Now we're turning to read a very familiar passage of scripture. And when I say read, I don't intend to say much in this, but then I never do. Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2. And we start at verse 1. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place, And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave the mutterance. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and dwellers in Mesopotamia and the Judea and Cappadocia in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia in Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians. We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. We finish in verse 11, the Lord will add his own blessing to the reading of his own word for his namesake. We'll take these 11 verses as representative of the chapter and the entire story of the movings of the Spirit of God on the day of Pentecost. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, it occurred to me as I thought of prayer meeting tonight, that given the position of Pentecost in the Jewish calendar coming as it did is the first feast after the Feast of Passover marking as it did the beginning of the barley harvest that you can well say in New Testament terms that Pentecost is the harvest of Calvary And I think that's a view of it that we would do well to ponder as we come to prayer tonight and take it much to heart. Pentecost is the harvest of Calvary. That day of Pentecost was in some ways the first fruits of that harvest. Pentecost in the Old Testament was not in itself the entirety or fullness of the harvest, but simply the beginning. and the harbinger of all that was to come, the guarantee of the continuing fullness and goodness of God. And this day of Pentecost, while an isolated day in the calendar of the history of the early church, was not a day in and unto itself, but was a harbinger of good and great things to come, the entire dispensation or age of the Spirit of God as He would move through the world using the church of Christ and the witness of Christ's people to bring many unto Himself. As I say, when you think of it as the harvest of Calvary, you think of it first of all as something that was merited by Christ. I think we should never lose sight of this fact that while the Holy Spirit is the gift of God, to the people of God. Yet, as with eternal life itself, this is a purchased gift. Christ purchased all that the Spirit did on that day and all that He ever would do throughout the days to come in, for, and through the church. He purchased that with the shedding of His blood at Calvary. The gift of the Holy Ghost, the power of the Holy Spirit, the moving of the Holy Spirit, the fruitfulness that He alone can bring to the work and witness of the church are things that the Savior has purchased. Now, when you think of it in that light, you will see, A, that the coming of the Spirit was certain. It had to happen because Christ purchased it. Second, you can see, I trust, that the gift and power of the Spirit are available to the church in every age, whatever the circumstances. Because the gift of Christ's purchase can never be subjected or rendered powerless by anything that's happening in the world. Whether it's the opposition of apostates, whether it's Satan let loose to persecute, whether it's governments or whatever rising up against the church, if Christ has purchased for His people the gift of the Holy Spirit, then that gift, having been purchased, must be conferred. And it is not a gift that is lost to the church by the passage of time, by the opposition of the enemy. In other words, this moving with power of the Spirit of God is available to the church of Christ even today. And yet, there is another way to look at this. In chapter one, We read that these all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, and so they went on praying. What were they doing? They were praying in direct response to the command of the Lord Jesus Christ to tarry in Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high. The Lord had told them to wait in Jerusalem. They had seen Him, don't forget, risen from the dead. They had seen Him ascend into heaven. No doubt their natural bent would be to go and tell it abroad. Christ indeed is risen and is ascended to the right hand of God. But the Savior said, you tarry in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. By the way, It tells you, while it is true to say the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, it is not true to say that the mere recitation of the words of the Gospel is in any way guaranteed to be effectual or productive or fruitful or saving. In other words, the message without the Spirit will produce nothing, because men are dead. It's not a slam at the message. It doesn't undervalue the message either in its content or anything else. But it is to say that the recipients, the needful recipients of the message are dead in trespasses and sins, and therefore without the Spirit to quicken them, they can have no benefit from the message. I don't want to get off on a tangent so much. for the emphasis of the wildly Arminian type of evangelism that we have today that simply says you give out some part of the message and then people have this idiot power to release the faith that's naturally within them. And it's all up to them. Billy Graham made very famous the whole idea of decisional regeneration. You decide to be born again. You decide to be regenerated by the Spirit of God. You decide. And the Holy Spirit's action is dependent upon a human decision. The Bible teaches the very opposite, that the human decision is consequent upon the Holy Spirit's action, and is the direct product of that action, apart from which the sinner would remain forever dead in trespasses and in sin. So the message without the Spirit is going to be unproductive. We've got to remember that. We've got to take it very much to heart. We believe in the message. We will never waver from that. We believe in the message of the gospel. But we will see nothing done unless we have the power of the Spirit. That's where it all comes down. Now to get back to the point I was making, this is not only the harvest of Christ's death, but look very carefully. They were praying. They prayed, and they prayed, and they prayed, waiting as the Lord commanded, waiting to be endued with power from on high. Then the day of Pentecost came. So while it is true to say this day was purchased by the death of Christ, it is equally true to say that it came in answer to the prayers of God's people. There is no tension in Scripture between God giving a promise and thus praying the promise through. There's no tension in Scripture in that. You'll find again and again, I'm not going to start going through examples just for the sake of time, and I think it's one of those points that if you haven't come across it in your Bible reading, you must have had blinders on. But you find this, that when God would come and give a promise, the saint to whom He gave it would immediately start pleading that promise and praying that God would do what He had said He would do. That's not unbelief. That's faith in action. You've said it. Now, Lord, do it. That's why we pray. And so I believe that here, having received the promise of the Father, which said the Lord Jesus, you have received of me, having received the command to tarry in Jerusalem until they be endued with power from on high, these disciples remained in the place of prayer, and this day of Pentecost, this outpouring of the Spirit of God, which was directly purchased by Christ and promised by Christ, was now brought to their experience in answer to prayer. They prayed and they got God's fullness. I don't think it's oversimplifying matters to say that's exactly where we stand today. I don't think that's oversimplifying it at all. We have a command, be filled with the Spirit. That's a command. We have the plain statements of the Word of God, Luke 11, 13, that the Holy Ghost is given to them who ask, to them who pray. We have the example of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit came upon Him as He was praying. That's when He was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then we have the statement of Acts 5.32, that the Holy Spirit is given to them who obey Him. These are the plain statements of Scripture. So it is not an oversimplification to say, in many ways, we sit where these people sat with a promise from God, with a purchased gift of power by the Spirit of God, and we're commanded to pray, and we're commanded to wait, and we're commanded to obey. And if we do, our day of Pentecost will fully come. Fully come. I think one of the troubles with Acts chapter two is that it has become so embroiled in controversy that ordinary Christians miss the promised blessing. Pentecostalists have actually chosen this name for themselves. It's a very tendentious name for them because it really doesn't belong to them. If Pentecostals wanted to choose a name, they should call themselves Corinthians, not Pentecostals, because they are the last ones to say that, in fact, they usually go out of their way to say that theirs is the gift of first Corinthians, which they, though I don't agree, they distinguish from the gift of Acts chapter 2. They certainly don't have cloven tongues as of fire sitting upon their head. Here they did. Filled with the Holy Ghost they began to speak in foreign languages and the Holy Spirit gave them the utterance to do so. The great thing about it was not so much the language they spoke in but the message they proclaimed and the power with which they proclaimed. Actually, I have a lot of sympathy with John Douglas's, he's our, for those of you who don't know, he's our clerk of presbytery in Northern Ireland. John Douglas's way, when he used to leave the Ravenhill Church prayer meeting and go up the Ravenhill Road, there's a very large Elam Pentecostal Church there, and they would get at him all the time, have you got it, have you got it, the it being the Holy Ghost, have you spoken in tongues? And John, even as a young fellow, had forgotten more than the pastor there ever knew, never mind the people. He was a very, very astute student, but he was also a good judge of human nature, so he didn't debate them at all. So he said, why do you have it? Oh yes, you really can speak in tongues. Oh, yes, we were speaking in tongues tonight. And so instead of arguing with him, he said, that's terrific. I'm glad to hear it. And he put his arm around some of them. The men only, of course, you could do that in those days. Don't do it nowadays. But anyway, he put his arm around and said, come on. Now, you have to remember at that time, Belfast was one of the leading ports in all of Europe. We had one of the greatest tonnages of shipping of any port in Europe. And so, we had always ships in from all over the world. And John put his arm around him and said, come on in. And he said, there's a ship in from Russia. And he said, we have been down giving out tract, but we can't speak a word. Come on down and you give them the gospel. I'll stand with you. You've got this gift of tongues. Wouldn't it be great to go and give them the gospel? And immediately they said, no, no, I can't do that. Why can't you do that? You tell me you've got the gift of tongues. You're a Pentecostalist. You've got what the apostles got. No, no. We have prayer tongues. We have angel tongues. What use that is to a Russian soldier or a Russian sailor? Of course, it's all cod's wallop. You know what cod's wallop is? It's a slap up the side of the face with a wet fish. And that's about as much good that this does you. It's nothing to do with Acts chapter 2. They were speaking with tongues. Now, had they been able to go down to the boat and give the gospel there, you could not really have said you don't have something that the Holy Ghost gave you. I don't think you could really have said that. But of course, they couldn't do it. Big thing here is the power of the Spirit to give the message in a way that people are going to be able to hear it and receive it. The old saying is that God doesn't normally do for you what you can do for yourself. That's why Pentecostalist missionaries have to go and learn the language of the nation to which they're going as a missionary, just the same as a Presbyterian or a Baptist or anybody else. And by the way, I'm told by missionaries they have the very same failure rate as any other group. So I'm just saying to you that normally, normally God doesn't do for you what you can do for yourself. And when you go, you learn the language. But the big thing is you preach the message in the power of God. Tonight as we come to pray, we're charged with preaching the message. But we're charged with receiving the power of the Spirit of God. Now, I cannot be responsible, and God doesn't make me responsible, for the extent of the moving of the Holy Ghost. I am not charged with having reveil. That's not my prerogative. That's God's prerogative. I'm not charged to see a million people saved. I read of these evangelists who can tell you, and some of them will be doing it right now, in other years they've done it, in 2007 we are going to see 350,000 people saved. This is before the year even happens. They can tell you how many are going to be saved because they have done their work the same as sales groups do their work and they've made their projections based on all their various computer models. And it's a blasphemy. Total blasphemy. I cannot tell you that. That's not within my prerogative. But I can tell you this. We can see God at work. And we have to see God at work. And we can see people saved. And we must see people saved. young people, older people, in our families, in our neighborhood, in our community, heathens, people brought up in the church, the whole gamut. We must see people saved. Now, never overlook the importance of the work of seeing our own children saved. Never overlooked that. Do you want to get off on a tangent here? I think I said that before I went off on a tangent, but how do I put this? Well, I put it bluntly. The usual way For God to build his church is for his people to have a lot of children and see them saved. It's the usual way. It comes to mind today because I'm writing some of my commentaries we call the Hot Topics for our radio broadcast and I was looking at the head of the Episcopal Church USA a brilliant woman of science and stupid woman of theology and she was saying very happily that the Episcopal Church is declining because they're better educated and they are more environmentally aware their stewardship responsibilities not to use more of this word's resources than they should. It's alright for the squids and the octopi or octopuses, whichever way you want it, that she worked with as an oceanographer. It's alright for them to have as much as they can possibly get. Let them multiply, but people ought not to multiply. At least if they're Episcopalian. That'd be a good idea, actually. If they're apostates, you know, we'll knock it down that road. But that was her notion, that they ought not to do it. But you know, that's how God fundamentally carries on his church. Now, never let us therefore undervalue the salvation of our children. We must see them saved. There's always an attrition rate. There's always some we lose. There's nothing breaks my heart more than to see somebody grown up in the church. And away they go. We must see them saved. But, and I say all that with the deepest sincerity, but with all that, we must never become a happy little family club. Because there is a world out there in which fewer and fewer people know anything of God or His Christ. There is a world out there where they don't even understand the basic language that we're talking when we talk about sin. They have no concept of that. We talk about sin against God. Their conscience is knowing a way about something, but they're so brainwashed, the understanding is misguiding them. And when it comes to the way of salvation, the devil has done a great work with the help of churches of almost every stripe to confuse people. into believing that somehow, someday, someway, it'll be alright if they just do their best. And then the evangelicals slant on that. If they will just have a relationship with Jesus Christ, a greater load of rubbish you never heard to reduce the whole biblical teaching of salvation as to have some nebulous relationship with Jesus Christ. Somebody said that actually the apostles would have been very hard put to find anything in their language, in their vocabulary to express that whole idea. Now don't get me wrong, when a person is saved, he is rightly related to God through Jesus Christ. But to use this language, a relationship with Christ, without reference to the great doctrines of the Gospel, without reference to the objective work of God in Christ, without reference to genuine repentance toward God and faith in Christ, is to deny the gospel. And so people are utterly confused. That's the world out there. And somehow, we've got to reach them. Somehow, we've got to reach them. Now over the years, both in this church And in every other free church I know, we have tried everything we possibly know how to do to reach people. We have knocked every door in the neighborhood and in other neighborhoods. We have mailed into every home that we can mail into. We have sent special invitations. We have done what we can. My experience in any church I've ever been in is this, that ultimately the best way is the most immediate way. That is each one win one. I wish I could remember the rest of this. We had a fella at home who was, well some of you may remember him, for a while he was up in Toronto helping in the work there. But he had this whole spiel that I'll not try to go over, but of each one, one, one, and each one who won, won, and he had so many one, one, ones, your head was spinning, but you ended up getting the message. In other words, there are people who will come unto the sound of the gospel when you say, will you come with me? Far, far more likely to do that than if I simply meet them in a restaurant, or meet them in a store, or passing by, or even just drop by their house, or give them a tract, or whatever. When people you know receive from you, when you come with me. We have good scripture warned for that by the way. Come thou with us and we will do thee good. When that happens, you will have a much higher success rate in reaching people. But all I'm saying is, one way or the other, as a church, we have got to reach them. So here are the two ways in which the Church of Christ expands, the work of God grows, the salvation of the children within the church, completion of the family within the church, Then the evangelization of the lost outside the church. They come in to start their Christian families in the church. And so the whole process goes again and again. That's the way. But you know, in both those cases, what we need is the message in the power of the Spirit. That's what we need. Tonight as we come to pray, we want to ask the Lord for the visitation of the Spirit. We cannot repeat the day of Pentecost. The day of Pentecost was the initial day of the Spirit's pouring forth upon the church. We can't repeat it. But as John Murray said, if it can't be repeated, neither has it been withdrawn. The Holy Spirit is still operative in the church, through the church, in the individual believer, through the individual believer, to the saving of the lost, to the building of the cause of Christ and to the real extension of the church on earth. So here we are. Can we gather together tonight in one place? I believe that place was the temple. Say that because if it had been the upper room, certainly there wasn't the crowds there. These people, when this happened, people came from everywhere in the temple. So I believe they were in the temple. They were in one place. They were with one accord. They had their eye on one thing. And they got what they were looking for. And tonight let us come, one after another. And if we can only pray, Lord, visit us with the outpouring of your Spirit. Visit us tonight. Visit us and give us the power to take this message of Christ and see it effective in the lives of men and women. Christ has purchased this, for His merit give us it. Christ has promised it. on His promise move tonight and answer the cry of our hearts.