The Arrival of the Holy Spirit
Acts 2:1-13
February 19, 2012
Tonight we have the luxury of witnessing through the pages of Scripture
One of the most important and impactful moments of all of history.
For here in Acts 2 the Holy Spirit of God arrives on the scene
And the Church of Christ is born.
Now to sort of build the anticipation just a bit,
Let me remind you of the promises that were given of this day.
I suppose you could say that the promises regarding the Holy Spirit
Began all the way back in the Old Testament.
Zechariah 4:6 “Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.”
But really and truly the coming and indwelling of the Holy Spirit
Was never really understood in the Old Testament.
In fact, it was a mystery.
Colossians 1:25-27 “Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
The presence of the Spirit was understood in the Old Testament,
But the indwelling of the Spirit was not.
This was a promise that began to be revealed in the New Testament.
John the Baptist was the first to reveal it.
Matthew 3:11 “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
And from there Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit often.
John 7:37-39 “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
To those who would believe Jesus promised God’s Spirit WITHIN them,
Not just UPON them. This was life and power from the inside out.
Which is what Jesus reiterated again in the Upper Room
The night before He died.
John 14:16-17 “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”
And so the Spirit of God was coming to dwell in men.
And the benefits of this are numerous.
John 14:26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”
This fact single handedly allowed the apostles
To write not only the gospels but also all of the New Testament.
For believers of all ages He also serves in this capacity
As He opens our eyes to understand the Scriptures.
Paul said:
1 Corinthians 2:9-13 “but just as it is written, “THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.” For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.”
He is definitely the teacher that Jesus promised would come.
But far more than just a teacher, He is also a witness.
See He doesn’t just come to help us, He comes to use us.
John 15:26-27 “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.”
And that is why His coming is most definitely to our advantage.
John 16:5-15 “But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ “But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”
Obviously God’s Spirit is necessary for things like salvation, and ministry.
And that is why even when Jesus rose from the dead
He pointed them to the Spirit of God.
John 20:22-23 “And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. “If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”
That speaks of the authority granted to them through God’s Spirit.
He is imperative to ministry.
Luke 24:49 “And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
Acts 1:8 “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
So for the last 3 years more or less,
God has been promising the special arrival of the Holy Spirit.
Not just a Spirit to oversee the workings of the church,
But a Spirit to indwell every member of the church
And empower them to do the work God has in store.
He is the newly anticipated member of the Trinity.
This whole thing started with God’s glory dwelling behind the veil.
That was “God To Us”
Then we saw God’s Son clothed in human flesh.
That was “God With Us”
Now they anticipated God’s Spirit coming to live within them.
That is “God In Us”
This is what the early church anticipated.
The Holy Spirit was to come Providing power,
Teaching truth, and Granting authority.
He would bring Conviction to sinners,
Guidance to saints, and Glory to Jesus.
He is the Helper, the Comforter, the Advocate,
The Witness, the Teacher, and the Guide.
He is the single most important figure
In explaining how the church accomplished anything!
Obviously, as Jesus said, He is to our advantage.
The church could not start until the Holy Spirit arrived.
That is what we see here.
3 things I want you to see.
#1 HE CAME IN POWER
Acts 2:1-4
The first thing we notice is the obvious timing of this event.
“When the day of Pentecost had come”
Pentecost meant “fiftieth”
It was an event that occurred 50 days after the Passover.
When you read the Old Testament,
You are familiar with this event as “The Feast of Weeks”
Leviticus 23:15-21 “You shall also count for yourselves from the day after the sabbath, from the day when you brought in the sheaf of the wave offering; there shall be seven complete sabbaths. ‘You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath; then you shall present a new grain offering to the LORD. ‘You shall bring in from your dwelling places two loaves of bread for a wave offering, made of two-tenths of an ephah; they shall be of a fine flour, baked with leaven as first fruits to the LORD. ‘Along with the bread you shall present seven one year old male lambs without defect, and a bull of the herd and two rams; they are to be a burnt offering to the LORD, with their grain offering and their drink offerings, an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the LORD. ‘You shall also offer one male goat for a sin offering and two male lambs one year old for a sacrifice of peace offerings. ‘The priest shall then wave them with the bread of the first fruits for a wave offering with two lambs before the LORD; they are to be holy to the LORD for the priest. ‘On this same day you shall make a proclamation as well; you are to have a holy convocation. You shall do no laborious work. It is to be a perpetual statute in all your dwelling places throughout your generations.”
This was one of the feasts that every Jewish male was required to attend.
It was the feast of the “first fruits”
After your crops had been planted and the very first fruits came out of the field,
You were to offer them to the Lord as a sign of the harvest to come.
After the harvest was complete the Jews returned in the seventh month to celebrate the feast of trumpets, the day of atonement, and the feast of booths, which signified the fullness of the harvest having come in.
And so the fact that God sent His Spirit during Pentecost or
“The Feast of Weeks” was significant
As here we see the first fruits of the church.
What occurred here was just a taste of what was coming.
And again we recognize that “they were all together in one place.”
And this is not surprising.
As we said last Sunday night at this point in history,
The glory of God was no longer behind the veil,
The Son of God was no longer on earth, and the Spirit of God had not yet come.
They were together fully devoting themselves to prayer.
And at a time when God’s presence was not on earth, this is obvious.
(2) “And suddenly”
Luke uses this term to reveal to you
That to a degree this was totally unexpected.
They knew the Spirit was coming but they didn’t know when.
(Very similar to how Christ will return one day)
“And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.”
And notice the verse.
Wind didn’t come, a noise came a wind came.
It sounded like a hurricane landed in that room!
All of a sudden – BOOM!
The point to that being that the Spirit of God came with power.
If you will remember this was sort of what Elijah wanted
Back at the mountain of the LORD.
But on that day God was not in the fire, nor the earthquake, nor the violent wind, God was in the gentle blowing signifying that the way God was working then was slow and steady and sure.
Elijah could not expect a fire-fall or an earth shattering event.
What God had planned for Israel in his day would take decades and would continue on through many different men. It was a slow gentle blowing.
Even to a degree when Jesus came He slipped in the back door.
He was announced by a star and worshiped by shepherds
In a lowly manger behind a hotel.
But not here.
• Here God is the violent wind!
• Here God is urgent.
• Here God is powerful.
• Here God explodes on the scene.
• No one could miss Him.
• No one could ignore Him.
• He was about to radically shape this world.
• And He announces His presence.
• He came to change things and change them drastically.
• He came to rock the world.
(3) “And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them.”
Many have tried to link this back to John the Baptist
Saying that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.
That is not what we’re talking about here.
Clearly John was talking about the fire of judgment to burn away the chaff.
These were “tongues as of fire”
Luke is simply describing something truly indescribable
In the only way he knows how.
He was loud like wind and He looked like fire.
(Very similar to John trying to describe the Revelation)
The significant thing is that the Holy Spirit came
And “rested on each one of them.”
Not just the 12 apostles, but all 120 that had gathered in that room.
This was not about appointing a new leader
This was about equipping all believers in a powerful way!
(4) “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.”
OK, let’s do a little Bible work here.
(I don’t want to deviate too much from the point, but there is enough confusion surrounding this we have to clarify it a little)
I know there is a movement today that promotes what is commonly called
“The Baptism of the Holy Spirit”
Which is supposedly accompanied by speaking in tongues.
This experience is often promoted as occurring after a believer, in the presence of others who have had the experience, prays to receive this baptism, and then God’s Spirit enables him or her to speak with an ecstatic utterance.
Commonly an “unknown language”
Please read your Bible carefully and see this is not what happened here.
1) They were praying to receive anything, they were surprised.
(The Holy Spirit was coming whether they asked or not)
2) They were not baptized in the Spirit here, they were “filled with the Holy Spirit”
Being filled with the Spirit is different than being baptized by the Spirit.
The baptism of the Spirit occurs at salvation,
It is a spiritual reality, not an experiential event.
The filling of the Spirit is something that we are commanded to have.
Ephesians 5:18-21 “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.”
The companion verse to that is this:
Colossians 3:16-17 “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”
Being filled with the Spirit comes when we let Him have full control of us.
When we repent of sin and fill our minds and hearts with His Word.
That is what happened to these people here.
They were made useable by God.
3) They did not speak in ecstatic, unknown tongues, they spoke with “other tongues”.
The Greek word being GLOSSA which is a term for actual known languages, which the rest of the text will reveal.
4) Furthermore this was not something they asked for, practiced, or developed, it was something the Holy Spirit was doing in them completely void of their ability or even desire.
This was the Holy Spirit arriving to do
Exactly what Jesus said He would do, He came to witness.
This is not them speaking, this is Him speaking.
They are not witnessing here by His power,
He is witnessing with their mouth.
In this room, the Holy Spirit has seized the entire situation
And is using these people for His own purposes.
The point is that the Spirit of God came in power.
#2 HE CAME WITH PROCLAMATION
Acts 2:5-11
Jesus said He would come to witness and that is exactly what He is doing.
“Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven.”
In other words men had traveled from all over to be in Jerusalem
For the “Feast of Weeks” as they were commanded in the Law to do.
There were here because they were devout Jews
And they were staying here until the feast was over.
(6) “And when this sound occurred, (the noise like a violent rushing wind) the crowd came together…”
So the Spirit of God by way of a loud noise has gathered a crowd.
But the crowd was in no way ready for what they were about to see and hear.
“and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. They were amazed and astonished, saying, “Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born?”
The people were shocked!
Not that these men were speaking jibberish,
That would really have made them sound drunk.
They were shocked because these men
Were speaking actual, current, known languages.
(And please note the people who understood did not have the Spirit of God
As a supernatural means to interpret.)
The Holy Spirit was using the 120 to supernaturally
Speak the truth in each man’s native language.
And this was especially surprising since they were “Galileans”,
Those noted as not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
And then the actual languages are listed.
(9-11) “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs — we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.”
Now understand how miraculous this was.
In our day thanks to media and the ease of air travel,
It is not uncommon to recognize a language even if you don’t speak it.
We can recognize French, or German, or Spanish
Simply because the global media has introduced them to us.
But in this day, when travel was limited this was phenomenal.
There is no way the 120 could have known those languages
Apart from the Holy Spirit speaking them to them.
And we even know what they were saying, “we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.”
The Holy Spirit had come to proclaim truth and bear witness
Just as Jesus said and He wasted no time doing just that.
It is clear then that the tongues here
Was not some personal devotion
Meant to deepen the prayer life of the 120.
Tongues here was an undeniable sign that God’s Spirit had come.
(just as it is the other 2 times it is mentioned in Acts)
Scripturally tongues is a sign for unbelievers.
1 Corinthians 14:20-22 “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature. In the Law it is written, “BY MEN OF STRANGE TONGUES AND BY THE LIPS OF STRANGERS I WILL SPEAK TO THIS PEOPLE, AND EVEN SO THEY WILL NOT LISTEN TO ME,” says the Lord. So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers; but prophecy is for a sign, not to unbelievers but to those who believe.”
It was actually a form of judgment indicating
That since people had rejected the truth in their own language,
God would now speak it in a language they could not understand.
Obviously here it also served an evangelistic purpose.
But the point is that the Holy Spirit was not some sort of benefit.
• He was not some sort of added bonus to the spiritually elite.
• This was not an added blessing on a few super-faithful.
• He did not come in response to their prayer…
• He did not enable in response to their request…
He came on His own timing to do His own thing.
He used God’s people to speak His message
The way He wanted to say to a lost and unbelieving world.
He is the Leader here, not the Servant.
Too much of people’s theology tries to relegate the Holy Spirit
To some sort of added power that we can summon.
You know we want to accomplish something beyond us,
So we just tell the Holy Spirit to come work His magic
And He just jumps right up to our request.
NOT SO!
• We submit to Him, not Him to us.
• We let Him fill us to accomplish His work.
• He doesn’t fill us to accomplish ours.
He came in power and He made proclamation.
#3 HE CAME IN PECULIARITY
Acts 2:12-13
Now the amazement part is obvious here.
“And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
That is not surprising.
Earlier Jesus told the disciples:
John 14:16-17 “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”
Jesus told us that the world would not be able to recognize Him.
That does not mean that the world can’t see the effects of Him,
It simply means that the world won’t recognize those effects
As being the result of the Holy Spirit.
Remember when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus?
John 3:8-10 “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?”
And that is the same thing you see here.
The world doesn’t understand the Holy Spirit.
But even in that you can break the world into two categories.
None understand Him, but some are CURIOUS and others are SKEPTICS.
One is AMAZED and the other is MOCKING.
Those amazed asked, “What does this mean?”
In other words, what should we do?
They are open to the message of God’s Spirit.
Those who mocked said, “They are full of sweet wine.”
In other words, we want nothing to do with that.
The point is that the Holy Spirit is a polarizing figure.
He is every bit as polarizing as Jesus.
When you allow your life to be filled by Him and He uses you,
It will not make everyone cheer.
Some will be amazed and want to know more,
Others will instantly be your enemy.
And that is seen throughout the book of Acts.
But in studying His arrival we see that He is in fact
The One who makes the difference for the church.
He comes in Power.
He comes with Proclamation.
He comes in Peculiarity.
And without a doubt church we need Him!
We talked about it Wednesday night as Paul asked the Galatians:
Galatians 3:3 “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
You can’t accomplish spiritual things with physical effort.
If it is spiritual work, then only the Spirit of God can accomplish it.
We can always maintain a shell and mirage of a church image.
• We can always go through the motions.
• We can always sing songs and have a sermon.
• We can follow the outline of the bulletin.
• We can maintain all our rituals.
But in order to make a difference for the kingdom of God
We must allow the Spirit of God to fill us and use us.
The early church could not fulfill their mission
Without the Spirit of God and neither can we.
You see that is the difference between chapter 1 and chapter 2 of Acts.
In chapter 1 the disciples were held back, in chapter 2 they are sent out.
The difference is the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Let me encourage you church
• To seek Him.
• Be filled by Him.
• Follow His leading.
• Let Him accomplish His work through you.
Acts 1:8 “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
