Birth Of The Church

BIRTH OF THE CHURCH

GENESIS 11:1-9

ACTS 2:1-41

#Pentecost

INTRODUCTION… OLDEST IN THE WORLD, wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

According to a report published by the Bank of Korea that looked at 41 countries, there were 5,586 companies older than 200 years. So when did some of these old companies and organizations start?

In the year 578 AD, the construction company Kongo Gumi was started in Japan which makes it the oldest continually operating company in the world. I’ll do the math for you, it is 1446 years old.

St Peter Stiftskulinarium in Salzburg, Austria is the oldest continually operating restaurant in the world at 1221 years old and was started in 803 AD. Christopher Columbus and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are said to have eaten there.

The Paris Mint was founded in 864 AD in France and is the oldest mint in the world. The next oldest continually operating mint is the Royal Mint of the United Kingdom currently located in Wales.

I find it fascinating that these companies and families and other organizations are still around after all of this time. In the United States, we feel like something that is 100 years old is old or ancient, but in other parts of the world, buildings or family homes or landmarks are often much older than in the United States. Many other countries and cultures do not tear down to build new, but build next to the old.

Today we are focusing on an organization that is even older than the Paris Mint or St Peter Stiftskulinarium or even Kongo Gumi. We are focusing on an organization that has been continuously operating for 1,991 years and began in 33 AD. Today we are celebrating and focusing on the birth of the Church which on Christian Calendars is called: Pentecost.

You may be unaware of Pentecost. If you are aware of Pentecost, you will know it as the day when the Holy Spirit came upon the followers of Jesus to indwell them and marked them as the “called-out ones” of God in Christ.

The events of Pentecost which we will read about in Acts 2 in the New Testament, happened 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection which you can read about at the end of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (also in the New Testament). Jesus appeared to the disciples and others in those days and convinced them that He had risen from the dead. On Pentecost Sunday 1991 years ago, they went public with their faith.

PURPOSE

Our purpose this morning is to make sure that we read through Acts 2 and highlight everything that God did on Pentecost Sunday. We will do that for sure, but I also want you to understand WHY God did WHAT He did on Pentecost. I want us to know the WHAT, but also the WHY.

TRANSITION

Believe it or not, the WHY begins in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Today we will be reading from Genesis 11 and then Acts 2 in order to focus on the WHAT and the WHY of Pentecost, which is the Birth of the Church.

READ GENESIS 11:1-9 (ESV)

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Genesis 11 provides us a look at the ancient past. At one point in the history of humanity, all people spoke the same language. In that time, all the people gathered together and wanted to build a tower that reached into the heavens. This tower would bring people closer to God on their own terms. This tower could create a safe place in case God ever decided to flood the whole earth again (Josephus, Book 1, Chapter 4). This tower would feed the human need for fame and greatness and power. This tower would gather all people in the same place which was exactly the opposite of God’s previous commands to fill the earth (Genesis 1:22, 1:28, 9:1). The tower was a symbol of the sin of humanity.