Doug McMasters: Well, before we get to the book of Acts today, I want to show you something.
Doug McMasters: I have an old Bible.
Doug McMasters: This is a 1615 edition of the Geneva Bible.
Doug McMasters: It's the very same translation the pilgrims brought with them on the Mayflower.
Doug McMasters: They loved its translation, they loved its notes.
Doug McMasters: They didn't like that newer one that King James I had authorized.
Doug McMasters: They wanted the old version.
Doug McMasters: And before you reach the book of Genesis, there are several pages of genealogy that runs from Adam to Christ.
Doug McMasters: And in these pages, there's a woodcut of a half-finished building.
Doug McMasters: And it's kind of crumbling under its own ambition.
Doug McMasters: And underneath it, in Old Typeface, English typeface and spelling, it says this, almost exactly what you said today, Ethan.
Doug McMasters: At Babel's building, languages divided.
Doug McMasters: And then it references Genesis 11, in the Apostles, understood.
Doug McMasters: Right there.
Doug McMasters: So 300 years, 400 years before Ethan got up to say those very words, they had already been said by a 17th century printer.
Doug McMasters: And what it tells us is that what we cannot do to bring about a spiritual life that unifies together a people who have absolutely nothing else in common, only God can do.
Doug McMasters: And so we're going to discover how that begins to happen in the book of Acts and chapter two.
Doug McMasters: So let's turn there.
Doug McMasters: As we enter into Acts chapter 2, there are three things I want us to hold on to.
Doug McMasters: And they'll help you see where the sermon is going.
Doug McMasters: They are the three points of the message.
Doug McMasters: This morning we'll discover that we need to depend on the spirit for a life that we cannot create, that we need to depend on the spirit for a unity that we cannot capture.
Doug McMasters: And we need to depend on the spirit for responses that we cannot control.
Doug McMasters: Everything this morning builds out of those three lines.
Doug McMasters: Well, let's take a look at God's word.
Doug McMasters: Let's read it together, and then we'll anchor it here in a few moments.
Doug McMasters: Here's the word of God.
Doug McMasters: When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place.
Doug McMasters: Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying.
Doug McMasters: They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each of them.
Doug McMasters: And then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Doug McMasters: Now there were Jews staying in Jerusalem, devout people from every nation under heaven.
Doug McMasters: And when the sound occurred, a people, a crowd came together and was confused, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
Doug McMasters: They were astounded and amazed, saying, Look, aren't all these who are speaking Galileans?
Doug McMasters: How is it that each of us can hear them in our own native language?
Doug McMasters: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Pergia and Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts, Cretans and Arabs.
Doug McMasters: We hear them declaring the magnificent acts of God in our own tongues.
Doug McMasters: And they were all astounded and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?
Doug McMasters: But some sneered and said, They are drunk on new wine.
Doug McMasters: Now, Luke told us in the previous chapter in Acts chapter 1, that the risen Christ had gathered his disciples together on the Mount of Olives and gave them a command that was wrapped up in a promise.
Doug McMasters: You might remember that in verses 4 or 5 of chapter 1.
Doug McMasters: While he was with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the Father's promise, which he said, You've heard me speak about, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days.
Doug McMasters: And then in verse 8, he says it again you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth.
Doug McMasters: Jesus promises them not a training program or a strategy, but power when the Holy Spirit comes on them.
Doug McMasters: And before we go forward into what that means in Acts chapter 2, we need to step back for just a second.
Doug McMasters: Because as Jesus said in Acts 1, you've heard me talk about this already.
Doug McMasters: And so in John chapter 16, he said to them that night before he was crucified, It is for your benefit that I go away.
Doug McMasters: For if I do not go away, the counselor will not come to you.
Doug McMasters: And if I go, I will send him to you.
Doug McMasters: Now notice what Jesus said there.
Doug McMasters: He didn't say that the Spirit would come instead of Jesus, but the Spirit would be cut would come because of Jesus.
Doug McMasters: And John even tells us in John 7, 39 why the Spirit did not yet come during the earthly ministry of Christ.
Doug McMasters: And he says these words in John 7, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.
Doug McMasters: There's something very important being said here.
Doug McMasters: And what it is saying is that the Spirit's coming was waiting, not on the disciples' readiness, but on Jesus' exaltation.
Doug McMasters: Jesus had to finish his work, his teaching and miracles, his work on the cross, his burial, the resurrection, and the ascension to the Father's right hand, before he could do this as the glorified Son of God.
Doug McMasters: Now hold on to that, because in just two weeks we're going to hear Peter say that in the sermon that we'll read about.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 33, he said, Since he, Jesus, has been exalted to the right hand of God and has received what the Father has promised, he has poured out what you both see and hear.
Doug McMasters: So when we get to this statement in Pentecost, and we get to this passage of Scripture, I want you to know that this is not a separate event apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: What happens at Pentecost is because of the ascended and enthroned Jesus Christ, who is acting in his first inaugural action as king.
Doug McMasters: And so the sermon title this morning means a lot.
Doug McMasters: Jesus sends the promised spirit.
Doug McMasters: It's not the spirit arrives, Jesus sends him.
Doug McMasters: Now, this passage of scripture is a narrative text, and narrative makes an argument unlike you might receive when you read one of Paul's letters.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't argue like Paul does.
Doug McMasters: And so as we go through this passage this morning and those three points that I mentioned just a moment ago, I want you to watch with me as this passage unfolds.
Doug McMasters: I'm confident that all of us will learn some things today in this passage that perhaps some of you, if not many of you, have never heard before.
Doug McMasters: And the reason is because this passage of scripture is one of the most attention-grabbing passages, and yet one of the least understood passages in Scripture.
Doug McMasters: It's often long pondered, but it's often misunderstood.
Doug McMasters: And the depth of it deserves our careful reading and hearing.
Doug McMasters: And its meaning is too, too important to move past.
Doug McMasters: So as we go through this, and this morning is going to be a little different than many of my other messages.
Doug McMasters: This is going to be more of a running commentary and a theological uh emphasis rather than maybe a more practical or devotional focus of a sermon.
Doug McMasters: I love it all.
Doug McMasters: This one is going to mean that we need to turn our brains on a little sharper.
Doug McMasters: I hope you had your coffee this morning.
Doug McMasters: So let's look at those three points.
Doug McMasters: First of all, to depend on the Spirit for the life that we cannot create.
Doug McMasters: And I want you to look at verse one of chapter two.
Doug McMasters: There, Luke says they were all together in one place.
Doug McMasters: Well, it's a little hard to be all together when you're not in one place.
Doug McMasters: So Luke is doubling down here to tell them, tell us that the people are here.
Doug McMasters: They're unified together.
Doug McMasters: They are doing exactly as Jesus told them to do.
Doug McMasters: But what's interesting about that is what's not said here.
Doug McMasters: There's nothing about them praying fervently.
Doug McMasters: There's nothing about them sort of generating anything.
Doug McMasters: They're just there.
Doug McMasters: No descriptors of their actions, no statements that they're a collective people longing for a private religious experience.
Doug McMasters: They're simply there.
Doug McMasters: I think that's important.
Doug McMasters: But suddenly, something does happen.
Doug McMasters: And what happens is not the buildup of 50 days of increasingly fervent prayer meetings, as though they had finally earned what's about to happen by their intensity.
Doug McMasters: Look at what it says in verse 2.
Doug McMasters: Suddenly a sound, like a violent rushing wind, fills the house.
Doug McMasters: It's not a wind, it sounds like a violent rushing wind.
Doug McMasters: Luke is straining with ordinary language to try to grasp something that words just can't quite envelop.
Doug McMasters: So he reaches for something that might be like what happened.
Doug McMasters: It's like a violent rushing wind.
Doug McMasters: And many, many years ago, after I'd left home, uh my mother and father living in Illinois at the time had a tornado pass over their house in the middle of the night.
Doug McMasters: Thankfully, it didn't destroy much, a little bit of damage to a shed that my dad and I had built together.
Doug McMasters: But my I'll never forget what my mother said when she described it.
Doug McMasters: She said it was like one of those old freight trains just passing over the house.
Doug McMasters: That loud, rushing, rumbling noise was the sound of that wind in the tornado.
Doug McMasters: This is what they're sensing in that house.
Doug McMasters: But also look at verse three.
Doug McMasters: There they see tongues like flames of fire appearing, dividing and resting on each one of them.
Doug McMasters: And these fire-like tongues divide.
Doug McMasters: And what's interesting is that the word about them, the these fire-like tongues resting, is that it's said in the singular.
Doug McMasters: So it's not a bunch of different tongues landing on people, but a collective separation and movement on all.
Doug McMasters: This is one spirit individually given.
Doug McMasters: Now, let's just mark out for a second here the sound and the fire.
Doug McMasters: The sound and the fire.
Doug McMasters: The rumbling, violent, shaking noise, and the fire.
Doug McMasters: Does that combination sound familiar to you at all?
Doug McMasters: Wind and fire.
Doug McMasters: And Pentecost.
Doug McMasters: There's no accident here.
Doug McMasters: By the time of Christ, Jewish tradition had long connected the Feast of Pentecost not just to the harvest festivals, but to something else that was vitally important to the people of Israel.
Doug McMasters: They connected Pentecost to another mountain, to a mountain with fire, another mountain 1,500 years prior to this.
Doug McMasters: Jewish tradition not only saw Pentecost as a harvest festival, they also understood it as the very day that God made the people of Israel a covenant community by giving them the law from Mount Sinai.
Doug McMasters: And it was then that they were brought into a covenant relationship with God under the Mosaic covenant.
Doug McMasters: Now, whether everybody in this crowd understood the connection, we have here a contrast of two mountains.
Doug McMasters: One mountain with fire and a rumbling roar that no person could ever approach and hear a house with a loud rushing roar and a fire that God inhabits.
Doug McMasters: The writer of Hebrews makes this same contrast between these two mountains.
Doug McMasters: He says, You've not come to what could be touched, could not be touched, to a blazing fire, to darkness, gloom, and storm, to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words, that those who heard it begged that not one more word should be spoken to them.
Doug McMasters: For they could not bear what was commanded.
Doug McMasters: Even if an animal touches this mountain, it must be stoned.
Doug McMasters: The appearance was so terrifying that Moses said, I am terrified and trembling.
Doug McMasters: The writer of Hebrews is describing that mountain on the day that the law came down, the day that the people were brought into covenant community under the Mosaic law.
Doug McMasters: And then he says, Instead, you've come to a different mountain.
Doug McMasters: Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the myriads of angels and festive gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Doug McMasters: Do you feel the contrast here?
Doug McMasters: On the day of Pentecost, these people were gathered not just for the harvest festival, they were gathered to celebrate themselves as the covenant people of God under the Mosaic dispensation.
Doug McMasters: And now here they are, discovering something happening on this mountain that's different than the mountain they were commemorating.
Doug McMasters: At Sinai, even Moses trembled.
Doug McMasters: At Sinai, an animal that so much as brushed up against the mountain had to be killed.
Doug McMasters: People could not draw near it.
Doug McMasters: Not the people, not the animals, not even Moses himself until he was called up.
Doug McMasters: But the fire of that first Pentecost spoke about the inaccessibility of a holy God.
Doug McMasters: But at this Pentecost, at this Pentecost, sent by the ascended king, is the very Spirit of God coming down to people and dwelling among them and in them.
Doug McMasters: Do you see the contrast?
Doug McMasters: What a remarkable thing this is that the fire on that mountain that was dreadful and fearsome has been replaced by the glorious intimacy of the Spirit of God in his people.
Doug McMasters: Now take a look at verse 4.
Doug McMasters: Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak different tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Doug McMasters: They were filled, decisive, done.
Doug McMasters: What surprises me in this verse is that the CSV drops out a word that it should have kept, I believe.
Doug McMasters: Look at the last word, as last phrase, as the spirit enabled them.
Doug McMasters: The ESV puts it this way: they began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance.
Doug McMasters: And that word utterance is a very weighty word.
Doug McMasters: It's only used three times in the whole New Testament, all three times in the book of Acts.
Doug McMasters: Peter uses it down in verse 14, and then Paul uses it in Acts chapter 26 about proclaiming the word of truth.
Doug McMasters: This word is an authoritative testimony about the mighty acts of God.
Doug McMasters: What that word is telling us is that what's coming out of the mouth of these people is just like the prophets speaking in the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: They are declaring the mighty acts of God.
Doug McMasters: All of them, not just an office of a prophet, but all the speech people speaking with divine utterance of the mighty acts of God, as though all of them were prophets.
Doug McMasters: Which is exactly what Peter is about to describe in verse 28.
Doug McMasters: I will pour out my spirit on all people.
Doug McMasters: Coming from promises in Isaiah, until the Spirit is poured out on us from on high, and the book of Ezekiel, where God says, I will place my spirit upon you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.
Doug McMasters: So here we have a rush of a sound, tongues like flames of fire in an upper room, the Father keeping his promise, the Son just enthroned, issuing the Spirit to come, the mighty acts of God being declared in a multiplicity of languages.
Doug McMasters: What we have here is fulfilled prediction.
Doug McMasters: And it's not the kind of satisfaction you get when the weatherman gets it right three days ahead of time, and you go, he told me Wednesday it was going to be a beautiful weekend.
Doug McMasters: And guess what?
Doug McMasters: He was right.
Doug McMasters: I can't believe it.
Doug McMasters: This is everything the Old Testament has longed for.
Doug McMasters: This is the new heart, a law no longer written on stone, but in flesh.
Doug McMasters: This is the spirit permanently residing among the people of God and not just resting on a few for an office of prophet, priest, or king.
Doug McMasters: This is the very thing that Isaiah and Jeremiah had been describing, and the people have been longing for the consolation of the people of God.
Doug McMasters: And Isaiah spoke of this day as a glorious one, and he uses prophetic poetry to describe how enriching it is in Isaiah 32.
Doug McMasters: Until the Spirit from on high has poured out on us, then the desert will become an orchard, and an orchard will seem like a forest, and then justice will inhabit the wilderness, and righteousness will dwell in the orchard, and the results of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness will be quiet confidence forever.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah is talking about that day that when the Spirit comes, words like justice and righteousness and peace and confidence will inhabit the people of God because the Spirit is present there.
Doug McMasters: That's what we're talking about.
Doug McMasters: That time when the law would be written on the heart, not just staring at people from stone on the outside of them, but on the very insides of who they are.
Doug McMasters: Now notice Jeremiah doesn't say this is a covenant with all nations.
Doug McMasters: He says this is a covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah in Jeremiah 31 31.
Doug McMasters: The promise here is spoken to Israel about Israel.
Doug McMasters: And in this room, on this morning, the eleven, the women, Mary, Jesus brothers, and all the rest that make up the 120, every single one of those people is a Jewish person.
Doug McMasters: Every single one of them.
Doug McMasters: This is not the church swallowing up Israel's promise.
Doug McMasters: This is Israel's promise being kept to the people who are Israel.
Doug McMasters: And notice what kind of movement this is.
Doug McMasters: This is monumental.
Doug McMasters: And this is one of the big questions that arises in church discussions.
Doug McMasters: Is what happens here in the book of Acts meant to be repeatable every time we gather?
Doug McMasters: Or is it something else?
Doug McMasters: And I believe it is something else.
Doug McMasters: People would say that Acts chapter 2 sets for us a paradigm, which means that every believer in every age must find a repeat of what's happening here.
Doug McMasters: I think what we're seeing here, like I said a moment ago, is the answer to the longings of all the Old Testament for the inauguration of the new covenant in which God would indwell his people.
Doug McMasters: And the signification of that is done in this dramatic way as it unfolds first among the Jews.
Doug McMasters: It is the historical hinge upon which the whole covenantal relationship of God with his people is transformed from old covenant to new.
Doug McMasters: And notice something about the timing here.
Doug McMasters: Pentecost.
Doug McMasters: What is Pentecost?
Doug McMasters: Well, it's the feast of weeks, it's the 50th day after Passover.
Doug McMasters: It's one of the three great feasts in which all the males of Israel had to travel to Jerusalem to celebrate.
Doug McMasters: And the word in Greek just means 50th, Pentecost.
Doug McMasters: It's counted 50 days past the first sheath of the barley harvest that is raised and waved before the Lord during the Passover.
Doug McMasters: And here is the wheat harvest, in which this harvest is also celebrated.
Doug McMasters: So it's the second of two harvests in which the first fruits of the barley harvest at Passover and the wheat harvest of Pentecost are waved before the Lord.
Doug McMasters: Now you're thinking, what are we doing in the book of Leviticus here?
Doug McMasters: This is important.
Doug McMasters: Jesus rose during the Passover festival as the first fruits.
Doug McMasters: Fifty days later, the second firstfruit harvest is happening here at Pentecost.
Doug McMasters: And the New Testament uses that language all over the place.
Doug McMasters: Christ has been raised from the dead.
Doug McMasters: First Corinthians 15, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Doug McMasters: And then he says in Romans 8 that all believers have the firstfruits of the Spirit.
Doug McMasters: And James adds in that we are a kind of firstfruits among all his creatures.
Doug McMasters: The two celebrations of Passover and Pentecost, the barley harvest and the wheat harvest, the resurrection of Christ and the new birth of God's people, who are now people who hold the hope of a resurrection themselves, are celebrated here.
Doug McMasters: It's no accident that this day has come, and it's come on this day.
Doug McMasters: Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection harvest, and here on Pentecost is the first fruits of a soul harvest.
Doug McMasters: Both landing on a calendar that had been marked out for this moment centuries before.
Doug McMasters: Behold, the new is come.
Doug McMasters: And what's happening here is not some experience reserved for the spiritual elite.
Doug McMasters: That a new covenant has surplanted the old covenant, that life has entered into this world of woe and sin and death.
Doug McMasters: That if you belong to Christ, you are a part of this.
Doug McMasters: No, let's go back to this room for a second and just back up and think about it for ourselves here for a moment.
Doug McMasters: This happens in this room.
Doug McMasters: Not because the apostles are finally ready by building themselves up in fervent prayer.
Doug McMasters: What's happening is not a spiritual dividend based upon their fervor.
Doug McMasters: It's the life of the Spirit that's given, not manufactured by them.
Doug McMasters: Think of it this way: a dry riverbed, late summer, it cannot produce full banks of water.
Doug McMasters: It cannot generate rainfall by the shape that it has, its deep channels or its steep banks.
Doug McMasters: A dry riverbed is a dry riverbed until it receives water.
Doug McMasters: The riverbed doesn't fill itself, it only accepts what's poured out on it.
Doug McMasters: And what we find here is a life that we cannot create.
Doug McMasters: What is happening here is something that only God can do.
Doug McMasters: These people are receiving this because it is God's good pleasure to give this at this time.
Doug McMasters: Think about ourselves at this moment.
Doug McMasters: Just think about the relationship that that might have for us in the dynamic of our own personal life.
Doug McMasters: Maybe you're here this morning and you're thinking to yourself, I need to be a better person.
Doug McMasters: I need to live a different life.
Doug McMasters: I need to get myself into a better place.
Doug McMasters: I think I'll go to church.
Doug McMasters: I think I'll try harder tomorrow.
Doug McMasters: I think I might be able to be a different person.
Doug McMasters: And I think if I do that well enough, God might accept me and I might be able to just go into heaven and have Him bring me there.
Doug McMasters: I want to tell you something.
Doug McMasters: You cannot do that.
Doug McMasters: You cannot produce the life that you're longing for.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't happen like that.
Doug McMasters: Jesus told Nicodemus, a religious man himself, one who was scrupulous about the law.
Doug McMasters: He said, unless you're born of the Spirit, you cannot see the kingdom of God.
Doug McMasters: It is not something you can produce.
Doug McMasters: It's something, however, by the grace of God you can receive.
Doug McMasters: And the scriptures tell us that whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved.
Doug McMasters: And if you're here this morning and you've been looking at yourself and you've been trying to do better out of yourself, and you've been longing for a different life, and maybe just maybe it might be able to grab a hold of you if you just stick to it long enough.
Doug McMasters: The only thing God is calling you to do is to release that self-effort, release that trust in yourself, and to call out to him for the life that comes through Jesus Christ alone, and to seek his transformation in your heart, not what you might be able to produce.
Doug McMasters: But if you're here as a believer and you've kind of gotten back into that old cycle of, well, I've got my good days and my better days, and my not so good days, and my bad days, and you think if you tally up your better days enough, you'll be what are we doing here?
Doug McMasters: We're reducing ourselves to the same mindset.
Doug McMasters: When you step into that next hard conversation, or when you face that next surmounting wall of trouble, when you are called upon to love someone you can't, and when you are asked to step into a place of obedience that runs contrary to the patterns of life that you've ingrained in you, the answer to that is not just to take a deep breath and grit your teeth and shoulder into it.
Doug McMasters: It is to look to the living God and say, God, I need you.
Doug McMasters: I need you to give me the kind of life that would bring me into love, that would bring me into obedience, that would bring me into joyful perseverance through my trouble.
Doug McMasters: Because those things are the fruit of the spirit, they are not the output of a determined person.
Doug McMasters: Only God can produce those things.
Doug McMasters: Well, let's keep moving.
Doug McMasters: And I'll be quicker with my points than the next two.
Doug McMasters: Not only do we need to depend on the spirit for a life we cannot create, we need to depend on the spirit for a unity that we cannot capture.
Doug McMasters: And we see this is in verses five through 11.
Doug McMasters: I'm not going to repeat these words, but you'll notice there that Luke is giving us a whole list of names.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 8 and 9.
Doug McMasters: 15 of them.
Doug McMasters: Now, Luke chooses his words carefully.
Doug McMasters: There's not a wasted word one in God's word.
Doug McMasters: And here we could have had summarized in a single sentence a lot of people from a lot of different places speaking a lot of different languages, and it would have been just as just as comprehensible as this.
Doug McMasters: But instead, he lists all these names from all these places.
Doug McMasters: That's an enormous amount of narrative space, right?
Doug McMasters: Luke's not wasting words here.
Doug McMasters: He wants you to feel something.
Doug McMasters: Look at it carefully.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse five.
Doug McMasters: It says in verse five, now there were Jews staying in Jerusalem, devout people from every nation under earth.
Doug McMasters: Do you catch that phrase?
Doug McMasters: Devout Jews, every nation under earth.
Doug McMasters: Under heaven, sorry.
Doug McMasters: Not Gentiles, necessarily.
Doug McMasters: Verse 10 confirms that.
Doug McMasters: Visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes.
Doug McMasters: Now there we finally enter into what might have been Gentile converts to the Jewish religion.
Doug McMasters: But one thing we can know for certain, there's not a single uncircumcised person there.
Doug McMasters: All of them are either Jewish or they are Jewish convert, Gentile converts to Judaism.
Doug McMasters: Every single one of them.
Doug McMasters: That's why it says, devout people from every nation under heaven.
Doug McMasters: What's happening here?
Doug McMasters: What's happening here is exactly what Ezekiel promised in Ezekiel 36.
Doug McMasters: For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and will bring you into your own land.
Doug McMasters: These people have come from the very reaches of the known world in its time.
Doug McMasters: These are not neighboring towns or neighboring provinces.
Doug McMasters: Parthians were citizens of Rome's bitter, unconquered rival empire.
Doug McMasters: And the names spanned the ancient world all the way from modern-day Iran all the way over to the western part of the Mediterranean.
Doug McMasters: Luke is pinning the miracle to these precise words.
Doug McMasters: He's pinning it to the ingathering of the Jewish people from all the nations who come to this place and find, as we'll see before we get to the end of this chapter, that they are now unified with the presence of God and the Spirit of God dwelling in them.
Doug McMasters: Now notice how they listen.
Doug McMasters: Each one describes it as his own language or dialect.
Doug McMasters: Dialect.
Doug McMasters: This miracle is not aimed at the crowd, it's aimed at persons, each one hearing individually the mighty acts of God in their own language.
Doug McMasters: What's happening here?
Doug McMasters: Exactly what a seventeenth century printer put in a woodcut in a Geneva Bible.
Doug McMasters: And exactly what a young man, I'll call you young, what a young man said in our service earlier today, that what Babel had done is now being undone.
Doug McMasters: Babel was humanity in effect saying that we, by our collective human effort, might be able to build a name for ourselves, that we might be able to build a tower that rises up into the heavens, that we might be able to build a unity that's founded on our own ambition.
Doug McMasters: And God says, that is not going to happen.
Doug McMasters: And in judgment and mercy, he confuses one language into many and scatters the people all over the face of the earth.
Doug McMasters: And humanity's lived in disunity ever since.
Doug McMasters: But here he gives his own spirit, and here he pours out that spirit directly on humans.
Doug McMasters: And here, for the first time, despite their languages, the people have a unified knowledge of God.
Doug McMasters: And it's not one language restored, it's many languages now understanding the mighty acts of God.
Doug McMasters: At Babel, God confused the languages into many and scattered humanity.
Doug McMasters: And at Pentecost, God is doing the reverse by restoring the one language of worship among the many nations and the many languages on earth.
Doug McMasters: Everything the Babel scattered in judgment, the Spirit is now creating in grace again.
Doug McMasters: A unity that we cannot, cannot capture.
Doug McMasters: Only the Spirit can bring this kind of unity.
Doug McMasters: Only the Spirit can bring people of such diverse places and of diverse languages and of diverse cultures together and have all of them in one place worshiping the very same God, the very same way.
Doug McMasters: But what began in this room is only just the beginning.
Doug McMasters: God meets these scattered people and he brings them into the new covenant through the new birth.
Doug McMasters: And the first wave is exactly how Paul describes it in Romans chapter one, to the Jew first.
Doug McMasters: And this is what we see.
Doug McMasters: But something else is about to happen.
Doug McMasters: Because remember Leviticus, Pentecost, as the second first fruits harvest over against the Passover, the barley during Passover, the wheat during Pentecost.
Doug McMasters: Well, in the feast of Pentecost, they would take two pieces of leavened bread, not unleavened bread this time, leavened bread, and they would take it and they would wave it before the Lord.
Doug McMasters: Why two pieces?
Doug McMasters: Why two pieces of leavened bread?
Doug McMasters: Why two pieces of leavened bread put together and waved before the Lord during a feast of harvest?
Doug McMasters: I dare say this, Jew and Gentile bound together, both sinful in themselves, filled with leaven, but by the mercy and grace of God, a part of a firstfruit harvest that gets waved before the Lord as a declaration of the wondrous, wondrous harvest that only God can give.
Doug McMasters: That's what we see here.
Doug McMasters: The Spirit is holding on the Jewish people here.
Doug McMasters: But in a few short chapters, eight chapters later, Peter, a Jew, is going to be told to go to a Gentile house.
Doug McMasters: And there he and his companions are going to be shocked by what they see.
Doug McMasters: And what they see there is that the gift of the Holy Spirit has been poured out even on the Gentiles.
Doug McMasters: And why I think this is just a one-time event, listen to how Peter describes it when he's called back to Jerusalem to give an account for what's going on.
Doug McMasters: And those guys are like, uh, you know, tell us what you were doing there, Peter.
Doug McMasters: You know, you know we don't do this.
Doug McMasters: And he says to them, as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as it did on us at the beginning.
Doug McMasters: He goes all the way back to this moment in Acts chapter 2 and says, Now the Gentiles are also part of the new covenant.
Doug McMasters: The Gentiles are also receiving the gracious acts and promises of God.
Doug McMasters: And he doesn't say it fell on them just like it's happening to us every time we get together, just like it did on us in the beginning.
Doug McMasters: It happened.
Doug McMasters: By the time Paul writes to the Galatians and the Ephesians, the truth that Jew and Gentile are bound together as one has become more known and more understood and more appreciated by all.
Doug McMasters: And so he could say clearly in Galatians 3.28, there's no Jew or Greek, for you're all one in Christ Jesus.
Doug McMasters: Or he might say in Ephesians 2 14, for he is our peace, who's made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility.
Doug McMasters: These two separate loaves, leavened as they are.
Doug McMasters: Are not kept separate anymore.
Doug McMasters: They are bound together and lifted up to God and waved before Him as a display of the worship of the God who brings a harvest.
Doug McMasters: And we are unified together.
Doug McMasters: As he said in Ephesians 1, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.
Doug McMasters: And when you believe the Holy Spirit is the down payment of your inheritance until the redemption of the possession to the praise of his glory.
Doug McMasters: Gentile, you too can receive the promises from the scriptures, the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: And you too can enter in to all the wonders that God had promised to his people.
Doug McMasters: Because you too are a person brought into the family of God.
Doug McMasters: You were once without God, without hope, without promises, outside the covenants.
Doug McMasters: You were separate from God, and now you are brought near, brought near by the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: So what is this telling us?
Doug McMasters: Fifteen nations worth of native speech spoken out of Galilean mouths, speaking in such a way that once they hear the explanation of it all, 3,000 of them believe and begin the work of lifting up the first of the two loaves that are going to be there on that day of Pentecost, just like was about to happen that very same day inside the temple itself.
Doug McMasters: So let me say this clearly.
Doug McMasters: To every person who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are unified together in the bond of love, in the faith of Christ.
Doug McMasters: It is not a unity we have to manufacture.
Doug McMasters: It's not a unity where we have to separate every single person out and go, I see you, I hear you.
Doug McMasters: Because at the very depths of who we are, no matter what shade this is, no matter how many gray cells are working or not up here, no matter how thick or thin your wallet is, whether your wall doesn't have a sheepskin on it or it has 17 of them, whether you're from America or not, it doesn't matter.
Doug McMasters: If you're in Christ, we are one.
Doug McMasters: We are one.
Doug McMasters: No human can.
Doug McMasters: From the very day of Babel, humanity has gone its separate ways until this day.
Doug McMasters: And it's continuing to happen now.
Doug McMasters: So I want to say something by way of practical experience for all of us.
Doug McMasters: Perhaps you've been a part of this church or visiting this church for some time, and you're still hanging on to old patterns of life.
Doug McMasters: I hang out with those who do the same things I do.
Doug McMasters: I hang out with the people that know the same experiences that I've had in life.
Doug McMasters: I hang out with the people that have a shared sense of identity according to my nationality or my background.
Doug McMasters: The body of Christ is far richer than that.
Doug McMasters: And let me encourage you to go find someone perhaps you've only just said hello to, who doesn't share the same background that you have, who doesn't look like you do, may not even speak with the same accent that you have, and find that unity that you have in Christ and share it with each other and discover a unity that transcends anything this world could ever, ever capture.
Doug McMasters: And if you're here this morning and you've been among us as the body of Christ, and you felt like you've had to learn a different language to feel at home here, I want to tell you, with every ounce of our being, we are trying to make the focus, the unity that we have in Christ.
Doug McMasters: You don't have to feel awkward no matter what your background is.
Doug McMasters: You don't have to feel awkward no matter what shade of skin you have.
Doug McMasters: You don't have to feel awkward no matter if you can speak English well or not.
Doug McMasters: If you're in Christ, we are brothers and sisters together.
Doug McMasters: Together.
Doug McMasters: Well, I need to move on.
Doug McMasters: Let's go to this third point.
Doug McMasters: And what we see here is we need to depend on the spirit for a life that we cannot create, and we need to depend on the spirit for a unity that we cannot capture.
Doug McMasters: But we also need to depend on the spirit for results and responses we cannot control.
Doug McMasters: Now take a look at verses 12 and 13 here.
Doug McMasters: We see the people responding to what's happening, and their reaction is a mixed reaction.
Doug McMasters: They were all astounded and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?
Doug McMasters: But some sneered and said, Oh, they're drunk on new wine.
Doug McMasters: Now back up to verse six, and you see that the people are confused, that their minds are mixed up, that they're disoriented, they're confused.
Doug McMasters: Verse 7, they're astounded and amazed, literally outside of themselves.
Doug McMasters: And verse 12, they're perplexed, genuinely at a loss to understand what's going on.
Doug McMasters: So Luke is showing us an escalation.
Doug McMasters: They go from confusion to astonishment to a real moment where they just can't go any further to try to understand it.
Doug McMasters: A cognitive impasse.
Doug McMasters: They can't get over this, they can't figure it out.
Doug McMasters: And then from there, the responses begin to fork.
Doug McMasters: Some are saying, What does this mean?
Doug McMasters: And they leave the question open because they're waiting for an answer.
Doug McMasters: And then there are others are going, they're just drunk.
Doug McMasters: And they've begun to build an explanation for what's happened here.
Doug McMasters: Same wind, same fire, same people speaking words of the mighty acts of God in their ears.
Doug McMasters: And some of them are saying, What's going on?
Doug McMasters: And others say, Well, I know what's going on.
Doug McMasters: They're drunk.
Doug McMasters: Now notice this the miracle does not bring the resolution.
Doug McMasters: They're not understanding things because of what's happened.
Doug McMasters: The only way that they can understand is when Peter gets up and speaks, and when he preaches the gospel, that's when understanding happens.
Doug McMasters: The miracle produces bewilderment or mockery.
Doug McMasters: It takes the proclamation of God's word to produce faith.
Doug McMasters: And the split is not new here.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah spoke long ago in Isaiah 6 that there would be a time when God would speak and they would look and they would look and they would look, but they would listen and never hear.
Doug McMasters: And Luke finishes in Acts chapter 28, this book of Acts, with those very words from Isaiah, talking about people that would not believe.
Doug McMasters: It begins in Acts 2 with people who hear and will not believe, and it ends in Acts 28 with people who hear and will not believe.
Doug McMasters: But within the middle of that are people who are Jews and Samaritans and Gentiles all the way to the very uttermost parts of the earth who are believing.
Doug McMasters: There's a separation of people here.
Doug McMasters: What is happening here?
Doug McMasters: The gospel sets people in categories, and there's only two.
Doug McMasters: You either in Christ or you are out of Christ.
Doug McMasters: You are either receiving Christ or you are rejecting Christ.
Doug McMasters: You either are either resting in the hope of eternal life or you are facing an eternity that is so horrific words fail to express.
Doug McMasters: That's it.
Doug McMasters: And the message of the gospel is doing just that work here.
Doug McMasters: It's beginning to separate humanity into those two streams.
Doug McMasters: And Paul talks about it when he says, in every place we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.
Doug McMasters: And he says, to some we're an aroma of death to death, and to others we're the aroma of life leading to life.
Doug McMasters: And it's not because the message changed, it's because the heart will not let go of those things that it's clinging so hard to.
Doug McMasters: Picture two people hearing the same account, a life changed by Christ, a marriage that was headed into the courthouse to break up, but now because of Christ is restored, or hearing about addictions that have been broken, but now Christ resides in the heart.
Doug McMasters: Or someone who had years of anger or bitterness, but now are filled with peace and love even toward their enemies.
Doug McMasters: And two people hearing those things, and one person saying, What does this mean?
Doug McMasters: And someone else going, oh come on.
Doug McMasters: This is exactly what's happening here.
Doug McMasters: Two entirely different postures of the heart.
Doug McMasters: And we cannot at all control that, brothers and sisters.
Doug McMasters: Preach the gospel.
Doug McMasters: Tell me more.
Doug McMasters: And then there will people who will say, What are you drunk?
Doug McMasters: Uh, you know, what happened to you last week?
Doug McMasters: You know, how the hell could you change?
Doug McMasters: 1983.
Doug McMasters: I walked back into a United States Air Force uh unit, and I was there among all the guys I worked with in the shop, and all of a sudden they're like, What happened to you?
Doug McMasters: They said, You're not gonna preach to us, are you?
Doug McMasters: And I said, I'm never gonna preach, but let me tell you something that's happened.
Doug McMasters: Jesus happened to me yesterday, and all of a sudden I got tagged with a cult word, Mooney.
Doug McMasters: I don't know if Moonies are even around anymore, but but I got called a Mooney for the next six months.
Doug McMasters: But there were some of the guys who said, What happened to you, Doug?
Doug McMasters: I need to know more.
Doug McMasters: If you're here this morning and you don't know Jesus Christ as your savior, the word of God is is calling to you.
Doug McMasters: And I want to encourage you, keep the question in front of you.
Doug McMasters: What is this?
Doug McMasters: What is happening here?
Doug McMasters: What is this message about Christ and forgiveness and eternal life?
Doug McMasters: What is this message about my sins being washed away?
Doug McMasters: What is this about me being a new creation in Christ?
Doug McMasters: What is this about me actually being so different that it could be likened to being born a second time?
Doug McMasters: Keep that question in front of you, because that is the very question that the gospel answers.
Doug McMasters: And if you're here this morning and you're saying, what a load of nonsense! Why did I even show up today?
Doug McMasters: Hear these words.
Doug McMasters: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Doug McMasters: And I say that with as much compassion as I can utter.
Doug McMasters: Because this is not a judgment that comes from me or any of us.
Doug McMasters: This is about a God who is so holy that he will not allow sin to be welcomed in his presence ever.
Doug McMasters: And it isn't about you coming up there with with the with a bag of good things that you did and the rest of the stuff that you've done, and asking him to put it on the scale to see if it outweighs one side or the other.
Doug McMasters: He will not allow anyone into his presence with welcome who hasn't been brought in by the righteous blood of Jesus Christ, and only in him can you live.
Doug McMasters: Go to him.
Doug McMasters: These words are extremely important.
Doug McMasters: They move us from the Old Testament in promise to the New Testament in fulfillment.
Doug McMasters: They inaugurate the new covenant, the beginning of the time when God is gathering in people here, Jew first, but later, as we'll see in the book of Acts, from all nations.
Doug McMasters: This is the call of the good news of Jesus Christ that begins to reverberate around this globe and is still ringing out to our day and will until Christ calls this to an end and ushers us into a new age.
Doug McMasters: The response for us is to believe, to rejoice, to worship, to love this God who gives life that we cannot create.
Doug McMasters: It is for us to welcome one another in Christ and to enjoy a unity that we cannot control.
Doug McMasters: And it's one that calls us to proclaim a message of life with results that are outside our ability.
Doug McMasters: And it's also one for us to hear and to welcome and live.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, we are grateful for your mighty act to bring Christ Jesus into this world to save sinners.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, each of us might argue with the Apostle Paul about who was the worst.
Doug McMasters: But we know that you set him as an example, one who opposed you fiercely, who tried to shut down the very life of the church as a demonstration of your forbearance and love, that all may come.
Doug McMasters: That that word whosoever can speak to any and every voice on earth, that it speaks to all and says, Come, come to the rivers of life and drink abundantly.
Doug McMasters: Come buy bread without price.
Doug McMasters: Don't waste yourself on broken things.
Doug McMasters: We thank you that you've given us life in Christ.
Doug McMasters: We thank you that you've given us a love for one another in Christ.
Doug McMasters: And we thank you that you've given us a longing to share the gospel of Christ with those, no matter what response they might have.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, we pray you do your work in us and do your work in those that you would make them one of yours.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.