Participants: Jim & Mark Howard
Series Code: ABOTB
Program Code: ABOTB00004B
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00:02 Welcome back to Books of the Book.
00:03 When we last left our audience we were talking about Acts 00:07 chapter 2 and this incredible event that happened on the day 00:11 of Pentecost. There was a mighty rushing wind, there were 00:15 tongues of fire, incredible manifestations of the Holy 00:19 Spirit that were so evident and the noise must have been so 00:23 great that it stirred up all those who were in the 00:25 surrounding area to come. 00:27 Right. That's what verse 6 tells 00:28 us, which is interesting because I've always had that idea that 00:31 they were in a room and all of them heard the mighty rushing 00:36 wind and it was something exclusive to them, not that 00:38 the whole town heard it, but that's what it says in verse 6 00:41 that when the sound occurred the multitudes came together. 00:45 So it was something that got everybody's attention as you had 00:48 mentioned before, because the Lord wanted the people to hear 00:52 the gospel message that the apostles were about to proclaim 00:54 And that brings us to the next point because the Lord wanted 00:59 them to hear but he also wanted them to understand and that was 01:02 going to be a very difficult challenge for them. Because it 01:06 says in verse 5 that there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, 01:10 devout men from every nation under heaven. So you get this 01:14 sense that there are a variety of different languages and then 01:18 in verse 6 at the conclusion of verse 6 it says everyone heard 01:23 them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and 01:26 marveled saying to one another look are not all these who speak 01:30 Galileans. Then verse 8, and how is it that we hear each in our 01:34 own language in which we were born. And it lists out all the 01:38 various languages and areas from which they came and they're all 01:43 hearing them speak. In verse 11 it says: in our own tongues the 01:48 wonderful works of God. Now this is pretty powerful because what 01:53 it reveals is the clearest picture we have in the entire 01:57 New Testament of what the Bible refers to as the gift of tongues 02:01 Now there are many different views on the gift of tongues 02:06 that exist in Christianity today and if it were just for certain 02:12 passages in the more theological letters of Paul we might not 02:16 know for sure what that gift of tongues looked like. This is 02:20 what we've been talking about in the book of Acts. Because we 02:25 have this inspired narrative of the practical, practiced or 02:31 acted out theology that we find in the rest of the New Testament 02:34 we can have a little better idea of what it's referring to. This 02:37 particular passage is the clearest illustration of the 02:42 gift of tongues that we have in the Bible. What happens in this? 02:47 It says very clearly everyone heard them speak in his own 02:51 language. The reason that this is important is because there 02:56 are some who believe that the gift of tongues must be a gift 03:00 that is somewhat unintelligible to other human beings. It may be 03:04 something that is unknown to myself and they take that from 03:07 certain passages of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians and we 03:10 could take a lot of time trying to really explore and 03:14 delve into those passages but what we need to remember is that 03:19 important method of interpretation of the Bible 03:23 an important rule of interpreting the Bible is that 03:26 we need to let clear passages inform the passages that do not 03:30 have that same clarity. So here is the clearest picture of the 03:34 gift of tongues and we do not see it as a language that is 03:39 unintelligible to humanity. Rather we see something very 03:43 different. Everyone hears these disciples speaking in their own 03:49 language. They can understand clearly what they are saying 03:52 in their own language. So this gift of tongues appears to be 03:55 a supernatural power that God gives to enable his 04:00 representatives to preach the gospel and be heard and 04:04 understood in languages that they themselves may not have 04:08 even been taught in. Absolutely. And it's important 04:11 again that you bring this up. The hearing of the word was 04:16 crucial to this audience. In other words, it wasn't enough 04:20 for the Lord that they saw something supernatural take 04:24 place. What they were about to hear was crucial to the 04:28 conversion experience of the multitudes and that's what we 04:31 find happens next here. They actually, some of the people 04:35 gathered there began mocking the apostles and saying that 04:39 these guys are drunk. And Peter responds in verse 14 and says 04:44 that we're not drunk. But he says: This is what was spoken by 04:48 the prophet Joel, in verse 16 and then he quotes from Joel 04:53 chapter 2: And it shall come to pass in the last days says God 04:57 that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your 05:01 daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, 05:05 your old men shall dream dreams, on my man servant and on my maid 05:09 servants I will pour out my Spirit in those days and they 05:12 shall prophesy and I will show wonders in the heavens above 05:15 and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of 05:18 smoke, the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into 05:21 blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the 05:24 Lord and it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name 05:29 of the Lord shall be saved. Now Peter shares this prophecy of 05:34 Joel and then he basically brings home to his audience that 05:39 these signs and wonders are God trying to communicate to them 05:44 that the Jesus that they've just taken and crucified was their 05:50 Messiah as prophecy had foretold He picks up in verse 22. He says 05:54 men of Israel here these words. Jesus of Nazareth a man attested 05:58 by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did 06:02 through him in your midst as you yourselves also know, etc. you 06:06 have taken by lawless hands and crucified. So he brings this 06:09 message to them. But it's interesting that he brings it 06:15 through this prophetic medium. Something we want to note about 06:21 Joel, two things about this prophecy of Joel. First of all, 06:27 when we look at the prophecy of Joel we find that not everything 06:32 that Joel prophesied and that Peter sites here was fulfilled 06:37 on the day of Pentecost. What that tells us is that we're 06:41 seeing not a complete fulfillment of Joel's prophecy, 06:45 but a partial fulfillment which would lead us to expect a fuller 06:49 fulfillment later on. Now why do I know that, that's it's a 06:52 partial fulfillment. How can we know that? Well a couple things. 06:55 First of all, one of the things it mentions in context of Joel's 06:59 prophecy is visions and dreams, the gift of prophecy, your sons 07:02 and daughters shall prophesy, but when we look at the account 07:06 here on the day of Pentecost, the gift we see is the gift of 07:09 tongues. We're not seeing this outpouring of the gift prophecy. 07:12 The other thing is that there are signs mentioned in the 07:15 heavens that we don't see taking place here under the outpouring 07:20 of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. 07:22 Verse 20 says the sun shall be turned into darkness, the moon 07:26 into blood. That's right. Before the coming 07:28 of the great and awesome day of the Lord. But we do know that 07:32 Jesus prophesied similar signs right before his second coming. 07:36 So it would lead us to look for a more complete fulfillment of 07:41 Joel later on. But now that's led some people when they see 07:45 some of these things to assume that maybe Peter spoke out of 07:48 turn here. Now we were talking about that. I think you had an 07:52 encounter something like that. Yeah. I at one point had 07:55 somebody share with me that they felt that Peter was actually 08:00 mistaken when he quoted Joel as a fulfillment of what happened 08:04 on the day of Pentecost. I said well Peter thought that Jesus 08:08 was going to be coming soon so he thought that this must have 08:11 been what was happening before the coming of the great and 08:15 awesome day of the Lord but he was simply wrong which really 08:19 doesn't sound quite right, does it? If you look at chapter 2 and 08:23 verse 4 it says they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and 08:27 began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them 08:30 utterance. So the Spirit was giving him utterance and the 08:34 Spirit inspired him to take this passage of scripture and 08:38 understand it as being a fulfillment of what was 08:40 happening on that day. If the Spirit inspired the writer Joel 08:44 and the Spirit inspired Peter to interpret you can bet that it 08:48 was a correct interpretation. But it doesn't mean necessarily, 08:52 as you are stating, that it's a complete fulfillment. It could 08:55 very well be a partial fulfillment. I'd like to point 08:59 us back to the book of Joel, because back in the book of Joel 09:02 in chapter 2 it gives a little hint of a possibility of 09:07 something that would happen to germinate the early church and 09:11 then something that would happen for a more complete fulfillment 09:15 at the end of the work of the church at the end of time. It's 09:20 in Joel chapter 2 verse 23. It says be glad then you children 09:25 of Zion and rejoice in the Lord your God for he has given you 09:29 the former rain faithfully, (that's the rain that helped to 09:33 germinate the seed in the beginning of the growing season) 09:38 and the former rain and the latter rain in the first month. 09:43 Now I want to go back up to the middle where it says, for he has 09:46 given you the former rain faithfully. My Bible has a 09:49 marginal reading on that. And the former rain, the marginal 09:53 reading for that is a teacher of righteousness. He will give 09:56 you a teacher of righteousness to rain down on you, both a 10:01 former manifestation and a latter manifestation. What is 10:05 this talking about? Well Hosea picks up something very similar 10:10 in Hosea chapter 6. I want to look in verse 3 of Hosea 6. 10:15 Hosea writes: Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the 10:19 Lord. So we need a teacher of righteousness to receive the 10:23 knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established 10:27 as the morning. He will come to us like the rain, like the 10:32 latter and former rain to the earth. It says, he will come to 10:37 us like the rain. That makes me think of is John 10:40 chapter 16. Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit coming and he 10:46 says in verse 16: I'll pray the Father. He will send you another 10:49 helper. Verse 17: The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot 10:52 receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. He will dwell 10:55 with you and be in you. And verse 18 says I will not leave 10:59 you orphans; I will come to you. But he's speaking about coming 11:03 through the Holy Spirit. And what you're looking at that 11:07 there and what Joel's talking about is coming through the Holy 11:10 Spirit as a teacher of righteousness. Well Jesus is 11:12 coming to us; he is the teacher of righteousness. 11:15 that's right and what we see here in Hosea, as you were 11:18 describing it, is that his going forth is established as the 11:22 morning. He will come to us, this teacher of righteousness, 11:27 the Holy Spirit that the Father is going to send. All of these 11:31 things tie together with this one very clear promise that we 11:35 have, that just as the former rain came faithfully to those 11:40 early apostles, the latter rain is going to come to us. That's 11:44 what we see in this promise. This is not a fulfillment that 11:48 is complete in Acts chapter 2. Joel spoke of something very 11:52 real that had happened and that Holy Spirit power is still 11:55 available to us today but in a greater degree we're going to 11:59 see manifestations of power and we're going to see conversions 12:02 such as happened here on the day of Pentecost once more. 12:06 Well something that we don't want to miss is in verse 37. 12:10 We're kind of jumping ahead a little bit. In verse 37 it says 12:13 that when Peter had preached everything that he had preached 12:17 it says the people were cut to the heart. And something that we 12:20 don't want to overlook is when the Holy Spirit was poured out 12:24 Jesus the teacher of righteousness speaking through 12:27 the Holy Spirit and conveying that righteousness to his church 12:31 it was in the context here of a prophetic fulfillment and we can 12:35 expect, I believe, at the end of time, when we're looking for 12:39 that latter rain that it will come again in the context of 12:43 fulfilled prophecy. Prophecies are being fulfilled around us 12:46 left and right. Jesus gave a number of prophecies in the 12:49 books of Daniel and Revelation and the book of Matthew about 12:52 his coming and it's in those messages of prophecy that the 12:56 people are cut to the heart. It's in those messages of 12:59 prophecy that they are brought to a deep conviction and a sense 13:02 of where they are and their need of Christ. What's ironic is 13:06 we're in a day and age where sometimes a level of political 13:10 correctness keeps us from wanting to say things that are 13:13 so... You know, preach the prophecies where they are 13:16 disheartening, they're cutting. The fact is that that cutting is 13:19 what brings about the conversion We see it in the power in the 13:22 power in the early church. 13:24 They are powerful aren't they? 13:25 And Jesus is coming soon friends The teacher of righteousness is 13:29 going to come to us and reveal himself in all his glory and we 13:32 want to be ready for that day. I hope you'll join us again 13:36 next time for our study of the book of Acts. |
Revised 2014-12-17