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*The Promise Fulfilled*
*May 14, 2000 Acts 2:1-13*
*Introduction:*
Has anyone ever made you a promise they didn't keep?
If you are like me, and most other people I know, broken promises are a fact of life.
Perhaps you've struggled with keeping your marriage vows, or you or your partner have actually broken them.
You may have found that breach of trust repairable and forgivable.
I hope that was possible for you.
But maybe you were a casualty of some things you couldn't control.
Maybe you were a casualty of some things about yourself.
Perhaps you had a good job that promised you regular increases and benefits only to find yourself taken advantage of over time.
Eventually they let you go without even a credit to your name.
Perhaps a good friend has let you down.
You trusted them with your life only to find it had little value.
Perhaps your family has denied your promised inheritance.
Perhaps a brother's greed took advantage.
What can we say about ourselves?
Is Jer.
17:9 correct that says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?
Have you ever excused your own actions of expediency to those that trusted your ethics?
Have we always acted in the best interests of others, especially those that trusted us and our motives?
What can we learn from God about promises?
What can we learn about God from his promises?
In Num.
23:19 it says, "God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
Does he promise and not fulfill?"
Our God is a God of promises.
But that statement sounds a bit empty doesn't it?
We have all known people who are full of promises.
But God is different than man.
Actually our God is a promise keeper.
You may be familiar with the popular Christian men's movement called Promise Keepers.
Promise Keepers desires to instill in men the integrity of God in keeping promises.
The seven promises that PK promoted among men were to:
1) Honor Jesus Christ
2) Pursue Vital Relationships with Other Men
3) Practice Personal Integrity
4) Build a Strong Marriage and Family
5) Support His Pastor and Church
6) Demonstrate Biblical Unity
7) Influence His Community for Christ
I'm sure that brings resounding praise from the wives of such men.
God has given us many promises, but he has established an excellent record among his people of keeping them.
The promise of God we have been focusing on as we left the gospels and now enter into the Acts of the Apostles in the early church was the coming of the Holy Spirit.
In Acts 1:4-5 & 7-8, we heard the last words of Jesus Christ before he ascended into heaven.
He told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the coming of the Holy Spirit in whom they would be baptized with power to proclaim the good news of salvation.
The disciples knew they would be able to do what Jesus gave them to do because he was alive, he would not leave them alone, and he was coming back to claim his own.
While the disciples were waiting, we saw that they applied the wise council of prayer, Scripture, and other believers to take action on replacing Judas.
And now that the church was prepared through prayer, and having the full complement of apostles, the Holy Spirit is sent as promised.
And what a gift he is!
So what can we learn about God or from God in this morning's passage in Acts 2:1-13 in addition to the fact that he keeps his promises?
We can learn more about God from the nature of the gift that he promised.
*The Big Question:* What is the nature of the Holy Spirit that Christ gave us?
What does this gift do for us?
*I.
Cycle One*
* A.
Narrative (2:1-4)*
1)
Pentecost: the word means "fiftieth".
It fell on the 50th day after Passover – that is, the 50th day from the first Sunday after Passover, since Passover ended on the Jewish Sabbath, which is on Saturday.
In other words, Pentecost is the 50th day after Easter for Christians, and it will always be on a Sunday, the first day of the week.
Jesus arose from the dead on the first day of the week and “became the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Cor.
15:20).
Christians assemble and worship on Sunday, the first day of the week, because on that day our Lord arose from the dead, but it was also appropriately the day on which the Holy Spirit would be given to the church.
This was called the "Feast of Weeks" because it came after a period of 7 weeks of harvesting that began with the offering of the first barley sheaf during the Passover celebration and ended with the beginning wheat harvest.
Another name for this one-day celebration is "the day of firstfruits" because on that day the firstfruits of the wheat harvest were presented to God.
It was one of the 3 great pilgrim festivals of Judaism.
Passover preceded it, and the Feast of Tabernacles followed it by 4 months.
In later times, it became associated with the anniversary of the giving of the law on Mt.
Sinai to Moses (as a deduction from Ex. 19:1) and became an annual renewal of the Mosaic covenant.
But for Christians, it would be the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit, a new law written upon our hearts – a new covenant – a Christian counterpart to the giving of the law at Sinai.
We might also take note that it is after the 70 weeks of Daniel's prophecy in Dan. 9 that Christ will establish his kingdom upon the earth.
This will be when his own harvest is completed among those who are forgiven.
And Christ has forgiven those who come to him in faith even as he told Peter in Mt. 18:22 that we should forgive our brother up to seventy times seven.
The Holy Spirit is about to come to the church at Pentecost to begin this present Age of Grace.
All together – one place: Luke places his emphasis mostly upon the "when" rather than the "where" of this event.
He is not specific about where except to say that they were all together in one place.
Who was it that were all together?
Probably the 120 mentioned in 1:15 and not just the reconstituted 12 apostles.
Where was the place?
Probably the upper room where they were staying in 1:13 and 2:2 where prayer was so much apart of the waiting that Jesus told them to do.
2)
Wind: we see here the first of 3 signs of the Spirit's coming that are reported – wind, fire and inspired speech.
All of these are considered in Jewish tradition to be signs of God's presence.
Recall that it was a wind as the breath of God that blew over the dry bones in the valley of Ezekiel's vision in Ez. 37:9-14 to fill them with new life.
It was this wind of God's Spirit that Jews looked forward to as ushering in the final Age of the Messiah.
Note also that Jesus spoke of the wind of the Spirit to Nicodemus in Jn. 3:8, saying, "The wind blows wherever it pleases.
You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
It is the mysterious operation of the Spirit that effects new birth.
This wind of God regenerates.
Note that Luke emphasizes the sound of blowing like a wind rather than the wind itself.
This is a supernatural occurrence.
This might well be connected to the sound of inspired speech that this wind of the Spirit will immediately impart.
We know that it was from God because it was from heaven.
We know that it was powerful because it was a violent, rushing sound.
We know that it was all encompassing because it filled the whole house.
God had just sent his Spirit to them in a way more intimate, personal, and powerful than they had ever before experienced.
3)
Fire: combine wind and fire and you have a blaze.
/Los Alamos, NM, is a present case in point./
Fire is the next sign of the Spirit that Luke mentions for us.
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