesus promises them not a training program or a strategy, but power when the Holy Spirit comes on them.

And before we go forward into what that means in Acts chapter 2, we need to step back for just a second.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Because as Jesus said in Acts 1, you've heard me talk about this already.

And so in John chapter 16, he said to them that night before he was crucified, It is for your benefit that I go away.

John 16 · chapter mention

For if I do not go away, the counselor will not come to you.

And if I go, I will send him to you.

Now notice what Jesus said there.

He didn't say that the Spirit would come instead of Jesus, but the Spirit would be cut would come because of Jesus.

And John even tells us in John 7, 39 why the Spirit did not yet come during the earthly ministry of Christ.

And he says these words in John 7, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

There's something very important being said here.

And what it is saying is that the Spirit's coming was waiting, not on the disciples' readiness, but on Jesus' exaltation.

Jesus had to finish his work, his teaching and miracles, his work on the cross, his burial, the resurrection, and the ascension to the Father's right hand, before he could do this as the glorified Son of God.

Now hold on to that, because in just two weeks we're going to hear Peter say that in the sermon that we'll read about.

And in verse 33, he said, Since he, Jesus, has been exalted to the right hand of God and has received what the Father has promised, he has poured out what you both see and hear.

So when we get to this statement in Pentecost, and we get to this passage of Scripture, I want you to know that this is not a separate event apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.

What happens at Pentecost is because of the ascended and enthroned Jesus Christ, who is acting in his first inaugural action as king.

And so the sermon title this morning means a lot.

Jesus sends the promised spirit.

It's not the spirit arrives, Jesus sends him.

Now, this passage of scripture is a narrative text, and narrative makes an argument unlike you might receive when you read one of Paul's letters.

It doesn't argue like Paul does.

And so as we go through this passage this morning and those three points that I mentioned just a moment ago, I want you to watch with me as this passage unfolds.

I'm confident that all of us will learn some things today in this passage that perhaps some of you, if not many of you, have never heard before.

And the reason is because this passage of scripture is one of the most attention-grabbing passages, and yet one of the least understood passages in Scripture.

It's often long pondered, but it's often misunderstood.

And the depth of it deserves our careful reading and hearing.

And its meaning is too, too important to move past.

So as we go through this, and this morning is going to be a little different than many of my other messages.

This is going to be more of a running commentary and a theological uh emphasis rather than maybe a more practical or devotional focus of a sermon.

I love it all.

This one is going to mean that we need to turn our brains on a little sharper.

I hope you had your coffee this morning.

So let's look at those three points.

First of all, to depend on the Spirit for the life that we cannot create.

And I want you to look at verse one of chapter two.

There, Luke says they were all together in one place.

Well, it's a little hard to be all together when you're not in one place.

So Luke is doubling down here to tell them, tell us that the people are here.

They're unified together.

They are doing exactly as Jesus told them to do.

But what's interesting about that is what's not said here.

There's nothing about them praying fervently.

There's nothing about them sort of generating anything.

They're just there.

No descriptors of their actions, no statements that they're a collective people longing for a private religious experience.

They're simply there.

I think that's important.

But suddenly, something does happen.

And what happens is not the buildup of 50 days of increasingly fervent prayer meetings, as though they had finally earned what's about to happen by their intensity.

Look at what it says in verse 2.

Suddenly a sound, like a violent rushing wind, fills the house.

It's not a wind, it sounds like a violent rushing wind.

Luke is straining with ordinary language to try to grasp something that words just can't quite envelop.

So he reaches for something that might be like what happened.

It's like a violent rushing wind.

And many, many years ago, after I'd left home, uh my mother and father living in Illinois at the time had a tornado pass over their house in the middle of the night.

Thankfully, it didn't destroy much, a little bit of damage to a shed that my dad and I had built together.

But my I'll never forget what my mother said when she described it.

She said it was like one of those old freight trains just passing over the house.

That loud, rushing, rumbling noise was the sound of that wind in the tornado.

This is what they're sensing in that house.

But also look at verse three.

There they see tongues like flames of fire appearing, dividing and resting on each one of them.

And these fire-like tongues divide.

And what's interesting is that the word about them, the these fire-like tongues resting, is that it's said in the singular.

So it's not a bunch of different tongues landing on people, but a collective separation and movement on all.

This is one spirit individually given.

Now, let's just mark out for a second here the sound and the fire.

The sound and the fire.

The rumbling, violent, shaking noise, and the fire.

Does that combination sound familiar to you at all?

Wind and fire.

And Pentecost.

There's no accident here.

By the time of Christ, Jewish tradition had long connected the Feast of Pentecost not just to the harvest festivals, but to something else that was vitally important to the people of Israel.

They connected Pentecost to another mountain, to a mountain with fire, another mountain 1,500 years prior to this.

Jewish tradition not only saw Pentecost as a harvest festival, they also understood it as the very day that God made the people of Israel a covenant community by giving them the law from Mount Sinai.

And it was then that they were brought into a covenant relationship with God under the Mosaic covenant.

Now, whether everybody in this crowd understood the connection, we have here a contrast of two mountains.

One mountain with fire and a rumbling roar that no person could ever approach and hear a house with a loud rushing roar and a fire that God inhabits.

The writer of Hebrews makes this same contrast between these two mountains.

He says, You've not come to what could be touched, could not be touched, to a blazing fire, to darkness, gloom, and storm, to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words, that those who heard it begged that not one more word should be spoken to them.

For they could not bear what was commanded.

Even if an animal touches this mountain, it must be stoned.

The appearance was so terrifying that Moses said, I am terrified and trembling.

The writer of Hebrews is describing that mountain on the day that the law came down, the day that the people were brought into covenant community under the Mosaic law.

And then he says, Instead, you've come to a different mountain.

Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the myriads of angels and festive gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Do you feel the contrast here?

On the day of Pentecost, these people were gathered not just for the harvest festival, they were gathered to celebrate themselves as the covenant people of God under the Mosaic dispensation.

And now here they are, discovering something happening on this mountain that's different than the mountain they were commemorating.

At Sinai, even Moses trembled.

At Sinai, an animal that so much as brushed up against the mountain had to be killed.

People could not draw near it.

Not the people, not the animals, not even Moses himself until he was called up.

But the fire of that first Pentecost spoke about the inaccessibility of a holy God.

But at this Pentecost, at this Pentecost, sent by the ascended king, is the very Spirit of God coming down to people and dwelling among them and in them.

Do you see the contrast?

What a remarkable thing this is that the fire on that mountain that was dreadful and fearsome has been replaced by the glorious intimacy of the Spirit of God in his people.

Now take a look at verse 4.

Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak different tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

They were filled, decisive, done.

What surprises me in this verse is that the CSV drops out a word that it should have kept, I believe.

Look at the last word, as last phrase, as the spirit enabled them.

The ESV puts it this way: they began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance.

And that word utterance is a very weighty word.

It's only used three times in the whole New Testament, all three times in the book of Acts.

Peter uses it down in verse 14, and then Paul uses it in Acts chapter 26 about proclaiming the word of truth.

Acts 26 · chapter mention

This word is an authoritative testimony about the mighty acts of God.

What that word is telling us is that what's coming out of the mouth of these people is just like the prophets speaking in the Old Testament.

They are declaring the mighty acts of God.

All of them, not just an office of a prophet, but all the speech people speaking with divine utterance of the mighty acts of God, as though all of them were prophets.

Which is exactly what Peter is about to describe in verse 28.

I will pour out my spirit on all people.

Coming from promises in Isaiah, until the Spirit is poured out on us from on high, and the book of Ezekiel, where God says, I will place my spirit upon you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.

So here we have a rush of a sound, tongues like flames of fire in an upper room, the Father keeping his promise, the Son just enthroned, issuing the Spirit to come, the mighty acts of God being declared in a multiplicity of languages.

What we have here is fulfilled prediction.

And it's not the kind of satisfaction you get when the weatherman gets it right three days ahead of time, and you go, he told me Wednesday it was going to be a beautiful weekend.

And guess what?

He was right.

I can't believe it.

This is everything the Old Testament has longed for.

This is the new heart, a law no longer written on stone, but in flesh.

This is the spirit permanently residing among the people of God and not just resting on a few for an office of prophet, priest, or king.

This is the very thing that Isaiah and Jeremiah had been describing, and the people have been longing for the consolation of the people of God.

And Isaiah spoke of this day as a glorious one, and he uses prophetic poetry to describe how enriching it is in Isaiah 32.

Until the Spirit from on high has poured out on us, then the desert will become an orchard, and an orchard will seem like a forest, and then justice will inhabit the wilderness, and righteousness will dwell in the orchard, and the results of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness will be quiet confidence forever.

Isaiah is talking about that day that when the Spirit comes, words like justice and righteousness and peace and confidence will inhabit the people of God because the Spirit is present there.

That's what we're talking about.

That time when the law would be written on the heart, not just staring at people from stone on the outside of them, but on the very insides of who they are.

Now notice Jeremiah doesn't say this is a covenant with all nations.

He says this is a covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah in Jeremiah 31 31.

The promise here is spoken to Israel about Israel.

And in this room, on this morning, the eleven, the women, Mary, Jesus brothers, and all the rest that make up the 120, every single one of those people is a Jewish person.

Every single one of them.

This is not the church swallowing up Israel's promise.

This is Israel's promise being kept to the people who are Israel.

And notice what kind of movement this is.

This is monumental.

And this is one of the big questions that arises in church discussions.

Is what happens here in the book of Acts meant to be repeatable every time we gather?

Or is it something else?

And I believe it is something else.

People would say that Acts chapter 2 sets for us a paradigm, which means that every believer in every age must find a repeat of what's happening here.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

I think what we're seeing here, like I said a moment ago, is the answer to the longings of all the Old Testament for the inauguration of the new covenant in which God would indwell his people.

And the signification of that is done in this dramatic way as it unfolds first among the Jews.

It is the historical hinge upon which the whole covenantal relationship of God with his people is transformed from old covenant to new.

And notice something about the timing here.

Pentecost.

What is Pentecost?

Well, it's the feast of weeks, it's the 50th day after Passover.

It's one of the three great feasts in which all the males of Israel had to travel to Jerusalem to celebrate.

And the word in Greek just means 50th, Pentecost.

It's counted 50 days past the first sheath of the barley harvest that is raised and waved before the Lord during the Passover.

And here is the wheat harvest, in which this harvest is also celebrated.

So it's the second of two harvests in which the first fruits of the barley harvest at Passover and the wheat harvest of Pentecost are waved before the Lord.

Now you're thinking, what are we doing in the book of Leviticus here?

This is important.

Jesus rose during the Passover festival as the first fruits.

Fifty days later, the second firstfruit harvest is happening here at Pentecost.

And the New Testament uses that language all over the place.

Christ has been raised from the dead.

First Corinthians 15, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

And then he says in Romans 8 that all believers have the firstfruits of the Spirit.

And James adds in that we are a kind of firstfruits among all his creatures.

The two celebrations of Passover and Pentecost, the barley harvest and the wheat harvest, the resurrection of Christ and the new birth of God's people, who are now people who hold the hope of a resurrection themselves, are celebrated here.

It's no accident that this day has come, and it's come on this day.

Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection harvest, and here on Pentecost is the first fruits of a soul harvest.

Both landing on a calendar that had been marked out for this moment centuries before.

Behold, the new is come.

And what's happening here is not some experience reserved for the spiritual elite.

That a new covenant has surplanted the old covenant, that life has entered into this world of woe and sin and death.

That if you belong to Christ, you are a part of this.

No, let's go back to this room for a second and just back up and think about it for ourselves here for a moment.

This happens in this room.

Not because the apostles are finally ready by building themselves up in fervent prayer.

What's happening is not a spiritual dividend based upon their fervor.

It's the life of the Spirit that's given, not manufactured by them.

Think of it this way: a dry riverbed, late summer, it cannot produce full banks of water.

It cannot generate rainfall by the shape that it has, its deep channels or its steep banks.

A dry riverbed is a dry riverbed until it receives water.

The riverbed doesn't fill itself, it only accepts what's poured out on it.

And what we find here is a life that we cannot create.

What is happening here is something that only God can do.

These people are receiving this because it is God's good pleasure to give this at this time.

Think about ourselves at this moment.

Just think about the relationship that that might have for us in the dynamic of our own personal life.

Maybe you're here this morning and you're thinking to yourself, I need to be a better person.

I need to live a different life.

I need to get myself into a better place.

I think I'll go to church.

I think I'll try harder tomorrow.

I think I might be able to be a different person.

And I think if I do that well enough, God might accept me and I might be able to just go into heaven and have Him bring me there.

I want to tell you something.

You cannot do that.

You cannot do that.

You cannot produce the life that you're longing for.

It doesn't happen like that.

Jesus told Nicodemus, a religious man himself, one who was scrupulous about the law.

He said, unless you're born of the Spirit, you cannot see the kingdom of God.

It is not something you can produce.

It's something, however, by the grace of God you can receive.

And the scriptures tell us that whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved.

And if you're here this morning and you've been looking at yourself and you've been trying to do better out of yourself, and you've been longing for a different life, and maybe just maybe it might be able to grab a hold of you if you just stick to it long enough.

The only thing God is calling you to do is to release that self-effort, release that trust in yourself, and to call out to him for the life that comes through Jesus Christ alone, and to seek his transformation in your heart, not what you might be able to produce.

But if you're here as a believer and you've kind of gotten back into that old cycle of, well, I've got my good days and my better days, and my not so good days, and my bad days, and you think if you tally up your better days enough, you'll be what are we doing here?

We're reducing ourselves to the same mindset.

When you step into that next hard conversation, or when you face that next surmounting wall of trouble, when you are called upon to love someone you can't, and when you are asked to step into a place of obedience that runs contrary to the patterns of life that you've ingrained in you, the answer to that is not just to take a deep breath and grit your teeth and shoulder into it.

It is to look to the living God and say, God, I need you.

I need you to give me the kind of life that would bring me into love, that would bring me into obedience, that would bring me into joyful perseverance through my trouble.

Because those things are the fruit of the spirit, they are not the output of a determined person.

Only God can produce those things.

Well, let's keep moving.

And I'll be quicker with my points than the next two.

Not only do we need to depend on the spirit for a life we cannot create, we need to depend on the spirit for a unity that we cannot capture.

And we see this is in verses five through 11.

I'm not going to repeat these words, but you'll notice there that Luke is giving us a whole list of names.

Take a look at verse 8 and 9.

15 of them.

Now, Luke chooses his words carefully.

There's not a wasted word one in God's word.

And here we could have had summarized in a single sentence a lot of people from a lot of different places speaking a lot of different languages, and it would have been just as just as comprehensible as this.

But instead, he lists all these names from all these places.

That's an enormous amount of narrative space, right?

Luke's not wasting words here.

He wants you to feel something.

Look at it carefully.

Take a look at verse five.

It says in verse five, now there were Jews staying in Jerusalem, devout people from every nation under earth.

Do you catch that phrase?

Devout Jews, every nation under earth.

Under heaven, sorry.

Not Gentiles, necessarily.

Verse 10 confirms that.

Visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes.

Now there we finally enter into what might have been Gentile converts to the Jewish religion.

But one thing we can know for certain, there's not a single uncircumcised person there.

All of them are either Jewish or they are Jewish convert, Gentile converts to Judaism.

Every single one of them.

That's why it says, devout people from every nation under heaven.

What's happening here?

What's happening here is exactly what Ezekiel promised in Ezekiel 36.

For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and will bring you into your own land.

These people have come from the very reaches of the known world in its time.

These are not neighboring towns or neighboring provinces.

Parthians were citizens of Rome's bitter, unconquered rival empire.

And the names spanned the ancient world all the way from modern-day Iran all the way over to the western part of the Mediterranean.

Luke is pinning the miracle to these precise words.

He's pinning it to the ingathering of the Jewish people from all the nations who come to this place and find, as we'll see before we get to the end of this chapter, that they are now unified with the presence of God and the Spirit of God dwelling in them.

Now notice how they listen.

Each one describes it as his own language or dialect.

Dialect.

This miracle is not aimed at the crowd, it's aimed at persons, each one hearing individually the mighty acts of God in their own language.

What's happening here?

Exactly what a seventeenth century printer put in a woodcut in a Geneva Bible.

And exactly what a young man, I'll call you young, what a young man said in our service earlier today, that what Babel had done is now being undone.

Babel was humanity in effect saying that we, by our collective human effort, might be able to build a name for ourselves, that we might be able to build a tower that rises up into the heavens, that we might be able to build a unity that's founded on our own ambition.

And God says, that is not going to happen.

And in judgment and mercy, he confuses one language into many and scatters the people all over the face of the earth.

And humanity's lived in disunity ever since.

But here he gives his own spirit, and here he pours out that spirit directly on humans.

And here, for the first time, despite their languages, the people have a unified knowledge of God.

And it's not one language restored, it's many languages now understanding the mighty acts of God.

At Babel, God confused the languages into many and scattered humanity.

And at Pentecost, God is doing the reverse by restoring the one language of worship among the many nations and the many languages on earth.

Everything the Babel scattered in judgment, the Spirit is now creating in grace again.

A unity that we cannot, cannot capture.

Only the Spirit can bring this kind of unity.

Only the Spirit can bring people of such diverse places and of diverse languages and of diverse cultures together and have all of them in one place worshiping the very same God, the very same way.

But what began in this room is only just the beginning.

God meets these scattered people and he brings them into the new covenant through the new birth.

And the first wave is exactly how Paul describes it in Romans chapter one, to the Jew first.

And this is what we see.

But something else is about to happen.

Because remember Leviticus, Pentecost, as the second first fruits harvest over against the Passover, the barley during Passover, the wheat during Pentecost.

Well, in the feast of Pentecost, they would take two pieces of leavened bread, not unleavened bread this time, leavened bread, and they would take it and they would wave it before the Lord.

Why two pieces?

Why two pieces of leavened bread?

Why two pieces of leavened bread put together and waved before the Lord during a feast of harvest?

I dare say this, Jew and Gentile bound together, both sinful in themselves, filled with leaven, but by the mercy and grace of God, a part of a firstfruit harvest that gets waved before the Lord as a declaration of the wondrous, wondrous harvest that only God can give.

That's what we see here.

The Spirit is holding on the Jewish people here.

But in a few short chapters, eight chapters later, Peter, a Jew, is going to be told to go to a Gentile house.

And there he and his companions are going to be shocked by what they see.

And what they see there is that the gift of the Holy Spirit has been poured out even on the Gentiles.

And why I think this is just a one-time event, listen to how Peter describes it when he's called back to Jerusalem to give an account for what's going on.

And those guys are like, uh, you know, tell us what you were doing there, Peter.

You know, you know we don't do this.

And he says to them, as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as it did on us at the beginning.

He goes all the way back to this moment in Acts chapter 2 and says, Now the Gentiles are also part of the new covenant.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The Gentiles are also receiving the gracious acts and promises of God.

And he doesn't say it fell on them just like it's happening to us every time we get together, just like it did on us in the beginning.

It happened.

By the time Paul writes to the Galatians and the Ephesians, the truth that Jew and Gentile are bound together as one has become more known and more understood and more appreciated by all.

And so he could say clearly in Galatians 3.28, there's no Jew or Greek, for you're all one in Christ Jesus.

Or he might say in Ephesians 2 14, for he is our peace, who's made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility.

These two separate loaves, leavened as they are.

Are not kept separate anymore.

They are bound together and lifted up to God and waved before Him as a display of the worship of the God who brings a harvest.

And we are unified together.

As he said in Ephesians 1, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

And when you believe the Holy Spirit is the down payment of your inheritance until the redemption of the possession to the praise of his glory.

Gentile, you too can receive the promises from the scriptures, the Old Testament.

And you too can enter in to all the wonders that God had promised to his people.

Because you too are a person brought into the family of God.

You were once without God, without hope, without promises, outside the covenants.

You were separate from God, and now you are brought near, brought near by the grace of God.

So what is this telling us?

Fifteen nations worth of native speech spoken out of Galilean mouths, speaking in such a way that once they hear the explanation of it all, 3,000 of them believe and begin the work of lifting up the first of the two loaves that are going to be there on that day of Pentecost, just like was about to happen that very same day inside the temple itself.

So let me say this clearly.

To every person who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are unified together in the bond of love, in the faith of Christ.

It is not a unity we have to manufacture.

It's not a unity where we have to separate every single person out and go, I see you, I hear you.

Because at the very depths of who we are, no matter what shade this is, no matter how many gray cells are working or not up here, no matter how thick or thin your wallet is, whether your wall doesn't have a sheepskin on it or it has 17 of them, whether you're from America or not, it doesn't matter.

If you're in Christ, we are one.

We are one.

No human can.

From the very day of Babel, humanity has gone its separate ways until this day.

And it's continuing to happen now.

So I want to say something by way of practical experience for all of us.

Perhaps you've been a part of this church or visiting this church for some time, and you're still hanging on to old patterns of life.

I hang out with those who do the same things I do.

I hang out with the people that know the same experiences that I've had in life.

I hang out with the people that have a shared sense of identity according to my nationality or my background.

The body of Christ is far richer than that.

And let me encourage you to go find someone perhaps you've only just said hello to, who doesn't share the same background that you have, who doesn't look like you do, may not even speak with the same accent that you have, and find that unity that you have in Christ and share it with each other and discover a unity that transcends anything this world could ever, ever capture.

And if you're here this morning and you've been among us as the body of Christ, and you felt like you've had to learn a different language to feel at home here, I want to tell you, with every ounce of our being, we are trying to make the focus, the unity that we have in Christ.

You don't have to feel awkward no matter what your background is.

You don't have to feel awkward no matter what shade of skin you have.

You don't have to feel awkward no matter if you can speak English well or not.

If you're in Christ, we are brothers and sisters together.

Together.

Well, I need to move on.

Let's go to this third point.

And what we see here is we need to depend on the spirit for a life that we cannot create, and we need to depend on the spirit for a unity that we cannot capture.

But we also need to depend on the spirit for results and responses we cannot control.

Now take a look at verses 12 and 13 here.

We see the people responding to what's happening, and their reaction is a mixed reaction.

They were all astounded and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?

But some sneered and said, Oh, they're drunk on new wine.

Now back up to verse six, and you see that the people are confused, that their minds are mixed up, that they're disoriented, they're confused.

Verse 7, they're astounded and amazed, literally outside of themselves.

And verse 12, they're perplexed, genuinely at a loss to understand what's going on.

So Luke is showing us an escalation.

They go from confusion to astonishment to a real moment where they just can't go any further to try to understand it.

A cognitive impasse.

They can't get over this, they can't figure it out.

And then from there, the responses begin to fork.

Some are saying, What does this mean?

And they leave the question open because they're waiting for an answer.

And then there are others are going, they're just drunk.

And they've begun to build an explanation for what's happened here.

Same wind, same fire, same people speaking words of the mighty acts of God in their ears.

And some of them are saying, What's going on?

And others say, Well, I know what's going on.

They're drunk.

Now notice this the miracle does not bring the resolution.

They're not understanding things because of what's happened.

The only way that they can understand is when Peter gets up and speaks, and when he preaches the gospel, that's when understanding happens.

The miracle produces bewilderment or mockery.

It takes the proclamation of God's word to produce faith.

And the split is not new here.

Isaiah spoke long ago in Isaiah 6 that there would be a time when God would speak and they would look and they would look and they would look, but they would listen and never hear.

And Luke finishes in Acts chapter 28, this book of Acts, with those very words from Isaiah, talking about people that would not believe.

Acts 28 · chapter mention

It begins in Acts 2 with people who hear and will not believe, and it ends in Acts 28 with people who hear and will not believe.

But within the middle of that are people who are Jews and Samaritans and Gentiles all the way to the very uttermost parts of the earth who are believing.

There's a separation of people here.

What is happening here?

The gospel sets people in categories, and there's only two.

You either in Christ or you are out of Christ.

You are either receiving Christ or you are rejecting Christ.

You either are either resting in the hope of eternal life or you are facing an eternity that is so horrific words fail to express.

That's it.

And the message of the gospel is doing just that work here.

It's beginning to separate humanity into those two streams.

And Paul talks about it when he says, in every place we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

And he says, to some we're an aroma of death to death, and to others we're the aroma of life leading to life.

And it's not because the message changed, it's because the heart will not let go of those things that it's clinging so hard to.

Picture two people hearing the same account, a life changed by Christ, a marriage that was headed into the courthouse to break up, but now because of Christ is restored, or hearing about addictions that have been broken, but now Christ resides in the heart.

Or someone who had years of anger or bitterness, but now are filled with peace and love even toward their enemies.

And two people hearing those things, and one person saying, What does this mean?

And someone else going, oh come on.

This is exactly what's happening here.

Two entirely different postures of the heart.

And we cannot at all control that, brothers and sisters.

Preach the gospel.

Tell me more.

And then there will people who will say, What are you drunk?

Uh, you know, what happened to you last week?

You know, how the hell could you change?

1983.

I walked back into a United States Air Force uh unit, and I was there among all the guys I worked with in the shop, and all of a sudden they're like, What happened to you?

They said, You're not gonna preach to us, are you?

And I said, I'm never gonna preach, but let me tell you something that's happened.

Jesus happened to me yesterday, and all of a sudden I got tagged with a cult word, Mooney.

I don't know if Moonies are even around anymore, but but I got called a Mooney for the next six months.

But there were some of the guys who said, What happened to you, Doug?

I need to know more.

If you're here this morning and you don't know Jesus Christ as your savior, the word of God is is calling to you.

And I want to encourage you, keep the question in front of you.

What is this?

What is happening here?

What is this message about Christ and forgiveness and eternal life?

What is this message about my sins being washed away?

What is this about me being a new creation in Christ?

What is this about me actually being so different that it could be likened to being born a second time?

Keep that question in front of you, because that is the very question that the gospel answers.

And if you're here this morning and you're saying, what a load of nonsense! Why did I even show up today?

Hear these words.

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

And I say that with as much compassion as I can utter.

Because this is not a judgment that comes from me or any of us.

This is about a God who is so holy that he will not allow sin to be welcomed in his presence ever.

And it isn't about you coming up there with with the with a bag of good things that you did and the rest of the stuff that you've done, and asking him to put it on the scale to see if it outweighs one side or the other.

He will not allow anyone into his presence with welcome who hasn't been brought in by the righteous blood of Jesus Christ, and only in him can you live.

Go to him.

These words are extremely important.

They move us from the Old Testament in promise to the New Testament in fulfillment.

They inaugurate the new covenant, the beginning of the time when God is gathering in people here, Jew first, but later, as we'll see in the book of Acts, from all nations.

This is the call of the good news of Jesus Christ that begins to reverberate around this globe and is still ringing out to our day and will until Christ calls this to an end and ushers us into a new age.

The response for us is to believe, to rejoice, to worship, to love this God who gives life that we cannot create.

It is for us to welcome one another in Christ and to enjoy a unity that we cannot control.

And it's one that calls us to proclaim a message of life with results that are outside our ability.

And it's also one for us to hear and to welcome and live.

Let's pray.

Father, we are grateful for your mighty act to bring Christ Jesus into this world to save sinners.

And Lord, each of us might argue with the Apostle Paul about who was the worst.

But we know that you set him as an example, one who opposed you fiercely, who tried to shut down the very life of the church as a demonstration of your forbearance and love, that all may come.

That that word whosoever can speak to any and every voice on earth, that it speaks to all and says, Come, come to the rivers of life and drink abundantly.

Come buy bread without price.

Don't waste yourself on broken things.

We thank you that you've given us life in Christ.

We thank you that you've given us a love for one another in Christ.

And we thank you that you've given us a longing to share the gospel of Christ with those, no matter what response they might have.

And Lord, we pray you do your work in us and do your work in those that you would make them one of yours.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.