Well, let's go back to this passage. Acts chapter 2. The book of Acts is a historical book, and it is the history of the apostolic ministry of the early church, and it covers a time period of roughly 30 to 35 years, from Acts 1 all the way through Acts chapter 28.

The central theme of the book of Acts is the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Know this, without His resurrection, His incarnation, His virgin birth, His perfect life, even His death upon the cross of Calvary, all of those things would have meant nothing without His resurrection.

So as you read through, and I would encourage you quite often to read through the book of the Acts, the acts that the apostles performed by the power of the Holy Spirit, testifying of the grace of God to sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ. As you read through the book of Acts, you will see over and over again how the resurrection of our Savior is continually mentioned.

I know only mention the resurrection right around Easter time. But we should be speaking of and rejoicing in His resurrection all year round. Because He lives. We live. Because He lives, we live spiritually. And we will live eternally. In fact, in 1 Peter, Peter talks about the fact that our regeneration, our new birth is tied to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so as you go through the book of Acts, and as I say, I would advise you to read the book of Acts, the emphasis is on the resurrection of Christ and his ascension and his enthronement. His exaltation, in other words. You see, the Holy Spirit had Luke to write the book of Acts in order to show us that the One who died for us, the One who laid down His life for us, the One who satisfied justice for us, the One who put our sins away by His death, He ever lives to make intercession for us.

Luke is presenting the exaltation, the enthronement, of our Lord Jesus Christ. Luke was the inspired writer, as I've already indicated. And the book of Acts sort of begins where the book of Luke ends. The book of Luke ends with, and you can read this for yourself, the 24th chapter of the book of of Luke, it ends with the ascension of our Lord Jesus. He presents himself to his apostles. He eats with them. He fellowships with them. He teaches them the meaning of all of the Old Testament scriptures, telling them that you shouldn't be surprised. You shouldn't be afraid. You shouldn't be amazed at what's happened here. My death and my resurrection, my ascension and my rule in glory forever is all set forth in the Old Testament.

For the Old Testament speaks of our Lord Jesus and the death that he would die and the glory that would follow his death. So Acts begins where the book of Luke has ended. The first chapter of the book of Acts presents to us the beginning of the birth of the church. The second chapter of the book of Acts, we see the actual beginning of the church of our Lord Jesus.

In the Old Testament you see things were primarily written to and for the Jews. But as we get to the book of Acts and you have all of these people coming into Jerusalem for Passover and then for Pentecost, And we have Gentiles throughout the book of Acts being mentioned, and Peter preaching to them as he did to Cornelius, and then the Apostle Paul preaching to the Gentiles. And as he did in so many locations, we have here a presentation of the fact that this is the actual beginning of the church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The word church means a called out assembly. So in the book of Acts we find local assemblies, we find many assemblies where the gospel of Christ is proclaimed, and we find one great large multitude of people which constitutes the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. The book of Acts begins with the church in her infancy. And then we behold, as we work through the book of Acts, and as you read through the book of Acts, you see the church growing, you see it expanding. You see the borders of the kingdom of grace conquering more people.

Because the book of Acts, speaking to us of the exaltation of our Lord Jesus, it presents to us the fact that our Savior is the conquering King. And His message, the glorious gospel of His grace, is going forth to all the four corners of the earth. For the Lord has a people from everywhere, from the north, the east, the south, and the west. A multitude that nobody can number according to John in the book of the Revelation. People of many different backgrounds, people of many different nationalities. Because our Lord has chosen a people out of every nation.

The Lord said to them back in the first chapter, wait before you go forth and preach this gospel. Wait to be equipped with the power that the Holy Spirit will give you. Wait till the Spirit of God comes upon you to teach you more fully the gospel of my grace, the good news of that which I have done and who I am. So wait, He said. Wait ten days, that's how long it would be. Forty days after his resurrection, he ascended back to heaven. Then he said, now you just stay here. They were itching to go forth, I'm sure that they were. They wanted to tell the world what, who Christ is and what Christ had done. But he said, you've got to put the brakes on now. I know you're full of enthusiasm and I know you want to go forth and preach the word, but just wait for the coming of the spirit of God who will empower you to go forth and preach the message of the gospel.

So really in chapter 1, we can kind of summarize chapter 1 as wait. Wait. And then in chapter 2, go forth. After you've learned, after you've been taught, then go forth. The disciples are sent out.

Now remember this, just kind of a historical note, all of chapter 2 happened in one day. It's a full day. But all of it happened in one day. This was the divinely appointed time when the Holy Spirit would be given in the fullness of His power. That doesn't mean that He wasn't present in the Old Testament. First of all, the Holy Spirit did not just begin to exist, In the book of Acts, he's the eternal God. He's the third person of the Holy Trinity.

They're taught to wait. They're taught to wait. In the Old Testament, it's like the Spirit of God was given in his power little by little. Kind of think of it like that. Little by little. It's like Isaiah says, here little, there little. But you get to the book of Acts in the second chapter, now the Holy Spirit comes in the fullness of His power and He's not only going to deal with Jews, He's going to deal with Gentiles.

In the majesty of His being, the Holy Spirit will accompany the preaching of the gospel as these apostles and then others after them obey the Great Commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel. And the Holy Spirit would come upon the preaching of the gospel of Christ, and as He did so, He would quicken sinners to believe the truth of Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God, and that life is in believing his name.

Now we know that the Holy Spirit could not and would not come until something specific happened. Hold your place here and go back to the book of John. Look at John chapter seven. He could not and he would not come until something very necessary happened, very specific had to happen.

John chapter 7, verse 37. In the last day, that is the great day of the feast, the feast of tabernacles, Jesus stood and cried saying, if any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. And I say, if you're thirsty for God, If you're thirsty for the Lord Jesus, if you're thirsty for God's salvation, if you're thirsty for God's forgiveness, if you're thirsty for the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, drink of the water of life freely. Believe Him. Lay hold of Him.

So he said to let him come and drink. He says in verse 38, He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. And we've read in Acts chapter 2, those who believed on him, have now received the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

So I begin verse 39 again. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given. In fact, he would be given some seven and one-half months later from this passage of Scripture. The Holy Spirit was not yet given in the fullness of His power. And here's the reason. Because that Jesus was not glorified.

You see, our Lord Jesus was glorified by His death upon the cross. By substitutionary sacrifice. That had to happen. Christ had to die. Christ had to lay down His life. He had to redeem His people. He had to satisfy God's law and God's justice. He had to finish the work of salvation, and upon the basis of His life lived and His death that He died and His resurrection, on the basis of Jesus Christ and His faithfulness to His covenant of grace obligations, The Holy Spirit was given.

But He couldn't be given, He wouldn't be given until Christ was glorified. You see, till the Savior had worked out salvation, till He had brought to pass the infinite purpose of God in redemption, till that happened, there was no message for the Holy Spirit to set forth. There was no gospel for him to empower the apostles to preach. You see, the gospel of the Old Testament was indeed true, but it was a gospel that dealt with emblems and figures and typologies. But now Christ has come. He has laid down His life. He has secured the salvation of His people. and He's been raised from the dead and He's gone back to glory. And in 10 days, the Spirit of God will then come on the basis of our Lord Jesus Christ and His life laid down.

After Passover, plus one day, the Jews observed the Feast of Pentecost. Pente, 50. 50 days after Passover. God's Passover Lamb has died. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, He has died. 40 days after His death, He ascended. After His resurrection, I should say, He ascended. And 10 more days would make 50 days. 50 days after Passover. And that's when Pentecost was held. It was a feast of the Jews. It was really to express thanksgiving to the Lord, at least originally this feast was, to express thanksgiving to the Lord for the end gathering of the wheat harvest, which would begin at this time, after the day of Pentecost, the wheat harvest would begin in earnest. So this was commemorating and thanking God for the impending harvest that was about to take place.

But there's a spiritual application to Pentecost. Because you see, after the death, the burial, and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, and after His ascension, there's going to be a great in-gathering, there's going to be a harvest of a different sort. It's going to be a harvest of souls. It's going to be a harvest of sinners saved by the grace of God, as the Spirit of God enables these men to go forth and preach Christ crucified, buried, risen again, and now ascended back to heaven. There's going to be a great end gathering. 3,000 people are going to be saved on this very day.

Before the Spirit of God was given, only 120 people believed the gospel of Christ. But now they begin to preach the gospel in other tongues, in other languages, that is, in languages they had never studied before. It wasn't some kind of gibberish. It wasn't a heavenly language. What amazed the people was this. They said, we hear every one of us in our own tongue, in our own language. Those who today claim that they're speaking in other tongues or speaking in a heavenly language are ignorant of the word of God. Read this again for yourself. They were amazed that they heard the truth in their own tongue, in their own language.

Many years ago, I used to drive for United Parcel Service in Lexington, North Carolina. And I delivered to businesses downtown, and I delivered to residential areas, and some of them were churches. I was delivering a package to the Church of God. And it was in the summertime. And so I pulled up and grabbed my, of course back then we didn't have the computerized thing like they've got now, but we had clipboard where they'd have to sign. I need your signature for the delivery of the package.

And I went to the office and I knocked on the door and nobody came to the door and I heard some racket coming from the back of the church. Then I remembered I'd just seen a sign out front at the Vacation Bible School. So I went around back, knowing I could get somebody's signature around back, and I went around back, and here were all these children, and they were saying unusual words, words I'd never heard before.

And so I went up, I recognized the secretary, because I had delivered there several times before, and I said, I need your signature for a package. I said, what's going on here? She said, we're teaching them to speak in tongues. I said, what language would that be? And she said, well, it's a heavenly language. I said, that's not what they did in the book of Acts, the second chapter. They spoke in languages that people could understand because it would be the same dialect, the same language from the area from which they came.

She said, you just don't understand. You just don't believe the power of the Holy Spirit. I said, I do believe the power of the Holy Spirit.

See, here's an illustration. Our son David's visiting us from Japan and he's a translator. And you know, we visited our family down in Virginia a couple of weeks ago, and they all said, hey David, speak a little Japanese for us. And of course he would. I didn't know what he was saying. I had no idea. I needed a translator. But I knew what he was saying wasn't gibberish. It's a real language. And we've been over there five, six times. I picked up a word or two, that's about it. So he would tell us what he said.

And this is the thing about the gift of tongues given in the book of Acts. It wasn't a language from heaven. It was a gift from heaven to these men to preach the gospel in languages that they had never studied before. It would be kind of like me stepping up here in front of you this morning, and let's say I was from Japan or I spoke the Japanese language. If I started speaking to you, you wouldn't understand. have to have an interpreter. to preach in a language that he never had any knowledge of before this. That's what the Holy Spirit, that's the gift of tongues. Don't let anybody mislead you. Because the word here literally translated as languages.

And so they went forth preaching and here's what they preached in verse, look at verse 11, the last statement. We do hear them speak in our tongues, The wonderful works of God, I'm sure preached about creation. They preached about providence, but mainly they preached about God's salvation. That salvation's of the Lord. That God chose a people in Christ unto salvation. that God sent his son to be the savior of a world full of sinners, people from all over the world, people from all different languages. You see, the greatest work of God is the work of salvation. And that's what these men and women spoke of.

After this, the women having spoken and the men having spoken, you get to the book of 1 Corinthians and Paul says it's not right for a woman to speak in public. This was on this time, for this time, speaking of the wonderful works of God. It's not the wonderful works of God and man. It's the wonderful works of God. So here they are. They begin to preach Pentecost, Pentecost, when God was going to harvest a great number of souls. The seed for their salvation was sown in eternity past. And the seed of the gospel would be sown in their hearts by the preaching of these who had the knowledge of languages, had never studied, and they spoke about the wonderful works of God in salvation.

And the Spirit of God was going to use that Word. The Spirit always uses the Word of God. He doesn't use the Word of men. He uses the Word of God. The power is in the Word as the Word is empowered by the Holy Spirit of power.

And the Lord poured out upon thousands of people on this day the grace of God. And if you were somebody who was, let's say, from Pamphylia, and you happen to hear somebody preaching from Libya, well, you say, what in the world's going on? What's he talking about over there? Well, he's talking about the same preacher you ought to be listening to, talking about the same subject you ought to be listening to, Christ Jesus the Lord. And they said, well, are these men drunk? And Peter's standing up and he said, I want you to listen to what I have to say. You know me. I want you to hear what I have to say. These aren't drunk. It's just 9 o'clock in the morning. Who drinks at 9 o'clock in the morning? Here's what happened. Here's what's happened to them. The words of Joel are being fulfilled. The Spirit of God has come upon these people to set forth the message of the mighty works of God. And they're preaching in various tongues. Just listen to the different languages that are being spoken. And here's a group over here. They're listening to the Elamites or preachers preaching the Elamites, and he speaks their language. And here's another group over here, and they're from North Africa, and they're preaching in the language of the North Africans. And here's another group over here. They're being preached to. Oh, aren't they Egyptians? Yeah, well, they don't understand our language. No, they don't, but they understand their language.

And you see the Lord through the years has been sending forth his preachers and we speak to you in our language. And yet it's a language that we have to be taught. Because I speak to you the language of grace. I used to not know the language of grace. I used to not know the language of salvation is of the Lord. I didn't know that language. But the Lord has taught me. And that's why I come preach to you this morning. And all of you who are out there watching and listening. I preach to you the wonderful works of God. The God of creation and the God of providence is the God of grace. And he saves sinners. through the very power of the Holy Spirit who uses this gospel that is preached to save sinners. And so he says in verse 21, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord. You've heard who the Lord is. Call upon his name. Worship Christ Jesus. And all who call upon his name shall be saved. And who gets the credit? The Lord does. The Father, who speaks of the Spirit as being the gift of the Father, the Son of God whose substitutionary sacrifice opened the way for the entrance of the Holy Spirit in the fullness of His power, And the Holy Spirit gets the glory. Because if you believe this gospel down in your heart, you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and you depend upon Him, you lay hold of Him, if you believe Christ, that's because of the work of the Holy Spirit. So we give God all the glory.

All right, let's sing a closing song. Look at 351.