Pentecost Sunday

Pentecost Sunday is more than a moment in church history—it’s an invitation into the story God is writing across all of human history. In this message, we explore the grand narrative of Scripture: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, and how the coming of the Holy Spirit empowers the Church to participate in God’s mission to redeem all things through Jesus Christ.

Through Acts 1–2, the story of Pentecost, and even echoes from Babel to the Gospel, we discover that the Holy Spirit was never meant to simply give comfort—but power, purpose, and witness. God’s presence no longer dwells in one place, but in His people, sent into every culture and every corner of the world.

This message is a call to:
• Understand the story you’re living in
• Receive the power of the Holy Spirit
• Embrace the mission of the Church
• Repent, believe, and follow Jesus fully
• Become part of God’s work of redemption in the world

Because there is still good in this world—and it’s worth fighting for.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, we're gonna be in Acts chapter two. I'm gonna read verses one through twelve. I'm gonna pray for us and then we're gonna dive in for the remainder of our time together. Acts chapter two, starting at verse one. Reads, When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place, and suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem, God fearing Jews from every nation under heaven, and when they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed they asked, Aren't all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asa, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues. Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, What does this mean? Let's pray. Lord, I think there are a lot of us who have that same question. What does this mean? And we need you to come and make it clear to us, to speak to us from your word, to speak to each and every single one of us. We have all kinds of questions, whether it's regarding this text or just it's regarding different things in our lives, and we are literally looking at so many different things, going, What does it mean? What does it mean? And we need you to come and make sense of our lives, to come and make sense of your word. Lord, it's it's a beautiful thing to be hungry. It's a beautiful thing to desire to know. But if you don't meet us in that place and tell us and speak to us and show us, then we're we're helpless. And so, Lord, would you come and would you speak? God, our prayer isn't just that people would walk out with understanding, with more knowledge. Our prayer is that people would encounter you and that they would experience you and that their hearts would be different and their lives would flow out of that differently. If there's anyone here and they don't know you, God, I pray that they would not leave this place without knowing you. Lord, if there's anyone here who does not have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, who doesn't ex who isn't experienced and intimacy in their relationship with you, God, I pray that they would walk out of here with new vision, with something stirred up inside of them, with their affections stirred, their passion stoked, to know you more, to know you more deeply. But God, we need you. Would you come and meet with us in Jesus' name? Amen. Man, do you I wonder if you understand that you're living in a story? Right? We're all living in a story. I think, I think, I think often we we kind of live our lives coasting from from one day to the next, and we tend to have this kind of narrow focus on our own day-to-day experience, our own desires, our own activity. But I wonder if sometimes we we fail to really to really zoom out and look at the story, the grand landscape of all that we're living in. I think one of the one of the negative side effects of our cultural moment is as we've seen, that there's there's this over-emphasis on self, right? There's we put self at the center and we kind of we kind of call the world to to fixate around us and our own desires and our own comforts. And anytime things get in the way of our of ourselves and our desires and our wants, we see that as an enemy in our lives. And and what happens with this over-emphasis on self is we begin to look at ourselves isolated rather than as a part of something that's way bigger than ourselves. I I think to to maybe put it in a different way, that you are important, but you're not that important, right? Like you are important. You're made in the image of God. He loves you, he created you, he knows your name, he has desires and a will and a purpose for your life. You're also just another image bearer. Like there's that reality, right? That you are no more valuable than the person to your left or to your right. And you're no more valuable than the person who died a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago. That everybody that God has ever breathed breath into and placed in this world was unique and beautiful in his image bearer. And they were important, but they weren't that important. And I wonder if maybe for some of us we've kind of zoomed so far into our lives and we've lost the plot. We've lost the story that we're part of. Because you're a part of the story. And do you know the story that you're in? Because if you don't know the story you're in, you don't know the role that you're supposed to play. And I'm I meet with a ton of people and I sit across from them who have no idea, who have no idea how they're meant to live or what they're meant to do because they don't know what role they're meant to play, because they don't know the story that they're in. And I think there's a lot of us in the room today who may feel that. That maybe you're in a season of life that you've never been in in before, and you're trying to figure out what how do I navigate this season of my life? Or maybe you're grieving a season that you're no longer in, and you're trying to figure out who am I and what role do I play now? I knew, I knew what what what role I played then, but I don't know what role I play now. And I'm trying to figure that out. I'm trying to navigate it because you've lost the story. And maybe today we can zoom out and look at the story. When I think about, when I think about this topic of story, I think about a scene in the Lord of the Rings, in the two towers, there's a conversation between Frodo and Sam. And and there's this moment where they are kind of at the pinnacle of their experience and they're up against the harshest challenge of the moment. And and and Frodo kind of has this moment of, I can't do this. He's been he's been working, he's been climbing, he's been going on this long journey, and he finally gets this moment, this pinnacle moment where he just says, I don't think I can do this. I don't think I can do this. And in probably one of the greatest monologues in movie history, you should go what you should go watch it. Uh, after Frodo says, I can't do this, Sam says this. I know. It's all wrong. By rights, we shouldn't even be here. But we are. And in the movie, they're looking out over this landscape of just absolute destruction, and they're going, we shouldn't be here, life shouldn't look like this, but but it does, and here we are. And then he goes, It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered, the stories that really mattered. They were full of darkness and danger. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end possibly be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it will shine out the clear. Those were the stories that stayed with you. They meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why, but I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't, because they were holding on to something. And Frodo asked this question What are we holding on to, Sam? What could we possibly be holding on to? And he says that there's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for. In this moment that Frodo had lost the plot, he had lost his role in the story, he was looking out and he was seeing this kind of narrow view, this narrow lens, looking out at the destruction in front of him. He had lost the story and he needed a friend to kind of zoom out and show him the story that he was living in. And said, There's been many people who have come before who lost the plot and didn't know the story they were living in. They didn't think there was any way that this could go well, and yet they did. And then he asked the question, do you think that maybe we could be living one of those stories right now? Maybe we too could be living one of those stories. That maybe we could be part of that story that someone else is gonna look on one day for hope to say, man, they they didn't think they were gonna make it, and yet they did. And I and I've tried to bring this to us before, but what if, what if one day across the landscape of history, someone is looking back on the stories of how God moved through a people or how God moved through a generation and they look back and they find inspiration in our moment. They look at you, they know your name, they know, they know the role that you played because you figured out your role in the story. You began to play it, and another generation gets to look at it and find inspiration. Perhaps you too are living in that story. If you find your role. If you're gonna live well, you need to know the story you're living in. And if you're gonna understand the purpose and agenda of your life as well as the purpose and agenda of the Holy Spirit, you must know the story. So the question that we have is what is God ultimately doing throughout human history? There's no way to read this story. There's no way to read all of the scriptures, but specific specifically this story, if we don't understand what God is ultimately doing throughout human history. I've talked about this a lot of times before. If you ever go to Welcome to Church, you'll hear this again because there's so much of what we do as a church and so much of how we preach or how we learn that is looked through this meta-narrative of what God is doing throughout humanity and how we read the word and how we read the scriptures. And so I always like to put this in front of us to remind us as we zoom in on a story what it's a part of. And that's that's this meta-narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. And so if you go back to the very beginning of the story when God created all things, all things, from day one all the way through day six, he creates everything from from from the waters and the galaxies all the way down to the human being that he breathed breath in and makes an image bearer. And along the way, God said all those things were good, we're good, we're good, we're good. And then he got to day six, he breathed his breath into humanity, his very own image, and said it was very good. And the and the Hebrew word that's used throughout that is this word Tov, T-O-V. And it literally means whole, beautiful, operating according to God's vision and design. He literally, he literally creates out of the overflow of his own vision, out of the overflow of his own glory, and he says, This is exactly how I pictured this to be. And he looks at it, he says, That's so good. And he creates. But then the fall happens. We don't know how long it took, but it but at some point humanity got an agenda of their own and they and they rebelled against God's God's goodness and his and his and his gracious and his gracious will and his purpose and his agenda for their lives. And now there was an enemy that attacked when Eve was isolated and alone, told her lies, led her astray, and yet she chose to not trust in God's good and gracious will and move another direction. And what happens as a result of that is brokenness and fracture. That on the other side of that sin is brokenness and fracture. And we see that not just on the wide scale. You can look all throughout human history and just see brokenness and fracture all the way across it. Every generation, every culture, brokenness and fracture. But you can also close your eyes and look within your own heart. And you can feel that exact same thing. One of the prayers of repentance that the church fathers used to always pray is I have is God, I have not loved you the way that I ought to love you. And I have not loved others the way that I ought to love them. And if you look within your own heart, you see that in yourself, don't you? That you do not love God the way that you ought to love God. You do not love people the way that you ought to love people. And that's the brokenness. And there's almost like a you can't, right? Like the way that you want to, you can't. You do things and you don't know why you do them. You think things and you don't know why you think them. You don't do the things you wish you could do, and you you do the things that you wish you wouldn't do. And that's the brokenness that he's talking about, that it's gotten down into the very depths of who we are and the way our world operates, that we're fractured at a macro and a micro level, broadly and deeply, globally and personally, which is why we need redemption. It's why we need healing. It's why we need payment. It's why we need someone to stand in the gap and do what we cannot do for ourselves, which is which is what started in the nation of Israel. That God calls for himself a people and says, you're going to be unlike the rest of the world. And I need you to give them an example, a vision of what who God is like and how he and how he operates. But they did it imperfectly because they're broken. Which is why God himself had to step into the story through the person of Jesus who did it perfectly. That Jesus Himself has borne the curse deeply and broadly to bring healing personally and globally. He is redeeming all things through Christ, and he's inviting people to receive it, experience it, and live in light of it, to fight for the good because it's worth fighting for. And then one day Jesus is going to come back because this fight for good won't last forever. Good will win. He will come back, he will return, and he will fully restore and renew all things. He will make all things new. That's his great promise. That this holistic healing that we're longing for is inevitable. God promises that this will happen, and yet here we are between redemption and restoration. That Jesus has paid the payment, healing has begun to happen, and yet we still long. And there's been a promise made, and we long to see it come to fruition. And if we don't understand the story that we're living in, this story doesn't make sense. And so if we look at Acts 1, Acts 2, and our own lives through the lens of this story, I think it'll really help us. The author of Acts is a guy by the name of Luke. That may sound familiar if you if you've if you're familiar with the New Testament, familiar with the Bible. Luke also wrote a gospel. It's the the recordings of Jesus' life and ministry. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four gospels. And Luke wrote wrote one. He was not a follower of Jesus. Luke was actually a historian who went back and talked to followers of Jesus to give an in-depth recording of the life and ministry of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. He's writing as a historian, he's writing as an investigator. And you'll notice in the book of Luke, he opens it up and he says, he talks to a guy by the name of Theophilus. We don't know exactly who that is, but people think it was potentially someone who was in Roman authority, who was trying to figure out who, like what is happening in the church. Once again, writing that Luke is writing this letter while the church is growing and expanding throughout the region. And so they're looking at this happen, even in the even in the face of persecution, they're looking at all of this happen and they're going, How is this happening? And Luke writes the gospel of Luke because he says, look, before Acts makes any sense, before I can tell you anything about what's happening in the world today, you first need to understand this person, Jesus. Because none of this makes sense if you don't know who Jesus is and what he's done. And so he writes the gospel of Luke to Theophilus to break down the life and ministry of Jesus. And then Luke writes this phrase at the beginning of Acts chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. And he says, In my former book, talking about the Gospel of Luke, Theophilus, writing to the same person again, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach. Can you say that word began? Yeah, it means he started something, right? That Jesus began to do something. He began to teach something. He started something. That all that he began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving instructions to the Holy Spirit, to the apostles he had chosen. And so Jesus started something. Luke is claiming that Jesus started something that is now continuing in and through these people, that is now continuing through the church, that is now continuing through the book of Acts. And so oftentimes the book of Acts is known as the Acts of the Apostles, but it's actually the Acts of Jesus by the Holy Spirit through the apostles, right? It's still Jesus doing what he's doing through his people, because Jesus just began to do and teach things in his life and ministry, and now it's continuing through his people. And then Jesus, before he ascends, calls his people to wait on the Holy Spirit. And so Jesus is trying to get them to understand the story that they're that they're living in. And he's saying, look, if you're going to continue what I've started, you need who I am and what I have. And so before you take off running to go and do this on your own, I need you to go back to Jerusalem. I need you to wait. I need you to wait for the Holy Spirit. Because he says, Look, you saw John baptized with water, but you're going to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. I'm going to fill you with my spirit. And in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, we find out why Jesus wants to fill people with his spirit. He says, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So Jesus says, Look, I'm going to pour my spirit. You're going to receive my spirit. Why? Because I need you to be my witnesses. I need you to tell my story. I need you to tell people who I am, and I need you to do this all over the world. Up until this moment, they believe that all of this was only for the nation of Israel, only for the chosen people of God. And yet Jesus is starting to clue them in on something that Jesus isn't just the king of Israel, he's the king of the whole world. And he wants to use them for the sake of expanding his kingdom to the whole world and calling the whole world to himself. And yet they need the Holy Spirit for a vision that big, for a mission that big. So what is the day of Pentecost? The day of Pentecost is the day that we celebrate on the church calendar, and what we know it as is the day that the Holy Spirit is poured out on the church and the church is birthed. In Acts chapter 2, that's the day of Pentecost. For a lot of people who are who are followers of Jesus or have been part of the church, you know, that's what you know the day of Pentecost as. Holy Spirit poured out and the church birthed. But what a lot of people don't realize is that the day of Pentecost actually was already a festival. It already existed. We didn't invent Pentecost. The Holy Spirit didn't invent Pentecost. That God, that God in His in His in His story through the nation of Israel, they had these rituals and they had these traditions, and Pentecost was already an existing ritual and tradition. But every church and every Christian can trace their genealogy back to this moment when the church is birthed and people and people receive the Holy Spirit. So Pentecost was an ancient Israelite festival. It literally means the feast of 50 weeks. That's what it's known as, the feast of 50 weeks. The reason that it was known as this is because a week is seven days, and a week of weeks is 49 days. It's seven, seven times seven, seven weeks of seven days. So that's the that's the week of weeks. And on the 50th day was Pentecost, Penta 50. Pentecost. It was 50 days after Passover. Jesus was crucified somewhere around Passover. He raised from the dead a couple of days later. And then and then and then he it the book of Acts says that he he teaches and preaches the kingdom for 40 days after his resurrection. And so we know that we're about 40, 42, 43 days after the crucifixion of Jesus, which means there's a week between Jesus' ascension and Pentecost. And so they've been praying and waiting for about a week since Jesus ascended. And Pentecost was basically the Jewish Thanksgiving, and estimates say that there would be thousands and thousands of Jewish pilgrims from all over the world who would return to Jerusalem for this feast. Estimates are anywhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people that would come for this feast. And so there's an abnormal amount of people who are in the city, and all of these speak different languages and are from different cultures, and they're colliding around their common Jewishness. And it's interesting that when Jesus ascends, there's a week until Pentecost. And he says, Look, I want you to pray and I want you to wait. And there's there's there's potential that we could look at this and go, man, why why why wait so long? Why not just pour out your spirit right there on the side of the mountain? And I think it's interesting that Jesus, in his in his sovereignty, waited until all of these cultures and all of these languages languages, all of these people had come to the city of Jerusalem, and he pours out his spirit in a transformative way. The text says that Jesus tells them, I want you to wait. And then when the spirit's pouring out, it says that this happens suddenly. And so they wait for a week, and then suddenly the spirit is poured out. And I was thinking, I was thinking as I was reading this, how many people may be in the room, and you're waiting and you're tired of waiting. You're waiting for something. Waiting for the Lord on something, waiting for him to do something. And I think that this could give you some encouragement, a little disconnected from the talk. But that you may wait and God can do something suddenly. You can wait for a long time and God can do something suddenly. And it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful lesson that maybe some of you can can take away today. That God He makes us wait. He does. And some of you have been waiting for a long time, and you're tired of waiting. And this isn't this isn't some kind of prosperity thing that, hey, whatever you're waiting for, whatever you have in your mind, I'm guaranteeing that God's gonna do that. You just gotta keep waiting. No, no. God's gonna do what God wants to do. I'm telling you, if it's from Him, that if you wait, He's gonna give it. This is a promise that Jesus had made. And so they had to cling to a promise because Jesus said, I'm going to pour out my spirit. Now they may have thought, oh yeah, we're gonna wait for a few hours. Jesus is gonna pour out his spirit and it's gonna be great. But all they had was a promise, a guarantee from Jesus that, hey, this is going to happen. I'm going to pour out my spirit. You will be baptized in the Holy Spirit. You will be my witnesses to the world. And so they had this promise, they had this command. We pray and we wait. They didn't know if it was going to be hours, they didn't know if it was going to be days, they didn't know if it was going to be weeks, but they had a promise from Jesus. And one of the things that a lot of theologians have thought about and I get curious about is I wonder how many people missed out on the spirit being poured out and seeing God do miraculous things because they couldn't wait a week? How many people left on day three? How many people left on day five? How many people lost faith on day six? How many people lost faith just in some of day seven? And they decided to go off, say it's not gonna happen. I'm not willing to wait that long. And they missed out on the beauty and the miracle of Pentecost. How many people's names are not written in the New Testament because they couldn't wait? And I think there's some of us in this room, and God wants to do something in your life, and it's gonna hinge on your ability to wait and cling to a promise. To trust Him. But I think there's so many of us, we love to sit on this fence and and and God's given us a promise, and yet and yet we want to go, we we want to go and dabble in the things of the in the things of this world and kind of do our own thing and yet still try to cling to this promise as if God owes it to us. And what the beauty of this is. Jesus can't no. No, I want you to wait. It says that they're together in one place and they're praying. They're waiting and they're praying. They're leaned into Jesus. They're waiting with expectation. They're not going off, getting busy, just waiting for the moment that that's going to happen. With some kind of sense of that that they're obliged that God's obligated to give them and bring them into part of this thing. No, no, no. They're praying and they're waiting and they're going, God, we're in this posture ready for you to prod your spirit that we may receive it. Man, are you in that posture with expectation to receive from the Lord? Pray and wait, then suddenly. So there's three kind of main characters as we look at, as we look at Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost. There's the Spirit, the gospel, and the church. And I really want to hit on these really quick before we kind of move into a time of response. So first and foremost, there's the Spirit. So once again, the Spirit of God is the third person of the Trinity, okay? This is something that can throw some people off, is that sometimes we look at the Holy Spirit and we and we think of the Holy Spirit as an it. Like some people say, yeah, it did this or it did that. Well, the scriptures teach us that the Holy Spirit is actually a person. It's the personal presence of God. It's the third person of the Trinity. And so the Holy Spirit is a person, the person of God moving and acting in and through his people throughout history. And he's there from the very, very beginning. And so we see the Spirit present from creation all the way through the entire story. The Spirit wasn't created at Pentecost, the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost. But we see the Spirit all the way at the moment of creation. What's interesting is that the same word for spirit is the same word for breath. And so there's this beautiful moment where in Genesis it says that the Spirit is hovering over the waters. There's chaos, and the spirit is searching, the spirit is moving. And then the same word for spirit says that when God takes man and he breathes into him the breath of life. Breath. Spirit. It's the same, same word. In the New Testament, the same word for wind is the same word for spirit. Throughout the scriptures, we see we see God's presence usually shown by two pictures of things, wind and fire. And what happens at Pentecost, like a loud wind and tongues of fire. And so this is showing that God is present with his people. And once again, this is a promise that Jesus has made that he's going to pour out his spirit for the sake of what he's doing in the world. And when Jesus is spirit, when this spirit is poured out on people, it's showing, it's showing everyone that a fulfillment of part of the story has happened, that Jesus has fulfilled Israel's story, and now and now God's story is going to the nations. And that's why when the Spirit is poured out and all of a sudden, all of a sudden they're able to speak in the languages of the nations, it's God being able to say, no, no, no, look, I'm not just trying to secure for myself one chosen people who speak one little language and have one little culture. No, no, no. I'm trying to take the gospel to the whole world and to every nation. This is why we have to a lot of us have to get out of this, out of this some nations playing a more important role than other nations. God's movement is global. It's global. And the growth and the expansion of the church is happening in beautiful ways all over the world. What's happening in Iran right now is amazing. What's been happening in China over the past few decades is amazing. That Jesus is securing for himself a global people, a global people. That's his church. That's what he's trying to do in the world. And so he has all of these Jews here at this festival who are from all over the world. And they're trying to see the uniqueness of Christ and the uniqueness of what God's doing and the story going to the whole world and to every nation. And so all of a sudden, this story of Jesus is being proclaimed in every language to everyone who is present in the room, to everyone who is present in the city. And they're hearing the story of Jesus in their own native language, their own native tongue. The mission is now going global, and God wants everyone to know it. A lot of theologians think that Pentecost is the reversal of what happened at the Tower of Babel. If you're not familiar with the with the Old Testament, there's a story in the Old Testament where at the at the time of Genesis 11, everyone kind of had a common language and a common culture. But they're but they're they're multiplying and the population is growing. And they have this moment where it says in Genesis chapter 11, they say, Come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens. And here's the important phrase, so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth. But the Lord came down to see the city, and the tower the people were building, and the Lord said, If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan will be impossible for them. And at this point their hearts are wicked. And so he says, Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so they will not be able to understand each other. And so the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. What's beautiful about Pentecost is all of a sudden you now have, you now have the apostles, and you now have a people who are coming together to make whose name great? To make Jesus' name great. And does God is God's goal to keep them from accomplishing that? No, no, his goal is to unite them together around the person of Jesus so that they can build something for the name of Jesus that is great. And so he actually pours his spirit out for the sake of advancing, advancing through these people. And so when they had their own selfish selfish agenda, Jesus said, Let me, God said, let me step into this and and blow all this apart. But when they made his agenda, their agenda, he said, let me breathe on this and build. It's a beautiful, beautiful promise. I wonder for you. When is the last time that you asked for the Holy Spirit? When is the last time that you asked for more of the Holy Spirit? There's a famous passage in Matthew chapter seven in the Sermon on the Mount. And in Matthew's version of this story, he says this Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks find and to the finds, and to the one who knocks the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? And Jesus is using hyperbole here, and he's going, he's going, hey, your son, we just celebrated my son's birthday yesterday. And it's like, man, if if your son were to come up to you and to ask you for a good thing, how many of you are gonna give him something that's gonna hurt him? And he says, None of you. And they're like, he's like, dude, you're not even close to being as good as God. And so what makes you think that you're gonna ask God for good things and he's gonna withhold from you? That his heart is to take from you. This is the first, this is the first lie of the enemy to Eve in the garden. What did he say? He told her, God is holding out on you. She said, if I eat from this, I'll surely die. He said, No, no, no, you're not gonna die. Your eyes are gonna be open and you'll be like God. He says, if you trust me, if you trust in yourself, you'll be more like God. Your eyes will be opened, you'll see more than you ever thought you could see before. God doesn't want you to. That's why he's holding out on you. And Jesus is coming against that here, and he's going, Man, you guys still believe the same thing. He says, If you who are evil are not, are not short-armed and don't withhold from your own children, how much more does God want to give you good things when you ask of them? And you may think about that, well, what's he talking about? Good things. This is why Luke writes the same exact thing, and I want you to notice the shift. Luke records this, and he says, So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks the door will be open. Which of the fathers, if your son asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake instead. Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. If you then, though though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. And so Luke is kind of recording this same story. We don't know if it's the exact same moment or if it if it's if it's a different moment that Jesus is saying the same stuff, but he takes that story and he says, He says, You know what, you know what good thing Jesus really wants to give you? The Holy Spirit. And he he specifically says, when you ask for the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit here, the personal presence of God, who carries the power of God, that connects you to the source of God, to stir up your intimacy and affection for God, to equip you for the mission of God. And what does he say? Ask for him. Ask for him. There's so many of us that that that the the things that are hurting us and aching us the most, that when you that when you lay your head on the pillow and you look up and you feel the things that you feel, or maybe you're here and you and you do long to be faithful to Jesus, but you're scared and you have a lot of fear. I wonder how many of those things could be healed if you just asked and received for the Holy Spirit, more of the Holy Spirit. And there's an important distinction here because this promise is made throughout the New Testament. And you go, you go, wait, wait, wait. When we when we become a believer and a follower of Jesus, don't we receive the Holy Spirit? And yes, you are indwelt with the Holy Spirit as a as a follower of Jesus. Ephesians says that the Holy Spirit seals you when you believe the gospel. And yet the New Testament constantly makes a promise that, yeah, you you may be indwelt with the Holy Spirit as a follower of Jesus. But all that he wants for you, beyond that, and increasingly more for your life with him and for your for your effectiveness in your everyday life, comes on the on the other side of receiving more and more and more of the Holy Spirit. That you can be filled with the Holy Spirit. So there's one indwelling upon your faith in Jesus. But you can have many feelings as you seek to follow him and be faithful to him. And so so many times that you see Christians throughout the New Testament say, filled with the Holy Spirit, they did. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they preached, filled with the Holy Spirit, they healed. Does that mean that they were receiving the indwelling of the Holy Spirit over and over and over again? No, no, no. But they were being filled with the power of God for the sake of what he was calling them to in the moment. And there's so many of us that we never experience the power of God because we're not intent on being faithful to the mission of Jesus and doing the things out of obedience that he calls for us to do. And so we never experience power. And so there's so many of us we're waiting until we feel comfortable, until we feel confident, until we feel equipped, until we feel trained, until we've read every book on the topic. And yet, and yet God is saying, if you'll step out, be obedient, go do something, I will fill you with the Spirit. I'll meet you there so that you can be obedient to what I've called you to do. And there's so many of us we settle for our own man-made strength. When when heaven, when heaven wants to fill us and equip us for what he's called for what he's calling us to do. And yet we settle. There's so many of us, your life with God has grown dormant because you don't have a relationship with God. You know information about God, but you don't have any intimacy with God, with the person of God, with the presence of God, and you long for it. And God goes, Ask. Ask. How often do we wake up, get still in the presence of God, and say, God, I want more of you. I want more of you. If there's more that I can have, I want more. And I think so many of us we settle for less. You had one experience with Jesus at a camp. You're in a church service. You had a moment with God, and you've been trying to coast off that moment for the rest of your life. And you keep looking back, but I but I was saved. I was saved, I was saved. And Jesus is going, there's so much more than I was saved. So much more. So much more than I had that moment a long time ago. There's so much more. Ask. Ask. What does the Holy Spirit fill us for the purpose of? Well, you notice it when Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit, what's the first thing that he does? He preaches the gospel. Preaches the gospel. So the second main character is the gospel. The good news of Jesus. I think there's a lot of us that we want the power of God for our own personal agenda. And yet God has committed his power for his purpose. He doesn't commit his power for your purpose. We want to use the power of God for the sake of our own finances. And he's going to no, no, no. I'm going to give you my power for the sake of being faithful to my purpose. We want his power for the sake of for the sake of our own reputation or our own accolades. And he's going to know my power is connected to my purpose. And so he's saying, man, if your purpose, if your agenda is going to be letting the nations know about the good news of Jesus and the finished work of Jesus, I will pour my spirit out and give you power for that. And so that's the first thing Peter does. They say, they say, what's happening here? And Peter starts, Acts 1.14. Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you. That's the beauty of the good news of Jesus, is you're explaining to people the reality of the story of God in the world. You're explaining to people the reality of who they are and what's been what they've been made for and what they're called to. You're explaining to people why they're why they're why their life feels so incomplete. You're explaining to people what they're lacking. You're explaining to people what they're needing. And so Peter looks at the gospel and he says, look, this is an explanation. And so he says, Let me explain what's happening to you. And he begins to tell the story of God. And he's letting them know that Jesus is the completion of Israel's story and you're being filled with the Spirit so that you can take this to the nations. And he quotes Joel chapter two. He says, In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness in the mood of blood before the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And a lot of times when we read this, we look at the signs and wonders and we lose track of what Peter's actually saying and what the promise to Joel actually is. We get so focused on prophesy. We get so we get so focused on visions and dreaming. We get so focused on what's happening to the earth below and the moon above and blood and fire, and everyone gets distracted by all of that. And Peter says, no, no, all of this is for the purpose of what? So that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. That's what this is about. That's what this is about. He's saying, Man, do you not understand that God will save anyone who calls on him? This is what Peter's trying to say. He's going, look, I know that we have Jews who are c who are gathered here from around the city, and you think that God has this one people and this one story. And he goes, No, no, no, no. God is going after the whole world. And he's going, Man, he will save anyone who will call on him. Anyone. I want you to think of the person in your mind right now that feels so far from God you've lost all hope for them. Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. I want you to think about where you were before you called on the name of Jesus. Who you were and where you were going before you called on the name of Jesus. Aren't you so thankful that anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved? Think about your family story. Where would your family be if someone in your generational line did not call on the name of the Lord Jesus and be saved? Think about the future of your family. What could the future of your family look like because you called on the name of the Lord Jesus and we're saved? He says, Man, don't get it twisted. You know why the spirit's being poured out? Because God wants to save people. And he's saying, I'm filling you with my spirit so that you can take the gospel to people who need to be saved. Because if they call on the name of the Lord, they will be saved. Did you know? Did you know that you've been filled with the Holy Spirit? That you actually have the person of God living within you if you've been united to Christ. That if you have called upon the name of Jesus and you've made that profession, that you've received the Holy Spirit. Why? So that you could hoard the story of Jesus? No. So that you could tell everyone who is far from him, that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. You know how many people you're around every single day who are far from God. And the beauty of the good news of Jesus is what? God loves you so much that He sent Christ to die for you. That if you would call on the name of Jesus, you will be saved. They don't have to clean themselves up. They don't have to crawl their way back to God. They don't have to climb their way up some religious mountain. Because Christ has already come down to save them. And he's filled you and placed you where you are for the sake of calling people who are far from God to himself, that they may call in the name of Jesus and be saved. And then the last thing that he does is he builds his church. So I want so Acts 2 can be so simplified if we just look at this right here. The Holy Spirit is poured out, the gospel is preached, and a people are gathered. That's what the Spirit does. If you look at Acts, people people get so distracted by a couple of verses. People have argued for hundreds of years over tongues and prophecy, and they've lost the plot of what God is doing in Acts chapter 2. That the Spirit of God is poured out, the gospel is preached, and a people are gathered. That's what the Spirit is doing. He's building and forming for himself a people, a people who are gathered around what? The gospel. The gospel being preached through what? The Holy Spirit. And so, how does Acts 2 close? So it says that Peter preaches the gospel. 3,000 people respond to the gospel. It says that, Peter says in verse 36 of Acts chapter 2, therefore let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, because all of us who have who have who have sinned, Jesus bore our sin, which means we are all partially responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, because he took our place. And he said, the one that you crucified is both Lord and Messiah. And it says that when the people heard this, they were cut to the heart. Man, a great question for you today is when's the last time you heard the gospel and it cut you to the heart? When's the last time that you actually felt in your heart the story of the gospel? Man, this morning, as we as we sang as a team and it did it again during worship, may I never lose the wonder of your presence. Oh, the beauty and the gift of your friendship. And it hit me all afresh of who I was before Christ. And now God calls me friend and I get access to his presence. And I only have that. I only have that because he saves. And that should be that should cut you to the heart again. It should cut you to the heart. When's the last time you actually felt the gospel like that? And it says they were cut to the heart, and it said to the Pete said to Peter and the apostles, What shall we do? What can we do? And Peter replied, Repent, be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call. And it says that they begin to repent, they begin to respond to Christ. And it closes out verse 40. It says, with many other words, he warned them and he pleaded with them, save yourselves from this corrupt generation. Those who accept this message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to their number in a day. Peter preaches the gospel to a crowd. 3,000 people responded to the gospel. Now there's two things that you can point out here. So you look at it and you go, man, gospel's preached. Everybody came to Christ. No, no, no. A small percentage of a large crowd came to Christ. Which gives us hope that as we share the gospel, not everyone's going to respond, not everyone's going to come, but some will. Some will. It says 3,000 people were added to their number that day. And then what happens? They started a conference. They, what do you do with 3,000 people who respond today? Man, you post about it. Let everybody know. Something crazy just happened. You know, the first thing they do is they gather into a community. Is they go, man, we got to get these, we got to get this big church and we got to make it small. And we got to get these people loving each other. And so it says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching because they heard part of the story, but they're undiscipled. And so he said, let's get them into this community, let's get them submitted to the teaching of the scripture. Let's get them discipled. Let's get them connected to one another, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread into prayer. It says everyone was filled with awe at the many signs and wonders that were being performed by the by the apostles through the Holy Spirit. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who are being saved. And what I want you to notice is that we don't get fixated on the moment that Peter preaches and 3,000 people come to faith that day. How does the Holy Spirit begin to continue continue this mission through his people? Through every day, faithfulness in the context of a community of people living missionally in a city. This is what he does. The Holy Spirit wants to gather for himself a people and teach them to practice the way of Jesus, to love one another, and to engage their neighbors in their city through everyday faithfulness. And what does he do? The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. People ask all the time, like man, why like why do you plan a church? What are you guys doing? And you know what our inspiration is. Our inspiration for every community. What's in every community packet that we have? What our inspiration was as we as we planted this church was actually 242-247. I mean, this is what we're trying to replicate. This is what we're trying to build. And you look at that and you go, Man, that doesn't sound all that crazy impressive. Because the Spirit's not trying to build something impressive. The Spirit's trying to build something potent and powerful. We keep missing the power of the Spirit because we're looking for the impressiveness of man. And the Spirit wants to move through you in your everyday faithfulness. Why do we do this? Why do we set up a library and get together? Why do we have conversation starters? Because God is forming for himself a people. And every little thing matters as we gather together to receive from God, have our affection stirred for Jesus, receive a filling of the Spirit, and to be sent back into our everyday world to love our families really well and to reach the people that He's placed around us. And faithfulness over time will lead to more and more and more and more people encountering the risen Jesus and being safe. The church is a missional community taking this gospel into every cultural context, every language, every location. And when the church loses its missional focus, it turns into something that it was never meant to be. And that's the whole point of us becoming living, breathing, walking temples of God's presence. When the Holy Spirit is poured out and all of a sudden there's fire and there's wind, but it's happening through everyday people and not in a temple on a hill. What is God saying? He's saying, You are my temple now. You are the one I'm filling, you are the one I'm working through. Not some place on a mountain, not some building on a Sunday, but through everyday normal people that I've filled with my spirit that I've equipped and called and sent into every place of our city. You are the ones I'm using now. So we can go into places that no constructed temple ever could. And God wants to see every image bearer redeemed to become who He has created and called them to be. Every image bearer to call in the name of Jesus and be saved. So we're we're gonna move into a time of response. And it's really simple. Like the goal today wasn't how do we try to how do we try to get some some emotional some emotional kind of natural response? The goal today was to preach what happened at Pentecost and to invite you to ask for the Holy Spirit. That was the goal. I think there are some of us in this room that I don't know what I don't know what denomination you come out of. For us, man, we love Jesus. We preach the Bible. That's what we want. And there's a lot of denominations that you know get made fun of that is Father, Son, Holy Bible. You know, we believe that you can be Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and you can really love the Bible. The Bible leads us to be Father, Son, Holy Spirit people. But I mean, I think that there's some, there's some of us in this room that if you're honest, man, you've just you've lost the plot. Like you've lost the story. And man, I I love our city. I love, you know, I love Atlanta. We like we live here, we're gonna give our lives here. By God's grace, we plan to die here. We want to give our lives to this place. Our vision is to see the kingdom of God transform the city of Atlanta through the mission of the local church. That's our goal. So I love this city. But man, one of the things about the city of Atlanta is that people move here to build things. People move here to earn. People move here for opportunity. People move here to move into the city, to work a job, make a lot of money, and move out of the city so they can have a big yard and feel successful. And check that thing off the box. So they move here. And man, I think some of us we've gotten so narrowed in on our day-to-day, and you've made something else the center point that wasn't meant to be the center point. And man, you still like, you still listen to sermons or still, you know, you still go to church when you can. But you're not living in the story that God has created you to live in. You've completely lost it. And you're looking around at the destruction and the and the disarray that's happening kind of all around us. And perhaps, perhaps the Lord kind of placed us here today to remind you of the great story that you get to live in. And to call you back to play your role. To call you back to play your role. Created you in his image to rescue you, to redeem you, and now is longing to pour his spirit. If you're not a believer of Jesus, he just longs to fill you with his spirit, longs to know you in such a way that you could receive the Holy Spirit, the person of God, and have an intimate relationship with Jesus. There's some of you right now that you've never called on the name of Jesus. That word translated literally means to cry out. You've sang songs to Jesus. You may have written checks to Jesus. You may have read books about Jesus, but you've never cried out on the name of Jesus to save you and to rescue you. And you will not experience intimacy with God or know the person of the Holy Spirit until you cry out on the name of Jesus to rescue you, redeem you, and save you. All you need to know is that you are not who he created and designed you to be, that you've fallen short. And the only way for you to be saved and rescued, to be forgiven, to be freed, and to become the person that he's created and called you to be is to be saved by Jesus, to be filled with the Spirit so that he could change you and transform you increasingly day by day more into the image of Jesus. And that's enough to know. We'll figure out the rest later. And you need to cry out to Jesus today. Others of you, there's a mission that God's called you to that you haven't involved yourself with. And you need to just be filled with the Holy Spirit. Romans 5 says that He pours the love of God into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. And you just need to, you just need to receive the love of God. Some of you just need to receive the power of God. Some of you just need to get your vision aligned with God to know why you're here, why he's placed you here. And so to just ask, to ask for more of him, for more of God. So we're gonna move into a time of prayer in response. We're gonna have some prayer team available. I'm gonna be here. You've got people around you who know Jesus, who have access to God. If you want somebody to pray with you, just ask somebody to pray with you. Um, or you can just cry out to God right where you sit. Maybe you're here and you just you just need to worship. You just need to say, God, I want, I just need more of you. Whatever it is for you. Let's be faithful to it as we respond. Holy Spirit, we just call on you right now in this moment. Like I said, our goal, our goal as a local church isn't to just try to be impressive or to give people a great concert or talk. God, our goal today is we want people to respond to you. That there's more available to them than what they're settling for. There's more available to all of us. You do not withhold from us your desires to give generously to your people. And your word says that you want to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. That's the that's the greatest good that we could ever ask for. We love to ask you for money. We love to ask you for provision, we love to ask you for help. God, I pray that we would ask for you. We would ask for more of you. And God, that we would know you love to answer that prayer for more of you. And so, Lord, would you stir that up in every single person in this room? That they would simply ask for you. Lord, if there's anyone here who needs to respond to you, would you help them respond? If they need someone to pray with them or for them or over them, may they seek that out. We give you space, Holy Spirit. Would you come and move? In Jesus' name. You can stand and sing, you can