Acts 2 - The Power of Pentecost - 1/22/17
Turn with me this morning to Acts 2. M, M, L, J, Acts. The full name is the Acts of the Apostles. So what is an apostle? Someone sent on a mission. In the more specific sense, the apostles are the 12 disciples of Jesus. Look back in 1:26. Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles. Jesus had many disciples, followers, those who not only listened to Him, but who believed in Him and wanted to be just like Him. That’s what a disciple is - not just someone who prays a prayer, but someone who wants to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. But the 12 KEY disciples are also called apostles. So in the gospels, we see Jesus training them. In the book of Acts, we see them going out and sharing the truth about Jesus. It is a transitional book. It describes how the apostles went about fulfilling their mission: they took the truth of the resurrected Christ and shared it with the world. It is not really a book that prescribes daily practices for Christians - we find those in the epistles - the letters that follow Acts. But Acts records for us that transitional period. It’s really more of a historical account to give us an understanding of how the church was built.
We saw in chapter 1 the ascension of Jesus. After the resurrection, Jesus appears many times to his followers and gives them - 1:3 - many convincing proofs that He was alive. He is with them 40 days, and then He ascends back to heaven. As He leaves, Acts 1:11 tells us, two angelic beings appear and say “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky?” Put in modern terms, they are telling the disciples “Stop standing around - get on with life!” And that’s something that we all need to take to heart. We have a task that has been given to us: to make disciples. Jesus left His disciples with a commission - Matthew 28 - Therefore go and make disciples of all nations. So our job as a church, as Christians, as followers of Christ, is simply put: Make disciples! We ARE to be studying the scriptures, praying, worshiping - but we do it all so we can reach others! We want others to follow our Savior, just as we are following Him.
We saw in the end of chapter 1, until they received the Holy Spirit, the disciples were to wait at Jerusalem. But as they wait, they also worship. Today in chapter 2, their waiting is over. We see the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. It’s a famous chapter in the bible. But let’s take a quick quiz:
• What is the Day of Pentecost? and • Why is it important?
Now most Christians would say the Day of Pentecost is when the Holy Spirit came, and it’s important because people spoke in tongues on that day. And if you said that, you’d get a D- on the quiz. So let’s look a little deeper. And as we come to the scriptures, let’s pray for God to give His insight: Let’s pray! First,
• What is the Day of Pentecost? Let’s look in Acts 2, starting in verse 1. Read 2:1-13.
Verse 1 starts out, “When the day of Pentecost came.” This isn’t a special day because of what happened in this chapter. This had been a special day for thousands of years. But because we weren’t raised in a Jewish home, and because we don’t know our Old Testament well, we aren’t familiar with it. So let’s do a little OT review.
If you search the OT, you won’t find the Day of Pentecost. The word Pentecost literally means 50 - it is a celebration that comes fifty days after the harvest comes in. In the OT, it was referred to as the Feast of Weeks. We find the instructions for it in Leviticus 23. In that chapter we see various festivals: Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Weeks, Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles. So in Leviticus 23:15 -“‘From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the LORD.
Let’s review what we saw at Easter. Christ is sacrificed at the Passover festival - the time we celebrate the death angel “passing over” the homes of the Jews in Egypt. 1 Corinthians 5:7 tells us, For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. So Christ is sacrificed as the passover, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. In fact, in Hebrews 10 it tells us that all the lambs sacrificed in the thousands of years leading up to Jesus NEVER took away ANY sin. It says, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. . . . we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. All those OT sacrifices were acts of faith done looking forward to the day when Jesus would die as the ONE perfect sacrifice. How are our sins atoned for? By the sacrifice of the perfect Son of God.
So Jesus died on Passover. When did He rise from the dead? On the feast of Firstfruits - read about it in Leviticus 23. It refers to the day after the sabbath after Passover - we know from the gospels that Jesus rose from the dead on the day after the sabbath - early in the morning on the first day of the week! That’s why Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 - But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. The Jewish festival of Firstfruits was the time they offered the first of their crops being harvested to the Lord. The firstfruit was a sign that more fruit was on the way! Jesus was raised from the dead - NOT to accomplish our salvation - that was accomplished by His DEATH - but He rose to give us HOPE, assurance, the CERTAINTY that WE ALSO will one day rise. Death is NOT the end - but for those of us who follow Christ; we WILL one day rise again. Christ is the firstfruit - raised back to life on the day of the firstfruit offering.
Then from that Easter Sunday morning, the Sunday after Passover, Jews would count 50 days. Seven weeks = 49 days, and then the 8th Sunday is the 50th day. So the Feast of Weeks - the Day of Pentecost - 50 days after Firstfruits, was also a Sunday.
The feast of weeks was a celebration of the harvest. The Jews celebrated the gathering of the wheat harvest. The beginning of wheat harvest was a time when people would come and present their first-fruits to the LORD in thanksgiving and praise. Before they would partake of any of the harvest themselves, they would come and make sure they had honored God. And here in Acts 2, the Day of Pentecost is a celebration of a harvest - but not just a wheat harvest here, but of a harvest of souls, of the reaping of 3,000 souls being saved and receiving the Holy Spirit.
So that is what the Day of Pentecost is. Now our second question:
Why is it important? First let me tell you some reasons it is NOT important.
• It is not important for us to have another experience like Pentecost. There was ONE Pentecost. It’s not going to happen again. On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit is sent from heaven just like Jesus said would happen. But since the Spirit came, the Spirit has continually been here and is still here today. We don’t need another coming of the Spirit. Just like we don’t need another crucifixion or another savior.
• It is not important for us to speak in tongues - yes, tongues is mentioned in this chapter - but the focus of the chapter is NOT on the tongues speaking. But sometimes those who have a desire to focus on tongue-speaking see only that in the chapter. Some people say the sign of having salvation is speaking in tongues. But that’s not what the scripture teaches. And normally those who want to speak in tongues IGNORE all of the restrictions the scripture sets down for speaking in tongues.
• It is not important for us to study to learn how to get the baptism of the Spirit - because we are baptized with the Spirit at the moment of salvation. Paul says in Romans 8:9 - if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. You can’t get much plainer than that!
So why IS Acts 2 important for us? First, it is important that we know that
1. The Holy Spirit has been given to believers - We often are so used to thinking about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that we easily forget the Spirit did not always indwell believers. In the OT, the spirit would come and go. Read the story of Samson in Judges 15, 16 - you will see the Spirit coming on Samson, and you will see the Spirit leaving Samson. But since the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit has come and stayed. As Christians, as those who have chosen to follow Christ with our lives, we have been given the Holy Spirit to live inside us, to teach us, to encourage us, to empower us, to rebuke us. Just as Jesus promised before He left. So Acts 2 shows us that Jesus keeps His promises. He promised - John 14:16 - to send the Spirit - and here in Acts 2 we see He keeps His word. We can trust what Jesus says will happen, will happen.
So here in chapter 2 we see the Spirit comes. The disciples are all together in one place - probably praying as they were in chapter 1. Verse 2 tells us Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. God makes a sound that gets everyone’s attention.
At my house, there is an emergency siren two blocks away. It doesn’t matter what is happening at 6 PM Thursdays in the summer, you instantly stop because you hear the siren test - it’s loud and blaring and get’s your attention - and you ask yourself “What’s going on?” When you realize it’s 6 PM and is a test, you relax. If it happens another time, you take cover - a tornado or severe thunderstorm is on the way. It get’s your attention.
It says here in Acts 2 God sets off an air raid siren - a sound that gets everyone’s attention. Jerusalem was packed and the suburbs were filled, and out on the hillsides were many camps of pilgrims. Because Deuteronomy 16 told the Jews, Three times a year all your men must appear before the LORD your God at the place he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks [that’s Pentecost] - and the Feast of Tabernacles. Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century, tells us that oftentimes the city of Jerusalem (which normally had a population of 150,000) would be swollen in numbers to well over a million. It is to this multitude that this miracle was directed. These are Jews; but they have come in from all parts of the earth. And God gets their attention in an amazing way. Notice there isn’t a strong wind - instead they HEAR a sound like the blowing of a violent wind. And really strong winds DO get your attention.
Verse 3 tells us, They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. There is not literal fire - but when it refers to a “tongue of fire” it probably has something to do with the shape that they saw. The separation of the tongues of fire “to rest on each of them” probably is done to show that the Spirit now rests on each believer individually. So there was some form of visible manifestation to show the coming of the Spirit.
Do we see this type of sensational manifestation when we receive the Holy Spirit? NO. Why not? Because remember, this is a transitional period, and God authenticated his apostles by special signs and miracles. In 1 Corinthians 1:22 we read, Jews demand miraculous signs. In fact, in John 2:18 when Jesus cleanses the temple the first time, the Jews come to Him and say, What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” So during this TRANSITIONAL time from Judaism to Christianity - from the OT covenant to the NT covenant, God authenticates His messengers with miraculous signs. The sign of the tongues of fire helps to authenticate to others that God is doing something special. We don’t need the miraculous signs today to authenticate our message, because we have the completed word of God. So they hear the wind - God gets their attention - they see the tongues of fire - they see that God is up to something special - then verse 4 - All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Here is the tongue speaking that so often gets focused on. But notice what this is. This is not the disciples standing around making unintelligible sounds that can’t be understood. Instead we see in verse 6 that a crowd gathers to see what is going on. It says they were bewildered, "because each one heard them speaking in his own language." Verse 7 tells us they could tell that the men were Galileans. Evidently Galileans stood out by their speech. Remember in Matthew 26 Peter is identified as a Galilean by his accent: After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away.” If you heard someone say, Howdy, how y’all doing today, sugar - you would say they’re from the south. If you heard someone saying they were from “thoity-thoid & thoid street - where the dirty purple bird sits a perched on the curb, chirpin and burpin and eatin dirty earthworms - you’d know he was from New Joisey (Jersey). They could tell these men were from Galilee - but they heard them speaking in their own languages - over sixteen different languages. Verses 9-11 tells us where they were from. (MAP)
Parthians. From the Parthian Empire on the western frontier - from the Tigris River to India.
Medes. Modern-day Kurds from Media, northeast of Mesopotamia.
Elamites. From Elam, north of the Persian Gulf (part of modern Iran).
Mesopotamia. Between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (modern-day Iraq).
Judea. The Jewish homeland, including Judea and Galilee.
Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia. Parts of Asia Minor (modern Turkey).
Phrygia and Pamphylia. Parts of Asia Minor (modern Turkey).
Egypt. Had a large Jewish population. Alexandria, Egypt, was a major center of Jewish learning.
Libya. In north Africa, west of Egypt (modern Libya).
Cyrene. Capital of Cyrenaica, a province in Libya.
Rome. Capital of the Roman Empire; it had one of the largest Jewish populations outside of Israel.
converts to Judaism. Former Gentiles who became full Jews through circumcision (for males) and by obeying the Mosaic law; also called “proselytes.”
Cretans. From the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea south of Greece..
Arabs. From the Nabatean kingdom south and east of Judea, sometimes called “Arabia” .
So here are all these Jews, from all the countries around, each with their own unique common tongue language. And the gift of tongues here was a gift of speaking in an actual language which you had never learned. Instead of calling it the gift of tongues it would probably help us better understand it if we called it the gift of languages. Why give this miraculous gift? To authenticate the message of the disciples. Here were these Galilean men - in our culture today we might call them hillbillies, rednecks. But back before the days of Rosetta stone and all the other language software - these rednecks were speaking in 16 different languages. Once again, God chooses common, ordinary men and women to accomplish His work in the world.
Many people see in this event a reversal of the judgment at Babel. God’s judgment at Babel scattered the people, but God’s blessing at Pentecost united the believers in the Spirit. At Babel, the people were unable to understand each other; but at Pentecost, men heard God’s praises and understood what was said. The Tower of Babel was a scheme designed to praise men and make a name for men, but Pentecost brought praise to God. The building of Babel was an act of rebellion, but Pentecost was a ministry of humble submission to God.
Luke writes here in verse 6 the crowd came together in “bewilderment” - the word means they were "hit hard, stunned." They were staggered by this amazing thing. They heard these Galilean peasants speaking these languages and they were staggered by it, especially since they easily recognized the languages they were speaking.
It says they were “utterly amazed: - which means literally, "to push out of their senses." It is exactly what we say when we use the modern phrase, "it blew their minds." That is exactly what Luke said. It blew their minds as they heard this phenomenon occurring. And linked with that, Luke says, they were perplexed. They have all kinds of thought running through their minds and they are looking for answers. And in verses 12 and 13, we see some seriously want the truth, and others turn from the truth for mockery.
So here on the Day of Pentecost, the day of celebrating the fruitful harvest, the Holy Spirit has come. God is doing something special, and it is evident to all. He has sent the Holy Spirit to indwell His followers. Acts 2 is given to us first, to show
the Holy Spirit has been given to believers. Secondly, it is give to us to show
2. The Holy Spirit empowers believers to witness. Remember where we started - God’s desire, God’s plan, God’s will for EACH ONE of us is that we would be a witness. That we would tell others what we have experienced, what we know to be true. How can we do that? Through the power of the Holy Spirit.
So what has happened? Jesus sent the Spirit - just as He said He would. The Spirit empowers the witnesses. And the witnesses powerfully proclaim the truth. The mark of being filled with the Spirit is NOT speaking in tongues - but rather it is boldness to proclaim the truth of the word of God. Verse 11 once again - we hear them declaring the wonders of God.
Look at what Peter does - verse 14 - Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: How is Peter able to address all these different nationalities at once? Peter didn’t preach in tongues; he probably addressed his audience in the everyday Aramaic that they understood. They are all Jews, and they all probably spoke the common Jewish language Aramaic. The message was given by a Jew, to Jews, on a Jewish holiday, about the resurrection of the Jewish Messiah. The Gentiles who were there were proselytes, converted to following Judaism. So where do the Gentiles come in? We’ll get to them in Acts 10 when Peter opens the door of faith to the Gentiles when he visited Cornelius. So what is Peter’s message?
“Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. So first Peter gives an EXPLANATION - what they are hearing and seeing is the fulfillment of OT prophecy. Secondly, Peter gives a DECLARATION - that Jesus IS the CHRIST, the promised Messiah, the Son of the Living God. In verse 36, after recounting what the scriptures say about Jesus, Peter declares, Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
It is interesting that this crowd gathered in Jerusalem didn’t question the resurrection. Today, 2,000 years later, skeptics want to say, Well, Jesus really didn’t rise. Listen, if He was still in the tomb, someone in the crowd there at Pentecost would have pointed it out!
How could they actually have believed someone could raise from the dead? Matthew 27 tells us, The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people. So just a couple weeks before, when Jesus rises, many others come back from the dead as well - but they came back to life only to die again. Jesus rises as the firstfruits to live forevermore! It is not hard for these Jews to believe that Jesus has risen!
So Peter gives explanation - he gives declaration - and then he gives the APPLICATION - verse 38 - “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.
The Holy Spirit empowers Peter to preach boldly, and as a result, verse 41 tells us 3,000 responded to the message. I’ve just jumped quickly through Peter’s sermon, but I want to invite you to come back tonight at 6 as we look more at this sermon in Acts 2. Take some time to read through it this afternoon, and then come back tonight for our potluck and bible study together.
But as we summarize in closing, what do we come away with?
* First, God keeps His word. He promised to send the Spirit, and He did.
* Second, the Spirit empowers our witness. You might struggle with the idea that YOU could be a witness. But we always want our witness to come - not from our wise insight - but from the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us. Look for God to use you to have a powerful witness this week. Expect great things from God. And then
* Third, how do we receive this powerful witness? We repent and are baptized. If you are here today, and you have never made the choice to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus, to turn control of your life over to Him - then you need to do that very thing today. To repent means to change the way you think. Instead of thinking you are okay - you admit you are a sinner in need of a Savior. Instead of thinking you can handle your problems yourself, you turn to God and seek His help. Instead of being the master of your fate, you place your faith in what Jesus has already done for you, in dying on your place, and receive His forgiveness. And when you do that, a supernatural change will take place in your life. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
I wonder if there is anyone here today who would say I’m ready to repent and place my faith in Jesus? If so, I would invite you to come and meet me here at the front today. Let’s pray. prayer for the Spirit to work in our lives
