ACTS 2:1-13; Text: Acts 2:1-4

12

THE COMING OF THE PROMISED SPIRIT.

Acts 2: 1 – 4

A Pentecost sermon by:

Rev. C. Pronk

PUBLISHED BY THE
PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE

OF THE

FREE REFORMED CHURCHES OF NORTH AMERICA.

(April 2008)

LITURGY:

Votum

Psalter 241: 1, 2, 4

Law of God

Psalter 233: 2, 3

Scripture Reading: Acts 2: 1 – 13

Text: Acts 2: 1 – 4

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one

Accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as

Of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were

Sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and

It sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and

Began to speak with other tongues. As the Spirit gave them utterance.”

Congregational prayer

Offerings

Psalter 276

Sermon

Psalter 221: 1, 3

Thanksgiving Prayer

Psalter 405: 1, 5, 7

Doxology: Psalter 315

Beloved Congregation,

“I will pray the Father and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever.” This was Jesus’ promise to His disciples before He died. And this promise was repeated in effect when He said moments before His ascension: You shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

It is now ten days after Christ went up to heaven. The disciples, following their Master’s instructions, are together in an upper room in Jerusalem somewhere in the vicinity of the temple. It was probably the same room in which the eleven disciples were secluded between Christ’s death and resurrection. Here they are waiting for the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise. Many other disciples, both men and women, for a total of about one hundred and twenty, joined them.

Then, suddenly it happens. The Holy Spirit comes down amid spectacular sights and sounds. Tongues of fire appear above the disciples’ heads and they are filled with a power and zeal they had never known before.

Let us meditate again on this great event recorded in Acts 2. The theme of our text is

The Coming Of The Promised Spirit

1. the precise time of His coming

2. the spectacular manner of His coming

3. the permanent effects of His coming

1. The Precise Time of His Coming

Our text says: “and when the day of Pentecost was fully come.” That means when the fifty days separating Passover from Pentecost were completed. The word Pentecost means fifty or fiftieth. It was an Old Testament harvest festival. Fifty days --seven weeks to the day--after the sickle was first put to the grain--the Israelites would carry baskets of their first fruits to the temple as a thank offering for the harvest. It was something like our Thanksgiving Day. In later Judaism, Pentecost

was seven weeks to the day after the Passover Sabbath, to celebrate the giving of the Law at Sinai where God had made Israel His own special people

Well, exactly fifty days after Jesus was crucified and died, fifty days after the promised Seed had been buried in the ground and sprouted to life on the third day, there was a harvest festival of the resurrection. Fifty days after His exodus through death into life, Jesus has a people, His Israel, His Church. It is the Church's New Testament birthday, in a sense. It is a day of celebration for the outpouring of the Spirit and the spread of the Gospel to all nations. Seven weeks to the day after Jesus died and rose from the dead, He breathes the wind and fire of His Spirit upon His Church.

We may be sure that the day began in prayer. As we are told in Acts 1, these one hundred and twenty disciples all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, waiting for the promised Holy Spirit. Did the disciples understand what this promise entailed? Did they know what to expect? I believe they did. Not only had their Master on several occasions told them about the coming Comforter, but He had also explained what the Holy Spirit would do for them: He would teach them all things reminding them of the things Jesus had spoken to them and guide them into all truth. He would glorify Christ by taking from what was Christ’s, making it known to them.

But not only did they have this information from Christ to go by; they also knew the Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming of the Spirit. We should realize, congregation, that both the advents of Christ and of the Spirit are clearly predicted in the Old Testament. Take Psalm 68:18, for instance and Isaiah 32:15, Ezekiel 36:26; 39:29,Joel 2:28 and Haggai 2:9. In these passages we find the descent of the third Person of the Trinity announced as definitely as was the incarnation of the second Person.

We may assume then that Jesus’ disciples were well acquainted with these prophecies and that they were eagerly longing for that filling of the Spirit that had been promised them both by Jehovah in the ancient Scriptures and more recently by their Master.

They were also keenly aware of their weakness and so they prayed for the power of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus had told them, would come upon them not many days hence. This is ever the proper way for believers to act. When God promises us something we need to pray for the fulfilment of that promise. Here Christ’s disciples were praying for the baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire as John the Baptist had already foretold.

That is not to say that the Spirit came in answer to the disciple’s prayers, no more than that Christ was born as a result of His people’s prayer. We have to be careful here. The disciples’ undoubtedly prayed for the fulfilment of God’s promise concerning the Spirit’s coming. But when He came, He came in a sovereign way and at the time appointed by God from eternity. I say this because there are people, Pentecostals and charismatics, who insist that the Spirit came as a direct result of the disciples’ prayers. From this they conclude that if we want a similar baptism of the Spirit, we need to earnestly pray and wait for this (second) blessing. This involves also meeting certain spiritual requirement, such as giving up all known sin and absolute surrender to God, they say.

I believe this is all wrong because it misses the whole point of Pentecost. The coming of the Holy Spirit is not a subjective experience, although there is obviously an experiential aspect to it. But it is first and foremost an objective act of God. At Pentecost a new dispensation is inaugurated. The age of the Spirit begins. It is characteristic of this age is that the Church is indwelt by the Spirit and empowered by Him to do the work of Christ on earth. That’s where the Pentecostal fire and the wind come in and this brings us to our second point:

2. The Spectacular Manner Of The Spirit’s Coming

Verse 2 tells us that suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, which filled the whole house where they were sitting.

Seven weeks prior to this, Jesus had breathed on His apostles, ordaining them as ministers, authorizing them to forgive and retain sins in His name. That was a mini Pentecost. Now, from the majesty of the right hand of God, He breathes on all His disciples, His entire church, pastors and people alike, men and women--all without exception. What Moses wished for came to pass. All God's people were given the Spirit. It is the Lord's big Pentecost, the harvest festival of His death and resurrection.

Christians often debate the question whether Pentecost is a once-for-all event or an ongoing, repeatable experience. It is a question that cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. We do not believe in a repetition of Pentecost as such, but we do believe in a continuation of it. There is a vast difference between these two.

Pentecost is not repeatable as an event for the simple reason that it is a redemptive act of God. Like Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and the Ascension it is a once-for-all event. The Holy Spirit could come into the Church only once, just as Christ could be born only once, and die, arise from the dead and go to heaven only once.

Yet Pentecost also has a permanent or enduring value for the Church. When the Spirit came, He did not come and go. He came to stay. He took up His abode in the body, the church of Christ and never left. That is the permanent and lasting value of this

But what about those signs that accompanied the arrival of the Spirit? The wind or the sound of it and the tongues of fire--can these phenomena be repeated? Whether they can or not is not for us to say. God is sovereign and can do whatever He pleases and when He pleases. But historically speaking, they have never been repeated.

Pentecostals and other charismatics, of course, claim that these external signs and wonders are very important and can be reproduced in some sense, especially the sign of speaking in tongues. But why do they always focus on tongue speaking and never on the wind and the fire? These things belong together, it would seem.

We should realize why Pentecost involved the miracle of speaking in tongues. There was a special significance to this phenomenon. It was to show that the Gospel was no longer restricted to the Jews but would from this day forward be preached to the whole world. Here we come to our third point, namely

3. The Result Or The Permanent Result Of The Spirit’s Coming

Filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit, the one hundred and twenty disciples opened their mouths and spoke. Pentecost is about words and witnessing. Tongues that were heavy with the Galilean dialect were loosed to speak in all the languages of the known world.

No one that day could say that the Gospel was not meant for them. Everyone heard the good news of God’s love in his own language and dialect: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, people from Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphilia, Egypt, Libya, Rome--all over the Roman Empire. Jews and Gentile converts to Judaism.

By the end of the day, three thousand people had been baptized into the name of Jesus. Imagine baptizing three thousand people in a single day! Three thousand grief-stricken sinners repented of their sins and believed that the One they had crucified had died and risen for them. Three thousand received the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of their sins. Three thousand went back to their homelands and homes, bearing the good news of Jesus crucified, risen and reigning--in their own native tongues to their children and co-workers and neighbours. The fire of Pentecost spread like a brushfire in dry grass on a windy day. It spread through the Roman Empire and Asia Minor, to all nations.

It is a fire that has blazed for two thousand years across nations and peoples. Great political empires have come and gone. Great leaders have risen and fallen. Great churches have been built and torn down. Men have tried to stamp this fire out. But the harder they tried, the more it spread and the hotter it burned.

The Spirit of Christ who brings the fire of the Father's love continues to fan the flames over His Church. He still fills His people with heavenly fire, breathing life into our death, melting our frozen and hardened hearts with the warm rays of the Sun of righteousness. He continues to come whenever His Word is read or preached or sung--at home, in church, in school, hospital and prison.

We pray that the Spirit may come to us every Lord's Day as we gather around the Word--that He would give us ears to hear, minds to understand and hearts to believe it. But we also pray for tongues to respond in prayer, praise and thanksgiving. We pray that the Spirit will come to us each day as we read the Scriptures in our homes and teach our children the truth of God's redeeming love. We pray that they might grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We pray that the Spirit would take hold of our tongues, so that we would be bold to speak the name of Christ to those who have not heard of that only Name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved.

The Holy Spirit is no aimless, empty breeze. He is a mighty Preacher who carries the living Word of Christ from mouths to ears, from preachers to hearers, from Christians to the world, from you to your neighbour. The Spirit is the Preacher, the Proclaimer, the Comforter, and Counsellor. He takes what belongs to Jesus and delivers it to a world lost in sin.

Someone has said the Holy Spirit is the UPS delivery Person of the Trinity. The eternal life worked by the Father's grace through the death and resurrection of His Son is delivered to us by the Holy Spirit and is made our own by gladly receiving the Word. What Jesus won for us when He died on the cross--our redemption, our forgiveness, our salvation, our eternal life--the Spirit

offers, delivers, and applies to us by the preaching of both Law and Gospel. And the amazing thing is that in doing so He makes use of the human tongue.

Tongues as of fire settled on each of the disciples, and each of the disciples spoke in the tongues of men. Luther thought that artists are missing the point when they draw the tongues of fire on top of the disciples’ heads. Those tongues should be over their mouths, he suggested, because the mouth is the place where is the action of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is a miracle of the tongue: tongues as of fire and tongues of men.

Simple Galileans, recognizable by their thick northern accents, are speaking about the wonderful works of God with great boldness and clarity in dozens of different languages and dialects. People were astounded at what they heard. Some thought that the disciples were drunk, filled with sweet wine. But the only spirit that filled them that morning was the Holy Spirit, the teacher and purifier of tongues.