Amen. All right. If you’re a Christian, you believe that at one point you were lost, spiritually lost, headed for destruction, on the road to destruction. But Jesus found you and he rescued you and he changed everything. That’s what we believe.

Amen. And Jesus continues to change us. And and the question is we’re going to look at this this morning. How does Jesus change us? And the answer is that he changes us by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit. And so we’re going to be talking about the Holy Spirit and his arrival at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 from the book of Acts. Birthday parties are a lot of fun. We’re right now going through in our family there’s seems like there’s a lot of birthdays coming up and so there’s a lot of talk about birthday parties and planning and all the you know the themes that go into birthday parties. My my boys like to choose themes like the Avengers or King Kong or something like that.

And you know, I don’t think I appreciated this as a kid, but there is a lot of planning, a lot of preparation time that goes into getting parties ready, but I appreciate that more as an adult now. Well, Acts two is about the birthday of the church. And here we see God has been planning this out not just for years or centuries, but since eternity. And what we see is that when God throws a party, it starts early. People gather together.

It’s very noisy. That’s what happens here in chapter 2. People are even accused of being drunk and then it spills out into the streets and and pretty soon 3,000 people get invited and they come and join this party, this celebration. But like everything, this party has a context. And Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit coming.

He had promised in that last time he had with the disciples in the the upper room in the Lord’s supper, he talked about the Holy Spirit who would come. And then before he ascended into heaven, he promised the Holy Spirit would arrive. And so there’s this expectation that’s been building up. The disciples aren’t given a timetable. They don’t know exactly when all this will unfold, but they know they’re told to wait and that the Holy Spirit will come.

So here we’re going to be looking at Acts chapter 2. And here’s the big idea. Pentecost is the allimp important event that marks the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the inauguration of the church, and the in gathering of the nations into the kingdom of God. In gathering of the nations. So if you would please st stand for the reading of God’s holy word from Acts chapter 2.

If you’re able to stand, invite you to do that. Acts chapter 2. It says this. The author Luke is writing. He says, “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them, and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? Parththeians and Mes and Elummites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Capidosia, Pontis and Asia, Friia and Panilia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Sirene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and procelites, cretins and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Verse 14, “But Peter standing with the 11 lifted up his voice and addressed them,”Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem. Let this be known to you and give ear to my words, for these people are not drunk as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel. And in the last days it shall be God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams even on my male servants and female servants. In those days I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy and I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below.

Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day, and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Thank you. You may be seated. This series, we’ve been looking at how the resurrection changes everything.

And so, we’ve looked at this from the beginning. You know, Jesus of all the spiritual options out there in the world, Jesus alone defeated death. You know, it’s one thing to say, “I’m God.” But, you know, that doesn’t impress us. But to claim to be divine and then to back it up with the resurrection, that’s unique.

Second, the reason the resurrection changes everything is because everybody has to deal with mortality. It’s inescapable. Everybody has to confront death and decide what will I do with this fact that one day my life will come to an end. The resurrection I believe is the only thing the only thing that gives you a sure hope to know I will survive this death. I will be resurrected myself because Jesus was resurrected.

And third, the resurrection changes everything because Jesus is alive. That means that we can have a real relationship with him. It’s not just that we believe in somebody who lived long ago and we we’ve dedicated our lives to his teachings. We can actually know him and we know him by the Holy Spirit. Now, if I was to guess, I would say that one of the biggest things that Christians will divide over or have disagreements over is over beliefs about the Holy Spirit.

Which is really a shame because the Holy Spirit, one of his roles is to unite believers in the faith. But you think about this, of all the beliefs out there, the Holy Spirit is is beliefs over the Holy Spirit have divided denominations. Whole whole groups and factions have split over what you believe about the Holy Spirit. But I believe that really the Holy Spirit is the the greatest reason for us to have that common bond as believers. Because think about this.

If the same spirit who indwells you indwells me, then that means we have this unbreakable spiritual bond that that makes us brothers and sisters in Christ. That there’s nothing more powerful than that. And so the Holy Spirit, he is one who unites us. Now I will say that of the three persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is undoubtedly the most mysterious. And by that I mean we know a lot about the father.

We know a lot about the son. We we know some about the Holy Spirit. We know less about him though. But we know he is a person. He’s God.

The Holy Spirit is divine in every way that the father is and the son is. And so it’s important that we don’t get this subject wrong when we talk about the Holy Spirit. My goal is very simple this morning. I want to ask what are some things we can learn about the Holy Spirit from Pentecost? From this this event that highlights his work.

Scripture basically says that Pentecost is the watershed event in the history of the people of God. Before this, the Holy Spirit would at times come on people, especially prophets, priests, and kings. But from this moment forward, there’s this new era in the history of the people of God. The church really begins here. And so, if you’re taking notes, Pentecost is the birthday of the church.

The day of Pentecost had great meaning even during the Old Testament. The Jews had three major feasts that they would celebrate every year where they would travel all the way to Jerusalem and and they would do this pilgrimage to offer sacrifices or they would in this case offer the first fruits of their harvest. And this is one of them. Passover, Pentecost, and tabernacles. And so that’s why we see in Acts two, there’s all these Jews from all these various parts of the world that they’ve come to Jerusalem to celebrate this day of Pentecost.

The word Pentecost comes from the Greek word for 50th. And that’s because Pentecost landed on the 50th day after Passover. And so you see this, it’s commemorated in the law. This is the time that acknowledging that Moses went up on Sinai and he received the law. He received the ten commandments that was on Pentecost.

And so there’s this 50 days after Passover that they would go to Jerusalem. And Luke says that the Holy Spirit came at a time when all of the the followers of Jesus were huddled together. They were in this this group in the upper room and he came suddenly. They they knew that the Holy Spirit was coming, but I think this event shocked them because it wasn’t on their calendar. It’s not as though they knew exactly when it was going to happen.

All they knew is that the Holy Spirit would come. And so, it’s not really something that the church did. It’s something that happened to the church. Look at verse two with me. Says, “And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rush rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

These Christians were probably terrified. You just think about what it would be like to be in a house where suddenly these hurricane force winds are are sweeping through the house and then suddenly these these tongues of fire appear above everyone’s head. There’s no way I’d remain calm in a situation like that. Now, I want us to set Pentecost in the grand story of scripture because there’s there’s a real context for everything that happens here. In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve, the first humans, for a relationship with him.

He He made them for fellowship. He put them in a garden. Everything was in perfect harmony. There was no suffering, no death because there was no sin. But then what happened is our first parents disobeyed God.

They they rebelled against him. They ate of the fruit they were not supposed to eat from. And because of that, they were banished from the garden. And and when they were banished from the garden, they were banished from the presence of God, from that immediate presence and awareness of God’s glory in their midst. That’s what happened.

And the the cherubim angel was posted at the entrance to guard the way back. And so the message was this this angel was there with a flaming sword as if to say because of sin, you can’t come back into my holy presence. You can’t come back into that that experience of my glory that you were made for because of your rebellion. But a new development came with the story of Israel. God chose this one nation he was going to work with.

He gave these promises of a coming savior, but he also did something unique with this nation. He brought them out of slavery in Egypt and he went before them. And the Bible says that they could see his glory cloud. And so by day you could see this this glory cloud leading the people this shikina glory and then this pillar of fire and this represented God is now in their midst. He’s not in the same sense as the garden of Eden but he’s he’s made himself available in a new way.

And then he had them build this tabernacle which is basically a massive tent. And he said that this tabernacle in one particular area of this tabernacle called the holy of holies or the most holy place his presence would dwell in a unique way. But there was only one way to get in there and that was done by the high priest. Only the high priest could go into the holy of holies once a year and he only could do it if he took the blood of a sacrifice on the day of atonement. And when the tabernacle was completed, it says that the glory cloud would would come and rest on the tabernacle.

And by night, again, it was this pillar of fire. The same thing happened when the temple was built. It says that the the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And it was almost like there’s this this physical presence that you you can’t even go into the temple when the glory of the Lord is filling that building. Now, here’s the amazing thing.

When they built the tabernacle, there was this massive curtain. And on that curtain, it was this very thick curtain. There was embroidered a cherubim. And the cherubim symbolized again, you can’t come into the presence. You can’t come into his holy presence or you’ll fall under that sword of judgment.

But when Jesus died on the cross, the Bible points us out that that curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom. And and that was God’s way of vividly saying, “The way that was blocked because of sin, what you couldn’t come into my holy presence before, but now now a new way has opened because of the cross, an empty tomb, and you’re invited in.” Amen. So, what does all this have to do with Pentecost? Well, at Pentecost, God, the same God who led Israel through the desert and the God who dwelt in that temple, he comes.

The Holy Spirit comes and he comes inside these believers. And the amazing thing is that the same picture shows up. The the tongues of fire again, they’re resting on their heads. And the message is just as God chose to dwell in a temple or a tabernacle for a time, he’s now dwelling in a new temple which is the church. And so Christians are both individually and corporately the new temple of God.

Elsewhere the Bible says, “Do you not know that your bodies these these bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have received from God?” So think about what this means. God’s living presence. He has chosen to to make his presence dwell not just in our midst in some building where we have to go through some process to get to him. He’s now come within us in our bodies.

This is remarkable because sometimes I think we can easily degrade the value of the body and we can almost even think like the body is inherently sinful or or there’s something wrong with our bodies. But here this is clearly saying that our bodies are now the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. The place where God makes his presence dwelled. So here’s the question. Are you in awe of Pentecost?

Are you are you amazed by this fact that our God would choose to dwell in you, in me? I think sometimes we we get so familiar with ideas and we we talk about being filled with the spirit and what that means and we can forget how astonishing this is that our holy God, the all-consuming fire, that’s what he’s described as in the Bible. That God that no one could get into before. It was instant death if you tried to get into the Holy of Holies. That same God says, “I’m going to dwell in you.”

So, Pentecost is proof that in Christ, our God is both in you and for you. The only way he would dwell inside of us is if he had become for us. And he was for us in the cross. So second in your notes, Pentecost fulfilled long expect expected promises of the Holy Spirit permanently indwelling all God’s people. All God’s people.

And Pentecost is a wonderful reminder that God always keeps his promises. There there’s never once a time that God says, “I’m going to do something. I’m going to do this and and it’s going to happen.” And then it and then it never happens. God always fulfills his word and God gave many hints and promises that he was going to do this.

In the book of Numbers, there’s this early hint. Moses who has the spirit of God is talking with his assistant Joshua and there’s this time where these these prophets or these I should say these elders of Israel are prophesying. They have the spirit of God and Joshua wonders is this okay that they they have the the spirit. They’re prophesying and Moses basically says, “You know what would be really great is if all God’s people had the spirit.” Wouldn’t that be amazing?

And see, what Moses only longed for? It probably sounded impossible to Joshua. It was fulfilled at Pentecost. Jesus, again, as I said, promised the Holy Spirit. And as we’ll see in a moment, Peter quotes Joel the prophet 600 years before this event.

He said, “This will happen. The the spirit will be poured out on all flesh, men and women. And so what do we see the Holy Spirit doing here? Verse four, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Notice again, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

There’s not a sense in which there’s these top tier Christians and those ones get the Holy Spirit, but then these other guys, nope. No. Everybody. They’re all filled with the Holy Spirit without any distinction. In the Old Testament, as I said, there would be times where the Holy Spirit would come upon certain individuals for a time to empower them for their God-given role.

King David had the spirit. He wrote the Psalms, many of the Psalms. But there is a time when in Psalm 51 because of his sin with Bath Sheba, he pleads with the Lord, do not take your holy spirit from me. But here we see God has his spirit dwell in all people. And he’s dwelling with them permanently.

In John 14:16, Jesus says he will ask the father that he will give the Holy Spirit as a helper who will be with them forever. See, Jesus is marking it out. He will be with you not just for a time. He’s not going to be a flighty spirit that comes and goes. He will be with you forever into eternity.

And the Bible says, “For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body.” And so, if you have trusted in Jesus as your savior for the forgiveness of your sins, you have the Holy Spirit. God’s word is clear on that. However, the Bible does talk about this need for continual filling. Filling we we can’t just be satisfied that he dwells within us even permanently.

The Bible actually commands us be filled with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 5:18 says, “Do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit.” That language of being filled is interesting. And you think about this. What are some other times when we talk about filling something?

You know, if I was to tell Whitney that I’m going to draw a bath for her, you know, I’m going to I’m going to fill the tub. I don’t always do this, but sometimes I can do that. You know, I’m talking about filling a bathtub with with liquid with water, right? Or if I tell her, you know, I’m going to go fill the the van’s gas tank for you. Again, we’re talking about filling with liquid.

Notice all these examples. I’m painting myself as this wonderful husband who it’s one of the privileges of giving the illustrations. But we we think of filling as it’s like there’s a container and something fills up with with liquid or gas or something like that. So, what does it mean to be filled with the spirit? The spirit is a person.

So, we’re being filled with a person. What does that look like? Well, I think it’s something like falling in love. You know, even secular people will talk about how they feel empty at times. What do they mean by that?

Or many Christians will say, you know, in my testimony, they’ll say, I at this point in time in my life, I felt so empty and then Jesus came and he changed all that. I think that emptiness, that that real feeling of emptiness, that’s our soul’s craving to be filled with God’s spirit. It’s in all of us. It’s in the image of God to be filled. We were created to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

We’re made to run on the love of God. And really, that’s what the Holy Spirit does. By the way, the Bible says, it’s the Holy Spirit that pours out God’s love into our hearts. And so there’s this role of the Holy Spirit where on our own, we wouldn’t believe God loves us. We we would we would doubt it forever.

God loving me, that’s insane, we’d think. But the Holy Spirit, he comes into our hearts and he convinces us of God’s love. He assures us God does love you. And and you know, if you believe that, if you believe God loves you right now, that’s because of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does more than that.

He also convicts us of sin. So it’s interesting. There’s these these two big roles of the Holy Spirit. I’d say on the one hand, the Holy Spirit is the one who says you’re a sinner. You’re not as righteous as you think you are.

You’re not as good as you think you are. And I’m going to point out all these areas in your life where you’ve gone wrong over here and you need to course correct this area of your life. The Holy Spirit does that. But at the same time, what the Holy Spirit does is he says, “But God loves sinners like you more than you could ever imagine. In fact, he’s more committed to you than you could ever be to him.”

That’s the Holy Spirit’s role. He says, “God loves you.” Now, here in Acts two, what happens when they’re filled with the Holy Spirit? It says they start speaking with tongues, other tongues or languages. And I think we’ll see from the context here that these are not ecstatic utterances but known human languages that are being talked about because one group in verse 8 says, “How is it that we hear each of us in his own native language?”

So since it was the feast of Pentecost, you had Jews streaming into Jerusalem from all over the world. They were coming there to celebrate this feast of Pentecost. And God knew in his perfect providence, he knew this is the time to bring the Holy Spirit to dwell in my people so that they can see this great miracle, this great wonder. They’re coming there and and they say, you know, how is it that these Galileans, there’s a little bit of a derogatory tone to that. How did these Galileans speak our native language?

It’s kind of like if someone was to say, you know, how can these rednecks who didn’t even finish high school, how can they speak Mandarin and Arabic, this doesn’t add up. It’s hard for us to appreciate the magnitude of this miracle. You know, we we have things like Google Translate and you know, we we can get an online course. If we want to learn a foreign language, we can hop online and and we can learn something. But even then it takes a lot of effort, a lot of time to learn another language.

And yet the miracle is that these Galileans uneducated, you know, these were bluecollar workers. They’d probably never been outside of Israel ever. And yet here they are speaking fluently, perfectly. They’re speaking these other languages from all over the world. And we have a map to show you where these people had come from.

And notice Jerusalem is right there at the epicenter of all this. Says in verse 9, these are the people talking. Parththeians and me and Elummites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Capidoshia, Pontis and Asia, Friia and Panilia, Egypt and other parts of Libya belonging to Sirene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and procelites, cretins and Arab and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. Now you remember Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit will empower you to be my witnesses.”

So these mighty works of God are the people talking about Jesus and the cross, an empty tomb. They’re being witnesses already because that’s what the Holy Spirit does. And he he empowers us to do many things, but it’s always going to be about lifting up Jesus. See, the Holy Spirit doesn’t empower us to lift up ourselves or exalt ourselves. The Holy Spirit actually works against you if that’s your motive.

But he will lift up Jesus. The Bible says he will glorify the son. And so the Holy Spirit’s goal right here is to get the message of Jesus out to the nations. All these people streaming into Jerusalem. It’s the perfect time to get the message to them.

And then when they go back home, they’re taking that gospel with them. This is all engineered by God. Third in your notes, Pentecost reminds us that the gospel is for all nations, peoples, and languages. I was reading recently about a missionary who was translating the Bible into Kurdish and Turkey. And he happened to be working with a a Muslim translator who was helping him translate this part of the book of Acts.

And and he was amazed. It started to dawn on him, wait a second, you know, Christianity is is not the Western religion that I thought it was. Here’s the start of Christianity and there’s all these nations streaming into a place in the Middle East. That’s where it got started. And then he came to the word mess and he dropped his pencil and said, “Wait a minute.

You mean my people were there? You see, Kurds trace their ancestry back through the mess. And so when he saw that, he said, “You know what? Christianity, it it’s it got started for all nations. It’s not just for one particular group.

It changed everything for him.” And that’s how Christianity has always been. It’s a multi-inational, multithnic movement. It it’s never been just isolated to one little corner of the globe. Today, there are more Christians in Africa than in North America.

All over Asia, Christianity is growing and and booming. It’s growing in in Central and South America. And so, when we tend to think of Christianity as well, this is this is from Europe or or something like that, that’s not how it got started. And this is a wonderful reminder of that. Revelation 5 describes heaven as a place where people from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation will gather around the throne.

And they will together worship as one people, one people, many, many languages, many voices, but one people. They will worship the lamb who shed his blood for them. In the book of Genesis, we read about a time when the whole world had one language. Now, they in their pride, they they tried to build a tower to heaven. And they said, ‘We going to make a name for ourselves.

Again, they’re trying to exalt themselves. That’s the human nature coming out. And so God goes down and he confuses their languages. That’s why it’s known as the Tower of Babel because they were just babbling all back and forth. And they’re forced to disperse from building that tower.

And some people have looked at Pentecost and said, “Oh, this is this is a reversal of Babel.” But actually, it’s it’s not Babel reversed so much as Babel redeemed. Because notice, it’s not as though all the languages come back into one and we have one language now. No, there’s still all these different languages because God loves diversity. God loves all nations.

But it’s Babel redeemed because people from every language group are now invited in to the kingdom. This passage also fulfills Old Testament promises where God says, “I’m going to gather in from all nations my people. I’m going to gather them all in.” Now, at the time, you think about how crazy that must have sounded for the Israelites to look at those promises and say, “God is going to gather in all nations to himself. Everybody’s going to be streaming into Jerusalem.”

In fact, already we’re seeing that work out in the world. Acts 2:12 says, “And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean?” And that’s the right question to ask. But others mocking said they’re filled with new wine. So those two responses to the Holy Spirit reminds us that the gospel always always brings polarizing responses.

You know, there’s always going to be there there’s those who will hear and believe the gospel and embrace Jesus and have their sins forgiven, become disciples. And then there’s going to be those who reject Jesus. This happens in the book of Acts. Sometimes the disciples get attacked by this group that rejects the gospel and try to imprison them. And that’s because there’s no neutrality with Jesus.

There’s no neutral ground. If when Jesus confronts us by the Holy Spirit, there’s no there’s no Switzerland, right? There’s no there’s no neutral ground. You’re either with him or you’re against him. And Jesus said that.

He said, “Whoever is not with me is against me and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” But some ask the right question. What does this all mean? Well, the Holy Spirit coming to live within us means that finally we can love one another as we were made to. We can know God’s love for us.

Just as these first Christians stuck out as a little different, they they seemed pretty odd when everyone was the crowd was forming. They see these Christians speaking in all these various languages. They look very strange. And in the same way, the Holy Spirit sets us apart. So now we are a distinct people where we’re separated from the world and for Jesus.

I was talking to someone recently who said she was drawn to Christians even as an unbeliever because in her home, her unbelieving home she grew up in, her dad was an alcoholic and when she was around Christians, she recognized, you know what, they don’t need to get drunk to have fun. And she was drawn to that. It felt safe. And she later came to Christ. Something I love about the Bible is that it includes these these little comical moments when you watch for them.

The people who see Peter and the other disciples speaking in foreign tongues that they say this this must be they’re they’re drunk. You know, they’ve had too much to drink. They’re babbling. But it’s always easy to mock what you don’t understand. Peter tells the crowd in verse 14, “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you.

Listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk as you suppose. It’s only 9 in the morning.” I’m guessing that if if you began to give a speech and you have to tell people, “I’m not drunk.” things probably aren’t off to a great start.

But Peter offers a word of clarification. He says, “We’re not drunk. You know, it’s only nine in the morning for goodness sake. No, this is what the prophet Joel said would happen. He promised this exact thing.

And by the way, I just have to point out the boldness of Peter. This is the same Peter who just weeks before crumbled under that social pressure. You know, a servant girl asks him, you know, do you belong to Jesus? Do you know Jesus? And he says, no, I don’t know him.

And one commentator pointed that out. Said, you know, before in his denial of Christ, Peter couldn’t even stand up to a servant girl. Now, Peter stands up to the entire world. He’s standing up and he’s saying, “No, this is what God planned out. This is the Holy Spirit.”

This reminds us that Christianity is not about making good people better. A lot of people think of Christianity that way. You know, it’s it’s a way to morally improve yourself. It’s not about making good people better. It’s about about making spiritually dead people come alive.

It’s about transforming the lost and broken into the company of the redeemed. So, it’s all by grace. See, if Jesus chose people based on moral character, Peter wouldn’t have made the list. I wouldn’t have made the list. I mean, frankly, none of us would have.

So, thank God that he chose to show his grace, his mercy. Paul was one who hated Christians. He wanted to destroy Christianity. And yet Paul says, “You know what? God chose me.

He showed his grace so that people would see this is how you’re saved. It’s not about moral performance. It’s about experiencing the love of God.” So throughout the sermon, Peter appeals to scripture. And I love that he does this.

He he quotes it. He explains it. We’re going to see more of this sermon next week. But this is what a true sermon looks like. It’s bringing the word of God and applying it to the hearts and lives of the people of God.

That’s what Peter does. He quotes the prophet Joel. Verse 17. In the last days, God says, “I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy.

Your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams.” Now notice there Joel’s language is radically inclusive because with respect to gender, the spirit is poured out on men and women. With respect to age, he’s poured out on old and young. With respect to class, he’s poured out on servants. Servants who would be considered the lowest ranking members of society.

No privilege given to them. And yet here they are. They too are temples of the Holy Spirit. So here’s the final point in your notes. Pentecost launched a new era of the last days.

So with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we’ve entered a new era. The Bible calls this the last days. The last days. And you know, interestingly, we’ve been living in the last days for 2,000 years. But here’s what that means.

You know, God throughout history, he worked through the nation of Israel to bring promises. He sent the Messiah to die for our sins, rise again, and ascend. And here he’s he sent the Holy Spirit to empower his people to be witnesses. And now the next thing to look forward to is Christ’s return. He’s now the next in the last days.

As we’ll see next week, this offer is for all. But there is a condition. The condition is that you must repent and trust in Jesus. Peter will preach this as we’ll see next week. He says,”Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of sins.”

So that’s the qualifier. Even Joel talked about that. He said, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” So here’s the question I want to leave you with. How does this fact, this truth that God has chosen to dwell in you?

That he has chosen to make his holy presence live in you and that you are now his temple. How does that change things for you? How does that impact you to know that the living God is is within you? How does that change your marriage? How does that change the way you relate to others, the way you work, the way you battle sin, and the way you love others?

So, may you and I never forget to be in awe. And and we should be, we should be amazed that God has chosen to dwell in us. Let’s pray. Father God, thank you for being a God of grace. Thank you that by your Holy Spirit we are gathered here this morning that we have your word the Holy Spirit inspired.

We thank you that we have joy which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Thank you for pouring out your love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And thank you for empowering us for witness to be bold witnesses for Jesus Christ all by the Holy Spirit. This is not our doing. This is something we can’t take credit for.

This is because of your Holy Spirit and what he’s done in our lives transforming us from the inside out. And God, I would ask that if there’s anyone here who doesn’t yet have a relationship with Jesus, that you by your Holy Spirit, you would work in their hearts and minds, help them to see their need for you. Help them to cry out in sal for salvation, in faith. Help them to know that you are a God who loves them right where they’re at. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus.

Amen. Would you stand and join us? I give you glory for all you brought me through. And now I’m ready for whatever you want to do. I’m moving forward to follow after you.

And now I’m ready for whatever you want to do. Your presence is an open door. We want you, Lord

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