The Fulfillment of the Promise
Notes
Transcript
Intro:
Intro:
So as we have been making our way through the book of Acts we have began to look at the story of the church begin if you will
As we have looked at before , we understand that Luke who wrote the Gospel of Luke is also writing here the book of Acts.
It is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke if you would. While the Gospel of Luke was a detailed account of the things that Jesus did and taught physically , The book of Acts continues to describe what Jesus did and taught through the Holy Spirit, working in the life of the apostles.
and as the book of Acts is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke, we began in Chapter 1 to pick up the story of Jesus.
In the last few chapters of Luke we see the Resurrection of Jesus. We see that he begins to appear to different disciples at different times.
as we get into the book of Acts, after Luke’s intro to Theophilus , who he was writing to, in verse 4. we see Jesus has appeared to the apostles and is gathered with them.
And Jesus reminds the Apostles of a promise that both God the father had given through John the Baptist, but also a promise that Jesus had given them, the promise of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus in John 14 made it clear that the Holy Spirit would be given to the believers
And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
And so Jesus promised that another Helper would be given to the disciples, and what that speaks of in the original language is another like me, Jesus was promising someone like him was going to come in the form of a spirit of be with them, and would dwell in them.
this is the promise of the Holy Spirit. But in order for the Holy Spirit to come , Jesus would have to leave to heaven.
“But now I go away to Him who sent Me, and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.
Jesus promised this to the disciples before his death and resurrection. Now we fast forward to the book of Acts and what we have is Jesus has Resurrected after 3 days.
He has been appearing to multiples of people for 40 days after his resurrection. And in verse 4, He tells his disciples to “ Wait for the Promise of the Father”
and in this we see two things...
Jesus was going to be leaving for good
The Holy Spirit would be coming
and verse 8 we really see this main verse.
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
This huge promise is given at this point to the disciples. That when the Holy Spirit comes , he will come upon them and they shall receive power to be witness’ in Jerusalem, Judah , Samaria and to the end of the earth.
After Jesus gives them a charge to wait and a promise of power, Jesus ascends up in to a cloud into heaven.
Transition
Now between Jesus’ Ascension and chp. 2 of the book of Acts we have about a 10 day period.
and during this time if you remember the disciples did a few things.
They returned to Jerusalem
They went up to the upper room
They prayed with one accord
They chose Matthias to be one of the Apostles to replace Judas
and this leads us right up to Chapter 2 today.
I. Waiting for the Promise of the Holy Spirit (v.1-4)
A. Waiting for the Spirit (v.1)
“ then the day of Pentacost had fully come”
in order to understand what is happening we have to jump into the culture of the times for a bit.
see there are (3) main feasts in the Jewish faith that the people were required to come to Jerusalem if they were able to ...
Feasts
Feast of Passover- Which was in early spring
Feast of Pentacost- which took place 50 days after the Feast of Passover
Feast of Tabernacles - happened in fall, sept- oct
And so to put this into context of the times we have to remember....
The time of the passover just took place at the end of the Gospel of Luke. This was a Feast where the people celebrated the deliverance from the land of Egypt. They would have placed the blood of a spotless lamb on the door posts and on the lentil of the door in the shape of a cross.
and as the spirit of God would come in judgement in Egypt , it was that blood of the lamb that spared them from judgement
Yet this year as the people were in the city of Jerusalem to celebrate the passover, a different scene was taking place.
A man named Jesus, who was the Son of God, the lamb that takes the sins of the world would be crucified on a cross, and his blood would be spilled to bring freedom from eternal judgement for you and I and all who believe.
Then after 3 days , Jesus would rise again from the grave. And for 40 days he would appear to many people as we mentioned.
After 40 days , He ascends into heaven as he tells the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to come upon them
10 days have passed and now it has been a total of 50 days from the death of Jesus at the end of the Gospel of Luke
And we find ourselves here in Acts 2 in Jerusalem 50 days later, where many people would come to the City from all over the world in order to celebrate the next important feast, The Feast of Penacost- which literally is Fifty in greek.
and the disciples find themselves all in one place as they waited for the Promise to come
B. The Revealing of the Spirit (v.2-3)
and so as the disciples and other believers are gathered in one place, about 120 people , we are told that the promise of the Holy Spirit comes upon them
And the Holy Spirit is revealed ....
By a sound from heaven (v.2)
We are told that as they are in one place, praying and waiting for God to move, they heard a sound from heaven
and the sound that they heard was like the sound of a rushing mighty wind, or like the sound of a storm, whatever it may have been, it is obvious that it was like a large strong loud storm.
2. By filling the house(v.2)
We are told that the Holy Spirit Filled the whole house where they were sitting.
the sound and the presence of the Holy Spirit fills the whole place
3. With tongues of fire (v.3)
we are told that at this point the Holy Spirit appeared to be like tongues of fire. This sounds crazy, but we have to understand that what is happening is not something that they have seen before.
and what Luke is doing is he is describing the sight the best that would give insight to all who would read this.
the symbol of fire resting on each person is the symbol of the Holy Spirit resting on each individual person at the same time.
many times in the bible fire is used in a revelation of God , like Moses and the burning bush or as the pillar of fire leading the people through the wilderness, so it isn’t surprising that Luke uses fire to describe the presence of God in the Holy Spirit falling on the people.
C. The Fulfillment of the Promise (.v4)
and so we see that as the Holy Spirit reveals himself , we are told that those in the room were filled, or were baptized by the Holy Spirit.
When we look at this in order for this to make sense we have to look at the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of you and me as believers.
Holy Spirit
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
the Holy Spirit is ...
With us
this is to come alongside of us. This is the Holy Spirit comes alongside of our lives and he begins to convict us of sin, he draws us to a relationship with God.
this is one aspect of how the Holy spirit works in our lives, he comes along side of us, he is with us
In us
When we come to faith in Jesus the Holy Spirit is no longer just with us, now he is in us, he dwells in us.
he makes his home in our hearts and begins to work in us transforming us into the image of the Son, through the word of God.
Upon us
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
The third way that the Holy Spirit works in us , is what Jesus promised in Acts 1, that the Holy Spirit will come upon us
and the best way to describe these roles in our lives is.....
imagine i had a large pitcher of water and an empty come next to it. This is the image of the Holy Spirit being with us, or coming alongside of us
but if i took the large pitcher of water and poured some into the empty cup, now the water in the pitcher is in the cup. This is the symbol of the Holy Spirit coming inside of us.
now what if i took that pitcher of water and i poured water into the cup, but i didn’t stop pouring , and the water filled the cup and it began to overflow outside of the cup falling on the ground and getting everything wet around it.
this is the symbol of the Holy Spirit coming upon us, it is the Holy Spirit coming upon you and empowering you and I for his service.
filling you and empowering you and i to effect those around us.
Jesus promised this power to affect others around them in Act 1:8 . by allowing them to be witnesses for Him .
Transition
And so as we look at this event in v.4 it is what we call the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Baptism of the Holy Spirit
it is a time when as we wait upon God in prayer, in worship , and as we ask in faith , that the Holy Spirit falls upon empowering us for service,
For the believers here the baptism of the Holy Spirit came with the gifts of tongues as they were speaking in known tongues
or in tongues that were not known to them as they were from Galilee, but those who were in the City from other parts of the world heard their own language spoken of by these Galileans and were amazed. and we will see this in the next few verses
Transition
Now as we talk about the Holy Spirit and the filling or Baptizing of the Holy Spirit i want to clarify a few things for us.
The Filling vs the Baptism of the Holy Spirit
the easiest way to describe this is that there are two main events that happen in the life of a christian.
We give our lives to Jesus and become Christians- At this point the Holy Spirit comes into all of us, and dwells in us. We are regenerated by the spirit.
2. We are baptized by the Holy Spirit- Then there is a time as we mentioned before that as we wait upon God, as we pray and seek him, and as we ask Him, he will come upon us as the scene here in Act 2:4, and he will pour his spirit in us to overflow, he empowers us for his service.
and so if you are a Christian today , the Holy Spirit is in you and dwells in your life and is working to transform you into the image of Christ. He is leading you into truth, he is bring things into remembrance, he is convicting us of sin and teaching us. (John 14, 16)
Yet the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not something that we all have, it is something that is available to all, but we must seek God and pray and allow God to move in our lives.
Transition
With that said there are somethings that we must be aware of . We must know God’s desire for us and the Holy Spirit.
God Desires us to be filled with the Holy Spirit
See while we experience the regeneration of the Holy Spirit once, or when we first become Christians the Holy Spirit comes in us and makes us new creations....... We have the ability to come daily to the presence of God and be filled daily with the Holy Spirit.
And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit,
And so God’s desire for our lives is to come to Him daily and to seek him in prayer and to ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit. God is asking us to live according to his strength and his power.
The problem is that many of us live this Christian life on our own strength , without the help and the empowerment available by God’s spirit.
I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
it is like an engine on a car running without the proper fluids, like oil or water. It will be able to run for a while, then it will begin to run rough, it will struggle, it will overheat, and eventually it will break down unable to operate.
yet when an engine is well oil, and has the fluids it needs, it will keep running in the most difficult terrains.
that is how our lives can be. We can be Christians and we can struggle through life trying to overcome sin by ourselves, trying to be better people on our own, trying to make decisions on our own, what school i will go to, what person i will date, who my friends will be, all without seeking God’s power in his Holy Spirit.
and our lives eventually end up like that broken down , burnt engine that is no good. Yet God’s desire is that we would run and live not on our own power but on God’s power.
Reason
For many of us the reason we run on our own strength is because we have our cups filled.
Cups Filled
our lives, our hearts are filled to the top with --sin, with ourselves, with our own thoughts, with our own abilities, with our own desires, with our won ideas, with too much indulgence in hobby’s
and the reality is that we haven’t left any room inside of the cup of our lives or the cup of our hearts for God. We are too full.
What is needed is for us to empty ourselves before God daily in order for him to fill us with His Spirit.
Kent Hughes
“ The Key to the Spirit Filled Christian is found in a paradox; cultivating an attitude of perpetual emptiness brings with it a perpetual fullness..”
so he is stating the same thing that in order for us to be filled with the Spirit of God daily, we must come and empty ourselves daily
much of the problems and struggles within our lives, within the church is a lack of moving in God’s power. People are moving on their own power, their own knowledge, on their own understand and desires, and that will never get us where God wants us.
we must learn to operate on God’s power by being filled with His Spirit.
Transition
the neat thing is that we are going to be looking at in the book of Acts is what happens when individuals with all kinds of potential , have their hearts set on fire by the filling of the Holy Spirit.
these disciples that waited upon God and emptied themselves, were in turn filled with the spirit of God and they transformed the world. They would have boldness to preach the Gospel all over the world in the most difficult situations, they would also die for that Gospel message.
and you and i still sit here and read what God did in their lives . That is amazing to me and encouraging . That if God can do that within the lives of these 120 people, there is no telling what God can do in and through you if you learn to empty yourself and learn to live on God’s power by daily coming before him to be filled with his spirit.