Acts 2:1-21
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. If you will, grab a Bible and go to Acts chapter 2. We're working our way through the book of Acts, and we have reached the moment we've all been waiting for. Well, if you haven't been waiting for it, the disciples have, because they were specifically told to wait for this moment.
So Jesus tells his disciples, you're going to be my witnesses to the entire world. You're going to reach the world. Wait. You will be clothed in power when the Spirit has come. Wait for the Spirit. You've got a global mission.
Wait for the Spirit. We read it together a moment ago, but he tells them, you're better off if I leave. So the disciples are waiting for something, someone, waiting for the Comforter to come who is better. They're better off with the work of the Spirit than with Jesus. So you've got to know they're waiting for power, and they're waiting for him to send the Comforter that he said he was going to send, and he told them it's going to be better.
So you know they have to be waiting with some significant anticipation. We saw them last. They were together praying, awaiting the work of the Spirit as they're going to be empowered to do what they've been called to do. So if you will, we're going to start this today. Chapter 2, verse 1. We're going to work through the first bit of what's going to happen on Pentecost, and next week we'll get to spend more time in it.
But here we go. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. So that they is the 120 followers of Jesus. Pentecost is a Jewish feast. It's one of the three pilgrim feasts, meaning that all the males that were Jewish were meant to come to the temple. So there's three of those.
So Jerusalem is packed out. They're here on the day of Pentecost. So for a Jewish believer, this would read like if you said, and it was the day of Christmas, like it had come. They were all together. Like your brain would register what's going on. This is one of the pilgrim feasts.
Now, Jesus was crucified on Passover. Which is a pilgrim feast that celebrates that when God was rescuing the people out of Egypt, he gave them a lamb to sacrifice and to put the blood on the doorframe. And then the angel of death would pass over their homes so that they'd be protected by the blood of the lamb. Jesus dies on Passover. Then there's the Passover Sabbath.
And then on the first Sunday after that Sabbath, they practiced the beginning of first fruits. Where they would wave a sheaf before the Lord of the first fruits of the hope of a harvest to come. That's the day that Jesus Christ rose from the grave. At the beginning of first fruits. When there's this acknowledgement to God that there's a harvest to come. Then they wait seven weeks, which would be 49 days to start the feast of first fruits, which starts on the 50th day.
That's why it's called Pentecost. So on Pentecost, you have the feast of first fruits or Pentecost or the ingathering, which is the harvest begins. And that's when the spirit shows up on the church on the day of Pentecost. God had his people practicing for years and years and years and centuries, these feasts and then Passover beginning of first fruits, first fruits. He begins to line up what he's doing and what the promise has been as the mystery is revealed in Christ. And so we're on the day of Pentecost.
They're together, which would be very normal for them to be together. They're praying. And the spirit is going to come as he begins to gather in his people as the first fruits of of what he's doing in salvation. And suddenly, this is verse two, there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. So it's not a mighty rushing wind.
It's a sound like a mighty rushing wind. And I don't know that it comes from heaven. So it descends on the house that they're in and it fills the house. This sound does. And I don't know if you've ever been in your house when there was a mighty rushing wind and you hear it. It roars.
It shakes your house. I was on a practice field this past week, and a natural phenomenon happened. I don't know what it was, but there was this noise. That was not the best impersonation of it, but it was like that. Like some sort of, it was like, is an airplane landing here? Like, what is happening?
And then there was a dust devil, and then all the trees shook, and it was for like 14 seconds, and it was wild. Like, everybody just stopped and was like, are we going to die? Is this going to be cool? What's going to happen? And it was an insane noise, and that's what he's saying, is there's this noise that just suddenly rips through like a mighty rushing wind, and it fills the house because the Spirit has come. And divided tongues, as of fire, appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
It's interesting that it says divided tongues, meaning that they had one source, but then they divide, and it's like fire, as of fire. So he's trying to describe it. What did it sound like? Sounded like a mighty wind. What did it look like? It looked like tongues of fire, little flames.
Went and rested on each one of them, the 120 that are here. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the Holy Spirit of God, that at times in the Old Testament would fill somebody, but then withdraw. That at times would empower somebody and then withdraw. That at times, and this was for prophets. This was for Judges.
This was for unique, special moments. And all of a sudden, the Spirit comes and fills all of them. And it says, they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. In other tongues, there's just another way of saying other languages. Verse 5, Now, there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. So this is a pilgrim feast.
That makes sense. They've all gathered here. And we're about to see that as the Spirit fills the church, and this is what we're going to get to look at as we walk through this morning. We're going to see in a picture, in the first moments of the work of the Spirit, what the work of the Spirit is in the church. We're going to see in these first moments of what the Spirit does when the Spirit descends and fills the church, we're going to get a picture of what it looks like as the Spirit fills the church and continues to lead the church in work. So it says, all these were here, and it says, And at this sound, the multitude came together, and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.
It's not clear what the at this sound is, whether that at this sound is the rushing wind, or if at this sound is 120 people who are going to be declaring the works of God. That's what's happening. They're beginning to speak in other tongues, and they're declaring the mighty works of God. And so if you would love to read a bunch of commentaries and hear them argue with each other, you can. But there's not a real consensus on, is the sound the wind?
Is the sound the people? But there's a sound, and there was a wind, and now there's a bunch of people testifying, and a whole bunch of people have gathered around. And it also seems like that the 120 people did not stay put in the house they were in. So the Spirit comes, and they go, because by the end of this interaction that we see at the day of Pentecost, there's thousands of people standing around listening. So it's likely that they made their way to the temple, or they were near it when this happened.
But they are proclaiming the works of God, and it says, verse 6, at this sound, the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. It's not perfectly clear. It's possible that out of the 120, they were getting different languages at different times. I think it's more likely, the way it says it, that they're each hearing them speak in his own language, that they were all speaking, and the language was universally being translated to whatever their language was. So the recipient's language is what they're hearing, because they're each hearing them speak in his own language.
Verse 7, and they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? So they didn't look like they had come from somewhere else, they looked like they had come from Galilee, somehow identifying markers of being Galileans, or they're talking to each other at some point, so maybe they're figuring it out, but they start going, wait, wait, wait, wait, these are all Galileans, how are we each hearing them? And then it's going to tell us where they're from. It says Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus in Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes.
So that means non-Jewish people who have converted to Judaism, Cretans, and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. All right, I want to show you all a slide. There's a little map. Well, I want to, but I may not get, there we go. That's just all the places they just mentioned.
Now, I know y'all have seen maps like that on news. This one's like not a bad map. It's not mad. It looks intense. That's just all the places. So it's just kind of helping you get an idea of where all these people had come from as they pilgrimed here.
And they're from different places and language and people groups. They would have been trying to get by. Some of them would have spoken maybe some common languages. Some of them are having a hard time and they suddenly hear all these people speaking in their language and they're bewildered. I want to point out, make four observations really quickly of this part of what's happening that I think we should register. One, if you're familiar with the idea of speaking in tongues or you heard that there are churches that speak in tongues or whatever, mostly that's referring to what Paul's going to talk about later in Corinthians.
It's a speaking in a language that the hearers at the moment don't understand. And so he's going to say that there needs to be an interpreter present. He's going to give some qualifications for how that would work. And that is a spirit-empowered gift that Paul's talking about. But that's not exactly what's happening here because what's happening here is they're speaking in a language that they understand.
So they're all proclaiming the mighty Acts of God and the hearers are hearing it in their own tongue, in their own language, which I don't know if you've ever traveled to another country. If you don't speak that language, it becomes white noise to you. It's just chatter. And then suddenly you hear someone speaking your language and your brain registers it, specifically if you're from America because whoever was speaking English is speaking way louder than everyone else there for some reason. But you register it.
And so they're hearing all of a sudden this language in their own tongue and they're registering it. The second thing I think we ought to recognize is the individuality of the work of the Spirit. If you were the only Cretan there, it didn't matter you heard it in your tongue. If you were the only person from Arabia there, it didn't matter you heard it in your tongue because the Spirit is working to claim individual people and is jumping barriers in order to do it. So sometimes I think we will put in our head, yeah, God loves me, Jesus loves me, and we make it this real general thing.
It's like He loves me because He loves everybody because that's who He is and that's true. But it's not the whole truth because the Spirit works to speak to you in a way that you'll understand to help you grab the idea and the hope of the gospel. And that's what the Spirit's doing on day one is reaching out to individual people that they might hear the Word in a way that they don't have to try to translate but they just register them. It's the language their mom spoke. It's what they grew up with. It's how they think.
And the Spirit speaks right into that. A third thing I think we need to see in this is that there's a reversal of Babel taking place on the day of Pentecost. So the story of the Tower of Babel comes after the flood. Everybody speaks the same language. It's in Genesis chapter 11 if you want to go read it. And they say, let's make a name for ourselves.
Let's build a tower to heaven. Let's ascend to God. So you start making bricks to build this tower to ascend to God. God comes down. He investigates this and then he distorts the languages. He gives them all these different languages to make them spread out and do what he told them to in the first place which was to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth and to not glorify themselves but to be his image bearers and glorify him across the face of the planet.
So he confuses the language and they spread out because there's a language barrier now and it says that they're bewildered. That's the word that Genesis uses and that's the word that's used here. They're bewildered in reverse here because they're hearing it in their own language. And what God is doing is the opposite of Babel. Babel is let's get together, let's glorify ourselves and let's ascend to heaven. And the hope of the gospel is that God descends from heaven, joins us, not that we join him but that he joins us, that he takes on flesh, that he dies, that we might have a hope of salvation, that he humbles himself rather than us exalting ourselves.
And there's this reversal of this picture of Babel that's taking place because of the work of Jesus. And I feel like I need to say this. I think some of you have walked into this building this morning with the hopes of Babel. What I mean by that is life's hard, things are going on, you got some stuff going on, you got some family trouble, you got some problems, you realize you're seeing some of your own sin and you've started saying to yourself, I'm going to get it together. I'm going to show up, I'm going to start reading my Bible, I'm going to hear what it says and I'm going to start doing the things I need to do.
So tell me what's the first rung on the ladder, I'll do that, tell me what's the second, I'll start building the tower, I'll start climbing up, I'll get more and more awesome and eventually I'll attain God. I'll be one of the good ones. That's Babel. The slow exaltation of yourself. That's not the hope of the gospel. That actually won't work.
The hope of the gospel is that Jesus comes to us in humility, he comes to us, he takes on our flesh, he takes on our sin, not that we take on his godliness, but that he takes on our sin and that he dies in our place for our sin so that we might have hope in him and then through that exchange he gives us his godliness but it's not something we climb up for, it's something he climbed down for. That's the hope of the gospel. I say this periodically but I would remind you again that when we get to heaven, if you stand in the glorious kingdom and we praise the name of Jesus, we will not shout and sing our own name. You will not be there to the praise of your own glorious goodness.
I'm not going to hand out song sheets and there's a blank that says your name here. That's not how this works. We're going to praise Jesus for his glorious work. That's the hope. So there's a reversal.
The spirit is undoing the work of Babel and reaching across all these lines and that's the other thing I think we need to see and understand about Christianity and understand it was a day one thing. Y'all, the spirit could have done this however he wanted to. So they could have spoken a language that everyone understood but that's not what happens. The language that is spoken is each individual language because what the work of the Lord does is it redeems people groups. It doesn't erase people groups. It crosses into people groups but it does not make us one big amalgamous thing.
We don't become one special type of person and we erase all these differences. No, the gospel and the hope of the gospel jumps across those lines, jumps into those languages. That's why John sees that beautiful picture in the book of Revelation where it's every tribe and tongue and people and language. How does he see that? Well, they look different. That's how he sees it.
And when the gospel begins to spread it jumps across these lines. Y'all, the hope of the gospel has moved around the world and it doesn't say, it doesn't show up and say learn this language, become this type of person, change your clothes, turn into this sort of thing. No, it jumps and it redeems the type of person that you are. And then God in his work redeems people groups and we're all there together and all of the glorious parts of culture and humanity are there too. So hair type, melanin level, how fast or slow you like your music, how spicy you like your food, it's all going to be there as the Lord redeems it.
So if you like stream music and bland food, okay, that stuff makes it to heaven. If you like the beat to hit on one and three, you like some spicy food, that's there too. And somebody tell me that southern food was bland. It's like, first of all, soul food is southern food. So no.
Second of all, butter is a flavor. Third, shut up. Sugar's a flavor too. But the work of the spirit is to jump, to claim, to redeem and it's beautiful. And that we actually display the goodness of the hope of the gospel, not when we all become one thing, but when all of us in our distinctions come together because there is one thing that brings us together and that is Christ and it can go across everything else. And that happens on day one.
Verse 12. It says, and all were amazed and perplexed saying to one another, what does this mean? But others mocking said they are filled with new wine. So Peter, in a minute, it's going to, just a moment, he's going to stand up. He's going to preach the first gospel proclamation sermon. He's going to address those two things.
Them saying, what does this mean? And the people who said they're filled with new wine. There's this miraculous work of the spirit and there are people who go, nah, I know what's going on here. And what they say is that they're drunk. That's their, that's their response. My, my, my guess is that probably the people who it was easiest for them to say they've been drinking are people who have the same language already as the people proclaiming the message.
That would be the easiest person to just go, nothing's what's happening here. They have the heart language of Peter. They're hearing Peter speak it. It's nothing special feels special to them. The other people are talking to each other. They're, they're going, they're speaking my language and this person's going to speak in my language and they're going, wait, how is that happening?
They're going back and forth. They're all going, no, that's clearly my, and it's like they're, they've started putting together something miraculous is going on. And there's a group of people who see this miraculous work of the spirit and go, nah, which I'll tell y'all is personally one of my favorite things to do is to just not believe stuff. I love it. Come tell me something you're excited about. You saw on Instagram, I'm not going to believe you and I'll feel great while I do it.
I'll just go, nah, it didn't happen. Nah, that's not real. That's crazy. And I feel real smart while I do it. It feels real smart to immediately be able to tell that whatever you told me is wrong. I love doing it.
It's my favorite thing. And there's a type of person who will consistently just say, this isn't real. And there's a type of person who will see even miraculous works of God and go, nah, there's got to be another explanation for that. Nah, that's staged. No, that's fake. No, that's not happening.
Something else is going on. And I would warn you against being the type of person who has never seen any evidence for God whatsoever. And really all you mean is you've never seen evidence for God that you couldn't immediately disregard because you don't consider things anyway. But there's a group of people who are on Pentecost. The Spirit is at work and 120 people to proclaim miraculously and they go, nah, and they say something that doesn't even really make any sense. They're drunk.
What? Whose party trick is that? I get a six pack in me and I can suddenly speak Russian. That's not, that doesn't make any sense. You don't have like, yeah, my uncle can do that. We just make him drink on the airplane so he can get us through customs.
That's not how it works. You don't, you don't do this. And so Peter immediately, he just responds to that and then he's going to respond to the second question which is a more legitimate question which is what is going on here. But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them. Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk as you suppose since it is only the third hour of the day.
That's his response. It's 9 a.m. guys. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel. He's immediately moved on from that and he's moving to the second question which is what's going on here. This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel and Peter is about to give empowered by the spirit the first gospel proclamation. He's going to go to the Old Testament to do it.
Good spirit empowered preaching goes from the text to Christ. And that's what he's going to do. He's going to take the text and he's going to show Jesus out of it and he's going to be empowered to do it and we're going to look at the first part of this today and then we're going to spend the rest of the time next week all of next week in his sermon. But he says this. This is what's going on in prophet Joel and it says in the last days it shall be God declares. Okay.
Peter just said we're in the last days. He says this prophecy is being fulfilled in the last days. So I don't know what your eschatology is but I would like to add into it that the last days began at the resurrection ascension and the descending of the spirit on the church we have entered into the last days. So kind of like at a football game when everybody does this Peter starts his sermon off by going we're in the fourth quarter. we've entered now we're just awaiting the return of Jesus. So in the last days the spirit has come and here we go.
In the last days it shall be God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. He says this is what Joel told us was going to come. It's come. The spirit is poured out on everybody. It's not just special people now for special moments. It's all the people and he's going to get to it's all the people who trust Jesus because that's who it fell upon the 120 that had followed Jesus.
It's all of them. He says men and women young and old poor like any group you'd want to exclude. He doesn't even know how true this is because in his brain it's all Jewish people. Later it's going to be Gentiles and they're like what? Okay then they go with it. They're like well if the spirit will do that then the spirit can do that like we're not who do we we're not going to tell God what he can't do.
But it's everybody. Y'all I think they might have had in their mind that the the 12 were waiting for the coming of the spirit and they they pick Matthias and they say you're going to have to fill this slot. We read about that last week. You're going to be a witness with us but who's witnessing now? All 120 of them. Even the guy with three names who was first runner up to being the 12th Joseph Barsabbas and Justice like he has all three of those names.
He's proclaiming the gospel now. He's witnessing now. He's speaking as empowered by the spirit now. Mary the mother of Jesus is standing in the streets of Jerusalem empowered by the spirit proclaiming the news. Jesus' younger brothers are standing in the street. Mary Magdalene is standing there right now articulating the gospel to someone from another country who's there and they're hearing Mary Magdalene proclaim the mighty Acts of God because the spirit has gone to work in the church.
Who is empowered by the spirit everyone who belongs to Jesus. Who is equipped for the work of the spirit everyone who belongs to Jesus. Who gets to proclaim this message everyone who belongs to Jesus. Peter says you're seeing prophecy fulfilled. It's happening right now. Verse 18 even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy and I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes the great and magnificent day. There are some who read into this and say that's a proclamation for what's coming more at the end. There are others who are going to read into this and say yeah but some of that's already begun. When Jesus was being crucified there were signs of blood. When Jesus was being crucified the sun failed to give its light. There were signs in the heavens above.
When Jesus was being crucified there was an earthquake. Some of these have already begun but they're going to continue and there's going to be these signs as it prepares for the great day of the Lord they're going to continue to be shown. So Peter is saying we're in the final days, we're in the last days, the spirit has come and we're working our way towards the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord is the day when God sets everything right. It's the day of judgment. It's the day of giving an account.
It's the day when debts are paid, when secrets are revealed. That's the day of the Lord. the great and magnificent day. A lot of translations will say the great and terrible day. Terrible like Ivan the Terrible. He wasn't named that because he was the worst Ivan. He was called Ivan the Terrible because he was powerful, mighty.
Which, if you were like on a football team or you cheered for a football team and there was a guy named Ivan the Terrible on the team, you'd be glad he was on your team. You would love Ivan the Terrible, you would wear shirts that said Ivan the Terrible. That's what it is, it's this powerful day, this magnificent day or this terrible day. It's a great day that is coming, this day of judgment, this day of recompense. Every time you've ever looked at a situation and said, who's going to fix this? Every time you've looked at a situation and said, are they going to get away with this?
Do they just get to do that? Is nobody going to stop them? Every time you've been in a situation and you've said, will this ever end? You've in your heart longed for the day of the Lord. You've longed for the day that he shows up and he sets everything right. You've longed for justice.
You've longed for someone who knows what to do to fix this. The problem with the great and terrible day of the Lord is that you're part of the problem. So though we long for it when we face injustice, we also are a part of what makes the world worse. And we stand. The final days have been inaugurated. We are waiting as the spirits at work in the world for this day of judgment to come.
And you've lied. And you've stolen. And you've cheated. And you've finagled things so that they would work out to your benefit. And you, when you've had other people in your power, have finally gotten your revenge on them. And you, when you've been the person who oversaw the schedule, set it up as best for you as you could possibly do it, when you had the chance to be selfish, you were.
When you had the chance to take something and no one knew, you did. When you had the chance to whisper about somebody because it was enjoyable that it was their secret and not yours, you did. We've been a part of making the decay and the sin and the evil and the brokenness in this world spread. And the day is coming when there's no more hiding. And the day is coming when you will stand before the glorious king and you will be laid bare. So Peter stands up and he says, the spirit's here.
Joel told us this was coming and we're walking towards the great day of the Lord. That's where we're headed. That's what's happening. And then he says, “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That's the hope of the gospel in a line. And everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. This is where the spirit is taking this message.
It's going to proclaim to us the hope of Jesus. so that on the great and magnificent day of the Lord, when he returns, it is justice and judgment or it is grace and mercy and rescue. That's the day of the Lord. Like the sound of sirens. If you're in the middle of committing a crime and you hear sirens, it's time to go. But if you're the one who's called because there's people in your house, it's a sweet sound.
It's music. That sound of a hope, of a rescue. And so those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. And it says everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. You say, you don't know what I've done. Oh, but I know who saves.
You don't know how sinful I am. I know how precious the blood of Christ was. I know that Jesus will not stand before the Father and go, that one asked for my help and I failed to deliver. That one needed me to cover their sin, but I just couldn't do it. That one asked for forgiveness and I forgot. That will not happen.
Because no one will be put to shame who calls on the name of the Lord. Everyone will be saved. If you call out to Christ and say, I need your help, I need your forgiveness, I need your hope, and I need when you return, that to be the most joyous day, not the most horrific day. He will. Because of who He is and what He does and what He's like and how good He is. And the Spirit went to work so that everyone could hear that.
So that everyone could know that. There's something interesting that happens here that I feel like we would do poorly if I didn't point out. Where it says in verse 21, it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. In the book of Joel, Lord there, if you go look at it, there's going to be capital L-O-R-D because it's the divine name Yahweh. It's the Most High God, Lord God. Now when they would have said it, they wouldn't have said His divine name, they would have said most likely Adonai, they would have put in a placeholder that would be translated Lord.
But I want you to see that from the very beginning, Jesus, as the Spirit empowers the proclamation of the gospel, is not just Lord as in King, but He is Lord as in God. There are whole religions and sects that will tell you that the Trinity is an idea that came in later, that this was made up later, that it was imported by the church later, that it was man-made somehow, and that was not how Jesus was understood, this is ten seconds into the first sermon empowered by the Spirit, and it's already saying the Lord that you're going to call on the name of is Jesus, and that Lord is not just Lord as in King, but Lord as in God, King. That's how the church has understood Jesus since day one, as the King and Lord of all, God Almighty, who says that nobody's ever seen God, but Jesus Christ has made Him known, He's the perfect imprint of His nature, that He's come to dwell among us, that all the fullness of God dwells in Christ bodily, and that He came to rescue and redeem us, and our hope is in Jesus, God King, who joins humanity, who dies so that we might have hope, and when He says He saves, He saves, and when you place your hope in Him, He rescues. If you're in here this morning, and you're trying to climb the Tower of Babel, if you're in here this morning and you're trying to save yourself, I would invite you to call on the name of the Lord, and say, I need Jesus to rescue me.
If you're in here this morning, and you're at the bottom, and you understand, I have no hope, I can't do this, I've tried, then come to Jesus, praise His name, call on Him for help, and He will help. That's the point of the work of the Spirit, to empower the church to proclaim that message. We say this every week, that there's hope in Jesus, and there's judgment coming, and that we're sent to proclaim this message. So church family, the Spirit is in you to tell people, and the Spirit is in you to work as He sees fit, to overcome obstacles and objections. You say, I don't know how to do it, I don't think I'm good enough at it.
The Spirit is. You just get to walk in faith. And if it doesn't work out, if they mock, there were some there who did. There's always going to be some who do. That's up to the Spirit. That's not up to us.
We get to walk forward in faith, we get to proclaim in faith, and we get to trust in faith that He will save, that He will redeem, that He will work, and that the only hope is Christ. So the Spirit goes to work in the church. He empowers every believer to proclaim the message. He jumps past boundaries to proclaim the hope of Christ. And we're going to see next week as He continues in that. Let's pray.
Lord, we ask that Your Spirit would be at work in us to proclaim the hope of the gospel. Lord, we ask that Your Spirit would be at work in this room to help those who do not know You, who are far from You, or who misunderstand. That they can come to You. That they can trust in You. That they can surrender their work, their effort, their pride, their glory, their sin to You. And that everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved.
In Your name we pray. Amen.