Sermon notes from Sunday 11 February 2018
Acts 2 verse 1 - 20
We looked last week at chapter 1 and the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thought of this great fundamental truth recorded here, the great hingepin for the message of the gospel - that Jesus Christ is alive, alive for ever more and he is coming again. That should thrill our hearts and challenge us. Perhaps he will come today. I want to turn to another aspect of the church. The Lord standing in their midst, as he spoke to them he is taken up into the air. 2 angelic hosts are standing with them and asked them "why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." They made their way back to Jerusalem because they received the power to go out and tell others. You and I need a power that is outside us to witness for the Lord. He will not fail us. He will grant that power if we seek after it. Chapter 2 the Holy Ghost comes now. Yes he came and went before but now he is coming to remain and stay.
There is an expectation that brought them. They left the Mount of Olives, made their way back to Jerusalem, had plenty to think about. Only a little group of people not a multitude. They were going back at the command of Jesus because they had a tremendous task to do. Paul says God uses the insignificant things to confound the mighty. If the Holy Spirit was to come today and fill every believer what a work we could really do. Sometimes we get caught up in vast numbers that we think the Lord is not in it. It is for the 2 or 3 that the Lord is in the midst of. That is the promise God has given us. Acts 1 verse 4 Jesus told them to go back to Jerusalem and "wait for the promise of the Father which ye have heard of me." They were waiting for the promise of the Spirit, they were waiting in obedience, listened to what he had said and now would carry it out. They would wait obediently. The scriptures tell us to "be doers of the word and not hearers only." (James 1 verse 22) "For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not grievous." (1 John 5 verse 3) They were coming back, expecting something. Jesus said something would happen and they came back expecting something to happen. Do we come into God`s house expecting God to do something very special? Obedence is a tremendous thing. Saul the king in the Old Testament was told to do a specific thing. He was to annihilate the Amalekites. Saul went out to do that and returned to the camp again. Samuel came to him and asked him "why are the sheep still bleating?" He was told to wipe out everything and he told Samuel he had done that. He explained to Samuel that the people saw the lambs and thought they would be good for sacrifice. They kept the very best of the flocks for God. Samuel told him the Lord was looking for obedience "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerngs and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of lambs." (1 Samuel 15 verse 22) Saul stepped into the role he never should have stepped into. The role of sacrifice - but God didn`t want that. We can put off a job because it doesn`t feel right doing it. Maybe even in order to do that we need to ask the Lord to help us.
The experience they had. They came in expectation, opened the door of the room, they gathered in, they were waiting on God to do something in their lives. It wasn`t their obedience that brought about a great experience nor their expectation of the Spirit coming. God has a programme and the world is running to that programme today. We might look at the leaders of the world, powerfully running things but God has everything under his control, to his say so. One day God will fold this world up like a garment (Hebrews 1 verse 12) It has nothing to do with man but God is in charge. In the Upper Room on this particular day this was God`s programme. Leviticus 23 shows us the different feasts God declared his people to observe. God is running this programme for this old world and on the Day of Pentecost the disciples waited in expectancy - Acts chapter 2 verse 1 . Verse 2 tells us "and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire and it sat upon each of them." Notice it was the sound of it, the symbolism of it all. Verse 4 "and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." They were waiting on God to do something for them and this was the outcome of the waiting. Remember Jairus in the gospels? He wanted to ask the Lord to come back to his house just to see his daughter. He left the house expecting and the experience he had was of his daughter being raised to life again. Maybe today the church is in a rut - we don`t expect people to get saved. Maybe that is why our church prayer meetings are so few in number - maybe why so many don`t attend church. We have lost out. We need a moving of God`s Spirit today. The wind is a powerful element. We can see the devastation a hurricane causes with villages wiped out. The wind cannot be harnessed. Fire speaks of purification. We need the Spirit to purify minds and hearts. In Acts 10 Peter came into the house of Cornelius. As he speaks "the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word." (Acts 10 verse 44) As a Jew he should not have been there in the home of a Gentile but God had told him to go there. He preached the word of God and the Holy Spirit came down. He purified their hearts by fire. We need pure hearts today. As Moses approached the burning bush in the desert the Lord told him to take off his shoes for the ground he was standing on was holy ground (Exodus 3 verse 5).
The enabling they received - "they began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance" verse 4. The people said they were drunk. They were speaking other languages which people in the crowd could understand. The Spirit came and filled them. They were enabled to do these things. Peter told them that this was what the prophet Joel had said would happen (verses 16 - 20). What a day that was in Jerusalem. The day the Spirit of God came. The challenge to us today is the same as the apostle Paul said to the Ephesian church - "be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with the Holy Spirit." (Ephesians 5 verse 18) We are still in the church age. We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit today, don`t settle for anything less.
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