Through the Bible

Now once again, remember this is overview, even though we'll be talking a lot about each of the things going on here in each of the verses, or a lot of the verses, I'm still trying to keep us in an overview mode rather than a specific focus in on every single verse. So we're going to still try and stay with the two chapters a week as we go through our overview in the New Testament. And we've skipped the Gospel of John, we leaped over John, we went Matthew, Mark, and Luke, finished up Luke last week. And two reasons, oh I'm bleeding, two reasons for going into John, or not going into John, one is that we're doing John on Thursday nights at our home fellowship, in depth, very in depth.

We've been in it for two years, a year and a half, and we're almost ready for chapter two. No, we're getting finished, we're getting down to the wire in it, it's 17, 18, that wasn't there. And another reason is because Acts is written by Luke, and you'll see the similarities, the reason though is Luke's name doesn't appear in Acts anywhere, the style of writing in all is attributed to Luke, he's addressing Theophilus, which if, go back to Luke chapter

truth about the things you have been taught. Then you flip over to Acts chapter one, and he starts off the same way, the first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, that's his gospel, that's the gospel that we have that's according to Luke, until the day when he was taken up to heaven after he had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen. So this is like his continuation, and there are those scholars that believe that possibly

there you go. So this could be, Luke and Acts could be his documentation for Paul's defense, Luke being a doctor again, he's very specific, very particular about what he writes and the language that he uses, and so we have that blessing for us in reading it, it's not as vague as some of the other gospels can be. So anyhow, he's compiled it for Theophilus, Theos, of course the Greek is for God, and Phileas is from Phileo, a lover, so Theophilus' name means a lover of God, and other scholars say if you read other commentaries they might say it's just, this is compiled for those

presented himself alive after his suffering, and he just mentions it, after his suffering, referring to the cross, by many convincing proofs, and if you're reading King James it says by many infallible proofs, and those are proofs that can't be disputed, they're right, complete, without error, or without fallibility, without any falseness to them. So his appearing to those after the resurrection was affirmed to many over a period of 40 days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God, and gathering them together, all the apostles, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, which, he said, now he begins quoting Jesus, you heard from me, for

John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. We've talked about it before, but I don't know how many have been with us when we've talked about it, about the holiness of God, the tahara of God, in the Hebrew, the part of Pentecost, the feast itself, or the time of Pentecost, was waiting upon the Lord for the of His holiness. They knew that the Old Testament had promised that the holiness of God would someday be

Then there would be many pilgrims there, just like there were for Passover, people from everywhere, Jews from every region of the world, and we'll see that as we get to Acts chapter 2, that that's verified in Acts chapter 2. But they are waiting there for this outpouring of God's holiness. Now they weren't looking at it as the outpouring of His Spirit necessarily, although that's

Bible prophecy, how Lindsay's first book had been out for a year or so, Late Great Planet Earth. God led me to the Lord, introduced me to that book, and I was excited about the fact that Jesus was coming, could come at any time, and for 38 years I've believed that, and as a pastor, I've taught that for 30 years, anticipating it very imminently. There's nothing else that has to happen. We don't have to go through any of the tribulation.

I believe the Bible teaches. We're going to be caught out before that time. Now still, anticipating that, I was telling the kids, you know, there's still that, it's just a, I don't know if it's an attitude, or it's just that I know it's going to happen, I really believe it's going to happen, and I believe it's going to happen any time now. But in the same, it's the same sense, you know.

If it happens, I'm going to be shocked. I'm going to be stunned. You know, when we're caught up together to meet the Lord in the air, it's going to be like, whoa, you know, whoa, you know, in a moment, and we're not going to be floating up. It's going to be instantaneously there, so, I mean, you know, it's not like we're all going to be hurling past Jupiter together, wow, this is cool, you know, and backstroke or back float all the way up.

It's just in a moment, we'll be there, but it's going to be like, wow, is this, is this really real? And so as this happens, that's the attitude, although they've been gathering for centuries to celebrate Pentecost, the Feast of Pentecost, in the anticipation of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, when it actually happens, they're stunned. What is this? You know, and so we'll get to that, but Jesus said to go and to wait in Jerusalem, to wait for what the Father has promised, and He says it's part of the baptism.

I'm baptizing you with the Holy Spirit. I'm going to immerse you into and with the Holy Spirit. So when they come together, verse 6, they were asking Him, saying, Lord, is it this time that you're restoring the kingdom to Israel? And He said to them, it's not for you to know times or epochs or seasons, whatever your translation says, which the Father has fixed by His own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest parts of the earth.

Now, this particular text right there is probably known even by a lot of non-Christians who've just heard it a lot. The Holy Spirit comes upon us and you'll be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the outermost parts of the earth. But something I want to take you back to is verse 6. When they come together, they were asking Him, saying, Lord, is it this time you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel?

He just told them, I want you to wait in Jerusalem because I'm going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's going to come upon you. He talked to them about the coming of the Holy Spirit. John reveals that to us probably more than any of the other Gospels, even though John was written at the end of, almost the end of the century. The things that Jesus had said that John records, chapters 14 through 17, it's just chapter

after chapter after chapter after chapter on the coming of the Holy Spirit and the promise of the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit's going to do and how the Holy Spirit's going to make us one with the Father and with the Son and Him and us and us and them and all of this. And yet, what they want is the kingdom here now, you know. We're tired of living under Roman rule. We're tired of living here the way things are.

Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Are we finally going to get to reign? And Jesus has to come back again and say, you know, it's not for you to know these particular specifics about the events that are going to happen. The word times there in Greek is the word chronos, which is the full length of time. Like when is this time going to end? From the time since the stars began to shine until it's over.

It's not for us to know that full length of time yet. When it happens, it's going to happen. We're to know that it's going to happen, but it's not for us to know specifically when it's going to happen. Or epochs or seasons, the word is kairos in the Greek and it means special, specific dates or specific opportunities that are going to come along. The kingdom is going to be restored.

It's not for us to know exactly when. Now later, Paul will tell us that we are to know, we're to be able to discern the seasons, not the specific date itself. So, you know, the 88 reasons why Jesus was going to come in 88 never panned out because we're not, we're not going to know exactly the date. We can say, sure seems close. Really seems close. Seems a whole lot closer.

Seems a whole lot closer yesterday, you know, than the day before. Seems a lot closer today than it was yesterday. And that's true because we are. We're another day closer. Whatever that's going to be, we're another day closer. But I can't tell you that Jesus is going to come this year. My hope is that He will. I have my own thoughts that some of it I shared on Sunday as far as, you know, I think it's

very probable that Israel is going to attack Iran in the next 13 days before the election. I think it's funny that, you know, while I was here telling you guys that on Sunday,

other guy probably would be, and that the guy who's been Secretary of State just said that the only way that he could possibly get in is if there was a strong military action that would hit the world. And we know we've got to hit Iran anyhow. Hey, let's go this weekend. You know, we've been practicing, we've been making the runs out over the Mediterranean. Let's just go.

So I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm saying, from my puny brain perspective, that would sure seem to be a strong possibility. And if it does, could that herald Ezekiel 39? Could that be the Ezekiel 39 battle that ensues as a result of that? And if that happens, then is that going to be the revealing of the Antichrist? And if that's going to happen, then according to 2 Thessalonians 2, we're out of here.

So I mean, it could be that quick. I don't know. I'm just saying it's exciting to look at it, but we can't know the dates. But they're going to receive power, he says, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. For what reason? For what reason? Power to heal? Well, yeah, those things will happen. But the primary reason that they were going to receive power was to be witnesses.

To be witnesses. To testify to the reality of who Jesus was everywhere. Starting in Jerusalem, and then on out to the countryside around Jerusalem, that area of Judea, and then on up into the regions of Samaria, which is really no man's land for the Jews, but he includes that. I think that's interesting. And then to the uttermost parts of the world. So places that they're not going to want to go, he's going to take them, primarily

for them to be witnesses of who he is. And then our minds, the Jewish mind, ought to go back to their heritage, to the Old Testament, to the patriarchs, to people like Joseph, who was taken from where he was in his region with his family, and taken to another region, and he was testifying, gave testimony to who God was in another region. And the whole nation of Egypt yielded to the God of Joseph. Now, how many of them believed, we don't know, but at least for a period of fourteen years, and probably more, during the times of plenty, and then the seven years of famine, and the strongest nation in the world, the predominant kingdom in the world, Egypt, knew who Yahweh

was, because of the testimony of one who had been taken somewhere that he didn't necessarily want to go. The Jews, the first church, were Jewish believers, were going to be booted out because of the persecutions of one Saul of Tarsus, moved to other regions, where they not necessarily wanted to go. But the testimony of Christ, and the testimony of God, and the testimony of God, and the testimony of Christ, went there as well. Now, it's by the power of the Holy Spirit that that happens, and I've shared with you before about, you know, it's gonna be things, with the sufferings, he talked about the suffering in verse three, that Jesus went through.

Paul then relates it to the fact that we are tasting of his sufferings, the different things we go through, it's a privilege for us to suffer for the Lord. It's a privilege to us to taste those sufferings so that the light, the truth that's in us, can shine out through these clay pots. And so God is going to put you in some precarious positions, into places that you don't want to go necessarily. Now, the whole idea of this going, you know, we know the Great Commission, Matthew 28, all power has been given unto me in heaven and earth, and therefore I command you to go.

And the idea in the tenses of the verbs is go, and while you're going, make disciples. The idea that happens as a result of the book of Acts is God is gonna move you out into different areas that you may not want to go, but while you go, you're gonna be witnesses of me. Now, especially in these last days, God's gonna be putting us in different circumstances that we may not want to be in, places that we may not want to go, but our purpose with the power of the Holy Spirit is to be witnesses of Him. And I've shared with you before about my wife and with her diagnosis of ALS, and God is already opening areas of contacts with people that we wouldn't normally be in contact with because of her disease.

Monday, we were just up again at KU, at the KU Med Center, for another clinic where you

and gives us some real good advice as far as what to do to help alleviate some of the choking and all. And then she says, you know, okay, so tell me what's happening in the Lord. And she had a graduate student with her, and she said, do you mind if she is going through some of this? We said, no, that's fine. And she ends up telling Ann, the pathologist did, she said, you don't realize how many

of the staff here you have touched because you glow. The joy of the Lord is so evident on you that you just glow. And the grad students sitting there nodding their head, and the pathologist said, you know, even my students that I bring through here, they can see the joy of the Lord in you. And, you know, so here's, we get a chance to be fellowshipping with them, encouraging.

She said, you guys are the strength of my day. She said, this is such a blessing. She said, I've even had other staff say, are they one of yours? Meaning, you know, are they Christians like you? Are they believers? And they go, and she goes, yeah, yeah, they are. And she said, they can see the difference. They're going from room to room with all these different patients out there that have ALS

in different stages. And she said, you can tell the difference. You can see the difference. Now, that's not a direction we wanted to go. That would be like our Samaria, you know, someplace that we've heard about. But we just don't really want to go there. But God sent us to Samaria, and yeah, it's so that we can get some encouragement and advice and help for Ann,

but it's to be witnesses. That's why you and I are still living and breathing as Christians. God has a use for us into the different circumstances of life in which He places us. And the only way you'll handle the circumstance is in the power of the Holy Spirit, because He will guide you and He just keeps bringing before your attention why you're here, you know?

Why you're in this circumstance. You know, I'm going to go, I can heal you at any time, but I'm using you in this particular circumstance for my sake, for my glory. And that's the power. That's the power that they didn't have. Peter was scared to death before he received the Holy Spirit. Okay, now we've got to move on quickly. Verse 9 is, as he said these things,

he was lifted up, and while they were looking on, a cloud received him out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while he was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. And they also said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.

And so the reality of the second coming of Jesus, when He actually comes back to the earth again, He'll come back in the same way, according to these angels that are there, in the same way that He went up. He's rising slowly. They watch Him go up into the clouds, up into the clouds, receive Him, and He's gone. And they say He's going to return the same way.

You go to the book of Zechariah in the Old Testament, you see that that's how He's coming. Every eye is going to see Him as He's coming back. Then you read about events in the New Testament where it talks about the rapture of the church, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, and 1 Corinthians 15, that we're going to be changed, transformed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. And we're going to be caught up, in 1 Thessalonians 4, caught up to meet Jesus in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

And yet you don't see Him descending. You don't see every eye seeing Him. It's like this is a moment in time that happens specifically for those who are believers who are waiting for Him to return. So it's not this particular second coming. It's, I believe, it's part of His coming again, but it's the part of the removal of the church before the time of the Great Tribulation.

This, they're talking about that actual second coming when He actually comes again. Every eye will see Him just as He's going up into heaven. They'll watch Him come back to the earth. And then they return to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journeyway, about two-thirds of a mile. In Israel today, they have the Sabbath ring,

the Sabbath marker ring around the city of Jerusalem. It's a wire going around and it goes from post to post. Excuse me, it's majored off at two-thirds of a mile. And the Jews know that's how far they can go on the Sabbath. That's as far as they can travel. It's a Sabbath ring, the Sabbath marker ring. And so they were that far away, excuse me, from Jerusalem when all of this happened.

When they'd entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying, that is, and then it lists the disciples that remained. Peter, he's the first one listed, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, then also James, the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James. These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. Now, take note, you might underline that and make a note off to the side of your Bible.

That's the last time Mary, the mother of Jesus, is mentioned in the Scriptures. That's it, last time. She is not a co-redemptrix with Jesus. She's not the intercessor between us and God. Jesus is. There's only one mediator, Paul tells Timothy, between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. This is the last time we see Mary. Now, at this time, Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren,

a gathering of about 120 persons were there together, and he said, brethren, the Scriptures had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus, for he was counted among us and received his share in this ministry. Now, this is a commentary by Luke. Luke sticks in his commentary, a little parenthetical statement here that talks about to Theophilus what happened to Judas. This man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out.

Now, there's a medical description by a doctor, you know, so, I mean, it's a basic medical description. He fell and he exploded and his, you know, we're told in the Gospels that Judas went out, he was distraught and that his revealing Jesus to the hierarchy there of the religious Jews resulted in Jesus' death. Judas didn't want him killed. I personally believe Judas was trying to manipulate him into making the kingdom appear now so that he could be a part of it.

And, you know, I mean, if he's running the treasury for this motley crew of 12 and he's getting to pilfer off the treasury with the 12, imagine if the kingdom of God's on the earth and I'm the treasurer of the kingdom, you know, woo. So let's get this kingdom rolling. And when it didn't work that way, he was distraught. He went out and he hung himself. Well, you wonder what happened to him after that.

I mean, he threw the money back into the temple and they said, because the hierarchy said, well, we can't receive money that's blood money. This is money that was, you know, given to have you betray. It's betrayal money. We can't receive it. We can't take it back from you. They threw it into the, he threw it back in the temple at him anyhow. They took it and they bought this field,

this potter's field, over which Judas ended up hanging himself. And he was so liked by everybody that nobody bothered to cut him down. It's what Luke is telling us. That he just, in fact, hung there until the rope rotted and broke. And he was so bloated and, you know, in the midst of decomposition that when he hit the ground, he just broke. He just popped like a ripe watermelon.

He burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out. And it became known to all who were living in Jerusalem so that in their own language, the field was called Hakodamah. That is the field of blood. Now, again, it's interesting. It is a field of blood because it was money. It was a field, the potter's field that was bought with the money, the betrayal money for Jesus' blood.

The potter's field was simply a field where the potter, when he was working his clay, if he had bad pieces of clay or the clay as he's shaping and molding it gets marred and he can't reshape it again, he'd just take it and he'd cast it out into the field. So it was a field. And if he dropped a piece of pottery and it broke, he'd sweep it up and he'd just throw it out in the field. It was not usable for anything again.

It was marred, it was defective, it was damaged, it was useless. Okay, now it's interesting to me then that Paul tells us in Thessalonians that we are clay pots. And these clay pots have the treasure in them. The gospel, the truth, the life of Christ, the Holy Spirit of God living in us, the truth of the Word of God living within us. We are simply clay pots.

Well, actually, we're the field. We're the broken, marred, defective, useless pottery in that field that was bought with the blood of Christ. It's the field of blood. And it's just a beautiful picture, I think, of the fact that Jesus' blood bought the broken clay pots of the world. Jesus, the Bible says, died, and His blood is effective for the sins of the world.

He is able to redeem those, all that come to Him, He can redeem because His blood was effective enough to buy the entire field, the potter's field of defective clay pots in the field of blood. For it is written, and then Peter quotes, now he's back to this area. Now, that was just a little parentheses. Now, go back up to verse 17 real quick. For He, Judas, was counted among us

and received His share in the ministry. And then it's time for us to replace Him. He goes down to verse 20. For it's written in the book of Psalms, let His homestead be made desolate, New American Standard said, and let no one dwell in it. That's taken from Psalm 69. And then from Psalm 109, verse 8, let another man take his office. Okay, now Peter rightly understood those verses.

Okay, now from here on, check this with me as we go. So it goes, verse 21, therefore it's necessary. What's necessary, Peter? Well, Peter says, therefore it's necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us, one of these must become a part of His resurrection.

Who said? Well, that's... Well, it just seems natural. It should be, huh? I mean, you know, guys, this, you know, Peter's saying that it should. Isn't that logical? It's logical that if somebody's going to take His place, that it ought to be somebody who's been with us from the beginning, that's seen all the miracles and stuff, and was an eyewitness of everything,

just as we were, right? Doesn't that seem logical that that happened? It's necessary, Peter says. It's absolutely necessary that one of these... And let me just ask you, what did Jesus tell them to do when they were out on the Mount of Olives? Go to Jerusalem and what? Go back.

Verse four, not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father has promised. He didn't say, go to Jerusalem and work through among yourselves and figure out the Scriptures are going to tell you that somebody's got to replace Judas, and you guys figure out how to do that. You'll draw lots, because that's what you do for everything. You know, when we don't know what to do, we draw lots.

You don't have the Urim and the Thummim, but you can draw lots because we know the Word says that God is in the casting of the lots, and so that's a logical way to figure all that out. We'll do that, huh? But God didn't tell Peter to do that. Jesus told Peter, go to Jerusalem and just wait for the promised Holy Spirit. In other words, the idea is the Spirit will guide you.

You'll know what to do once the Spirit comes upon you. All I want you to do is go to Jerusalem and wait. And during that time, again, back to what I said about the Tahara, waiting for the holiness of God, you would have been given to prayer, seeking the Lord, asking God for His holiness to come upon them, reading through and praying through the Ten Commandments, just waiting upon the Lord, letting the Word of God flow through them so that the Holy Spirit comes, now He can begin to direct and speak to them. But as happens with all of us, God needs help.

God needs our help. We've got to help God do this. I mean, I have an idea what needs to happen, so I need to do this so that God, you know, we've got to have 12 of us. Why do we have to have 12? Well, because Jesus chose 12 of us, and now there's only 11.

Amen. Well, the Psalms said to replace Him. Well, the Psalms said that He would be replaced. It didn't say that they should replace Him. It said that He would be replaced. Let another man take His office. Okay, how's that going to happen? Well, remember, in the way that God chose out people, you remember Gideon going up against the enemy. They were, it's God that whittled down the numbers

and told Gideon, this is too many, this is too many, this is too many, Gideon, this is too many, down to the 300. They were outnumbered 32 to one. And God said, that's it, that's what I want. You're going to go up against these guys with 300. Okay, but that was God that did that. It wasn't man that was figuring out how to do it. God was capable to do that with Gideon,

surely capable to figure out who's going to, if there even needs to be a replacement. Does there need to be a replacement? Well, yeah, because the scripture said that there's another man. It's necessary that somebody else is going to take His place. Let another man take His office. They go ahead and they put forward two men, verse 23. Joseph called Barsabbas,

who was also called Justice, and Matthias. And they prayed, God love them. They did things the best way they knew how. They prayed, but they did what we always, well, not always, I won't say we always do it, but we tend to do. What we can tend to do is a lot of stuff and then say, God, bless our efforts. Instead of, God, what is it that we should do? Now, direct me in these efforts.

These are things that I see that could be done. Is this what you want me to do? Well, we can have a tendency to get rolling and then say, okay, let's call the church together and ask God to pray and bless this outreach. Let God, let's have God bless our effort instead of saying, God, show us what to do and lead us because then we know you're going to bless whatever it is that we're supposed to be doing.

But they said, okay, we got this going. Okay, now God bless this. You, Lord, know the hearts of men. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to occupy this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place. And they drew lots for them and the lot fell to Matthews. And he was added to the 11 apostles. And that's the last you'll hear of Matthews

in all the scripture. Now, who did God choose to replace to be one of the main apostles? Who did God choose? Paul, a man called Saul of Tarsus, and he chose him his way. Well, he wasn't with them from the beginning. Well, remember that the Bible says that, well, we'll see it as we go through here, that Paul spends three years in the desert with Jesus. As Jesus, he appears to him

and he teaches him personally. Paul's an eyewitness to his resurrection because Jesus appears to him. God speaks to him personally. God will do what God needs to do his way. He does not need our help. He invites us to be a part of it. I truly believe we don't hobble him. He will get done what he wants to get done when he wants to get it done. We'll miss out on a blessing

if we refuse to yield to his will, if we try to direct him, if we try to tell him in prayer how he ought to do things. He'll just let us go on and on because he's already figured out he doesn't need our directing. He doesn't need our help. He invites us to come along. He invites us to pray so that as we're praying, he begins to direct our prayers. We begin to see how he's moving.

You know, again, go back to the Old Testament. Go back to, again, I'm mentioning Joseph tonight because you read the account of Joseph in the time that his brothers thumped on him and threw him in the well and then sold him to the caravan going south to Egypt and then he's in Potiphar's house. And we don't read anything there of the account that he was begging Potiphar, I'm not supposed to be here, this is just a total, I just don't know why I'm here, you know, woe is me and I should be back there. He served in the circumstance that he was in as faithfully to God as he could serve.

And God blessed him in that circumstance, raised him up to where he was second in Potiphar's house. He was in charge of everything in Potiphar's house. Everything Potiphar's wife. And when she fouled him up, you know, accused him falsely and he ends up in prison, again, I don't read of him bemoaning or crying out to God, asking God why, or trying to direct God out of it.

He served God where he was. He was in his Samaria, in his uttermost parts of the earth, being a witness for the Lord. That's what we're supposed to do. Just testifying of Christ and living as righteously unto God as we can. Doing everything that we do, Paul says, unto God who's a rewarder of us, not unto man. We're not doing it for man's appeal or affirmation,

we're doing it as unto the Lord. Joseph did that and then he got raised up to second in command under Pharaoh of the greatest kingdom in the world. He didn't seek it, he didn't command it, he didn't direct God to do anything with it. Matter of fact, when Pharaoh called Joseph before him and said, I understand that you interpret dreams, that you give understanding of dreams.

He said, I don't do it, not me. It's God who gives the understanding. You know, you tell me and I'll pray and God will give it, but it's not me. He's a humble man and God so blesses that and that's what he wants and that's ultimately what Peter becomes. We're going through Peter, 1 Peter on Sunday mornings and you see the life of the one who has changed from this point on with the Holy Spirit

and it's tremendous to see Peter's life, the humility that God has brought into this man. So anyhow, chapter two, when the day of Pentecost had come or King James write more correctly says has fully come, they were all together in one place and suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind and it filled the whole house where they were sitting and there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves and they rested on each one of them and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit was giving them utterance. Now, a couple of things, the sound is of a rushing mighty wind. Back to the Gospels, back to John specifically, Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus

that the Spirit of God, well go back with me, John chapter three, real quick, real quick, but back to chapter three of John's Gospel.

Jesus talking to Nicodemus, he comes and affirms to Jesus verse two, Rabbi, we know that you've come from God as a teacher for no one can do these things, these signs that you do unless God is with him. And Jesus answered and said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one's born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he's old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?

And Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Do not be amazed that I said that you must be born again. Then he uses this phrase, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it,

but you do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. And the word for Spirit in the Greek that's used there is the word pneuma, which is neuter. It means a breath or a wind. end. Before Jesus goes, and we'll get to it eventually, Thursday group. Before He ascends. He breathes on them. There it is. John chapter 20. We flip over to chapter 20.

Verse 19. When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut, where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, Peace be with you. And when He had said this, He showed both His hands and His side, and the disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. And the parade just started. And so Jesus said to them again,

Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I also send you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. He breathed on them. The Spirit was coming out from Him. And by illustration, He shows them how that's going to happen. And it's like a breath, like a mighty wind. And so it shouldn't be a surprise to us as we're here in Acts chapter 2,

that when the Spirit of God actually comes, He's like the sound of a rushing mighty wind. The breath of God. Now in creation, back in Genesis, God created for man from the dust of the ground and He breathed into him the breath of life. And man became a living soul. And so to be born again, it's going to take the breath of new life, the tahara, the holiness of God, the breath of God to

come upon us. And so that we see illustrated here in Acts chapter 2 as the Holy Spirit comes. Now He comes and He appears to them in tongues. The word in the Greek is glossa. We get our word glossary from this Greek root word. A glossary is simply a listing of words, a whole bunch of words. You have a glossary in a, if you have a book that's written, you have a glossary and there's

words that are used and definitions of the words that are used in a glossary. They're used in that particular writing, in that particular book. So that's glossa, that's the tongue of the Spirit that came upon them and settled over them. And then they were filled with the Spirit, verse 4, and they began to speak with other glossa, with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance or was enabling them. Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men

from every nation under heaven. Now remember, they're packed in there. That's why they are there, is they've been praying. They've been praying all night for the tahara of God, the fall, the holiness of God, the fall. They've been expecting it. They're awake and anticipating it because they've been there all night praying. And they hear this sound as of a rushing mighty wind.

And so they go to where they hear the specific location of this sound of the wind. And when they get there, when this sound occurred, the wind, the crowd came together, verse 6, and they were bewildered because each of them now was hearing these guys speak in his own language. They were amazed and astonished saying, why aren't all these guys who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which each of us were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and

residents of Mesopotamia and Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Galatia, Phrygia and Pamphylia and Egypt and the districts of Libya and northern Africa and Cyrene, the visitors from Rome over the regions of Italy and all, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans, Athenians of Crete, Arabs from the Middle East, on the other side of Israel, we hear them in our own tongues, our own glossa, speaking of the mighty deeds of God. And they all continued in amazement with great perplexity saying to one another, what does this mean? When we are filled with the Spirit, we are given the ability to witness. And that's exactly what they were doing. They were

testifying to the things of God. This filling of the Holy Spirit. And I do believe, the Bible goes on to teach, we'll see the other sections in the book of Acts where those believers receive the Holy Spirit and they speak with other tongues. There are other languages. There is a gift of tongues. Paul talks about praying in his tongue. Tongues are that gift most often used today in

prayer, a prayer language. It's where, you see it here in the book of Acts, it's communicating, man's communicating to God. Praise is being given to God. In 1 Corinthians 14, when Paul talks about praying in a tongue, it's man communicating to God in tongue. So often where tongues are used in a group, often we can hear somebody giving back a prophecy, speaking back a word of

knowledge or whatever, when that's not the interpretation of that tongue, because according to Scripture, according to examples in Scripture, when the tongue is evidenced, it's always man speaking to God, either giving praise to God or praying to God. It's not God speaking to man. When God speaks to man, he always speaks understandably. Now, words of knowledge, words of prophecy, wisdom, those will come in the language in which we understand. I do believe that a gift

of languages, missionaries will often get that as they go into different regions and they may not know the language, and God will give them that particular language. I've heard testimony of that before from credible people that I respect, and I also believe, as we look at the book of Revelation in chapter 7, where the 144,000 specific Jews, 12,000 from each of the specific tribes, that's not the church, those are specific Jews who will be called by God and sealed by God and sent by God into the world. They'll reach the 1040 window, the area of the regions where we have not reached yet, at the time that they go out, and I believe God will enable many of them to be able to reach those nations with the gospel

during that period of great tribulation. But I think we get gifts from the church when they use them, they use them in their daily, just their daily time, special services where we get together and we wait specifically for people to speak out in a gift of tongues or in a gift of prophecy or, you know, move with the word of knowledge or move with the healing. I mean, when the church is functioning as the church is supposed to function, when we're out praying with each other or praying for one another, whatever, in the different circumstances that come about, those things are going to just happen naturally. We don't have to set some kind of an atmosphere to try and make them happen or try and get them

to happen. I mean, if you have those special times to do that, and we've gone through that in our younger years, you know, because we really want to see them, we sincerely want to see God move, then we need to have that time waiting and if somebody gets up and they turn on a vacuum cleaner, well that's a gift of helps, you know, but that kind of disrupts the whole waiting on the Lord for the gift of tongues kind of service. But all the gifts moving, they move through the body. They just move through the body as the body functions.

As a chaplain, there have been police chaplains, there have been times I've been able to go on different calls with the officers and in different circumstances as we're going to the calls with the officers, I'll just pray. I'll say, you know, I'm gonna pray for you as we're going and I pray and I'll start praying in a prayer language. And most of these guys aren't saved, you know, and I just say I'm praying for protection. And in different circumstances, you know, there's, I've been in areas of exorcism and I'll pray in my prayer language. And just, you know,

thank God and ask God for strength in the midst of these different circumstances. But it's just, that's the natural outflow of the circumstances that we're going through. That's what's happening here. It's a natural outflow. God's wanting to reach this group of people with the outpouring of His Holy Spirit and the way that He does it is He lets them hear His praise in their own

specific language so that they're there and they're amazed and they're ready for the Word of God. It's the Word of God that transforms lives and hearts as the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and transforms people. It's not the miracles of God. In all the miracles that were done in the Gospels, very few people came to faith in Christ. Most of those before whom Jesus did the miracles

were the very ones that were standing there later demanding that He be crucified. It's the Word of God that transforms the heart for the Lord. And so the people are there and they are ready. What does this mean? But verse 13, others were mocking and saying, these guys are full of sweet wine. But Peter, taking his stand with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them, men of

Judea and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it's only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken of through the prophet

Now he quotes that section from Joel chapter 2, taking us from this particular time, this day of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and clear through until the time of the Great Tribulation and the coming again of the Lord. So from verse 17 here until through verse 21, we've just spanned the entire time from the birth of the Church of Pentecost through the Great Tribulation until the time that Jesus comes again. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Everyone that offer the opportunity is there for everyone. For anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be

His life was not cut short. He did not fail to finish the ministry or the mission which God the Father sent him to accomplish. It was the predetermined counsel and the foreknowledge of God that he went to the cross, when he went to the cross, why he went to the cross. You nailed him to a cross by the hands of godless men and you put him to death. But God raised him up again, putting an

end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. It was impossible for two reasons. Number one, he himself was the Son of God. He was God in the flesh. He indeed was the God-man. Now he took upon his flesh, his fleshly body, the sins of the world. He became sin. He was made for sin, made to be sin for us, 1 Corinthians says. God made him to be sin for us, so that he

could nail to the cross all the sin of mankind, judge it there in the person of Christ, and all who would call upon him will be saved, be cleansed, be washed free from that sin, and have the righteousness of God, the tahara, the holiness of God, imputed to him, given to him, through the shed blood of Christ. The predetermined counsel of God determined that he was the God-man who did it. And secondly, the second reason he could not stay dead is because God's Word said he wouldn't. God said that he would not stay in the grave. It's

impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says of him in Psalm 16, I saw the Lord always in my presence, for he is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exalted, moreover my flesh also will live in hope, because you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow your Holy One to undergo decay. You have made known to me the way of life, you will make me full of gladness with your presence. And then Peter gives the

commentary to that. Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. So in those verses David was not speaking of himself. Verse 30 says, And so because he was a prophet, David was, and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, David looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, of the Messiah, that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh suffer decay. This Jesus, Peter says,

got raised up again, to which we are all witnesses, that hundred and twenty of them in that upper room. Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this which you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. And therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Mashiach, the Christ, this Jesus whom you crucify. So Peter boldly takes the Word of God

and applies it, and says this is what Joel spoke about, this is what David spoke about in the Psalms. You have the cross, not just at your own whim. God the Father predetermined this. He ordained it, foreordained it, and determined it, and worked it all out to where it happened just as he planned it to happen. I was telling my high school class today, God, you know, Satan doesn't arbitrarily move. Satan cannot

just say I'm gonna go do this or go do that. The demons cannot say that. The demons cannot just say we're gonna go do this or do that. We see in Job, Job gives kind of a pulled-back curtain into that particular dimension, into the dimension of the angelic realm. And in Job we see that it was time, there was a predetermined time, a regular time that the sons of God had to present

themselves before God, and Satan came with them. Now the sons of God, the term the sons of God in the Old Testament according to scriptural constancy always refers to evil. It's not a positive thing. The sons of God in Genesis chapter 6 saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, that they were beautiful, and they joined unto them. They took some as wives and cohabited

with them and produced a race of Nephilim, men of renown. That's not a good thing. That was the demonic cohabitation of the demonic with man seeking to thwart God's promise to Adam and Eve back in Genesis chapter 3 of the deliverer, the one who would come from the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head. Satan tried to thwart it. God wasn't taken by surprise. God knew that

was going to happen. God allowed that to happen. He allowed that to happen for a reason. And brought mankind then through the descendants of Noah and showed that He, God, He Himself, God Himself is over, sovereign over all authority. There isn't anything that happens outside of His authority or He's not sovereign. If Satan can arbitrarily move, if God's wondering

what Satan's going to do next, then God is not a sovereign God. He would be a God, but then Satan would be a God equal to God, who could move sovereignly as He wills, and God's trying to play catch-up to try and block Satan as he moves. That's not what the Bible says. Satan is a created being. God is not. God is, was, and always will be. There's never a time God

wasn't. There is a time when Satan wasn't, and he was created by God. He is not God. He is not equal with God. He does not have even a tenth of the power of God. He has to appeal to God, as do his demons, to do what they would like to do, and God gives them privilege so far. He restricts their privilege, but He uses it. He uses it always, ultimately, for His glory, for His own end. That's what the predetermined, foreordained

counsel of God is all about. 9-11. Who is responsible for that? Oh, well, Satan. Yeah, but if Satan arbitrarily did that on his own, then God's not a sovereign God. God had to not only know that was going to happen, He had to allow that to happen. Did He? Absolutely. Did He restrict it? Absolutely. There's anywhere from 50 to 100,000 people in those buildings on any given day, and only 3,000 lost their lives totally with

the people that were in the building and those that were rescue workers coming. Mercy? Absolutely. God sovereignly used that. For what purpose? For what reason? I believe specifically to stir the hearts of this nation, to bring us back to an awareness of Him, which we did for, gee, a whole period of several weeks. And then we went back into our own pursuits and our own abandoning of God for our own

hedonistic, pleasurable lifestyle. Things that are happening now, God's allowing. The enemy wants to destroy. God says, this far, no further. You can touch this, but you can't harm this. And so, Peter is saying, this is what happened. This is what's going to happen. God's predetermined these things to happen. And so, God has made Jesus, and made Him towards us. We see Him now as Lord and

Christ. He always has been. God the Father did not make Jesus. He did not create Jesus. Jesus is the second person of the Godhead. Always been with the Father and the Spirit. But to us, He's been revealed. We see Him as Lord, seated on the throne next to Yahweh, which, if you read Isaiah 43 and Isaiah 46, that can't happen unless He is God. Because there is no God beside me, nor is any God going to come after me. I am the Lord, God says, I am it.

And beside me there is no Savior, although Jesus is called the Savior. He's identified to Mary as being the Savior of the world. He is the Savior who is seated next to the Father. He has to be God. He can't be anything less than God, or he'd violate the Word of God. Now the people are starting to pick up on some of this. I mean, it's still all hitting them very fast.

And so they heard this and they were pierced to the heart. I mean, you talk about hearing something for the first time as dramatic, as effective, as powerful as that, and none of us pick up on it. So you guys are going to have to take this home and listen to it several times to pick up on what I've said. I mean, you know, just to go back through and go, okay, he did read that verse. I didn't think he read that verse.

No, he really did read those verses, I guess, but I don't remember him reading those verses. So these guys are blown away and they're overwhelmed. When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do? King James says, what must we do to be saved? They're saying here, what do we do now?

And Peter said to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now, let me clear up one thing. Repentance is the idea that we're on the wrong road, we're going the wrong direction. To repent means we're going to turn and go the opposite direction. We're going to affirm that what we've been thinking and what we've been doing is wrong,

and we're going to turn and we're going to go in the opposite direction. We're going to go in the other direction towards what is deemed to be right. So Peter's saying, this is the way you were going. You were a part of the group that had him crucified. Now you need to turn and go the other way and realize that he is indeed Lord and Christ, because that's what God's revealed him to us now as, Jesus whom you have crucified.

And then, be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. They're not getting baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. They're being baptized identifying themselves with Jesus. Identifying themselves with Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins. There's a lot, well not a lot, there are some churches who tie this into the fact that

you have to repent and you have to be baptized to be saved. Baptism is a mark of identification. When John the Baptist was baptizing in the wilderness, the Pharisees came out to him and they didn't say, what are you doing, John? Because they understood what baptism was. They baptized. The Ethiopian eunuch, Simon of Cyrene, who carried Jesus' cross. Those were proselytes, I believe, to Judaism.

Those were those who had heard about Yahweh, and they had come and they had given themselves in faith to Yahweh, to be a follower of Yahweh, to be a follower of the Hebrew God. And they would have been baptized in the pool of Siloam as a mark of identification, that they are proselyting, they are coming and turning from their gods in Egypt and Ethiopia to God, to Yahweh, identifying themselves with Yahweh. And so they understood what baptism was. The Ethiopian eunuch, the treasurer, when Philip goes to Gaza and sees him at the chariot, and God says, join yourself to the chariot, and here's the eunuch reading from Isaiah.

And he says, Philip asked him, do you understand what you're reading? He says, how can I, except a man explain it to me? And so he climbed up in the chariot with him, and beginning there in Isaiah, and going through the rest of the prophets, he explained to him about the Messiah, how Jesus fulfilled these prophecies concerning what Isaiah was talking about, that Jesus indeed is the Messiah. And the eunuch believed, and he said, look, there's some water.

What's to keep me from being baptized? He already understood. I've identified myself with Judaism, with Yahweh, by being baptized in the pool of Siloam. I want to identify with this God, too.

Because to do that openly here at this time, they are now alienated from the temple. They will be after a while. Right now, it's so new and confusing that people don't know what to think. But ultimately, those who did that would be alienated from the temple worship. They'd be alienated from the marketplace because of their faith in this new sect, this belief in this new sect.

to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer, the four basics of the early church. The apostles' doctrine and the apostles' teaching, the word of God. To fellowship together, just being together, fellowshipping with one another. The breaking of bread involves the fellowshipping together in a meal. Every one of their meals, every time they'd eat together, they'd end,

celebrating the Lord's Supper that Jesus instituted at the Passover. They would celebrate it at the Passover, but as we get into this a little more, when we get to 1 Corinthians 11, we'll find it happened pretty much every time they had a meal together. They would celebrate the Lord's Supper. So it incorporates here the idea of eating together because you're a part of one another when you commune with one another.

And then also that part of taking the Lord's Supper would be part of that.

praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. So the desire to fellowship together, to fellowship with the Lord, to learn more of Him and to take that out into the areas around where they lived. That was the basics of the early church. And that should be the basics of what we do, what we function as part of the church.

and to just help along your way to help disciple them and then also send them out. I encourage them to go, and as they go, to make disciples as well. Lord, we know we're in the last days. We know that your Son is coming at any time. We want to be radically about your business. So prompt us to that, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.