SERMON OUTLINE:
(1). The Day of Pentecost (vs 1a)
(2). The Coming of the Spirit (vs 2-4)
(3). The Reaction of the Crowd (vs 5-13)
SERMON BODY:
Ill:
• Many of you know I like to drink the black nectar.
• A good cup of coffee is one of life’s pleasurers!
• And I agree with the person who tongue-in-cheek said,
• “Caffeine isn’t a drug, it’s a vitamin”.
• As a connoisseur of coffee, I have to say that,
• I am not a fan of Starbucks, they are my least favourite coffee chain,
• And I only go there in emergency situations when no other option is available.
• But I read this week that in the USA Starbucks have done something slightly different,
• Since 2012 the coffee company has built 45 mini cafes.
• These mini cafes are built out of shipping containers.
• These tiny Starbucks stores have a much smaller environmental footprint,
• Then their traditional cafes, taking less water and energy to operate.
• Now the line in the article that got may attention was this one,
• They say the containers are “reclaimed, refurnished, renewed and revived.”
• That sounds to me like what God does for a person,
• When they are converted and come to real faith in Jesus Christ!
• “Reclaimed, refurnished, renewed and revived.”
• TRANSITION: In Acts chapter 2,
• These “Reclaimed, refurnished” disciples needed also to be “renewed and revived.”
• That would take more than just good teaching, more than just meeting together.
• They need the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
• To change them from the inside out! To bring lasting transformation.
Quote: Tim Downs
“Watches, cars and Christians can all look chromed and shiny.
But watches don't tick, cars don't go, and Christians don't make a difference without insides.
For a Christian, that's the Holy Spirit”.
• So, for these “Reclaimed, refurnished” disciples to be “renewed and revived.”
• They must wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Note: Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
• John in his gospel spends three chapters (John chapters 14-16),
• Recording the teaching of Jesus regarding the Holy Spirit’s role in the life of the believer.
• Remember that up to this point the disciples had only seen the Holy Spirit externally.
• But at Pentecost they would experience him internally.
• e.g., Jesus told them; “He will be in you”.
• The second chapter in the book of Acts is the fulfilment of the promise Jesus made.
• When he promised that ‘another helper’ (‘The Spirit of truth’) would come.
• In Acts chapter 1 verses 5 & 8a,
• Jesus once again repeats his promise regarding this ‘helper’ the Holy Spirit,
• And here in Acts chapter 2 verses 1-13 – on the first Pentecost Sunday,
• He kept his promise!
Now don’t forget that this is not merely a history lesson,
• Because every Christian is still living in the good of those events today!
• Whenever a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ,
• At the moment of their conversion,
• The Holy Spirit baptises them into the Church, the family of God!
• The New Testament teaches elsewhere that,
• God enters their life via the Holy Spirit who seals them and marks them out.
• e.g., Ephesians chapter 1 verse 13.
“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,”
• At our conversion every believer is not only sealed with the Holy Spirit,
• But also united into the one body, the Church of Jesus Christ.
• e.g., 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 13.
“For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body--whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free--and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
• In our passage this morning we have the birth of the Church.
• The events in this chapter describe how the Church was born.
• So, we are right back at the beginning of the Christian movement.
(1). The Day of Pentecost (vs 1a)
“When the day of Pentecost came…”
Ill:
• Some dates are very well known:
• No-one ever forgets December 25th - Christmas day.
• Or November 5th - Bonfire Night.
• And of course, February 14th – Valentine’s Day.
• Some days ought to be well known but sadly are not:
• April 23rd - St. George’s Day.
• (we English must keep the flag flying high if even if St George was Spanish!)
• July 16th - My Birthday!
• (No cheques just cash please!)
TRANSITION: Pentecost was a date fixed in the Jewish diary.
• There were three great Jewish festivals on the Jewish calendar.
• Every male Jew living within twenty miles of Jerusalem.
• Was legally bound to come and attend these great occasions.
• There was Passover:
• Which celebrated the Jews freedom from slavery in Egypt.
• There was Pentecost:
• Which is the feast we will look at in a moment.
• There was Tabernacles or Booths:
• Which commemorates the forty-year period.
• During which the children of Israel were wandering in the desert, living in temporary shelters.
Pentecost is the festival mentioned in verse 1:
• Christians did not invent the phrase “Pentecost” (means fifty).
• Rather, they borrowed it from Greek-speaking Jews,
• Who used the phrase to refer to a particular Jewish holiday.
• This name comes from an expression in the book of Leviticus chapter 23 verse 16:
• (Septuagint – a Greek translation of the Old Testament).
• Which instructs people to count seven weeks or “fifty days”
• From the end of one Jewish holiday called ‘Passover’.
• To the beginning of the next holiday called ‘Pentecost’
• i.e., A bit like us counting the days between Christmas Day & New Year’s Day (only 6)
Note:
• Jews refer to this holiday we call ‘Pentecost’ as the ‘Festival of Weeks’,
• Or, more simply, ‘Weeks’ (‘Shavuot’ in Hebrew).
• It is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan.
• (for us Gentiles that is around late May or early June).
Now this feast or festival has two meanings - one agricultural and the other historical.
FIRST: AGRICULTURAL:
• ill: bad joke,
• I recommend to all young people that they get a degree in agriculture.
• It allows them to work in a variety of fields (groan, groan).
• Shavuot was originally a harvest festival (Exodus chapter 23 verse 16).
• It was a celebration of the grain harvest.
• When seven weeks, worth of harvest had been gathered in.
SECOND: HISTORICAL:
• Towards the end of the intertestamental period (between the Old & New Testaments).
• It began to be observed as another anniversary:
• A day to commemorate the giving of the ‘Torah’ or the Law on Mt. Sinai.
• Because this was reckoned to have taken place fifty days after the Exodus.
• i.e., The word ‘Torah’ (which means "Instruction" or "Teaching")
• i.e., It is sometimes called the ‘Pentateuch’ (which means “five books”)
• The first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy & Leviticus.)
Ill:
• Please notice that the holiday is called by Jews the time of the ‘giving’ of the Torah,
• Rather than the time of the ‘receiving’ of the Torah.
• Jewish Rabbis are keen to point out:
• That we are constantly in the process of receiving the Torah,
• i.e., we receive it every day, each time we read it or hear it.
• (what a great application for us as Christians to remember that too when reading the Bible)
So, the Law was given to the Jews by God at this time.
• And so, it is always the ‘giving’, not the ‘receiving’, that makes this holiday significant.
• While there’s no official mention of ‘Shavuot’ in the Bible,
• The story of the giving of the Torah begins in Exodus 19 and continues from there:
Note: Both of these meanings would not be lost on the first Christians:
• FIRST:
• It was on this special day (‘Pentecost’ or ‘Festival of Weeks’):
• That God chose to birth to the Church.
• Remember that Jews had come from all over the world for this special occasion,
• They had come to celebrate the harvest of the first fruits.
• And it is not coincidental that God chose this day to birth the Church.
• And to bring in a worldwide spiritual harvest.
• i.e., Harvest of 3,000 people on this day alone (vs 41).
• SECOND:
• The old covenant had been characterised by the giving of the Law.
• In Exodus chapter 32 verse 28 when the law was given,
• 3,000 people died as a result of making sacrifices to the golden calf,
• Fast forward to the day of Pentecost,
• And we see the contrast between the law and the Spirit.
• Whereas 3000 died at the giving of the law,
• We now see 3000 saved with the giving of the Spirit. Pentecost was the exact same day!
• The old covenant had been characterised by the giving of the Law.
• The new covenant would be characterised by the giving of the Spirit.
• This new era is ushered in on the anniversary of the old as they are fused together.
Ill:
• A number of Old Testament prophets put the Law and the Spirit together:
• Ezekiel chapter 36 verse 26-27:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws”.
• God gives his Holy Spirit.
• To write his Law upon our hearts and empower us to keep it!
(2). The Coming of the Spirit (vs 2-4)
“Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them”.
• Although this passage is often called, ‘The coming of the Holy Spirit,’
• We have read about him on many occasions in the Old Testament.
• i.e., in the very first chapter of the Bible (Genesis chapter 1 verse 1-2):
• The Holy Spirit was active in creation.
• i.e., we read about him in Old Testament history.
• (Judges chapter 6 verse 34 & 1 Samuel chapter 16 verse 13):
• i.e., we read about him in the life of Jesus.
• (Luke chapter 1 verse 30-37 & chapter 4 verse 1&14):
But from now on after Pentecost there would be two major changes:
• First: The Holy Spirit would dwell in people and not just come on people.
• e.g., Story of Samson, he was a weak skinny guy,
• That is why the opposition was baffled, they could not figure out his strength.
• Judges chapter 14 verses 5-6, “the Spirit came upon Samson powerfully.”
• Second: The Holy Spirit’s presence would be permanent, not temporary.
• e.g., David’s prayer in Psalm 51 verse 11, “Take not thy Holy Spirit from me”.
• David had seen King Saul lose his anointing for disobedience,
• And he was terrified it might happen to him as well.
Quote: John Stott:
“Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of character apart from his fruit, and no effective witness without his power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the Church without the Spirit is dead”.
Notice:
• There are three astonishing signs that accompanied the coming of the Holy Spirit.
• The threefold evidence showing to us that the Holy Spirit had come:
• FIRST: AUDIBLE EVIDENCE (VS 2B):
• A noise came ‘like the blowing of a violent wind’.
• Notice it wasn’t the wind, but it sounded like it.
• ill: Wonder if it sounded like a Boeing 737 at take-off!
• SECOND: VISIBLE EVIDENCE (VS 3):
• There appeared to be ‘tongues of fire…resting on them’.
• To their amazement.
• Fire-like manifestations resembling tongues of fire settled on each person.
• And soon their own tongues would be set on fire by the Spirit with the message of Jesus!
• THIRD: SPOKEN EVIDENCE (VS 4):
• They began to speak in ‘other languages’ previously unknown to them.
• Whereas the noise and fire were both external manifestations.
• Imagine their surprise when they began conversing in other languages.
• Dialects they had never learnt or not even known to them!
• I just love verses 8-11:
“Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs – we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!’
• In these verses we have fifteen different geographical locations mentioned,
• And people from those places heard and understood in their own language,
• As Peter and the others ‘declared the wonders of God!’
• Notice: that the ‘speaking in tongues.
• Was not for the “spiritual elation” of those doing the speaking,
• Rather it was for the benefit of those who were hearing!
• In fact, three times we read this, and this is certainly Luke’s emphasis,
• That these unreached people were being reached,
• Because the gospel message was being presented in their own language.
• I love the fact that although the languages differed,
• The message remained the same: one gospel for all people groups!
Ill:
• In 1917, William Cameron Townsend.
• Was passing out Spanish Bibles and speaking about God in a Guatemalan village.
• A Cakchiquel (Kaq-chi-kel) Indian (they had their own dialect) came up to him and said,
• “If your God is so smart, why doesn’t he speak Cakchiquel (Kaq-chi-kel)?”
• That was a life-defining moment for William Townsend.
• He decided to do something about it,
• And he started a linguistics school (known today as SIL),
• Training people to do Bible translation.
• The work continued to grow, and in 1942,
• Cameron officially founded Wycliffe Bible Translators.
• Today, according to their website (May 2021):
• The full Bible is now available in 704 different languages,
• Giving 5.7 billion people access to Scripture in the language they understand best.
• The New Testament is available in another 1,551 languages,
• Reaching another 815 million people.
• Selections and stories are available in a further 1,160 other languages,
• Spoken by 458 million people.
• Sadly, there are currently 3,945 languages with no Scripture.
• 167 million people, speaking 2,014 languages, still need translation work to begin.
• TRANSITION: No such problem on the day of Pentecost,
• But a big problem for the Church ever since!
(3). The Reaction of the Crowd (vs 5-13)
• As the Spirit’s rumblings spilled out of the upper room onto the street below,
• Thousands of people crowded around to find out what was going on.
• And Dr Luke the writer of this book,
• Describes for us the reaction and responses of the crowd to these events.
(A). CONFUSION (VS 5-6):
“Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken”.
Ill:
• The famous modern artist Pablo Picasso was once robbed in his French home.
• He told the police he would be happy to paint them a picture of the robbers.
• And on the strength of that picture, the French police later reported,
“we are looking for a thief who resembles a mother superior, a government minister, a washing machine, and the Eiffel Tower.”
• TRANSITION: Confusion is what many people experienced at Pentecost.
• The Jewish audience who was made up of people from many countries & cultures.
• Had never before heard their language spoken so well outside their own countries,
• And their first response was confusion, bewilderment, and puzzlement.
(B). AMAZEMENT (VS 7):
“Utterly amazed, they asked: ‘Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans?”
• The crowd’s confusion soon turned into astonishment.
• When they realised WHO was speaking their languages,
• It was not the educated priests of the temple but a group of Galileans!
• You can imagine their jaws dropping and them shaking their heads,
• As they saw Galileans who normally roughed up their language,
• Suddenly the most enlightened conversations there!
Ill:
• The experts tell us that Galileans had a reputation for being uncultured,
• They had the habit of swallowing syllables when speaking,
• They were seen by southerners to be unpolished, unsophisticated northerners.
• Yest it was these Galileans who spoke the language of the world,
• Better than their own mother tongue.
(C). CURIOSITY (VS 8-12)
“Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? - (15 groups named and mentioned) - we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!’ Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, ‘What does this mean?’”
• Curiosity soon overtook the crowd’s amazement.
• As they began searching, looking for the meaning behind this extraordinary event.
Ill:
• It may be that one disciple spoke and they all heard him in their own language.
• Or it may be one disciple spoke in Italian and those who spoke Italian gathered to him,
• Another in Egyptian and those who spoke Egyptian gathered to him, and so on.
• TRANSITION: Either way, the crowd knew something miraculous was taking place:
• They heard preaching in a variety of different foreign languages,
• Their languages!
• They were wise enough to realise this was a sign,
• They needed to move on and discover why this miraculous sign was given.
(D). DENIAL (VS 13)
“Some, however, made fun of them and said, ‘They have had too much wine.’”
• While many would go on to understand what was happening.
• And see beyond the signs and believe in Jesus (vs 41)
• Others denied the miracle and scoffed at those speaking in other languages,
• Saying; “They’re drunk!”
• Well, that was the best they could offer!
• As if drinking alcohol could help one speak,
• With perfect inflection a previously unlearned language!
Ill:
• When I get to preach abroad, I always use an interpreter,
• I have never once thought about drinking a bottle of whisky!
• TRANSITION:
• It was a poor excuse that helped these dissenters explain what was happening,
• But it just demonstrated that they were unwilling,
• To recognise the power of God at work in the lives of others.
• Peter is emphatic with his answer:
• But you will have to read/study the rest of the chapter or come back next week,
• To discover what he says.
In conclusion:
(1). EVERY CHRISTIAN HAS THE HOLY SPIRIT!
Quote: John Stott:
“Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of character apart from his fruit, and no effective witness without his power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the Church without the Spirit is dead”.
• So, every Christian has the Holy Spirit!
• And because the Holy Spirit is a person (the third member of the Godhead).
• You can’t get part of him – you get all or nothing!
Ill:
• A doctor who becomes a Christian, gets no-more than a tramp who gets converted.
• An adult gets no-more than a child who gets converted.
• You get exactly the same amount of the Holy Spirit as....
• Billy Graham, Stuart Townend or any Christian you can think of!
• It is never a question of how much of the spirit do you have,
• But how much has he got of you.
Quote: D.L. Moody:
“I believe firmly that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Spirit will fill every corner of our hearts. But if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God. We must be emptied before we can be filled.”
(2). EVERY CHRISTIAN NEEDS FILLING WITH THE SPIRIT.
• At Pentecost, we read the historic event of the coming of the Holy Spirit.
• How the Christians were filled with the Spirit.
• And experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
• But after that event they experienced many further fillings of the Holy Spirit.
• (i.e., Acts 4:8, 4:31, 9:17, 13:9) but no more baptisms.
• The command of the New Testament is not baptised by the Holy Spirit.
• That happens automatically at conversion.
• The command is be filled with the Holy Spirit (i.e., Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18).
• Please note that this phrase is not commanding empty Christians.
• To acquire something, they don't already have.
• Each believer possesses the entire Holy Spirit from the time we repent and believe.
• A literal translation of the verb (in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18):
• Would read something like "be being kept filled."
• The idea is one of keeping yourself constantly filled,
• Means that we allow him to occupy and control every area of our lives.
Ill:
• John R. W. Stott writes in one of his books, regarding Archbishop William Temple.
• (‘The Radical Disciple: Some Neglected Aspects of Our Calling’)
• “It is no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear,
• And telling me to write a play like that.
• Shakespeare could do it; I can’t.
• And it is no good showing me a life like the life of Jesus,
• And telling me to live a life like that.
• Jesus could do it; I can’t.
• But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me,
• Then I could write plays like his.
• And if the Spirit of Jesus could come and live in me, then I could live a life like his.”
MP3 Audio Sermon:
https://surf.pxwave.com/wl/?id=PhJCF0RbDbDn9lw0oz7VlP8W4oxdBTPi
YouTube Video Sermon
https://youtu.be/AeEfqRRUIoM
