WWUTT 1028 The Sun Darkened and the Moon Turned to Blood?

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Joel prophesied that the sun will be darkened and the moon turn to blood before the awesome day of the

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Lord comes. Some have interpreted this to mean that eclipses are going to happen. No, it's more supernatural than that.

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When we understand the text. This is when we understand the text studying

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God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you please let others know about our program.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. Back in Acts 2 today and we will begin a study of Peter's sermon at Pentecost.

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I'm going to begin reading in verse 14 and read through verse 41. But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them,

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Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words.

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For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.

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But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel. And in the last days it shall be,

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God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

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And your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams, even on my male servants and female servants.

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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.

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The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the

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Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the

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Lord shall be saved. Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this

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Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

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God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

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For David says concerning him, I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken.

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Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced, my flesh also will dwell in hope.

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For you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your holy one see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life.

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You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch

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David, that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day.

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Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the

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Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

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This Jesus God raised up and of that we all are witnesses.

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Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the

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Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

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For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, the

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Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

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Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both

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Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now when they had heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

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And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

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And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the

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Lord, our God calls to himself. And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation.

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So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls.

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And there is Peter's sermon at Pentecost and the results of it as well will probably only get as far as studying the words of Joel that Peter recalls here at the start of the sermon.

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So in verse 14, Peter standing with the 11 lifted up his voice and address them. Remember what had what had brought the people around to see what was going on.

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They heard the rushing wind as the Holy Spirit had come upon the apostles there in the upper room.

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They came out of the upper room speaking in various tongues and the people heard in their own respective languages, testimonies of the mighty work of God coming from the apostles.

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These Galileans who would not have known these languages to have so many diverse languages shared among these men.

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The people recognized that something supernatural was going on here. Now, let me say, let me demonstrate what wasn't happening,

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OK? What was not happening was the apostles coming out and testifying.

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And then those words were coming into the ears of the hearers. But the Holy Spirit was doing something in their mind to help them to understand it or hear it in their own language.

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Like they had a babble fish in their ear. Do you understand that reference? That comes from Hitchhiker's Guide to the

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Galaxy. Douglas Adams, who was the the writer of that series, he was an atheist, incidentally.

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But he came up with this little thing called a babble fish. You would put it in your ear and what would go into the babble fish was one language.

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And then what would be excreted from the babble fish would be the language that you speak so that you might be able to understand it.

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There's also a language software called Babble Fish, which is taken straight from Douglas Adams idea anyway.

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So that's not what was happening here. It wasn't that the apostles were speaking in their own

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Aramaic and then the people were able to understand it in their own respective languages. No, the apostles themselves, they had the

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Holy Spirit. The people didn't have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit didn't come upon them to make them understand what the apostles were saying.

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The Holy Spirit was with the apostles so that this supernatural gifting of speaking in tongues, speaking languages that they did not ordinarily know.

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They come out testifying in everyone's respective language so that they could hear again in verse 11 in our own tongues, the mighty works of God.

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Verse 12, all were amazed and perplexed. Some were saying to one another, what does this mean?

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Again, recognizing that something supernatural was going on here. But the others mocked, as it says in verse 13.

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They are filled with new wine. But Peter, standing with the 11, lifted up his voice and addressed them, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem.

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So he's talking to those in the surrounding region and those who were right there in the city as well.

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There were many who were descended from the Judeans that had been dispersed in the dispersion.

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So they lived in all different kinds of places. And we had those various languages that were spoken, even among the

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Judeans demonstrated there in verses eight through through 11, the different regions from which these

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Jews had come and gathered here in Jerusalem for Pentecost, for the Feast of Weeks.

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So Peter says, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words.

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So now Peter is going to explain to them what it is that they've heard. They've heard the testimonies proclaimed, spoken the mighty works of God.

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And now Peter is going to explain to them. He's going to give sense to the words that they just heard prophesied for.

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These people are not drunk, as you suppose. Verse 15, since it is only the third hour of the day, that would have been about nine o 'clock in the morning.

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So they haven't even been awake long enough to drink that much to therefore become drunk. So what you are seeing demonstrated is not drunkenness.

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What you are seeing demonstrated is something supernatural, something incredible.

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They're not babbling. So those who did not know these languages, they did not receive what they were witnessing from the apostles as them actually speaking languages, known tongues of men.

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Since they didn't know the languages, everybody in Jerusalem, not everyone knew all of these languages.

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And so as they saw the apostles carrying on like this, they just said, well, they're just babbling nonsense.

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I don't know that language. So it's just nonsense. Therefore, they must be drunk. It didn't it doesn't mean they looked like they were drunk.

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They weren't falling over each other, giggling and laughing and experiencing holy laughter like some of the Pentecostals and charismatics will try to interpret this.

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It was just their stupid way of trying to explain what was going on.

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But it was clear that this was a supernatural outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God.

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Peter says it's only the third hour of the day, so you can just recognize just by where the sun is in the sky. We haven't even had enough time to be drinking and therefore be drunk at this time of the day.

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But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel. What you're witnessing right here is what was testified, prophesied by Joel, verse 17.

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And in the last days, this is taken from Joel chapter two. In the last days, it shall be

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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.

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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.

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The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes the great and magnificent day.

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And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

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All right. There's his entire reference there from Joel chapter two verses twenty eight through thirty two.

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So this is what we're going to spend the rest of. You know, the next ten minutes looking at here is exegeting this section of Joel that Peter references.

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So in verse 17 and in the last days, it shall be God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

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Let's stop right there. So in the last days, that's when we are now. And in last week, when we were reading about Jesus ascending into heaven,

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I mentioned that his ascension into heaven was the beginning of the last days. So we are in those days now between Jesus ascension into heaven and his return back to earth.

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And this is the time that he is pouring out his Holy Spirit on all flesh. And so we are no we as the people of God are no longer marked by fleshly things as the descendants of Abraham were with circumcision, but rather our sign of being followers of God is the

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Holy Spirit of God. And we will demonstrate that we are in Christ by those works that we do carried out in Christ Jesus.

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So these are those last days that we are in. And God has declared, even from as far back as the

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Old Testament, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

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Now, understand something there about all flesh. It does not mean every single person on earth.

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You've surely heard a preacher at some point say all means all and that's all.

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All means no. All always has a context, just like every other word in the

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Bible. All has a context. And so in this particular case, those who receive the

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Holy Spirit poured out on all flesh are those who are the followers of Christ and only them, only those who are followers of Christ have the

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Holy Spirit of God. Paul says that in Romans chapter eight, those who do not have the spirit of Christ do not belong to him.

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So this is this reference to all flesh in Joel and its fulfillment then with the giving of the

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Holy Spirit is how God is going to save the Gentiles. And he's doing that through Christ, by faith in Christ.

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And it will be for all flesh, for all people of all nations to be able to hear the gospel, know it and believe, not just a group of people from Jerusalem and Judea.

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So that's the point. And this is the fulfillment. Now, the spreading of the gospel, which is going to go out to the entire world, beginning with Jerusalem, because that's what

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Jesus told his apostles to do back in Acts chapter one, verse eight, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

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So it begins in Jerusalem. Here is where we're starting. But this Holy Spirit is going to be poured out on everyone who calls upon the name of the

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Lord as we get to in verse twenty one. So then going on here, the next part of verse 17 and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.

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Peter is showing to the people of Jerusalem that are there listening to him preach that this is the fulfillment now of that Joel prophecy.

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Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. That's what's happening now. Not just the apostles came out of that upper room.

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There were women there as well. So sons and daughters are prophesying. They are bearing witness.

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We read about the daughters of Philip prophesying in Acts twenty one versus eight and nine. When we get there now, this is not an argument for women serving the office of pastor.

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But that doesn't mean that women won't prophesy. Women will not declare the testimonies of God as revealed by the

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Holy Spirit in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.

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That isn't necessarily what's going on here, what they're witnessing, but they will. There will be dreams and visions that will be talked about during this apostolic age that the evidence of the

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Holy Spirit being poured out on all flesh is going to be demonstrated. So this is simply the beginning of the fulfillment of this prophecy in Joel two.

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So now verse 16, even on my male servants and female servants in those days, I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy.

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Prophesying here does not necessarily mean prediction of future events in the sense that God has given visions of something that's going to happen in the future.

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And therefore they're going to declare, hey, I've just received a vision. God is doing something new. And here's what it is that he's doing to this very day.

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We continue to prophesy. And what we are prophesying is the scriptures as they have been revealed.

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When I step into the pulpit and I speak the word of God preaching from the

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Bible, I am prophesying. And I don't mean prophesying just in the sense that I'm preaching something.

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I mean, prophesying in the sense that I'm declaring something that will happen in the future. There will be a future fulfillment.

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It's how God is reconciling all things together through the person and work of Jesus Christ, which is a work that continues to be done.

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It's bringing about the sanctification of his elect. It's talking about Christ returning in glory.

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All of this is prophesying. But what I prophesy is not something that I dreamed last night. What I'm prophesying is those things that did come about in dreams and visions and the revealing of the

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Holy Spirit to his apostles and were written down in the New Testament. So to this very day.

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We continue to do that and we do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the power of the spirit upon a preacher that he preaches the word of God.

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And it's the power of the Holy Spirit upon the listener that they can hear what it is that he's preaching and understand it.

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All of this is still according to this outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon God's people.

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So now, verse 19, and I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

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The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes the great and magnificent day.

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OK, let's stop right there. I just read two verses, 19 and 20. But what do they mean? Clearly, something catastrophic is being talked about here.

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Signs in the heavens. Whenever the Old Testament talks about the sun being darkened and the moon turning to blood, what it's being talked about is a judgment that is coming upon Israel everywhere that happens in the

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Old Testament. Judgment is coming upon Israel. That's certainly the case with Joel. As Joel is laying out these prophecies, there is like a short term fulfillment of that prophecy and there's a long term fulfillment.

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The short term fulfillment is the judgment that was coming upon Israel. The long term fulfillment is going to be even a later judgment that's going to come upon Israel.

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And yet you can even see more of a macro fulfillment in the sense that there are certain things here that have not yet come to pass, particularly related to the coming of Christ.

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So there's yet more that will be fulfilled according to this prophecy. But in the meantime, all

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Peter is communicating here, referencing the prophet Joel, is that judgment is coming upon Israel.

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This sign of the apostles speaking in tongues is demonstrating the beginning of the fulfillment of this prophecy in Joel, too.

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And and rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, the Jews that were there that heard Peter saying this were terrified because, again, as they see the apostles speaking these languages that Galilean men should not have known, they recognize something supernatural is going on.

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And as Peter begins referencing Joel and saying, this is the beginning of the wrath of God that is going to be poured out upon rebellious

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Israel. The people who were there hearing Peter preach this were quite concerned.

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He definitely got their attention because they were like, yeah, we remember the words of Isaiah when

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God said people of a foreign tongue are going to come upon you. When the Assyrians came and conquered Israel, they were defeated by a foreign invader speaking a language they didn't understand.

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And so now here these apostles come speaking languages by some supernatural power.

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And Peter is saying this is a demonstration of a judgment that is coming upon Israel. Paul, by the way, the apostle

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Paul referenced that also in first Corinthians chapter 14, that the sign of tongues is a sign of judgment coming upon Israel.

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Something heaven shaking was going to be taking place. Hence the reference to the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood.

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What happened when Jesus was crucified that took place for three hours? Do you remember the sun was darkened and the people still remembered that it was just 50 days ago?

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They were still talking about Jesus being crucified, the sun being darkened, there being an earthquake, the temple curtain being torn, all of that.

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Supernaturally, the people were still discussing these things and didn't yet know what these things meant until Peter comes explaining to them all of this is sign of judgment.

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It's a sign of judgment coming upon Israel. And God is going to be taking the promises that were going to be given to the sons of Abraham and he's going to give them to another people instead, a foreign people, those who will call upon the name of the

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Lord. Therefore, we have in verse 21, it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the

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Lord shall be saved. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, not just people from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, but to the ends of the earth.

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Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whoever does not know

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Christ will fall under this judgment and this judgment is going to continue for these 40 years that the

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Holy Spirit is demonstrating this power of being poured out on all flesh. And it will culminate, at least in this period, with the destruction of the temple in 70

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A .D., the Romans that will come upon Jerusalem and destroy it. And the temple will be no more and hasn't been ever since.

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For 2000 years, all of this conflict that we see that goes on in the Middle East, even to this day, this is by the providence of God that the temple should never be reconstructed because God doesn't dwell in temples made by hands.

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As the apostle Paul speaks at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17, we are the temple of the

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Holy Spirit. Whoever is a follower of Jesus, the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon us and we have

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God with us, Emmanuel, God dwelling within us through the

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Holy Spirit that he gave to us. Indeed, the judgment of God is coming upon the world. But all of us who are followers of Jesus Christ have nothing to fear of that day.

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May we continue to go out with the gospel so that all who hear it would believe and so be saved.

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We're going to stop there for today and pick up studying Peter's sermon at Pentecost beginning in verse 22 next week.

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Let's finish with prayer. Our heavenly father, we thank you for the gift of your son and the giving of your

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Holy Spirit. And so by the power of your spirit that is within us, may we have confidence in the gospel that we have heard that Jesus Christ came and died for our sins, rose again from the grave, ascended to the right hand of the father so that all who believe on his name, we have fellowship with God, forgiveness of sins and entrance into eternal life with you forever in your eternal kingdom.

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May we therefore know that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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We pray in his name. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

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Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.