1. "You either run into your own self-made meaning of the world where such things are just terrible but kind of random. Or tragedies wake you up for the painful exploration of asking if then there is any truth out there to know. Any God who made us or rules us or has purposes even for our pain."

2. "If you're here trying to maintain your unbelief, better you just not care about it much. If you become too hyped up about it and start investigating it a lot, you'll be asking me for a spot in the internship soon."

3. "Missions is no optional extra added to the dish of the banquet of God's grace. It has been from the very founding moments of the church conceived and delivered as part of God's plan. God wants the world, he wants the nations to know him."

4. "These devout men were seeing one of the most important revelations of God's self throughout history. And they couldn't tell the difference between this great act in salvation history and common drunkenness."

5. "You don't have to love Jesus to love spectacle. Lots of people can come for health or wealth. The people who wanted to come to have the bread, the spectacle, the physical healing, they weren't about Jesus' agenda, they came with their own."

6. "You can have an experience from God, and you can interpret it wrongly. You can misunderstand and misread what's going on. Without the key to the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, they meant nothing. They needed the Rosetta Stone for us to understand the meaning."

7. "Spectacle may cause you to be awed, but you can be changed through the truth of the gospel."

8. "Repentance is not a religious ceremony. There's not a religious ceremony to be enacted. There's a moral revolution to be acted out in our heads and our hearts and our hands. We are to turn from our sinful unbelief."

9. "Friends, I don't think you realize how weird churches are. I think you take for granted that we really care about each other. If somebody's hurting, we're not gonna do it perfectly, but we really do care."

10. "I realized I was reading this as if I knew the supernatural couldn't be true, as if I knew there were no God, as if I knew Jesus had not been raised from the dead. And I realized I never made that claim."

Observation Questions

1. According to Acts 2:1-4, what three signs accompanied the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and on whom did the tongues of fire rest?

2. In Acts 2:5-11, how did the devout Jews from various nations respond when they heard the disciples speaking, and what were the disciples declaring in these foreign languages?

3. What explanation does Peter give in Acts 2:14-21 for what the crowd was witnessing, and from which Old Testament prophet does he quote?

4. In Acts 2:22-24, what three things does Peter say about Jesus of Nazareth regarding his ministry, his death, and what God did afterward?

5. According to Acts 2:37-41, what was the crowd's emotional response to Peter's sermon, what did Peter instruct them to do, and approximately how many people were added to their number that day?

6. What four activities did the new believers devote themselves to according to Acts 2:42, and what was the overall atmosphere described in verses 46-47?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that the tongues of fire rested on "each one" of the believers (Acts 2:3) rather than only on Peter or the other apostles, and what does this reveal about the nature of God's new covenant community?

2. Peter quotes Psalm 16 and Psalm 110 in his sermon to explain Jesus' resurrection and ascension. Why was it important for Peter to show that David was speaking prophetically about someone other than himself, and how does this connect Jesus to Old Testament expectations?

3. In Acts 2:23, Peter says Jesus was "delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God" yet also says "you crucified and killed" him. How do these two realities—divine sovereignty and human responsibility—work together in this passage, and why does Peter emphasize both?

4. The crowd's initial response to the signs was bewilderment and even mockery (Acts 2:12-13), but after Peter's sermon they were "cut to the heart" (Acts 2:37). What does this contrast teach us about the relationship between miraculous signs and the preached Word in bringing people to faith?

5. How does the description of the early church community in Acts 2:42-47—their teaching, fellowship, generosity, and worship—demonstrate that the transformation in the disciples was genuine and lasting rather than a temporary enthusiasm?

Application Questions

1. The disciples went from fearfully hiding behind locked doors to boldly proclaiming Christ in public within a matter of weeks. What area of your life are you currently holding back from fully identifying with Jesus due to fear, and what specific step could you take this week to move toward greater boldness?

2. Peter's sermon was built on careful explanation of Scripture, not just the spectacular signs. How might you grow in your ability to explain the gospel from the Bible to someone who is spiritually curious or skeptical, and who in your life might benefit from such a conversation?

3. The early believers "had all things in common" and distributed to anyone who had need (Acts 2:44-45). In what practical way could you use your time, money, or possessions this week to meet a need within your church family or community?

4. Acts 2:42 describes the believers' devotion to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. Which of these four areas is weakest in your current rhythm of Christian life, and what concrete change could you make to strengthen it?

5. The sermon highlighted how Thomas moved from doubt to bold faith and eventually gave his life for Christ. Is there a specific doubt or question about Christianity that you have been avoiding rather than honestly investigating? How might you take a step toward seeking answers this week?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Joel 2:28-32 — This is the primary Old Testament passage Peter quotes to explain the outpouring of the Spirit, showing that Pentecost was the fulfillment of God's long-promised plan for the last days.

2. John 20:19-29 — This passage recounts Thomas's journey from doubt to confession, providing the background for understanding how the resurrection transformed the disciples from fearful deserters to bold witnesses.

3. Luke 24:36-49 — Here the risen Jesus appears to his disciples, opens their minds to understand the Scriptures, and commands them to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit's power—the immediate prelude to the events of Acts 2.

4. Genesis 11:1-9 — The account of the Tower of Babel explains how God divided humanity through language; Pentecost reverses this division as the gospel unites people from every nation through the Spirit.

5. Psalm 110:1-4 — This messianic psalm, which Peter quotes to explain Christ's exaltation to God's right hand, reveals the identity of Jesus as both David's Lord and the eternal priest-king at the Father's side.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Personal Journey from Agnosticism to Faith

II. God Makes Himself Known Through the Wind and Signs (Acts 2:1-13)

III. God Makes Himself Known Through the Word: Peter's Sermon (Acts 2:14-36)

IV. The Response: Conviction, Conversion, and Community (Acts 2:37-47)

V. The Evidence of Transformation: From Doubting Thomas to Faithful Witness

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Detailed Sermon Outline

I am the son of an alcoholic man who was married and divorced three times.

My mother, now perhaps in her last days living with dementia, has never been particularly religious.

Especially since when she was in her early 30s, her very devoted Christian aunt died of a painfully and cruelly disfiguring cancer.

It won't be a surprise to you then that I grew up with the veneer of religion that was expected in my southern town. But with no personal faith. Instead, I was a self-conscious agnostic until the chapter that we're studying this morning messed up my naturalistic worldview.

I understand that religious people, Christian people, can do things that don't commend the gospel or take positions that you don't like, or perhaps that you prefer to live life with the freedom and ease of agnostic seeming to create your own world by the way you view things.

But one problem with that is reality.

You fail this test, you break that knee, Your dearest family member inexplicably dies.

Facts which don't ask your permission to be happen.

You either run into your own self-made meaning of the world where such things are just terrible but kind of random.

That's probably the dominant worldview in my extended family.

Or tragedies wake you up for the painful exploration of asking if then there is any truth out there to know. Any God who made us or rules us or has purposes even for our pain.

For me, the pain was not a great disappointment. It was not the tragic death of a family member. It was my own young man demanding nature for meaning and purpose in life. Is there any reason I'm going through the struggles and hassles of maturing as a teenager? The why are we here?

Question.

I assumed that there was no answer. This seemed the safest and most obvious way. I've always had a predisposition for the random. From the food that I eat, to the music that I listen to, to the clothes that I wear, I come up with little systems that make all these small decisions for me. Let them just run in the background providing a series of surprises through the day.

And then I can use my mind space on the big stuff.

But I had to admit that the view that the world was random might not be true. I didn't know it was true. I submitted it to the various philosophies that I investigated, but all they did was give me options for the way I could view things. That didn't upset my comfortable agnosticism. It was history that drove me to this chapter.

I realized that religions made more historical claims than philosophies. As I finally investigated Christianity, I came to the people here in this book, and it was really this bunch of people, unnamed and named, in this chapter that God finally used to break apart my agnosticism. It was history that drove me there. Turn to Acts chapter 2. You'll find it on pages 926 and 927 in the Bibles provided.

If you're not used to looking at a Bible, the chapter numbers are the large numbers. We're in chapter 2. The verse numbers are the small numbers after that.

Last time we looked at the first chapter that Luke wrote in Acts. Remember this was Luke writing about when Christianity began. The seed is the ministry of Jesus which he covered in his first book named after him, Luke. That seed begins to publicly grow and sprout in this book. In fact, it breaks ground to make a public appearance for the first time in this chapter.

We read here of the first sermon ever preached, the first Christian sermon. We read here of the first baptisms, the first Christian baptisms ever done. Here in this chapter.

And we end up with these last two verses. Look at these last two verses in chapter 2. This is where the picture today we consider ends.

Beginning verse 46, and day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Now, the particular question I want to put before us is this: How did the kind of ordinary people who had followed Jesus as his disciples move from being the men who had on Thursday night been scared by Jesus's arrest and by the next morning at Jesus's trial had denied or at least deserted him. How did they become this group that we read about here at the end of Acts chapter two, this group of contented, happy, even rejoicing people, happy to be publicly identified with Jesus. Remember just weeks earlier when Jesus was crucified, this was not the story. Even those closest to Jesus, his OG, 12 disciples, had almost entirely deserted him. You figure Judas had betrayed him, Peter, and then Judas killed himself.

Peter had denied him three times that he even knew him. The rest of Jesus' disciples, even more cowardly and perhaps normally, had seemed to shrink away into the crowd as things kept going downhill on Friday morning. We know this because John is the only one who is said to be nearby watching along with Jesus' mother and some other of his female followers. Any other of Jesus' followers by that time seemed to be keeping a discreet distance. That's Friday midday.

By Sunday, We find them still in Jerusalem, but not wanting to show their faces. They're huddled together behind locked doors for fear that they might be taken.

What happened to change them into the people that we see in this chapter?

That's a real question. That's not just a philosophy, oh, I like Camus. I think the French existentialists help us to understand the ennui of life. Friends, these are real people, they really existed. They had real lives.

Let's just take one as an example. Let's just pluck one from the crowd. Let's pick one in particular, an ordinary guy. He grew up in Galilee back in the day with James and John. He was a fisherman like them.

He had a twin, we're not sure who that twin was, his name was Thomas. Thomas was actually one of the 12 that Jesus initially chose out of the early crowds to follow him. For the three plus years of his earthly ministry. So in the events mentioned in Luke's gospel about Jesus, Thomas would normally have been there. There are a couple of times toward the end of Jesus' ministry that Thomas is named specifically.

Both times it's by his childhood friend and later gospel writer, John. In John 11, when Jesus shows his resolve to go into Jerusalem, that last week during Passover time, when he's in hot water with the authorities, lots of his friends say, No, don't go, it's too dangerous. And then for the first time in the Gospel, since he's named as one of the 12 surrogated, Thomas speaks up. And what does Thomas say? Let's go with him, even if it means we'll have to die with him.

That's Thomas, brave words that Thomas didn't live up to. But some of us here today can relate to somebody who talks better than they live.

The other time is that last night of Jesus' earthly ministry. Jesus told them after the Last Supper that He was about to go away to prepare a place for them. And this prompted Thomas to ask honestly, Lord, we don't know where youe're going. How can we know the way? Which provoked Jesus to one of His best known statements, John 14:6, Jesus said to Thomas, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through Me. Then Thomas, like most of the rest of the disciples, is lost to the night, the arrest, the crowds, the hiding fears.

A couple of days later, when Jesus is raised from the dead by God early Sunday morning, Jesus finds all the disciples gathered in fear behind locked doors and speaks to them. All of them except Thomas. Thomas was out, it seems, when the resurrected Christ stopped by.

Yet one more reason we can relate to Thomas. He's not always in the right place at the right time.

John 22 tells us that Thomas was skeptical about his friend's claim to to have seen Jesus. All of them tell them that they've seen Jesus. And Thomas, being the ordinary fisherman that he is, goes like, maybe.

But then, this is when he uttered that famous statement that caused the word doubting to be forever fixed to his name, doubting Thomas. Look in John 20. You see where this happens, John 20:24.

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came, so the other disciples told him, We've seen the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe.

I mean, I hear a statement like that, and part of me thinks, that young man's going to be a preacher. I've seen it again and again. If you're here trying to maintain your unbelief, better you just not care about it much. If you become too hyped up about it and start investigating it a lot, you'll be asking me for a spot in the internship soon.

Verse 28, no, verse 26, Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' Then he said to Thomas, 'As if he had been there and heard what Thomas had said, 'Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God.' Many people would say, that's the climax of John's gospel, that confession of doubting Thomas about this Jesus that he had known for years as his Lord and God. So thoroughly believing in Jesus, Thomas was listed as being with Peter, James, and John in John 21 when Jesus appeared to them again on the shores of Lake Galilee. Other than that, the last time that Thomas is mentioned in the Bible is by Luke.

If you go back to our passage, it's right there in Acts. It's in Acts chapter 1, so the chapter that we looked at last time, Acts 1:13. He was one of the eleven in Jerusalem gathered together from the resurrection right after the Passover through this series of Meetings with Jesus referred to in Luke 24 where the risen Christ for 40 days taught them how to read their Bibles. The most amazing course seminar in biblical theology ever given. Jesus teaching them how to read the Old Testament.

So as they obeyed his command to stay there, Christ bodily ascended out of their sight, further confirming his identity. Christ had gone to the right hand of God the Father. So now Thomas stood there waiting with the other disciples, the restored 12. And the 120 that we see in Acts 1:15. And how we get from this to that joy-filled picture that I read a moment ago, the end of chapter 2, is what happens next.

Follow as we look at Acts chapter 2. You know, we read in Ephesians 3 that in the church, God is making himself known. And if you think Think about it, as you read through the Bible, this is really the subtext of pretty much every sentence you read in the Bible. God is making himself known. So for example, last week we had H.B.

Charles talking to the few, the brave who made it through. Last week we looked at Romans chapter three, verses 21 to 26 about salvation. And what did we find? We found that there in the the primary, most celebrated paragraph about salvation in the Bible, there is this underlying text of meaning in verse 26, Romans 326. Why did God do this?

Because he wanted to be known as the one who is just, that is righteous, and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus. So God was involved in saving us through Jesus. Why? Because he wanted to save. Yes.

But he had a bigger agenda than that in mind. He was making himself known. Friends, he's also doing that here in Acts chapter two through the church. As he establishes the church, yes, he wants to save his people, but he's gonna make himself known. And I want us to watch in this chapter the two ways especially he makes himself known.

In the first 13 verses it's through the wind and the other signs. And then in verse 14 to the end, it's through the Word. So if you want to look at this whole chapter, a long chapter, it's really in two halves, the wind and the Word, the signs and the sermon. You have the wind, the tongues of fire, the unknown languages, the known languages, the various international languages, and then their response. And then the second half you have Peter's sermon, and then the response to that.

If you want to look at the whole chapter, that's how to think about it. You have the miracles of Pentecost, people's response, and then you have Peter's sermon and the people's response. That's a simple way to understand this whole chapter that we're going to look through now. First we see that God made Himself known by the wind here in these two paragraphs, chapter 2 verses 1 to 13, the signs in the first four verses, and then their response in verses 5 to 13. Let's begin with the the signs of the Spirit.

Look with me at this first paragraph.

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. So who was gathered and where?

Well, these are the 12 disciples from up in chapter 1 verse 15 and the other hundred or so disciples of Jesus who were waiting in Jerusalem as they had been instructed to, to be empowered by the Holy Spirit coming upon them as they had been instructed to by the risen Christ back in chapter 1 verse 5. Verse 8, Before He ascended to heaven, they were either in some house, upper room, maybe near the temple precincts, or someplace even closer where they could be seen and heard by other Jewish pilgrims from all over the known world where the Jews had been dispersed. And the order of what happens next is sound, sight, speech. Sound, sight, speech. The sound of the rushing wind.

The sight of the fiery tongues, and then they hear the speech. And when you think of it, and you recall the Old Testament, this is actually a pattern that we see God using. In Ezekiel chapter 1, there's a great vision of God, and there it's actually sight, sound, speech. But you have spectacle that gets the attention, and then speech. Just like in Exodus 3 with the burning bush, God gets Moses' attention with a burning bush.

There's a spectacle and then he speaks, there are words. Friends, that's the pattern of God's revelation of Himself to those of us who are human beings made in His image. In verse 3 is added the sight of fiery tongues resting on them to the sound of the rushing wind. And all this is a clear sign of God's presence. It didn't simply rest on Peter or Peter, James and John or on Mary, but these tongues rested on each one of them.

So from the foundational moment of God's new people, created by God's Spirit, it was clear God's people wouldn't be mainly the preachers, the priests, the clergy, it'd be all the people, the men and the women, all the members of the assembly. These are the ones who make up God's people. And then verse 4 specifically it says it wasn't simply the wind filling the house, but it was God's Spirit filling each one of them. And that showed itself because then they began to speak in these other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Friends, this is what is called the descent of the Holy Spirit, where he is poured out as Jesus promised he would be after he ascended to his Father.

Very much like the Son of God descended in the incarnation we just sang about, and thou who was rich. So now here the Holy Spirit of God descended to indwell to fill his people. And the many languages, the international nature of this people of God, which Jesus had clearly indicated to his disciples, would be baked in the very essence and core, this initial moments of the founding of Christ's Church. Friends, so much we could draw from this, but one thing we should notice is that missions is no optional extra added to the dish of the banquet of God's grace. It has been from the very founding moments of the church conceived and delivered as part of God's plan.

God wants the world, he wants the nations to know him. The disciples here are supernaturally enabled to do cross-cultural ministry from the very first moment the Spirit comes.

But how did the people respond? Well, let's keep reading. Let's pick it up with verse five.

And now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, 'Aren't all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia.

I just realized Mesopotamia, after reading this word for 60 years, it's Potamia, the Potomac River. It's like the river. In Mesopotamia, it's the middle. It's the middle river. It's Tigris and Euphrates.

You know, between India and Egypt, there it is, the land of the middle river. Anyway, sharing the kind of stuff I like when I'm studying for you guys. So Parthians and Medes, Elamites, the residents of Mesopotamia, Middle River Land, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean? But others mocking said, They're filled with new wine.

So you have these amazing signs of God, this overwhelming sound of like a rushing wind filling the house, causing it maybe even to shake. This extraordinary sight of these fiery tongues on people. And then the most amazing of all, that they're hearing about the mighty works of God in their own languages. 15 mentioned here. And yet what was their response?

To be amazed.

Verse 5, Luke lets us know that there were people from all over the world. Why would they have been there? Because it's Pentecost, one of the three festivals of the Jewish year at that point where people were invited, encouraged, instructed to come. And they came from around the world. There was Passover.

50 days before, and then Pentecost, this first ingathering of the wheat, and then the other half of the year, there was the Festival of Tabernacles. Those are three annual feasts. And for this, people gathered, Jews gathered from all over the world. And it was the perfect time for God to pour out His Spirit, because He could have eyewitnesses and earwitnesses from all over the world, where Jews had been dispersed from Libya and Rome in the to Babylon and the Parthian Empire in the East. We read in verse 16, or in verse 6, that the sound drew the multitude's attention and they came and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

So notice their response to the sounds, the sights, the multitude of languages being spoken out loud simultaneously. It says that they were bewildered. Or in verse 7, they were amazed and They were astonished. They could tell that these were hill country fishermen. They weren't from their own exotic locations.

These were no U.N. interpreters. And yet each one of these men from every nation under heaven was hearing in his own native language. It's as if the miracle was a reversing of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, where people had been divided by languages. Now here they were being reunited, despite the differences. They were being pulled back together.

Luke says, hey, 15 different languages here that they were speaking. It says about the mighty works of God. We don't know exactly what their message was. I get the impression that they were short messages, phrases, maybe sentences. Because what Peter does when he stands up and speaks at least seems so different.

So I'm getting the impression that these are just phrases of praise.

Even when they hear these mighty works of God in their own tongues, the surprising nature of their native language being used seems to have impressed them as much as particularly what was being said.

Whatever it was has not been recorded for us. But in verse 12 we see their response. Again it says, They're amazed and perplexed. They weren't asking the disciples, they... maybe the disciples didn't even realize they were...

what they were saying, I don't know. But it says in verse 12, they were saying to one another, 'What does this mean?' and one part of the astonished people even became mockers. Did you notice that in verse 13? But the others mocking said, They're filled with new wine.

And these were devout men. They had traveled a long way. These were religious. They had come a long way to Jerusalem. And they are looking at the work of God, one of the most important revelations of God throughout history.

And these devout men are attributing this work not to the Holy Spirit, but the alcoholic spirits.

These devout men were seeing one of the most important revelations of God's self throughout history. And they couldn't tell the difference between this great act in salvation history and common drunkenness.

How different is going to be their response to Peter's sermon just a few verses later. When the Spirit takes the word preached, and particularly the word about Christ, and then hearers may be cut to the heart More on that, as I say, in just a minute. But here in this first part of the chapter, we get the kind of thing that we saw in the Gospels all the time. People coming to Jesus in crowds, following him for a time for the spectacle of it.

Friends, this church has 800 or 1,000 people in it. Another church over there, Arlington Baptist, may have 100 or 200 in it. Don't assume this church is better because it has more people. You want the biggest crowds? Don't do what we're doing here.

Have spectacle. Oh, you don't have to love Jesus to love spectacle. Lots of people can come for health or wealth. You know, if that's what you're looking for, there's a lot of ways to do it. Jesus saw that in his own ministry.

The people who wanted to come to have the bread, the spectacle, the physical healing, they weren't about Jesus' agenda, they came with their own. They simply looked to Jesus to enable them to do what they already wanted to do. And then here in this first 13 verses of chapter 2, what we see Luke recognizing is the limitation, even of God's own signs and wonders, if there's not language to interpret it. You can have an experience from God, and you can interpret it wrongly.

You can misunderstand and misread what's going on. Without the key to the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, they meant nothing. They needed the Rosetta Stone for us to understand the meaning. So here the church would not be founded without the demonstration of God's power. You had to have the signs and wonders, just like Moses needed the bush to burn.

You know, Ezekiel needed to have the storm coming to him to see that this was God, but that's not all they needed. The church here would not be founded without the demonstration of God's power. You had to do this in the beginning, but it wouldn't be founded only with that kind of demonstration. Those signs and wonders would have to give way to the far more important sermon. That's how they would understand what all these signs and wonders meant.

So we move on through to the second half of the chapter where added to this mighty rushing wind, the Spirit of God moving in power, is the Word of God. God revealed Himself by the wind, the tongues, but God also revealed Himself by the Word. So if the first 13 verses have shown us something of the Spirit's power, and what response that could bring uninterpreted when it's still largely uninterpreted, then the rest of the chapter, 14 to 47, shows us God's Word and the sign of the wind and the tongues being interpreted as Peter stands up and explains them from the Bible. And you can call these the signs of the sun. If the first are the signs of the Spirit, it's a sign to the sun.

Really, that's what we see in this three paragraph summary of this sermon, the first Christian sermon recorded here in verses 14 to 36. If you're looking at the ESV, you'll see they've got three paragraphs. I think they get it just right. Those are the three sections. Each one is built around a passage of Scripture.

Which gives the special key to interpreting something that they had just seen. So Peter begins in verses 14 to 21 by explaining the signs that they were just seeing. He goes to the prophet Joel in the Old Testament. Let's look at this next section of Acts 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, that's 9:00 a.m. 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 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. So Peter stands there together with the other apostles, the exact opposite of their cowardly desertion of Jesus five weeks before at His crucifixion. Now they're all standing there together in public before this crowd of bewildered people, some even mocking, moved by God's pouring out of His Spirit, filled with God's Spirit, Peter lifted up his voice and he addressed the mockers head on.

I love the fact he starts there. Verse 15, For these people are not drunk as you suppose, since it's only the third hour of the day. Then Peter puts forward an opposite view of what's going on. But we read from verse 16, and then he quotes this long section from Joel chapter 2.

Now Joel is one of those minor prophets in the Old Testament, minor not meaning unimportant, just meaning shorter than Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. He is unusually devoid of specifics of historical matter. So the last one we just got was Hosea. Just the end of last year. And you remember in Hosea, there was a detailed list of kings given at the beginning.

So we know almost down to the, certainly the decade, almost the year that Hosea was prophesying. Well, there's nothing like that with Joel. Many people have thought that this lack of specifics in terms of kings and the potential invaders even, or about the temple, many other such things, may have been deliberate on Joel's part in order to make the book's message so easily transferable. From this day, the day he was prophesying into the ones that followed. Certainly God's prophesying about the end is still fresh and powerful in this section.

Peter quoted this was being fulfilled around them. This is how he says they know they're in the last days because these things are happening now. And you'll notice many of those things were happening. But you see the sun wasn't being darkened and the moon wasn't turned to blood. So what's going on with that?

Well, whenever we come to one of these statements of prophecy, I often go to my wife growing up in Colorado in Loveland, and if you go to her backyard, you look out and you see this wonderful lineup of the Rocky Mountains. You can see Longs Peak right next to Rocky Mountain National Park. And from standing there in her backyard, they all look like it's just this one tableau, just right like this. But then, if you start in the car and you head on up, you go up through this winding, Thompson Canyon. You know, you go 45 minutes up to Ese's Park, you see, oh, that was the first stuff that I was seeing, but then that's still miles ahead is this stuff.

And you see, that's what it's like when you go through the prophecies in Scripture. Some of them are fulfilled now, oh, but some others are still way in the future. If you read Matthew 24, Mark 13, it's the same way. Uh, there's some things that you see fulfilled now, others of it is still to come. That's what was going on here.

But here some of it was being fulfilled, the spirit being poured out. Peter quickly turns from these signs which have performed their function in signaling God's special presence and something of its worldwide purpose as the curse of the Tower of Babel is rolled back. It's not really even just the Tower of Babel. It's the curse of Eden that's being rolled back. You see that?

Because what happens as people come to be reconciled to God back in the garden as it were, they're reconciled to each other. Take the Christians you are least reconciled with. Part of the final vision is that you'll be reconciled with them because you're both reconciled to God. That's what's beginning on this very day we're reading about here. Peter turns to what their attention has been gotten for.

Got their attention with these signs, but he got four explaining the truth about Jesus. The Spirit is poured out to point to the Son. That's the Spirit's ministry. So look with me at this next section of Peter's sermon as he turns from the signs around them to these two Psalms of David to explain the Son. Look at verse 22.

Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, the 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, and friends, that's just a nice way of saying crucified, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands 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, and these are words from Psalm 16 that we sang at the beginning of the service, 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. So here Peter turns from the prophets to the even earlier Psalms of David to explain the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And he does that here from Psalm 16.

So in Psalm 16, David is promised that as he quotes here in verse 27, you, will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your holy ones see corruption. The prophetic psalm had David perceiving the truth about his own personal salvation and something even more specific about great David's greater son, the one who would fulfill the promise God had made to David that he would always have a descendant forever on the throne ruling over his people. Peter here is simply arguing, we all know David's tomb is here in Jerusalem. This wasn't fulfilled in David's life. And at the time, David's tomb was known.

It was on the south side of Jerusalem. Peter says, Look, we know that David in the psalm wasn't talking only about himself. He was prophesying about the son of David, the Messiah who was to come. And this is who Jesus has shown himself to be, by God raising him from the dead. Peter is so blunt in the divergence of wills between God and his people.

There in verses 23 and 24, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. How different is this than Peter's cowardice just five weeks earlier when he denied nervously even knowing him just around a few people. Now here he's standing up in front of hundreds, thousands. And he is telling them, you crucified the Messiah, the son of David, but God raised him up.

That's what God's spirit can do. But it's not merely God raising Jesus from the dead that he wants them to understand, but he wants them to understand Jesus' ascension to the right hand of God that they had just days earlier witnessed. Look at that final section of this sermon that's recorded here. Beginning at verse 29, 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's poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says in Psalm 110, 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. He's taking it right back and he's saying all this pouring out of the Holy Spirit, you're seeing evidence of none of this would have happened if Jesus had not in fact gotten to the Father's right hand. This is how we know that he got to where he was going in that resurrection and ascension, because this is the fruit of that.

It's what you're seeing right now. Peter explains the ascension to the Father from the Old Testament verse that Jesus quoted more than any other verse from the Old Testament, Psalm 110:1. The power of these words about Jesus' identity comes in understanding that this psalm is said by King David, and in a short quotation there are two other characters. There's the very straightforward, the Lord, that's at the beginning. But in Luke's Greek, the meaning is already obvious.

It's a bit veiled in English. The same word is being repeated in our English here. It's the Lord said to my Lord. But already you can tell something's going on. You can tell he means two different people because this person who is David's Lord, David calls my Lord who's speaking to the Lord.

Well, who's he talking about? Well, Luke's Greek is just like the English. It's Lord and Lord. It's curios and curios. The same word used.

But if you go back to the Hebrew, if you go back to what David wrote, it's instead Yahweh is there. Yahweh said to my Adonai, the one true living God said to the Lord, my Lord, who on earth would King David call my Lord? Except for Yahweh. And this is where you begin to piece together that even such an exalted king as David that had no Lord but Yahweh, God the Lord, and you see embedded in this doggedly monotheistic Old Testament is the verse here in which David recognizes that there is another above him, both united to and yet personally distinct from the Father. Jesus taught that he was the unique Son of the Heavenly Father, one with the Father, who together with his father would pour out his spirit on the believers, which is exactly what they were witnessing this Pentecost morning.

They're beginning to hammer out their doctrine that would come to be called the Trinity, right here. Psalm 110 is in addition to Psalm 16, because of course Psalm 16 is just talking about the beginning of the resurrection of the Messiah. He's raised from the dead, but it's to Psalm 110 we have to go to learn the destination of the raised Messiah. Where is he going to when he's raised? It was up into heaven, like the disciples had just witnessed ten days earlier, when Jesus ascended from them to the heavens to be seated at God's right hand at the place where his authority is admitted to be the same as that of the Father's.

So Christ, the Messiah, is also the Lord in both senses of the Adonai and of Yahweh himself. So Jesus had told the inquisitive Thomas, the last night of his earthly ministry, when Thomas was sort of arguing with him in John 14:8, Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. And then Jesus said to him, if I have been with you so long and you do not know me, Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works. So when Thomas had been having that conversation with Jesus, the other disciples there, Philip chimes in, and here we see that Jesus is saying, the Father who dwells in me does his works. I do not speak with my own authority. I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Friends, this is what we're taught here.

Again, look at Peter's stinging conclusion there. To his message in Acts chapter 2, verse 36. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, and he couldn't stop there. This Jesus whom you crucified.

Hearing Galileans speak of God's mighty works in different languages may only have produced amazement or scorn. But Peter's exposition of these passages recently taught them no doubt by the risen Lord Jesus in Luke 24, this, this would turn them. Spectacle may cause you to be awed, but you can be changed through the truth of the gospel. Look at their response now that they've been informed. It brings about conviction and community in these last two paragraphs.

Of this chapter. First, let's look at verses 37 to 41.

And now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?' and Peter said to them, 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off. Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized.

And there were added that day about 3,000 souls. So here as individuals hear the word, they are convicted and converted. Many of them we see down in verse 41 received the word.

I wonder if anyone is here today listening to the truth about Jesus having this experience.

I know you're not one of the ones who's there in the crowd shouting for Jesus' crucifixion, but you understand as sinners we are part of the body that has motivated God the Father to give up his only Son to death for the sake of people like you and like me.

Do you realize the culpability we have in that? I wonder if you're being cut to the heart, or if you're wondering what you should do next. In verse 38 you see sort of five elements brought together, the fruit of God's conviction, repentance, change, I don't know how you were brought up, but repentance is not a religious ceremony. Wycliffe very poorly translated this, do penance. That's not what this word means at all.

No, there's not a religious ceremony to be enacted. There's a moral revolution to be acted out in our heads and our hearts and our hands. We are to turn from our sinful unbelief, turn in our hands and our heart. Peter then urged obedience to Christ's final command that we saw in Matthew 28, that all those so repenting, so reevaluating themselves and reevaluating Jesus Christ, all of them be baptized. As a confession of their own sin and of their identification with Christ, their ultimate hope in him.

It's a visible expression of the faith in their hearts. This is all done in Jesus' name. With his motivating orders, his person is the focus of our faith. If you read this flatly, you might think it's saying that baptism actually brings about the forgiveness of sins. But if you read this in the context of Acts, there's no way to admit this.

Salvation is mentioned again and again in Acts and in the letters of the New Testament. With no mention of baptism. Baptism is a summary picture of what goes on in conversion, of our confession of sin and our putting our faith in Christ. We bring our sins, he gives his forgiveness and his own cleansing presence as he fills us with his spirit. And verse 39 tells us that this is for people of every generation and every nation.

By verse 41, the response of the individuals is now being merged into the response of the community as a whole that's being formed. Look at that last paragraph. Starting in verse 42. See in 41 it says, They were added that day about 3,000 souls, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship of the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Here is the seedling bursting forth from the topsoil.

The first Christian fellowship, the first church, the first assembly is formed. And what a striking description each of these sentences brings. In verse 42 we see that among these previously counted as devout Jews, there was now a new devotion. It's a devotion to the Scriptures being opened to them like this, as Peter was doing that Sunday so long ago, as Jesus had done for them several weeks earlier, as I mean to be doing for you right now. You realize I'm doing this in direct imitation of Jesus.

This is what Jesus did with the disciples after the resurrection. He got the Bible, opened it, and explained it. And listen, let me tell you, as a preacher, I well know, I sit here and I stand here rather, and I do this again and again, and for a lot of you, you are eating this like it is life itself. This is food for your soul. For a lot of you, you're polite and bored out of your mind.

I'm not intimidated by that at all. I understand that's what happens. I got that. But then something gets through and your life is changed. And I am happy to put up with the boredom knowing how many times I've gotten to see the lives changed.

Because that's what happens when God's word is preached. We have a devotion here not to any teaching, but the apostles' teaching. What it is that they taught, what those commissioned witnesses of Jesus teach about Jesus. We're also devoted to the fellowship, these regular times together as we normally begin and conclude each new week's initial Lord's Day, the Lord's Day together, so bringing the first fruits of our time as standing for the use of the whole, even as the ancient Israelites. Brought the first fruits of their wheat to the temple at Pentecost.

We give ourselves to the breaking of bread, whether that's a special reference to the Lord's Supper, as we'll celebrate tonight, or, as I'm persuaded, it's a reference to the mutual care and more informal fellowship and love and hospitality which characterize these people. And to the prayers, whether the more formal on Sunday morning like we've had, or the more informal we'll have tonight when we share together with family and friends through the In verse 43 we get a glimpse of a time unlike our own. Look at verse 43, there awe was fed by wonders like these flaming tongues or other more recurring miracles, which we'll read from time to time as we go through the book of Acts, as God publicly owns and verifies the ministry of these apostles as His own.

Undoubtedly the verses that bring the most attention are verses 44 and 45. We have one of the most commented upon parts of the life of this first church. It's their communism. Let's look at verses 44 and 45.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.

First of all, let's look at the word all. In a congregation of lawyers, I've just got to say, All very naturally does not always mean every last person. You look there the last time I just read it. They distributed the proceeds to all as any had need. So all those who didn't have any particular need, they didn't have these things distributed to them.

And yet it's not false when he says it was distributed to all. All just means a whole lot. It's a bunch, every kind of person. That's the way that word all is is often used very naturally, both in English and in other languages. So here, I think, on a closer look at what they're doing, what they're doing, I think, sounds a lot like what we do here at CHBC.

It's what every Christian church does. Unlike other family groups or nationality-centered groups, It clearly wasn't full communism because in the next three chapters you see people having their own things they own. Peter specifically tells Ananias and Sapphira, it was yours. You didn't have to sell that land. You didn't have to lie about it.

You owned it. It's fine. You own it. There's no problem with private property. It was more in distinction, I think, from the existing structures.

The way as Christians in a Christian church we're used to relating to each other caring for each other is not what goes on in a Hindu temple. It's not what goes on. I don't think it went on in Jewish synagogues at the time. It was a new kind of family that was being born in which everyone's filled with the very same spirit. Some of you who've been here a long time will remember Jeannette Devlin, dear member of this church from the 40s to when she went home to be with the Lord in the early 2000s.

I remember Jeanette's funeral here, and then a meal downstairs afterwards, and I got to sit next to the nurse who cared for Jeanette in our last few weeks and months of life. Jeanette never married. This nurse was a Muslim nurse, and we got into a good conversation, and she said, so who are all these people here? There were probably 50 or 60 people down there, maybe. And I said, well, these are just members of the church.

And she said, well, I don't understand. I said, well, we've known Jeannette for years. We've loved her, we cared for her, we made sure she always had somebody there. And I said, you must do things like this at your mosque. And she said, no, I just go to the mosque.

She said, now there are special charities we can give to sometimes. Somebody will make an announcement about something, but there's nothing like this. And so ever since I had that conversation, I've started talking to every Muslim, not every, but many Muslims, that identify themselves to me or that I get to know, and I'll say, hey, at your mosque, do you do this and this and this and this? And I think always I've had the answer, no. No, it's a different kind of place.

Friends, I don't think you realize how weird churches are. I think you take for granted that we really care about each other. If somebody's hurting, we're not gonna do it perfectly, but we really do care. If somebody has financial need, We're gonna figure that thing out. Do you know we've got a benevolence fund here at this church?

Right now, over a hundred thousand dollars in it. It's all been given by you freely to help you. If you're going through a hard time with your rent, if you're going through a hard time because somebody dozed you, if you're going through a hard time because you just didn't understand something and something went wrong in a part of your life and now you're just really in need, talk to the deacons of member care. Talk to one of the elders. Let us know about it.

We're not gonna like, you know, give you a new job of just free money for years, but we will care and we will use our financial resources freely. You don't need to pay back in order just to try to help you because that's what Christian churches do. Friends, every year you give like $5 million for the Lord's work here. That's a lot of money. This church is not composed of a bunch of rich people.

It's composed of people, many of whom have good jobs, but you're a very generous congregation, but you need to understand that generosity is provoked by God, the Holy Spirit's work in you, making you a new creation, caring about different things than your secular neighbors care about. So I think when you read verses 44 and 45, you need to realize, oh, that's a description of a healthy church. Look again at those last two verses of the chapter that we started out with. Imagine the joy that suffused the whole. Imagine people like once doubting Thomas now, day by day, attending the temple together, breaking bread in their homes, receiving the food with glad and generous hearts.

Picture them praising God. And then there's that interesting phrase in the very last verse, having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Wasn't Jesus just crucified? What's going here?

Having favor with all the people? Ah, it's a little weird, I know, but when you're first converted, often, because you stopped doing some really bad things, like maybe getting drunk all the time, lying, not turning up when you should, your actions get cleaned up, there's often an initial popularity that happens with some friends. All of a sudden you become known as a responsible person, maybe you're a kinder person. Jesus himself, his first year of ministry is often called the year of popularity. 'cause the crowds were so big.

Don't worry, Tom will take care of that. Thins it out. When you start making more godly choices, things that make the people around you, if they're not Christians, feel uncomfortable. Jesus had that initial popularity, but soon enough, even with his early church, we'll see next week, when we get to chapters three and four, persecution will come. But so often people do experience some initial positive responses when they first become Christians.

I wonder if you can remember when you came to Christ, if you came to Christ as an adult, if that was your experience at all. Anyway, this is how the Christian church began and these characteristics are how it still is.

But back to my earlier question. What explains the change between how we know Jesus' disciples were when he was crucified and how they are here in Acts 2 and for the rest of their lives? Both these points of history seem pretty indisputable. When I read these things as a non-Christian agnostic, I thought, this is true. Jesus was crucified, his disciples deserted him.

As an agnostic, I got no problem thinking that's true. In fact, it's weird stuff to write down about your chief person in your religion. So that to me even seemed extra certain. These feel like good historical facts. But then this stuff about the first church being formed.

Why are they all presented here like this? Again, it seemed clear this was true. Nothing supernatural has to take place for people to be standing there and happily giving a talk and people hearing it and changing their minds. But I thought, how did that difference happen? What's going on?

Why did they change like this?

And that's where I realized I was reading this as if I knew the supernatural couldn't be true, as if I knew there were no God, as if I knew Jesus had not been raised from the dead. And I realized I never made that claim. So as a good agnostic, I thought, okay, what if it is true? And then friends, all I need to tell you, it just all made sense. Jesus made sense, this first church made sense, history began to make sense, my life began to make sense, all of a sudden, oh, oh, there's a lot more going on here than I realized.

Okay, wow, I need a savior.

Let's just go back to the example of Thomas. What happened to Thomas? What became of him? He went from doubting Thomas to exclaiming there in the end of John's Gospel to the risen Christ, My Lord and my God. As I say, arguably the climax of that Gospel written by his close friend John, who knew Thomas well, well enough to present him doubts and all.

But you've got to wonder sometimes, did these kind of changes last? There are momentary enthusiasms. All of us have seen people who are temporarily religious. They get all excited for a little while. Well, let's just take Thomas.

Whatever happened to Thomas? Well, he's in our passage. You know, he was there at Pentecost in Jerusalem. The change in him and others like him is, as I say, one of the most remarkable evidences that what Peter said here about God having raised Jesus from the dead is true. Though he's not named in chapter 2, He's clearly there throughout this chapter in this first Christian fellowship being formed in Jerusalem.

But here's a question. Why does Luke never mention him again? Why does Paul never in any of his letters or even his friend John who writes five books in the New Testament except for the gospel where he is mentioned in these later ones, the three letters in the Revelation, why does he never mention Thomas? Well, we've seen that Thomas changed, and I think part of that change may have been Thomas listening to that final command of Christ to go tell people elsewhere about Jesus. We have a council study this year in Acts about Peter and Paul taking the gospel all over the Mediterranean world.

Maybe Thomas took it someplace else. There were all of these communities of Jews dispersed from Libya to Iran. Remember up in verse 9, the mention of devout men, that's these Jews or Gentiles becoming Jews. In Parthia, among the Medes, that's east of Jerusalem. That's where they were in captivity in Babylon.

And there are some early historical accounts that Thomas went to visit the Jews in Babylon. In 49 or 50 A.D. and shared the good news of Jesus with them and established Christian churches in Parthia more generally from there, modern day Persia, Iran. And even that he went on in to Hindu, Hindi speaking parts of India and established Christian churches there around 52 A.D. and then on down further into Tamil Nadu, where he began preaching the gospel even among the Tamil speakers. And you know what's interesting about that? Ah, maybe just an early church legend.

Well, it could be, but it is interesting when the Portuguese in the 1400s get to southern India and they land, do you know what they find there? Christian churches. Older than their own churches back in Portugal. And when they ask where these Christian churches came from, you know what they're told? From the disciple Thomas.

Well, well.

Tradition even says that Thomas was martyred there for following Christ around 72 A.D.

If so, Thomas was changed from a guy who just said, Let's go die with him. To a guy who actually did, as Peter and Paul and almost all of the original disciples did. Friends, they all thought Jesus was raised from the dead.

That's why they changed, because God did raise Jesus from the dead. Friends, that's why I changed.

That's why you can change, because God raised Jesus from the dead.

The Holy Spirit has come. We have God's Word. God's people are here.

Come join us. By faith, indwelt by God's Spirit. If you have more questions about this, ask the friends or family you've come with. Ask any of us standing at the doors afterwards.

Come. Come to Christ. God has raised Him from the dead. Let's pray together.

Lord God, even as yous began youn church by youy Spirit, so we pray that yout would add to it today, in Jesus' name. Amen.