All right, we have been discussing the early church and we kind of started in Acts last week. If you remember, we started with the discussion of why Luke wrote the book of Acts in the first place. He kind of starts out with the discussion of why he wrote the book of Acts in the first place. Some of the background on the book of Acts. I think some of those things are important for us to be able to understand. what we're looking at and why we're looking at it, where it's coming from, and really Acts is the succession to, it's the next step in the discussion after the Gospels. And we had gotten to, Oh, verse 12, I know we got a little bit further than verse 12, but I'm gonna pick up in verse 12 because really we're back in Jerusalem and we're discussing what's going to happen from here. We talked about the theme verse of Acts and as we go, we'll follow this concept. But in Acts, we're kind of following that concept of what happens in Jerusalem, then what happens with Peter, in the early part of the church. And then from there, we sort of moved to what happens with Paul and the church as the church spreads out into the world. And aren't we glad that it did because we're here today. And verse 12 reads, they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem, a Sabbath day journey. If you were just here for the last service, if you remember Pastor Spicer, I made the comment upstairs to the guys who work with me in the sound room, we talked about this last week, the idea that They said to him, listen, does this mean that the kingdom is coming? And he said, it's not your job to know what's gonna happen. It's not your job. Your job is to do what the Lord has asked of you under those circumstances. And Pastor Spicer was just talking about that exact thing in his sermon this morning, the idea that it's not our job to know everything. It's not, I was discussing it this morning with some guys, discussing some theological points with some guys in the gym earlier, and I thought to myself at the time, the same concept, it's not our job to know the truth. everything. It's not our job to know all of God's plan. It is our job to do what part of God's plan that he's given us to do, and he gives us specific commands, and it's our job to do those things. Would I like to be able to understand everything? Sure. I'm that kind of a person, and I think that's what draws me to science, is the fact that I get to understand. But on the other hand, sometimes you just have to accept some things by Faith, God says, go do, and you go do, even though you may not understand exactly why. Just go do. And I think that's the exact same thing we're discussing here. They come back after this and they come back into Jerusalem. They're doing what they're told. They go to the upper room and in verse 13, Luke gives us a list of many of the people who are there. In verse 14, he says, they continue with one accord in prayer and supplication. with the women and marry the mother of Jesus with all his brethren. And in those days, Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples and said, the number of names together were about 120. So Peter, the leader of the Disciples, the leader of the apostles stands up and is going to essentially give us a little bit of a speech that we see. Peter is kind of the leader of this group of people and he has been the leader of this group of people from the very beginning. And he says, men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus. And so he is talking about the fact that Christ was going to have to be given over to someone for being crucified. This didn't happen outside of God's will, this didn't happen outside of God's plan, this happened inside of God's plan. This was something that God had planned for all along, verse 17, for he was numbered with us that had obtained part of this ministry. And Judas was part of the apostles, but he wasn't really part of them at all the whole time. And this was something that Looking back at the scriptures, it was fulfilled by the mouth of David's spake concerning Judas. Back in the Psalms, we see that concept. And we know, basically, he's going to tell us that there needs to be 12 apostles. And we know in Revelation 21, it talks about the 12, which means there is a 12th. Now, we can argue as to who that 12th is. I'll give you my opinions, but that's gonna be a few weeks down the road. Verse 18, he says, now this man purchased a field with a reward of iniquity and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst and all his bowels gushed out. That's pretty pointed there, Peter says. He hung himself and Judas kind of fell off of hanging himself and when he hit the ground, he kind of made a mess. Is that good enough? Graphic enough for everybody without being too awfully graphic? I think Peter was actually more graphic than I was at this discussion. He burst asunder in the midst that all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem, inasmuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Asaldama, that is to say, the field of blood. That's an Aramaic word. It is supposedly on the southern edge, just outside of the city. And you can look up pictures of it online, which is supposedly the potter's field, the field of blood. You understand they, you understand what a potter's field is, right? Everybody good with this concept? They needed clay, so they dug up clay, which caused them to big dig hole, dig, dig, dig big. Dig big is hard to say. Dig large holes in the ground, and those holes then were useful for burying people in. Once you've already dug up a bunch of holes all over the place, why not? bury folks in it. And so consequently, you have this potter's field, dug up what they needed, and it was bought with the money that Judas got from betraying Christ. And then he makes this quotation, for it is written in the book of Psalms, let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein, and his bishopric let another take. Wherefore, of these men, which a companion accompanied with us all the time, that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection. Judas bought this field, and Peter is saying, listen, Judas therefore, based on this verse from Psalms, Psalm 69, 25, Judas is out. He wasn't an apostle, he wasn't a disciple, but while we have the 12, now just 11, we need 12, and we only have 11. But you know, there are guys who've been with us the entire time who weren't counted as part of the 12. We can bring one of them in and they can be part of the. part of the 12. You with me? It makes sense. The qualifications here, he said, are that they'd been with the apostles, they'd seen the Lord Jesus Christ bodily after the resurrection, he'd been a witness of the resurrection, and so they were going to pick somebody else who is going to come in and take that 12th position. Verse 23, and they appointed to Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justice, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship. from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place. And they gave forth their lots, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was numbered with the 11 apostles." So the candidates were Joseph, called Arzabas, who were justice, surnamed Justice, and Matthias. They prayed, they drew lots. This is the last time we actually see in the scriptures that lots are chosen to determine the Lord's will. Stones, I don't know exactly how they did that. Stones, draw out the right rock, write somebody's name on a rock. We would probably put pieces of paper and a hat. Did you guys ever do that whenever you were in school and you're like passing around and you're trying to figure out who's who? Cards and note cards with names written on it. Some of you are shaking your head yes and many of you are just looking at me funny. I think that's how I would do it these days. And Matthias is picked, and it says, Luke says, he was numbered with the apostles. Now, again, there's some question to this decision. Does Matthias, was Matthias one of the 12? Or did God have other plans? And this was just Peter and the apostles' plans. I told you I was going to reserve my judgment on the subject for a few chapters, but does anybody? No? God had other plans. So you don't think Matthias was one of the, counted as one of the 12 apostles. You think Matthias was just, we needed 12, this guy kind of fits the bill, let's just pick out one of them and see. You gotta wonder when they drew lots whether or not they had the option of drawing the no-name lot. You know what I'm saying? It's none of the above or whether or not it has to be one of these two guys. My expectation is it had to be one of these two guys. All right, well, like I said, we will discuss to that. At no point in time does it say that this concept was put forward by the Holy Spirit But I think there's some discussion to be had on the subject, to be perfectly honest. Which leads us to chapter two. So we've seen them back in Jerusalem, and we're going to see kind of what happens in Jerusalem. My Bible has a header. Does your Bible have headers at the beginning of the chapters? Mine says the baptism of the Holy Spirit here. Chapter two, verse one, and when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. Okay, so Pentecost. Pentecost was an annual Jewish feast following the Feast of Firstfruits. It was the week of weeks, so. Seven weeks of seven days comes to 49 days. And on the day after the week of weeks, you have the 50th day. And that's why it's called Pentecost. Pentecost means 50. You're familiar with your pentagons? You geometry people, any geometry people in here? Pentagons? No. No. Ever wondered why pentagons are called pentagons and hexagons are called hexagons, heptagons are called heptagons? You math folks. And four-sided figures are called quadrilaterals? Shouldn't they be called tetragons? I mean, why did we switch languages just for four sides? We went from Greek pentagons to quadrilateral, that's Latin. No, nobody has an answer. I'm still asking this question all these many years later, and no one has ever given me an answer. And then, of course, triangles? The English language is messed up. You haven't figured that out. Anyway, I've always wondered, Pentecost here means the 50th day, and so after the week of weeks, after the seven weeks of seven days each, 49 days, we have the 50th day, or we have the Pentecost, the 50th day after the Feast of Firstfruits. They're all together in one place, all together with the court in one place. It really doesn't actually tell us where, Acts 2.2 says it's a house, and perhaps it's the upper room, but it doesn't exactly tell us where, maybe near the temple, but a house. Verse two, it says, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. So we know that, but they're all together with one accord in one place, if Luke would just be a little more specific for us, and suddenly there came a rushing from heaven, there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. So the spirit here, the word breath, Again, while we get into languages, I always find it interesting that the word for spirit and the word for wind or breath are the same word, pneuma. It's the word for spirit, but when you get pneumonia, that's because you've got a problem with your lungs. Pneuma, breath, they're related to the word, same root word. And this points to the Holy Spirit and his coming. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. So these tongues of fire, the presence of God, The fire is really the presence of God, and we see that repeatedly, Exodus 3 with the burning bush, Exodus 13 with the pillars of fire. We see this concept all throughout the Old Testament, and we see it again here. Each Christian, the flames sort of came in and appeared to, over each of them, Verse four, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. So the filling of the Holy Spirit is separate from the baptism of the Spirit at the moment of salvation. The filling can happen on many multiple occasions. The evidence here is for salvation and the coming of the Spirit. Now, I will tell you, don't get your theology from I think we mess up sometimes when we try to get our theology from these transitional periods. You with me? There are some people who are still trying to get their theology out of this passage right here. I personally have never seen rushing wind take over a building and fire descend upon an individual, but I know lots of safe people. Right? You get me? You get what I'm saying? It says here that they spoke with, these tongues came down on them and they spoke with other tongues. The Greek word there, the Greek words that are translated there literally means other languages. Agloses is a word for language. It's the typical word for a language that everybody knows. This isn't strange words that no one understands. This is language that people understand. They're real, likely real living languages. The word itself means language. You see it again in verse six, speak to everybody in their own language. That actually is a completely different word in Greek. than you see up here. That word is dialecto or dialect. We get our word dialect. It's a completely different word in Greek there than it is here. But this word that is used for tongues is literally the word language. And this really marks the beginning of what we know as the ecclesia, the church itself. Up to this point, the church was anticipated But here we see the church in actuality. The church itself is made up of, and I will say this again, I say this to my teenagers, the church isn't the building. The church is not even necessarily everyone who sits in the pews. I'm sorry if I say that, but the church is made up of saved, regenerate believers. We are the church. We're the church. We come to the church building, but the reality is if an unsaved person comes in and sits in and listens to the message, they're not technically part of the church, and I don't care if an unsaved person becomes, enters the membership of the church. Based on this, they're not part of the church. Being a member of the church is not going to get you salvation. You're supposed to have salvation to be a member of the church, and we see this. The church is a body that is brought together by regenerate people, and it's the baptism of the spirit here. 1 5 kind of looked forward to it for John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. And chapter 11 actually says that it happened here. Verse five, and there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven, and when this was nosed abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language. Now that is a really weird experience. You had a whole bunch of people, so a lot worse than we have here in the United States, but I don't know if you've ever been someplace where there's a lot of people speaking a lot of different languages, These folks were able to go out and speak to all the different people in a different language. It's not exactly explained how that happens, whether or not that is each person is speaking a different language, and so each different group is understanding what they're saying, or whether or not it's just simply miraculous, each person speaks a language and the other people hear it and understand it in their own language, kind of like you see on Star Trek or whatever it is. Whichever way it goes, it's absolutely miraculous, because you have a group of Jews who don't know how to speak other languages, and you have a group of people who are like, I don't understand, I'm from so-and-so place, there should be nobody here who speaks that language, and there's somebody in this crew that speaks that language? And pretty much everybody had someone who spoke their language. Everyone had someone who had learned their language. And they'd learned it, this is tongues, they'd learned it essentially overnight. They just were able to speak in a different language. These Jews of the spreading out of the Jews were in Jerusalem. Many of them probably spoke Greek, as Greek was kind of the language of the world in those days. You understand that the New Testament was written in Greek, and that even though we think of the Romans being in charge of everything, the language was Greek. Just like if you go elsewhere in the world, many, many people you're gonna run into speak their own language, English, because we kind of have the language that is currently dominating the world. It's exactly the same concept. So we have these concepts of these folks speaking and everyone understanding them, and it was a big deal. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? They should know Aramaic, I get that. They should know Greek, because everybody knows that, but they're Galileans. I mean, it's Galilee. Excuse me if I say that. If you don't realize, Galilee was kind of like saying the lower, what's the word I want to? They used to say the other side of the tracks. I don't think that that really qualifies anymore. Do you guys have the slum part of the world here in your brain? Well, that was Galilee. Can anything good come out of Galilee? I mean, everybody said that kind of stuff. Come on, these people can't be very smart. They're from? They're from Galilee, people, come on. You get me? You understand what I'm saying here? That's what they're thinking. These are Galileans. These Galileans, how did they know all of these different languages? How and how hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born? Parthians, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia. Pamphylia in Egypt, the parts of Libya around Cyrene, strangers in Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians. So we even have some people here who are not Jewish and they're still able to understand what's being said. We hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. It's amazing. Everyone's hearing in their own language. That's really speaking in tongues here, folks. I mean, we're talking about speaking languages that you ought not be able to speak. And they're speaking languages to all of these different groups who all have different languages spoken. And like we said, the word that's used for verse six, speak in his own language, is actually the word dialect. Delectas, it's the idea of there's little bits and differences. I really don't, I can't give you an exact example of this because the differences were way bigger. It's kind of like the difference between Spanish and Portuguese. I don't know if you know anybody Spanish and Portuguese. They're the same language, but they're very, very different. If you go to England, you'll be able to communicate fine. They've got a different dialect than we do, except there are some places in England that might be a little more difficult for you to understand what they're saying. But in any case, if you go to England, you'll be able to communicate fine. Sometimes I thought it was a little weird. I'm originally from Kalispell, Montana, for those of you who are unaware of my origins. And I have a dialect of here and there and everywhere. as I've lived here and there and everywhere. But when I moved to North Carolina, I'll admit there was some people that I had trouble talking to that even though we both spoke the same language, I would have argued with you that it wasn't quite the same language. I lived in Davidson County, North Carolina. I don't know if you've ever been to Davidson County, North Carolina. You should really go sometime. There's not much there other than farmland. But the people there have definitely got a different kind of dialect. Just saying. I'm not going to do the southern dialect for you today. Just so you're aware, these people were all amazed at what was going on. They were amazed that they were hearing things in their own language. They were amazed they were hearing things in their own dialect. In verse 12, they said, and they were all amazed and were in doubt, saying one to another, what does this mean? What? Something's going on here. This isn't normal. A few of them said, though, Others mocking said, these men are full of new wine. These guys are drunk. They're just drunk. Now that leads me to believe that you had different people, a bunch of different people speaking in a bunch of different languages. but that's my personal opinion of what was happening here. You take that for what it's worth. Verse 14, but Peter standing up with the 11 lifted up his voice and said unto them, ye men of Judea, I love how Peter starts this discussion out. Ye men of Judea and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you and hearken to my words, for these are not drunken as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. You get that? Peter's first argument is, these guys aren't drunk, it's too early in the morning. I mean, maybe if this were the afternoon, they had a chance to drink all day, but this is really early in the morning here, folks. And consequently, they clearly are not drunk. I've always found Peter's first argument here to be just kind of funny, that he's gonna put forth the, it's too early in the day to be drunk argument. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, and it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. He is saying that instead of drunkenness, Joel too, the idea that Pentecost is fulfilling what it described There are some prophecies in Joel 2 that are not fulfilled that are going to be fulfilled during the day of the Lord during the tribulation period, but they're not fulfilled now. But he says, listen, this is a fulfillment of prophecy. You guys, if you were paying attention to your Old Testament, you should be able to know what's going on here. This is not like something accidental. It's kind of like I've always said. If you were paying attention to your Old Testament, you should have known when Christ was coming. There's a timeline given there. There's a timeline of what's happening. There's plenty of evidence in the Old Testament that leads up to that. And if you were a Jew who claimed to know your Old Testament, it ought to make sense. Peter's saying, listen, if you're a Jew who knows your Old Testament, what's going on here is something that you ought to have expected. It's something that makes sense. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesy and I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke and the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before that great and notable day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And so he is giving this discussion about what is happening in Joel and what they should have expected. Now, what you should expect and what I think Peter, even in Peter's brain, he might have been looking forward to hasn't all happened. Yeah, and I think we often run into the concept of if you look in the Old Testament and you were a scholar of the Old Testament, the period of time that we live in doesn't seem to be there. You understand what I'm saying, right? If you're reading your Old Testament and you just read it the way that it says it, it should have all come to an end by now. There should have been the kingdom. That all should have happened. But it didn't, and today we're living here now in this situation. And perhaps even in Peter's mind as he's giving this sermon, and I will say as I have said often, you know, the scriptures are in many cases given to us about what really happened, not what we would have liked to have happened. There's murder and there's intrigue and there's all kinds of things in the scriptures that we would say are sin and terrible things. And good people doing terrible things in the scriptures, which of course explains to you, helps us understand that they're true. Because if you were trying to falsify this, you would make David into a perfect individual. You won't have made him have a relationship with Bathsheba and then kill her husband. You would want David to be the great guy, the man after God's own heart. And I think Peter here was looking forward, and Joel, he's giving this sermon, but he's still looking forward to things happening in a much tighter time span than he expected, or he expected a much tighter time span than is actually going to happen. All right.