For our scripture reading this morning, please turn with me to the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2. We'll read together the first four verses and then skip down to verse 29, taking up Peter's Pentecost sermon in the middle of it there. So we'll begin our reading, Acts chapter 2, at verse 1. Let us hear God's own 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. Then down to verse 29 where Peter is preaching. 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 till 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 will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is 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. As I said at the beginning of our service, today around the world, many churches will be marking this Sunday as Pentecost Sunday. Remembering in a special way the great gift of God, giving the Holy Spirit to his church, as is described for us in Acts chapter 2. This is a celebration that has been going on for a long time in many churches. As early as the early 4th century, the celebration of Pentecost was widely commemorated in the churches. But Pentecost, I think, in the last century or so, has come to have an added dimension and character to it. Speaking as a church historian, I can say that when the history of the church in the 20th century is written, probably many historians will refer to it as the age of Pentecostalism. And Pentecostals have encouraged all of us to think more carefully and more fully about the Holy Spirit than was sometimes the case in the past. And so there has been a renewed interest in the Holy Spirit. There has been a renewed interest in the true meaning of Pentecost. And it is good for us then to pause and to think about Pentecost and about the Spirit. on this Sunday, and particularly to look at, with care, at Acts chapter 2 to see what the scriptures, in fact, tell us about Pentecost. And the remarkable thing is, when you look carefully at chapter 2 of the Acts of the Apostles, is we find the great message of that chapter, the great message of Pentecost, is that Pentecost is about Jesus. We see that in the first place because this chapter says so clearly the Holy Spirit is given by Jesus. It's Jesus who sends forth the Spirit. Look at verse 33 of our text. Peter says, exalted to the right hand of God, he, Jesus, has received from the Father the Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. Peter wants to underscore that all that they are experiencing on that first Pentecost Sunday is a gift of Jesus Christ to his people. It is Jesus who is the giver of the Holy Spirit. This is part of his glory. This is part of the work that he accomplished for his people. Peter in the sermon is celebrating the glories, the work, the accomplishment of our Savior and saying not only did he die to bear the sins of his people, but he was not left in the grave. God validated all the work that Jesus did by raising him from the dead. By exalting him into heaven as is recorded for us in Acts chapter 1 at the ascension. By seating him on a throne of power and dignity at his own right hand in heaven. And by assuring us that he will come again in glory. But as he is seated there in heaven, and Peter quotes Psalm 110 to prove that this was prophesied. As he's seated there, glorified in heaven, Jesus is at work. He's at work subduing his enemies. He will sit there, the psalm tells us, until God has made his enemies his footstool. And the process of subduing his enemies comes through the missionary work of the church. It's not a literal battle that takes place on a literal battlefield. It's a spiritual battle fought with spiritual weapons. And it's the Holy Spirit who from the day of Pentecost on has energized the church to go forth and turn enemies into friends of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. And Peter wants to stress that this Spirit is not a Spirit who does his own thing, but a Spirit who is sent by Jesus Christ. He is Jesus' gift to the church. And that's why throughout the New Testament, over and over again, the Spirit is referred to as the Spirit of Jesus, or the Spirit of Jesus Christ, or the Spirit of Christ. Luke says that. Paul says that. Peter says that. The spirit, you see, is the spirit that Jesus has given to us. And he's the spirit that Jesus has given to us in the first place to make Jesus present with us. You know, left to itself, one of the more remarkable things that Jesus said, particularly in John's gospel, is that he would not leave us as orphans, but he would come to us. And when did he come to us? Well, our minds very often go back to the promise that he will come again in glory in the last day, and that's true, of course. But I don't think that's what Jesus is meaning when he says, I will come to you in John 14. There he's saying, I will come to you in my spirit. I will send you that counselor or comforter who will connect you to me, who will allow my life to flow into you so that you will be my servants in this world. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. John in his first epistle, chapter 4 says, We know that we live in Jesus and Jesus lives in us because he has given us his spirit. How does Jesus live in us? And how do we live in Jesus in this time in redemptive history? By the Spirit. The Spirit is the one who connects us. And that's why Jesus can say so remarkably, it is for your good that I'm going away. That's always surprising to me. I think we all tend to think how wonderful it must have been to be a disciple of Jesus Christ when he was here on earth. To walk with him, to see him, to hear him, to be able to sit at his feet. Jesus is saying, my disciples are better off if I go away. That means you and I are more privileged than those disciples who walked with him on earth. Seems impossible, doesn't it? But that's what he says. John 16. But I tell you the truth, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. And so Jesus promises that we are not left as orphans. He'll be with us. He is not removed and far away because He is in heaven. But by His Spirit, He comes to us. We're told that Jesus is the head and we are the body. We're not a decapitated body. We're not a headless body. We are still linked to the head. I guess that makes the Holy Spirit the neck. The Holy Spirit connects us in that way with Jesus so that we are never apart from him. And so the first lesson of Pentecost is that Jesus sends his spirit that we might be in Jesus and with him. Now we don't have time to look at all of the teaching of the New Testament about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is described in a number of ways in the New Testament. He is the Spirit of life. He's the Spirit that enlivens God's people. He's the one who gives us the gift of faith. He's the Spirit of holiness. He's the one who begins and enables us to make progress in holiness. He's the Spirit of truth. He tells us what is true. He impresses the truth upon us and has inscripturated the truth for us in the Bible. but I think the message of Pentecost is slightly different from any of these three. If we think of the Spirit as the Spirit of life, were the disciples alive spiritually before Pentecost? I think they were. I think they were already believers. They were already regenerated by the Spirit of God. Pentecost doesn't regenerate those initial disciples. Did they have the Spirit of holiness? Well, we know from reading the Gospels, the disciples had a long way to go, but yes, I think they had already begun on the path of holiness. Did they have the spirit of truth? Well, again, I think the spirit brought to them truths that they may have forgotten and neglected from the ministry of Jesus, but they knew already the basic message of his gospel. What Pentecost is supremely about, it seems to me, is the spirit of power for service. That's what's happening at this moment in the life of the church. Jesus sends his spirit to empower his church to witness to Jesus. That's why Pentecost is about Jesus. It's Jesus sending the spirit to empower the church to bear its witness for Jesus. Now sometimes when we think about Pentecost or when others think about Pentecost, they focus on the extraordinary things, the mighty wind and the loud sound that must have made, the appearance of the tongues of fire that rested above each head. And there can be no doubt that God was doing something extraordinary to draw attention to the importance of this occasion. But we can miss the really critical part of Pentecost if we don't see that the sound of the mighty wind and the tongues of fire are all pointing to the importance of a bold declaration of the truth of the gospel on the part of the church. Pentecost is in the first place about Jesus, and I suppose we could say in the second place it's about talking about Jesus. when you look at Peter's sermon, the remarkable thing is it's a sermon all about Jesus. It's about how he was not abandoned in the grave. It's about how he was resurrected to life. It's how he is now the exalted king. And that's the content of the sermon. That's the focus of the sermon. What Jesus has done and who Jesus now is. That's why the conclusion of the sermon is Therefore know, Israelites, that this Jesus whom you crucified is Lord and Christ. That's what the sermon is all about. That's how the sermon culminates. That's what the great work of the Spirit in the church at Pentecost is all about. That Jesus is being made known. When we think about the gift of the Spirit, the pouring out of the Spirit, the filling of the Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit, this is all about the church. making Jesus known. It's not some strange, surprising, unexpected, extraordinary things that are the most important thing that are at Pentecost. It's talking about Jesus that's at the center. And if there's one really important, extraordinary miracle at Pentecost, it's that these common, simple disciples were suddenly speaking other languages. When it says they were speaking in tongues, we shouldn't imagine that this is some angelic language or some un-understood or mysterious language. That's not what's in mind here. The speaking in tongues of Acts chapter 2 is clearly the speaking of foreign languages. You see, there were many pilgrims in Jerusalem come to worship at the temple. They'd come from many parts of the empire. They spoke many different languages at home. And suddenly they hear these common fishermen from Galilee speaking all of these languages and testifying to Jesus Christ. As some have observed, this is kind of a miraculous reversal of Babel and the confusion of human languages. Now suddenly the message of God's truth and salvation in Jesus Christ is going out in all sorts of languages as God has blessed miraculously. You see, at the heart of Pentecost is talking about Jesus. Again, we might remember the words of Jesus, John 14, 26. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. The Spirit doesn't come with new secret words that the church has never heard before. The Spirit doesn't come to talk about himself. The Spirit comes to draw us to Jesus and to His words. And so Pentecost is not about the Spirit glorifying Himself, but it's about the Spirit glorifying Jesus. Now we have every right to glorify the Spirit. We have a right to pray to the Spirit as the third person of the Godhead. We have a right to study the Spirit and what the Scriptures say about the Spirit. We don't want to neglect the Spirit. But whenever we focus on the Spirit, we ought to learn the key lesson that the Spirit wants us to learn, and that is that we should be led to Jesus Christ by the Spirit and His great saving work. If we get so fascinated with the Spirit that we begin to neglect Jesus, then we're running amok. We've gone off the track. and that's important because sometimes we're asked today, are you a spirit-filled church? Are you a Pentecostal church? And how would you answer that if someone asked you that? Well, if you want to be biblical, you should say, you bet. We are a spirit-filled church. We are a Pentecostal church in the biblical sense of that term. Now, what exactly does that mean in the light of Pentecost as we read about it in Acts chapter 2? A Pentecostal church, a spirit-filled church, is a church that is making Jesus Christ and his gospel known. That's what Pentecost is all about. Well, maybe we ought to pause a minute and ask, so how are we doing as a congregation here with that task? Are we making the gospel of Jesus Christ known? Are we in that sense a spirit-filled Pentecostal church? Well, are we? How would you judge that? What standard would you look to? I think in the first place we can say the gospel is preached from this pulpit. Sunday morning and Sunday evening, Sabbath by Sabbath. That's what we're here to do. That's our aim. So in that sense we're making the gospel known, aren't we? when people go to our Sunday school classes or our catechism classes or our young people's activities or various societies in the church, is the gospel of Jesus Christ made known there? That's what they exist for, isn't it? I think they are. We live in a day where sometimes who's what's called the ordinary work of the church in making the gospel known is kind of despised. It really shouldn't be, you know. My family and I have been privileged to be part of this church now for 22 years. And one of the wonderful things in my experience in this church is to get to know families who have seen that faithful making known of the gospel pass from generation to generation to generation here. some of you who were younger when I moved here 22 years ago can testify to seeing children and grandchildren and sometimes great-grandchildren who've come to hear the gospel and know the gospel in this place. Some of you here are able to think back to parents and grandparents, perhaps great-grandparents who knew the gospel. Perhaps in this place, perhaps in others. That's an amazing thing. That's a way of making the gospel known. It's critical, crucial, vital in the life and well-being of the people of God. That means, that character of making the gospel known must never be in any way denigrated or seen as unimportant. As the gospel is preached here and taught here, this is a spirit-filled church. Now, it's also good to ask, well, how good are we looking outside of our own walls? Well, there are evidences of concern here, aren't there? We pray regularly. Some people want to despise prayer and say, well, that's not doing much. It's doing a lot because it's God who saves. Talking to God is probably the most important thing we can do for the unbelieving. We pray for the lost. We give of our gifts to support missionaries and evangelists. So in that sense, we're a spirit-filled church. At this point, I could do what preachers sometimes do and move on to make you feel very guilty. Because we're not as good about making Christ known as we ought to be, are we? There are things we ought to do better, could do better. We perhaps are not as faithful and effective as some in speaking naturally to friends and neighbors about Christ. And where that isn't happening, we should pause, especially in this week of self-examination, And ask ourselves, has the wonder of the gift of salvation that God has given to me come to be taken a little bit for granted in my heart so that when I'm talking to others it just doesn't seem to come up naturally? You know, the real antidote, I think, to our silence about the gospel, if we are silent when we talk to others, may be whether we have been gripped by how glorious and wonderful and gracious it is for us individually. Maybe we need to think a little bit more about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ so that we will be much more likely to talk to others. I think we need to be a little more willing to invite others to come to church here. One of the curious things I've always found about our circles is that there is a bit of a tendency to say, I have the most wonderful church there, the most wonderful people there. There's wonderful things going on there, but I wouldn't want to invite my neighbors. They wouldn't like it. You know, that's kind of weird, isn't it? If we like it, why wouldn't they like it? Well, we are a little bit weird, but everybody's a little bit weird. But we should be filled with that thankfulness. What a wonderful community. What a wonderful church we have been given here by the Lord. Why shouldn't we eagerly invite others to come and share the good things that we have? You see, Jesus sent forth His Spirit. Jesus wants you to be the kind of Pentecostal. Jesus wants all of us together to be the kind of Pentecostals, bearing witness, speaking about the gospel of Jesus Christ, the great things that God has done. in Jesus Christ. And when we do that, we'll find an experience similar to that of Peter's. When Peter talked about Christ, you notice he really doesn't ask them at the end of the sermon to do anything. But they are so moved by the vision of Christ, of His mercy, of His love, of His power and of His glory, that they say, what must we do? They ask. What should we do in response to this? And Peter, we could summarize his answer by saying, you ought to trust Jesus. In whatever circumstance you find yourself, you should trust Jesus. Peter has, at least implicitly, really confronted them with their sin. This Jesus whom you crucified, he said to those original listeners. For their sin, they should trust Jesus. For their struggles and confusion and loneliness, they should trust Jesus. For every need of life, they should trust Jesus. Now, Peter makes more specific what is involved in trusting Jesus, in living for Jesus. He says, repent. Repent of rejecting Jesus. Be baptized. Be baptized in the name of Jesus. Receive forgiveness, the forgiveness won by Jesus. Receive the gift of the Spirit of Jesus. You see, Pentecost is all about Jesus. It's about our recognizing if we have turned our back on Him, if we have neglected Him, if we have rejected Him, we're to tell Him we're sorry for that. It's all about turning to Him to find the forgiveness of sins that He won for us on the cross. It's about being part of the family of faith into which we're initiated by baptism. It's about having His Spirit, which He gives to all of those who belong to Him. And you see, this is the great message of Pentecost. Not that the Spirit came to do extraordinary things, but the Spirit came to do this remarkable, amazing, ordinary thing. He gives us the gift of faith and enables us to speak for Christ. The Heidelberg Catechism got it just right in question 53 when it talks about the Holy Spirit and says, the Holy Spirit is also given to me to make me by true faith a partaker of Christ and all his benefits. That's an ordinary thing, isn't it? You can't get excited about that. Oh, it's the most important thing in all the world. You know, if you're able to prophesy, if you're able to speak in tongues, if you're able to heal the sick, If you were able to raise the dead, it wouldn't be the tiniest bit in importance in comparison to be able to speak the gospel and to see people converted. That's the important thing. Pentecost is about Jesus and the gospel. And where there is faith in Jesus Christ, there is the Spirit. And where there is a teaching and preaching and communicating of the gospel, there is a spirit-filled church. May God grant that his spirit would always be with us to make Jesus and his gospel known. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, how thankful we are that you have not left us as orphans, left us alone. But that you have sent the Spirit of Jesus into our midst. The Spirit who has brought us to life. The Spirit who helps us pursue holiness. The Spirit who teaches us the truth through your word. And the Spirit who empowers us to serve Jesus Christ in this church and in the world. And so, O Lord, as we think about the Spirit, May the Spirit do his great work amongst us. May he make us a people who make Jesus Christ known. Hear us, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.