ACTS 1-12 BIRTH OF THE BODY

Dr. E.M. Blaiklock, longtime Professor of Classics at the University of New Zealand, has said, "Of all the centuries, the twentieth is most like the first?" Despite the obvious technological differences (which are certainly superficial), the truth of Dr. Blaiklock's statement can be demonstrated in several ways, including the position of the church in the world today. Twentieth-century Christians confront a thoroughly secularized and pagan world, just as the first-century Christians did. Persecution of Christians in the twentieth century is far more widespread and at least as violent as it ever was in the first century. The seeds of restless discontent have been widely sown among the nations in our day, and people everywhere are crying out for relief from the sense of emptiness and despair which a widespread materialism has produced.

The major difference between the two centuries is that the virile, growing church of today must contend not only with a secularized society, but also with a secularized church - a vast and torpid body which moves only slowly toward restored vitality. Nevertheless, vitality is returning! In spontaneous upthrusts which are breaking out in many places, the Holy Spirit is restoring the church to the original pattern given in the Scriptures, thereby reviving its pristine power and impact. The changes that have taken place in the church worldwide during the past 15 years is phenomenal. The Congress for World Evangelization that was held in Lausanne, Switzerland reflected many of these changes.

At a time like this nothing could be more helpful to the church than to review again the record of the early church's rise and growth. The same principles which produced explosive growth then will do so today. The same pattern of leadership which prevailed then must prevail again in the twentieth century. The same remarkable power which accounted for the church's success then can and must be found today, for Christ's promise has never changed: "I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

These studies on the Book of Acts have been sent forth with the explicit intention of showing how the church of Acts is designed to be normative Christianity. Certain signs and symbols which were present in Acts (and have been made far too much of today) are not as present in the twentieth-century church to the same degree. But that is as it should be, for the roof of a building does not duplicate exactly the foundation, though it is part of the same building and may use much of the same material. While the Great Architect has proceeded with the construction of His building exactly according to the blueprints which He made available at the beginning, a great many well-meaning friends have sought to help the project by building rooms and lean-tos of their own, all made with shoddy junk materials. Ultimately these side structures will all be torn down as so much scaffolding, and the true building will be revealed just as the Architect planned it.

Through the dust and haze of construction it may help to see the emerging building more clearly if we study the blueprints carefully. To this end these studies are presented. They were originally a series of messages on the Book of Acts which were preached the attentive congregation of the Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California. I am indebted particularly to Mrs. Jean McAllister for their present re-edited form, and to Mr. Paul Winslow for his untiring efforts in bringing them to publication.

Ray C. Stedman

Chapter One

Out of the Shadows

Acts 1:1-14

The Book of Acts unveils one of the most exciting dramas of the Bible. Though the full name of the Book of Acts is The Acts of the Apostles, only Peter, James, John, and Paul appear prominently as apostles. Through the centuries, Christians have shortened this title to simply The Acts. This is an appropriate name, for Acts is truly a book of action, showing God at work through the living body of Christ, the church.

One of the nicer things said about today's nominal church is that it is irrelevant. Many people look upon the church as nothing but a collection of colorless religious creeps who come to church to sit with black stares on their faces. The liflessness of today's church may well have stimulated the famous remark by Nietzsche, the pagan philosopher: "If you want me to believe in your Redeemer, you'll have to look a lot more redeemed!"

Some people think of the church as a group of religious bureaucrats who are forever issuing pronouncements to which no one pays any attention. Others think of it as a group of plastic hypocrites trying to play waterboy to the game of life; whenever real issues need to be faced, the church stands off to one side and says "Me too." Some people view the church as a group of "good time Charlies" who never entertain a serious thought, never think deeply about life, and never care enough about other people to bother getting their hands dirty.

In all honesty we must admit that there is much justification for these charges. But they are true only because the church so easily forgets what it really is. When it operates the way it was intended to, the church is the most important body of people of any era--far above and beyond any other human entity. The church is actually the secret government of earth. As Paul the Apostle says, it is "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15), that is, the source and support of all realistic knowledge of life. This is what the church is supposed to be in its day-to-day life on earth.

A Building and a Body

In our study of the Book of Acts we are privileged eye-witnesses of the birth and growth of this amazing phenomenon, which is still present in the twentieth century. In Paul's Letter to the Ephesians he employs two symbols for the church--two major figures that help us to understand what the church is really like. At the end of the first chapter Paul says that the church is a body. He speaks of "his [Christ's] body, the fulness of him who fills all in all" (Eph. 1:23). So the church is a living organism; it is part of the life of Jesus Christ present on this earth. At the close of the second chapter the Apostle says the church is like a building, "members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets," which grows into a holy temple designed by the Spirit for the habitation of God (Eph. 2:19-22). So in one sense the church is like a building and in another it is like a body. Yet certain things are common to both these ideas. For one thing, both a building and a body are inhabited by a person. The central thing about the church, therefore, is its relationship to a Person. This personal relationship is what we shall see developing in the Book of Acts.

There is intense conflict throughout the Book, but the conflict is met by ringing confidence. Acts is a record of power in the midst of persecution, of life and health pouring from a living Christ into a sick society through the channel of obscure men and women very much like you and me. The Book of Acts fills the gap between the Gospels and the Book of Romans, making it possible for us to fully understand the New Testament. At the end of the Gospels we find a handful of Jews gathered in Jerusalem talking about a kingdom that is to come to Israel. In the Book of Romans we find an apostle who is not even mentioned in the Gospels and who was not even one of the twelve; he writes to a band of Christians in the capital city of Rome, talking about his plans to travel to the ends of the earth. The Book of Acts tells us how it happened and why this change occurred.

The key to the Book is found in the introduction, where the essential strategy by which Jesus Christ proposes to change the world is revealed--a strategy which is the secret of the revolutionary character of the church when it is operating as it was intended to operate. This strategy is given to us in the first two verses of Acts:

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen (Acts 1:1,2).

The writer here is Dr. Luke, that beloved physician who accompanied Paul on his journeys. We do not know how Luke became a Christian, though it was probably through the ministry of the Apostle Paul. Luke was Paul's companion through danger, hardship, trial, and endless difficulty up and down the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. He wrote two books of the New Testament-the Gospel According to Luke and the Book of Acts. Acts is written to a young man named Theophilus, and that is all we know about him. His name indicates that Theophilus was probably a young Greek, perhaps a new convert to Christianity whom Luke met somewhere and to whom he is explaining what Christianity is all about.

It may seem strange that Theophilus is not mentioned anywhere else in Scripture, but anyone with a name like Theophilus might well tend to remain hidden most of the time! I had friend whose middle initial was "T", and once at a party a friend of his announced that he had discovered what the "T" stood for: Theophilus, because when the doctor first saw this baby he said, "That's the awful-est baby I ever saw!" The name actually means "loved of God," indicating that this young man was probably a Christian. We are indebted to Theophilus for sharing his letters with us, for otherwise we would not have the Gospel of Luke or the Book of Acts.

Dressed in Flesh

In is first statement Luke says, "In the first book I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach..." The Gospel of John says, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). Jesus as a man came to begin something--"to do and to teach"--and record of that beginning is in the Gospels. But Luke clearly implies that this second Book is the continuation of what Jesus began to do. In a very real sense Acts is not the acts of Christians but the continuing acts of Jesus. It is an account of what Jesus continues to do and to teach. In the Gospels He did it in His own physical body, but in the Book of Acts he is doing it through the bodies of men and women who are indwelt by His life. Whether in the Gospels or in Acts, incarnation is the secret strategy by which God changes the world.

Whenever God wants to get a message across to men He does not merely send someone to announce it; his final way of driving it home is to dress the message in flesh and blood. God takes a life and aims it in a certain direction, and then by the manifestation of His own life through the blood and flesh of a human being He makes clear what He has to say. That is the strategy of the Book of Acts. It is the record of incarnation--of men and women possessed by Jesus Christ and manifesting His life every day. Anytime you find a Christianity that is not doing this, it is a false Christianity. No matter how much the pseudo-Christianity may adapt the garb and language of true Christianity, if it is not the activity of human beings possessed and indwelt by the life of Jesus Christ, it is not authentic Christianity. The life of the indwelling Christ is the true power of the church, as we see in the Book of Acts.

For this reason the Book of Acts is an unfinished book, for it still being written. Acts closes abruptly, with an account of Paul living in a rented house in Rome. It almost sounds as if you could turn the next page and begin another new adventure! The Book of Acts is Volume 1, and we today are writing Volume 20. Ours may well be the last volume in the series. I hope that it is! In this introduction to Acts we learn the historic basis on which the strategy of incarnation rests and the elements that make up the continuous program by which it operates. The first these historic elements is the resurrection of Jesus:

To them [the apostles] he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking of the kingdom of God. And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem...(Acts 1:3,4).

I have already deliberately stopped here to show how Luke stresses the great and central fact of Christian faith: Jesus is alive. That incomparable fact is what thrusts Christianity ten thousand miles ahead of its nearest competitor in the field of religion. There is nothing like it Jesus is alive, risen from the dead!

A certain man today who calls himself the Messiah has been announcing that he is the fulfillment of the predictions of the return of the Messiah to earth. He is causing quite a stir among people who are easily influenced by this type of fraud. Whenever I hear of someone like this, my first question is, "Has he risen from the dead?" I'm not interested in a Messiah who hasn't risen from the dead!

By Convincing Proofs

But Jesus Christ has truly risen from the dead: "He presented himself alive after his passion by many (convincing) proofs." The word Greek word for "proof" here is a word that included the idea of being convincing--"infallible," as the King James Version puts it. Luke gives us three categories of proofs that Jesus Christ is alive, though not in as much detail as in other parts of Scripture. These evidences are important, for from the very day of Christ's resurrection certain enemies of Christianity have claimed that the appearances of Jesus were really nothing but hallucinations in the minds of Christ's followers.

"But let me show you," Luke says, "the three categories of proof that he has risen." The first one: he appeared to them for a period of forty days. From this word for "appear" we get our word ophthalmia which means literally "the eyeball." In the modern vernacular, these disciples "eyeballed" Jesus For forty days! They saw Him again and again, not merely once, and each time He looked exactly the same. It's hard for a hallucination to accomplish this! Then too, Christ spoke to them: "speaking of the kingdom of God." "We even remember His subject matter," Luke says; "He talked about the kingdom of God." "We saw Him and hear Him--two experiences of our senses that confirmed to us that this was no fantasy, no hallucination." Finally, the ultimate proof was that "He ate with us." (The word "staying" in verse 4 has a marginal reference which gives "eating" as the actual Greek word used.) Those who were with Jesus saw Him eat. They actually saw the food disappear. It must be terribly hard to get a hallucination to eat! So Luke says, "This is proof; He ate with us, so we know he is alive."

This marvelous fact of the resurrection of Jesus is the bedrock upon which all Christian faith ultimately rests. Anytime you are troubled with doubts or are under attack for your faith, come right back to this fundamental fact. The Apostle Paul holds it up for us and says, in effect, to the enemies of Christianity, "Look, if you want to destroy our faith, then disprove this fact. It all rests on this. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile" (1 Cor. 15:17). Throughout the centuries many attempts have been made to disprove the resurrection of Jesus, but none has ever been successful. In fact, in the attempts may skeptics themselves have become convinced by the evidence and have become Christians. The resurrection is fact number one upon which the strategy of incarnation rests.

The second historic fact is referred to here as "the promise of the Father":

And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, "you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit." So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them "It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:4-8).

This passage contains the fourfold characteristic of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What Jesus said to these eleven disciples (Judas by now having left them) was literally, "Stick around Jerusalem." That is the Greek expression. "Stick around! Don't go outside the city until the promise of the Father has come upon you." Why? "Because you'll make a mess of it if you try witnessing without this. This is an essential. You can't be an effective Christian if you aren't operating in the power of the Holy Spirit." Every attempt ever made to advance the cause of Christianity which does not arise from this source of power only destroys the message God wants to convey. "Just wait," Jesus says, "for in a few days you will receive the promise of the Father."

The Blessing of Abraham

What did Jesus mean by "the promise of the Father"? First, he indicates that the coming of the Holy Spirit would not be a ritual, but a reality. John, he said, baptized with water. That is a ritual, a shadow, a picture. But the reality will be the actual Spirit Himself coming to live in you. The promise made to Abraham two thousand years ago will be fulfilled in you. God said to Abraham, "I will bless you, and make your name great...And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed" (Gen. 12:2,3 margin). We are not told in Genesis exactly what that blessing is, but in Paul's Letter to the Galatians he tells us very explicitly what the blessing was:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us--for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree"--that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (Gal. 3:13,14).

There we learn that God promised Abraham the Spirit and, through him, to give the blessing (that same Spirit) to everyone who believes, even to the Gentile world. Now does this mean that no one ever received the Holy Spirit until the Day of Pentecost, even though the promise was given to Abraham two thousand years before? Well, no Gentile did, unless he had fist become a part of Israel. There is no record of any Gentile believers ever receiving the Holy Spirit until the Day of Pentecost, unless that Gentile first became a Jew.

Pictures of the Spirit

But in the Old Testament there are several accounts of Israelites who were filled with the Spirit. Abraham himself was so filled, because God had promised "I will bless you," and that blessing Paul says, is the promise of the Spirit. But not only Abraham, but also Moses and Joshua and David and may of the kings of Judah were filled with that same Spirit. And certainly all the prophets were Spirit-filled, for Peter tells us that when these prophets predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glory that would follow, they were speaking by means of the Spirit of Christ which was "within them" (1 Pet. 1:11). They were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke out of that indwelling.

Yet these Old Testament believers came to a realization and experience of the Spirit-filled life only means of a long, drawn-out process of learning, by means of shadows. They were not given this experience first, as we are, to learn its effects later, but they were taught first by means of pictures, shadows, types, and symbols. The Old Testament is full of these. Aaron's rod that budded, which was kept in the Ark of the Covenant, and the candlestick in the Tabernacle were both pictures of the Holy Spirit illuminating the mind and heart. The widow's cruse of oil which never became empty was a picture of the flowing of the oil of the Spirit in a human life (1 Kgs. 17:8-16). The two olive trees of Zechariah which dripped oil from their branches into the bowls of the golden lampstand are also a picture of the Holy Spirit (Zech. 4:1-14). Ezekiel's river that came pouring out from under the throne of God, growing deeper as it went, is a wonderful picture of the flow and power of the Spirit-filled life (Ezek. 47:1-12). These men of old gradually understood through these symbols what it meant to be filled with the Spirit, and then they experienced this filling by faith.

The last of these symbols or shadows was the baptism of John the Baptist. Jesus said that John was the last of the prophets. We are told of John the Baptist that he was "filled with the Holy Spirit... from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15). He experienced this filling in his own life, but he had to teach it by shadows. As he baptized people in water he thereby taught them that the One who was coming would immediately place them into the body of Christ, making them part of His life. Jesus referred to John the Baptist as the greatest man born of women because he was filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb (Matt. 11:11). But now, Jesus says, there will be no more shadows; now there will be immediate reality. Everyone will begin his Christian life on this level.

Jesus had said to these eleven men earlier, "The Spirit of truth...dwells with you, and he shall be in you" (John 14:17). As we have seen, this does not mean that no one in the Old Testament was filled with the Holy Spirit; it only means that these men were not yet so filled. Their filling of the Spirit was delayed until it would be available to both Jews and Gentiles. Although they were Jews, they were to be part of a body of both Jews and Gentiles which would be formed by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Spirit is given to a believer the moment he puts his faith in Jesus. There is no special sign, feeling, or emotional indication of this indwelling. It occurs, as Jesus said it would, when anyone believes in Him. It is the means by which the risen life of Jesus becomes available to us continuously and constantly. All that Jesus is, is made available through all that I am. That is why it is important that the Holy Spirit should come--so that through the Spirit Jesus' life is made available to each of us who trusts in Him.

Quiet Power

Jesus points out that this indwelling is not a ritual but reality, not a program but power. The eleven disciples said to Jesus, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" They were thinking in terms of timetables, schedules, and programs. And the church throughout its history has often made this same mistake. But the Lord Jesus said, "That is not for you to know. Times, schedules, and programming are all in the Father's authority. Your task is to be the manifestation of power; the Father will put it all together."

Now what kind of power is Jesus talking about? This is a most wonderful thing! It is resurrection power. It is the power of a risen Lord--there is no way to overthrow it, no way to stop it. Every obstacle thrown in its path is only turned into an opportunity to advance. You can find many demonstrations of this power in the Gospels and in church history. Every attempt to resist the working of the Holy Spirit simply opens the door wider, for this is Christ's resurrection power at work.

It is a glorious kind of power, for it does not need any props or outside help, and it does not borrow anything from the world. It doesn't even need a cup of coffee to get started in the morning! Furthermore, this power works best in a cemetery. It operates most visibly where everything is dull and lifeless. Anyone operating on resurrection power can come in and change the whole scene. Resurrection power changes lives from within rather than from without. It does not start on the outside, with the environment, or the circumstances, or the external situation; it starts within and works outward. It does not separate or divide; it harmonizes, heals, draws people together, and breaks down walls

of hostility that have been standing sometimes for centuries. It batters these all down and brings people together in harmony. This totally different kind of power is what you receive when you receive the Holy Spirit.

Eyes on the Lord

Jesus also says that this power will result not in propaganda but in witnessing. Christians are not to be like salesmen going out to peddle a product, nor are they to be recruiters trying to get people to join a religious club. By doing this the church has become false and has lost its power. In contrast, Christ's power has a personal note about it. Jesus says, "You will talk about Me because you will have experienced Me. You will talk about what I have done for you." The mark of a carnal church is that it loves to talk about itself. These early Christians never witnessed about the church at all; they witnessed about the Lord--what He could do, how He would work, what a fantastic person He was, how amazing His power was, and what He could do in human hearts. The twentieth

-century church too often has its eyes focused on itself. But the early church had its eyes focused on its Lord, and for this reason it was an effective witness for Him.

Finally, this promise of the Father will not be restricted at all, but it will be universal. It will begin in Jerusalem and Samaria and go to the uttermost parts of the earth. It will include all places and all times, and it will make no distinction between classes, races, or sexes.

In Christ there is no East or West,

In Him no South no North

But one great fellowship of love,

Throughout the whole wide earth.

An Assured Return

The third historic element which Luke stresses, which runs like a thread throughout the rest of the Book of Acts, is the hope of Christ's return:

And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:9-1l).

What an amazing experience this was! As the disciples were standing on the Mount of Olives they saw Jesus suddenly ascend into a cloud, and they never saw Him again. He just disappeared. The cloud received Him out of their sight. Now Jesus had told them this would happen, and that it was necessary. "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you" (John 16:7). It is by means of the Spirit that Jesus makes His life available to each of us so intimately and personally.

Jesus did not go to some distant planet in space. I think of wrong to think of heaven as if it were several billion light-years away. Instead, Jesus simply stepped into a different dimension of existence--the spiritual kingdom which surrounds us on every side, invisibly. He is not far away, and neither is the throne of God and the greatness of his power. But that invisible life imparted to us by the Holy Spirit, who came as a result of Christ's leaving this earth. Because Jesus went, I can have all of Him, and so can you.

Now the angels tell us that Christ's return is certain. "This same Jesus," they say, "will come back again." He will come in exactly the same way as they saw Him go. Just as He stepped into invisibility, He will step back again into visibility. Suddenly He will be back. And when He comes, says other Scripture, He will remove the curse from nature. Men are looking today for a solution to the ecological crisis that confronts us. How shall we solve these problems?

Well, we shall not. They will get much worse, and the crisis will get so bad that human life will actually be unable to exist any longer on the earth. Jesus said so. He said that the tribulation of those days would be so intense, so terrible, that no flesh would be saved except for the intervention of God. But when Jesus comes again He will remove the curse from nature, and nature will bloom and blossom once again. God will draw back the curtains on the exciting creation He has been working on behind the scenes throughout these twenty centuries--a new humanity. A new kind of man will suddenly be revealed. That is what Paul calls "the revealing of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:19). All the world is

looking forward to this event. The hope of Christ's return is part and parcel of the mystery of incarnation, the grand strategy that God employs.

The Final Link

As the disciples turned away from the Mount of Olives, we read of the last element:

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olives, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away; and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers (Acts 1:12-14).

What did they do we they were waiting? Why, the only thing left to them--they prayed! Here were these men deprived of the physical presence of Jesus. The Spirit had not yet been given, so they did not have His indwelling life, but they were still not cut off from God. They were linked to Him by the marvelous communication of prayer. They gave themselves to prayer, waiting for the full revelation of what God had in mind to give them. Prayer is always an essential part of the life of the people of God. It is part of the strategy by which the incarnate Christ touches and changes the world.

Here in this introduction we have all the elements that make up the Book of Acts: a risen Lord whose life is made available through the coming of the Spirit, and who will come again in power and great glory, but with whom we are always in instant communication by means of the miracle of prayer. These elements are what enable any group of Christians to have an impact upon and to exercise a vital revolutionary force upon the age in which they live. May God grant that this will become our own experience in day-to-day living!

Chapter Two

The Birthday

Acts 1:15-2:4

As we consider the last part of Acts I and the first four verses of Chapter 2, it will be helpful to remember the two figures of the church in this section--a building and a body. In the last part of Chapter 1 the foundation is laid for the building, and in the first part of Chapter 2 the body is born. The scene

is set for us in these verses:

In those days Peter stood up among the brethren (the company of persons was in all about a hundred and twenty), and said, "Brethren, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David, concerning Judas, who was guide to those who arrested Jesus" (Acts 1:15,16).

For years I believed that these 120 believers met in the upper room, and that the Holy Spirit came upon them there. But notice that there is a break here. Although the previous paragraph does mention the upper room, (since it is part of the introduction, which ends at verse 14), it is only at verse 15 that Dr. Luke really begins to tell his story. If you link verse 15 with the last verse of the Gospel of Luke, you can see clearly where Luke takes up his narrative again. In the Gospel, Luke tells us that the disciples came back from the Mount of Olives after the ascension of Jesus and continued meeting in the courts of the temple. And that is where the Pentecostal event occurred; 120 people formed much too large a group to meet in an upper room.

A Foundation of Twelve

Peter's immediate concern is that a replacement be found for Judas in the apostolic band. Judas had fallen from his place as an apostle by his betrayal of the Lord Jesus, and Peter now feels impelled by the Spirit to replace Judas. We have already seen from Paul's Letter to the Ephesians that the church is like a building, "built upon the foundation of the apostles... " (Eph.19). It is therefore not surprising that the first thing we read about in the Book of Acts is the completing of the band of the apostles.

In the Book of Revelation John sees the city of God coming down from heaven--a beautiful picture of this magnificent church (Rev. 21:10). There is a wall around it with twelve gates, each bearing the name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Clearly Israel is linked to this new city. The wall also has twelve foundations, each named for one of the apostles of the Lamb. So there must also be twelve apostles. Some people think the Apostle Paul should be counted among these twelve, although Paul actually apostle, he was not one of the twelve. Peter makes clear that Scriptures had predicted that there would be a replacement of Judas, and he quotes two of the Psalms to prove this. In verse 20 he says:

For it is written in the Book of Psalms, "Let his habitation become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it" (Psa. 69:25); and "His office let another take" (Psa. 109:8).

During the ten-day period after Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples poured over the Old Testament to see what was predicted for these days. In the Scriptures they discovered that there must be a replacement for Judas.

The Last Payment

We are also given a glimpse, in a parenthetical verse, of the tragic end of Judas. We learn how he forfeited his apostolic position:

For he was numbered among us, and was allotted his share in this ministry. (Now this man bought a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood) (Acts 1:17-19).

Here is a concise and encapsulated summary of all that happened to Judas in his last moments. When it says that he bought a field with the reward of his wickedness, it does not mean that he took the thirty pieces of silver for which he betrayed the Lord and went out and bought a field. We know from the Gospels that he took those thirty pieces of silver and threw them at the feet of the high priest, refusing to have anything to do with them. Then in what way was this Scripture fulfilled? If we put together all the references to Judas in the Gospels we learn what happened.

We are told that Judas was the treasurer of the disciples. He was so appointed by Jesus Himself. John tells us in his Gospel that Judas carried the common treasury, and also that he was a thief, and that he kept stealing money out of this common treasury (John 12:6). What for? Well, evidently Judas had accepted the current Jewish idea that when the Messiah would come he would overthrow the Roman government and establish a kingdom of power and authority, with the nation of Israel at the head. Judas was feathering his nest in anticipation of this event. He had already picked a plot of ground on which he wanted to build a lovely home, and he was buying it little by little with the money which he stole from the bag. Whether he was making payments on the land or simply saving the money in order to give a cash payment at the end, we are not told. But it is likely that this is what he was doing.

As Judas realized that Jesus was approaching a crisis, he found he lacked thirty pieces of silver in order to purchase the land. So he made arrangements with the high priest to betray the Lord for those thirty pieces. But when he did the deed and led the soldiers to the Garden of Gethsemane and kissed Jesus to betray him, his eyes were apparently opened to the terrible implications of what he had done, and, wrenched with remorse and agony of conscience, he took the money back to the high priests and threw it at their feet with the words, "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood" (Matt. 27:4). Then Judas went out and hanged himself. Hanging there, on the very ground that he had hoped to buy for his home, his body bloated and swelled till the rope broke and he fell headlong, as this Scripture says, and his bowels gushed out.

Then the high priests took the thirty pieces of silver and finished paying for the property. They bought it from a potter, finished paying for the property. They bought it from a potter, thus fulfilling Zechariah's prediction that this money for which Jesus would be betrayed (Zechariah had actually predicted that it would be thirty pieces of silver) would be given to the potter. Yet because this property was the scene of the suicide of Judas--a place marked by the blood of a guilty man--the high priests called it "the Field of Blood." To this day you can visit the field in Jerusalem.

Judas had to be replaced, then, in order that the church be built upon the apostles. The qualifications necessary to that replacement are given:

So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us--one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection (Acts 1:21,22).

There were only two qualifications. The man who was chosen must have been with the apostles from the baptism of John, and he must have accompanied Jesus all through His ministry. (Remember that there were many more than twelve disciples who went around with Jesus. He chose twelve of them in order to be in a special relationship to Himself, but there were others who also accompanied Him. It was out of this larger band that a replacement would be chosen.) Not only must the replacement apostle have seen all that Jesus did, but he also must have witnessed the Lord's appearances after the resurrection. He had to give witness to the authenticity of the resurrection.

Why such stringent requirements? Well, they underscore what the New Testament is forever telling us-that our faith is not based upon myths or legends; it is based on facts and events which men have seen, felt, heard, and been involved in. This is not a "holy history," as certain theologians like to call it, a kind of pseudo-history which takes place only in the realm of ideas. No, these things actually happened, and our faith rests upon the fact that they really occurred. For this reason the apostle chosen must be able to give witness that these things were actually true.

The Lord's Decision

The process of choosing happened in an interesting place and in an interesting way:

And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, "Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show which one of these two thou hast chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside, to go to his own place." And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was enrolled with the eleven apostles (Acts 1:23-26).

Evidently there were only two men out of that band of 120 who met all the qualifications for apostleship. Only two had been with Jesus the whole time and had also seen Him after the resurrection. So Justus and Matthias were put forward. The others had to decide between the two of them, and they did it in the Old Testament way: they cast lots for them. This was very much akin to what we do in flipping a coin. They may have literally used a coin, casting for

heads or tails. It came up heads, and Matthias won.

Now don't misunderstand this method. It wasn't done in a casino atmosphere; it was a dignified performance. This method was used only when men were otherwise equally qualified. It indicates a recognition that God controls even the smallest things. That's why the Book of Proverbs says, "The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is wholly from the Lord" (Prov. 16:33). After the lot fell on Matthias he was numbered with the eleven, thereby becoming the new twelfth apostle. A subtle change occurs from here on in Acts. Up to this point the apostles are called "the eleven," but from here on they are again called "the twelve," showing that Matthias was accepted among them as a genuine apostle.

The Task of the Twelve

With the choosing of Matthias the ground was laid for the church to be built. The foundation was now poured; all the apostles were there. These mighty apostles were men who could witness to the historic foundation of Christianity.

The apostles were sent forth with a threefold task.

First, they were to be pioneers, going out where the name of Jesus had never been named and planting churches there. Every one of the apostles fulfilled this task. Church history tells us that Thomas went to India, Peter and Paul went to Europe, and others went to North Africa.

Second, the apostles were to be proclaimers, uttering what God had revealed. Remember that Jesus had said to His disciples, "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" (John 16:12). He never said these "many things" in the days of His flesh; they were revealed only after the Holy Spirit came and taught these men the truths of God. That is why these apostles spoke with authority. When they spoke they did not speak as mere men, but, as Paul says, "When you received the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God" (1 Thes. 2:13). The apostles were proclaimers.

Finally, the apostles were patterns. They were intended to be examples of how the Spirit of God operates through men, penetrating a community and moving to change people and transform them. The apostles were to be examples of what a Christian ought to be. They did not live far above us; they were on the same level as we are. We are to live as the apostles lived in every way. It is in this way that these men formed the foundation of the church.

A Body is Born

As we turn to Acts 2 we find that the figure has changed. Now The church is no longer called a building, but a body. In this exciting chapter we read the account of the birth of the corporate body of Jesus Christ. Here's how the story begins:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:14).

This passage has been subjected to much examination, and also to much abuse and distortion. We need to look at it very carefully. Three things in this passage call for our special attention. In the next chapter we will pursue the study of the subject of tongues, but right now we want to describe three other important points of the passage.

Two Loaves Into One

First, the day on which this event occurred was the Day of Pentecost. Pentecost is a Greek word which means "fifty," and the day was called that because it occurred fifty days after the Passover feast. Pentecost refers to a Jewish feast which is described in the Old Testament under the title The Feast of Weeks. Seven weeks (49 days) were to be numbered from Passover, and on the fiftieth day the Jewish people were to celebrate the Feast of Weeks, also called the Feast of the Wave Loaves. This feast came at the end of the wheat harvest in Palestine, and they were to take this new wheat, the first-fruits of the harvest, and make two loaves of it.

Now these two loaves were symbols of the two bodies from which the church was to be formed--the Jews and the Gentiles. Jesus said He came first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, the Jews. But He also said, "I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also So there shall be one flock..." (John 10:16). He was referring to the Gentiles. Here, on the Day of Pentecost, God brought the Jews and Gentiles together and baptized them into one new body, the church.

These loaves of the Old Testament were to be baked with leaven. Leaven is yeast, and is a symbol of sin. The wave-loaf offering is the only one in the Old Testament that ever had leaven included in it. Why? Because it was God's wonderful way of telling us that the church is not made up of perfect people. It is made up of saints, but they are sinful saints. It is made up of believers who are in the process of becoming what God wants them, changing them into the image of Christ. For this reason the loaves were baked with leaven.

Members of One Another

In this beautiful loaf symbolism lies the heart of the church. On the Day of Pentecost, right in line with this Old Testament pattern, the Holy Spirit came upon God's people. And what did He do? He took 120 people who were gathered together in one place, and made one body out of them. Here were 120 isolated individuals who had been living their lives quite separately, held together only by a mutual interest in Jesus Christ. But now they are baptized by the Spirit into one body. That is the fulfillment of Jesus' promise that when the Holy Spirit would come they would be baptized by the Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with any outward demonstration. It is not necessarily associated with tongues, or fire, or wind. These were the incidentals. The essential was the making of a body, one body. This was truly the birthday of the church.

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, shepherds and wise men came to see Him, and there were angels and a star. But all these things happened only once. They never occurred in conjunction again. Likewise the wind, the fire, and the tongues occur together only once in Scripture. It is foolish to always be craving these incidentals when the Holy Spirit acts today. These are connected only with the beginning of the body. The only time in Scripture that we ever find the phrase "baptized with the Spirit" after this event in Acts is in First Corinthians. There the Apostle Paul says, "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body" (1 Cor. 12:13). That is the true baptism of the Holy Spirit--"they all became one." And from then on they were part of the life of Jesus Christ and members of one another. What would happen to one would affect the others from then on. They could not be separated, they could not live their lives in isolation any longer; they were truly one body.

Certain symbols were associated with this event. There was the sound of the rush of a mighty wind; there was the appearance of tongues of fire dancing on the head of each individual; and there was the strange phenomenon of languages spoken by men who had never learned them--in other words, "tongues." What was the meaning of these symbols? They were the key to the purpose of the body. This was God's pictorial way of telling us what this new body would be like and what it would do. The first symbol was wind:

Suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting (Acts 2:2).

Wind is the symbol of invisible power. Remember that Jesus said to Nicodemus that the Spirit is like the wind, which blows wherever it desires, and no one can tell where it comes from or where it will go (John 3:8). It is sovereign, mighty, powerful, irresistible, invincible. But it is also invisible; you can't see the wind. And this is to be a characteristic of the church. It is to be a band of men and women bound together by the life of Jesus Christ, who will accomplish great things through them when they operate in the invisible power of the Spirit. As with the wind, you cannot put your finger on their source of power, but it moves mightily to change and transform lives. The second symbol was fire. Fire is used in two ways in the Old Testament. It is a purifier, burning up dross, garbage, and waste; and it is a symbol for enthusiasm, passion, purpose, and inner hunger. Jeremiah said, "There is in my heart a burning fire" (Jer. 20:9). These two symbols indicate that there is to be within the church a yearning hunger for God which will purify the lives of those who are affected by it.

I have been challenged by the story of D. L. Moody walking down a street in New York City and thinking about a sentence he had heard: The world has yet to see what God can do with a man who is wholly yielded to him. There came into Moody's heart a great hunger, and he cried out, "O God, make me that man!" He was so filled with a sense of the overwhelming love of God that he had to go to a friend's house nearby and ask for the use of a room. For an hour or more he was caught up by this passion that had entered his heart when he became converted and which broke out from time to time with tremendous power to cleanse the evils of his life, moving him toward a unifying purpose, a relentless drive to a single goal.

That is what Luke is talking about here. When John the Baptist predicted that Jesus would come and baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, he meant that there would be an unexplainable passion about the church. Every Christian has felt it. We sing of it this way:

O Love that wilt not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in Thee;

I give Thee back the life I owe,

That in thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.

Proclamation

The third symbol was the use of tongues. Certainly this was not gibberish; these were known languages spoken in that very region as well as in other places of the earth. Those who were there understood the words. The tongues were therefore edifying proclamations; they were intelligent utterances. These men were praising God in languages; the men in the audience heard the apostles telling forth the mighty works of God.

Now this is the purpose of the filling of the Spirit. It is always to enable us to speak with boldness, clarity, sincerity, and earnestness, telling forth the mighty works of God in languages that are known. There is a miracle here, no question about it, but the important point is that these men and women were seized by the Holy Spirit and filled with utterance, with proclamation. Several times in the Book of Acts it says that the disciples were filled that the Holy Spirit. But on those occasions they did not speak in their own language. And they were filled that they might speak: "Filled with the Holy Spirit, they spoke..." That is what the filling of the Spirit is for--that Christians might speak with boldness, clarity, and unction--but not always in tongues.

This is what the church should be like today. It should be filled with power, passion, and proclamation. It is exciting to see the Lord reviving His church today. All over this country and around the world there are such manifestations breaking out again. They are not spectacular, miraculous demonstrations, but outbreaks of resistless power, like a mighty wind blowing no man knows where, leading out into new ventures, new methods, new approaches, filling men with a passion and hunger for God and a reality which consumes the dross, the garbage, and the waste of our lives--a wind which impels men to speak to others about the glorious reality of a God who lives within, who is mighty and adequate in all that He does. That is the true church, the body of Christ. What an exciting thing to be a member of this living body!

Chapter Three

Beyond Tongues

Acts 2:5-21

In the phenomenon of Pentecost we see the beginning of the church of Jesus Christ, the body of Christ--in other words, the birthday of the church. Now, in the rest of Acts Chapter 2, we learn the background of the amazing sermon which the Apostle Peter preached on that occasion--a mighty sermon that brought three thousand people to Christ.

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were amazed and wondered, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others, mocking, said, "They are filled with new wine" (Acts 2:5.13).

Luke very carefully describes the onlookers to this amazing miracle of tongues. The tongues were intended for this certain group of people, who are described in a single phrase:

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven (Acts 2:5).

The holy time between Passover and Pentecost drew thousands of Jewish pilgrims from all over the earth to Jerusalem. Josephus, the Jewish historian of this time, tells us that the city of Jerusalem (which normally had a population of 50,000) would often be swollen in numbers to well over a million. It was to this multitude that the miracle of Pentecost was directed.

God summoned the throngs with the sound of a mighty rushing wind. "At this sound the multitude came together" (Acts 2:6). The "sound" does not refer to the sound of tongues (that would hardly be loud enough to attract the attention of the whole city and countryside!) but to the mighty rush of wind that attracted people from all over the city. It is the same word that occurs in verse 2: "And suddenly a sound came from heaven..." God, as it were, turned on a siren to bring the people together!

No Interpreters Needed

When the people heard this great sound they came rushing together into the temple, but when they arrived they were still more bewildered, "because each one heard them speaking in his own language." They heard the strange sound of certain men and women, evidently peasants from Galilee, who were speaking in over sixteen different languages. It was quite evident that these people were not educated. And that this was long before the days of the art of linguistics, so it was very difficult to learn a foreign language. You had to live in a country in order to learn its language. Yet these untrained men and women were speaking in languages which were foreign to them.

Notice that no special supernatural activity was required to understand the languages. These pilgrims were amazed that they could hear these utterance in their own native tongues. Luke even names the localities and therefore the different languages that were being spoken. Beginning with the East, he lists a group of dialects east of Jerusalem spoken by Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia. Then he moves north, including Judea (where they were), Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia--Roman provinces of Asia Minor, as we know it today. Then he moves south to Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, in northern Africa, then west to Rome and Crete, and then south again to Arabia.

Although the apostles were speaking in different languages, they were all saying the same things. They were declaring, literally, the "magnificences of God." They were praising God. They were not preaching the gospel; they were speaking of how great God is, worshiping and praising God. That was the phenomenon that arrested the attention of this great multitude as they came pressing into the temple courts.

Curiosity and Ridicule

In Luke's record of the crowd's reaction, there are two words he uses for astonishment: "amazed" and "bewildered." Twice he indicates that they were amazed. The literal translation from Greek is "to push out of their senses." Or, in the modern phrase, it blew their minds." Linked with that, Luke says, they were bewildered. The word is really one which means they were hit hard, stunned; they were staggered by this amazing thing, especially since they easily recognized the languages they heard.

Then we have two more words that indicate puzzlement. They "wondered," and they were "perplexed." Those are suggestive words. "Wondered" means they sought for a solution. "What is behind all this? Why is this happening?" The second word, "perplexed," means literally "thoughts running through their minds." Two more expressions that are recorded of this crowd are especially interesting. When the human mind is confronted with a startling new thing it reacts in one of two ways, as in this case. First, some people began to inquire, representing the group of open minds that are always ready to investigate further before coming to a conclusion. But the other group immediately dismissed the phenomenon with the infantile reaction of mockery and ridicule. They looked at the disciples and said, "They're drunk! That explains it. They've been getting into the new wine!"

Explaining Reality

All this sets the stage for Peter's explanation, and in the next few verses we have a wonderful message delivered by the Apostle on this occasion:

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 men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel" (Acts 2:14-16).

Notice how alert Peter was. Led by the Holy Spirit, he immediately began to speak. And he spoke so effectively that he never got a chance to give an altar call (a wonderful thing to have happen!) because he stated the truth in the power of the Spirit. That was Peter's message-a simple explanation of reality. The preaching of the gospel is an explanation of what things are really like. Peter seized this occasion to make clear what lay behind the supernatural events of the Day of Pentecost. His message contained three parts-an explanation of the phenomenon of tongues, a declaration of Jesus of Nazareth, and an application to the crowd. Right now let's discuss Peter's explanation of the phenomenon of tongues.

First of all, what Peter said to the crowd when he stood up was not quite what we read in the Revised Standard Version--"For these men are not drunk, as you suppose." What the Greek literally says is, "He stood up and said to them, 'Not as you suppose are these men drunk.'" In other words, they are drunk, but not from new wine; rather, it is what Joel said would happen--the Spirit of God has come upon them. It is true that to be controlled by the Holy Spirit does affect a person somewhat like alcohol does. Paul implies this in Ephesians: "Do not get drunk with wine...but be filled with the Spirit" (Eph. 5:18). But Peter says, "No, it is only nine o'clock in the morning. Everyone knows that hardly anyone drinks before eleven o'clock, so it can't be that they're drunk with new wine; they're drunk with the Holy Spirit!"

In the Last Days

And then he quotes this amazing passage from the prophet Joel:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day. And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Acts 2:17-21).

Peter's explanation is very simple. Since this is exactly what Joel declared would happen, it is therefore neither unexpected nor unexplained. The key to this passage from Joel is the phrase "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh." If you read the prophecy as it occurs in the second chapter of Joel, you will find that in the words preceding this passage the prophet had predicted that the Lord would visit His people. He would come to them and live in their midst. Then, as the prophet puts it, "afterward" (after this visitation) "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh." A distinction is made between the visitation of God to Israel and the pouring out of the Spirit upon all peoples everywhere--Gentiles as well as Jews. The emphasis of this section is that now the good news about Jesus Christ is to go out to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews.

Now Peter announces that the time has come when God will pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, Jews and Gentiles alike--not only all people everywhere, but all kinds of people: "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions" (Acts 2:17). Note the emphasis upon youth. God is saying that in this age of the Spirit, leadership, effectiveness, and power will not be limited to gray hairs; young men and women will also speak and lead, will also prophesy and see visions. Even upon servants, obscure people, and insignificant people will God pour out His Spirit, and they too will prophesy.

What Peter did not say is as important as what he did say. He did not say, "Thus is fulfilled what was said by the prophet Joel." From other Scriptures we learn that Joel's prophecy has yet to be fulfilled in its ultimate meaning. God will again visit His people at the second return of Jesus Christ. Then, after His return, the Spirit will once more be poured out. When Peter quotes this passage he changes the word "afterward" to the phrase "in the last days." Peter adapts Joel's prediction to the present age of the Spirit, which begins, he says, with the pouring out of the Spirit of God.

It is also important to notice that in this quotation of Joel there is no mention at all of tongues; instead, Joel refers to another gift of the Spirit, the gift of prophecy. Prophecy is the ability to declare or tell forth the Word of God in power. Young men and old, servants and obscure people will all be equipped by the Spirit to tell forth the Word of God with power. That will be the mark of the age, Joel says. The emphasis is not upon tongues at all--not even upon gifts--but upon the Spirit who gives the gifts.

The last section of the prophecy was not fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost. According to the prophecy of Jesus Himself, this is yet for the future (Matt. 24:29). The day is coming when God will show signs on earth and in the heaven above: blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day (Acts 2:20).

Thus Peter gives us the great parenthesis which marks the age of the Spirit in which we live. It began on Pentecost, and it will end after the Great Tribulation, but through it all runs one great unbroken thread:

And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Acts 2:21).

It is an age of faith, an age of belief. When men believe what God has said and call upon the name of the Lord, asking Jesus to be Lord of their life, they are filled with the Spirit. There need be no manifestation, no outward signs. It will be just as Jesus Himself said:

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:37,38).

John immediately adds,

Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believe in him were to receive... (John 7:39).

From the Day of Pentecost on, the Spirit is given to everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the reason for the manifestations on the Day of Pentecost.

Is It the Same Gift?

Now the question comes, what about today's manifestation of tongues? Today many people are saying, "We are experiencing a second Pentecost. There is a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It is the 'latter rain' that was predicted by Joel to follow the 'early rain' of Pentecost." But no one seems to have noticed that Joel says that the latter rain will occur only after the second return of Jesus Christ--not before. Well, then, what about this modern experience of "speaking in tongues"? How should we evaluate it?

The great question that needs to be answered is whether or not the modern phenomenon is the same gift as that recorded in the Bible. We are exhorted by John to "test the spirits, to see whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1). The only way we can know for sure is to understand exactly what the marks of the Biblical gift are and then to compare these with what we see today.

Whenever the true gift of tongues is manifested it will always be characterized in four ways. The Holy Spirit always moves in line with the Word of God. First, as we have clearly seen, the Biblical gift of tongues always consists of known languages, spoken somewhere on earth. They may be unknown to the immediate audience hearing them (as in the fourteenth chapter of First Corinthians), but they are spoken somewhere.

Second, Biblical tongues are addressed to God as praise and worship. The early Christians did not preach the gospel in tongues; they praised and worshiped God in these strange languages. Paul confirms this with these words: "For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God" (1 Cor. 14:2).

The third mark of true Biblical tongues is very clear in this Pentecostal incident. The gift of tongues is intended to be manifested publicly--never privately. Again Paul confirms this when he says, "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (1 Cor. 12:7). The gifts are not for private blessing; they are for the common good. In First Corinthians 14 Paul insists that if tongues are nevertheless exercised in the church, they must be interpreted, lest they be of no value whatsoever. Tongues were never intended for the benefit of the speaker, but for the edifying of the hearers. The miracle at Pentecost occurred for the benefit of the thousands of Jews who had gathered at Jerusalem from the four corners of the earth.

This leads to the last mark of Biblical tongues, which is also clearly evident at Pentecost and which is definitely referred to by Paul in First Corinthians 14. The Biblical gift of tongues is a sign to unbelievers, and not to believers. Paul quotes an old Testament prophet, the prophet Isaiah, who predicted that one day God would send to Israel men who spoke in strange tongues (Isa. 28:11,12). "And," says Isaiah, "when you hear these you will know that the hour has struck when God will send His message out to all peoples everywhere." The tongues of Pentecost were therefore a sign to unbelievers that the gospel was now going out to the whole Gentile world. Wherever you find tongues occurring in the New Testament you always find unbelievers present, because tongues were a sign to them rather than to the believers.

The Need for Warning

That is what the Biblical gift of tongues was like. In my judgment, the present-day manifestation is definitely not the same thing, since it doesn't meet the Biblical standard at all. Furthermore, we need to recognize that the utterance of strange syllables is a very common thing in other religions, occurring frequently in Hinduism and several African cults. Long before Plato and the early Greek philosophers discussed the phenomenon of speaking in strange syllables under religious ecstasy. But in my opinion this has nothing to do with the Biblical gift of languages; it is something else. At best, it is a psychological response, fulfilling an overpowering desire to have something that will mark a person as unusually favored in God's sight. This is almost always the explanation behind the hunger of those who seek this gift.

The false gift often appears in connection with a genuine moving of the Holy Spirit, and sometimes it is hard to separate the true from the false. This false gift is often a seed planted by the enemy in the midst of a genuine moving of the Spirit, and much of the blessing that comes from the genuine awakening is unthinkingly attributed to tongues. But it is clear to me that the results of yielding to this false gift of tongues is frequently spiritual derailment. Many who have begun well, who have begun to walk in the Spirit, are derailed--shunted into a dead-end street which never goes anywhere. It ultimately results in divisiveness, in separation of Christian from Christian, as well as in prolonged barrenness in the spiritual life. That is why there is need for a warning: the true gift of God will always be in line with the Biblical picture.

We need to take special heed to Peter's final word in this section, that in this age of the Spirit all that the Spirit of God has for us is given to whomever calls on the name of the Lord. As Paul says in the opening words of his Letter to the Ephesians, "Blessed be the God and Father...who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" (Eph. 1:3). And Peter adds, "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness" (2 Pet. 1:3). We need nothing further, no new provision or supply; we only need to claim by faith what is already ours in Christ Jesus.

Chapter Four

Confrontation

Acts 2:22-37

Peter said that the age of the Spirit would begin with proclamation and end with tribulation. We are two thousand years away from the beginning of that age, and therefore two thousand years closer to the end. In fact, it may well be that the end has already begun. Twenty-five years ago, many people would not have believed that the Book of Revelation could be literally fulfilled, exactly as written. But the Apostle Peter said that throughout this whole age the good news would be that whoever would call upon the name of the Lord would be saved; they would be free from everything that keeps them from being the kind of men and women they were intended to be. Salvation is a restoration to what God intended when he made man in the first place. And the way they will he saved, Peter says, is to call upon the name of the Lord.

But having said that, he is ready to spring a bomb on these people. The Lord upon whom men must call, Peter now announces, is none other than the Prophet who was crucified fifty days ago right here in the city of Jerusalem: Jesus of Nazareth. This stunning announcement fell upon the ears of these people with fantastic power. Peter set before them a threefold argument that began with the humanity of Jesus and ended with a clear proclamation of His deity. Peter moved with such precision and such irrefutable proofs that, when he arrived at his conclusion, three thousand people arrived with him.

The first movement is the foundation of facts:

Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know--this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it (Acts 2:22-24).

These are the great events in history upon which our Christian faith rests: the life and the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. These are historical events which would have been recorded in any daily newspaper of the time. If these events did not occur, Christianity is nothing but a hoax--a bad joke. It is upon the historicity of these events that our faith must rest. If they had not occurred, who would know better than Peter's audience? These people had been in Jerusalem throughout the time that these events took place. They had been in the city when it was so stirred with the arrest and trial and death of Jesus. Of all people in the world, Peter's listeners would have been best able to contradict the Apostle if any of these events were legend or myth. But the Apostle simply sets forth these facts as conclusive evidence and indisputable proofs to support the claims of the Christian faith.

The Standard Man

Each of these events is designed to teach mankind some important truth. The first is the pattern of normal humanity which Jesus set before us. He was a man, says Peter; he was not a specter or a phantom, nor was He a superman. He was a normal man, authenticated and approved by God as a standard of humanity. When you see Jesus you see what God intended man to be.

God's method of authentication was by "mighty works and wonders and signs," the miracles of Jesus. These amazing miracles of changing water to wine, of stilling the winds and the waves, of multiplying the loaves and fishes, of healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead are simply manifestations of man's intended control over nature. These signs were not done by Jesus because He was God. They were done by a man who was yielded to the indwelling power and life of God within. And by means of that power Jesus did these great miracles. That is the normal pattern of humanity, the means by which the life of God the Father was made available to the Man Jesus.

Jesus was indeed God--there is no question about that--but that was not the secret of His ministry. The secret of Jesus' ministry was that He was a Man through whom God worked. God wants to communicate to us through the life of Jesus in the Gospels, to tell us to act and think and react as Jesus did, for He is the pattern of normal humanity.

Putting Evil to Death

The second step in Peter's argument is to focus on the death of Jesus, in which is revealed the purpose of God in history:

This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men (Acts 2:23).

The death of Jesus was accomplished, Peter said, by you Jews at the hands of Roman Gentiles, who were lawless in regard to the observance of God's law. Although you did this, Peter continued, your murder nevertheless fulfilled the determinate program and plan of God. The Cross was no accident in the life of Jesus--it was an essential event, programmed by God the Father from the beginning of time. Peter indicates here that the only way God could deal with the problem of human evil--the basic problem--was by the death of Jesus. It had to happen, and God arranged it. He is the standard man. He pleased God because He was what God wanted men to be. There is no way to deal with this evil within us except by death.

We are all capable of putting on a respectable front. But within us all lurks an evil, reactionary nature which responds with all the ugly things that afflict us today. We are all capable of such evil. Even at moments when we want to do good we find this evil nature coming out. This is what God is aiming at destroying.

A young man came to see me, a man whom I had not seen for a number of years. He told me about his life, how he had gotten into difficulties and spent a few years in prison. Now he was really sorry for some of the things he had done, and he realized he was miserable and had made a fool of himself, and he wanted to straighten out his life. We talked about what it would take to correct his life, and about the need of a restoration to the love and fellowship of the Lord Jesus. Then we prayed together. Yet that very night this young man went to the place where he worked, cleaned out the till, and took off with $200 of his father's money. The possibilities of evil are in all of us. God says that the only way this sinful nature can be broken is by the death of Jesus; there is no other way out.

When Peter speaks about the definite plan and foreknowledge involved of God, he is not saying that the men and women who were involved in the death of Jesus were robots, automatons who could not help themselves; that though they had to put Jesus to death they could hardly be blamed, since they were operating according to the predetermined program of God. What was determined was that, once having made a choice to reject God, they no longer had a choice as to how that rejection would be manifested. It must manifest itself in some deliberate action and attitude against Jesus Christ.

Not One Challenge

Now Peter moves to the third point--the resurrection:

But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it (Acts 2:24).

The resurrection power of God, a power which man cannot duplicate, is revealed here. The ability to bring life out of death, to correct a situation that is hopeless, to change a person's hardened heart--that is resurrection power. A high school boy was telling me how baffled his father was by his son's conversion. He couldn't understand it; it fit no psychological pattern that he knew of. He couldn't explain why his son was suddenly so different. And because he couldn't explain it, it angered him and he fought it all the way. People who come into contact with the resurrection power of God frequently react this way.

Mankind is always dreaming of finding a way to beat death. One of the more ghastly propositions today is to put yourself in a condition of deep-freeze if you have an incurable disease, until science has found a cure, maybe fifty or a hundred years from now. Then doctors will thaw you out, and you will get a chance to go on living. What a miserable thing! What a far cry from resurrection life! This is not what happened to Jesus Christ when He rose from the dead in all the fulness and vitality of His person.

The strange and remarkable thing about Peter's sermon is that not a single voice was lifted in protest. To me one of the greatest proofs of the resurrection of Jesus is that Peter could stand up in the city where these events had taken place a little more than a month before and tell these people that Jesus had risen from the dead, with not a single person challenging him. They knew that the authorities could not produce the body of Jesus, though they would have given a king's ransom to be able to do so. The people had heard all the wild rumors of Jesus appearing alive to His own disciples, and now they stand in mute and stricken silence as the Apostle drives home with powerful strokes the sword of the Spirit, convicting them of the truth of his claim.

Pointing Toward Jesus

The second major movement in Peter's address was to reveal the background of the resurrection prediction. Behind the actual events of the resurrection lay a pattern of prediction which tremendously enhanced the power of the Apostle's argument. He quotes now from David:

For David says concerning him, "I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will dwell in hope. For thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let thy Holy One see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou wilt make me full of gladness with thy presence" (Acts 2:25-28).

The point that Peter is making here by quoting from the sixteenth Psalm is not merely that David had predicted that Jesus would rise from the dead, but also that David had declared that the resurrection was absolutely essential in view of the life that Jesus had lived. Peter's whole argument hangs on this "therefore" in verse 26. Before that, David foresaw Jesus as saying, "I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken." His would be a life lived continually in dependence on the power and authority of the Father. "Therefore [because I will rest in trust upon God] my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will rest in hope. "For," he goes on, "you will not abandon my soul to Hades, and you will not let my body rot in the grave. Instead, you will make known to me the ways of life, and in your presence will be fullness of gladness and joy."

That prediction of David indicates that the kind of life which Jesus lived guaranteed that death would have no power over Him. In the Words of Major Ian Thomas, "He had to be what He was in order to do what He did." And then Major Thomas continues, "He had to do what He did in order that we might have what He is. And we must have what He is in order to be what He was." That is Christianity.

The second point that Peter makes here is that David was not talking about himself:

Brethren, I may say to you confidently of the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses (Acts 2:29-32).

Skeptics say that these predictive psalms, such as Psalms 16 and 22, reflect only some personal experience that the psalmist was going through, and that it is wrong to read them as pointing forward to Jesus Christ. But notice how Peter denies that argument. He says, "In the sixteenth Psalm David is talking about a man whose body does not rot in the grave. Now that couldn't be David, because David died and was buried. And if you don't believe it, there's his tomb."

Peter's third point in his sermon is that death had no effect whatever upon Jesus Christ. Some Christians accept the theory that when Jesus died His soul went to hell, where He preached to the spirits that were in hades and led some of them captive up to heaven. But Jesus did not go to hades; He did not go to hell. As He said when He died, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit"(Luke 23:46). The argument of the Apostle was, then, that death had no power over Him--none at all. It could touch neither His soul nor His body.

Evidence of Lordship

In the last movement of Peter's sermon we see the demonstration of the results:

"Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make thy enemies a stool for thy feet.' Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?" (Acts 2:33-37).

Once again the Apostle turned his whole audience into witnesses of his claim. He says, "You're just now seeing the proof of what David had predicted would happen." And then he quotes Psalm 110, in which God says to David's Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I make you ruler over all, till I make your enemies your footstool." And Peter says that this has now happened--that the tongues of fire, the sound of the mighty wind, and the utterance of the strange languages were proof that Jesus of Nazareth is Lord and Christ.

"Lord" means Ruler of all things, King over all men, the One who holds the key to life and death, heaven and hell. There is no authority or power that exists that does not take its direction and its limitation from Him. "Christ" means Messiah. "Jesus" is His name; "Christ" is His title. Christ means Messiah, the Promised One, the Deliverer, the only hope that mankind has ever had.

Suddenly all of this made fantastic sense to the multitude. The full force of Peter's arguments thudded home, and they realized that they were in a very precarious position. This One whom Peter had proved by indisputable evidence to be Lord was the very person they had crucified fifty days before. They were cut to the to the heart, and they cried out, "Brethren, what shall we do?"

It is here that Christianity rests its case. Jesus Christ is Lord whether men know it or not. The very forces that control their lives are dependent upon Him. The declaration of Peter on this day was that Jesus is the inevitable Man. There is no way you can avoid Him. He is Lord over all things, and sooner or later you have to deal with Jesus Christ, whether you like it or not; you have no option.

Chapter Five

The Essential Ingredients

Acts 2:37-47

The response to Peter's message on the Day of Pentecost was similar to the remarkable awakening that recently swept across our country, especially on college campuses. It is an awakening in which the wife of a college president gets up in chapel and confesses her antagonism toward both the school and the town, confessing that she had not enjoyed her years there and had held it against the whole college community. As she confesses, she tells of God's dealing with her and of the warm love and acceptance He has now given her toward both the town and the school. At the end of her testimony, it is like the Day of Pentecost. People swarm to the altar, cut to the heart because of what they have heard.

That is exactly what happened two thousand years ago, confirming that we are living in the same age of the Spirit that was begun on the Day of Pentecost. Continuing in Acts 2, we read:

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?" (Acts 2:37).

To be cut to the heart is to be deeply convicted, to have a sense of personal involvement in what has been said and an awareness of the tremendous impact of revealed truth. These people had had their eyes opened. They began to realize that behind all the normal events of everyday life was the power of God. And now they understood that the Man they had nailed to a cross some fifty days earlier was the very God of power Himself.

In fear and perhaps despair the crowd cried out, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" This is the work of the Spirit of God, making men aware of the Lordship of Jesus. Jesus is Lord. By Him all things consist and are held together. When we understand that Jesus is the inescapable One, there comes this deep sense of conviction, of being cut to the heart.

Change Your Mind

Peter responds by providing a crystal-clear explanation of how to become a Christian:

And Peter said to them, "Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him." And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, "Save your selves from this crooked generation" (Acts 2:38-40).

There are two things you need to do, Peter says, and then there is one thing God will do. First you need to repent--a word which is greatly misunderstood. Feeling sorry and crying may go along with repentance, but such emotions do not necessarily mean that you have repented. To repent (Greek mantanoia) means to change your mind. You have been thinking that everything was all right with you--but now you must think again. You have been thinking that Jesus may have been a great teacher, or a great prophet, but that He is not the Son of God--but now you must think again. Peter is saying, "Get in tune with reality, line up with things the way they really are!"

A New Beginning

The second thing to do is to be baptized. Baptism does not make you magically clean, but it is the outward and symbolic declaration of the change of mind that you have experienced inside. Baptism is an open identification with Jesus Christ. It is a cutting off from the old way of thinking, a beginning of a new life. Among these Jews baptism wa