The Day of Pentecost

Today we want to study Acts chapter 2 and I feel like it's a little bit like being invited into a labor and delivery room experience with all the anticipation the joy the drama The bonding everything that goes along with the birth of something new the birth of a baby and in this case the birth of the church Last week in chapter 1 Jesus had told his disciples before he went up into heaven. He had told them stay in Jerusalem Wait for the promise that my father gave you and you are going to receive power You're going to be my witnesses Those were the important things and they took him seriously and in verse 14 last week We read that with one accord they devoted themselves to prayer for 10 days They were devoting themselves to prayer and now you've studied this week Acts chapter 2 and you've read about that Amazing day that happened 10 days later when the Holy Spirit actually did come upon them in a very unique and Dynamic way, and I think what we're going to do this morning is I'm going to cover this chapter in This using the same outline as your study guide And so we're going to talk about the Spirit's work first of all to actually come on Pentecost Secondly to empower Peter to preach thirdly the work of the Spirit to convict those that heard Him and then lastly the power of the Spirit upon all of them to live a life in Unity and that was pleasing to God now This isn't just church history because if you think about those four markers This is super relevant to each one of our lives the importance of the Holy Spirit to come with power upon us To understand who he is for power for service the importance of the gospel message itself The gospel message never gets old it is so important the the Importance of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit not only in our lives to come to Christ in the first place But the ongoing convicting work of the Spirit and the importance of how we live together in community So this is a super relevant chapter. It should be its own eight-week Bible study But it's not so let's put on our sprinting shoes and go through it First of all what actually happened on the day of Pentecost we'll start reading in verse 1

and in these 73 words Luke paints for us a very accurate and beautiful picture of That incredible moment in history and this this moment the day of Pentecost Comes 10 days after Jesus ascended into heaven and it comes 50 days after Passover you studied that in your book and what we see was a Mighty rushing with the sound of a mighty rushing wind we see fire and we see the supernatural sign Which was all of the believers? Praising God telling of the works of God in a language that they didn't know that's pretty dynamic What I want to do for just about four minutes here is I want to talk about something that's not in your study guide But do you remember last week? We talked about these mileposts in history and how they're super packed with information And there's it's like God leaves lots of breadcrumbs every once in a while Like he'll just like dump out a whole handfuls and then move along in one or two and then there'll be whole handfuls Okay, we're at the whole handful part. And so what I want to do is compare two Passover's two very important Passover's in the history of the world the very first one and The one that happened just 50 days prior to this so at the first Passover You may remember that the children of Israel were in Egypt God had raised up Moses to be their deliverer and there was the plagues on Israel We were getting ready for the tenth plague the destroying angel to come and God told Moses to instruct the Israelites to kill a lamb Take the blood of that lamb painted over the doorposts of their homes and those who remained Sheltering under the blood of that lamb when the destroying angel came we're trusting in the fact that that angel was going to pass right over them pass over them and They would not be killed along with the Egyptians and that is how it happened 50 days later those people who had been trusting in The the blood of the lamb were now taken out of Egypt and now they were found themselves at the base of Mount Sinai Where God came to them to give them a revelation of his character the law and at this point He said just Moses come up everybody else. Stay back. Stay away and That day it says it tells us in Exodus chapter 20. There was fire and The word of God spoke and revealed his nature his character to them, okay Second the other very important Passover in history the real Passover where Jesus the real Passover lamb Was slain and for anyone who believes his blood can be applied figuratively over our lives as we trust in That sacrifice we trust in his blood to save us from destruction From the judgment that should come upon us That 50 days after that Passover now those people who had been trusting in the blood of the lamb find themselves in the upper room and The Lord comes again in a significant way to reveal himself with fire Don't you find that interesting these little divided tongues of fire this time not stay back this time It is I will come upon each One of you and it will be intimate and I will give you a sign you will speak in a language that you didn't even Know before this day, and so God was coming upon them this time to say this is like the New Covenant It will be intimate it will be inside of you not like the law. That's written externally This is on the inside aren't those neat breadcrumbs Don't you just look at the Bible as a whole I wanted to go through that because if you're a mother Every one of us have had a child come to us and say how do we know that our religion is really true? How do we know that the Bible is really true? It's these kind of breadcrumbs that we should pause and marvel at and say who could think this up Who could think you know all of this up? Well, there's one other So I don't think it was by accident that the Lord Wanted the Holy Spirit to come upon the disciples at Pentecost Why do we call this the baptism of the Holy Spirit well one other thing? I wanted to kind of unfold a little bit is that First of all Jesus told them that they would be baptized He used that word and it was going to be the Spirit coming upon them And there's another link in a similarity with Jesus himself and when Jesus started his ministry He was baptized by John the Baptist and at his baptism. Do you remember what happened the dove came down out of heaven? This is my beloved son, and he was The Spirit came upon Jesus in the form of a dove the Spirit came upon Jesus in the form of a dove and he said in John the Baptist said he said I baptize you with water for repentance But he who is coming after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire So we have a link in a similarity to look at when Jesus was baptized and the Spirit came upon Him then Jesus began to do and to teach as Luke as Luke Told us about as we opened up our acts Now that the Spirit comes upon the disciples They will continue to do and to teach do you see the similarities with those two baptisms? And so it's good for us to describe it as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but we better move along verse 5

and then Luke goes on to list Practically the entire known world and in the middle of verse 11 We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God This is what we they were speaking the mighty works of God And all were amazed and perplexed saying to one another what does this mean? But others mocking said oh, they're filled with new wine and so we learn about that day We learn about the people of that day in Jerusalem were Jews from all over the known world They're in Jerusalem gathered to celebrate Pentecost Okay we learn about the sounds that God chose to use the sound of a mighty rushing wind as an attention getter to sort of Gather up the people, when you hear a sound, just a couple of months ago, there was a car crash right on that street. And Selena was in the office, and you hear that sound, and you rush over there to see what's going on, right? And we learn about praise, because the disciples had been devoting themselves already to prayer. And we assume that that meant praise, and now God was doing through them what they had already been doing. But now with the sign that they were now speaking it in a new language. So this event was pretty amazing, and the people were empowered that day like they had never been before. Well, now we want to look at the second section, which is how the Spirit empowered Peter to preach. What I wanna say is all the people that day that the Holy Spirit came upon for power, I believe the Holy Spirit gave them all kinds of different gifts on that day. And we'll see power for different aspects of a Christian life, but Peter was empowered to preach. He was the one that stood up and began to preach. And I love this, many of the people's conjecture was that they were drunk. And so Peter seized the opportunity to explain the truth. I marvel at when the Spirit gives men and women gifts to do that. Franklin Graham has that gift. I read his Facebook posts all the time. He will take something, somebody's opinion, or some pop culture thing that's going on, he will take something that's out there in the world and say, well, you think this, now let me tell you the gospel. And he weaves it into the gospel every day, just like his daddy did. It's like that is a gift, that's what Peter does here. They're saying, they're drunk, and Peter goes, okay, I'm gonna use that. Cuz that's their opinion right here, that's what's on their mind. So I'm gonna use that. And so in verse 14, he stands up with the 11 and he lifts up his voice and he goes, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. These people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it's only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel. Now, again, these are Jews, right? Primarily, these are Jews that he's talking to. And so, how brilliant of the spirit to tell him to point to their own scriptures. And what Peter is saying is, this is really an expected Jewish event. Our own prophets talked about this. And he points to Joel where, in verse 18, in those days I will pour out my spirit. And everyone who calls upon the Lord will be saved. And so he begins to open up a conversation with them, based on their own understanding. You guys know the scriptures. You know that there are scriptures that prophesied this. So don't think that they're drunk. Something else is going on here. And it is the spirit of God being poured out upon all people. And Peter expresses to them, we're not gonna read those 23 verses, okay? I'm gonna pick and choose through there. And what I wanna do is highlight the five areas that Peter expresses. Because these continue to this day to form the bones of the gospel message. If we can convey these five elements to someone, this is the most important message in history. And it is the life, the death, the resurrection, the exaltation, and the active presence of Jesus in the world. So let's see how he does that. In verse 22, he talks about the life of Jesus.

, this isn't new information. In verse 23, he talks about the death.

. So he wanted them to know this didn't catch God by surprise, that Jesus was crucified. This was the definite plan of God, in fact. The resurrection of Jesus in verse 32,

. Remember, that's really important. They are eyewitnesses to the resurrection. His exaltation in verse 33,

. And lastly, his living, active presence in the end of 33,

. Those five elements are the gospel message that is so important to us. And so when we read that, here on the other side of it, we read our Bibles, and we should, first of all, internalize it and ask ourselves the question, have I really come to believe this? Do I believe all of those elements? You know, we don't read our Bibles to make it say what we want it to say. We want to come to the Bible for the gospel that is contained within and conform our lives to match the gospel message that's in there. And then next, we see a perfect model for handling the message of Jesus. And you might say to yourself, I'm not an evangelist, I can't do that. God hasn't given me that. Now it is true that God does specifically gift by the Holy Spirit some to be evangelist extraordinaires. But I believe to every believer, God does gift us the ability to communicate the gospel. If you feel insufficient in that, then this is a perfect Bible study for you to be in, because we're looking at and want to absorb into our own life the empowering of the spirit to do the things that are in his mind, to do what's important to him. Is it not important to God that all people come to know salvation? He will empower us to do that, so we don't have to figure it out on our own. We want to move to the next section, how the spirit convicted the crowd of sin, starting in verse 37. And how was this message effective? How was the response? It says in 37,

? And Peter said,

. So Peter's sermon was super effective. They just said, what do we need to do? And we see, again, the simplicity of the message. The gospel combined with the conviction of the Holy Spirit leads a person, if they're listening, to repentance and receive forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Which by that we mean the Holy Spirit to come to indwell them and to mark them as belonging to God. And so Peter's message was so effective. There's a little section about the baptism part in your study guide. If you didn't read that box, read that. I don't wanna take a lot of time on it here. But those who received the word, it says in verse 41,

. Super effective, right? So our church has grown over the course of ten days to 3,000. Well, the last section we want to look at is how the spirit now enabled the believers in the lifestyle of unity. And I want you to see how they began to live now just as much a gift of the Holy Spirit and empowering of the Holy Spirit as was Peter to preach. And I think we'll see that as we read through this. Verse 42, which should be four messages all on its own, says,

, those four things. And those four elements form the core curriculum of the church. This is a pattern that Luke no doubt wanted to write for history, for the churches in his day, and it remains a pattern for us. This is the blueprint for God's church, these four elements. So let's look at them individually. They gathered and they devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles. And these apostles that they were listening to were eyewitness apostles, how glorious. But we also have eyewitness apostles because most of those, some of those men wrote most of our New Testament. And so we too have the eyewitness apostles teaching. They devote themselves to fellowship, and that is a word that we use rather loosely to cover a broad range of things. But in its basic structure, it means knowing and being known with other believers. We would say together, doing life together, for care, for nurturing, for consideration of life's issues and life's problems. Having a bond together. They devoted themselves to breaking of bread. And for them, that probably looked similar to what we saw at the Last Supper. Where it was actually a meal and Also communion, also a remembrance. Both of those elements, I think, are summed up in the breaking of bread here. And they devoted themselves to prayer. And I think, too, just don't think of it as they had long lists of intercessory prayer, just kind of going through their list and telling God what they wanted him to do. But when it says they devoted themselves to prayer, it was praising God. It was what we saw them doing at the day of Pentecost, telling his mighty works. I think that when we worship together, that is also technically under that prayer, because we are telling in the singing with notes and with music to our voice, we are telling of God's praises all together in unison. And I think that that's a beautiful aspect of that. So we want to look at this and kind of ask ourselves, how are we doing? Because remember, in this Bible study, we want to say, what do we see in the first days that apply to our last days? I read a blog post this week, and I'll just share a few sentences, because it was relevant to this message. The New Testament knows nothing of the individualized Christianity of the Christian who thinks he doesn't need church. In scripture, we are referred to as a flock, a collective bride of Christ. We are limbs and organs in the body of Christ, and we're told that we can't separate ourselves from the rest of the body. And I would add to that, as we went through our study in 1 Peter, that first chapter, second chapter, that we are living stones, built fashion together, placed together to rise up to become the temple. Every place in scripture, we are seen as a piece of a whole, as the church, the body of Christ is described. And so here we find ourselves living on a continent and in a culture that is highly individualized, highly independent. And so there are some things we have to fight through. There are some cultural things that we need to let the word of God and what we see wash over us. So let's go through them again, teaching. What kind of a mark do we get on devoting ourselves to the apostles' teaching? Well, you're in Friday morning Bible study, so maybe a pretty high mark for those of you sitting here, right? And as a church body, I think that we probably get a fairly high mark on that. Maybe that comes easy to us, but what about the next one, fellowship? What is your personal mark on fellowship? Seeking out like-minded believers, not to create a bubble in which we don't go out and affect the world. But to have that, to do life together, to know them, to know someone else that they know they can connect with you, and to be known by others. How do we do on that? What's our mark on that? What about the breaking of bread? Some of you might think, yeah, that's great. Others might think, terrible. That sharing together to the point of the intimacy of a meal, sharing a meal together in the same space. And then also the communion aspect. In our culture, we just need to do communion in church a little bit more artificial than the first century did. It's just how we do things. But they were so organic in their moving from a meal into communion and dialoguing together about what Christ has done for them as they take in that representation. What about prayer? What kind of a mark? Are we devoted to prayer in our personal life? Are we devoted to prayer and praise as a church community? And that's another level, isn't it? But what I like about small groups like this is it gives us an opportunity to exercise and to grow in communal prayer. And that's why we have prayer at the end of our discussion times, because it's the model that we see. Praying together, not just interceding. That's a big part of what we want to do, because that's the fellowship aspect. I wanna tell you about this thing going on with my son. And would you be praying with me about that? That's good, that generates fellowship. But praising God, thanking him together. So now after I've said that, and I talk about things like giving yourself a mark, the beauty of Christian life is not attaining to expectations. The beauty of Christian life is walking in the spirit, okay? And so we don't look at that list and say, boy, I need to do all that kind of thing. We look at that list and say, there's a lot of room for the Holy Spirit to empower me to change and to grow and to do what he wants to do. So please know that that's the heart of that. Looking at that is, you know how we talked about last week, the things that naturally interest me? And that affects the things that I do. We invite the Holy Spirit to empower us to do the things that naturally interest him. And then that affects the things that we do. So let's finish up, verse 44 says,

. So we finally wanna ask the question then, what does this mean to us, this chapter? How do the first days affect our last days? And you may have noticed I skipped over verse 39. So let's go take a look at verse 39 for just a minute. Where Peter is telling the people that day, and I think that we can lift this out for us as well. He says, for the promise, and what he means by that is the promise of the Holy Spirit.

. Okay, let's take that for us for just a minute. We don't read the day of Pentecost as a historical fact that happened to those people alone. Peter himself, by the Holy Spirit, says, this promise is for you guys here and your kids and everybody that's far off. Now for one thing, the Spirit was prompting Peter before he even knew the Gentiles were coming into this deal ten years later. The Spirit was prompting him to give a little clue to that. But we look at that sitting here today and we must say to ourselves, that promise is for me. This promise to be empowered by the Holy Spirit, it is for me. Peter said so, the Holy Spirit empowered him to say so. And so we ask the question, am I walking in the Spirit? Do I need the power of the Holy Spirit in my life? Have I faced things in life that I need power from the Holy Spirit to do the right thing, to be a witness of Jesus Christ? To, you know what I'm saying, all those decisions that we make? Well, I do, I definitely need the power of the Spirit to do that. And so we look at this and say, well, I want that. And the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or the filling of the Holy Spirit for power, is available to any born again believer who already has the Spirit of Christ dwelling within them. It was too much information for your week two study guide, but if you saw in there, there's a five page supplement at the end of the study guide that kinda helps us understand some of this dialogue and helps us understand what the purpose of coming to God and saying, I want the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I want the power that you have in my life. And it doesn't have to be a service with the organ music playing real low and just at the right level. It can be something just very intimate between you and the Lord. But there's one thing we'll continue to look at as we go through our study. And that is, it's difficult to be filled with the Holy Spirit for the Holy Spirit to come upon us when we haven't yet emptied things that are contrary to the Spirit and holding on to that. We'll discuss that more as we go along. But the Spirit's work is just as relevant in our lives for power as it was for those believers. Second little thing I want to mention is that this chapter highlights the drawing work of the Holy Spirit, the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. And we know that the Holy Spirit draws people, even gives them an interest in connecting with God. Maybe you can relate to a time when the Spirit drew you. And we see this as Peter is preaching. It wasn't his eloquence, it wasn't his passion that cut to their hearts. It was because the Holy Spirit was working in that whole crowd and was convicting them of sin and convicting them and drawing them to understand the gospel message. We see this happen. And so as we study this, it's a reminder to us. that this is an important work that we should even pray for. Who's praying for someone in their life that does not yet know the Lord, hasn't surrendered their hearts to the Lord? Are you praying that the Holy Spirit would reach out to them and convict them of sin? I think some of the models we've adapted in the last few decades have been a little askew, like just tell them how much God loves them and it's gonna be good. Eh, I don't know. This is the gospel here, and I think everyone needs a conviction of sin in their lives to actually receive that gift of forgiveness. And so those are just two final elements that I wanted to share, and I know you're gonna discuss more relevant things to your life and your groups. So I'm just gonna close in prayer. Father in heaven, we just thank you for this snapshot. All the important things we see in here that we can process and really just adjust our lives and our thinking and our hearts by spending time in your word and really looking. And I pray that in our groups and as we go home from this place, Lord, that you would continue that work of revelation to show us what you're after in our own individual lives and in our hearts, Lord. And we yield ourselves to you, and I just pray that we would have a great discussion and prayer time in this place. In Jesus' name, amen.