May 28 Sermon: Wonders & Signs
At the end of our passage there today, we hear a rather familiar phrase for us. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now, we've heard this statement many times. We're very familiar with it. But I think it's also pretty easy for us to forget just how profound and revolutionary that statement was where we're reading it in the Book of Acts. Because we struggle to fully grasp the power of this statement because we're used to the idea. We get this idea that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But in the first century, for the Jewish people experiencing the events of Pentecost there in Jerusalem, this idea would have not only been a change to the way of thinking, it would have been scandalous. For them, the greatest marker for being saved would have been being a Hebrew and having the covenant sign of circumcision to establish you being in the in group, to being one of God's people, to propose that that state of affairs has changed and to make the claim that anyone who invokes the name of the Lord will be saved would have been seen as preposterous.
And as we remember the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost this morning, it's crucial to remember that this is the focal point of what we read in this passage today. There's a lot going on. There's a lot going on in this passage with people speaking in other languages and Peter's sermons speaking about all these wonders and all these signs. But as with anything, it's easy to be distracted by the shiny stuff that's going on, right? To see all of that stuff and to think that's the point that that's what we're supposed to focus on. But at the root of all of this is the truth that any individual who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, regardless of their ethnic background. That's the focal point of the passage for today, that the covenant people of God are now identified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and not by ethnic heritage or religious rites such as circumcision. This is good news. It is the culmination of the work that has been done by Jesus to make for himself a particular people from every tribe, every tongue, every nation. And so this is why we are able to gather here as the people of God in this place.
Because we are not Hebrew people, we're not Jewish folk. We have been called to God. God has called us to himself through the Holy Spirit. He has given us faith in what Jesus accomplished for us. And so we come to praise God and hear this good news again and again that we have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Now, last week, we looked at the Ascension of Jesus, and we saw how this event shows us that the church has work to do to spread the good news of salvation until Christ returns, because the angels told them, Why are you standing here? He's going to come back. But don't stand looking up into heaven. There was something to do, we talked about. In the Ascension, we understand that we don't stand there and wait looking to the sky, hoping Christ will come back right away. Instead, we have work to do as the people of God. We have a mission that he has given us to spread the gospel. The Ascension also lets us know that we no longer go to Jerusalem to worship because the presence of God resides in one place in the temple there.
No. Instead, because Jesus has ascended to the right-hand of the Father, he reigns on high as king over all the earth. And so we can worship him anywhere. This enables us to assemble and offer worship where God has planted us as His covenant people to be His servants. And this is the foundation of the church and the work that the church has to do. And today with our celebrating Pentecost, we're recalling the beginning of this new covenant church and the expansion of the covenant of God to people of every ethnic and people group. And so of all the events that we commemorate, Pentecost, I believe, is the one where it's the easiest for us to have our attention diverted from the big story, from the main point. We can so easily veer off topic because, as I said before, there's so much that's going on and it's fun and it's exciting stuff. Gusting winds, tongues of fire speaking in different languages. But before we dig into the text, it's important that we stop for a moment and talk about what the word tongues means in this passage. Because in our times, the idea of tongues has come to mean ecstatic utterances.
But as we look at Acts 2, verse 4 here, we hear this word tongue, and our thought is immediately to the muscle in our mouth that lets us talk. That's what we think of. We would never run into someone on the street who speaks another language and then go tell our friends, Yeah, I ran into this guy. He speaks in another tongue. That's not how we speak anymore. We would say, No, they speak in another language. And that's what is being said here. And as we go through the passage today, we're going to see that these are actual languages. This is not gibberish, ecstatic utterances. There's a purpose behind what is happening at Pentecost. And it isn't chaos. There's confusion here in the amazing happenings because this has never been seen before. But there's not confusion in what is being said, is there? And this is important. And if we fail to grasp what's happening with the disciples, we're going to struggle to understand Pentecost and grasp the nature and mission of the church on the whole. What is going on here in Acts is speaking in ordinary human languages that were different from what they were raised speaking.
They know they're able to speak these languages and be heard in these languages. This is not ecstatic chaos here. It's clear, ordered proclamation of the good news of salvation in Christ in the languages of the different people who were gathered in Jerusalem that day. So let's take a look at everything that happened here at Pentecost in verses 1 through 4. We have rushing wind, we have fire, we have speaking in other languages. And after these four verses, business continues to pick up even more with an accusation that these folks are all drunk. And then Peter giving a sermon quoting apocalyptic language from the Prophet Joel. There's a lot going on. And with all this stuff going on, we have to be sure that we don't get distracted from the main point of the text. And that point is that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. That's the big point. So we are in the New Testament here in Acts, but what is going on is actually a very Old Testament thing because we see elements of what would happen when the presence of God was witnessed in the Old Testament.
This looks like an Old Testament thing here in the New Testament because there were often three things when the presence of God was seen in the Old Testament. There would be wind, there would be fire, and there would be prophetic speech. Well, in the Old Testament, this would show us that God was at work, that God was doing something new. He was making a proclamation. Now, it wasn't always these three things, but there was always some sign of some sort to let the people know that God is working. This isn't some false prophet speaking and giving his own opinion. These signs would let the people of God know that God himself was speaking. It was an indication that this was not a random event or something coming through the innovations of man. And the same thing is taking place here. The disciples are proclaiming that God is at work. This is a clear indication here of God moving. These signs here show us that the disciples aren't starting some new Jesus cult. No, God is acting here in history, and he's showing us that he is at work through these men who are proclaiming that Jesus is resurrected and that he is the promised Messiah.
The same promised Messiah is being proclaimed here, the one pointed to through all of Scripture. And these signs are letting these people in Jerusalem that day, and us, the readers of Acts now in the 21st century, know that just as God spoke through Moses and the prophets, he is now speaking through these Apostles. And so we should listen to what they have to say. But the natural question that we might have is why is this taking place now? Jesus rose from the dead 50 days ago, roughly, 53 days ago, I guess, and He ascended 40 days after that. So why is this program just now kicking off? Why this day? You would think that if the message is so important, they would have gone out and gotten on task right away, right after the resurrection. Well, there's actually a great reason that God appointed these events to take place on Pentecost, because for the Hebrew people, there were three big feasts. Now, we know Passover. That was the big one. We know that because of the story in the Old Testament. We all know that. And we also know that it takes place every year when we celebrate Easter.
So we think about Passover. That's the first big festival of the Jewish people. Well, there was also the Feast of Tabernacles, which takes place around the time of the day of atonement. That usually takes place in the fall. Now, in between those two major festivals, there's another Feast that takes place 50 days after Passover, and it's known as the Feast of Weeks. But it was also known as Pentecost. As my wife pointed out, 50 days. It was 50 days after Passover. And so people would come to Jerusalem for these festivals from all over the Roman Empire. There were people all over the place, just like there were when Jesus was crucified around the time of the Passover. There's people from everywhere. Because if you think back, over biblical history, the people of God had been taken into exile many times, right? Many times, over and over. And each time, the people would return to the land, but not every person would come back. They had lives there. They couldn't just pick up and move back to Jerusalem. So the Jewish people, the Hebrew people, were distributed or dispersed all throughout the Roman Empire. But they would come back for these feasts.
So this massive humanity descending on Jerusalem made it the perfect time for the Spirit to be poured out. Now, reading this without an understanding of the Jewish calendar and the dispersion of the people of God to the far reaches of the known world, we might think that the disciples were just sitting around bored, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for something to come ppening to happen. And then boom, it happened. It came on just some random day and we gave it the name Pentecost. But actually, it was called Pentecost before any of this happened, because they were doing a festival that they had always done. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of other faithful Jewish folk were in Jerusalem along with the Apostles. They were all there and they were gathered. Now, think back, they had probably been, a lot of the same people and maybe some other folks, had been in Jerusalem during the Passover, and they had probably heard about this guy who they had hoped was the Messiah being crucified. And maybe they had heard that there were witnesses to his resurrection. Remember, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says that more than 500 people were witnesses to this.
This might be the buzz in Jerusalem. These people attesting to the idea that Jesus had risen from the dead. So really, there was no better time for what we see here in Acts 2, because these wonders and signs that are happening here are validating their claims to people from all over the known world. And we see what I'm talking about here as we move on to verse 5. Here are not only people who can be witnesses to the people around, but there are witnesses to the outpouring of the Spirit from every nation. This isn't just to let us know that they came a long way, but we also look at this and understand that these people would have been speaking many different languages because they wouldn't have been able to live in these assorted areas of the Roman Empire that they had been dispersed to without knowing the dialect where they had either been transported to or likely by this time in history, they had been raised there. It might be the only language they really knew because they had been born and raised there. And so this is why the sign that we see here is speaking in other languages.
The sign is for the Jewish people that God is doing something new and he is speaking through the disciples of Jesus. But it also gets to the point that the message of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, that message is to go out to the whole world, not just to one people group. Jesus ascended to be the king over all the earth, and now the message is to go out to the ends of the earth. Instead of just being a message for Hebrew people in the Hebrew language, the Holy Spirit has come and it enables people from all over the known world to share the gospel where they had come from. And as I mentioned, every time we celebrate Pentecost, we can't understand what's happening here without really understanding that this is a reversal of what happened at the tower of Babel. Remember back to Genesis, the people there rejected God's command to go out into the world to be fruitful and multiply. That was their sin. God confused their language in order to scatter them. So this event divided the world into people groups based upon languages.
And the message of the coming Messiah was then entrusted to the covenant line that led to Jesus. And that message was communicated through the Hebrew people in the Hebrew language. But sin and death is not just a problem for Hebrews. It is a problem for all of humanity. And so the message of the victory of the Messiah that was won over sin and death, it needs to go out to everybody. And so here at Pentecost, the judgment of the tower of Babel, that scattering is done. And now the people of God are gathered to him from every tribe, tongue and nation and in every language. Victory over the curse was won in the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. But the effect of the sin at the tower of Babel is undone when the Spirit comes on the disciples at Pentecost, and now the message of the gospel goes out to the whole world. No more is the message to one people group with one language. It now goes into the whole world just as Jesus commanded in the Great Commission. And this is the story of the church. Everywhere, there are those who praise the name of Jesus because they have been rescued from sin, death and hell.
The message isn't just for some people of a particular ethnicity. It is now for those who by faith trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the wonders and signs at Pentecost aren't something that you and I are supposed to try and replicate. The signs at Pentecost were for a particular people at a particular time and for a very specific purpose. The story of Pentecost shows us that salvation comes to all people, regardless of language and regardless of ethnicity. Salvation is by grace through faith and faith comes by hearing and believing the gospel. And you can hear this message in Hebrew, in Greek, in English, in Latin, in French, in Spanish, or any other language. It doesn't matter. What matters is that we trust in the work of Jesus alone for salvation. And this is only possible through the proclamation of the Word of God, the Gospel, and the work of the Holy Spirit in us to give us the gift of faith. And we see this taught in the message of Peter that follows here in Acts 2. Now, as I read this story, obviously, my favorite part is the message of the gospel going out.
That's the best part of this story. But when it comes to my sense of humor, my favorite part of this story is that they think they've had too much wine. Who hears people speaking other languages, known languages, and then says, hey, they're drunk. Maybe things happened differently back then, but that just seems strange to me. But Peter wants them to know that this is for a purpose and that it fulfills the words of the Prophet Joel as we look at verses 17 and 18 today. And so look at how this prophecy points to what's happening at Pentecost. Again, it's important that we don't get stuck on the stuff that is miraculous here. Those things are important, but their purpose here is to validate this new message of God that's being proclaimed. Our focus here is on who the people are in Joel's prophecy, not what the people are experiencing. So what do we see? First, he will pour out his Spirit on all people. Now, this doesn't mean every person ever. This isn't talking about every individual that has existed or will ever exist. It's talking about all different ethnicities and people groups. Like I have quoted many times, from the Book of revelation, this is the idea of every tribe, every tongue, and every nation.
The Spirit no longer goes to a few select prophets or to the 70 elders appointed by Moses that we read about in the Old Testament when the Spirit is given out. Instead, it goes to all people. S ons and daughters, it also says, will prophesy. It isn't male and female who receive the... It's not just sons, it's not just one group of people. Instead, it is male and female people who receive the Spirit, all people. Young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams. In other words, age doesn't matter because by faith, young and old can receive the Holy Spirit. This new covenant that Joel is telling us about here is for all people. And we see that with the range of people that he talks about. This is important and it's what we see happening at Pentecost. And this quote from the Prophet Joel starts with the words, Last days. Now, when we hear the words last days, we automatically think that it's referring to the end of history, like the last, very last days, the last few hours even of history. But when we hear the words here, we need to remember that this phrase last days here means something else.
It means when the final economy of God, when the final way of doing things, when the Spirit comes, those are the last days. There isn't going to be something new that God is doing. This is the thing. The arrival of the Spirit at Pentecost shows us that this is the good news, that God is doing this new thing, and this is his plan, and this is going to go on until the end of history. That's what it means by last days here, that this is the last way of doing things. It's the way the world operates from now on. That the gospel is for all people and people will come to faith in the same way until Christ returns to judge the living and the dead. This is not only the new plan of God, it is the plan of God and has always been the plan of God to pour out His Spirit on all people. Because in the last days, we read here, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. That is how we know that we have faith. That is how we know we are saved by God's grace.
We call upon the name of the Lord. We would never do that on our own. This is the same idea that we see from the Apostle Paul in Romans 10, verse 9. It tells us, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. This is how we are saved in the New Covenant. We are saved by faith in Jesus Christ and by calling upon his name. And throughout the Book of Acts, we see that whenever the Apostles preach, they proclaim Christ. That is the message on the day of Pentecost, and it's the message of the entire New Testament. The Ascension and Pentecost create the Church. And if we are to continue as the Church around the world, we must stay on mission and proclaim the same message as the Apostles because that is the only means by which we can be saved. So as we look at this passage and we bring it home to apply for us today, I believe we need to remember the model that we see from the Apostles here. It starts with us personally.
While we no longer receive the signs that we see in this extraordinary event in Acts 2, we need to remember that we have received a miraculous sign. We have. And it is greater even than speaking in other languages. Because God has given us the sign of coming to us and saving us. We were dead in our sin, and yet we were resurrected to life by the Holy Spirit through the proclamation of the Gospel. We hear and we believe the good news. And it isn't just one group of people. It isn't just male and female. It isn't just young or old. All of us are gathered together and we have been called together by God to be his church. So here we are. We are the embassy of the Kingdom of God on this corner in Edgerton, Minnesota. And this is a great miracle and it is a work of God. Think of how God has blessed this covenant people through the years. And here we are because someone proclaimed the good news to us and God gave us faith through the Holy Spirit. And he will continue to be faithful to that proclamation of that same gospel from generation to generation.
And as we look at this text and we look at other texts in the Book of Acts, I know that it can be discouraging because we see the amazing faith of the Apostles and we see spectacular signs that are done there in that book. And you've probably thought like I have at some point. You've probably thought, why aren't things like that for me? Why can't I do miracles? Why can't I do those things? But we need to remember that the signs that we see in the Book of Acts were for that time, for a specific reason, for the purpose of the proclamation and showing that God was doing this new thing in the Book of Acts through the Apostles. But remembering that can be difficult because we want signs, we want proof. And anytime we read a story, don't we naturally put ourselves into that story somehow? And who do we want to be? We want to be the person who's doing the most amazing thing. When you read a comic book, you put yourself in the role of the hero, right? You're not the people they're saving when you imagine yourself in the story.
You want to do amazing things. But what I want us to think about this morning is about the heroes in this story that we don't give a second thought to. As we leave from here today, I want us to think about the heroes in this story that we would never even acknowledge. But they were so vital to why you and I are able to be here today. And that is those people at Pentecost who came from the far regions of the globe, and they heard the message of the gospel, and they believed it by faith, and they went back to where they had come from and they shared the gospel in their language. They shared it with their family. They raised their kids in the faith. We don't know anything about them. We don't know their names. But they were there that day and they went out into the world and shared the gospel with the people they came into contact with. They raised their children in the faith. Those people are heroes of the faith and we never give them a second thought. This is our opportunity to be those same heroes, to be those people who go out into the world, those people who proclaim the gospel and raise their children in the faith.
It starts with us. It starts with us living our lives where we are and faithfully testifying to the work that Jesus Christ has done for us. This is how the church of Christ has grown throughout the ages. This is how the church has been built up throughout history. T his is how the church will stand for generations to come until Christ returns to deliver his kingdom to the Father. By faithful people going out and sharing the gospel with those around them and raising their covenant children in the faith. And we can do this because God is faithful to his people. He has given us his Holy Spirit and we can know that we have this mission because everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And we have called upon the name of the Lord. And this will continue now until Christ returns because God is faithful to bless the work of his covenant people. Amen. Let us pray. Almighty and ever lasting God, we thank you for the gift of your word. We are thankful that you have given us the gift of faith and that we have the indwelling Holy Spirit.
We pray, oh Lord, that we would be like the heroes in this story who went out into the world and shared the gospel with those that they came into contact with and raise their family in the faith. We pray that your Spirit would empower us to do this. Pour out your Spirit upon us that we might do this great Kingdom work to the glory of God. of Christ, the one who has saved us and gathered us together from every tribe, tongue and nation. May we glorify Him in our proclamation of your word. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray, Amen.
This message was delivered on May 28, 2023 by Pastor Mark Groen at First Reformed Church in Edgerton, MN. First Reformed is a congregation in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.