SPEAKER_00: Well, Acts chapter 2 describes the beginning of the church.
SPEAKER_00: And the word church, even in Greek is ecclesia.
SPEAKER_00: It means the called out ones.
SPEAKER_00: It is a word that was used for the synagogues would often, as they gathered in the Old Testament times in the life of Christ, they would call themselves Ecclesia when the gatherings of the synagogues were together.
SPEAKER_00: He did not say that he would build a new synagogue.
SPEAKER_00: He did not say that he would start a new organization that would be just like the ones that were confronting him all day long everywhere that he went.
SPEAKER_00: But he asked Peter very plainly, Peter, who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: And Peter responded in Matthew 16 with, You are the Lord, the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You are the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Upon this confession, I tell you, Peter, that I will build my church.
SPEAKER_00: The church is a body.
SPEAKER_00: It's living.
SPEAKER_00: It is made up of individuals that are saved by faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We are all bricks, but we are living bricks, and we are put together.
SPEAKER_00: The church is the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, there was a physical temple that was built under Solomon's watch, and that the nations were to pray to if they wanted to call upon Yahweh, although they too seldom did.
SPEAKER_00: And that temple was torn down.
SPEAKER_00: It was rebuilt again, of course, by Herod, the butcher of Bethlehem, and he established it as the focal point of the Judaic religion, and the Jews worshipped at Herod's temple even during the life of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus again said, You can tear that temple down, then I will rebuild it again in three days.
SPEAKER_00: And of course the people were astonished, saying it had taken us, you know, who knows how long to build that temple, and you're going to build it in three days.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus was speaking of his own body, John lets us know, that his own body is what would be torn down, it would be rebuilt, and we, as those who are brothers and sisters in Christ, are adopted into the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so we, in a very real sense, are the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is how Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: We are the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: We're built together brick upon brick.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 6 even, we are united one to another as the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reality of being in the church.
SPEAKER_00: It is living.
SPEAKER_00: In the church, there are not ethnic divisions, or at least there should not be.
SPEAKER_00: There are Jews and Gentiles that are brought together.
SPEAKER_00: Under the old covenant, there was a dividing wall.
SPEAKER_00: The old covenant had a Berlin wall that went straight up and kept the Jews on one side and the Gentiles on the other.
SPEAKER_00: The court was separated in the old covenant between where the Gentiles could go.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't even go to parts of the court that the Jews could go.
SPEAKER_00: There was a court for the women.
SPEAKER_00: There was a division between the sexes in the temple where the women had their own court, the Gentiles had their own court, only Jewish men could go to the closest they could get, and then the high priest would be separated even from that.
SPEAKER_00: So it was layer upon layer of separation.
SPEAKER_00: And this in Ephesians 2 and 3 is what the church has torn down.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is through his own death, through his own death, rips the veil.
SPEAKER_00: The veil marked the separation between the holy place and the outer place where the nations could come, the veil was ripped, and now everybody, regardless of their ethnicity, their nationality, their gender, their language group, regardless of that, they have access to the holy place through faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to be part of the church.
SPEAKER_00: The division is gone and it is replaced with unity.
SPEAKER_00: That unity is brought about, Ephesians tells us, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit seals us and makes us one.
SPEAKER_00: We have a unity that comes to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And I say to you that that is a new covenant reality.
SPEAKER_00: That that is a brand new thing that happens in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: That in Acts chapter 1, that was not true.
SPEAKER_00: And by the end of Acts chapter 2, it is true.
SPEAKER_00: In Acts chapter 1, even though the veil of the temple had been torn down, that was still prefiguring what was to come.
SPEAKER_00: What was needed for that unity in the church, what was needed for that one body, Jew and Gentile together, was the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every single believer.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what Acts chapter 1, Jesus says, wait, wait until the Holy Spirit comes, wait in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You'll go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the othermost parts of the world.
SPEAKER_00: You will be my witnesses to all the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 28 is the great commission.
SPEAKER_00: Go into all the world, making disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Go, go, go, go, go.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, all Jesus' ministry, it was wait, all Jesus' ministry was saying, don't go, wait, be quiet, keep it a secret.
SPEAKER_00: You know I'm the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Shh.
SPEAKER_00: Don't tell people I raised you from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Shh, don't tell people the whole ministry was that.
SPEAKER_00: And at the very end, Matthew 28, at the very end, Mark 16, the very end, Luke 22, the very end of John 21, all the end of the Gospels, it all changes.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of all the gospels, it's a go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
SPEAKER_00: But then in Acts chapter 1, Jesus says, just not quite yet.
SPEAKER_00: Wait one more minute, because you need the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That's the energy, that's the strength that you need.
SPEAKER_00: That's the empowering for taking this news that Jesus is the Messiah of the nations.
SPEAKER_00: He's not just the Messiah of the Jews, He's the Savior of the whole world, not just of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: But in order to take that, you need the Spirit who binds you and Gentile together in the body of Christ to indwell your hearts and empower you.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what they were told in Acts chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: Wait, wait, wait.
SPEAKER_00: And then Acts chapter 2 happens.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at this passage together.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter 2, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: The day of Pentecost arrived.
SPEAKER_00: The Pentecost is a holiday.
SPEAKER_00: Pentecost is a word that means 50th.
SPEAKER_00: It was the kind of Hellenized description of this holiday.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish name of it is the feast of weeks.
SPEAKER_00: It's the celebration of the wheat harvest.
SPEAKER_00: It's 50 days after the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's called Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: It's 50 days after Passover.
SPEAKER_00: All the main feasts are described in Leviticus 23, and there's an order to them, a sequence.
SPEAKER_00: The first, of course, is the celebration of Passover, where the lamb is brought forward in Leviticus 23, and he is sacrificed for sin, and the lamb becomes the offering to God, that he would pass over in his wrath on you.
SPEAKER_00: That you deserve God's wrath because you're a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: You deserve to be under judgment, whether or not you're an Egyptian or an Israelite, there's no distinction.
SPEAKER_00: God's wrath is coming, but the blood of the lamb on the doorpost in the Exodus marks that you had made a sacrifice and God accepted the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, and because of the shed blood, passed over you and didn't give you the judgment your sin deserved.
SPEAKER_00: That's Passover.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews commemorated that every year by offering a Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Now this ends, of course, with the death of Jesus Christ, who is the Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: He is the final lamb.
SPEAKER_00: So you understand that every Passover lamb in the Old Testament was looking forward to Jesus, who is the final, ultimate, and last Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one that it was all pointing to.
SPEAKER_00: He's the true Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the first holiday.
SPEAKER_00: Passover, it's the feast, and of course, is fulfilled in Christ who brings it in its fullness.
SPEAKER_00: The second of the holidays in Leviticus 23 was the feast of the unleavened bread.
SPEAKER_00: And that was supposed to be the Sabbath after Passover.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a very complicated way for determining what Sabbath that is.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of Pharisees and Sadducees fought over it, but it was eventually settled on that it is the Sunday immediately after Passover.
SPEAKER_00: So Passover is on Friday.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus sacrifices the lamb on Friday.
SPEAKER_00: The Sabbath then stands in in that middle period, and the feast of the unleavened bread would have been that next Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And that Sunday is the day that Jesus rises from the grave, of course.
SPEAKER_00: He's a firstfruits offering.
SPEAKER_00: This is what 1 Corinthians 15.20 says.
SPEAKER_00: He's the first fruits in 1 Corinthians 15.20.
SPEAKER_00: He's the first fruits of those who have died.
SPEAKER_00: And so death gives up its first offering.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, when he dies on the cross on Passover, goes to the grave.
SPEAKER_00: He releases them, sends them up to heaven where he will join them on his way up.
SPEAKER_00: He stops back at earth, you know, of course, and uh proclaims the kingdom of God with the disciples, and he ascends into heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is the first physical resurrection of that new life.
SPEAKER_00: He is the first fruits offering of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the second offering.
SPEAKER_00: First is Passover, second, first fruits, and then the third is Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: 50 days later, 49 days after the feast of the unleavened bread of the first fruits is Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: Pentecost was the feast of weeks.
SPEAKER_00: It was the celebration of the harvest.
SPEAKER_00: It was uh of the plant, not the harvest, but of the planting having been accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: It was a celebration of the seeds are down and everything is going to grow.
SPEAKER_00: And so you're bringing your first fruit offering in that sense to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Fifty days later, there's a unity in the feast of weeks.
SPEAKER_00: There was a oneness that the Jews celebrated with it.
SPEAKER_00: It was one of the main festivities that you would go to the temple for.
SPEAKER_00: You would travel even from faraway places to get to Jerusalem for this.
SPEAKER_00: It was a massive, major holiday that demonstrated their unity that they all are receiving from God's kindness.
SPEAKER_00: That's the holiday.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter 2, verse 1 is that day.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we don't really celebrate this now.
SPEAKER_00: And if churches do celebrate it, they celebrate it as a spiritual holiday of the coming of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And so we overlook, I think, the Jewish significance of it, which was the celebration of the unity they have having received God's provision.
SPEAKER_00: So the day of Pentecost arrived.
SPEAKER_00: They were all together in one place.
SPEAKER_00: That altogether was the dozens and dozens of Christians that are in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15 of Acts 1 says about 120 of them.
SPEAKER_00: So we're dealing with some small numbers right now.
SPEAKER_00: It was big enough to be a house church, and they're all gathered there.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind.
SPEAKER_00: And it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
SPEAKER_00: So the wind didn't fill the house.
SPEAKER_00: The sound is what it says filled the house, and the Greek language is pretty obvious.
SPEAKER_00: Some English translations make it seem like the wind filled the house, but the antecedent here is the sound.
SPEAKER_00: It rocked the house.
SPEAKER_00: They were astonished.
SPEAKER_00: It's like an earthquake.
SPEAKER_00: They're shaking.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh, it's in the ESV it says a mighty rushing wind, but it is the Greek word here for some kind of uh tremor, some kind of hurricane kind of force.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of wind that's so loud it rattles you.
SPEAKER_00: So you might hear this in uh not so much in Virginia, but windier parts of the world.
SPEAKER_00: You know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night with the wind shaking the whole house.
SPEAKER_00: There's the sound of the wind.
SPEAKER_00: You can even hear it coming before it gets there.
SPEAKER_00: That's this idiom right here.
SPEAKER_00: So they're all gathered together.
SPEAKER_00: They know the Holy Spirit is going to come.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has said that repeatedly, but now it's here.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't, they were expecting it, but they weren't expecting it.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: Like they knew it was going to come, but they're still surprised by it.
SPEAKER_00: And it shakes the house.
SPEAKER_00: The noise fills their ears.
SPEAKER_00: It is an astonishing, astonishing scene.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think they knew the Holy Spirit would come like a mighty rushing wind, but it's, I think, useful to know that in both Greek and Hebrew, the word for wind and the word for spirit are the same word.
SPEAKER_00: They're kind of homonyms or the same word covers both uh meanings there.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a lot of puns, even in the Old Testament, with that, where in Ezekiel, for example, God compares the coming of the Spirit to the coming of the wind.
SPEAKER_00: He breathes on Ezekiel in the Old Testament and telling him to preach spiritual truth to people.
SPEAKER_00: The most obvious example of this is in John chapter 3, when Jesus asks Nicodemus, uh, well, Nicodemus asks Jesus, what does it take to get to heaven?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, You have to be born again, and Nicodemus can't believe that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how dare you tell a Pharisee he's not saved?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus tells Nicodemus, the wind goes where it wills.
SPEAKER_00: You might hear it, but you don't see where it's coming from.
SPEAKER_00: So it is with everybody who's born of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the picture then of being born again.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit comes to you, Jesus, relates it to winds.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know where it's coming from, you can't direct it.
SPEAKER_00: Even today, with all our modern-day technology and weather and patterns and whatnot, you don't know where the wind is going, but it just happens.
SPEAKER_00: This is true of the Holy Spirit as well.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit comes to people to bring them faith, to regenerate them, to give them life.
SPEAKER_00: That is a reality that is an old covenant reality as well.
SPEAKER_00: Old covenant saints had to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He had to cause their dead hearts to come alive.
SPEAKER_00: We know this because Nicodemus, remember, said, What do you mean after you're born again?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, You're the teacher of Israel, and you don't know that?
SPEAKER_00: You've got to be kidding me.
SPEAKER_00: You should have funked out of a seminary, Pharisee seminary, whatever they would have called it.
SPEAKER_00: You have to know that in order to be saved, you must be born again.
SPEAKER_00: So that's an old covenant reality.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant reality here is the unity that comes from the indwelling of the Spirit, and that's where we are now.
SPEAKER_00: The house is shaken, the people are deafened, and then verse 3: divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
SPEAKER_00: So ain't nothing like this happened before.
SPEAKER_00: Tongues.
SPEAKER_00: The word tongues is glossia, which means languages, and but it's it's also a homonym.
SPEAKER_00: It's you know, in in Greek the word for your is the word for languages.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same word.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's it's an image here, something that looks like a tongue.
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, fire looks like tongues quite easily, you know, flesh-colored whatnot, and it's on fire.
SPEAKER_00: So little things of fire fill the room with the sound of the wind and settle on each person.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's not actual fire.
SPEAKER_00: There's very clear it says something like fire, tongues as of fire, and it's a comparative word in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: It means something like fire.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't think it was hot.
SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna burn you in that sense.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't get burned, scalded when it landed on their heads.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but it's something like that, meaning it was, I don't know, in fuego, like it was illuminating, it was flickering, I don't know, it was shaped like a tongue, but it had some kind of fire-like element to it, and it settles on every person's head.
SPEAKER_00: So that's weird.
SPEAKER_00: But it happened.
SPEAKER_00: And as it rested on each one of them, they were, while this is happening, all filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So at this moment, you'll see this throughout the book of Acts, this is their baptism of the Spirit, where the Holy Spirit, who had previously regenerated them, chapter 1, verse 15, remember, describes them as being in the company of the apostles and the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: They were followers of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They were studying the Word of God in Acts 1, verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: They were devoted to the teaching of Jesus, they believed in his resurrection, they were being persecuted for it, or they were afraid of that, they were hiding out because of this.
SPEAKER_00: So these people are believers, but this is their baptism of the Spirit, meaning they are now introduced, inducted into the church.
SPEAKER_00: They're the church's first members.
SPEAKER_00: They're the first Baptist, the first Baptist Church, Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: There they are.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit seals them, fills them is the word, and the word filled in uh Greek is from the inside out to the top, so the Spirit is its internal dwelling.
SPEAKER_00: This is very different than the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: This is very different than circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: Circumcision did not work inside out, but rather outside as an indicator of something that would come in the future, in hope or in faith of a future circumcision of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is the circumcision of the heart happens with their conversion.
SPEAKER_00: This is now the baptism that indicates that.
SPEAKER_00: They are filled with the Spirit, and as a result of this, verse 4, they begin to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
SPEAKER_00: And I like that the ESV renders it tongues because it's keeping you aware that it's the same word that was used earlier.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the fire that landed on their head was an indicator of the linguistic gift that they were about to experience.
SPEAKER_00: Because the fire was shaped like a tongue, they now speak in a tongue, and you know, it doesn't it wouldn't make sense to work the pun the other way.
SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't say like something that was shaped like a language landed on their head, and they begin to speak in languages.
SPEAKER_00: But you get the idea that the idiom works both ways.
SPEAKER_00: The downside of it rendering them both tongues is you get all kinds of people today that think that speaking in tongues as gibberish is a real act of the gift.
SPEAKER_00: Because if it was language, it would say language, so we just speak in tongues, andalanda, shandalana, shandalana kind of language.
SPEAKER_00: But that's you know, it's a language.
SPEAKER_00: It is the word for language, it's not a mystical language, it's a real live language that people actually speak.
SPEAKER_00: There was people didn't claim to have the gift of tongues being of, you know, a foreign language really at all until, at least in any big scale, until the Azusa Street Revival in the early 1900s, where that kind of teaching swept and became the charismatic and the Pentecostal church breaking out of Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of crazy things come from Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't even alive, but it's just how LA goes.
SPEAKER_00: And it spreads like wildfire, another Los Angeles pun there, all around the world, and people begin speaking in languages, I you know, gibberish, identifying them as languages.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the predominant experience of the Pentecostal church.
SPEAKER_00: The Pentecostal church through the 20th century would say that unless you speak in tongues, then you are not uh you haven't experienced the baptism of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Most Pentecostals wouldn't say you're not saved unless you speak in tongues, but they would definitely say a hallmark of the Pentecostal movement is that if you haven't spoken in tongues, you have not been baptized in the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: It's a one-to-one correspondence.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone who's been baptized in the Spirit has spoken in tongues, and for all the 20th century that was considered to be a real live language.
SPEAKER_00: And then something happened around 2000.
SPEAKER_00: Namely, Al Gore invented the internet.
SPEAKER_00: And with the advent of the internet, you can record the speaking of tongues, and no longer is it claimed to be a language.
SPEAKER_00: Most people will not claim that it's an actual language anymore because Google Translate debunks that, and now what you get is now it's shifted to a prayer language.
SPEAKER_00: This is the common charismatic teaching today that this is a prayer when I speak in that a tongue, it's a prayer language, and it's something that was given to me to communicate with God directly.
SPEAKER_00: They'll point to 1 Corinthians 14, say it's a language I speak to God with, and it's only angels can understand that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what's happening in Acts 2.
SPEAKER_00: I'll talk more about that later, but I just want you to understand before we get to this, that's not what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: It is the word for languages that is used.
SPEAKER_00: The reason it's rendered tongue is not because it's not a real language, the reason it's rendered tongue is because they are shaped like tongues.
SPEAKER_00: So it's a pun that's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: Something is shaped like a tongue, they speak in a language, but in Greek it was the same word.
SPEAKER_00: They're speaking in the language, and as the Holy Spirit is giving them utterance, so they don't know the languages they're speaking in.
SPEAKER_00: They haven't learned them, and that's going to be important in a second, but they're speaking them clearly because it is God who is speaking through them.
SPEAKER_00: So this is happening, and it's creating a scene.
SPEAKER_00: So there's the noise of the wind, of course, there's the fire-like things in their heads, and now there's 120 people speaking in different languages.
SPEAKER_00: Well, outside, verse 5, dwelling in Jerusalem were Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Devout men from every nation under heaven.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of people are there.
SPEAKER_00: And they're there, of course, for the Feast of Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times people would come for the Feast of Passover and they would stay for a few months.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they would come and go, sometimes people would just come for the Feast of Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that there's a lot of activity in Jerusalem, a lot of people from around the Roman Empire, and they are there to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: And they are hearing this room of people, this house of people, probably a large house, Jewish houses even in Jerusalem, could have extended courtyards.
SPEAKER_00: There's a massive amount of pla uh space here.
SPEAKER_00: If the place that is attributed as the upper room today, I mean I don't think it's the actual upper room, but if you go to Jerusalem and you can go see the upper room, to me it looks like it was built roughly 1940 rather than, you know, uh 2,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: But pretending it's in that location, it is a location that's open.
SPEAKER_00: There's even parks and fields there right now.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not that far from the it's like a five or six minute walk to the um to the temple from there.
SPEAKER_00: So assuming that's in that area where it happened, there's lots of open space there, and people gather around uh and the multitude, verse six, is coming together.
SPEAKER_00: And notice verse six says they're drawn by the sound.
SPEAKER_00: So the sound of the tongues, the sound of languages, the sound of the wind.
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of sound.
SPEAKER_00: It's having a magnetizing effect, as you could imagine, you know, in in your neighborhood, if there's a strange sound coming from up the street, you'll probably go investigate.
SPEAKER_00: You'll probably go see what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's drawing scores and scores, hundreds of hundreds, up to thousands and thousands of people are being drawn to this.
SPEAKER_00: So this is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: At the sound of the multitude, they came together and they were bewildered, verse 6 says.
SPEAKER_00: Because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.
SPEAKER_00: This is why it's so important to understand these.
SPEAKER_00: Are real languages.
SPEAKER_00: And the people who are brought there are all hearing the proclamation in their own language.
SPEAKER_00: This is not gibberish.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a prayer language.
SPEAKER_00: This is a proclamation from these Christians about God to unbelievers, and unbelievers are hearing it in their own language.
SPEAKER_00: That's the key point.
SPEAKER_00: They were amazed, verse 7 says.
SPEAKER_00: That's that word we talked about this morning.
SPEAKER_00: They were flabbergasted, bamboozled, befuddled, gobsmacked.
SPEAKER_00: They were astonished because nothing like this has ever happened before, and they don't know what to do with it.
SPEAKER_00: They're astonished.
SPEAKER_00: And they said, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
SPEAKER_00: Which should make you laugh a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Like the first thing they notice, these people are from Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's a derogatory comment.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's not correct to make fun of people from the southern United States because of their southern drawl and all that, but that would be the closest thing I can think of to help you understand this.
SPEAKER_00: Apologies, Alex, you're giving me the angry look right now.
SPEAKER_00: But that would be the closest idiom I can hear of.
SPEAKER_00: They're speaking in these languages, and the people come and like fire, noise, strange languages, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
SPEAKER_00: And the craziest thing is these guys are from Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: Galileans aren't educated.
SPEAKER_00: Galileans didn't go to school.
SPEAKER_00: Most Galileans are probably not literate.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the educators are, but most Galileans aren't, like the educators being the priestly class would be.
SPEAKER_00: But most Galileans are fishermen.
SPEAKER_00: They're out of the middle.
SPEAKER_00: This is the exam, the response people had when they first heard that Jesus was from Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: Remember?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, come see the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He's from Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: And the response is, can anything good come from Nazareth?
SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
SPEAKER_00: These people are uneducated.
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna come up again later in Acts chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be astonished that these people are such powerful speakers.
SPEAKER_00: They must have been with Jesus because they're from Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: So they have to get over that first.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, they've got to hear through the southern drawl, understand, okay, that's great preaching, even for a Galilean.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8, they're from Galilee, but how can we hear each of us in his own native language?
SPEAKER_00: That's the astonishing thing.
SPEAKER_00: They're hearing their own language.
SPEAKER_00: Galileans do not travel the world.
SPEAKER_00: Galileans don't get out and go to visit Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: They don't go on an adventure to Iran.
SPEAKER_00: But these ones did, it appears.
SPEAKER_00: They're speaking our languages perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: We get a list of all the languages.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's interesting, this list.
SPEAKER_00: You hear that it starts with Parthians.
SPEAKER_00: Partheons were, they're, that they're not in the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: They're a deposit of Jews that had been exiled, probably by the Assyrians, and they didn't assimilate, they didn't come to Samaritans, like most of those who the Assyrians exiled.
SPEAKER_00: They went out there and they kept an ethnically distinct group on the far side of Iran.
SPEAKER_00: They never got conquered by the Romans.
SPEAKER_00: They're not Romans.
SPEAKER_00: They're the group of people that aren't Romans.
SPEAKER_00: So that I'm just giving you this picture so you know how far away they are from Galilee and how far away they are from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these people are from past the edge of the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: And they're there.
SPEAKER_00: The Medes, those are those that were, you know, the Persians, Darius, last part of the book of Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: That's these people.
SPEAKER_00: There were Jews that had been part of the Medo-Persian Empire that did not return in the exile.
SPEAKER_00: And some of them, as the Persian Empire fell, a lot of it fell to the Greeks, some of them did not assimilate with the Greeks, most of them did, but some of them went and joined forces with the Parthians.
SPEAKER_00: These Medes here, apparently.
SPEAKER_00: And the Elamites, same kind of people.
SPEAKER_00: They're the southwest part of Iran, and they're right on the edge of the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them might be Roman, but they're all Jewish, this group here.
SPEAKER_00: And then residents of Mesopotamia, that's the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates River.
SPEAKER_00: Then Judea, that's Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That's of course there are Judeans there.
SPEAKER_00: No kidding.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's where it's happening.
SPEAKER_00: Their neighbors came over.
SPEAKER_00: Hi, Judean.
SPEAKER_00: Cappadocia, that's uh, and Pontius in Asia.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all parts of Asia Minor.
SPEAKER_00: Those places are.
SPEAKER_00: I think is how you pronounce the word if you see it in the Greek, phagria or whatever it would be say it in English, but Fugia in Greek in Phamphylla, those are parts of Asia Minor.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: There were more Jews living in Egypt during the life of Christ than were living in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites had left en masse to get away from Herod.
SPEAKER_00: So there were more Jews there than in Israel, and some of them are back for the feast of the Booze.
SPEAKER_00: They're there.
SPEAKER_00: Egypt, Alexandria is the main Jewish city there.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the Septuagint came from, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It's a hotbed of Jewish economic activity, of Jewish religion.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, they're translating the Old Testament into Greek.
SPEAKER_00: That's taking place there, including parts of Libya, if you go on.
SPEAKER_00: So that you're going past Egypt now.
SPEAKER_00: So we've worked from all the way on the other side of Iran, all the way down through Jerusalem, through Asia Minor, which is the Mediterranean basin, where churches are going to be planted pretty soon, and then all the way up past Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're into Libya, Cyrene, that's the very edge of North Africa, and then across over to Rome.
SPEAKER_00: So you've made like a full circle here: Rome, Asia Minor, the far part of Iran, all the way back through Jerusalem, and then all the way back up.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing we're missing here are Syrians.
SPEAKER_00: We get them in a second.
SPEAKER_00: All these people are both Jews and proselytes.
SPEAKER_00: And I think proselytes here is modifying the visitors from Rome.
SPEAKER_00: So there's people from Rome that include both Jews and proselytes.
SPEAKER_00: So people that had been Gentiles who'd been converted to Christianity, living in Rome, going on a vacation or a field trip or a religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem for this holiday.
SPEAKER_00: So this these people have a crazy story for sure.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of Roman living in Rome converts to Judaism, then goes on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast of weeks, and then gets swept up in Pentecost hearing these disciples preach about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to hear that guy's baptism testimony.
SPEAKER_00: And then Cretans, I mean, Cretans, what are you gonna say about Cretans?
SPEAKER_00: I have some ideas.
SPEAKER_00: They are evil beasts, they are lazy gluttons.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul calls them in the book of Titus.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's true.
SPEAKER_00: They're there.
SPEAKER_00: And then Arabians.
SPEAKER_00: Arabians are Arabs.
SPEAKER_00: And some Arabs were Jews, especially those around Damascus.
SPEAKER_00: So there's likely people from Damascus here.
SPEAKER_00: That's the Kree you've got.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a very eclectic group from all over the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's as far flung as you can imagine.
SPEAKER_00: And they're hearing twelve guys plus a hundred and ten others speaking in their languages, their languages of their little, their their domain, their languages of their home nation.
SPEAKER_00: They're hearing these people speak in it perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: And they're astonished.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's the content of the message that's being preached?
SPEAKER_00: Because there's content going out.
SPEAKER_00: What is the one thing people from all those nations that are there for the Feast of Weeks have in common?
SPEAKER_00: There's probably only one thing, and that they are there to worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's all that binds them.
SPEAKER_00: They would have different interpretations of Sabbath laws, different interpretations of Torah, different interpretations of everything in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't get these two people to, you couldn't get two of these people to agree on anything.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews from the far side of Iran and the Jews from the far side of Libya, a Gentile proselyte from Rome, an accretion.
SPEAKER_00: What are they going to agree on?
SPEAKER_00: The only thing that would bind them together is that Yahweh is the true God.
SPEAKER_00: Great is the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly what they're preaching, verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: We hear them telling in our own languages the mighty works of God.
SPEAKER_00: So they are making the most of this experience.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples are.
SPEAKER_00: They're proclaiming the greatness of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a common refrain in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: I'll spare you examples of it, but it's all over the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: When people prophesy or they give thanks in the Old Testament, they often begin by recounting the great deeds of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: Something new and major is happening, and they begin preaching about the greatness of God through it.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody, verse 12, we get the same phrase again.
SPEAKER_00: They're amazed and they're perplexed.
SPEAKER_00: This one has a note of worry in it.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier they were amazed and astonished.
SPEAKER_00: Now they're amazed and perplexed.
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: They wonder.
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: Others were mocking them and said, They are filled with new wine.
SPEAKER_00: Very interesting accusation.
SPEAKER_00: They're drunk.
SPEAKER_00: If you were here at 515 today, we started the service of the scripture reading from Isaiah 28.
SPEAKER_00: The notion of tongues, of foreign languages, it comes from Isaiah 28.
SPEAKER_00: It's prophesied there that it will happen when the Savior comes.
SPEAKER_00: That's from Isaiah 28.
SPEAKER_00: And do you remember what Isaiah 28, how it described the people who would hear that language?
SPEAKER_00: It described them as drunks who are pulled up at the table with so much vomit on the table that a whole group of them couldn't fit around it.
SPEAKER_00: This language from Isaiah 28.
SPEAKER_00: It's so interesting that when that prophecy is fulfilled and languages does come, the response of some of them anyway is that these are the guys that are drunk.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know.
SPEAKER_00: So you go through that list, you go through their preaching.
SPEAKER_00: Many of these people are going to be saved.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to believe the preaching.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to believe Peter's message.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think you can get saved just from hearing the great deeds of the Old Testament recounted.
SPEAKER_00: I think you need something specific about the death and resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's coming in Peter's sermon.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to start in verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: And so here Peter in verse 15 says, We're not drunk as you suppose, because it's, you know, 9 in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: Relax, guys.
SPEAKER_00: But then he goes on to preach the gospel, a very powerful sermon, and people come to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So what is happening with tongues?
SPEAKER_00: What is happening with the gift of languages?
SPEAKER_00: Well, 1 Corinthians 14, 21 through 22 is where Paul describes this, and there he says that the gift of languages, the gift of tongues, is given to the world as a sign against unbelieving Jews, as a sign to unbelieving Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: So you could imagine in Corinth, there's Jews in Corinth, certainly, if we just saw the list of where Jews are from, there's certainly some in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: There will be Jews attracted to the church in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: There are unbelievers.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to hear the gift of languages used in their church translated with a translator, because not everybody is an unbelieving Jew, okay?
SPEAKER_00: The idea is that the unbelieving Jews are perceiving the language, but you got somebody who's not an unbelieving Jew from a different language group.
SPEAKER_00: He's not hearing his language.
SPEAKER_00: The gift isn't for non-Jews.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a gift for Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: This is a gift for Jews to condemn Jews.
SPEAKER_00: That's the function of this gift.
SPEAKER_00: And it wouldn't make sense for Gentiles because you, as far as the Bible is concerned, and I'm glad you're sitting down so you're not shocked by this, as far as the Bible is concerned, you're a barbarian.
SPEAKER_00: As far as the Bible is concerned, if you're a Gentile, your language is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Your language is some mystical gibberish from a pagan nation.
SPEAKER_00: You speak English?
SPEAKER_00: That's a foreign language.
SPEAKER_00: Forget about it.
SPEAKER_00: So the gift of languages isn't for you.
SPEAKER_00: The gift of languages was designed by God to condemn Israel because they would hear, and we read this earlier in Isaiah 28, Israel would be condemned when they heard other Gentiles coming in.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom is coming from them.
SPEAKER_00: It's being taken from Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The vineyard of, which is theirs in Isaiah 5, is being taken from them and given to others who will actually bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus prophesies this in his own telling of the parable of the vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Because you are going to kill the son, the vineyard owner's son, the vineyard will be taken from you and given to others who will pay rent, who will produce fruit.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews are there, they're in their vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: This is Isaiah 5.
SPEAKER_00: They're in their vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: They are there for the feast of weeks.
SPEAKER_00: They are there to offer the firstfruits and the celebration that happens at the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of being in the synagogues with the Pharisees and hearing the Phariseal religion, instead, they're hearing Galileans preaching in the language of Gentiles as the church is starting.
SPEAKER_00: This is meant to be condemnation on them.
SPEAKER_00: And you know that this is a huge change because you see this again throughout the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is all Jews here.
SPEAKER_00: Makes it clear, they're all Jews.
SPEAKER_00: They hear this in Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to get saved, they're going to get filled with the Spirit, they're going to be in one body.
SPEAKER_00: Then in Acts chapter 8, you see it again.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter 8, verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritans, Philip the evangelist, goes to the Samaritans.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the Samaritans were people that were Jews that were exiled by the Assyrians, and they had come back and they had mixed kind of syncretism.
SPEAKER_00: They had mixed Judaism with the Assyrian religions and, you know, their own mountain, their own temple, the whole, the whole nine yards.
SPEAKER_00: Some Samaritans get saved.
SPEAKER_00: They believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And remember Philip, when the Samaritans get saved, Philip was like, whoa, hold on.
SPEAKER_00: I'll be right back.
SPEAKER_00: I got to speak to your manager.
SPEAKER_00: And Philip leaves.
SPEAKER_00: Philip's a deacon, he's an evangelist, he bounces, goes back to Jerusalem, and gets Peter and John and says, You guys got to see this.
SPEAKER_00: Samaritans are getting saved.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter and John come, and remember, then the Samaritans get filled, baptized with the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Peter and John lay hands on them.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritans are now part of the same church.
SPEAKER_00: Very visual manifestation of the fact the church is not just Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: Samaritans are in it.
SPEAKER_00: And if you ask a Samaritan, they would say they are the real Jews.
SPEAKER_00: But if you ask a Jew, they would say a Samaritan is like a half-breed.
SPEAKER_00: But then it keeps going.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter 10, Paul tells Peter, go to Caesarea.
SPEAKER_00: It's a Gentile city.
SPEAKER_00: And preach there.
SPEAKER_00: And eat their food.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, they eat their food part, and Peter's like, oh no, thanks on the food.
SPEAKER_00: And God rebukes him.
SPEAKER_00: Peter goes, Peter preaches.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles get saved.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles get baptized with the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles have this miraculous gift, demonstrating their unity with the church.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles are grafted in in a very clear way, exactly like the Jews were in Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews entered the church in a certain way in Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritans entered the church in the same way.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Gentiles enter the church.
SPEAKER_00: That should be the end of it, you think.
SPEAKER_00: But there's one more category of people running around out there at this point in time.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples of John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: They believed in John's preaching.
SPEAKER_00: They were already exiled from Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They're already banished by the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: They had sided with John.
SPEAKER_00: John is dead.
SPEAKER_00: They're now running around the world.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And they're encountered in Acts chapter 19.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is preached to them.
SPEAKER_00: They get saved, and they have the same manifestation of the gifts as they're added to church.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the last time you see it in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to draw your attention to a pretty clear point about this.
SPEAKER_00: Those examples, the people filled with the Spirit, some of whom spoke in tongues, those were categories of people.
SPEAKER_00: Do you follow?
SPEAKER_00: Jews, Samaritans, Gentiles, John the Baptist disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Categories of people.
SPEAKER_00: At that moment, the church is now universal.
SPEAKER_00: It's where the phrase universal church comes from.
SPEAKER_00: Not that every person in the world is part of the church, but the church now transcends any national boundary.
SPEAKER_00: It transcends any national language.
SPEAKER_00: It transcends Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: It's bigger than Greek.
SPEAKER_00: And every person who's part of it has the same spirit.
SPEAKER_00: There's a unity in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: From that point forward, baptism of the Spirit is no longer by category.
SPEAKER_00: It's no longer by group.
SPEAKER_00: From that point forward, baptism by the Holy Spirit is one person at a time.
SPEAKER_00: That's a huge change, even from the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: Even from the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: So what's going on with tongues?
SPEAKER_00: I've preached on this before from 1 Corinthians 14.
SPEAKER_00: You were the Corinthians speaking in tongues.
SPEAKER_00: I would make an argument from 1 Corinthians 14 that what the Corinthians were doing was not the biblical gift of tongues.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have time to go through that tonight, but I would just make an argument to you that what's ascribed in 1 Corinthians 14, there's enough clues in the grammar there that Paul's using it as gibberish.
SPEAKER_00: He's using an idiom for gibberish that what they're speaking doesn't make a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_00: He even tells them, I would rather speak ten words that I can understand than 10,000 in whatever you guys are talking.
SPEAKER_00: It's not edifying.
SPEAKER_00: You're like a trumpet that sounds the people can't tell if you're sounding the fire alarm or you're sounding the meal bell.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know to run or to come.
SPEAKER_00: It's confusing.
SPEAKER_00: And he, as I read 1 Corinthians 14, I think he he condemns the practice of tongues there.
SPEAKER_00: He certainly says it shouldn't be spoken by women.
SPEAKER_00: He certainly says it's a sign for unbelieving Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's coming from Isaiah chapter 28.
SPEAKER_00: So I think there's enough hints, even in 1 Corinthians 14, to say whatever was happening in 1 Corinthians 14 was certainly not really what was happening in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul is pretty skeptical of it.
SPEAKER_00: And by the book of Hebrews, Paul says that this gift is in the rearview window.
SPEAKER_00: He says, in previous times, God spoke to us through the apostles who testified through various gifts of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of what Paul calls in 2 Corinthians the signs of the superapostle.
SPEAKER_00: By Hebrews 1 and Hebrews 2, they're already being spoken of in the past tense, which makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: You see Paul leaving people sick by the end of his pastoral epistles.
SPEAKER_00: Paul certainly had the gift of healing, and you see that it had kind of run its course even in Paul's own life.
SPEAKER_00: So do I believe that the gift of tongues is for today?
SPEAKER_00: I do not believe that the gift of tongues is for today.
SPEAKER_00: I think that the gift of tongues was a transitional sign to demonstrate the authenticity of the apostles and to demonstrate the unity that comes from the church.
SPEAKER_00: That they all have the same spirit and they speak in a language that binds people from all over the Roman Empire together to the singular gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That's how tongues was functioning.
SPEAKER_00: It's a real spoken language.
SPEAKER_00: A real language.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we watched the video of one of our missionaries preparing to go to Chad.
SPEAKER_00: She is raising funds.
SPEAKER_00: She's going to go to France and learn language skill and then find a country, maybe not Chad, some country in the Francophone window of Africa, and she's on the hunt.
SPEAKER_00: And this years of training is the point.
SPEAKER_00: To go and then learn another language.
SPEAKER_00: To help other people who are there learning a language so they can translate the Bible into the language of the people who are there.
SPEAKER_00: This is a hundred and twenty-two years into the charismatic phenomenon of the gift of tongues.
SPEAKER_00: And we're still turning up missionaries.
SPEAKER_00: The stats that were in the video we saw this morning are should be sobering to you.
SPEAKER_00: 17,000 plus different language groups in the world, and some estimates between five and seven thousand of them still unreached.
SPEAKER_00: And what would it take to reach them?
SPEAKER_00: It will not take you begging God for the gift of languages so you can get on a plane and go preach the gospel to them.
SPEAKER_00: That's not going to do the trick.
SPEAKER_00: If that would do the trick, this would have happened 120 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: Having been and visited some of our missionaries in these areas, this is a very personal thing to me.
SPEAKER_00: I take huge offense at those that say the gift of tongues is an ongoing present-day manifestation of a language that you just have to have enough faith to have.
SPEAKER_00: Because you go and see the most faithful people, the most faithful missionaries living out their lives, raising their kids in the bush, you know, having to teach their kids to check for snakes before they go to the bathroom as they're trying to live life in the most remote part of the world possible, to learn a language, to bring the Bible there, and then you come stateside and you got people with air conditioning and Coke Zeros and nice cars and pools and swim team who say they have the gift of languages.
SPEAKER_00: It drives me crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And for the missionary, it's totally easy to go there.
SPEAKER_00: You'll be fine and happy.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_00: No snakes in the bathroom.
SPEAKER_00: That's my thought on the gift of languages.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that resolves any questions you might have about it.
SPEAKER_00: The point, what's happening in Acts 2, is bigger than languages.
SPEAKER_00: Bigger than languages.
SPEAKER_00: The point of Acts 2, and not about languages.
SPEAKER_00: The point of Acts 2, some people say the point of Acts 2 is that you have to beg God to be baptized by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: If you wanted it enough, you could ask God and it would come.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what happened in Acts 2.
SPEAKER_00: These people weren't begging God to be rocked by a hurricane.
SPEAKER_00: They were waiting.
SPEAKER_00: Waiting, waiting, waiting.
SPEAKER_00: And God came in the most unexpected way.
SPEAKER_00: What's happening in Acts 2 is so much bigger than baptism with the Spirit in that sense, so much bigger than the gifted languages.
SPEAKER_00: What's happening in Acts 2 is the end of an era.
SPEAKER_00: And the start of a new one.
SPEAKER_00: Or you could even say, to borrow the term in the Westminster Confession, the end of a dispensation.
SPEAKER_00: And the start of a new one.
SPEAKER_00: What happens?
SPEAKER_00: What changes between Acts 2 1 and Acts 2, verse 14?
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament has given way to the new.
SPEAKER_00: Israel has given way to the church.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrew has given way to Greek.
SPEAKER_00: The New Testament is not written in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament's not written in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you get that even the languages change?
SPEAKER_00: Everything is different.
SPEAKER_00: The law of Moses gives way to the law of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Synagogues give way to churches.
SPEAKER_00: The region of Judah gives way to Jesus, who is now their representative.
SPEAKER_00: The first advent, everybody waiting for the first advent of the Messiah gives way to now we're waiting for the second advent of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Pharisees go away.
SPEAKER_00: The whole temple's going to come down in a few decades after this.
SPEAKER_00: Pharisees will be banished, gone into the winds.
SPEAKER_00: Replaced initially with apostles, and then ultimately with elders as the apostles die out.
SPEAKER_00: Circumcision gives way to baptism.
SPEAKER_00: An external sign gives way to a public profession of an internal reality.
SPEAKER_00: Passover gives way and is replaced with communion.
SPEAKER_00: Being united by the Torah, which is what remember what gives these people their identity?
SPEAKER_00: That Yahweh, the God of the Torah, does great things.
SPEAKER_00: Being united by the law of the Torah gives way to being united by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one that gives us unity in the church.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reality.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: We are all baptized into one body, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: Every believer is baptized into one body.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of spirit baptism and manifested publicly in water baptism, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who does not have the Spirit does not have Christ, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: If you have not been baptized with the Holy Spirit, you do not possess Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not part of the church, you are not a believer.
SPEAKER_00: The universal church.
SPEAKER_00: That's Romans 8, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 3.28, think of some of the practical applications of this.
SPEAKER_00: There is neither Jew nor Greek.
SPEAKER_00: There is neither slave nor free.
SPEAKER_00: There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You could not say that in Acts 2, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's a whole lot of Jew or Greek going on.
SPEAKER_00: Not anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Not by verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: That is torn down.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say in Acts 2 that only the men there spoken languages.
SPEAKER_00: The group, the 120 of them, they're all manifesting that.
SPEAKER_00: So those that's what's happening in Acts 2.
SPEAKER_00: The old becomes the new.
SPEAKER_00: Israel gives way to the church.
SPEAKER_00: Not that Israel is broken off forever, there are still promises to Israel, and those promises will be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: If the Gentiles are grafted in and it provokes the Jews to jealousy, we shouldn't boast because if God treated the natural branches in such a way, what more would he do to us, those who have been grafted?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to end with one more tangent here.
SPEAKER_00: It is at this point that I'm halfway through my notes.
SPEAKER_00: Were Old Testament saints filled with the Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: And I started earlier by answering that question, no.
SPEAKER_00: Old Testament saints were regenerated sinners in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The indwelling of the Spirit in the hearts and lives of believers begins at Pentecost, though.
SPEAKER_00: That's a key point in dispensationalism.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the keys to the New Covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The New Covenant says, when the new covenant comes, it won't be like the Old.
SPEAKER_00: The Old was symbolized with an external reality of circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: The new will be recognized with an internal reality, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, so that you won't need people to teach you.
SPEAKER_00: You have the Spirit who opens your eyes to the truth of the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' prophecy in John 20 wouldn't make sense if Old Testament saints were filled with the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 20, Jesus after his resurrection, brings the disciples together.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Peace be with you, as the Father sent me, so I'm sending you into the world.
SPEAKER_00: When he said this, he breathed on them and said, Receive the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: These are the apostles, minus Judas, gathered together.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone is saved at this point in redemptive history, it's those dudes right there.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus breathes on them, saying, You need to receive the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't think the Spirit came in a real sense until Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: I think that was prophetic, but there's different interpretations of John 20.
SPEAKER_00: I'm fine with any of them, as long as all of them account for the reality that in John 19 they said that hadn't happened yet.
SPEAKER_00: They did not have the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 2 is where this Holy Spirit comes.
SPEAKER_00: And even in my progressive, leaky, modified dispensationalist state that I am, you understand that Acts chapter 2 is the start of the church.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, God dwelt with his people corporately through the temple worship.
SPEAKER_00: And this changed under, I think, King Manasseh's reign when the Holy Spirit left the temple of God in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: God took a residence in the temple in Israel in some way, I can't describe what way, but the Bible seems to teach that the God dwelt in a particular way in Solomon's temple in the Old Testament that ended in Manasseh's reign because it was filled with idols and no room for the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He was priced out of it with all the idols.
SPEAKER_00: If you would have asked somebody in the Old Testament, where does God live?
SPEAKER_00: Before Manasseh, after Manasseh.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you could have found anybody who would know what that question meant.
SPEAKER_00: You know, all the priests have little Baal statues in their dashboards kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: And they wouldn't understand what the question means.
SPEAKER_00: You go back even older, you know, like Elijah's life.
SPEAKER_00: Where does God live?
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that question was asked when Elijah died.
SPEAKER_00: Elisha asked people, where does God live?
SPEAKER_00: And you remember they pointed at the Jordan, the last place they saw Elijah go.
SPEAKER_00: That was their answer to the question.
SPEAKER_00: Over there, across the river.
SPEAKER_00: Elijah went that way.
SPEAKER_00: Can you ask a Christian that question?
SPEAKER_00: And you have to get like a young Christian before their theology has grown too mature for this kind of answer.
SPEAKER_00: Like a baby Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Where does God live?
SPEAKER_00: In my heart.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit dwells in me.
SPEAKER_00: I have unity with believers through my indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the Lord lives.
SPEAKER_00: That's a new covenant reality.
SPEAKER_00: This is a radical change from the old covenant because we now have unity.
SPEAKER_00: There's still language differences in the church, of course.
SPEAKER_00: You know, as we mentioned earlier, there's missionaries trying to learn the language.
SPEAKER_00: I preach in churches in Africa where I have to be translated multiple times.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I went to a church in Chad, and there's like four different languages there.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm preaching, and one guy translates me, and then three other guys translated.
SPEAKER_00: It was like Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody's speaking their own language.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reality.
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference.
SPEAKER_00: There's a beauty in the distinctions.
SPEAKER_00: There's a beauty in the ethnic and cultural and linguistic distinctions in the church that are all represented in the church.
SPEAKER_00: But what's amazing about an experience like that is that your unity is not in the language, it is not in the culture, it is in the Holy Spirit who dwells in the hearts of the believers.
SPEAKER_00: This is the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: I will put my laws in their minds, I will write them on their hearts, I will be their God, and they will be my people, Yahweh says.
SPEAKER_00: The old covenant simply did not entail the writing of the law on the heart in the mind, and that is very evident with the contrast of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: This is why 1 John 2 can say, the anointing which you received from him, speaking of the baptism of the Spirit, abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you.
SPEAKER_00: Just as his anointing teaches you about all things.
SPEAKER_00: It's true and it's not a lie.
SPEAKER_00: Just as I've taught you, abide in him.
SPEAKER_00: The anointing is the filling and the indwelling of the Spirit in the new covenant, and that is exactly what corrects the deficiency of the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Every biblical description of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: It's in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Every time the Bible describes about the Spirit dwelling in the hearts of believers, it's a new covenant reality.
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament, the Holy Spirit will use people for a period of time.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit will designate a king or a judge or a craftsman to work in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: For a task.
SPEAKER_00: They're set apart by the Spirit for a task.
SPEAKER_00: This is why David can sing, don't take your Holy Spirit from me, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Don't.
SPEAKER_00: Please don't.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be done using me.
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes I've heard churches sing that song, Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's an old covenant hymn, if there ever was one right there.
SPEAKER_00: If you take Acts 1 and John 20 seriously when it says the disciples didn't have the Spirit, then you're going to see something new happens in Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: And the missing piece in Acts 2 is not languages.
SPEAKER_00: The missing piece in Acts 2 is the presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart.
SPEAKER_00: In the heart.
SPEAKER_00: If the weakness of the old covenant was the lack of the spirit in dwelling every member of the covenant, then the strength of the new covenant is from the least of the greatest.
SPEAKER_00: Every covenant member, regardless of ethnicity, is filled with the same spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That's the glory of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful that the death of Christ can unite the world.
SPEAKER_00: As John says here, not the Savior merely of Israel, but you are indeed the Savior of the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: As we see Acts unfold, we see Gentiles added to the church, and we in our hearts can't help but rejoice, Lord, because you have set your spirit in us.
SPEAKER_00: You chose us, we did not choose you.
SPEAKER_00: We don't boast, we don't brag.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a work of our own flesh.
SPEAKER_00: This is something you have done from before eternity, from before the foundation of time.
SPEAKER_00: This was your plan.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're thankful to receive it in these last days as your Holy Spirit dwells in us.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone here tonight who has never placed their faith in you tonight.
SPEAKER_00: I pray they wouldn't trust their baptism.
SPEAKER_00: I pray they wouldn't trust any spiritual experience of tongues or languages or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: I pray tonight anyone listening to this would simply trust in the death and resurrection of Christ for their salvation.
SPEAKER_00: They place their faith in you and not in our own works or effort or experiences.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful that you are able to save all those who place their faith in you.
SPEAKER_00: And you do so willingly in the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.