We're in a special time in the scriptures where some big things were happening. It's not Pentecost Sunday today, that's in a few weeks, but today we're looking over what happened on the day of Pentecost in the Scriptures. And so if you'll turn in your scriptures with me to Acts, chapter two, we're going to read verses 37 through 47.

And although this doesn't talk about the moment that the Holy Spirit showed up, this is talking about what happened in the aftermath of that. Peter had just preached quite the sermon and the people had a response to it. There should always be a response to the sermon. That response in you on any given day might be. That was great.

It didn't really change me today. Okay. It wasn't for you directly today. However, there's something that, as you process that and put it deep inside your heart, that someday God will bring that to your mind and say, remember that time where you heard this? I had you hear that because I wanted you to be prepared for this day.

There might be a response that you have that says, you know what? That's a good reminder of something God's been telling me and he's confirming within me that I need to be serious in this part of my life. And it just might be that your response is like, these people here. Let's read in verse 37, when the people heard this, they. I love this translation.

It says they were acutely distressed. The guy that wrote this book was a doctor, Luke. Luke wrote this. He wrote the Gospel of Luke and he wrote the book of Acts. And he was a medical doctor.

And although I'm sure in practice it was quite a bit different in his day than medical field is now. There's a word that he used that the translators of this one, which is called the net, they said, acutely distressed. It sounds like a medical diagnosis, doesn't it? The people were acutely distressed. Some other versions might say they were cut to the heart.

It's, it's, it's cutting in deep. This isn't surface level stuff that Peter was talking about. These people were cut to the heart. They're acutely distressed. And so they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what should we do?

That's their response to the sermon. That's great. You know, sometimes I preach and then later on I'll think, I wish I would have given them a little bit more. Like, where the rubber meets the road. Like, how do I put this into practice?

What must we do by the Way. We have a Sunday school class that meets after service in the discipleship place. And the purpose of that is to dig into the things that we talk about that don't necessarily make it into the sermon, but it's the outflow of that the what must we do Part, or what are the things that I didn't quite understand. That's what we talk about. And so they said, what should we do, brothers?

Peter said to them, verse 38, repent each of you and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And, oh, this is great. You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God is calling to himself. With many other words, He, Peter testified and exhorted them, saying, save yourselves from this wicked and perverse generation. So those who accepted his message were baptized, and about 3,000 people were added that day.

They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching. Listen, there's four things here. The apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Reverential awe came over everyone, and many wonders and miraculous signs came about. By the apostles.

All those who believed were together, and they held everything in common. They began selling their property and possessions and distributing the proceeds to everyone as anyone had need. Every day they continued to gather together by common consent in the temple courts, breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and sincere hearts and humble hearts, praising God and having the favor of all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number every day, those who were being saved.

Jesus, as we looked over the last couple weeks, had risen from the grave. And for 40 days he was with his disciples. He's with these believers in him and Matthew. In the Gospel of Matthew, it says that there were even some who didn't yet believe. Isn't it great?

These were people that God knew, that Jesus knew that one day they would come to full belief and that they would be serving him in the manner and capacity for which he had created them. But as of that moment, they still struggled with belief. There's people today that are struggling with believing in God. Maybe some of you sitting right here, you're like, I'm not sure about all of this. There's questions that I have.

And I tell you what, I love trying to answer some of those questions and help you walk through them. I can't answer all of them. I can't. Like, I can't be there on every single one of Those and get you to a place where you're convinced of it and convicted of the truth of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. But yet there will come a day when you stay with it that you say, I do believe.

There's. There's objections that I still have. Can I. Can I confess something to you as your pastor? There are things that I read in Scripture that I'm still like, I don't understand this.

I'm not sure about it. Like, I'm just. I'm not. Like, it's not that I don't trust God. It's not that I don't believe the word of God.

There's just things where I'm like, I don't have an understanding of that yet. And so I put that in the column over here where it says, like, I sure want an answer on this. Like, I'd love an explanation for this. Amen.

So keep studying, keep digging. Stay true to Christ, and he begins to reveal those things to you. What he did was he worked with the disciples, even those who didn't yet believe. He works with them. And he says, I'm giving you a mission.

We call it the Great Commission. He commissioned them to work together to spread the gospel, the good news, wherever they went, throughout the whole world. That was their job. And he didn't just give it to that generation, that group that is passed on from generation to generation of believers. So if you're walking with Christ, if you're a believer, a Christian, if you've been born again, your job that Christ has given you is to share the good news with others.

Now, Jesus had spent those 40 days with them. We looked at this a couple weeks ago. He taught them several things. He corrected bad doctrine that they have. A lot of people in church today say, let's not worry about doctrine.

Let's just preach love. Let's just preach about Jesus. And yes, we should do that. But doctrine matters. The way that we teach matters.

The things that we teach, that we believe, the things that we sing. It matters that we get it right. And so Jesus corrected some bad theology, some bad doctrine that the disciples had. He taught them about the coming Holy Spirit. He even, it says, breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit.

Now, that wasn't what happened at Pentecost. That was different. That was where the Holy Spirit comes. And when there's 120 believers in one place and the Holy Spirit shows up, it's loud. It sounds like a rushing wind.

There's tongues of fire. It says that separate and land on each of them and didn't even catch their hair on fire, you know, like, it's great, and it's clearly something supernatural happening here. The whole place is shaking with the power of the Holy Spirit. And all of a sudden, these people start proclaiming the good news of Jesus in different languages. And there's people there that had traveled from all over the Roman Empire.

They were Jewish people that had traveled in. And as they traveled in to come to this festival, they. It was called the Feast of Weeks, or the Pentecost. And as they'd show up to this to worship God in the way that they had been doing throughout all of their ancestors, all the way back to the Exodus out of Egypt, as they had been celebrating this festival that God had given them in that time in the wilderness, when he said, there's three festivals I want you to attend every year, this was one of them. They actually had seven festivals every year, but there were three that he says, you have to show up to these.

And so if you were a Jew that had moved away from Jerusalem and the land of Judea and you'd gone to a far flung place, they called that the Diaspora, the dispersion. If you were part of the Diaspora, you still were required. Not that everybody always did it, you know, like, there's some times where it's like, hey, you know, we say, like, show up to church every week, and you're like, but, you know, there's other stuff that's more important. I'm going to do that today, and maybe I'll see you next week. Okay, fine.

There were people that had that mentality then, too. You're not special. They did it, too. So the people, though, they show up and they show up to this Pentecost festival, this big festival that they would have. And it was a long festival.

It was like seven days long. And so sometimes when people celebrate, they celebrate a little bit too much, if you catch my drift. Well, these people, they're from all over the place. They speak different languages. There's at least a dozen places that are mentioned that people came from.

And so at least a dozen different languages they celebrated. But it's believed that they represented 70 different people groups that had scattered around the world. This goes back to the table of nations in Genesis 10. It's one of those things that usually skip over when you're reading, because it's like this guy had this kid and he had these kids, and the people that came from them was this people group. And it totaled 70 different ones.

There's Some, like, Bible nerd information for you there. But there's this table of nations, 70 different nations. And it's believed that the people of God, the Jewish diaspora, had gone out amongst all these 70 nations. So that when they show up, it represents all the nations of the world being present. And they're all hearing the gospel at one time in their own native languages because the Holy Spirit gave them the power to do that.

Now, some of them were, like, skeptical, like, what's going on? How are they able to do this? And they said they celebrated too much. They've had too much to drink. Now Peter gets up and he's like, okay, let me tell you what's going on.

He says, these men, they're not drunk. Like, you're thinking. That's not the answer. First of all, has anybody ever seen anybody get more intelligent as they drink? They actually say whatever's in their heart, you know, like, whatever's on their mind that comes out.

Because their ability to, like, limit that, their inhibition is gone. And they just say whatever they're thinking. And so Peter's like, no, folks, that's not what it is. He says, also, these men are Galileans, translation. Not known to be, like, the most educated people.

Like, these are more of, like, the rednecks, you know, like, these are. You know, they're smart in a lot of ways. Language isn't one of them. So Peter says, no, you know, and he says, Besides that, it's 9 o'. Clock.

In other words, like, all right, cool.

So he says, it's only nine o' clock in the morning. I guess that was a rationale that says, like, why would anybody be drinking yet? But I had a friend that said, you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning. So I don't know. But anyway, I've never done that.

So Peter, it just keeps going.

If it's a. Is it a sermon, we can put a mic up to it.

It's okay.

What Peter had preached, though, he preaches this sermon. He's like, these people aren't drunk. They're not. They haven't celebrated too hard and gotten into the sauce a little bit too much. No, that's not what the case is.

This is something that the prophet Joel talked about hundreds of years before, where God said he would pour out his spirit on all peoples. Old men, young men, men and women, children. They'll have spiritual dreams and visions. They'll speak to everyone like you're seeing here in this moment. And so he begins to Explain this.

And then he tells them about Jesus. And he says, you guys know about Jesus. You've heard about him. Some of you had heard him speak. And as.

As Jesus was in the hearts and minds of the people, something shifted and changed. And there was a group of people that voted to have him killed. And he says, now, I know you guys feel bad about that. And some of them were thinking, I wasn't even there. Yeah, but if you were there, you would have been part of that.

That's the point. Like, we would like to think from our vantage point as worshipers of Jesus Christ. We're like, jesus, I wouldn't have voted to kill you. I wouldn't have been in the crowd shouting, crucify, Crucify. I wouldn't have spit on you and mocked you.

Peter's point is, yes, you would have. You would have. If you had taken. If you had been there, you would have had the opportunity. You would have sided with those people as well.

So what is his response to them? You live in the midst of a wicked and evil generation. Now, these were the religious people. Like, you've heard preaching to the choir. Has anybody ever known, like, we don't have a choir, but, like, a choir member.

That was like, great. On Sundays, they show up to their practices, they come and they'd sing in a choir. You know, they looked the part, they sounded the part, but you bump into them throughout the week. They didn't live the part right. Sometimes a choir needs to be preached to.

Also.

Peter says, you guys think you're good. You think you're the good ones. You're here at the festival, you're obeying the law of God, you're doing the right stuff. You've showed up to the religious services. If we are translating to today, it would be like, you went to Sunday school, you came to church service, you know, you helped volunteer throughout the week doing something, or on Sunday morning, you know, you gave your offering, you did all the right stuff.

He says, but you're in the midst of a wicked and evil generation. And so he says, you need to save yourselves from this. Now, a little background without giving, like, their whole process of upbringing. I'll just sum it up with this. Jewish boys and girls, their entire education throughout what we would call kind of elementary and middle school, would have been religious education.

Learning the Bible, their Bible, what we call the Old Testament, they were learning the scriptures. That was it. Mostly the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. A couple of those are books you guys avoid, like numbers and Leviticus. You're like, I'm not reading that.

You know, like a couple chapters are fine. Some of them they get a little bit icky. Like I had to, I'm doing a Bible reading plan, like reading through the Bible in a year and it skips around to different sections. And we just went through this week the infectious skin diseases section and what you do with that and mold and things like that. It is quite disgusting.

I mean, I'm telling you, like God, I don't know why this is in here, but thank you for your word. You know, so anyway, but like I work through it, so I challenge you that you can too, you know, just muscle through those things because God's got something in there. The Bible tells us that every scripture is God breathed and useful. Useful for instruction and for learning and for conviction and all these things. So we read that because I might not need to know that today, but there's gonna be a day where God says, remember when you read that, that boring part, that table of nations in Genesis 10 that comes into play today, you know, so he's going to bring it to your mind.

One of the things the disciples were doing there was not just the 12 apostles, but the 120 believers. One of the things they were doing in this ten days after Jesus had ascended into heaven, but before the Holy Spirit had come down was they were studying the scriptures. Like what we're doing with this sermon companion guide, this series we're in, it's all about Jesus. We're pouring through the scriptures and seeing where all the scriptures have tied us into Jesus Christ. Where they showed his coming, where they talked about his life and ministry, where they talk about what he's doing through the work and ministry and presence of the Holy Spirit in the years after that.

And so what the disciples were doing was they were pouring through the scriptures. Even though they had their whole religious upbringing now everything has changed in their understanding in light of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the long awaited Messiah that the Jewish people had expected. Now that he has come to, they have to kind of re understand their interpretation of their scriptures based on the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Now they're looking through the scriptures and they're seeing Jesus Christ there.

So for 10 days there's 120 people gathered and maybe they come and go. Maybe they're all staying in the same room. If that was the case. That room smelled awful. Who's ever like chaperoned a junior high, like a lock in with junior high teenager, like boys and girls.

When those boys get in there, the worst Smell. I mean, oh, all night. They're running, they're jumping, they're playing basketball, they're playing outside. They get in one room because you get like, you know, 50 pizzas showed up, and they're all gonna devour some pizzas. That room smells nasty.

The van back to your church on the way home, the worst thing ever. You're hanging your head out the window like a dog. You know, just. I don't know if 120 people were in this upper room altogether, if they were coming and going. You know, I'm not sure how all that worked, but there was a continual gathering for 10 days.

And they were praying, but they were also studying the Scriptures. During that time, Peter did something really cool. Peter's the guy that kind of jumped to a lot of conclusions. But now, because Jesus has breathed on them the Holy Spirit in this interim time, for 10 days, they didn't have the fullness, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They didn't have all the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

They weren't able to speak in other languages yet, and any of that stuff, but they had the wisdom and knowledge and discernment that the Spirit gave. And because of that, they're reading the Psalms, and they're looking at psalms as prophecy. Some of you read it as poetry. It fits that category. But the Psalms are telling us things about God.

They're telling us things that God wants you to know for your life. They're telling us things about Jesus Christ. And so as they're reading them, Peter sees some stuff in there, the others. And Peter brings it up and he's like, look, it says right here that Judas was going to do what Judas did. He's going to betray Jesus.

There's a psalm that says that he would turn on him. And they're like, what? Yeah, I guess it does say that, doesn't it? And then he says that his place would be left vacant. Well, Judas went.

And after he betrayed Jesus, he was full of remorse for what he had done. He went and hanged himself. And so Judas is no more. His place is vacated. There were 12 apostles that Jesus had named.

Now there's 11 were missing one. And then Peter finds another psalm that says, may another person take his. His place of leadership. Peter says, these were spoken about our times right now. For years we've read these and not really understood it.

But now we see it in light of Jesus Christ. It all is about Jesus. And so he says, guys, we've got to come up with another one. We got to propose a replacement apostle. And so it needs to be somebody that was there from the beginning, from the time of John baptizing people down at the river, all the way through to the ascension of Jesus Christ.

There were others that would been following Jesus the whole time. It wasn't just those special 12 that Jesus named the apostles. There were other followers that had been there the whole time. And they come up with two guys that fit the criteria. They say, lord, you choose.

And they have these, like, holy dice that they roll, and they're like, God, you pick. And I guess odds and evens. I don't know how it worked, but, you know, whatever it was, you know, it landed on Matthias was the guy. And so they're like, okay, you're number 12 now. And then he's not really listed in scripture after that.

I guess he didn't. Didn't soar too high, I don't know. But anyway, this was all because they were studying the word of God. They were applying it to their lives and to the time that they were in. So Peter, he's now been filled with the Holy Spirit.

They've. They've proclaimed in all these tongues, these languages, and all the people hear it. He settles it down. He's like, no, it wasn't drunkenness. It wasn't some weird, you know, some thing that you can explain with human knowledge.

This thing that you think is really weird that's happening is actually the Holy Spirit. And the scriptures told us at this time, and it shouldn't be a surprise to you that this day would come. You're just fortunate that it happened in your midst and in your lifetime. So he proclaims this message. And they said, what should we do?

He says, repent and be baptized. Every one of you, Repent. Why? Because you have sin in your life. Sin has to be dealt with.

And it was Jesus Christ that deals with that sin. It was Jesus Christ. It was his blood that cleanses us from all sin. There's a verse, I put it on my Facebook this week. It was in Leviticus where it says that God tells him that there has to be the shedding of blood for sins to be removed, for the remission of sins.

And it's only by that offering of blood that that could happen. And he had been telling them, like, one of those weird passages that we usually don't like to read. And then we find out later it's really important where we're reading in Leviticus. And he's like, don't eat an animal with blood in it. Drain the blood.

If anybody Eats blood. This and this and this. And it's going through all these regulations. And you're like, this is gross. You know, like, I'm not hungry anymore.

I didn't want. I was listening to that on my lunch break, and I was like, oh, great. You know? Ugh.

And then you read it, and you realize this is talking about the ultimate sacrifice that God would one day provide. When you see Abraham and Isaac, and God has called them, and he said, okay, Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your son, your only son, whom you love. And then they get up there, and Isaac's like, hey, dad, we got wood. You got a torch? Hey, where's the sacrificial lamb?

He's like, God will provide it. And Abraham, as he's about to lay his son out there on the altar, he's about to slay him before God to be obedient to God. God's like, hold on. I know that you won't withhold your only son from me. He says, don't slay the boy.

And he shows him a ram that was caught in the thicket by its horns. He says, that's the sacrifice. And he provided the sacrificial lamb. It's probably an awkward walk back down the mountain from that point back home. Shh.

Don't tell your mother about this, okay?

But God himself didn't withhold his only son from us. See, he went through with that. He offered up his only son. He didn't withhold him from us, but he. He offered him up.

Jesus went willingly with a little bit of a protest, like, father, if there's any other way, please. But in the end, he says, not my will, but yours. And he goes to that cross and. And his blood is shed for you and me. So Peter proclaims that.

And the people are cut to the heart, as they should be, as we should be. And they're cut to the heart. And they say, what's our response to this? Like, I have now. I have not just the guilt of my sin, but the guilt of the blood of Christ is on my hands.

How can I be free of this? He says, repent. Repentance is simply saying, I wish I'd never done it. It's that easy. We went through a period of time in our daughter's life where the hardest thing for her to ever say was, I'm sorry.

She would cry so much when we would say, I need you to go say you're sorry to mom or to whoever. No, no. It's like it was painful for her. To consider even the possibility of saying, I'm sorry. I don't understand that, except I do.

It's hard for us to say, yeah, I need to repent. It's hard for us to admit that what I have done is wrong. And I have somebody that I need to repent to that I need to say I'm sorry to. There might be a person that you need to do that with. There might be a person where you need to say, hey, I'm very sorry about this.

But there might also, I know guarantee there's some things in your life that you need to go to God and say, lord, I'm sorry. I've sinned against you. I've done things that hurt my ability to have a relationship with you, and I'm sorry for that, Lord, I want to be close to you. I want to be connected with you. So Peter tells him, repent.

And then he says, your sins are forgiven when you repent. It's great. In fact, actually, the word is remission of sins. Think of, like a cancer that's in remission. It's not present anymore.

Obviously, there is the potentiality for it to show back up, especially with certain kinds of cancers and things, I guess. But with your sin, your sins, you have remission of sins. They're gone. God takes them away from you. It's not just like, hey, we'll just ignore that.

We'll just kind of get beyond it. We'll just kind of figure out a way to forget about this. He says, your sins are removed. You guys aren't excited enough about that. Your sins are removed.

Peter says, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness, for the remission of your sins and receive the Holy Spirit. Now, it's hard to build, like, a. Like a flow chart of exactly how all this stuff works, because you'll read a different passage of Scripture, which tells a little different way. So I'm not going to sit here and say, okay, if you do this, then this, then this, then this will happen. I'm not going to go and say that.

I do know that if you confess your sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, you are what the scripture calls born again. That part very clear. The process for receiving the filling or baptism of the Holy Spirit varies. And I think there's a good reason for that. God doesn't want you to start thinking that you can make it happen.

There was a guy that actually tries that. His name is Simon. He's the magician, and he lives in a city in Samaria. When the Apostle Philip has gone up there to proclaim the gospel. And then I think it's Peter and John come up there.

They lay hands on people, they receive the Holy Spirit, and they're like, this is great. And Simon the Magician, who's just been doing sleight of hand tricks, he sees this and he's like, now that's real power. I just do sleight of hand stuff. That's some real power. Can I give you guys money so that I can have that ability?

Can I have the ability to just lay hands on people and they receive this Holy Spirit? That would be awesome. And Peter's like, you are full of darkness and sin. Absolutely not. May you perish with your money.

Because he thought you could buy the gift of God. So what we see is that there's times where the Holy Spirit just shows up, like on Pentecost. There's times where somebody's baptized and then they receive the Holy Spirit. There's times where hands are laid on them and they receive the Holy Spirit. So I can't say that there's like one pathway for you to receive the fullness of the Spirit of God.

However, I can tell you this. Jesus promised him. He said that this would be a gift for all believers, that the Holy Spirit is sent by God the Father, and that this is something that you're entitled to as a son or daughter of God. That this is a gift from your heavenly Father, who loves you and wants to equip you for everything that he created you to do. Amen.

So what I can tell you is this, to sum that up, you should seek and eagerly desire the Holy Spirit in your life. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is not like some, you know, weird thing. This is the presence of God with you. There will be people that think you're weird because you understand stuff by the.

You know, we think we have this human intuition, but the deception discernment of the Holy Spirit that sometimes will say, don't go there right now. Stop. Stop talking to that person. They're going to stab you in the back. They're not your friend.

Stop. Stop saying these things because. Because what you're actually doing is you're participating in gossip or you're setting other people off, whatever it might be. The Holy Spirit is going to be leading and guiding you. He's going to be giving you supernatural power.

I don't mean like you're just going to start, like, levitating right now. Nothing like that would be cool. Okay, I didn't see that in this list of Spiritual gifts, though, you know, for you to just be able to float different places. Because sometimes walking is hard, right? You know, and so some of you.

I didn't hear enough amens like. But anyway, some of you have that extra metal to help you get around. You'd be like, it'd be cool to just float somewhere else. That's not what we're talking about. That's not what the Holy Spirit does.

He equips you for ministry and life as a Christian. When Jesus said, I'm going to send you out into all the world to declare the gospel to all nations, he's not sending you out to do it alone. He's giving you his Holy Spirit to do this. So Peter has explained this. They've been cut to the heart and said, what must we do?

He tells them, repent and be baptized. Now, one of the things that he had said in here was that God made Jesus, that we were responsible for crucifying. He made Jesus both Lord and Christ.

A lot of us, I'll tell you, are uncomfortable with part of that right now. You're okay with the Christ part. Christ, Messiah. They're kind of interchangeable terms in a way. Jesus Christ or Jesus the Messiah.

That means the one that's. That's reigning and ruling over us by God's decree. God. We're okay with Jesus being our Messiah because he. He's the king that God had sent to bring salvation to us.

And we're okay with that. We like the idea of heaven. We like the idea of being free of the guilt of our sins. We're good with that. Everybody love that plan.

Salvation is great. It's by Jesus, the Messiah. Amen. Some of us don't like the Lord part. The Lord part means he's in charge.

The Lord part means that you bow your knee to Jesus Christ. The Lord part means that he's going to tell you through the Holy Spirit at times that the way you are to live is different from how you're living right now. And there's some things that have to go. Sometimes he's going to send you someplace. He might tell you to pick up and move, live somewhere else.

He might tell you to stop. Maybe you're living a little too high on the horse and he wants to bring you down to this level. Maybe you're not striving hard enough for something, Some measure of what we might look at as success, but some measure of accomplishment. He's like, listen, I want you to actually get up and do more. You're not doing anything And I want you to do it.

Sometimes he might call you to suffer in some way that you, as of this moment, aren't willing to do. But as you grow closer to God and bow your knee to him and allow Jesus Christ to be the Lord of your life. You say, lord, even if I must suffer for you, I will. The best example of that is the Apostle Paul in Scripture. The best example in Scripture I know of is the Apostle Paul.

This is a guy that was. He was. He did all the religious things that he thought were right, and then he finds out that he had it all wrong. In fact, there's a verse he writes in the letter that he. That he gives to the church in Philippi, the letter of Philippians.

He says, all the things that I once counted as gain, I now count as loss, except for them drawing me closer to Christ. I paraphrased a little bit there. That's how I understand that verse. In other words, it's like a. A profit and loss sheet if you owned a business.

Things that I put in the profit column, things that I thought were good and profitable to me. Now I realize that those are what's dragging me down. Those are liabilities, not assets. Everything to me is a liability unless it funnels me closer to Christ. That's what it means to be under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

So Peter, he tells them this. He says that Jesus is both Lord and Christ. He you repent, you're baptized, you receive the Holy Spirit.

Then the Holy Spirit showed up. He erased language barriers. These language barriers we experience from time to time. I was in some training this week, and there was somebody that's lived in this country for, like, 23 years, I think it was, or 27 years, I can't remember. It was a long time.

Still struggling with the English language. There were some tests we had to take and all this stuff. And she was, like, looking around like, I don't know what's happening right now. And I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is difficult, you know, like, how? Like, first of all, how is she supposed to do the job she's trying to do?

She doesn't even understand the training. And second of all, like, the rest of us are having to just sit here and wait while she catches up. That was just a real minor inconvenience when a language barrier happens. But when you're trying to share the gospel of Christ with somebody and they don't speak your language, you're like, I really want to share Christ with you. And I don't know Your language and you don't know mine.

This is a legitimate barrier. Now, this all started, we got to go way back, thousands of years ago, to this happens in Genesis, chapter 11. And it's something that we call the Tower of Babel. You guys have heard of this, all right, The Tower of Babel, you probably heard in somewhere along the line. They figure it was like a.

A ziggurat of some kind, like almost like a pyramid, a stepped building with these, you know, stairways leading up them. And they found several, actually about, like, I think, seven different ruins of such a building in Mesopotamia, kind of in the land of modern day Iraq. And this. There's a few archaeologists that argue over which one they think was the Tower of Babel. I don't know that it matters so much that we find the exact one that was in Genesis 11.

But here's the story of what was going on there. There was a group of people that had memory not that long before of the flood, where God had wiped away all of humanity and all of allegedly, or trying. Or we think he was trying to get rid of all the evil that was there. But I don't think that was the purpose of the flood. That's a longer story.

We'll get into another time. But what he was doing was he washed the world away and then started over with Noah and his family. And then all the nations came from there. So these people remember the flood, and they know it was because it was God's judgment on people. So what they decided to do was they wanted to judgment proof themselves.

They built a waterproof building. They made their own bricks, and then they put tar and pitch between them so they were watertight. And they built this building that would go up their idea, into the heavens. I don't think they had any kind of like airplanes or balloons yet. So they didn't really realize how high the sky really is.

You know, it just looked like it was right up there. We can build into that. They probably. The more they got, they're like, I think we should have started a little wider, you know, to be able to get up there. Anyway, they build this thing, and part of their goal was to flood proof themselves.

They made it watertight in there. Like, we can weather out, you know, a storm from God. He won't get us again. But the other thing is they think that if they can get into the heavens, they can find God and throw him down. They can dethrone God.

The interesting thing that happens is, without them knowing it, God actually does come down. He Comes down and visits. He comes down and he walks and he inspects what they're doing. And they don't recognize him among them. They don't recognize that it's God walking among them.

And he says to the council of divine beings that are with him, he says, look, if this thing that they are doing, if they succeed at it, then nothing they do will be impossible for them. So he confused their languages. He just made the job site really difficult to get anything done. If any of you have ever done, like, especially blue collar work, we can kind of like grunt and point. But man, if you work with, you know, if you're working with different languages, it's kind of like when you're really trying to give some instruction for how to get it done and the, your co worker doesn't know what you're saying.

It's hard. Like, I've been there, I've done that. And it's like, you know what? I'm just gonna do my job. Well, when my job relies on your job to do and you're not doing your job and I can't tell you how to do it, then nothing gets done.

So they just abandoned the building project. God messed up their language and they left. Now when the Holy Spirit shows up, he undoes that, that disunity that God created amongst people. Now he's calling them back together. He's saying language is no longer the issue.

That's not going to be the barrier that keeps people from salvation. I'm going to make my believers able to share that message out. Now, what do you think happens when 3,000 people get saved? First of all, they did 3,000 baptisms, and I don't even know if you can do that in a day. That's a lot of baptisms.

Like we baptized five people last week. That was great. Loved it. Takes a few minutes, no big deal. 3,000, that takes some time.

Even if you have 12, you know, disciples splitting it up. I don't know who did the baptizing. I don't think it was just Peter, you know, it was all of them. I don't know. But that's, that's, that's taking a while.

And especially if anybody hasn't had a shower in a few days, that water. Well, fortunately for baptisms, they use flowing water, so it probably wash it all away. But I was gonna say if it was like one of these, that water would be pretty gnarly. You know what I'm saying? Like after 3,000 people.

So hopefully the running water thing kind of kept it flowing through. But that's, that's, that's a big day. That's like you're never going to have another church service that rivals that. Just put this as the high water mark for like just exciting days in the history of the church of Jesus Christ. But then can you imagine those 3,000 people then going home after this is over?

You've got believers, many of them traveling together. So you might have 10 or 12 or 15 people from, from one city, maybe 100 people from a city. I don't know how they were all split up. Now they're going to go home and what are they going to do? They're going to go home.

And we see the rest of the story in the last few verses of this passage. It says that they did four things. They continued in the apostles teaching. What's the apostles teaching? This is the understanding of scripture that focuses all of their scriptural understanding on Jesus Christ.

It's looking at it and saying, okay, how does the scriptures point us to Christ as Messiah? And how do they tell us what we should do from here? And of course, the apostles teaching would also include the things Jesus instructed them. In fact, one of the things Jesus said was, take what I'm giving to you and teach everyone to obey my commands. And lo, I am with you to the very end of the age.

So in other words, remember what I told you. I'm sending the Holy Spirit to help you, help remind you of that. Then go and teach that to everyone that you meet, everyone that's a disciple of yours. And remember, I'm with you now. Some of us take that as encouragement.

Maybe it's like I'm looking over your shoulder to make sure you get it right now. I'm just kidding. He didn't do that. He says, I'm with you. I'm there with you the whole time, so you don't have to worry.

Some of you guys say, I don't know how to share my faith. I'm scared to share my faith with someone else. I'm scared to share my testimony. What if, what if they walk away? What if they ridicule me?

What if they mock me? What if, what if I think our biggest fear actually is what if I say the wrong thing? Jesus says he's with you. He gave us his Holy Spirit to not just as our backup, but as our leader and guide. He's the one that's giving us what to say.

Just go and be faithful. So as these people go from there and they go to their, their hometowns, what are they going to do? They're going to continue learning the apostles teaching. They're going to dwell on that. So of course, there's probably going to be some people that say, can we designate one or two people to go back and learn at the feet of the apostles?

Can we get some letters from them telling us we have questions? We're going to send some questions to Jerusalem and have them answer them and send it back? That's how you get some of the letters in the New Testament as the apostles writing to people in different areas, in different churches to settle matters of doctrine, to dig them deeper into the teaching of Jesus Christ. And so they continued on in that they had fellowship with one another as they fellowship together, as they talk with one another, as they get to know each other and carry each other's burdens. The church was strengthened by that.

They continued on with breaking bread together, they shared meals together. One of those things is communion, and we'll take part in that in just a few moments. And the other thing that they did was they prayed together. Now we have opportunities for all those things in this local congregation because we should. Those are the most important things we have.

Those are the most important things we do is focusing on these four things. And it says that every day there were more believers that were added. When you continue reading in the next chapter or two in the book of Acts, it says there were people that held the Christian community in high esteem, but they were scared to infiltrate. Not that they were scared to become part of it. It was a welcoming group.

They were scared to just act like they were part of it. They were scared to try to play the part and try to fit in, because it was obvious that they would be found out if they were there with nefarious intentions. In fact, in chapter five, there's a couple, you saw in a couple verses we read that people started selling their property, they started giving things away, they started sharing their food with each other. This wasn't like communism. This wasn't state sponsored.

This wasn't some Marxist thing to try to bring down the people that had production and the people that were poor. This was people saying, God has blessed me with more than enough. I have more than what my needs are. I have more than I could spend in this lifetime. So why hang on to it and pass it on?

Why don't we help those that are in need right now? And so that's what they were doing. And so there's this guy named Barnabas, and he at the end of Acts, chapter four, he has a piece of land, he sells it, he brings the money, it says it puts it at the apostles feet. That's kind of his thing. Like he puts it in the offering basket, says, this is no longer mine.

I don't know what needs to be done with it, but as the needs arise, I'm trusting the leadership of the church to take that and to bless others as needed. It's not mine anymore. Praise God, it was always his. Anyway, I'm just turning it over. Amen.

So then there's this couple named Ananias and Sapphira. They're like, hey, you know, it would be really cool is if people would really like us a lot more. What we're going to do is we're going to sell a piece of land too. And so they sell their land. Ananias, the husband, he gets some money.

He keeps part of it though for himself. He's like, they don't have like online records, you know, they can't look up the sale price. Nobody's going to know if I keep a few grand back for ourselves. So he's like, peter, apostles. Here you guys go.

Look at that. Do I get a plaque? You know, anybody gonna remember me for this? Peter's like, ananias, how is it that you have agreed to lie not to me, not to the other people, but to the Holy Spirit? Oh, man drops dead right there.

Peter's like, can some of you guys come and bury him? By the way, that's not anywhere on our list of volunteer opportunities in this local church. Is like grave digger. You know, these guys wish they hadn't signed up for that job. They thought they got the easy job.

Like, we'll never have to do this.

A few hours later, the wife shows up. Peter's like, hey, tell me she hasn't heard her husband's died. Tell me, was this the price? Oh yeah, yeah. Absolutely gone.

The guys had just showed up like leaning on their shovels, drinking a Coca Cola. They just finished burying the husband. He's like, all right guys, another one. Fear gripped the church. Everything had been going great.

No hitches, no problems until this happens. Now fear grips the church. Why? This is serious. The serious times here.

We can't play around when it comes to the work that the Holy Spirit is doing. When the Holy Spirit is moving through the church, our job is to submit our need to bow our knee to Christ as our Lord. We received his salvation. But you don't just take that and play around with it, you know, like, okay, I got this gift now I'm just going to squander it. No, it's serious stuff.

And Jesus is now your Lord. And when he tells you to go, you go. If he tells you to give, you give. And if he tells you to serve, you serve. And whatever he calls you to do, you better do it.

And if you start thinking that, you can just act like you're playing the part, but you're not. You're part of the wicked and perverse generation that Peter said to save yourselves from the people that grew up with all the Jewish education, the young men that thought, maybe, just maybe, if I do good enough in my school, I can learn under the feet of a rabbi and I can become one of his disciples, and then later I can become a rabbi, too. That was their high goal. That was what they were aiming for on many of them, and many of them didn't make it to that. And so Peter, him and the other apostles, they were not the ones that naturally made it through that.

They didn't pick a rabbi to follow. Jesus picked them. And now that the Holy Spirit's given them the power to minister, to administer the church, now they realize this is real serious. We can't just play around acting like, oh, I'm the top of my religion and I can just do whatever I want. We bow our knee to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

For those of us here in this room, those of us that are paying attention online, maybe what we've got to understand is that the outpouring of the Spirit continued in not just the last few verses of chapter two, but it continues throughout the book of Acts. And the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is important, and we rely on that. We continue in the apostles teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. But we also have to understand that what we're part of is serious. It's not a club.

It's not just a religion. This is the life that God has called you to do. And the best thing that you can do is to do and be everything that God has ever called you to be.