The Day Everything Changed

If you do not know who I am, you are about to get to know more more than you probably would like. My name is Ryan Reed and I am the student pastor here at Fannin and I will be partnering alongside Mark and others to bring the Word of God on Sunday mornings. I can sense the excitement on your faces. This morning I want to talk about a day that changed everything.

For me, the date was June 14, 1999. You probably do not remember much about this day, as it was some time ago. Several of you were not even born yet, which hurts even more. But this is a day that I will never forget. I grew up in Greenwood and attended Greenwood Baptist Church all the way through high school. The summer before 1999, on August 23, 1998, at the ripe old age of 14 (I see you all doing the math there). Yes, I am old. I will turn 41, kind of this weekend. My birthday is February 29th, which it will be another 3 years before I get a birthday. So I turn 41 or 10 1/4. Either way. But anyways, back to June 14, 1999.

Our church decided to start taking students leaders to a summer camp called Super Summer beginning in 1999. This was a great camp that really challenged us and pushed us spiritually. They have kind of gotten away from the student leadership aspect of super summer, although I did hear they are trying to get back to those roots now. So who knows. But again, back inJune 14. We arrive at camp and I am in the orange squad (all students who completed their freshman year). We go in and we eventually are split up into family groups and are taken outside to get to know each other. My cousin Traci was in my family group, so that was nice, being able to have someone I knew and could talk to. We are going around the circle introducing ourselves to the rest of our group when I locked eyes with someone else as we both leaned forward a little bit to look around the circle. We smiled and continued to listen as kids introduced themselves. I did not hear much of what was being said because it was love at first sight. On one end. Over the course of the week we had grown pretty close. She lived in Commerce, which is east of Dallas, and I of course was here in Midland. Because of this newfound love I had for this young woman, I did not want to lose her (remember. 9th grade). I asked her to be my girlfriend (I am not sure how that would have even worked anyways. Again. 9th grade boy.) She politely declined, stating the distance between us. Brokenhearted, we decided to remain friends.

As we continued on through high school, we would chat on msn messenger, occasionally talk on the phone through a calling card (I don’t even want to explain to you young kids what that is.) If my church or family would meet up at Six Flags, she would make that hour drive and meet us. It was great still getting to be in each other’s lives a little bit. We kind of lost touch as we got older and both had serious significant others in high school, but after we graduated we reconnected and it was like it was 1999 all over again. Talked more. Went and spent time with her family. She came down and helped me run the merch booth for Toby Mac at Rock the Desert. It was great seeing her again. Riding that emotional high I decided to shoot my shot again and asked her to be my girlfriend. And she said yes this time! Just a few short months later we were engaged and Jennifer and I will be celebrating our 22nd anniversary in May. So pray for her that she has to put up with this. But June 14, 1999 is a day that everything changed in my life. I do not want know what life would be like without her.

Mark and I have been talking a lot about where we want to go and focus on in Sunday mornings and we have some exciting things in store for you. We have spent a couple of weeks looking at prayer, followed by the Lord’s Supper last week, and then starting next week we are going to spend the next month walking through 1 Corinthians 12 as we examine what the body of Christ should look like.

But before we get there, we need to see how the Holy Spirit helps us in the process, to be fully and forever equipped to do that which He has called us. We are going to continue with what Mark started last week and continue on in the book of Acts, and we will be in Acts 2:1-13 today. Follow along with me as I read from and we see the day that everything changed: Acts 2:1-13

Acts 2:1–13 ESV

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. 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 was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, 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 are filled with new wine.”

So let’s walk through this passage. If you know anything about me, you know that I love to study and bring out the historical context of a passage. It excites me because it enriches the Word of God and helps me to read it with a little more clarity than if I were to read it in my 21st century westerner eyes. So the setting of this passage is Pentecost as we see in verse 1. The Greek reads “when the Day of Pentecost was being fulfilled…” How incredible! Luke was suggesting that this was taking place as the end of a period of preparation and anticipation.

We recently started a Fannin Terrace Baptist Church podcast to keep these sermons short, we have decided to take things a little deeper on that podcast, so I won’t spend too much time talking about Pentecost here, but also more in depth about this particular Pentecost, but if you would like more information, I will be recording that episode and releasing it soon. But here are a few things on that festival:

Pentecost was one of the three main pilgrimage festivals of Judaism. Each pilgrim festival, Passover, Pentecost and Sukkot, or Tabernacles, was associated with a major historical event in the forming of the Jewish people, and also with a major religious theme. Passover, celebrating the Exodus from Egypt, has creation as its theme, the creation of the Jewish people. The theme of Pentecost is revelation, and the theme of Sukkot is associated with the 40 years of wandering culminated by entering the Promised Land, which is redemption. These three themes—creation, revelation and redemption—reappear in other aspects of Jewish life, for example the three meals of Shabbat and other things, but let’s get back to Pentecost.

Pentecost took place 10 days after the ascension of Jesus. Pentecost was the celebration of the barley harvest. As time went on, Pentecost also came to commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses on Sinai, following the Passover when the redemption of the people from Egypt was remembered. So this festival of Pentecost was all about fulfillment, completion and finality. The completion of Christ’s work was marked by the pouring out of his Spirit and birth of his body, the Church. Pentecost then, is the beginning of the end; the Holy Spirit a foretaste of the new age, a down payment on the inheritance which is ours and for which we groan in anticipation as it says in Romans 8:23

Romans 8:23 ESV

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Looking back at verses 2 and 3 in Acts, we see the coming of the Spirit is associated with the sound of wind and the sight of fire. In John 3:8, Jesus speaks explicitly of the Spirit and the wind when He says John 3:8

John 3:8 ESV

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

That word being used there is Ruach, which the Hebrew uses for both “wind” and “Spirit.” So in that verse, both the second word “wind” and last word “Spirit” that we have in our english ESV, Jesus is using the same Hebrew word, Ruach.

We also see something similar in the old Testament. When God visited Moses in the theophany of Exodus 3:2, flames of fire were present. Exodus 3:2

Exodus 3:2 ESV

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

God used a strong east wind to blow back the Red Sea, and in a pillar of fire he led the people of God out of Egypt, to Sinai, and then to the Promised Land. The combination of the sound of a violent wind and tongues of flame resting on each of the one hundred and twenty was the indication of a visitation from God. What Jesus told them to wait for, and what John the Baptist said the Christ would do, was now happening. They were being baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Luke 3:16).

The difference between this theophany and Old Testament occurrences is instructive. God’s Spirit is not just present with his people corporately, leading them collectively like He did in Exodus; rather, each individual believer gathered that day in Jerusalem is touched by fire. Both men and woman receive the Spirit, as do apostles and ordinary believers.

So let’s continue on in verse 4. The one hundred and twenty were filled with the Spirit, enabling them to speak in ‘other tongues’. The Greek word here is glossa (speaking in tongues is thus referred to as glossolalia).

In Jerusalem at the time were Jewish pilgrims from the fifteen different areas listed in verses 9–11. It is estimated that the population of Jerusalem, normally around fifty-five thousand in the first century, could increase dramatically at festival time to two hundred thousand, or more. Here were Jews from fifteen different language groups hearing among the utterances of the hundred and twenty the wonders of God being declared in their own mother tongues (v. 11). Again the word is glossa. If you have ever traveled out of the country for any extended period of time, especially places where English is not super common, coming home and hearing your mother tongue is a welcomed thing. William Cameron Townsend, founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, makes a powerful point: ‘The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It never needs a furlough and never is considered a foreigner.’ And this is what happened for these people here at Pentecost, that they heard these teachings, these truths, in their mother tongue. What a miracle!

But I do want to point out that this event is quite different from what is typically labelled as tongues-speaking in Christian gatherings today. Very often, so-called tongues-speaking is unformed, unintelligible language. Verse 6 makes it clear that this is not just a miracle of hearing, but truly a miracle of speaking. This tongues-speaking was the Holy Spirit enabling each of the hundred and twenty to speak a language without having learned that language. The word used in verse 6 for language, synonymous with tongue in verse 4 and verse 11, is the word ‘dialect’-a definite, discernible language.

When Cornelius and his friends are baptised in the Holy Spirit, they too speak in tongues and Peter and the witnesses understand them to be magnifying God. They understood this to be a duplicate of their own experience as described in Acts 10:46–47. I take that to mean that they too spoke in formal, formed language.

The miraculous event accomplished through the Holy Spirit amounts to a reversal of Babel that we see in Genesis 11:1-9. Then God confronted the speech of people misusing their unity for sinful purposes. Here God enabled people whose different languages separated them to understand each other praising God, which is the proper use of unity.

Vivid writer as he is, Luke describes the crowd’s reactions: • bewilderment—literally, stopped in their tracks (v. 6); • utterly amazed—literally, swept off their feet (v. 7); • amazed and perplexed; they find it incredible, inexplicable (v. 12); • some mocked, ‘they must be drunk’ (v. 13).

This sort of mixed reaction is a typical response to God’s work throughout the book of Acts. People, typically pious or religious Jews, were amazed at the word of God through the apostles. They may have even been confused, but still open to being taught. Others ridiculed. I have been lucky enough to have a an online Bible study through the book of Acts from a Messianic Jewish perspective with men from across the US every Wednesday for the past 4 months, and it has been truly enlightening. If you have never studied the book, I encourage you to.

But let’s look a little deeper at some of the themes here in our text, with the first one being the coming of the Holy Spirit.

The coming of the Spirit on God’s people, as a permanent resident in their lives, is spoken of by Jeremiah 31:33 and Ezekiel 36:25–27.

Ezekiel 36:25–27 ESV

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Jeremiah 31:33 ESV

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

So here God promised Jeremiah, “I will put my law, my Torah on their hearts.” This He does as He gives His Holy Spirit. The same one God gives both Torah and Spirit on the same one holiday, Pentecost, to the same one people, the Jewish people, stretching through history from the fire on Mount Sinai to the tongues of fire at Jerusalem.

Even Peter acknowledges that this event on this Pentecost is also fulfilling Joel 2:28–32. The sermon he gives in Acts 2 is a midrash, a Jewish commentary on a Hebrew Scripture. At the beginning of his sermon, he was quoted from Joel 2:28-32, which can be found in Acts 2:17-21. He then paused from quoting that verse, gave his teaching, his midrash, and then picked back up with Joel 3:1-5 at the end of his sermon, which is found in Acts 2:28-32. His entire sermon and his return to the Joel passage at the conclusion of it indicates that his entire teaching was an explanation of the promise that all who “call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” And because it was Pentecost, one of the things that would have been read and taught in the temple and synagogues was the prophet Joel. Peter knew what He was doing. The Holy Spirit spoke through him to weave a beautiful tapestry of Joel and the life and teachings of Jesus.

Earlier, Luke refers to Elizabeth and Zechariah being filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:41, 67) but these were temporary and particular fillings. Now the Holy Spirit comes to reside permanently, animating the body of Christ like it says in (Eph. 3:16–19

Ephesians 3:16–19 ESV

that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Here then is the wonder of the gospel: an assured relationship with God, of life and blessing, rather than judgment and curse because of the forgiveness of sins secured for us by Christ, and a dynamic relationship with God whereby Christ dwells within us in the person of his Spirit (Col. 1:27).

So let’s look at that part briefly, being filled with the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? Paul exhorts the Ephesians to go on continually being filled with the Spirit by speaking, singing, giving thanks and submitting. Look what it says in Ephesians 5:18-21

Ephesians 5:18–21 ESV

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Ordinary, every day activities for Christians, yet these activities are the way to maintain the fullness of the Spirit within. As I mentioned earlier, we are going to start a series next week looking at the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to the people of the church and how we are to use those gifts for the benefit of the church.

But we see throughout the Old Testament that certain individuals had the Holy Spirit “in” or “with” them, but here He fills them all, bringing to pass what Moses had prayed for long ago in Numbers 11:29

Numbers 11:29 ESV

But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!”

But this also came to pass to fulfill the promise of Jesus in John 14:16, 20:22

John 20:22 ESV

16-And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with You forever…And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

Church, I want you to rejoice in the fullness of the complete Christian experience, the forgiveness of sin, the divine empowerment for life and witness from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. You are a supernaturally enabled person. What happened to the hundred and twenty and to the three thousand is also our experience. This means we currently live in the age of the Spirit, and we shouldn’t see these events in Acts as something that came and went. Rather, what happened on the day of Pentecost has abiding significance. The Spirit came and stayed. The day of Pentecost was the installation of God’s new source of blessing and power for the benefit of His people. Now everyone person who turns to Christ in repentance and faith has access to this great source of power. The installation happens only one time, at the point of salvation, but the significance is ongoing.

As we wrap up, I want you to think about your life. Are you consciously aware of the Holy Spirit in your life, living within you? PAUSE

Do you show enough confidence in the Spirit to do his work? PAUSE

Do you live in the reality of being a supernaturally empowered person at home, at work and in church? If you find that the atmosphere at home can be filled with tension and conflict, intentionally cultivate a spirit-filled environment by prioritizing prayer as a family. Set aside a specific time each week to gather as a household for prayer. Ask each family member to share their needs and praises, offering a chance to support each other spiritually. Not only will this bring God’s presence into your home, but it will also encourage forgiveness and unity. As tensions arise, remind each other to respond to conflict with prayer rather than anger, leaning on the Holy Spirit for guidance.

Take some time this week to reflect on those things and how the Holy Spirit has filled you to live a supernaturally empowered life.

I want to encourage you to come back next week as we kick off a month long study through 1 Corinthians 12 and what it looks like to be supernaturally gifted by the Holy Spirit and your role within this church body.