The Spirit of Truth

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Date: Pentecost Sunday Text: John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15 www.kongsvingerchurch.org

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern
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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.
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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the 15th and 16th chapters.
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Glory to you, O Lord. Jesus said, When the
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Helper comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the
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Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.
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I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. Now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you ask,
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Where are you going? But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth.
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It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go,
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I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.
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Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer.
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Concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
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And when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority. But whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
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He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All the Father has is mine, therefore
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I said that he will take what is mine, and he will declare it to you. This is the gospel of the
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Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Brothers and sisters, today is the
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Feast of Pentecost. And I don't know if you've noticed or checked the social media lately, but we Lutherans get a bad rap.
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We get accused of putting God, the Holy Spirit, in a box. Have you ever heard anyone say that? You Lutherans, you believe in Father, Son, and Holy Bible.
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And you sit there and go, what are you talking about? We have a rich theology and doctrine of the
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Holy Spirit. But the issue is, is that we are at odds with much of the teaching that is out there regarding the
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Holy Spirit. And the reason being is because, well, because of the Pentecostal movement. Pentecostal movement claims that there is a second baptism, baptism of the
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Holy Spirit, as evidenced by speaking in tongues. But scripture is clear in Ephesians 4. There is one
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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.
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And so as a result of this, this confusion that happens, and by the way, scripture is also clear, not everybody has the gift of tongues, that is improper.
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We have to point people back to what Christ said the
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Holy Spirit would be doing. The Holy Spirit, when he comes upon us, does not cause us to bark like a dog or cluck like a chicken or convulse uncontrollably on the ground.
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By the way, the only instances of people convulsing uncontrollably on the ground in scripture are those who are manifesting a demon.
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Instead, the Holy Spirit does something far more important, and one that is not very popular, and we have to take this into consideration.
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Because I don't know if you've ever heard some of today's modern prophets. Unfortunately, my other job requires me to listen to a lot of these yahoos.
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And they claim things like this. You can always tell when God the Holy Spirit is speaking, because God would never say anything to you that would hurt your feelings.
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Bah humbug, that's not even close to true. So let's consider the words of our
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Lord in our gospel text before we take a look at what happened on the day of Pentecost.
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Here's what Jesus says to his disciples. But when the helper comes, whom I will send to you from the
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Father, the spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
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Let's consider these words for a second here. Important word, helper, the Greek word perikle, that's a pretty good translation.
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The Holy Spirit is one who helps us. He helps us and gives us strength to mortify our sinful flesh.
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He's also the one who makes us alive in Christ. But you're gonna note here an important modifier regarding the
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Holy Spirit. He is the spirit of truth, truth. He is not the spirit of error, nor is he the spirit of lies.
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And you'll note that throughout the scriptures, it is absolutely consistent that no one ever said,
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I feel like the Lord is telling me that maybe kinda sorta right now, that we might be in a season and there'll be sudden leads and breakthroughs.
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Nonsense, absolute nonsense. Everybody who spoke by the
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Holy Spirit in both the Old and the New Testament said, thus saith the Lord.
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And you'll remember that God commanded Ezekiel, thus declares the
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Lord. And that wonderful passage we read in the Old Testament today about the valley of dry bones, just a little aside, it has nothing to do with God resurrecting your dead dreams.
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It has nothing to do with that at all. The promise there in the text, he's going to raise your dead carcass on the last day.
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If you are not alive when Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, and you happen to be snoozing outside there in our graveyard, well then know this, that when
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Jesus comes back, as Ezekiel prophesied, you will be raised from the dead.
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That's what that passage is about. And so I would note, there's a lot of error. There are a lot of lies.
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There is a lot of false doctrine that is pinned on the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit gets a bad rap today.
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But Jesus makes it clear, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. And he will bear witness about me.
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So you'll note the Holy Spirit, one of my seminary profs, and I've heard other people say this along the way of my journey as a
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Christian, they point out that the Holy Spirit, he is the PR guy for Jesus.
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That's who he is. He's always telling people about Jesus. Have you heard about Jesus?
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Hi Holy Spirit, what would you like to tell me today? Can I tell you about Jesus and what he's done for you? Have you heard about the testimony of Jesus?
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How he is sinless in your place. How he bore your sins on the cross.
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How he is the one who reconciles you to the Father. You'll note that the Holy Spirit is there emboldening the apostles to preach about Jesus.
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And I find it fascinating that many people who claim to have the Holy Spirit and operate in signs and wonders, you know who they preach about?
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Themselves. It's really, really weird. The real Holy Spirit is obsessed with pointing us to Christ and bearing witness about him.
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Jesus continues, and you also will bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning.
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And so you'll note that here you have the apostles, Christ saying that they will bear witness about Christ.
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In the same phrase, he talks about how the Holy Spirit will bear witness about Christ. And when you read the
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New Testament, who do the apostles seem to be obsessed with and who do they want to tell you about?
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Jesus. Right, that's kind of the point. So I've said these things to you, that when their hour comes, you may remember what
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I told you. And then Jesus goes on to say this, that when the helper comes, that he will send, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.
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Convict the world regarding sin? Uh -oh, that might make you feel negative thoughts.
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But the thing is, those negative thoughts are true. When the Holy Spirit works through the law of God, he will convict you of your sin and you will say to yourself, and you will say to God, Lord, I am a sinner and I deserve only your wrath and your punishment.
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But the Holy Spirit also convicts us regarding righteousness. Whose righteousness? Yours? No, the righteousness of Christ given to you as a gift by grace through faith.
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So the Holy Spirit will convict you of your sin but also convict you regarding the truth that Christ has bled and died for your sins, every single one of them.
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And so you'll note, there are some negative feelings that come along with the real work of the
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Holy Spirit. And we see this throughout scripture. We also see it on the day of Pentecost.
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Now it's not in our Pentecost reading today because what they've done is they've taken Peter's sermon and chopped it into two pieces.
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Today we get part one. But in part two next week on Trinity Sunday, we see that after Peter has preached his great
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Pentecost sermon, it says the people were cut to the heart and they cried out, brothers, what shall we do?
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And what does Peter say? Repent, repent. Boy, that's a word that's become like a four -letter word today.
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How many times have you heard preachers preach on repentance? It's become very, well, not popular because it's so negative.
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I think about Paula White. A couple years ago, she famously sent out on her social media, any spirit that would tell you to deny yourself is a demonic spirit.
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Full quote, Paula White. Any spirit that would tell you to deny yourself is a demonic spirit.
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Well, I would note that Christ is the one who says anyone who would follow me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
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So you'll note, if you're here to feel good about yourself, that's not gonna work. Because what's my job?
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My job's to tell you that you're a sinner. So am I, that's why I wear black and that's why I'm covered up.
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Because, well, this pastor's a sinner just like you and like me. But all of that being said, so he says the
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Holy Spirit's gonna convict the world of sin and judgment, concerning righteousness, and he says when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority.
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And you'll note here, Christ is promising his disciples, who are the apostles, that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth.
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That's why Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter three that all scripture is theonoustos.
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What an interesting word, theo, God. Noustos, coming from the word pneuma, spirit.
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That it's God -breathed, that it's God -inspirated. And so we know that the Holy Spirit guided the apostles into all truth.
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And you know what they did? They wrote it down for us. And they wrote it down for us so that we also can be, well, trained, instructed, rebuked, and equipped through the word of truth.
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The word of truth that the Holy Spirit caused the apostles to write for us. And it's in this regard,
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I would like to say something to James. As is tradition, the pastor always gets to choose a verse or two for your confirmation.
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And this is a passage that, the idea here is that having spent two years with you, and by the way, you were a fantastic student,
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I want everybody to know that, that these verses need to follow you the rest of your life.
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And so we've made sure that it'll be hard for you to forget what they are. But the verses
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I've chosen for you are from the Gospel of John chapter eight, verses 31 and 32.
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Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
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Let these words be a compass point for you. True north is in the words of Christ, and they are found in the scripture.
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If ever you find yourself in a situation where the devil, the world, or your own sinful flesh has gotten the better of you, and you're a little bit lost or discombobulated, come back to this verse.
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Abide in Christ's words. His word is truth, and they will set you free.
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These words are important for us because each and every one of us, we are buffeted daily, weekly.
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I myself am, by temptations that at times will feel overwhelming. Right now your life is a little simple because, well, you're still a kid.
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But the days are coming when you're gonna have to pay bills, you're gonna have to go to work, you're gonna have to deal with office politics, you're gonna have major homework assignments, you're gonna be tired and exhausted, and temptations will come your way.
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The devil will not leave you alone, I promise you that, because scripture says that. So know this, abide in the words of Christ, and when you do, you will know the truth, and the truth will always set you free, because that's what his word does.
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So, coming back then to the sermon, that was an aside, an important one.
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Christ has made it clear that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. He will glorify me.
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He will take what is mine and declare it to you, and all that the Father has is mine. Therefore I said that he will take what is mine, and he will declare it to you.
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The work of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Christ. And in that regard then, we consider Acts chapter two, verses one to 21, the day of Pentecost.
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And if you're not sure what Pentecost is, what's that name, why Pentecost? Well, it's a feast that was appointed in the
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Mosaic Covenant to be celebrated at the 50 -day mark after the
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Passover. So it's 50 days since the Passover, 50 days since Christ's death and resurrection, and subsequently he is ascended into heaven.
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And so Pentecost in the Mosaic Covenant was an interesting feast. People were required to show up in Jerusalem for it, and the big thing that happened seems kind of like not that big of a thing.
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What they did is they took some sheaves of wheat, which were like the first fruits of the wheat harvest.
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They had two harvests in Israel back in the day. And so they'd take wheat sheaves from the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and they would wave them before the
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Lord. That's it? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Oh, that's great.
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Okay, but consider the implications here. The Lord knew, and the Lord set it up that these
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Old Testament festivals were always pointing to Christ or pointing to a reality that he would fulfill.
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And so Christ is the one who chose to send the Holy Spirit on the day that he sent him. It could have come on any day, but he came on Pentecost, the celebration of the first fruits of the harvest.
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Oh, wait a second. Isn't the kicking off of the church with the Holy Spirit and the proclamation of the gospel kind of like the first fruits of the harvest?
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Indeed, it is. In fact, Jesus always and again refers to the day of judgment in terms of harvest, of separating of wheat from chaff.
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And so here we have the kicking off of the harvest of the end of the days. And the people who heard Peter preach on that day, they were the first fruits.
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They were the initial sheave of the wheat that Christ would gather into his barn.
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And know this then, that God the Holy Spirit wills for you to be saved as well. And so this sermon that Peter preached comes across the pages of time and reaches our ears and challenges us and comforts us as well.
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And so when Pentecost arrived, the disciples were all together in one place. I like the fact that some of the older translations said they were all in one accord, which means they drove a
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Honda. But I know, I write my own material. Yeah, I know
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I've achieved my objective when Wayne Cleven shakes his head. Anyway, 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 a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
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And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance.
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An important note here is that this text is gonna take great pains to make it clear that tongues is not gibberish, that these are actual human languages.
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And this is a fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah chapter 28 where God said that there would be a sign given to, well, stiff -necked and unbelieving
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Israel. He says that even if somebody were to preach to you in other languages, you still wouldn't repent.
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This was a sign, if you would. This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14 that tongues are a sign to unbelievers.
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And so here they're going to hear the wonders of God proclaimed to them in actual human languages.
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This isn't the nonsense that we see in so many churches where somebody gets up and said, coulda bought a Hyundai, shoulda bought a
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Kia. That ain't tongues, that's gibberish. There's a big difference between the two.
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So the word dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound, the multitude came together.
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They were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own, and here the Greek uses a synonym for glosa, tongues, and it's dialectos, it means language.
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And that's what they heard. They were amazed, they were astonished, and they're saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
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Little bit of a historical aside here. Galileans back in the day were not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
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I'm just saying, okay? These were salty people of the earth, and they didn't graduate from high school, maybe junior high at best.
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I mean, that's kind of what we're talking about. And so these are folks that were not known for purchasing the
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Rosetta Stone app and studying other languages, and that's part of the sign, if you would.
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And so are they not Galileans? How is it that we hear them, each in his own native language, dialectos, again in the
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Greek, and now we hear the languages that were spoken, the languages of the Parthenians and the Medes, the
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Elamites, the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both
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Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.
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What was the Holy Spirit doing? Pointing people to Jesus. That's exactly what was going on.
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So they were all amazed. They were perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean? But others mocked and said, they are filled with new wine.
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Now, a little bit of a note. Even though Galileans are salty people of the earth, they have standards when it comes to drinking.
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Nine in the morning, still too early. Maybe one in the afternoon or five, who knows? But it's scandalous and slanderous to accuse them of being drunk so early in the morning.
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So Peter, standing with the 11, he lifted up his voice and he addressed them. 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 men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it's only the third hour of the day.
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Even we have standards, right? But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel.
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And then Peter gives us a Holy Spirit -inspired interpretation of Joel's prophecy.
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And you'll note that he's filled with the Holy Spirit here. He says, and this is the fulfillment of it. In the last days, it shall be,
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God declares, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Up to this point, the
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Holy Spirit was coming as kind of a private thing among people who were genetically descendants of Abraham.
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Those were the ones who received the Holy Spirit, who received the prophetic utterances, who wrote the Old Testament for us.
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But now, what has Christ said? Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And you'll note that the Holy Spirit is no longer merely for people who are the descendants of Abraham.
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Instead, the Holy Spirit is for all people. All people brought to penitence and faith in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.
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And so he says, because this is the fulfillment of this, as Joel said, your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams.
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Even on male servants and female servants, it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, the
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Holy Spirit is for all who believe in Christ. And in those days, I will pour out my spirit and they will prophesy.
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And then I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs in 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. Wait a second, didn't that happen just 50 days prior to Pentecost when
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Christ was hanging on the cross? And that's kind of the point, isn't it? You see, there was a sign that preceded this and that was the three hours of darkness that Jesus hung, suffering, bleeding, dying, languishing under the wrath of God for you and for me so that we can be forgiven, pardoned and reconciled.
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You see, it's all about Jesus. God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him, that you might be saved.
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And so you'll note, there was a sign of the sun turning to darkness while Christ bled and died for your sins and mine.
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And before the great day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day, and then here's where we'll leave off with part one of Peter's great sermon on the day of Pentecost.
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And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
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Everyone, you, me, doesn't matter if you're Norwegian or Polish, Asian, Mexican, doesn't matter what your genetic descent is.
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Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Why? Because Christ became sin by taking your sin upon himself in order to reconcile you to the
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Father. So though your sins be as scarlet, and they are, though your sins be horrible and well worthy of damnation, and they are,
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Christ has stood in your place and suffered so that you can live. The Holy Spirit wants you to hear about Jesus today.
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And so Jesus you will hear about. Because even the prophets prophesied of him. It shall come to pass all who call upon the name of Jesus will be saved.
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So let us thank God for the Holy Spirit who is our helper, who convicts us of our sin, convicts us regarding the righteousness of Christ, convicts us regarding the coming judgment, but also helps us to bear the fruit of the
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Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit isn't being out of control or drunk, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self -control.
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You see the Holy Spirit is everything. And the Holy Spirit points us to Christ. The Holy Spirit gives us the power that we need to mortify our sinful flesh so that daily we can rise to the good works that Christ has prepared for us to do.
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What an amazing gift the Holy Spirit is. And that's what Christ called it, a gift.
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And that's who he is, he's a gift, he's our helper, he's our paraclete, he's our convictor, and he's also the one who assures us that we are forgiven.
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Ah, the Holy Spirit, we definitely believe in him. And no, he's not in a box.
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He's here today, pointing you to Christ. In the name of Jesus, amen.
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