Preached · March 31, 2019
Text · Acts 2; Acts 2.1-4
Opening
Good morning, everybody. Good morning. It's good to see you. Like the video said, I'm going to steal this music stand. The video didn't say that. Like the video said, my name is Anthony Parrott. I'm one of the pastors here at Good News, and it is good to be here with you this morning.
We have been on this journey in the book of Acts. We've been exploring the founding, the birth of the church, which started a long, long time ago, nearly 2,000 years ago, and has continued up to this day and has led to a moment like today when people like you are sitting in places like this around the world, lifting up the name of Jesus, celebrating the resurrection, and spreading the good news to the world.
And so we think it's worth turning to that book, turning toward this opening, founding history book of the church, and paying attention to what it says, paying attention to the stories of the saints, of the disciples and apostles and evangelists and prophets and teachers who have gone before us, to learn the lessons that we need to learn so that we can imitate their lives, follow them as they followed Jesus.
A Story of Hospitality
Now, I have a really quick story. It doesn't have to do with the book of Acts, but it does have to do with our church doing a good job of following the way of Jesus.
If you were on Facebook this week — I was not; I quit it because it was an addictive habit I didn't like — but if you were on Facebook, you saw a post going around about a homeless gentleman who was sleeping in other people's garages and places, and he was kind of scaring the neighborhood. He got dozens of shares, and people were concerned; he had a criminal record. And our area is not known for crime, so for something like this to happen raised everybody's anxiety level.
So I get a call Monday night saying, "Hey, Anthony, we want to let you know that this gentleman came into our church while a group was meeting here." They were holding Alpha, which is a class about learning the basics of the Christian faith, and they're a missional community. And this gentleman entered into our church and just sat in the back and started watching their video, which happened to be about the Holy Spirit. And a couple of folks noticed this man, took him aside, asked him some questions, got his story, fed him, found him a place to stay, and invited him to Celebrate Recovery.
That is the church at work. Our instinct is to react in fear, and that's understandable. We have a God-given instinct to protect our families, to protect our homes, and that's good. But what the Holy Spirit does to the church and to the people within the church is say, "But what if we could change someone's life for the better?" And so I am so thrilled to be a part of a church that gets to play a part in stories like that, where we don't just react out of fear, but we do Hebrews 13 kind of stuff. It says,
Show hospitality to strangers, because you may be showing hospitality to angels and not even know it.
So I am so glad to be part of a church like that.
Breaking the Rules of Good Sermonizing
We are in a year-long series on the book of Acts, and we're chunking it out into mini-series. We started the year on the first chapter of Acts. We took a break, we talked about the Holy Spirit for seven weeks, and now we're back into the second chapter of Acts. And we're going to spend about six weeks just on this second chapter, because it's crucial: it's the birth of the church, it's Pentecost. We spent seven weeks leading us up to this moment where the Holy Spirit is poured out on the church, and now we want to spend another six weeks on that day, the day where we can say the church was born, the church was birthed.
And in order to set us up for success for those next six weeks, I'm going to break all the rules of good sermonizing today. A good sermon should have anecdotes, and it should have application, and it should make you laugh and tell good stories. I'm not going to do any of that. What we're going to do is just a good, old-fashioned Bible study. I'm going to leave the application to the sermons that are to come.
Acts chapter 2 is a passage where lots and lots and lots of themes in Scripture are all coming to a climax. They're all coming to a conclusion. They're all coming to their natural end. And in order for Acts chapter 2 to make any sense to us, we need to go way back to the beginning of the story. So we're going to start out in Genesis chapter 11.
Genesis 11: Humanity Divided
This is what it says:
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
So we're way back in the beginning of history. Adam and Eve has happened. Cain and Abel has happened; Cain killed his brother; Adam had another son. The flood has happened. And now we're after the flood, after Noah, but before Abraham. We're really early on in biblical history.
And as people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. And they said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
And by the way, eastward means away from Eden, away from paradise.
So humanity gathers together. They have one common language. And they say, "We're going to start this project" — which is going to get a name in a little bit, called the Tower of Babel — "to build a temple up to the heavens." And there's lots of archaeological evidence for towers like these that were called ziggurats. If you're a pagan person, you picture the gods somewhere up above, and you're trying to get to the gods. But that's not how ancient people viewed ziggurats. Ziggurats or temples or towers like this were not so you could get to the heavens; it's so that you could build a way for the gods to come down to you. Because pagan people — people who didn't believe in Yahweh, who didn't have very much knowledge about him — believed that there were barriers between the heavens and the earth, and that we had to do the gods a favor and build a tower in order for God to come down to us.
And notice the reason that they're doing this. One, so that they can make a name for themselves — it's all their own vanity, their own pride, their own ambition. And two, so that they're not scattered over the face of the whole earth. If we can get God to come down to us, we don't have to scatter. Which is in direct disobedience of what God had asked humanity to do in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and 3 and 9, when he says, "Fill the earth and subdue it." So God gives humanity a command — "Go, fill the earth, subdue it" — and humanity says, "No, we need God to come back down, make Eden for us, make paradise for us. We'll make a name for ourselves, and we will disobey what God has asked us to do."
So in verse 5, before they even get a chance to start their project, God comes down anyway:
The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that 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 to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other." So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
Humanity had an opportunity to listen, to do what God had asked, and God has to do it for them.
That is why it is 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.
Here in Genesis 11 we begin to see the divisions in humanity. The division of language, of race, of nationality, of borders, of people groups starts here. Because humanity would not listen, tried to make a name for themselves, tried to manipulate God to their own purposes, God says, "If you're not going to listen, I'm going to make you listen; I'm going to scatter you." And so humanity goes from one language to many, from one people group to many people groups. So make a mental note: Genesis 11, humanity divided, one language to multiple.
Exodus 40: Glory Fills the Tabernacle
Next, turn to the book of Exodus chapter 40, verses 33 through 38. Let me catch you up on a little of the history. Abraham has been called. Abraham has Isaac, Isaac has Jacob, Jacob has twelve sons, those twelve sons become the twelve tribes, and the twelve tribes become enslaved in Egypt. Moses gets called. He says to Pharaoh, "Let my people go." There are ten plagues. And we get to Exodus chapter 40.
God has given the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, and now he's given the instructions for the building of the tabernacle. The tabernacle is this portable temple, a portable tent that the Israelites are going to move through the wilderness as a way to set up sacrifices and to commune with the presence of God. It says:
Moses set up the courtyard around the tabernacle and the altar, and put up the curtain at the entrance to the courtyard. And so Moses finished the work.
So they've been building this tabernacle — basically a little tent in the middle, and a courtyard around it where people would gather.
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
Note that word — the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And even Moses himself, the friend of God, who would speak to God face to face, could not enter the tent of meeting. See the repetition: the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
And in all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels.
This is a crucial moment in Israelite history. God has pulled them out of Egypt, he has redeemed his people, he has told them that they are his own, he has given them his promises, he has given them his commandments, and then they build this tabernacle — a place to sacrifice, a place to worship — and God's glory fills it. And notice the fire that's there, the cloud that's there. In Isaiah chapter 63 — which we're not going to go to right now — the prophet lets us know that this glory, this presence, is the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit that is filling the tabernacle.
Leviticus 23: The Origins of Pentecost
Thing number three: let's go to Leviticus chapter 23, verse 15. God starts giving the Israelites, his covenant people, some feasts, in order to know how to celebrate what God has done in their lives. Quite often we talk about fasting, which is abstaining from food, abstaining from good things, in order to sensitize ourselves to our desires and our needs and help us in our prayer life. But not only is fasting talked about in Scripture; so is feasting — the rules for how to feast, and to feast well. We get one of these feasts here in Leviticus chapter 23:
From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks.
What's seven times seven? Forty-nine. And it's the day after the Sabbath, so seven times seven plus one is fifty.
Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord. From wherever you live, bring two loaves made of two-tenths of an ephah of the finest flour, baked with yeast, as a wave offering of firstfruits to the Lord. Present with this bread seven male lambs, each a year old and without defect, one young bull and two rams. They will be a burnt offering to the Lord, together with their grain offerings and drink offerings — a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.
So we're given instructions: you're going to go to the tabernacle, eventually the temple, you're going to make the sacrifice, you're going to dine with the divine. And these are the kinds of foods you're going to take. Don't dine poorly. Dine like a king, with the best flour and the best bull and the best rams. These are the firstfruits of your offering to God.
And this happens fifty days after the beginning of the harvest. In Jewish tradition, eventually it was fifty days after the Sabbath of Passover. Fifty, if you know your Latin, is "penta." And thus we get the word Pentecost — fifty days after the Passover. Now, if you know anything about the Christian story, Passover is a little bit important, because it's around that time when a person named Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected. So fifty days after Passover — fifty days after Jesus is killed and then resurrected — there's a feast the Jews are going to celebrate called "penta": fifty days, Pentecost. And rabbinical tradition associates Pentecost with the giving of the law — with Mount Sinai, with the Ten Commandments, with the stone tablets being given to the Israelites.
2 Chronicles 3 and 7: Glory Fills the Temple
Let's go to our fourth passage, 2 Chronicles 3. The Israelites have lived in the Promised Land for quite some time now. Moses has passed away. Joshua led the Israelites to the conquest of the land. There's the period of the Judges, when for many years Israel does not have a king. Eventually the country demands a king, so a prophet named Samuel anoints Saul. Saul goes off the rails — much like this sermon — so then Samuel anoints David. David has to run away from Saul for quite some time; Saul gets killed in battle; David becomes king. David has a son named Solomon. There's a bunch of inner turmoil in David's house, but eventually Solomon becomes king.
David wanted to take the tabernacle and transform it into a temple, a permanent building, a permanent dwelling place for God. But the Lord said to David, "There's too much blood on your hands. Let's have your son Solomon do it." So Solomon starts gathering the wealth of his nation and builds this magnificent temple to Yahweh. So 2 Chronicles 3 is the dedication of this temple. The ground's been broken, the foundation's been laid, everything has been built up, and now the people of Israel have gathered together and their king Solomon is going to dedicate the temple. It says in verse 8:
Solomon built the Most Holy Place, its length corresponding to the width of the temple — twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide. He overlaid the inside with six hundred talents of fine gold.
A talent's about seventy-five pounds, so that's six hundred seventy-five-pound chunks of fine gold.
The gold nails weighed fifty shekels. He also overlaid the upper parts with gold. For the Most Holy Place he made a pair of sculptured cherubim and overlaid them with gold.
Now, a cherubim — some of you might be picturing a Hallmark chubby angel. Not quite right. It is an angel of some sort, or some sort of divine messenger, and there are lots of differing descriptions in Scripture. Sometimes they're described as human-looking with wings; sometimes as a beast or an animal with wings. But regardless, you get the idea of this magnificent spiritual being with wings, overlaid with gold.
The total wingspan of the cherubim was twenty cubits.
A cubit is about eighteen inches, so eighteen inches times twenty — they're big, big things.
One wing of the first cherub was five cubits long and touched the temple wall, and the other wing, also five cubits long, touched the wing of the other cherub.
And they stood on their feet, facing the main hall. Then Solomon makes
a curtain of blue and purple and crimson yarn and fine linen, with cherubim worked into it.
This curtain is what divided the Holy Place, where the majority of the priests would do sacrifices, from the Most Holy Place, where only the high priest could go in and offer a sacrifice once a year — where the Ark of the Covenant, the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, and these cherubim were laid. And it was there that they saw, or imagined, or pictured, or thought that the center of God's presence was.
Skip ahead to chapter 7. Solomon prays a gigantically long prayer in the chapter before, which we're not going to read. And it says this in chapter 7, verse 1:
When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it. When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, "He is good; his love endures forever."
That cry becomes the anthem, the national anthem, of the country of Israel. You see it throughout the Psalms, throughout the songs of the Old Testament. This is what Israel cries about their God: that he is good and his love endures forever. And so at the dedication of this temple, God's glory fills it, and again we see the presence of fire. Make note of that; that's important. And we see this idea of having to stand back, because God's glory is so blinding, so good, so magnificent, so other, so holy, that you can't even be near it.
Isaiah 59: Ruach, God's Arrival
Let's go to Isaiah chapter 59, verse 19. We're going to take a break from temple language for a moment, and I want to do a little bit of word association for you. It says:
From the west, people will fear the name of the Lord, and from the rising of the sun they will revere his glory.
"From the rising of the sun" is a poetic way of saying the east. So the author is saying, from that way and that way, everywhere, people will fear the name of the Lord and revere his glory.
For he will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along. The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins.
That phrase, "the breath of the Lord drives along" — it's the word ruach. It's a Hebrew word that can mean wind, or breath, or spirit. We've talked about this during our Holy Spirit series. I just want you to associate that word ruach — wind, spirit, breath — with God's arrival. When God shows up on the scene, there is ruach. There is wind that shows up with him.
This is often associated in the Old Testament with God's divine power. Think of the Red Sea. Moses stands, he lifts up his staff, and it says that a mighty ruach split the Red Sea in two, and then the Israelites could pass through. So ruach: God's presence, God's arrival, God's power, God's mighty wind or breath or spirit. Make that word association.
So, to review. Genesis 11: humanity divided at the Tower of Babel. Exodus 40: Moses builds a tabernacle, a portable temple, and God's glory fills it with fire and his presence. Leviticus 23: we see the origin of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover, the giving of firstfruits to the Lord. 2 Chronicles 3 and 7: God's glory again fills the temple, the permanent building, again with fire. Isaiah 59: ruach is God's arrival, God's presence, God's power.
Ezekiel 10 and 11: God's Glory Leaves the Temple
Let's go now to Ezekiel chapter 10. Again, flying through Israelite history: Solomon has died, the kingdom of Israel is divided into two separate nations, both of them are generally unfaithful to God, and eventually they are exiled and the temple is going to be destroyed. A prophet named Ezekiel has been exiled to Babylon, and he has seen visions of the destruction that's coming to Jerusalem, to the temple, to the place where God's presence is centered. It says in verse 3:
The cherubim were standing on the south side of the temple when the man went in, and a cloud filled the inner court.
So now the cherubim statues in the temple — Ezekiel sees them alive in a vision, not just statues, not just laid in gold, but alive. This is bad news. We glance over this verse, but this is really bad news. What's the cloud? What does the cloud represent? The glory of God, the Holy Spirit, the presence of God. Where is the glory, the presence, supposed to be? The Most Holy Place — not the outer court, not the inner court, not the Holy Place, but the Most Holy Place. And where is it now, according to verse 3? The inner court. It's left the Most Holy Place. It's leaving.
Then the glory of the Lord rose above the cherubim and moved to the threshold of the temple. The cloud filled the temple, and the court was full of the radiance of the glory of the Lord.
Now it's even further away — now it's like at the steps of the temple. Let's go down to verse 18:
Then the glory of the Lord departed from over the threshold of the temple and stopped above the cherubim. While I watched, the cherubim spread their wings and rose from the ground, and as they went, the wheels went with them. They stopped at the entrance of the east gate of the Lord's house, and the glory of the God of Israel was above them.
So Ezekiel has this image of a complicated kind of chariot, with wheels within wheels, and cherubim or angels or creatures moving this chariot along. And the glory of God — which Ezekiel very shyly says looks kind of like a human — is seated there, and it's leaving the temple. Let's skip ahead to chapter 11, verse 22:
Then the cherubim, with the wheels beside them, spread their wings, and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. The glory of the Lord went up from within the city and stopped above the mountain east of it.
So Ezekiel sees this vision of God's glory, God's presence, God's cloud, the Holy Spirit, leaving the temple, leaving the Holy Place, leaving the steps of the temple, then eventually leaving the city and waiting at a mountain just east of Jerusalem. And then eventually, history tells us, the temple is destroyed brick by brick. This was Israel's greatest fear, and yet it was the very fate they marched toward every time they rebelled against God: that God's glory left the temple.
Ezekiel 43: The Expectation of Return
Still in the book of Ezekiel, let's go to chapter 43. Ezekiel's vision continues:
The man brought me to the gate facing east, and I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east. His voice was like the roar of rushing waters, and the land was radiant with his glory. The vision I saw was like the vision I had seen when he came to destroy the city, and like the visions I had seen by the Kibar River. And I fell facedown. The glory of the Lord entered the temple through the gate facing east. Then the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.
So remember: the glory of God left the temple, sits atop a mountain to the east, and now Ezekiel sees the glory coming back. Ezekiel 43 is the expectation of return. This is Israel's great hope — that God's glory would return. Yes, it left; yes, they rebelled; yes, the temple was destroyed. But the thing the prophets promised and declared is that God would come back, the temple would be rebuilt, and God's glory, God's Spirit, God's presence, God's ruach would fill the temple once again, and this glory would radiate throughout the city. This is the expectation of return.
Ezra 3 and 6: Not the Former Glory
So, did it happen? Now we're going to flip backwards, because our Bibles are not chronologically ordered, to Ezra chapter 3. Eventually a king lets Israel start going back to their homeland, and they're allowed to rebuild Jerusalem and to rebuild a temple, a place to worship. This is thanks to a king named Cyrus the Great. Ezra is part of the priestly line, and he's the one who leads the effort to rebuild God's temple. It says in verse 10:
When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the Lord, as prescribed by David king of Israel. With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord: "He is good; his love toward Israel endures forever." And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.
So they're trying to conjure up what happened when Solomon finished the first temple. They're trying to bring back those memories, bring back the way it was before. They're even singing the same songs they sang hundreds of years ago: "He is good, and his love endures forever." But flip ahead to chapter 6, verse 15:
The temple was completed on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius. Then the people of Israel — the priests, the Levites, and the rest of the exiles — celebrated the dedication of the house of God with joy. For the dedication they offered a hundred bulls, two hundred rams, and four hundred male lambs, and, as a sin offering for all Israel, twelve male goats, one for each of the tribes of Israel. And they installed the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their groups.
And back in chapter 3:
But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.
Now, why are they weeping? Why the shouts of joy and tears? Look at the dedication in chapter 6: the temple was completed, they celebrated the dedication with joy, they offered the animals, they installed the priests according to what is written in the Book of Moses. What is missing from the dedication? The glory of the Lord. It's not back. Ezekiel 43 — God's glory returning from the mountain — didn't happen. They laid the foundation, they built the temple, they made the sacrifices, they sang the old song, they did the old things according to the Book of Moses. And yet there's no verse that says, "and the glory of the Lord filled the temple." There's no verse that says, "and fire fell down from heaven." There's no verse that says, "and the priests couldn't go into the temple because the glory of the Lord was there." It didn't happen.
There's this amazing story from a few years ago where the postal service unknowingly took a picture of the Statue of Liberty — the one in Las Vegas, not New York — and put it on a stamp. And if you notice, the two look a little different. The one in New York, Lady Liberty, is 350 feet tall — a shining beacon. The one in Las Vegas is about 150 feet tall; it does not even compare. And thus, Ezra chapter 3: there was weeping from the priests and the people who knew the old temple, because it did not even compare. They did all the things they were supposed to do, and yet God's glory has not come back. It's like the exile is still happening.
Mark 15: The Veil Is Torn
Let's flip, finally, to the New Testament, the book of Mark, chapter 15. The temple is rebuilt. Eventually a ruler named Herod the Great comes and glorifies the temple, makes it even bigger than Solomon's temple. If they can't have the glory of the Lord filling it, at least they'll make it prettier and bigger and more magnificent. That will have to do. And eventually a young construction worker and rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth comes, goes to the temple in Jerusalem, and starts tossing over tables. And for this, the religious authorities say, "You've done enough. This cannot stand. You've blasphemed God, and now we will crucify you." And so Jesus goes up on a cross and dies. In verse 37 it says:
With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
Now, this curtain was thirty feet tall by thirty feet wide. Jewish tradition says it was as thick as a man's hand, and that two horses pulling it with ropes could not tear it apart. And yet something about Jesus' death, something about Jesus' sacrifice, something about what Jesus has done has ripped the veil, this curtain of the temple, in two.
Summary
So let's summarize. First, there's Babel — the place where humanity had one language and is divided into many languages, where they, by their own efforts, attempt to manipulate God so that he will come down because they said so, and so they are divided. Then there's the temple, the place of God's glory, commonly understood as the Holy Spirit — a place where fire comes down, a place where there is the ruach of God, the wind of God, that comes down. But eventually, because of rebellion and sin, God's glory leaves, and it hasn't come back yet. Everyone's waiting. Everyone wonders when. And then there's Pentecost, a yearly festival fifty days after the Passover, associated with the giving of firstfruits, and also with God giving the Torah, God giving the law, God giving his commandments to his people.
Acts 2:1-4
So with that, let's turn to the book of Acts chapter 2, and let's all stand for the public reading of God's word.
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 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.
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
