Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

1, 2, 3. We have a trinitarian sound system this morning. I’m going to do my sermon today as an overview of Acts chapter 2, but I think we’ll read the actual sermon, which is the center of the chapter. If you have a handout, the outline—the second page of that is the actual text laid out the way I look at it, the way it sort of makes sense to me in terms of the sections of Acts chapter 2. And you’ll see on that structure that the middle three sections are the sermon of Peter on the day of Pentecost.

And today, of course, is Pentecost Sunday. So I’ll read that, but we’ll talk about the whole section. And you’ll see as we read through this that each of these three sections of the sermon begin with an address and all conclude with Scripture references and then there’s a concluding statement of the sermon at the conclusion of it. So please stand for the reading of God’s word. Acts chapter 2 beginning at verse 14.

But Peter, standing with the 11, lifted up his voice and addressed them. Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk as you suppose, since it’s only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel. And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, even on my male servants and female servants.

In those days, I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy, and I will show wonders in the heavens above, and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Men of Israel, hear these words.

Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. This Jesus delivered up according to the divine plan, the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hand of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him.

I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore, my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. My flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your holy one see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.

Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this historical account of something that actually happened just shy of 2,000 years ago. We thank you, Lord God, for the coming of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the new humanity in your church. We thank you for this text that defines these things to us, that tells us specifically what you want us to think about in terms of that tremendous event in history. Bless us, Lord God, as we attempt to understand what the text tells us. More than that, transform us by this word, your powerful word.

May your spirit indeed transform us by the power of your word. May he bring the things of Jesus to us as he did to these men on that very important day. Transform us, Lord God. Give us the good gift of union and communion and a recognition of that and a building of that upon that foundation with Jesus Christ. In his name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

The two opening songs of praise were interesting and different, were they not? And you know, we approved them both, we sang them both, but it is interesting to read men’s interpretation of the day in the hymn that we sang and then to sing Psalm 110 that actually is cited on the day of Pentecost.

You know what I mean, right? What we just sang—we just sang in the hymn, for instance. “Come down, oh love divine, seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardor glowing. And then in verse two, ‘Oh let it freely burn till worldly passions turn to dust and ashes in its heat consuming. Let holy charity verse three without outward view and loneliness become mine inner clothing true loneliness of heart.’”

Well, those things are all good sentiments. They tend a little, I think, toward the romantic side. Now the culmination of Acts chapter 2 is the charity and the love that we see at the conclusion of the passage and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. And certainly loneliness and humility of mind is what people have. And yet in that loneliness and humility, of course, God had these people speak and prophesy—all those that receive the spirit.

And then specifically, he used the apostles to speak boldly and confidently about the implications of Pentecost for those that were gathered. And it wasn’t quite sweetness and light and let’s all hold hands and kumbaya. Essentially, that sermon that we just read, as you can tell, was: “You guys are in deep trouble. You’ve killed the Lord of glory. You did it.” That’s the message of Pentecost. And somehow we end up sort of turning it into kind of a, you know, emotional experience of sort of detachment from the world.

But it wasn’t. It was the beginning of the conquest of the world. Jesus had commissioned them. They had prayed in terms of that commissioning. The kingdom was coming. Israel was being restored and then the kingdom was going out to all the earth. And he said, “Wait for power.” Power is what they received, not some kind of, you know, sweet submission to nothingness and all that kind of thing. Power. Now, it’s power to lay down our lives, to be humble, to live lives of charity and grace, but it’s power also to proclaim the word of the Lord Jesus Christ and to tell people God is not in the dock.

You are. Our culture wants to put God in the dock. What do we think of him? Well, a better question to ask people is, “What does God think of you?” And what Peter told these men assembled was, “You are in deep trouble, my friend. You killed the Lord of glory.” And you know what? He’s at the right hand of the father and he’s exercising power and he will put every one of his enemies under his feet. He’ll either kill you or he’ll convert you.

That’s the way it works. So that’s the message of Pentecost brought to us here. And I want us to sort of do a little overview of this. Remember that we get here through prayer. I don’t want to leave that off. Today, this evening in Oregon City, I think at the high school—is that right? Where is this at? Yeah, Oregon City High School auditorium. Tonight at 6:00, there’ll be a global day of prayer event. So pastors from Oregon City, congregations from Oregon City will meet there.

It’ll probably be a pretty big deal. And Pastor Erin Hour, who has done all this research in Oregon’s Christian history, will be speaking. We should pray for that event even if we can’t be there, but it’s very appropriate to have that because this is, after all, Pentecost comes in direct relationship to the prayers of the saints as they prepare for what God had promised in terms of Pentecost.

Another aspect of Pentecost that I want to draw before we actually look at this movement of the text of Acts chapter 2. You’ll remember that when we talked about the ascension of Jesus that we said that Jesus lifts his hands and blesses them. And I think that the only place that really is done besides in the ascension is in Leviticus 9:22 where Aaron lifts his hands and blesses the people after doing the sacrifices. And we drew this connection that Jesus had finished the offerings, the purification offering, the ascension offering, the tribute offering.

He finished them—all the offerings that reflect the different aspects of his one death on the cross. He had done all of that, and so he then blesses the people on the basis of the completed offerings. Well, the text in Leviticus 9:22 goes on. It says he came down from offering the sin offering after he’d blessed them and then Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting and when they came out they blessed the people.

So now they disappear. They go away right into the tent of meeting which is a picture of the heavenly tabernacle. So I think we can see in that after Jesus had finished his sacrifice and blessed the people by raising his hands and pronouncing the benediction that then he goes away into the tent of meeting as well. And then it says, “And then they came out and they blessed the people and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people.

Fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted and praised and fell rather on their faces.” So you see the movement here has been predicted for us by way of example in Leviticus 9 with the ascension—Jesus blessing him being taken into the tent of meeting and the next blessing he sends is this fire from God that comes down and transforms the world.

And so what we have in the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 is that transformation, the fire of God coming down, consuming us, transforming us. We’re on the altar, in changing the world.

Now, Leviticus 9:22 is the conclusion of the ordination of the Aaronic priesthood. And Aaron is a picture of the new Adam. He’s the new man. And he, you know, takes all his clothes off, they wash him, they anoint him, they dress him, they perfume him up. He goes through this process of ordination. And he’s really being pictured as a second Adam. And ultimately, what that’s showing to us is when the second Adam, Jesus, comes, then the true second Adam has arrived. The new creation, the new humanity in Jesus Christ has come and the world will never be the same again. So all that stuff is prefigured in Leviticus 9:22. And so today, you know, we’re sort of looking at Acts chapter 2 on the basis of showing us this new humanity.

Now, I think that there are seven sections to Acts chapter 2. You know, the three sections of the sermon are laid out, you know, very distinctly with specific terms of address and then a summary statement at the end. So there’s three sections each sort of concludes—except for the summary statement—with a verse of Scripture, a section from Scripture and that’s kind of clear to see. There’s this three-part sermon going on at the middle of the thing.

On either side of that is the sermon is given in response to the bystanders who have responded to the gift of tongues and the sound of the wind and the appearance of fire by saying these guys—some are saying he’s drunk. So there’s the response to the manifestation of the day of Pentecost on the part of all the world basically represented in the people that were gathered, and after the sermon there’s the response to the preaching of the word. You know, and the response is sort of summarized—the first response is, “What’s going on? What is this? How do we understand all of this?” and by the end of that time, after the end of the sermon, they have another question. It’s, “What must we do?”

So they want an interpretation of the events which the sermon provides them and the sermon goes further than the mere interpretation of the gift. It starts there but then moves into the proclamation of Jesus and then after the interpretation is given to these people they have mass conversion and so they ask what must we do and the answer is believe on Christ and be baptized.

So the crowd, the audience is bookends to the three-part sermon in the middle, and at the beginning and end of Acts chapter 2 begins with the apostles and disciples all together and the power of the Holy Spirit comes upon them and then at the end of the text we have a description—a longer description—we talked about this last week—of the church. And so again they’re all united again now and there’s more description given to us on the basis of that but the picture of the united church is for and after this section of Scripture Chapter 2.

And this is all an account of Pentecost and what happens as a result of Pentecost. It’s a distinct unit from the next one which will talk about specific named apostles, their healing of people, their preaching and being thrown into prison. God has a funny way of winning battles. You know, one of the first things he does is he throws people in prison. It’s the death of Jesus Christ in humility that we spoke of, what we sang of earlier in that song.

But the point is, you see how the structure works that way. It begins with the church. The church has an impact on the world. The impact on the world then is interpreted and Jesus is preached. The world comes to conversion. And then at the end, the church is added—people are added to it. And the people that are added are part of that unified great trinitarian community. That trinitarian community life of the last few verses, that’ll be the subject of our sermon next week.

We sent out an outline this week that’ll show you the outline for that sermon. We have a particular structure to that last section that I think is interesting and helps us to understand some things, but this structure—the heart of it of course is the preaching of Jesus Christ and as we go through this we’ll see that the heart of that is the information that’s given about the man Jesus Christ, right? If you look at that handout, you know, look at these three middle sections of the sermon.

So the first section with the quotation from Joel is about what just happened. The spirit has come and salvation is now—whoever believes will be saved. And then the second part of the sermon in verse 22 and following—the very middle of the sermon, he talks about Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God. And so he talks about the manhood, the humanity of Jesus. In the fifth section, he talks about the lordship and that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah.

So he’s talking there about, you know, the eternal second person of God. But the middle, the heart of the sermon, I think, is the humanity of Jesus because Jesus has ascended into heaven. Jesus Christ has, but his—he has two natures and one of those natures is his human nature and he takes humanity into the throne room of God for the first time and Jesus Christ, second person of the trinity and renewed humanity the new man is seated at the right hand of God the Father so it’s the manhood of Christ that I think is the center of the sermon and it’s the manhood of Christ I stress because that’s what’s changed in the world. Now, humanity in the form of Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father.

And now things will change. Now all the stuff that was kind of looked at and put up with by God in the past, that’s gone. Now’s the time of judgment. Now is the time of warfare when the church gets ready, prepares herself through prayer, doing work while they’re praying, picking the next apostle to replace Judas, and then preaching the word of God. The battle has been formed. So the heart of this story is a recognition and acknowledgment of the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now before we get into the details, one other point about this structure. It’s seven, right? You kids have a coloring page today and there’s three reasons I chose that particular coloring page. One reason is because there are seven people, right? So at the coloring page, there’s seven people. Seven’s a pretty good number. Seven’s the number of the days of creation. And if we have here a new humanity, a new creation played out—

Remember in John 20 at the end of the gospel and Jesus is resurrected but not ascended and he breathes on the disciples and he says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Clearly, all that John stuff is happening in the garden. He’s the new gardener. It’s new creation time and man gets the breath of life again. Well, that’s a little foretaste of this. What happens now? The spirit is poured out in its fullness to proclaim the Lord Jesus.

And so, this new humanity is what Acts 2, or Pentecost, is all about. And they’re represented by seven people here in the picture. That’s one reason I chose it. Second reason I chose it is you got that dove up there. And so, we remember that the new humanity comes about as the creation of the Holy Spirit, right? The Holy Spirit moves in the context of the first creation in a sevenfold way and the Holy Spirit makes a world.

And so the Holy Spirit’s moving now in the context of the disciples and he’s making a new world. And the third reason I chose it is that unlike some pictures, you got a woman here. I like that. Now, it’s probably Mary. I don’t like that so much. Mary’s okay. But the point is, as we’ll look at in just a minute, women receive the gift, too. And Joel made a big deal out of it that women were going to prophesy, too.

And even female servants. So, I like the inclusion of women in this coloring page because that reminds us that the empowerment for battle is not just given to men, it’s given to women. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Kind of getting ahead of myself here, but you know, we’ve talked about this, but what happens in Luke 24 as we’ve gone through this sequence of events of resurrection, post-resurrection appearances, ascension, and now Pentecost?

What happened in the resurrection, very first day? Women tell men what to believe and what to do, right? They bring the message of Christ’s resurrection. They tell people to believe on it. And actually, if we go back to the other gospel accounts, they’re commanded to go take a message that the apostles are supposed—the disciples were supposed to meet Jesus in Galilee on a mountain. So, they both tell people, men what to believe and what to do.

So, here in the power of Pentecost, we have women an important part of this description and we don’t want to blow past that. We want to think about that.

Now, there’s some balance, but that’s one reason I chose this picture. One thing I didn’t like about the picture is there’s little forked tongues on top of their heads. You know, that’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Cloven tongues of fire. Forked tongues. That’s what a serpent has. It’s got a fork tongue. I think that the word cloven tongues of fire is a word that indicates distribution. It doesn’t mean that each of the flames on top of each head was split the way this shows. It means that they’re all partaking of one spirit and the manifestation is of each individually. So distributed tongues of fire might be a better way to interpret that.

Now so there’s a sevenfold structure here and I don’t want to belabor the point and I know some of you are not going to buy you know some of these connections but if you meditate on these seven—the sevenfold structure that seems to me to be clearly laid out in the text. And if you have an understanding of how the spirit moved in creation, I think you’ll see echoes of creation, the creation account in this seven-fold pattern. We would expect that actually. I mean, we’ve got a new humanity, new world begun here, and we got it listed in seven sections. At least it seems to me it’s seven sections. We’d sort of expect that, right?

So in the first section, what do we got? Tongues, flames, light, the light of God, right? From heaven. So light. And then in the next section, we have a description. And actually it says this explicitly. Look at verse five. “They were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.” So we got the nations under heaven. We got the earth and the heaven. We have the firmament, right? Day two is about the firmament. And here we have a reference to the nations under the heaven. And by the way, of course, it’s a global term.

It’s a global mission that’s being pictured on this day of Pentecost. Right from the get-go, all the world is pictured as being converted. But firmament, and then the other thing about the firmament is it kind of divides things. And by the end of this section, you got some people that are actually questioning what is this? They want to know and other people are making fun of them. So you have kind of the two kinds of humanity.

The second feast in Leviticus 23 is Passover. And Passover distinguishes between those that have the blood applied and those that don’t. Two kinds of people, two kinds of humanity, the old humanity and the new humanity. And so in section two, we’ve got a picture of that. So we’ve got couple of different references to, you know, the teaching of firmament in relationship to at least to Passover.

In the third section we have the interpretation of the events and the spirit of God come upon the people to make them come to prophecy. Fourth section—and I don’t, you know, I haven’t really thought much about how that relates to the third day but maybe it’s a prefigurement again I don’t know but the fourth section is about the humanity of Jesus on day four you have the reflected light of the glory of God—son moon and stars—with people, right? Rulers. And so Jesus, you know, and his humanity, actually, is linked to Jesus’s humanity is the reflected glory.

Jesus is the son and we’re the moon and the stars that reflect the glory of his humanity, which is now ascended to the right hand of the Father. And then in the fifth section, he’s described as Lord. And what happens in the fifth day? It’s always kind of an odd day. You got these teeming things, but it’s the first time there’s a command given. They’re commanded to multiply. That doesn’t happen in the creation week until day five.

And here the command work that Jesus is Lord is described for us. Sixth day, man is created and falls. The sixth feast in Leviticus 23 is atonement. And that’s what happens in the sixth section of our narrative here, right? We’ve sinned. How can we be saved? We’ve fallen. We’re identified with fallen humanity. And we need to apply atonement to us, the sixth feast and the sixth day. And then finally by the end, you know, seventh day is a day of rest.

We get together, we have a great time together, we hear the word of God. He comes to be with us in a special way on the Lord’s day or in the Old Testament Sabbath. And we have this wonderful picture at the end of Acts chapter 2 of just that—they’re gathering together for the teaching of the apostles and the breaking of bread and they’re praying together. And it’s a wonderful picture of Sabbath rest. So I think that kind of, you know, is intended for us to think that way.

Again, driving home the point that Pentecost is a new creation. Okay, let’s briefly go over each of these seven sections, and it will be brief, I promise you.

First section, we have a unified church empowered to disciple the world. That’s in the first four verses. And this unified church is what’s depicted at the end. And the unified church that’s pictured at the end is also has more people. You know, we start with a 100 or 200 or whatever it is and we end up with thousands of people by the end of the account but they’re all unified right there’s a commonality of life that exists already this unified church is then empowered to disciple the world and as I said what we have here are all these great pictures like you know the new creation that’s described in John 20 but here the spirit comes upon them in fullness they’re all together there’s a mighty rushing wind well you know God came to Adam on the creation, right?

And God would come as a wind, mighty rushing. No, now we think of the Hebrew there as God comes in the stillness or whatever the nice sound. But really, it’s I think in the Hebrew it’s more like a rushing freight train bearing down upon Adam and Eve. And they weren’t frightened of it until they sinned. But here that mighty rushing wind is depicted. So creation imagery again and we have these tongues of fire.

Now specifically it says when the day of Pentecost arrived. Pentecost. So, we’re supposed to know something about Pentecost. That’s interesting. Jesus is our Passover. He is our first fruits, right? So, we have those references. But you, you know, it’s interesting how the church has never really agreed that the Friday meal was a Passover meal. Is it true? Is it not true? We’d like to think it’s true, but was it true?

Why is it just the man? I mean, there’s all kinds of ambiguity to that. We know it was Passover season, but it doesn’t tie as specifically to the day as this text does. This say when the day of Pentecost arrived. So it wants us to understand this feast. This feast was one of three required annual feasts. Now I know there are more than three but there were the three required ones. Three times a year in Israel under the Mosaic and Levitical administration, the men had to go up to Jerusalem.

That was at the beginning of the harvest, planting of the beginning of the harvest at Passover. The end of the first harvest at Pentecost and the end of all the harvests at the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. Pentecost is also referred to as the feast of weeks because it’s 7 weeks. 7 × 7 is 49 + 1 is 50. But the point is it’s the middle of things, right? It’s the middle of the harvest year. You get a little bit of first fruit given at Passover.

You get the fullness of that first harvest at Pentecost and then the fullness of the whole harvest at the end of the world, end of the end of the cycle. Well, that’s how history works. Pentecost comes at the middle of history and there’s been, you know, a development up to now. But now with the new humanity, the first harvest, which is the church, these people depicted for us here, they begin to harvest that first harvest and the Jews are harvested and eventually all the world will be harvested.

All the world will be discipled for Christ and we got feast of tabernacle time. But Pentecost comes in the middle of the season, or the seasons rather, and it represents that harvest.

Pentecost also is—if you do a careful, it appears from a careful chronological look at the Passover and the deliverance from Egypt and then their arrival at Mount Sinai. It seems like Pentecost is also the day that Moses receives the law on Mount Sinai. And this has been Jewish and Christian history tradition for thousands of years that Pentecost celebrates the giving of the law on Sinai and of course we see the manifestations of God on Sinai right and so we have manifestations here and this was the Pentecost giving of the law. There’s another connection between that because when Moses goes down from receiving the law what happens? Well, they’ve been sinning and 3,000 people are killed and what happens here? Well, we have the new creation.

We got a little picture of the new creation then, but you know, as soon as Aaron and his sons are consecrated, right after Leviticus 9, his sons sin. We’re not there yet. Soon as God gives Moses the law on Sinai at Pentecost, they sin. We’re not there yet. Jesus hasn’t come. The church hasn’t started. The whole thing is we’re being pictured that there’s something better to come. There’s a greater Pentecost.

And that’s what’s happening here now. Instead of 3,000 people being killed. We have exactly or about 3,000 people saved. That’s what the text tells us. 3,000 people were added to the church. Why? Why 3,000? Well, it has to match up with this back here. So, it ties this again to the giving of the law. You know, the giving of the law and the conclusion of harvest are events of responsibility, right? When you gather in the harvest, it’s because you did your work, your work preparing and then gathering it in and then you have a good time. You rejoice. No work, no harvest. The law doesn’t come to take us away from responsibility to give us lives of ease over here without responsibilities. The law comes on Sinai to prepare them. And most of the law is worship. But then there’s moral laws, civil laws. That law comes to prepare them to conquer the promised land. The law comes and brings responsibility.

Pentecost is the coming of the spirit who will bring, as we see in the sermon, the law of God, the word of God to bear upon the church. And this is why I contrasted those two songs at the beginning of the sermon. You know, sometimes we get kind of thinking about Pentecost the way the world thinks about, yeah, I’d love to, you know, buy the world a Coke or whatever it is. It’s kumbaya time. It’s change is what we need and we’re all got to work together and we just forget all the doctrines and the different laws we have in the religion.

We can just all—Rodney King, we can just all get along? And a lot of times that’s the sort of the way we think about Pentecost. That’s the way we think about the Holy Spirit. It sort of just makes us all love each other a whole bunch. Well, it does that clearly by the end of the text. That’s what they’re doing. But see, if we understand that it wants us to identify this as Pentecost and then very clearly the sermon ties the spirit to the word, and very clearly the sermon ties the spirit to the conquering of the enemies of Christ.

Psalm 110 at the end. They’re all going to become your footstool. He’s reigning now. Then clearly Pentecost is not about irresponsibility. It’s not about vague emotionalism. It’s not about just enjoying everybody and have them enjoy us. No, it’s about responsibility. It’s about working so that the final harvest will happen the way that Jesus has worked for the first harvest. Now it’s the church turn.

You know, the church year is two sections right—from advent through Pentecost or Trinity Sunday next Sunday or through Pentecost traditionally—life of Jesus and then the next six months the ordinary or numbered month—numbered Sundays—the life of the church but it used to be that those Sundays in the life of the church were called the first Sunday after Pentecost the second Sunday after Pentecost the third Sunday after Pentecost because Pentecost obviously is the transition to the work of Christ through the church.

And that work of the church and the work of Jesus is not a work of vague emotionalism of just let’s all hold hands and get along. No, it’s a it’s to be characterized by the empowerment of Pentecost that the law of God, the spirit writes the laws upon our heart. The spirit brings the word. The spirit brings Jesus so that we can be responsible people and conquer in his name. That’s what Pentecost was all about.

Pentecost was the center of the three agricultural feasts. Leviticus 23 lists three or seven feasts and it’s a little different list than other lists of seven feasts. It starts with the Sabbath and then goes to Passover and first fruits and Pentecost, trumpets, atonement, and tabernacles. Now, that’s sort of, you know, 3-1-3, right? Pentecost or Passover is connected up to the feast of unleavened bread and first and the first sheaf for first fruits.

And at the end of the year, tabernacles is connected up with the blowing of trumpets, bringing the nations together, day of atonement, and then enter into culminated rest of the tabernacle, or feast of booths. So you’ve got these three agricultural festivals sort of like seven, but still Pentecost is at the middle. Well, in Leviticus 23, they drop off the first fruits from Passover, but add the Sabbath as the beginning one.

And well, my point is you still end up with Pentecost at the center. Pentecost is at the center of the three major feasts. Pentecost is at the center of the seven enumerated specific feasts. And Pentecost is at the center of the list in Leviticus 23. No matter what way you slice it, what list you’re looking from in the Old Testament, he’s telling us again and again that Pentecost is the center of history.

And now the world changes because the new humanity rules in Christ.

All right. Well, so then they—this manifestation happens and the world wants to know what’s going on. And it is the world. They’re from every nation under heaven. And look at their reactions. I’ve got them highlighted on your outline. They are bewildered at first. Then they get amazed and astonished, dazed and confused. They don’t know what’s happening, but they know something’s happening.

And then they’re amazed and perplexed. So three-fold designation of the response of the world to what’s happening. And then the question, “What does this mean?” But then others don’t ask this question. Others mock saying they’re filled with new wine. Well, that’s the way it is when the church goes out into the world in the name of Jesus Christ and does everything that we do. You know, why are you taking this position politically?

Why do you run your family this way? Why is it that you do your finances this way? Why do you have this kind of ethic at work? Why do you tell me the truth when I ask you about my car and what needs to be done unlike the last mechanic I spoke to. Right? Why? What does this mean? This is astonishing to us. They’re actually honest people. There are moral people. There are people that have a particular perspective on politics that absolutely baffles them.

Most people mock. Not most, but many people mock. But don’t miss the fact that witness in the power of the spirit through your life is what causes the world to say, “What does this mean? What’s going on?” So as you live out your life, the world wants to know what’s happening. It asks for an answer for the hope that’s within you. The world’s reaction is confusion, but it’s questioning as well. We’re set in the middle of the world to get people to think about what is different about these folks.

What is it? What’s going on about everything that we do, right? The spirit and powers all of our lives. What is it that’s different? And then, you know, like we should do, the question is answered. Well, we’ll tell you what it’s all about. We’re prepared by the Holy Spirit. We’ll talk to you about what it is. We’re not going to be afraid of saying things you won’t like or not thinking we’re solid enough, all that stuff.

We’re going to tell you what it is.

Now, I should make one caveat here. Look at verse 14. Peter standing with the 11 lifted up his voice and addressed them. So now I’ve stressed that what he’ll say here is as women receive the gift, they’ve got the flame just on them just like the men do. And women and men are both going to prophesy in this period of time. And even male servants and even female servants, God will fill with the spirit so that they can prophesy, speak the word of God as it applies to our situation.

All Christians can do that. Okay. Now, when it gets to the work of evangelism here though in preaching, we’ve got the apostles again, the 11 disciples and Peter. And later it’ll actually say they asked the apostles. So, you know, it’s unity and diversity, equality, but a differentiation of function. So, you know, we don’t want to fall into either ditch. I think that typically we’re more prone to fall into the ditch that women can’t do anything.

And the scriptures charge us to rethink that. But we don’t want to fall into the other ditch where there’s no distinction anymore. Clearly, there remains a distinction not just between women and men, but between the apostles and the average congregant. So don’t think it’s your job to preach a sermon like Peter does here. In a very real sense, Acts shows us the evangelism of the church being conducted primarily at point time, at contact time by men who are ordained for that particular purpose.

But you know, they interpret the event. This is what generally the general prophetic gift is—that’s what we have. We interpret the events around us. What’s going on with the economy? What’s going on with, you know, the government? What’s going on with, you know, why we can’t get along at our workplace? We interpret the events around us and we give that interpretation to the world. And that’s just what the happens here.

He addresses them. Men of Judea, let me talk to you about this. They’re not drunk. It’s Joel.

Now, one thing about the context of this quote from Joel, we’re doing an overview today, so we can’t talk about it in detail, but one thing about the context here in Joel, what’s happened is time of refreshing has come in the verses leading up to this. And then this section of Scripture happens that he’s quoting from and then the judgment on the nations is proclaimed in the very next section of Joel.

Again, that’s what the flow of history that we’re seeing develop here is. Jesus has brought the true times of reformation, restoration, whatever you want to call it, the times of refreshing back to God’s people. He’s restoring the kingdom. And then that kingdom is a kingdom empowered by God prophetically by the power of the Holy Spirit. And then God uses them and he uses that empowered army to wage war against the nations.

And that’s just what happens in Joel. So in a way—Hey, you know, he’s singing, you know, verse the first couple lines of verse two of Joel, but these are good Jews. They know what the next line is. They know the next line is judgment’s coming. And they know that preceding this, Jesus has brought times of refreshment. So, you know, part of the interpretation already opens up the point that times of judgment are coming.

One other brief connection—And I have to touch on this. I know I’m running a little long. Numbers 11. They want meat in the wilderness. Moses says, “I can’t bear this people.” He asked God for help or to kill him. You help me or kill me. One or the other. Put me out of my misery. And God instead provides him 70 elders, officers to administer God’s people. And this is a parallel account to the choosing of the deacons. A food problem, mixed multitude, yada yada. It’s parallel.

But it’s also parallel to what’s going on here because what happens is God says that and he does this. He takes the gift of prophecy that’s on Moses and he puts it upon the 70. 70 is the number of nations. These guys are here representing every nation. I know it isn’t the list of 70 nations listed, but it’s still the same. 70 is this number of all the nations of the world. Genesis 10. So God puts what Moses had upon each of the 70.

Right? So Jesus takes what the spirit—Jesus sends what he had as to us, right? Well, two of these 70 people aren’t actually there in the place where they’re all assembled. They’re off over in the camp and they start prophesying. And Joshua sees this and he says, “Moses, forbid them. Please don’t let them do that.” And Moses’ response, do you remember what Moses says? This is where Joshua is introduced. All men are saved by grace, right?

Tries to forbid people from prophesying in the name of the Lord. We got to be careful what we say about people. Anyway, Moses’ response is “Would that all of God’s people were prophets, right?” That’s what he says. Well, that’s what happens. Moses was saying at some point in time, the greater 70 will be happen. The greater gift of the Holy Spirit, the greater gift of empowering men to prophesy will be upon him.

Those 70 men, they aren’t perpetual prophets. They become administrators and they’re bureaucrats. It’s the Sanhedrin. And so, it’s a Pentecost of for the bureaucrats to make them better managers. But originally the gift given to them is prophesying. It’s taken away. Well, with the church that gift remains, but it also reminds us that the power of the spirit is so we can be good administrators, good bureaucrats.

See, it’s the same thing. Well, anyway, so God’s people are all prophets now. And that’s what they’re told.

Then the middle of the sermon, part two, death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s sovereignty and man’s culpability. And you’ve heard—we talked about this before, but you know what he says is look at here’s what actually is going on. It’s prophesying and now I’m going to prophesy to you. I’m going to instruct you in what’s happened here.

And he stresses, as I said, the humanity of Jesus. Everything in this section is about Jesus’s humanity. And he reminds them that they know who this guy was. Part of the job of the Christian is to awaken the conscience and the memory of the world to the fact that they know who Jesus is. Now, I know it’s different than this situation. These people were actually there, all that stuff. But he tells them, you know, and we should understand that when we talk to people, they really know that God is and that he’s spoken.

They know their culpability. Now, we bring it out of them, but he says, you know, and he says that you’re responsible. You’ve killed him by the hands of lawless men, probably by the hands of the Romans. You’ve killed him. You crucified him. But this happened as a result of the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. So the sovereignty of God and human responsibility are both stressed in the initial sermon of the church on the day of Pentecost and it’s part of our message.

We’re describing to people we’re in—we’re telling people who God is. He’s sovereign. So this happened as a result of a sovereign God. But people are responsible and very specifically he says you’re responsible. You’re responsible because this Jesus you killed.

Then we get to the second part of the sermon or the third part of the sermon rather. We move through the death and resurrection of Christ or Jesus rather. And in part three he stresses the resurrection and ascension to imminent power of the Lord Jesus Christ. So now he talks about Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ in verse 31, right? He foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ. So he interprets David’s words. Notice by the way that what the Holy Spirit’s doing here, the Spirit isn’t making a big deal of himself. And the Spirit isn’t saying, “I’m going to give you some direct divine revelation.” The spirit gives the church the ability to interpret the word of God.

Right? And the spirit knows, and we should know, Jesus has taught us that entire word speaks about him, Jesus. One guy has said that all pneumatology is Christology. In other words, you know, the doctrine of the holy spirit has to be tied to the doctrine of the son because the spirit comes to bring us things of Christ and empower us to speak Christ, not to talk about the spirit. You know, when the enthusiasts, those who were really into the charismatic gifts, come to Luther during the middle of the reformation.

The spirit, the spirit, the spirit, they cried and he said, “I slap your spirit on the snout ‘cuz it’s the wrong spirit if it’s not exalting Jesus Christ as Lord. That’s not the spirit of God. That’s some other spirit then.” And it’s the wrong spirit that tends to say, “Well, we’ll get stuff apart from the word of God.” The spirit speaks by means of the word. We’re real pleased today. We’re going to have a Gideon representative at the end of the dinner today.

And we do it for Pentecost explicitly because if you don’t got the Bible out there, you diminish, you grieve the work of the Holy Spirit. The spirit comes to take that word to write it upon people’s hearts to empower the church to know what it means and to tell others what it means. The spirit on this very first sermon is talking about Jesus and he’s talking about Jesus in relationship to the word of God to the word of God.

So he’s talking about—he interprets David and he says that Jesus is the Christ and we’re witnesses to this and then he’s exalted at the right hand of the God having received from the father, the promise of the Holy Spirit. He has poured out this that you see. So Jesus has sent the spirit. Jesus Christ has sent the spirit. The humanity of Jesus is part of Jesus Christ. The humanity of Christ has sent the spirit to create a new humanity in union with him.

And so Jesus sends this spirit, but it’s a spirit of power because sit at my right hand until your enemies are made your footstool. And then the summation of the sermon then is let all the house of Israel—he’s addressed him as Judah. He’s addressed him as Israel. He’s addressed him as brothers. And the summation now is, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. This Jesus whom you crucified.”

So the humanity Jesus, Messiah, Christ, his divinity, and he’s Lord now. So as I said, the sermon is—you’re in deep water. You got a lot of problems because you crucified the Lord who isn’t just—It’s not just you crucified a guy that was righteous. That’s true. It’s not just you should feel bad ‘cuz you did something wrong. That’s true.

It’s that this guy has all the power in the world now and in the universe. And not only that, he’s exercising that power to bring his enemies under him his footstool. There was some old Clint Eastwood movie, right? Where a town killed him, beat him to death or something and he comes back and he writes hell on the name of the town or something and he brings vengeance. See, that’s what’s kind of going on here.

Jesus is now coming in the power of the spirit. And you should know—while grace will be extended to you when you repent, you should know that until that time, he’s like Clint Eastwood in that movie. He’s going to kill every one of you. He’s going to bring judgment. That’s what he says here. That’s the Christian message. God is not in the dock. We’re in the dock. We’re in the dock.

Now, he’s not Clint Eastwood because they then cry out, “What should we do? What are we going to do?” And he doesn’t say nothing. You can’t do nothing. Clint Eastwood is coming and that’s that. No, they cry out, “What are we supposed to do?” The world’s reaction now is a conviction instead of confusion. And Paul tells them then what they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to—who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re cut to the heart. What do we do? And he says, “Repent and be baptized.”

Repent means to turn from our ways. We’ve ignored Christ. Worse, we’ve done things that really were counter to the cause of his kingdom. We’ve worked against him. We got to repent of that. And then when we repent, we have to be baptized. Now, I’m not going to get into a deal whether you got to be baptized to be saved, but that’s what he says here. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness or remission of your sins.

We were at family camp years ago. Oh, I’m sorry. Years ago, and Jim B. Jordan, we were singing the Nicene Creed about baptism for the remission of sins. And a guy came up and said, “Where do you guys get that weird doctrine of baptism for the remission of sins?” Oh, it’s right here. Day of Pentecost. It’s part of the central message. It’s what it says. You to be baptized. Now, it’s tied to your repentance. Baptism is magic, but it ties these things together.

Repent and be baptized. That’s what they’re supposed to do. And the promise is unto you. We forget about that. What is the promise? The promise he’s talking about here is the promise of the Holy Spirit. That’s what he’s talking about. He says everyone who calls—everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. And so the promise is that they’re going to receive the Holy Spirit too. They’ll be part of the humanity.

There’s no distinction between Christians with the spirit Christians without—all Christians have the spirit. You repent and are baptized. You call on the name of the Lord. God’s called you out effectively and you are now a person that has been given the gift, the promise of new life through the Holy Spirit.

Save yourselves from this crooked generation. And then finally, the world’s reaction after it or the world reaction—its conviction. And then after that, we see that they’re they believe. Many of them who received the word were baptized in verse 41, added that day about 3,000 souls. And then we have this wonderful picture of both Sabbath and Lord’s Day life and ordinary life which we’ll talk about next week. They enter into the trinitarian life of the church, a life of unity, love, peace, and blessing. And it is kind of kumbayage at the end.

But we get there through an understanding of the humanity and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fact that he is now prosecuting his warfare against all rebels of him. This is the message of Pentecost. New humanity and there’s an old humanity that’s being defeated and conquered by Jesus Christ and there’s no middle ground. You’ve got to say, are you going to be the one that says, “Am I going to call on the name of God?

Am I going to ask what must I do? Am I going to say, what is the meaning of the world as interpreted by the scriptures? Are you going to be those that mock Christ?” There’s no middle ground here. Personal evangelism is at the heart of this. But corporate work is going on as well. The new humanity is being built up person by person by person. And that personal evangelism happens as a result of bringing conviction for sins, bringing the warning that Jesus Christ is now ruling at the right hand of God and he is in the process of conquering.

This text tells us our identity. It’s the beginning of who we are, you know, in full. And it tells us who we are. We’re spirit-empowered members of the Lord Jesus Christ’s body. We’re those who have been sent forth on a mission to conquer all enemies for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. And part of the means of conquering is clearly telling people why things are happening in the world that happen to interpret them based upon the scriptures.

The power of the Holy Spirit is tied to the word of God and its interpretation of events. That’s our job to live lives of hope to experience spirit-empowered unity—which is, you know, the spirit comes in power at the end, at the beginning, at the end they’re living together in harmony—how? Only by the work of the spirit. And as people see that too they ask what does this mean and we tell them what it means is there’s two kinds of people in the world those that are united to Christ and are going from life to life and those that are rejecting Jesus Christ who are being killed by him. That’s what it means.

What do I have to do to be saved? Repent and be baptized and you’ll become part of this wonderful worshipping trinitarian community.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text again. We thank you for the wide scope of it and the individual details of it. We thank you for the wonder of the day of Pentecost and the tremendous conclusion to things that are brought and yet the new beginning for humanity as well in Christ.

Thank you for showing us today who we are—empowered warriors for the Lord Jesus Christ, men and women alike, boys and girls. Help us to remember that, Father. Help us to have confidence and help us then to do things in a way that is pleasing, that demonstrate the fruit of the spirit in our lives and thus cause people to ask. Thank you, Lord God, for today. Thank you for your word. Bless us as we consecrate ourselves to you afresh.

In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.