He's talking about Acts 2, and if you don't have a Bible with you, you can find the text on the back of your order of worship. I'm just going to read the first four verses, although we're going to talk about the first 13. So I said to you, hear the word of God. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly, there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues as a 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. Let's pray. Father, I pray this morning that as we talk about the Holy Spirit that you in fact would manifest yourself by your Spirit, that he would come and renew our hearts, renew our minds, open the eyes of those who were blind in the ears of those who are deaf. I pray also for myself that you would be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart and in my editors standing, in my mouth, and in my speaking. Christ's name, we pray these things. Amen. Amen. Well, those of you who have been around for a while know that as far as my preaching schedule and even the worship schedule, I try and stick more or less to the church calendar, or the church year. In other words, over the history of the church, a calendar has been developed, and basically that calendar sort of follows a certain rhythm. It begins with Advent, which everyone is familiar with Christmas, and it goes through the land and to the Holy Week and to Easter. And unfortunately, we stop at Easter, generally speaking. Most churches do. You see, one of the reasons I want, I try to emphasize the church calendar is because it not only gives us a rhythm for life and for ministry, but also it helps us to avoid error. In other words, we're always tempted to focus on some things and avoid others or avoid some things and focus on others. And to that end, today we are celebrating, and I'm guaranteed a most muted note, today we're celebrating one of the most holy days in the church calendar. In fact, the day that we are celebrating here today is as important as Easter morning. You can believe that. Today is Pentecost Sunday. Why is Pentecost so important? Pentecost is important because Pentecost is not only the birth of the church, but Pentecost is the day in the book of Acts in which Jesus sent his promised spirit. That the Holy Spirit would come, and the Holy Spirit would not only convert people, but it would empower them for the ministry and the mission he'd given them to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, and we hardly ever recognize it. There's a practical reason we don't celebrate Pentecost more often, and I'm going to be completely honest with you. The reason we don't put more focus, most churches on Pentecost is because most years it falls on the same day as Mother's Day. And one of them is optional, and one of them carries a death penalty, so which one do you think I usually choose? But even so, it's important. It's an extremely important day because it begins, it gets us talking about the work and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And most churches fall into one of two categories. One category of churches tends to focus so intensely on the ministry and work of the Holy Spirit they do so, and they end up neglecting sound doctrine. That all they think about and consider is the Holy Spirit, and in the process they often neglect sound doctrine. On the other hand, I'm going to give you a test after this. On the other hand, there are churches who spend so much of their time focusing on sound doctrine, they neglect the work of the Holy Spirit. Okay, if you have your pencils, here's your test. Pass fail. Which one do you think we are? That's pretty easy test, wasn't it? I see a hand in the front. Sorry. Today we're going to look at Acts chapter 2, and Acts chapter 2 is a corrective to both of those. It's a corrective to both extremes, which is why it's important to continue to look at the church calendar, the way things come up. In fact, the church calendar by the way is a side note. We have penciled in, in dark pencil for the fall, a church, a class that is based upon nothing but the church calendar. It will be a class that is teaching you the church year, so keep that in mind. This morning as we look at this passage in Acts, we're going to look at three things really. We're going to look at the power, the power at Pentecost. That's number one. The second thing we're going to look at is the purpose of Pentecost. And the third thing we're going to look at briefly is responding to the Spirit. How do you respond to the Holy Spirit? So the first thing, before I jump into the text, we've got to give you some background. And if you read, if you're reading the book of Acts, you've got to keep in mind that the book of Acts was also written by Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke. And I don't know who made the decision to put the Bible together, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then the book of Acts, it would have been much simpler if it was Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke. Because Luke and Acts should be back-to-back. They should be just right beside each other because where Luke leaves off, Acts picks up. So let me read you the last thing that Jesus says to his disciples in the book of Luke. Jesus said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to these things and behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. So Jesus first, he tells them their mission and their mission is going to be to preach the Gospel to all the world, starting at Jerusalem. And the second thing that he tells them is to wait. You have to wait until I send the Spirit to you. Now that is important because you cannot force the work of the Holy Spirit. The way you deal with it is you have to wait and you have to pray. And they had been waiting and praying for about 40 days. You remember Jesus was with them for about 40 days and toward the end of right when he was going to ascend, they started to get a little squirrely again. And Jesus had to reassure them of what he was talking about in Acts chapter 1 verse 4. He said, they are not depart from Jerusalem but wait for the promise of the Father. You heard from me John baptized with water but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So when they come together they ask, Lord will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel and he said to them, it is not for you to know the times or seasons but the Father is fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem in Judea and Samaria and to all the ends of the earth. So he promises that the Spirit will come and the Spirit will empower you to take the gospel to all the ends of the earth. And then the passage I read as we now begin to talk about the power of the Holy Spirit begins by saying, now when Pentecost take come and they were all together in one place. First question you need to ask is what is the significance of Pentecost? Pentecost was a Jewish holiday and Pentecost comes from the, you know, Pente, its 50 is basically all that it means is 50 because Pentecost took place 50 days after the last Sabbath on the Passover. Simple as that. But it gets a little bit more confusing when you're reading your Bible because you oftentimes when you read your Bible and you'll come across a phrase it's called the Feast of Weeks. The Feast of Weeks is also Pentecost because it was seven weeks after what we know is Easter, what the Jewish folks would know as Passover. And then there's another aspect. It's also called the Feast of First Fruits. You thought I was finished talking about Stewardship, didn't you? I'm never finished talking about Stewardship. It was called the Feast of First Fruits because also at this time of year would be the time that the Jews would devote their first fruits of their harvest to the Lord. And so later on you're going to read the word devout Jews from every nation under heaven there, almost by definition if someone was celebrating Pentecost they were devout. And the reason you know they were devout is because it would have cost them. They were coming to celebrate the part of their celebration was to giving God the first fruits of all of their labor. And if you're not devout you don't do that. And so we read later that they were devout Jews from every place under heaven. And so that's just the sort of chronological timeline. The next question is who are they? That's the big debate in Bible scholarship it is. It says when Pentecost had arrived they were all together in one place. Who are they? Most commentators, in fact almost every commentator I've read said that they who are gathered together at Pentecost in that one place were the 120 folks that were in the upper room. And I don't think that's correct. The reason you know you can you can thank Bruce one of my professors at FSU Bruce bear for that. See I had Professor bear at FSU I majored in English and I spent most of my time studying Renaissance drama. And Professor bear taught Milton among other things and every week he would give us a quiz. And the quiz was nothing more or nothing less than him picking a passage at a paradise lost and he would point out a pronoun. He she it you they and the whole quiz was we had to find the antecedent of that pronoun. In other words whenever you read the word him or he or they it always points back to something. And so if you want to have a fun Sunday afternoon I guarantee you it will take you hours just open paradise lost pick any random pronoun and spend you can spend the rest of the day trying to find the antecedent. It's a lot easier here. In other words when you're reading through your Bible and you come across a day well an antecedent the way you find an antecedent is just you look back to the last proper noun or the last thing that was referred to. And if you do that it helps you understand who was actually in the room but also helps you understand the importance of who was in the room and what was going on when they were empowered. Let me look at if you look at verse 26 of chapter 1 it says and they cast lots for them and they the lot fell on Matthias. Now he was numbered with the 11 Apostles and then very next thing when the day of Pentecost arrived they were all together in one place. Right so Judas remember Judas was put on permanent DL he's gone they have to replace Judas so they do it with Matthias. And the new testament in the original languages it wouldn't have had chapter markers it would have just run right together and so the antecedent today is the 11 Apostles. So very least the 11 Apostles were all together in one place and then something happened something unexpected something they prayed for and they waited for but I don't know that they were ready for it. Let me read it to you. It says they were together in one place and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. So they're sitting in there and basically the Spirit shows up and you have three three evidences of the spirits showing up the first evidence was a sound of a mighty rushing wind and then the second was the fire the tongues the first fire appeared and then tongues spit out on to each person and then the last sign of the Spirit's present presents and this sign is always present. I'll make that clear later is proclamation or utterance so it's wind fire and proclamation let's talk about wind for a minute. Why is wind one of the things that shows up here and if you look throughout the whole Old Testament and even in the New Testament the word for wind and the word for Spirit is the same. In other words in Hebrew the word for wind is ruach and the word for Spirit is ruach and in the New Testament Numa is wind and Numa is Spirit and so when you look through the Old Testament you can see where God acts what his Spirit does and in the Old Testament the primary job of the Spirit and in the new is to bring things to life. It's to make things new it's to create and so the Spirit so when you look say for example Genesis chapter one it's easy to pass over but there's sort of this chaotic thing and then it says but the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Why because the Spirit of God is getting ready to create all things and then when in chapter two when Adam is created he's basically inanimate. He's like gumbeers I mean he's just there and it says that God breathed into his nostrils the life giving Spirit that the only way Adam would have life is if God breathed his Spirit into him and gave him life. One of the primary jobs of the Holy Spirit is to give life it's to create and to make all things new and it's not only that in the Old Testament but it's the same way in the New Testament as well. In other words if you are a Christian the reason you are Christian primarily is not because you decided to trust Jesus it's because God decided to breathe life into you. Have you ever noticed when I pray I'm constantly praying that God would open the eyes of the blind in the ears of the deaf that's God the Holy Spirit I'm imploring imploring to come and make people alive. When you read the book of Ezekiel and you get to the Valley of dry bones it's a famous story and yet what is it that actually brings those bones to life and makes them new. It's the Spirit of God blown through like a wind. So the Spirit of God one of the primary purposes of the Spirit of God is to make things new and to make things alive and if you stopped there it would almost be easy enough to think that the Holy Spirit is just God sort of errand boy. The God the Father is in heaven and he says you know I'd like to make Tommy Allen alive why don't you go breathe on him. But nothing could be further from the truth because the next thing that we see is that was manifested was fire. Tons of flame. What does fire mean when you begin to talk about God fire actually connotes in the Bible the very presence of God himself. And if you again if you go through the Old Testament when you look at Abraham when he was in chapter 15 when he's worried he would have to go through this covenant ceremony with God. He has a dream and what does he see going through the pieces he sees a smoking oven and a pillar of fire. When Moses is confronted by God in the desert what does he see a burning bush God's fire. Israel's led through the desert how by pillar of fire. And finally when God delivered the law to Israel remember they couldn't go near the mountain or touch the mountain because God had come down on the mountain in a consuming fire. You see the Holy Spirit isn't just God's errand boy the Holy Spirit is God himself. And so think about the importance of that when we neglect the ministry of the Holy Spirit what you're neglecting is the very ministry of God himself because the Holy Spirit is God. And the last thing you see there is utterance they spoke. I'm going to make the case to you that the filling of the Holy Spirit always issues forth in proclamation before I talk about the how they what they spoke let's talk about being filled by the Holy Spirit quickly. What does it mean to be filled by the Holy Spirit? Peter tells the crowd later he's preaching a sermon to them on the basis of what they've just seen and at the end of that sermon they say what are we supposed to do now. And Peter says to them repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So what does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit where you received the Holy Spirit by putting your faith in Jesus in other words the reason you even put your faith in Jesus is because the spirit is already at work. But that's not the only way he manifests himself the spirit also manifests himself to empower people for certain tasks so on one hand it let's call it the general filling of the Holy Spirit if you are Christian you are filled with the Holy Spirit. What's happening here and what happens throughout the rest of the Bible is God also comes to people and he empowers them for specific tasks and he empowers them to do certain things and remember I preached about Saul last year. God's spirit comes upon Saul and Saul is empowered for this task of taking on the Philistines and if you remember what's the first thing he did when the spirit empowered him. He prophesied he preached the same thing happened with David and as if you as you go through here you see the Holy Spirit filling people and empowering them for specific tasks but the task that is specific and the task that is general in large part are the same. In other words whenever you see the filling of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament the thing that always accompanies it is the proclamation of the gospel. Proclamation of the gospel always accompanies being filled with the Holy Spirit and not everyone believes that some people think when you received the spirit you simply what it means is that you speak in tongues and things that people can understand as in 1 Corinthians 14. What's happening in 1 Corinthians 14 about people praying in tongues is not what's happening here you see if you're filled with the Holy Spirit you will utter you will proclaim. And I've had times over the course of my life where people come to me and they said Tommy are you filled with the Holy Spirit and I said yeah they tell me and as soon as they say that I talk to about the story of Patty and Maria when I was at Florida State you know I'm most universe I'm guessing that Florida State there's a big student union that meets every Wednesday and I would always go down to the student union on Wednesdays because there's every. Kind of person in the world there and I would share the gospel with people and I would try and challenge myself into one day I was sharing the gospel trying to share the gospel with a girl named Patty who's from Venezuela she didn't speak English and I thought well do it in Spanish. And so I'm I'm laboring along trying to tell her about Jesus in Spanish and I was I was stumbling and at some point in the corner of my eye I saw a woman walk by she appeared to be Hispanic it was in Florida so it was a good chance of that. And she came by I grabbed her and I said excuse me. I said you know I have less than you own she said you see and I said come to see DC to repent. And she said oh it's I'll repent here say. And I said gracias and I kept sharing the gospel with Patty and you know who became a Christian after that conversation Maria. Patty eventually did as well as did Maria's brother now you have to ask yourself was that just chance. Was it chance that I was trying to tell someone about the gospel and that I was trying to speak in a language that wasn't very familiar to me and then a girl just happened to come by and I happened to ask her how do you say repent and she happened to listen the whole conversation and her whole life was changed as a result of that is that chance. It's a work of the Holy Spirit but the spirit always uses means as well and so unless you're actually uttering he's not going to do anything. You see the question is if you've genuinely become if you if you really understand yourself to be a Christian and the Holy Spirit is genuinely filled you how come you're not proclaiming. You see some people are empowered for a special task you know when we ordain ministers we pray toward that end but that doesn't mean that everyone who isn't filled with the Holy Spirit shouldn't be also proclaiming the gospel because the spirits filling always is accompanied by proclamation. Remember one of the primary parts of our mission statement our vision is gathering are we gathering. They did actually we rephrase that God did God told the memory that Jesus promised you're going to preach the gospel to all nations starting at Jerusalem who would have known that they would never have to leave Jerusalem to preach the gospel to all nations. And that's where we get into the purpose of the Holy Spirit. Remember Jesus said the purpose the reason I'm giving you this spirit is for your proclamation of the gospel so that I'm going to empower you to take it to the end of the earth and what happens next. Let's look at the purpose. Verse 5. It says now dwelling in Jerusalem Jews. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews devout men from every nation under heaven. And at the sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished saying are we are all these who are speaking Galileans. And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language. Parthians, Meeds, Illinois residents of Mesopotamia, Metamia, Judea, Kapidosha, Pontius, Asia, Phrygia, Pamplia, other parts of Libya belonging to Syrians, visitors from Rome, Jews, Prostlites, Cretans and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. So what is the Holy Spirit doing here? Well first of all, he's arranged a meeting. It says there were in Jerusalem devout Jews from every nation under heaven. Remember in the Old Testament the Jews were dispersed. Some were sent into exile in Babylonia, some into Assyria and they were dispersed throughout all the known world. And at some point some of them came back to Jerusalem but most of them did not. And so although they were still Jewish, they were in some sense natives of the land where they come from, from somewhere else in the world. And the nations listed there are all the nations in the known world to them. And so the Jews who were devout came in from all nations. I think I have a graphic. Yes, there we go. If you look in the middle of that you'll see the star, that's Jerusalem. And now if you could hit the next. So from all over the known world the nations came in to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost. And while they're there they hear this sound. We don't know if it's the sound of the wind or the sound of these guys preaching. Eventually we know they came outside and they begin to come to hear these men preach. And a couple of things happen. The first thing that happens is that they're amazed and confounded. Why? Because each of them is hearing the gospel in their own tongue. And the question people often ask is that a gift of hearing? Did they just word the apostles just preaching and they heard what God wanted him to hear? And the answer is probably not because of the comment you find in there. They said are not all these speaking Galileans? You see Galileans not only were they from the other side of the tracks we've talked about that. But apparently they had a very distinctive accent. Remember it's what got Peter caught when he was following Jesus on the night before his crucifixion. And apparently as I was reading the Galileans were sort of like the Scottish of the New Testament. Right? They were very guttural. They swallowed their vows and so it was very distinctive. And so now these guys hear these guys with thick accents. And speaking the mighty works of God in their own language and they're confounded. But it's a good confounding. Because one of the things that's going on here is that the curse of sin is being reversed. And in particular the curse of sin that manifested itself at the tower of Babel is being reversed. Remember the story of the tower of Babel? Humanity had become prideful. Humanity had become almost as if they wanted to be gods themselves. They were going to build a tower so that they could reach up to God and to make a name for themselves. And it was such a joke that God had to come down and see them from above. And he laughed at them. And what did God do as a result of that? He confounded their languages so that they couldn't communicate with one another. He said if I let them continue and having the same language who knows what they'll be able to do. So because of man's sin and because of man's pride God confounded the languages but because of the work of Jesus on behalf of those same sinners. Babel now is being reversed. So instead of the nations coming together as one and being confounded and sent out the nations are actually coming in as one. And the confusion now is a good confusion because now instead of not knowing what's going on now they know exactly what's going on. You see one of the things the Holy Spirit does is he actually brings unity to the church. You see now the whole church in the whole world has a common language. I don't mean English or Japanese or Chinese. I mean the common language of the church now is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Oh, maize, I've been all over the world and I've been in some pretty... I've been in some places other people probably wouldn't want to go. And every place that I've been I've found people there who are believers in Jesus. It's amazing because what the gospel is doing is taking that which was dispersed and that which was confused and bringing it together. And what's ultimately going to happen here? Ryan hit the other animation. These people are going to hear the gospel and then they're going to go back to the where they came from and start their own churches. There's a big mystery as to how the Roman church, if you read the book of Romans got started, it probably happened here. Devout Jews heard the gospel, 3,000 people are converted and then they go back to Rome and they can't help but proclaim this news. Why? Because they're filled with the Holy Spirit. Now the beautiful thing is I was thinking about this. Our church, first EPC, is in almost the exact same position as this church was. Our job is to proclaim the gospel to the nations. And years ago in the grand history of this church, we had this huge emphasis on missions and we sent people out all over the world. And still have people out all over the world. Because we're being obedient to the great commission. Now what God has done for us now is instead of us having to go all throughout the world, 30 years ago, this neighborhood was primarily Anglo. Now it's about half Anglo, which means the nations have now come to us. So our job is to proclaim the gospel to the nations and the question is how are we going to do that? Are we going to do it? The only way we'll be able to do it is if the Holy Spirit changes us. And the Holy Spirit gives us eyes to see the need that people have for the gospel from every tongue tribe in nation, even as they exist within blocks of our church. The question is what are you going to do about that? What is the Spirit leading you with that? That leads to the last point. Really, it's responding to the Spirit. Did you notice at the end of this how the responses were? They were basically two. Let me read them to you. In verse 12 it says, and they were all amazed and perplexing to one another. What does this mean? But others mocking said they are filled with new wine. You see, there's only ever two responses to the Holy Spirit. Two responses to the Holy Spirit are basically amazement and wondering what am I supposed to do now? Lord, what is it you would have made to do? And the other response is just mocking. And that's what you see here. And the question is which one are you? Which one are you? You see as Presbyterians and as Presbyterians with a big engineer influence, we don't tend to be mockers, but we do tend to want to control things. We want to know exactly. Things need to be done decently and things need to be done orderly. And the problem with that is that the Holy Spirit doesn't always work that way. And the question is are you open? How do you respond to the Spirit? Are you sensitive enough when you see the Spirit doing this or that to actually respond to it? Or do you say we don't do that here? How are you going to respond? The other question of course is for those of you who aren't Christians, if you're not a Christian the question is what are you going to do? You see they proclaimed to these men the mighty works of God. What were they talking about where they were proclaiming the gospel of Jesus to them? And what's the gospel of Jesus? It's just this is that you and I are more broken and sinful than we could ever imagine. And yet Jesus came down and bore out our sin on the cross in our stead. And then when He rose from the dead He rose from the dead ensuring that with we believe we would be forgiven is the Spirit. Do you feel that working in your heart and if you do please I beg you to embrace it. And if you don't believe anything I've said this morning. That's fine too. I'll be praying that the Spirit would open your eyes. Think about that. Let's pray. Father I just pray this morning so much could be said about your spirit and your spirit's work and I just pray that you would open our eyes to the working of the Spirit here in our church in this body. And I pray that you would make us open I pray that you make us pliable. And I pray that you would actually enable us to accomplish this mission of preaching the gospel to all the nations under heaven. In Christ's name we pray these things. Amen. Amen.