Keep sharing good news without ads.
Reading Acts 2:14-15 which sets up the sermon Peter is about to give, and Pastor Gabe also provides and introduction to a lot of the sermons we will read in the book of Acts. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
We have numerous sermons in the book of Acts. It's important for us to pay attention to them because the way that the apostles proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ should also be the way that we proclaim the gospel when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ, that we may humble ourselves before the Lord and at the proper time, he may exalt us. Tell your friends about our ministry at wwutt .com.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we've made it to the Sermon at Pentecost, where Peter preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem. And I'm going to start off our study of this sermon by reading the whole thing.
So let me start in verse 14 and go to the end of the chapter, verse 47. Hear the word of the Lord. But Peter, taking his stand with the 11, raised his voice and declared to them, men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words.
For these men are not drunk as you suppose, for it is the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel. And it shall be in the last days, God says, that I will pour out my spirit on all mankind 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 slaves and female slaves, I will in those days pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. And I will put wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it will be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Men of Israel, listen to these words.
Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs, which God did through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know. This man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of lawless men and put him to death.
But God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says of him, I saw the Lord continually before me because he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken.
Therefore, my heart was glad and my tongue exalted. Moreover, my flesh also will live in hope because you will not forsake my soul to Hades nor give your Holy One over to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life.
You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Men, brothers, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch, David, that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to set one of the fruit of his body on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither forsaken to Hades nor did his flesh see corruption.
This Jesus, God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this, which you both see and hear.
For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus, whom you crucified.
Now, when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men, brothers, what should we do? And Peter said to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself. And with many other words, he solemnly bore witness and kept on exhorting them saying, be saved from this crooked generation.
So then, those who had received his word were baptized, and that day they were added about 3000 souls, and they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.
And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common. And they began selling their property and possessions and were dividing them up with all as anyone might have need.
And daily devoting themselves with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people.
And the Lord was adding to their number daily those who were being saved. And that's the remainder of Acts chapter two. And so between today and at least a couple of days next week we're gonna be looking at the sermon itself, which goes from verses 14 to 36.
Now, before getting into this sermon, I wanna mention something, and we're gonna exposit the sermon, look at the specifics of it, these Old Testament references that Peter makes. But I want you to recognize every one of the sermons that we look at in the book of Acts and see the language that the disciples use.
Something that I did not say when we did the introduction of the book of Acts. It's just, I just seem to remember not saying this. I don't know why, but I did not mention this fact about the book of Acts.
The word love never occurs in this book. Now that's interesting to consider when once again, the author is Luke and Luke mentions love a lot of times in the gospel of Luke, especially in the context of a command.
Jesus saying, I say to you who hear, love your enemies and do good to those who hate you. That's Luke 6, 27. And then of course, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself.
Luke 10, 27. Although there's nowhere in Luke where Jesus explicitly says to his disciples, I love you. Now, John puts a lot more emphasis on that, of course. The word love comes up in the gospel of John 40 times, more than the other three gospels combined.
So John spends a lot more emphasis on love than Luke does, but the book of Acts does not contain the word love. And the reason why I mentioned that is because we need to be very careful when it comes to the way that we share the gospel.
There is a tendency among a lot of us, especially in the Western world, especially in modern day United States of America, there's a tendency for us to tell people that God loves you, to tell everybody God loves you.
He loves you and he has a wonderful plan for your life. That's a very common saying among many evangelical preachers. I'm not just attributing that to Joel Osteen. There may be some very well-meaning preachers who are less heretical than Joel who will say something like that.
Will say that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Many evangelists do this. Evangelists who know that if this person does not trust in Jesus, that they're going to go to hell. And yet they will appeal to this lost sinner and say to them, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
Yet you never see the apostles share the gospel that way in Acts. You never see them at all tell an unbeliever, God loves you. And even here as they are preaching at Pentecost, Peter does not stand up and say, God loves you.
Now, does God love them? Oh, yes. Yes, of course he does. There is a love that God has for the whole world, which is why people, lost sinners, the wicked, the depraved, it's why they still exist in the world.
It's the common grace that God has for all of his creatures. Although some we know have been prepared for destruction. Yet he has commanded that the gospel go out everywhere. And as Paul will say later on in Acts 17, which we'll certainly get to months from now, probably.
But Paul says there, the Lord commands all people everywhere to repent. So this message of the gospel is to go everywhere. Jesus commanded the disciples to do that at the end of Luke. The message of repentance must go into all nations.
As we read in John 3, 16, God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. So yes, God has love for the people that Peter is preaching to.
It's exactly why Peter is preaching to them. But you don't tell a lost sinner that God loves them.
Why?
Because what does a lost sinner hear when you tell them that? They hear that God approves of me. He loves me just the way I am. There's nothing that I need to change. And even if they are convinced by you for a moment that they need to believe in Jesus and maybe even be baptized, will that message really stick if they think in their minds, God already loves me no matter what it is that I do.
So they for a moment will profess faith and go through the motions. But then a little bit later on, fall right back into their sin because it doesn't really matter anyway. God loves me no matter what I do.
We have to be very, very careful about that. And when it comes to sharing the gospel, we need to do it the way that Jesus and his disciples did it. We have a model of how to share the gospel given to us in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts.
This is how we are to share the gospel. They did not tell lost sinners, God loves you. That was not their introduction to the gospel. And we should not tell them that either. They will know God loves them if they repent and believe in Jesus.
Then they will know it. Then they will understand. Romans 5, 8, God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Then they get it. When they trust in Jesus, then they know God loves me and he's loved me the entire time.
He loved me enough that even when I was a wretched, depraved sinner and what I deserve was the wrath of God, he did not leave me in that state, did he? No, he sent somebody to preach this gospel to me that I may believe in Jesus and be saved.
And God did this because he had love for me. He had love for me before I was even born. A person comes into that understanding when they believe in Jesus, but they should not be told that beforehand because you're telling a depraved heart, a person who is of their flesh, who cannot conceptualize spiritual things because they are a naturally minded man, 1 Corinthians 2, 14, a person who can't understand the spiritual things of God, you tell them God loves you and what they hear is God approves of me.
God is okay with everything that I am doing. They need to hear that they are sinners. They need to hear that the wrath of God is upon them. Not God's love is upon them, his wrath is upon them because that's what John 3, 36 says.
He who has the son has life. He who does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. It's been on him from the time that he was born and had rebelled against God and followed in the ways of Adam and went after the passions of his own flesh, God's wrath was upon him.
The judgment of God would have befallen that person and they would have been destroyed if not for the gospel that came to them and they turned from their sin to Jesus Christ and are saved. The love of God is not upon an unbelieving sinner.
The wrath of God is upon them. Now it is of course out of the love of God that the gospel has come to them, but again, let them believe in Jesus and then come to know God loves me. So let's consider this sermon and pay attention to all these sermons.
That's kind of like your introduction to the sermons that we will read about in Acts that I gave you right there. Pay attention to the language that's used because this is the way that we are going to share the gospel with other people, imitating the way that Jesus did it and his apostles especially did it.
So Peter, verse 14, taking his stand with the 11 raised his voice and declared to the people there in Jerusalem.
Remember, the people there in Jerusalem.
They're now all speaking in all these different languages, but they don't understand what is being said. They understand the words, they don't know the meaning of these words because back to verse 12, they all continued in astonishment and great perplexity saying to one another, what does this mean?
So they understand the words clearly. The apostles are all speaking in all the individual languages that are represented there in Jerusalem. They hear the words, but they don't understand the meaning of the words.
And so this is what Peter does here with the sermon. The sermon shows to us what it was that they were saying when they were speaking of the mighty deeds of God. And then Peter also elaborates and gives exposition to those things that the other apostles were proclaiming.
So verse 14, Peter, taking his stand with the 11 raised his voice and declared to them, men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words. Remember once again, they are in Jerusalem for Pentecost.
This is the Jewish festival of the feast of weeks. It is celebrating the harvest. It's also a celebration of the giving of the law, which is interesting. So in the Passover meal, they're celebrating the freedom that God gave to them, calling them out of slavery in Egypt but in Pentecost they are celebrating the giving of the law.
And yet here, what is Peter gonna proclaim? He's going to proclaim the law and the prophets, but he's showing how Jesus is the fulfillment of all of that. The law won't save you, it's Jesus. It's putting your faith and trust in Jesus as he is going to present to them.
These men are not drunk, Peter says, as you suppose, for it is the third hour of the day. Now remember what was said just a moment ago with regards to the apostles speaking in tongues. All the people there continued in astonishment and great perplexity saying to one another,.
What does this mean?
But others were mocking and were saying, they are full of new wine. So some people hear the words, they don't get what they mean, they're curious about it, they wanna know more, but others become kind of mocking, they're jeering at them saying they are full of new, these guys are just drunk.
That's all that's wrong with them. Now you're probably familiar with some of the charismatic churches who have taken that phrase, and they think that being full of the Holy Spirit means we are supposed to look like we're drunk.
Have you seen this done? There's that one guy who calls himself like the Holy Ghost bartender, I can't remember his name. Rodney Howard Brown, it just popped right back into my head. Rodney Howard Brown, I believe he lives in Florida now, but anyway, he's such a heretical preacher, but had considered himself the Holy Ghost bartender that he just deals out the Holy Spirit.
And if you've ever seen any of his acts when he does this, he will do the whole manipulation thing where he lays a hand on somebody or he blows on them or something like makes a hand gesture where it seems like he's casting the Holy Spirit onto somebody.
And they will just fall over in fits of laughter and they will flop on the floor and they will like wobble to and fro and act like they're just drunk. They're drunk on the Holy Spirit because Rodney Howard Brown gave them the Spirit in this way just as it said in Acts 2 .13, that's their justification for it.
If it looked to these people that they are full of new wine, then it should look to everybody else that were drunk when it comes to being filled with the Holy Spirit. Kenneth Hagen did this too. In fact, Rodney Howard Brown is just copying or imitating what it was that Kenneth Hagen did.
And there's a very famous sermon of his, you can still find on YouTube where he's talking about this very thing and preaching from Acts 2 .13. And right at the moment where he says, they thought that they were drunk with the Holy Spirit, he starts acting drunk, like hobbling all over the place, slurred words, people have to hold him up because he's kind of toppling over, but he's laughing and he'll cast things onto the crowd and they'll fall over and laugh or they'll jump up and down and run all over the room.
All of this is absurd. It's all an act. It's crowd manipulation. It is not at all the Holy Spirit. This is not what this passage means. It doesn't mean that we act like drunk fools because the scripture explicitly forbids drunkenness.
These are mockers. They are scoffing at them and not being able to get a handle on whatever it is that's happening. They just decide, okay, well, I just don't believe what's happening. And what's really taking place is these guys are just drunk.
And Peter taking his stand with the 11 says, these are not drunk. These men are not drunk as you suppose, for it is the third hour of the day. We could not have been drinking long enough to get drunk.
Now, wine at this particular time was not quite as concentrated as the wine and strong drink that we have today. It's obviously not like drinking whiskey. So you would have had to have been drinking for a while, starting at sunrise and drinking throughout the day in order to get that drunk.
Peter's saying, just as a matter of common sense, it's only the third hour of the day. There's no way that they could be drunk by now. And then obviously hearing Peter in sound mind, proclaiming what he is saying, they're going to understand that this is not drunkenness.
This is clear, sound reasoning from the scriptures. So all that charismatic nonsense that they'll do, claiming to be drunk on the Holy Spirit, that is not the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit is what Peter's doing here, preaching the word of God and the Spirit convicting the hearts of the people that are there to believe the words that are being said.
That is the work of the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit has been working in that way from the Old Testament, from the time that the world was created. When you read Genesis 1, 2, the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
The Holy Spirit has been there from the very beginning of creation to today. And all of us who believe in Jesus have the Spirit of God dwelling within our hearts. As said in Romans 9, 11, the same Spirit that brought Jesus back from the dead is the Spirit that gives life to our mortal bodies and causes us to walk in the way that we should go, following the way of life that we have been given in Christ our Lord.
We're going to stop there. We've just done an introduction to the sermons of Acts and an introduction to this sermon from Peter. We'll pick up with his reference to the prophet Joel when we come back to this next week.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read. We thank you for the gospel that has been proclaimed to us. And I pray that we would be wise when it comes to understanding how we communicate this gospel to others.
Thank you for your Holy Spirit that we may know the right things to say, that we may discern spiritual truths, that we may resist sin and also walk in the paths that we are to walk after our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Lead us in those paths today that we may live lives pleasing to our God who has saved us and has promised us eternal life with Christ in the heavens in your imperishable kingdom. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
We pray in his name, amen.
You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.
On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on a Old Testament study When We Understand the Text.