Let's turn in our Bibles to Acts
chapter 2. One of the wonderful things in
the scriptures is that we have again and again repeated throughout
the Old Testament and the New the very life experience of a
believer. And it's remarkable to think
what depths of darkness the apostles in that early church were taken
into, and then what glorious light came shining upon it. The darkness, the darkness dispelled
and taken away by the rays of sunshine. In Acts chapter 1 we have the
glorious descriptions of the Lord Jesus and those days that
he spent with his apostles and the wonderful way he left them.
In Acts chapter 2 we see the remarkable coming of the Holy
Spirit. That which was anticipated from
the very beginning is now the reality of these people. And it's the reality of all of
God's people. Christ in you, Christ with you,
Christ sustaining you. The Blessed Holy Spirit is given
the glorious task, isn't it, in this age to actually finish
the building. So many people start things,
but it's only when it's beautifully finished is there to be rejoiced
in and enjoyed in remarkable ways. And such is the glory of
the work of the Holy Spirit, to take the things of the Lord
Jesus Christ and reveal them to us. And the wonder of Acts
chapter 2 is that the Holy Spirit, like the other members of the
trolleying God, never changes. What He did then is what He is
doing now. Our God changes not. What he did in the life of that
church in the early days is what he can do and does do in the
lives of his people and in the lives, the life of his church,
his individual churches on this earth. He's still at work. He's still at work finishing
that glorious work that was in a sense designed and begun in
eternity and is the work upon which this world and all the
events of this world hinge. I suppose the thing is that no
one read to us out of 1 Peter and full of those glorious promises,
full of those precious promises, and they're precious to us. They're
precious to God's people. And we should expect the Holy Spirit to do the things
again and again in the life of His people, in the life of the
Church, we should expect it to continue. We should be looking
forward again. It will be the experience of
God's people again and again that we'll be taken to places
of darkness, inexplicable darkness, and sometimes sorrow will be
added to sorrow in ways which break us and crush us, and yet
As that church suffered in those days of darkness when the light
of the glory of the Lord Jesus seemed hidden and seemed lost
forever, He comes back again and He revives and He restores. Acts chapter 2 is a glorious
picture and something I would ask you Please, if the Lord allows
you to spend some time just reading that short book of Joel, and
read it through the eyes of faith, read it looking for the Lord
Jesus Christ, because we are led by the Holy Spirit to see
that the prophecy of Joel is fulfilled before us in Acts chapter
2. Let's just read these first 11
verses. 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 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. And there
dwelling at Jerusalem, There were, dwelling at Jerusalem,
Jews, devout men, out of every nation unto heaven. Now when
this was noised about, the multitude came together and were confounded,
because that every man heard them speak in his own language.
And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another,
Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear
we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born, Parthians
and Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia and Judea
and Cappadocia and Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia in
Egypt, in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of
Rome, Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians. Do we hear them
speak? in our tongues the wonderful
works of God. Wouldn't it be wonderful if today,
yet again, we could hear the wonderful works of God? Not the
wonderful works of man, as Norm so clearly pointed out, the wonderful
works of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we do pray that you would take your word and make it spirit
and life to us that we might be able to speak and to hear
and to see with the eyes of faith. the wonderful works of God, the
wonderful works of our Triune God, the wonderful works of the
Blessed Father, our Father, Abba Father, the wonderful works of
our Blessed Redeemer, and the wonderful works of the Blessed
Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, our Comforter, He who comes alongside
as our Advocate, He who causes us to see the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, our Father, we pray your
blessing on us and those that can't be with us this morning
and pray your blessing upon your church throughout this world. And pray your blessing, Heavenly
Father, upon those who are yours and yet don't know it. May the Holy Spirit come as a
mighty rushing wind upon them. that they might see your glory,
that they might join us and join the hosts of heaven in speaking
of the wondrous works of God. We are in your hands and we are
thankful that that is the case, our Father. Bless us for Christ's
sake. Amen. And so Acts chapter 2 begins
about talking about the When the day of Pentecost, there were
three feasts, all within six weeks of each other roughly.
The Feast of Passover, of course, is the feast that began in Egypt,
and it was when the judgment of God fell upon Egypt. And the Lord saw the blood. The Lord saw the blood of the
Lamb, and He passed over the children of God. The Lamb suffered
the wrath, and the children of God go free. He is, that's 1 Corinthians 5.7,
He is our Passover. And He had, just those weeks
beforehand, He'd kept that Passover feast. And in that Passover feast,
the last of them, he instituted the Lord's Supper. On the Sunday
after Passover, there was this Feast of the Firstfruits. And
on the day of the Lord's resurrection he was raised again. He rose
from the grave as the firstfruits of all those that will be risen
from the grave, 1 Corinthians 15 says. He's the firstfruits. At the beginning of the harvest
they brought the firstfruits to God and said all that we have
comes from you, it comes from your work, and it's given to
us. And the firstfruits is just the
sign, isn't it, that the great harvest is out there in the field,
the crops are growing and they're ripening, we're bringing some
in, and there's a multitude more to come in. The Lord Jesus said
the fields are white on the harvest. all of God's children will be
brought in. And the Feast of Pentecost was
held seven weeks after the Passover, at the end of the harvest. And
this is the great day that we speak of here. We speak again
and again of our great God. This God in Trinity, our Triune
God, God the Father, has from all eternity and has through
the time that Church was in the wilderness until the coming of
the Lord Jesus, He's expressed again and again His love for
the Church. Again and again He's professed
and proclaimed the glory of His Son. And when the Son came, and
began his ministry, there was this glorious picture of the
triune God, wasn't it? God the Father spoke from heaven. This is my beloved Son in whom
I am well pleased. And in whom, all those who are
in Him, He's well pleased with them. And God the Holy Spirit
came down as a dove and rested on the Saviour, our Lord Jesus
Christ. And God the Son, as we see through
the Old Testament, again and again, He came before His Incarnation,
He came again and again, and He came to meet with His people,
to visit with His people. If anyone saw God, Anyone who
met with God, as Moses did, and Isaiah did, and Job did, they
met with the Lord Jesus Christ, the one mediator before God and
man. He came again and again, but
He came and left, and He came eventually in the Incarnation,
born of a virgin, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem
them. And the Blessed Holy Spirit,
whom we'll speak of today, He'd always, He'd always presided
over the Church, the Church which He founded. He was there in creation. He was there, as Norm read out
of 1st and 2nd Peter, He was there inspiring the prophets
to speak of the Lord Jesus Christ. to speak of who man is, to speak
of who God is and to speak of the wonders of salvation. He is the Almighty Teacher of
the Church and He will make all of that salvation work effectual
in the hearts of His people. So all of our triune God is involved
in salvation from all eternity. And here, when the day of Pentecost
was fully come, fully come, this was the day, the Spirit had come
in all sorts of ways in the Old Testament, inspiring people,
resting upon people and then being taken away. The Spirit
came upon even the likes of King Saul, the reprobate King Saul
for a time and was taken away. No wonder David pleaded with
the Lord in Psalm 51, don't take your Holy Spirit from me. Why? Because to have the Holy Spirit
taken from you is to be left in the hands of madness and demonic
forces, and to be devoid of the grace of God. And the day of
Pentecost was fully come. They were all with one accord
in one place. Again and again we will see as
we look through these early chapters of Acts that the church began
as a unified body. The 120 in that room all were
filled with the Holy Spirit. The 120 there and the 12 apostles
all spoke with one voice. You sat the twelve apostles down
and asked them about any issue of doctrine that mattered to
eternal souls and to the glory of God, there would not have
been a single hint of dissension ever. This idea that it was concocted
by men and it had to be debated and worked out is nonsense. with one accord in one place. As the church begins, so will
it end. On that great day when the Lord
Jesus comes back to take us to himself, we'll all be in one
place and we'll all be in one accord. We will sing the wondrous
works of God. We will look upon it and be amazed
and wonder and delight in Him for all eternity. All the heresies
and errors of the Church are introduced species, like the
weeds in the parable of Matthew 13. And suddenly there came a
sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. There is in this coming of the
Holy Spirit a picture of how the Holy Spirit comes upon all
of God's children throughout time. I love the fact that there's
a suddenness to it. It's not something that's contrived
and manipulated by the activities of men and the activities of
religion. There's a suddenness. It's an
unexpected coming. This was a promised coming, as
we know. The Lord Jesus promised this
was coming. There will be a promised coming,
but when the promised coming comes, it will come as a suddenness
upon people. It will come with a direction,
won't it? It came from heaven. There will be a suddenness and
there will be a coming from heaven. The Blessed Spirit will come
from above. We will. We will, God's children
all, be born from above. And there is a sound, a sound
as of a mighty rushing wind. It's exactly what the Lord Jesus
Christ said to Nicodemus, wasn't it? Nicodemus, who was religious
and intelligent and knowledgeable and blind as a bat. He'd spent
his whole life studying God and talking about God to people,
and God stood in front of him and sat down with him, and he
didn't have a single clue who he was. And he says to Nicodemus,
you must be born from above. There must be a mighty Russian
wind from heaven. There must be. But he says in
John 3.8, he said, the wind blows where it wishes. The wind blows where it listens,
where it wills. and you hear the sound thereof
and you cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth, so
is every one that is born of the Spirit." We can't explain,
brothers and sisters. We can describe the glories of
our Redeemer. But it comes, it comes, and it's
a wonderful thing to ponder, isn't it? That it comes suddenly,
and it comes from heaven, and it comes upon people as a wind,
and you don't know where it's coming from. You don't know where
it's going, but you feel the effects of it. for our lost friends,
for our lost loved ones. There is in Sovereign Grace,
and in these words of the Blessed Holy Spirit in His activities,
great, great hope. Great hope, isn't it? It doesn't
require the intelligence or the wisdom or the permission of men
for God to do His mighty work. It comes as a mighty rushing
wind, and in its appearance there are cloven tongues as of fire. There is, in the coming of the
Holy Spirit, a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning. and it comes sitting upon them. As the Spirit came and rested
upon the Lord Jesus, it comes sitting upon the heads of each
of them. When the Holy Spirit comes, He
comes to abide forever, to be with you forever. And there is, at the end of all
of this, a glorious result, isn't it? The people speak, miraculously
speak, miraculously speaking tongues, but they speak of the
wondrous works of God. a mighty rushing wind in its
suddenness. But it came, isn't it? The word
wind and spirit, both in the New Testament and the Old, represent
the spirit. The word wind and spirit are
the same. in both the Old Testament, and the wind is often used to
represent the power and the presence of God. You might remember in
Ezekiel 37, under that field an army of dead dry bones, whitened
by the sun, as lifeless as you can possibly get lifelessness
on this earth. And Ezekiel is told to prophesy
unto the wind, son of man, say to the wind, thus says the Lord
God, come from the four winds, O breath, breathe upon these
slain, that they may live. It's exactly what preaching and
the gospel is about, isn't it? It's God sending a wind. God sending His presence. And the wind comes with a mighty,
rushing, irresistible power. We can no more withstand the
mighty power of God coming upon His chosen ones and applying
the finished work of the Lord Jesus than you can come and stand
outside and stop the westerly wind blowing. Such is the irresistible
grace and irresistible power of the Spirit of God. It's uncontrolled
by man. God's grace is sovereign, it's
almighty and it's irresistible. and it filled all the house where
they were sitting. It filled the house. The house
obviously signifies the church. The church is going to be filled
with the Holy Spirit and each member will be filled as we'll
see in a little while. Now there appeared, verse 3,
there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire. There are two ways of looking
at the cloven tongues. Either you can have a tongue that is
like the cloven hoof of a cow split into two resting on each
one of them. And that may signify the Jews
and the Gentiles that now all of creation is going to be brought
by the sovereign hand of God into the Church. But it may also,
the clovenness may also be a reference to the fact that this fire appeared
and it divided evenly and sat upon each one of them. And they all received it exactly. The fire represents the very
presence of God. The Lord talked with Moses face
to face out of the midst of the fire. And when Moses met the
Lord in the burning bush, the fire came out of the bush. The bush burned with fire, but
the bush was not consumed. Our Lord Jesus suffered the infinite
fire of the holy wrath of God. He consumed the fire and was
not burned. that John the Baptist said that
the Messiah will come in the Holy Spirit and with fire. Isaiah 4 says that there is,
when the Lord comes, when the Lord shall have washed away the
filth of the daughters of Zion, what a great description of our
sins, the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged
the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of
judgment and the spirit of burning. Clairvon Tums came as of fire. Fire is an emblem of the divinity
of our God. And God appeared to his people
and stayed with his people in that appearance for 40 years
as a pillar of fire that lit their days, a pillar of fire. And a pillar of fire and a pillar
of cloud separated God's children from the others. What was light
to the children of God at the Red Sea was darkness and blindness
to the Egyptians. Our God is a consuming fire and
when He comes to those of His own, He comes as He did to Isaiah
and He takes the flaming alive coal, a coal fire from the altar
of God and anoints His own. Fire comes to enlighten, to energise,
to invigorate the Church. And it sat, and it sat upon each
of them. As the Lord Jesus promised, the
Spirit will be with you forever. As the Lord Jesus promised in
John 15, He said, My joy might remain in you, that you may be
full, that your joy may be full, and they are all filled with
the Holy Ghost." It's remarkable, as they looked across that room,
as they looked across that room on that great day, each one would
have looked at every other member of the Church and what would
they have seen? That same tongue of fire sitting
on them. at rest on them. It's a glorious
way to think of our brothers and sisters in Christ. In our
flesh, as these 120, and especially the ones that we see and hear
most of, have failed in so many ways so miserably. May God grant
us the grace to look upon our brothers and sisters in Christ
through the eyes of faith, so that we might look beyond the
infirmities of our flesh Look beyond the infirmities of the
flesh of our brothers and see, see them as God sees them. Forgive them for Christ's sake. Be merciful to them. The Church
is one and one accord, isn't it? And they were filled with
the Holy Ghost. One of the remarkable things
about that filling is for something to be filled, it's actually the
outside looks the same, doesn't it? And inside there is something
completely different. It's Christ in you, the hope
of glory. It's a hard application, isn't
it? It's an internal work of God, applying the finished work
of the Lord Jesus personally and powerfully in the hearts
of God's people. So to be filled with the Holy
Spirit is to be controlled by Him, to be ruled by Him, to be
dominated by Him. And that's exactly what the children
of God want. Lord, take my life. Take everything
of my life and use it for your glory." It's to be filled with
grace. It's to be filled with His comfort. It's to be filled with His influences
over us. Just as these people had been
through the darkest of times and were now brought into this
glorious light, so He does with us again and again and again.
We suffer the darkness of unbelief and the darkness of sin, the
darkness of dwelling in this world, the darkness of living
in a religion that besmirches the name and treads upon the
precious blood of the Lord Jesus again and again and again. And
we feel the weight and the heaviness of living in this body of flesh.
And then, brothers and sisters, there is this light of the Gospel
that shines. And it comes in ways which are
unknowable, unfathomable. And we have, as the Ephesians
talks about, we have these things which are beyond knowledge and
beyond understanding. It is a precious gift. from our
great God, our glorious Holy Spirit, again and again, in the
midst of our darkness, we'll illuminate it with the glory
of His Son, at a time of His choosing, with irresistible grace
and power, and from above. And we'll see Him again and we'll
see ourselves afresh as his dearly beloved children. The Spirit
anointed the Lord Jesus Christ. He sat upon him and he was filled
with the Holy Spirit and the members of his body are treated
in exactly the same way. They are filled with the Holy
Spirit. He had in the Old Testament come
and left and come and left, as the Lord Jesus did, and now He
comes in a manifest way and He abides with them forever. And He has come. He has come
as He has been sent. It's very difficult to understand
the whole business of the sending of the members of the Triune
God, and God the Son was sent. And now Acts chapter Peter will
say, this Jesus Whom God hath raised up, whereof we are all
witnesses, therefore being at the right hand, Acts 2.33, therefore
being by the right hand of God exalted. God the Father is exalted
in all of His glory and His character. God the Son is now exalted. Having
received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He has shed
forth this, He has shed forth this which you now see and hear. He comes. He comes in mighty
rushing wind. He comes from heaven. He comes
to a people, a church which is gathered by Him. And they began
to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Such is the cry of all who stand
before God, that the Spirit will be the one who speaks. You hear
a man, you hear a vessel of clay, a broken clay pot. But as the
Spirit said to the churches, he that has an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit says to the churches. I want for you to hear from God. I want for you to meet Him and
to find Him as glorious as He proclaims Himself to be. Religion keeps telling man how
to live in this world. Gospel preachers want to show
men how to live before God, both here, but especially in eternity. God will see to the first when
the latter is accomplished, isn't it? If you know how to live before
God into eternity, you'll be led by Him through this world. from the space of the wondrous
works of God, they began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit
gave them utterance. There was in this gift of tongues
It came upon this church, it came upon others, as we'll see
in Acts chapter 10 and 11, it came as a miraculous gift upon
the disciples of Corinth. It's been the subject of so much
controversy over the years, so much rubbish has been talked
about it. For a start, when the Holy Spirit
is given the gift of tongues, the people will be speaking of
the wondrous works of God. The Holy Spirit is most exalted
when the Lord Jesus Christ is lifted up before men as glorious. So if you hear people talking
about the Holy Spirit all the time and not talking about the
Lord Jesus, it's not the Holy Spirit. Also the gift of tongues
was not a permanent gift. It was a sign, according to 1
Corinthians 4.22, it was a sign to unbelievers. There was in
Jerusalem on that day of Pentecost 120 believers. All outside of
that 120 were unbelievers. It was a sign to unbelievers. And it seems It seems from the
language that when they came to speak, instead of it being
this tongue speaking that you may have witnessed where it's
just gibberish and everyone is involved in competitive gibberish,
it is, it seems, as if they were speaking in a very ordered way
indeed, that they weren't competing. It wasn't Paul over here speaking
Arabic, and alongside him, Thomas, speaking Greek, they were, it
was an ordered thing. Now maybe the people were separated,
but it seems from the language that that was an ordered thing. And also, And the clearest description
of what tongue speaking really is, is that all biblical tongue
speaking for that time was a tongue speaking that was able to be
interpreted because someone else understood the language. This
modern tongue speaking is demonic. It is just gibberish that exalts
the flesh of man. The gift of tongues is the ability
to speak a language, and we can see it very, very clearly in
the text here, isn't it? What did they say? All those,
how we hear every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born,
their native tongue, and then it lists them all. We hear them,
verse 11, speaking in our tongues the wonderful works of God. The word tongues in the scriptures
always refers to just two things, a known language and the thing
that's in your mouth, and nothing else. It is. It is so clear, isn't it? It was as if For those of you
who have travelled, all of a sudden I was able to speak Tamil. I would have loved to have spoken
Tamil in India. I would have loved to have been
able to speak Tamil to those people. It was just gibberish
to me. And I worked for years to try
and understand it, and I could pick up little bits and pieces
of it. And when I thought that I'd got it really off pat, I
would practice my Tamil up in the hills of Uvi, and I'd practice
and I'd go to lessons, and I'd practice and practice and practice,
and I'd have all my phrases all worked out, and I'd drive down
to the plains where Gunnar and those people were, and I'd spout
out all these phrases that I'd learnt, thinking that here I
was, now I was speaking Tamil. And of course what it is, is
it's a language which is tonal and also it's divided up into
sort of sections. So the Tamil in Western Tamil
Nadu is different to the Tamil in Chennai and other places.
And it's tonal, so you can say the word and say it hundreds
of times over and think you've got it just right and you're
saying something completely different. completely different. I remember
Graham Dunkley practising his Arabic and then going to a church
in Jordan and speaking to people and he couldn't work out why
they were all laughing at him. And he was talking about the
fact that he had red hair. And what he'd actually said to them,
I am a pumpkin. The apostles had none of those
problems, brothers and sisters. They didn't need to go to language
school. The gifts were for a time. The gifts were for unbelievers. The gifts were given and distributed
in an orderly way. And the gifts were given so that
unbelievers could hear the wonderful works of God. They could hear
the Gospel. They could hear the Gospel proclaimed
clearly and effectively. And when, and when the New Testament
is finished being written, we don't need those things any longer. The signs were given for a time. The signs, the miraculous signs
and the gift of tongues were given by God to testify to the
fact that these were the servants of God and this Gospel that these
servants preach is the message from above. It is the true Gospel. We don't need supernatural gifts. Don't ever be envious of anyone
who claims to have supernatural gifts. You do not need them now,
brothers and sisters. We just need simple faith to
trust God. The power that came upon these
people was the power to preach the Gospel, to preach the Gospel
and preach the Gospel to the hearts of God's chosen people,
as we will see. To preach the Gospel to convince
them of who they were before God and who God was before them. The wonder of salvation. And God the Holy Spirit not only
enables the preacher to preach, He enables the chosen sinners
to hear and to understand and to believe the Gospel. And He
makes the Gospel a savour of life unto some and a savour of
death unto others. And He'll cause the children
of God to speak of the wonderful works of our God, verse 11. The wonderful works of our God. To hear someone speak of the
wonderful works of our God. It is just simply to preach Jesus
Christ and Him crucified, as we'll see as we go through Peter's
sermon. Every time, every time the word
preaching, 37 times in the Book of Acts the word preaching is
used. Every single one of them is a
reference to preaching Christ. The Holy Spirit is honoured most. when the Lord Jesus Christ is
proclaimed clearly. I love what the Lord said. He said, the spirit of the Lord
God is upon me. Isaiah 61. It's repeated in Luke
chapter four. Because the Lord has anointed
me. It's anointing from above. Good
tidings to the meek. He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. any broken hearted here, to proclaim
liberty for the captives. not to show them or tell them
that there's a way out of jail, but to proclaim their liberty.
Not on the basis of them doing something, it's the wonderful
works of God. To opening, the opening of the
prison to them that abound, the prison of sin, the prison of
unbelief, the prison of this world, the prison that is kept
locked by Satan. and a stronger one has come and
he's opened the doors. I love the picture of Samson
going down to Gaza and there were the doors of that great
town locked against him. What did Samson do? The great
type of our Lord Jesus Christ. He actually tore the gates off
their hinges, put them on his back, both of them, and carried
them up the hill out of the way and let the people free, if so
they desired. He will open the prison doors,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance
of our God, to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto them that
mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of
joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness,
that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting
of the Lord." Why? The last phrase in Isaiah 61.3,
that he might be glorified. Brothers and sisters, our great
God reigns. He will be glorified. He will
be glorified, He must be glorified. He'll be glorified in His people
as they are led to believe. The Blessed Holy Spirit takes
the things of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is His? Deity, salvation,
sovereignty. His exaltation and His glory
in heaven right now and His coming again, He takes all of those
things, all of what the Lord Jesus is, He takes them and He
reveals them to us. We cannot see them unless they
are revealed from heaven. We need a mighty rushing wind
that comes suddenly upon us, comes with irresistible power.
the fire of God's sovereign free grace, illuminating the Lord
Jesus, lighting our