The Coming of the Holy Spirit

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

Acts 2 · chapter mention Acts 2 · chapter mention

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.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

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

Acts 2 · chapter mention

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.