Please turn with me in the Word of God to the Acts of the Apostles. We're going to begin our reading in chapter 1, reading the first eight verses of chapter 1, and then moving on to the reading in chapter 2. These readings will tell us both what happened on the day of Pentecost and Peter's sermon explaining what was happening. So we begin our reading of the Word of God this morning from Acts chapter 1 at verse 1. Let us hear God's own Word. In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command. Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. So when they met together, they asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Then moving to Acts chapter 2, verse 1. 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. And then down to verse 14. Then Peter stood up with the eleven, raised his voice, and addressed the crowd. Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you. Listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning. No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. 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. And I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Men of Israel, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. David said about him, I saw the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will live in hope because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence. Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet. and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Therefore let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? Peter replied, Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins. And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the promises for you and your children, and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call. So far the reading of God's Word. Today, as Pentecost Sunday, is a day when churches around the world look back to this event described in Acts chapter 2 when Jesus poured out his spirit as a gift to his people. We know that in the last 50 to 100 years, one of the most remarkable areas of growth in the Christian church has been among people who call themselves Pentecostals. People who claim in a special way to have the Spirit of God and to know the purpose of the Spirit of God. And so with a particular pointedness, it comes to us on a day like this to think about Pentecost. What was the real meaning of Pentecost? What was God really doing on that day? What lesson does he have for us to learn from that remarkable event some 2,000 years ago? And it's good that we should pause and reflect on that because it seems to me that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about Pentecost in many Christian circles today. Some call Pentecost the birthday of the church. But I don't really think that's right. There was a church before Pentecost. Some see Pentecost as the beginning of a new age of miracles, in which Christians are to be able to perform miracles in a way never known before. And yet I hope we'll see as we look at this text that the focus here in Acts 2 is not on miracles. They are present. They have their function. We'll talk about that a little bit. But that's not the focus. That's not what Pentecost is primarily about. Some just want to speak in a very general way about the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, almost as if the Holy Spirit was unknown until the day of Pentecost. But that's not true either. For Acts chapter 1 makes clear that the Spirit had been active before the day of Pentecost. And so we come back to this question, what is Pentecost really about? What is God really doing on this Pentecost day, and what does it have of meaning and significance and importance for us today? And I want to think about that question of what is Pentecost really all about under three points. First of all, that Pentecost is a promise fulfilled. This is particularly for you boys or girls who like to take notes, because I didn't get the outline in the bulletin. Pentecost is a promise fulfilled, it is a presence renewed, and it is a power expressed. It's under those three points that I want to think about Pentecost with you today. First of all, that Pentecost is a promise fulfilled. God had promised that he would pour out his Spirit. This is not a surprising event. It's not an unexpected event. It's not something that had not been talked about or anticipated before it happened. But God from all eternity had planned that Pentecost would be part of his saving purpose and work for the well-being of his people and of his church. Here in Acts 2 we read that the gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift of the Father. A gift of the Father to the Son and a gift from the Son then to his people. and that this had been taught and prophesied all the way back to the days of the prophet Joel. And in Joel chapter 2, we read the words that Peter quotes here. We're not sure how Peter was able to quote that. I don't think he probably had a large scroll of the prophets under his arm. He probably had committed these words to memory. Jesus had been talking for 40 days to his disciples about the kingdom of God that he was going to be planting and seeing building. And Jesus must have talked to the disciples about the coming of the Holy Spirit in more detail. And probably Jesus had quoted from this passage in Joel chapter 2. And here it's held up. You see, we've been looking forward to this day. God had promised it. The prophets had spoken of it. And now it is being fulfilled. The Spirit has come. And the Spirit has come because of another prophecy, the prophecy that God would send David a son who would sit forever on his throne. And it would be from that throne of David, from that powerful descendant of David, that this gift to the people of God of the Holy Spirit would come. And so Peter quotes also from Psalm 110, the psalm that prophesied of the Lord sitting at God's right hand in splendor and in rule. So this is a promise that was made in the Old Testament, and it's a promise that is reiterated by Jesus in his earthly ministry at several points in John's Gospel. We have Jesus talking about how he will send the Holy Spirit to his people, how that Holy Spirit will lead them into deeper knowledge of him, how that Holy Spirit will be a blessing and a comforter and a counselor to them. And Jesus had stated that promise after his resurrection of sending the Spirit, both at the end of Luke's Gospel and in the first chapter of Acts, as we've already read. And so this is a promise God has made to his people. A promise, he says, of the Spirit as a gift. On this Mother's Day, some of you mothers may be hoping that you're going home to gifts. Some of those gifts will be genuinely exciting. And some of them will cause for a little bit of play acting on the part of mothers to be excited. Maybe some mothers are going home to have dinner made for them. Some of those dinners will be wonderful, and some of those dinners will be challenging. But a gift is a wonderful thing. We look forward with anticipation to a gift. And Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is his gift to the church. That's one way in which he talks about the Spirit. He says that we will be baptized in the Spirit. This is a way of talking about being set apart by the Spirit. This is a way of the Spirit's making some decisive event in our lives. And Jesus talks about the Spirit being our power. Particularly the power to be, he said, my witnesses. And so this is a promise that Jesus has made to us. a promise that he thought was crucial. He said, don't worry that I'm going away from you because I will send my spirit to you to be another comforter. I have been your comforter. I have been with you as your comforter, he said to his disciples. And when I'm gone, I will not leave you as orphans. You remember that wonderful word that he spoke in John's gospel. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. I will come to you in my spirit. So this is a wonderful promise that Jesus has made, and it's a promise made to every Christian. You notice that the Holy Spirit comes on all of them, all of the disciples on the day of Pentecost. You notice that Peter's promise is to everyone who repents and is baptized that the Holy Spirit will come upon them. This is important in the world in which we live because there are certain people who teach a doctrine that says, well, you become a Christian by faith, and then at some later point, the Spirit comes upon you as a second blessing. And this creates a sort of two-tier system of Christians. There are basic Christians, and then there are Spirit-baptized Christians. And sometimes Christians are put under a lot of pressure. Do you have all that God wants for you? There's a spirit of power available to you that many Christians haven't experienced, so you need to pursue that. That's not what this passage teaches at all. It's not what the New Testament teaches at all. The spirit is given to all those who are connected to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. Think of these words that Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 12. 1 Corinthians was, of course, a church very confused about spiritual things, and Paul had to write to try to make things clear for them. And he wrote to them, 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13, For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. If you're part of the church of Jesus Christ, if you're a real part of the church by faith in Jesus Christ, you have the Spirit. That's what Paul is saying. You don't need to seek the Spirit as if you don't have Him. Now, the New Testament does say that we can be more filled with the Spirit. We can see more of the Spirit at work in us. We can pursue the Spirit and pray for the Spirit. We should do that. But we shouldn't do it on the basis of saying, I have not yet been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Everyone who is a true member of Christ by faith has been baptized in the Holy Spirit. It's a gift that Jesus is giving in his mercy to all his people, just as he promised. And so the first thing we can see about Pentecost is that God, once again, shows himself to be a promise keeping God. This should encourage us over and over again. Our God is a God who, when he makes a promise, fulfills it. When he makes a promise that one day he will send his spirit in power upon his people, he keeps that promise. When he promises that one day he will send his Christ to suffer and die and rise again to save a people, he will keep that promise. When he promises that one day Jesus is coming again in glory, he will keep that promise. When he promises that he will build his church and the gates of hell will not withstand its advance, he will keep that promise. When he says to you, if you call upon the name of the Lord, you will be saved, he will keep that promise. And that's what Pentecost must mean to us in the first place. We serve a great promise-keeping God who comes to his people in his Holy Spirit. And that leads us on then to this second point. Pentecost is not only about a promise fulfilled, it's about a presence renewed. Jesus Christ did not ascend into heaven and sit down to rest. I look around this congregation, there are a few retired people. Now, most retired people say that they work harder in retirement than they did when they were working. We mustn't for a moment think the ascension of Jesus Christ is the retirement of Jesus Christ. You notice how Luke puts it at the beginning of Acts. In my former book, that is in my gospel, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach. And this second book, the Acts of the Apostles, is really the continuing acts of Jesus Christ. He's still at work. He's still active. He's working through the apostles, by his Holy Spirit, but the book of Acts is really a book all about Jesus' work. And so, Pentecost is reminding us that Jesus Christ has not departed from us, that he is not absent from us, but that by the power of the Holy Spirit, He is still present with us. I go back to that promise, Acts 14, verse 18. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. And although He will come with visible glory at the end of the age to make all things new, He comes now, since the day of Pentecost, in the person and power of His Holy Spirit to be with us. You notice what Peter says in Acts 2, 36. Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. Both sovereign and Savior. And he is sovereign and savior now, not emeritus, not having completed his work, not having finished all he had to do, but he is actively Lord today. Do you believe that? He's actively Lord today. He's king of kings and Lord of lords today. He's ruler of the kings of the earth today. He's in charge of all things today. He's managing the history of this world, and particularly the history of his people. Today, he's accomplishing his purpose. He's Lord. And he is Christ. That is, he is Savior. He is the anointed one of his people. He is the one who has come to save his people, and he's still active in saving his people, isn't he? What a wonderful thing. or none of us would know that salvation today. He's been active by the power of his Holy Spirit in his church for 2,000 years. And if he hadn't been, none of us would be here today. None of us would look to him in faith today. But he is Lord and Christ. And the Spirit then connects us to the living Lord and the living Christ who is with us today. when we come next week to the Lord's Supper and we see bread and wine and we hear that bread and wine described as the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, how is it that we can commune with Christ through bread and wine? Not through the change of bread and wine, but through the power of the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit who will use that bread and wine to connect us to Jesus Christ. The Spirit is the presence of Christ renewed among us in his powerful work. And this must be a great encouragement to us. Jesus is not gone. Jesus is not far away. Jesus is not remote and indifferent. But Jesus has come in the power of his Spirit to be with us, to be in our hearts, to be in our minds, to be in our lives, to go with us through all that we go through. And that's part of what Pentecost powerfully testifies to us. Jesus is not far away. He's with us. Do we realize that when we gather for worship? We gather as good Reformed Christians in a rather sparse and spare building. And we do that deliberately so that our minds might not focus on anything here, but our minds might be lifted by the Spirit and by the Word to recognize that our Christ is with us. Our Christ is meeting with us. And that means that as He looks into your heart and into mine, He knows every struggle that we're going through, every difficulty. He knows every blessing and every triumph. He knows what fills our hearts with thanksgiving and what fills our hearts with pain. And he says, you're not alone. I am with you. I'm with you even to the end of the age. I will never leave you or forsake you. That's what Pentecost says. You notice how the sermon on Pentecost that Peter preaches is primarily a sermon about Jesus. The Spirit does not come to glorify himself. The Spirit comes to glorify Jesus, and that's why he's called the Spirit of Jesus. Not because he isn't a separate person of the Trinity. He is a separate person of the Trinity. And worthy of all glory and honor. But his function today is not to glorify himself, but to glorify Jesus Christ. And that's why Peter, on Pentecost, preaches a sermon on Jesus. Jesus who's always with us, who always cares for us, who always protects us. So Pentecost is about a promise fulfilled, about a presence renewed, and about a power expressed. The Spirit, over and over, we're told, comes with power. He is not power. That would be to reduce him to an influence. He is a person, but he's a person who comes with power. Power that is great and power that is real. that power was manifested very openly in miracles that attended the day of Pentecost a mighty wind people in the upper room suddenly hearing that sound as of a great storm and rush of wind points to the power of the coming of the Spirit and then over every head they saw a flame of fire again pointing to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit and then they began to speak and another miracle they spoke in foreign languages that's the clear meaning of this text they were suddenly able to speak in languages they hadn't known before because the great power of Pentecost is the power of communication. It's the power of witness. It's the power of preaching and teaching and speaking. What is the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost above all else? It's a power to speak in a way that had never been manifested before. You notice in the section we didn't read of chapter 2, verse 11, after it's been described how many different languages they were speaking, someone said, we hear them, the apostles now baptized in the Holy Spirit, we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues. You see, Jesus had said, when I send you the Spirit, You'll begin to talk about me in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria under the outermost parts of the earth. And they'd need to be able to speak languages to communicate in all those different places. And so God gave a sign of that in the miracle of being able to speak suddenly all of these languages from all around the Mediterranean. and the power of Pentecost has gone forth through the centuries that the gospel has been taken now from one language and one people to another. I look around this congregation this morning, and I see lots of different languages represented even in our relatively small group. English, and Spanish, and Dutch, and that noble language Fris, and German, and Ukrainian, and Russian, and Korean, and Teve. I don't know if I've left anybody out. Hungarian. Oh boy, I was going to be in trouble. There was going to be no Father's Day for me. And we begin to see the fruit of Pentecost right here among us. Somebody spoke to us or to our ancestors about the mighty works of God done in Jesus Christ for our salvation. And as a result, the word about Jesus has gone around the world. And we're part of it. We see the fruit of it. we see it not only in all the disciples who were speaking, but we see it particularly in Peter, don't we? You notice what Luke says about Peter at the end of his gospel? Well, we have three references to Peter sort of towards the end of Luke's gospel. In Luke 22, we read that Peter wept because he had betrayed Jesus by denying him. And then in Luke 24, we read that Peter wondered as he stood at the empty tomb and wasn't sure what had happened. And then a little later in Luke 24, we hear that Peter watched as the risen Lord appeared. Not doing much that was very active, was he? Weeping and wondering and watching. But here, now that he's baptized in the Holy Spirit, he's witnessing for his Lord. He's preaching a sermon for his Lord. He's able to speak out in power and pointedness for his Lord. He's talking about all that Jesus did for salvation. And then very pointedly he's saying, And you handed him over to wicked men. You crucified him. You would not receive him. But you need him, because he is Lord and Christ. He is sovereign and Savior. And then we read of that quiet, but absolutely indispensable work of the Holy Spirit in verse 37. And they were cut to the heart. It's a very strong word in Greek. They're pierced. They're stabbed. It's like a sword was jabbed into their heart. What sword? The sword of the Spirit. The Spirit has come to move them. Have you ever been cut to the heart? Have you ever heard a word spoken that shook you? That arrested you? That changed you? That's what the Spirit's doing through the words of Peter. Not through Peter's cleverness. but through the Spirit's taking that word and pressing it on the hearts and minds of people. And you see, that power of the Spirit is alive today. We see it in the missionary work of the church all around the world. We see it in every local area where evangelism is going on. We see it in people like Bill Green and Dr. Elaine Tam. But you see, it's in us too. It must be in us. Every Christian has the Spirit. Every Christian can't preach a sermon. Every Christian can't be a missionary. But every Christian can speak of the mighty acts of God. Has God done a mighty act in your life? You can talk about it. Has God done a mighty act revealed in Jesus Christ in the scriptures? You can talk about that. You may not be able to talk about it wonderfully, learnedly, but you can talk about it. Some of you remember Reverend Kaminga's mother, Tilly Kaminga. She was easy to get confused with Millie Kaminga, but this is Tilly Kaminga. She died a few months ago, you remember. And she was 98 when she died. She'd lived through a lot of the 20th century. She'd seen a great many things. She'd seen ups and downs in Reformed churches. And I said to her once, you've lived through a lot. And like a lot of conservative Reformed Christians, you and I can sometimes be kind of regretful about how things are worse than they used to be. You know, sometimes we reformed Christians can get a little grumpy that way. Oh, for the good old days, things aren't as good as they used to be. I said, is there anything better than it used to be? And without hardly missing a beat, she said, yes, we reformed people are better today at speaking openly about our faith than we were a generation or two ago. I've always remembered that. It's been so encouraging to me. It's not that we're not perfect about it, that we can't make wonderful progress about that, that we ought to find ways more freely to speak about our Savior. Because that's the work of the Spirit. Once He's regenerated us, once He's renewed us, He's with us to help us make the Christ who is present in our lives, present in the lives of others. What a blessing. What an encouragement. A promise fulfilled, a presence renewed, a power expressed. Jesus is still at work. He's at work in the world. He's at work in Escondido. He's at work in this church. I pray he's at work in every heart here, that every one of us is being drawn by that spirit more and more to Jesus Christ. We mustn't be passive and sit back and just wait for the Spirit. What must we do? Repent. Be baptized for the forgiveness of sins and you'll receive the Holy Spirit. But we mustn't be presumptuous. We mustn't assume just because we're worshiping on a Sunday morning that we have the Spirit. The preparatory form calls us to ask the question, how is it with my soul? How is it between me and Jesus? How is it between me and my neighbor? Has the Holy Spirit cut you to the heart and drawn you to the Savior? If he has it, he says now, come. Come. Jesus today is Lord and Christ. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And if he's already done his regenerating work in your heart, come that the Holy Spirit may draw you ever closer to Jesus, build you up in faith, encourage you in holiness, strengthen you to live for him. And so we all need to hear that word of the prophet Joel today. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. That's the meaning of Pentecost. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord our God, how good and faithful you are to us. How full of gifts and blessings. And we bless you for the gift of the Holy Spirit. the gift of the Holy Spirit that makes the church a preaching, teaching, speaking church, that makes the church a testifying church to the light of the world. Use us, O Lord, each one of us here, and use all those around the world who believe in Jesus Christ to cause the light of the gospel to shine ever more brightly that the building of Christ's church might be done and we might rejoice in it. For we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.