Darris: Good morning, everyone. We are ready to get into the second chapter of Acts. And again, those of you that are online, I hope that you are benefiting from these classes. We have come to a point in the Book of Acts, where we are now at the beginning of the church, the first chapter of Acts established Christ's final words and his ascension and the selection of a successor to Judas. And now the work of the church is really ready to begin. If you will recall from the introductory material that we had when we were discussing the introductory material to the Book of Acts, one of the purposes that I gave for going into the Book of Acts, and there were seven different reasons to study the Book of Acts. But the first one was that it pictures or describes the continuing work of the resurrected Christ, and His disciples are in His church. And this is really where we get into this now with Chapter 2, as the day of Pentecost comes, giving of the Holy Spirit, that spirit being the Spirit of God, it is the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of Christ. It's not a third person of the Godhead, according to a Trinitarian construct, but it is the very essence of God, the family of God, of the Father and Christ.

And so we are now seeing the pouring out of that spirit as we will get into Chapter 2, which gets us really into the means by which the work of the church is done. Notice, I use the term is, in the present tense, because it's the continuing work of the church. It's not something that just was done, as we read about it in the Book of Acts, it's been engaged and been working ever since that time. And it continues today through the church, through the disciples, and those who are called to do that. So, let's go ahead and jump right into Chapter 1. I doubt we will finish all of it here in this particular session, there's quite a bit here to discuss.

Acts 2:1 "When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place."

Remember, Christ had told them in Chapter 1, "Wait in Jerusalem until Pentecost." And so we have come now to that holy day, it is a festival, it is detailed back in the Leviticus Chapter 23, the one chapter in the Book of Leviticus that details all of the holy days. And in Leviticus 23, we have a very clear counting of how we arrived at the day of Pentecost, which in itself is another study, we'll do that when we come to the festivals. We'll kind of talk more in detail about that.

But Pentecost is counted 50 days from the morning after the Sabbath that falls within the Days of Unleavened Bread. And at that point, according to the law, in Leviticus 23, a sheaf of grain called a wave sheaf was cut, it was an early part of the harvest. And that sheaf, which was a bundle of stalks of grain bound together, brought into the temple or to the priest, and he in a special ceremony would make an offering with that before the altar, and that signified the beginning of the early harvest as a part of a unique ceremony. And it is from that event, that the counting toward the day of Pentecost commences and ends 50 days later. Pentecost merely is the Greek word meaning Count 50.

And so we have come to that point. It is 10 days following Christ's ascension, which is, again, recounted in Chapter 1, and His final bodily appearance before the disciples, as we have it in the Book of Acts. And so they are in Jerusalem. Now, where are they in Jerusalem? I can go over here and pull up the Jerusalem map a little bit, just to give you a little bit of an idea. This is the Kidron Valley, Hinnom Valley. And this is the Temple Mount complex of Jerusalem at the time of David and Solomon, this is Jerusalem more at the time of Jesus. And the Temple Mount here is right here. And somewhere over in this general area is where the room, sometimes called more by tradition today, the Upper Room is located, and it is the site of the disciples with Christ on the night before He was crucified. And if you go to Jerusalem today, there is a traditional site in the location of what they call Mount Zion, and Mount Zion is a part of the Old City of Jerusalem. Over in this area here, this is the Temple Mount. And that's an important to keep in mind. I'm probably going to give you a whole class about the temple, I'm thinking, as we get into Chapter 3, either next week or the week after, and talk about the temple to orient you to that.

But the site where they are now gathered is over here. Now, what is happening in Jerusalem at this time, is the festival Pentecost. And it's one of the three festivals that are seasons that are mentioned in Deuteronomy 16, where it says, "Three times in a year, you will bring an offering, and that is unleavened bread, the Feast of Weeks, and that the Feast of Ingathering in the fall." Those are the three seasons within which the seven festivals are located. We're at that middle point here at Pentecost. And each of these, in the time of the apostles, were what they called pilgrimage feasts. And that is, people would come in from all over the Roman world at that time. Jews would come to Jerusalem, and they estimate the size of the city would swell several 100,000 times, maybe up to a million people would be in the environs of Jerusalem during the festival locations. And at this particular time, you can well imagine they probably had a few more than normal.

Remember, 50 days earlier, 50-plus days earlier, was the crucifixion. And with that event, the sun turning dark midday, 500 people coming out of the tombs, an earthquake, the veil of the temple being rent. There were a number of magnificent significant signs that took place at the moment of Christ's death. All of this was buzzed and noised about of the pilgrims and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And I would imagine that a lot of people stayed from the Spring Festival to the time of Pentecost, wondering what will happen next. And as rumors began to fly at about an empty tomb, what did that mean? And so we could have even more people than they would have normally held here at the time of Pentecost. And so the disciples are here, and the streets are full, the temple is full. And on the morning of Pentecost, then something happens and the disciples are gathered.

Now, this is the interior of what is the traditional Upper Room in Jerusalem. I have never seen this in my trips to Jerusalem. But it is one of the items, one of the stops, it's on the typical tourist route. But it's located in the Old City. And it is a traditional site. Nobody really knows. But it can give you perhaps a little bit of an idea, even though the room that they were in didn't look like this. This is a room that has a particular type of architecture. And it was built as it is now back in the Crusader days, 13th, 14th century. And so it's quite old, but it's not as old as the first century in the time of the apostles. Is it the site or on the site? I don't know. And the tradition in Jerusalem builds a lot of things, whether it's the site for Christ's death or His burial. There are traditional sites, there's more than one site for those. We'll talk about that at another time.

There are certain sites that we do know, such as where the temple was, such as the Valley of Kidron, the Mount of Olives, and the general location of the city itself. We know, and can have a certainty with a lot, but not every scene from the gospels in the New Testament can we be accurate about. We can be pretty accurate about the environs of the temple itself, but this location of the Upper Room is one we necessarily don't know, for sure. But it can at least give you some type of an idea of a large room in which they were gathered. They just probably kept, what we might call the lease on it or the rent paid until this particular moment. And this is where they would have been gathered.

Acts 2:2-3 "Suddenly, there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting." And so it is explicitly said that they were in a house, in a large enough room in the house for them all to be gathered when this sound of a mighty rushing wind filled the house. "And there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and one set upon each of them."

Now, let's unpack what we're told here. Most of the commentators realize the language is saying is that it doesn't have to be a literal wind that would have blown the hair back and, you know, their clothes nearly off, but it was a sound as of a rushing wind. And it appeared to them divided tongues as of fire. And so it looked like fire, it sounded like wind. There was this great noise that appeared to them, and it was a manifestation, at least in visually and orally, that they experienced at this particular time. Now, maybe, maybe not, but they could have begun to think about the significance of this from any number of passages from the Old Testament. Back in Numbers Chapter 11, we find two servants, Eldad and Medad have the spirit rest upon Israel, at that time. If you turned to Ezekiel 37, and you see the vision of Ezekiel, the descriptions of the Holy Spirit there coming upon the beings that are resurrected in that vision of the valley of dry bones, would have been known to them and they would have understood that. One particular verse we might turn to over in Hebrews Chapter 12, I think, can give us a pretty good vision, as the writer of Hebrews calls upon something that speaks to the presence of God. In Hebrews 12, beginning in verse 18.

Hebrews 12:18-19 He says that, "You have not come to the mountain that may be touched, and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore."

This is a description of Mount Sinai and the giving of the law, back in Exodus as is brought here, and he goes on to show what we have come before. But mountain burning with fire, a sound of a trumpet, a voice of words, and a great commotion accompanied the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. Now, there's a tradition that giving of the law was on actually the day of Pentecost, talking about the law at Sinai, and that is a Jewish tradition. And we've kind of held to that in our years in the church.

And so there's a connection then that you could make to what is happening now on the day of Pentecost with the giving of the spirit, the beginning of the church, if what happened at Mount Sinai was the beginning of the covenant relationship between God and Israel, Israel being the Church of the Old Testament, as we're told, and now we have the spiritual church being birthed, if you will, or beginning. And we are now on the day of Pentecost, you would have a connection, if that's the case. But we also have a manifestations of the presence of God, the power of God, and with the sound of a mighty wind, and as the tongues of fire come down upon them. You want to keep this in mind, when we go through the Book of Revelation, it is filled with thunderings, and lightnings, and noises from the very throne of God, as we will see.

And I will make a point of bringing that out to you because I think it's some things...scenes that are maybe typically overlooked, as we read through the revelation trying to focus on prophetic items. And we may just skim over the things that are telling us about the majesty of the throne of God where all the action is. What happened here on Pentecost is of God, from God to His disciples, and it is a significant beginning. Though we will see in Acts two other occasions of the speaking with other languages. We will not see exactly as it happens here on Pentecost with a sound of like a wind or that of fire. And I don't know what we should make of that. We'll talk about those other two with Cornelius and his baptism, and the baptism of a group of disciples at the city of Ephesus.

But this is the beginning of the church. And it was a significant event over Jerusalem...within Jerusalem. This particular scene shows an unusual cloud formation that gives you a bit of a suggestion of the events on the day of Pentecost, you might see that gold dome right there in the bottom part of this. I've got my new pointer here and see if I can get it up there on the screen. Right? It doesn't show on the screen. See it right there? For some reason, can you see it on the screen? No, I can't either. Boy, my cat would have had a fun day trying to find that one up in the wall, and then it disappears. Do you ever use one of these with a cat? That's the greatest entertainment you can get into is run a cat around on the carpet with a pointer. Anyway, you'll see that gold dome about the center to the right of center, that's the Temple Mount, that's the Muslim mosque, Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. And that was where the temple stood. And we'll come to that location here as we move on through the chapter here. And so another thing to note here is that what it says at the end of verse 3.

Acts 2:3 "It sat on each of them."

Signifying that the giving of the Spirit is an individual matter, it went to each of them. And as we study about baptism, the receipt of God's Spirit, it is an individual matter between us and God, we have to repent, we are baptized. A minister lays hands upon you, God then gives you His Spirit. And repentance and joining to the spiritual body of Christ, it's an individual matter, signifying so many different things, but certainly our individual relationship with God, the beginning of a new life, and the work that is now to be done through the disciples. And it is upon all of the disciples here, at this particular time. And so, this speaks to the personal relationship that we have. Now, going on to verse 4.

Acts 2:4 "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."

Now, we can spend a few minutes on verse 4, this is an important verse to understand. What it is basically telling us is that they began to speak with other languages. That word tongues merely means a language. And it's a known language, as Latin was a known language, as Greek was a known language at the time, Aramean, and many, many others. So, it was a known language that they were speaking of. This particular verse and its multiple interpretations has given rise to even whole denominations of Christianity in the modern age, especially among those who are charismatic, speak in tongues, as a sign of the Spirit of God, what we call the Pentecostal movement. My mother sent me to a Pentecostal Sunday school for a short time as she was leaving the Methodist Church. And before she came into the Church of God, a friend of hers shamed her one day and said, "Well, you need to send these two kids, my sister and I, these little kids, they need to be in church," even though my mother had withdrawn from the Baptist or the Methodist Church.

So, we had a Pentecostal church just a few blocks down the street from us. So, my mother would send my sister and I down there for Sunday school. And I forgot, maybe a year or so, we attended this little Pentecostal Sunday school. And I still remember the songs I learned back there. Those are powerful things when you teach your kid a song about the Bible at that young age. But we never stayed for church. For some reason, my mom said, "When Sunday school's over, you come straight home." And so we would kind of sneak by the door as people were going into the church. And I didn't hang around long enough to see them speaking in tongues. And I get...sometimes I wished that I had peeked through the door or slipped into the back of the church and watched that. I've never seen it in person, just depictions of it and documentaries and movies. But the point is all of this has been done off of this verse.

And is typically these denominations are speaking charismatically or in languages with interpretations. This comes out of 1 Corinthians as well. And you'll get into all that study when you go through what was happening at Corinth. But for what we're seeing here, and actually, we have more information from this episode here in Acts 2 than really anything else to tell us really and give us a benchmark of understanding the matter of speaking in languages as it was used in the New Testament. And in this particular case, they spoke with other known languages, it was not unintelligible gibberish. And we see there was no interpretation given here.

When you study tongues in Corinthians, what was happening at Corinth, there was an interpretation, there was a different manifestation that was going on there. But in this particular case, there was no interpretation, they began to speak with the languages as the Spirit gave them utterance. And as we will see, in verse 6, when this sound occurred, the multitude came together and were confused because everyone heard them speak in his own language. So, verse 6 here tells us an important clue to connect back to verse 4, to understand what was happening. They were speaking in a known language. And the miracle was not only that the disciples were doing this, but also there was a miracle of a hearing, because these other people who were now beginning to witness this, are hearing it in their language. And, of course, they understand that. So, verse 5, let's go ahead and read that.

Acts 2:5 "There were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven."

And so, not only did Jerusalem have quite a mixed, diverse population, but keep in mind the pilgrims that were coming within. And so just to pause a little bit here before we go on to recognize what is happening here.

Acts 2:6 Tells us, "When this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, everyone heard."

Somewhere between verses 1 through 3, probably 4 as well, and what we then read about in verse 6, and the following verses, the disciples moved out of that room and moved into a more public area, very likely the area of the temple itself, and were in the open public areas where the other pilgrims were gathering on the day of Pentecost. Luke doesn't explicitly tell us that, but it has to be that that's what has happened for now them to be engaged with all these other dwellers at Jerusalem, and the other people who were there from other nations at this particular time.

And so, what do we make of this event and the disciples speaking in languages? They obviously knew that something big was happening, as it was impressed upon them. And they were now speaking in a way that they did not do before. This was all under God's direction. This was not something they had to linger and tarry over. In the Pentecostal circles, they have what they call tarry meetings, in other words, to tarry means to linger long or to wait long in a type of meeting. And through their prayer, through their singing, through their other motions, they kind of pray down the spirit. And some within their midst will suddenly be seized with a tongues, as they would call it, and start dancing, writhing on the floor, speaking in some type of unknown tongue, and that has to be interpreted, and this is what is done. It's a very emotional experience. And it is a very emotional religion. And it largely is looked upon as a sign of the Spirit working upon them. But it goes counter to what we read in Scripture about the fruits of God's Spirit.

In Galatians 5, we find what are really the signs of God's Spirit working in us, the fruits, and it's love, it's joy, it's peace, it's long-suffering, and a whole list of the fruits of the Spirit are given there. And they're not momentary, ecstatic, emotional states of mind being that we suddenly work up and are seized into without...in an uncontrollable way, to put on joy, to put on love. And faith and long-suffering are conscious decisions that we do through a life of prayer and a life of a relationship with God and using the Spirit of God to produce that within us over period of time, not in a moment in a worship service. And what we're seeing here is obviously, it's in a sense, a one-off event in that it was at Pentecost, it's the beginning of the church. And it's very significant. Another point to understand about what is happening here is this, this is often seen, and looked at, in contrast to what we read about back in Genesis 11 with the event at the Tower of Babel. What happened at the Tower of Babel, Sage? The languages were confused. Who confused the languages, Rhys, at the Tower of Babel?

Rhys: God did.

Darris: God did. He came down and He confused the language, if you look at that very carefully. And the peoples were scattered in that significant event back in Genesis. When we come to Pentecost, we have a matter of known languages now being gifted to the disciples, and it's being done by the Spirit, which is God. In a sense that it's the Spirit of God, it is the spirit of the Father's, the Spirit of Christ has come upon them. God has come down to them through His Spirit. And He is now performing this miracle of language through His disciples. But there's a different twist to it as opposed to what happened at Babel. Now, we have the beginning of the church. And the church now is going to take the message of the gospel to the nations, both Jew and Gentile or Israel and Gentile, all peoples. And it is to have a unifying effect to bring people together spiritually. And so Pentecost, what happens here in Acts 2 is seen as a contrast to what we read about at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, where there was division of peoples, now there's a uniting of peoples through the work of the Spirit, and the work of the church, and the gospel being preached. And what is being built now is a spiritual community within the church. So, let's go on to verse 7.

Acts 2:7 “These people who are witnessing this now are all amazed. And they marveled saying to one another, 'Look, are not all of these who speak Galileans?'"

This is a scene of the area of Galilee, of a region of the Jezreel Valley from ridge...from Nazareth looking out over the Jezreel Valley. And this is where the disciples had come from, certainly the 12, as they had been called by God, by Christ, and were known among the peoples here in Jerusalem. And they're seeing this. They knew them well enough to identify them, and they said, "They marveled at the erudite languages coming out of the mouths of Peter, John, Philip, and others whom they knew, and they also knew that they were Galileans." Now, what is being said here, and you have to know a little bit of the cultural background to make the connection, Galilee was looked upon as the backwoods of Israel at the time. It was the sticks, as we use that term, right? It was the...shall I say, the South from the perspective, let's say, of a northerner, a rural area, uneducated, unlearned, not that the South is today. I've already got myself in trouble, a lot of fine universities and fine people from the south.

But Galilee was looked upon as was not Jerusalem, was not the urban, intellectual, religious, political, governmental center of the nation. It was small towns and villages of a few dozen people, a couple of 100 or so scattered around, they were fishermen, they worked the land, there was a different people. And they did have synagogues. They were very intelligent people in Galilee. And they did know their Bible, but they didn't have the rabbinical schools. And they were looked upon by those in Jerusalem as a little bit lesser intelligence. And that's what's being said here about them that, look, are they not Galileans? They hadn't been schooled in all of those languages. And that's true. That's not to put them down. But now it goes on in verse 8.

Acts 2:8 "How is it that we hear, each on our own language in which we were born?"

And then it goes on in verses 9, 10, and 11, to describe the groupings of people who were in Jerusalem at the Pentecost Festival. And this map, you have...it's on your handout here, is a map of the region that shows all of these specific locations mentioned here in Acts 9, 10, and 11, and where they came from on this particular map. And notice this.

Acts 2:9 It says, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia."

And you'll see, to the right of the map, Partha, Media, and Elam, down there on the bottom, those were the regions that are referenced here in verse 9. And that's the general area of Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, and the two rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates. You'll know that, you'll be able to identify that on a map before it's all over with this year, so, but that is the area of Mesopotamia. And there were Jews from that area in Jerusalem at this time. That's what's being said here. Keep in mind that with the fall of Jerusalem, beginning with the captivity of Daniel that we've been studying, Nebuchadnezzar, the final collapse later, the Jews were taken to Babylon. And that begins a scattering and a wandering of the Jews. When the Jews, 70 years later returned to Jerusalem, not every Jew went back to Jerusalem, many stayed in Babylon. And by 70 years, you're talking essentially two generations of time. You have to realize that with the release under the Persian, Cyrus the Great, these Jews probably decided that Jerusalem was not in their future anymore. That was where their grandparents had been.

And third generation removed now, they had families. And so they began to, not only stay in Babylon, but they began to move out into these other regions. And that's why, as we will move through here, the scattering goes throughout the Mesopotamian area, the area of Asia Minor, and the Mediterranean world. Look at verse 10. Well, the latter part of verse 9.

Acts 2:9 “Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia.”

That moves you into what is called Asia Minor today, that's Turkey. You see Cappadocia, right in the center of the map there, and Pontus, and the general region of Asia, which would be the western part of that area.

Acts 2:10 And then it mentions “Phrygia, Pamphylia.” Those are two kind of south-central areas of Asia Minor, again, today, what is Turkey that almost like a peninsula that juts out there from the Mesopotamian area. And then it mentions Egypt, everybody knows where Egypt is, I hope, down to the south here, and the Nile area. And then parts of Libya moving to the west. “Adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, all the way out to the east there, both Jews and proselytes.”

All right. So, we have regions, and then Cretans and Arabs are mentioned in verse 11. It says, "We hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God." And so this map gives you at least a view of people all the way from Rome, out into the further Western areas where there were Jews. These were not necessarily Roman citizens that came for the festival of Pentecost, there would be no reason for them to do that.

But here's the significant part of what you're looking at here. When you look at this map, and you look at these regions, these are the regions to which the gospel then begins to go. And we will see recordings of that as we go through the Book of Acts, particularly in Asia, where Phrygia and Pamphylia and Asia are mentioned. That's where Paul will go. He will go specifically to Phrygia and Pamphylia.

Paul was from the region of Pamphylia, the city of Tarsus, which was in the region of Pamphylia. And he will go to Phrygia and Asia where we have the churches of Ephesus and Laodicea, Colossae, Hierapolis mentioned in the New Testament. But other disciples, the apostles went to these other areas of Egypt and then to the east in Media and Parthia. And when they get there, there are Jewish communities, and to which they will go, just as we will see Paul will do. And that forms then the basis of congregations of the church that we will read about in Acts. But keep in mind that that happened throughout the area, the regions that are mentioned here. So, these people have come in on Pentecost, and they witnessed this event, and they will go back and they will talk about it.

And so when the gospel goes to those areas, in the years to come, there will be some fertile ground already there, a little bit of groundwork that we could expect was done, so that Paul, and Peter, and Andrew, and others who go to these areas, not only have a Jewish audience to talk to in a synagogue, but some Jews who actually were present on this day of Pentecost, and witness this event and knew that this message was important and that it was something that needed to be listened to. And some will even respond to it, and be converted, and receive this the same spirit that is received here by these.

Acts 2:12-13 "So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'Whatever could this mean?' Others mocking said, 'They are full of new wine,'" meaning they're drunk.

They thought that the excitement and they were probably moving around. Were they dancing? You know, probably, in some way, that, again, not an out-of-control type of weird thing. But when you read about David dancing before the ark when he brought it into Jerusalem, I don't know what his moves were, he was probably busting some good moves. But it was an expression of joy, and it was an accepted part of one's religious expression. And so as they're looking at the people here, they see that there's an excitement about them. And people are looking, what does it all mean? And they dismiss it, which is typical human nature, "Well, they're just drunk." But this is where Peter stands up in verse 14, with the 11.

Acts 2:14 "And he raised his voice, and he said to them, 'Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words, for these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.'"

That would be 9:00 in the morning. By the reckoning of time, it's a Roman counting from sunrise that was counted from 6:00 a.m. And then the third hour would be 9:00 a.m. And so Peter now begins to talk to the crowd. And he is somewhere here in this temple area. This is a scale model of the first-century Jerusalem, the entire city, and the temples especially, that historians and archaeologists feel this is a pretty accurate depiction of what that temple and its area would have looked like. And somewhere in these public courts around the temple is very likely where this took place.

The preaching of Peter now, and the activities of the church we're going to read about in the next few chapters center right here. And even their trials before the Sanhedrin are right here as well. And so this now begins the first of many sermons in the Book of Acts, and it's a synopsis of the sermon, it's not every word that Peter spoke that day, as we will see when we go through it. But it is a sermon that leads to a repentance of thousands of people and the beginning of the church. We will leave it at that point, it's a good place to just pause here. I'm surprised I made it through as many verses as I did, through verse 14. As we got to this point, we got a little bit of a late start here this morning. So, we will pick this up in the next class, beginning in verse 16 and Peter's sermon explaining what is happening, what it all means, and its call to repentance.