Clough Acts Lesson 4

Pentecost: What Did it Mean? – Acts 2:1-21, Isaiah 28

[Feedback card] Joseph in Acts 1:23 was known for drinking a cup of venom to prove the divinity of Christ to heretics. What does this do, then, to the argument that Mark 16:17-18 is not there as part of the canon of Scripture? Well, whether that particular verse is there or not there’s no doubt but that signs accompanied the early apostles. The debate doesn’t have to hinge on the canonicity of Mark 16. There’s undoubtedly miracles like that that happen. The debate isn’t that; the debate is whether those miracles were to last or not into the next non-apostolic generation.

In Acts 1:13, is James the son of Alphaeus or the brother of Jesus? He’s the son of Alphaeus, this is a different James than the author of the epistle of James.

Were the apostles out of line in choosing another person to be numbered with the eleven? If they are not why does Paul have to go to so much trouble to prove his apostleship? Precisely because the circle of the twelve apostles was complete and Paul always faced the problem of exclusion from the circle of the twelve and therefore it was a problem in the early Church to accept Paul’s ministry. This is why he goes to unlimited amounts of time in the epistles to defend it. God called Paul to a special apostleship for the Gentiles and he has a different label than the other apostles. The other apostles are called the twelve, Paul is called an apostle to the nations or an apostle to the Gentiles; there’s a different title there. God just did it that way; we don’t know why, He just did it that way.

Why is it impossible to have constant spiritual without attending the same church as opposed to going to different churches from time to time? Well, you can go to different churches from time to time but my point in making the exhortation a few weeks ago is for you to abide with a local group of believers, settle down. A lot of this church hopping, going from one church to another, is really because people are immature. Now some of it is a search for Bible doctrine but a lot of isn’t; a lot of it is just using that to blow smoke. The real issue is that they cannot get along with believers and an authoritative structure and so every time something comes up that the least bit annoys them instead of solving the problem biblically they just pick up their marbles and go some place else, and that kind of attitude is just basically immature and it cuts you off from a constant ministry. See, when you’re under a particular teacher you’ve got to stay with that man a long enough time to gather what he’s saying, his basic framework and so on. You wouldn’t obviously go to a university, enroll for two weeks in one course and hop around, two weeks in another course and three weeks in something else. Then how come that some of you do this as far as churches are concerned. It’s basically ridiculous and you’re not going to grow that way; there’s no way.

Let’s turn to Acts 2; today we begin a new section in the book of Acts; this is a section that demands close concentration because Acts is one of the most misused books of all the Bible. We have studied in Acts 1 the prelude to the Acts, showing Luke’s emphasis on the historic nature of Christ’s ascension, that there had to be an literal ascent from the literal Mount of Olives, on a literal day and this is to provide your faith with the historic background so you can trust; you don’t have to work up an emotion, you can relax and simply trust in what God has done. Then elsewhere in Acts 1 we studied the completion of the circle of the twelve. We’ve seen how God the Holy Spirit purges the Church, and when Judas spills his guts on top of The Field of the Potter then that’s a good example for the Church down through history of the Ariuses and similar apostates who will similarly die as God the Holy Spirit purges out men who have rebelled against the authority of the Word of God. This is a source of encouragement to believers that God stands with us in the battle; He’s not left it all to us.

Now beginning with chapter 2 and going through chapter 7 we have the ministry in Jerusalem. Acts 1:8 gives you the outline for the book of Acts: Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world; three things. And chapters 2-7 deal with Jerusalem. Remember the key in Acts 1:22, these apostles were called not just to witness but to be witnesses to His resurrection and that’s one of the great themes of the witness. It is not a witness over what God has done particularly to you. Now your life may have been changed by the Word of God, that’s fine, but that still is not the gospel. The gospel is not that your life has been changed; the gospel is what Christ has done and let’s distinguish between testimony and the gospel. Testimony is fine but someone is not going to be won to Christ by testimony. What they will be one to is a futile attempt to mimic your experience and your testimony. So mere recitation of testimony is not witnessing; witnessing is telling someone else what has happened in history.

Now in Acts 2 we deal with the witnessing in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Acts 2;1, “When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.” This demands quite a bit of Old Testament background so let’s start with what Pentecost is all about. Pentecost is one of the great feasts in the spring cycle of Israel’s calendar. Israel had a spring cycle to here calendar and she had a fall cycle to her calendar so that nationally the Jew, by celebrating his national holidays would have to review God’s pan of history and in reviewing God’s plan of history all the major events would be covered. So in the spring first you had Passover; Passover reviewed the Exodus, it reviewed salvation from judgment by blood atonement, a very vital truth that would be mirroring the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you had the Feast of Unleavened Bread and you also had a second day, the Feast of Firstfruits. So the first holiday was Passover, the second holiday was the Feast of Firstfruits and then fifty days later you had the holiday of Pentecost, the third day in the spring cycle. Those are three holidays that every Jew celebrated every year. Every time spring would come they’d celebrate Passover, Firstfruits and Pentecost; Passover, Firstfruits and Pentecost, year after year after year.

Now God was training them and we find that when God chose to finish off certain elements of history these elements of history happened exactly on these days. Jesus Christ was crucified that year exactly on the day of Passover and Paul speaks of this in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8. So Jesus Christ died to the day, not by chance, but by God’s sovereign control of history, Christ paid the price for your sin and mine on that day when blood atonement was introduced into history at the Exodus, as far as its redemptive quality was concerned. Then Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the day of Firstfruits, also mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:20. So the first two events of the spring calendar have been fulfilled. Christ has died fulfilling Passover; Christ has risen from the dead fulfilling the day of Firstfruits.

Now the third day, the day of Pentecost. Now although the New Testament says quite explicitly that Jesus Christ died and roes again in fulfillment of those first two days, the Bible does not explicitly say that Pentecost has been completely fulfilled. There’s no statement in the New Testament to that effect. We know Pentecost has been partially fulfilled but not totally fulfilled. It has been partially fulfilled on that day in Acts 2; it was partially fulfilled in Acts 8; it was partially fulfilled again in Acts 10, partially fulfilled in Acts 19; fulfilled in Jerusalem; fulfilled in Samaria; fulfilled among the Gentiles and fulfilled among John the Baptist’s disciples in Ephesus. So we have these partial fulfillments of Pentecost, but on the day of Pentecost this time you have a major fulfillment, not the final one but a major one. To find out the complications, and believe me Acts 2 is a complicated passage. Anybody trying to build doctrine out of Acts 2 is going to have a bad time. This is an extremely difficult chapter and today we’re going to spend time just on the verse by verse approach; then next week we’ll deal with the doctrine of tongues.

What did these feasts picture. We already know that Passover pictured the cross of Christ; it did so by a lamb, a sacrificial lamb. We know that Firstfruits commemorated the spring harvest; in the agricultural of Israel there were two crops planted, fall crop and spring crop, or we would say winter crop and summer crop and the harvest would be at the end of spring and at the end of fall. Now the Feast of Pentecost and Firstfruits have to do with that winter crop that comes to harvest at the end of the spring. And the Firstfruits, the day of the Firstfruits would be the day in which they’d walk out into the fields and take the ripened barley, which was the first thing in their economy that came to harvest, they’d take some sheafs of the barley and then they’d hold it up, have the high priest hold this up before God. The barley was not used; it was not ground, it was not incorporated into a loaf of bread; it was just taken raw out of the field and held before God. Why? Because it was a picture of what was coming; it was a guarantee that the harvest was going to come to fruit, that a crop was going to be made. And so the Firstfruits then are connected with the next holiday, the third one, Pentecost, because in the day of Pentecost, the other grains that are coming, the wheat as well as the barley are now taken out of the field and ground. And thus on the day of Pentecost it is not the raw wheat or the raw barley but it is the ground grain made into a loaf to eat that has been presented before God. The difference between Firstfruits and Pentecost is, then, in the utilization of the crop. It’s the same crop but it’s a difference that one is being used for its purpose and the other one is just a sign that it’s started but it hasn’t finished.

Now why is this little observation valuable for doctrine. For the reason that we know what Firstfruits speaks of; it speaks of resurrection. Christ rose on that third day. Therefore, since Firstfruits speaks of resurrection we can say that Pentecost basically is related not to the Holy Spirit, it is related to God the Son and His resurrection. Pentecost is part of the same process that began when Christ was resurrected from the dead, and thus the ground of Pentecost is not the Holy Spirit giving testimony to Himself; it is the Son and His great resurrection and Pentecost is a sign of that resurrection. See, this fits with the theme of Acts. What were the disciples told to do in verse 22? To be witnesses to the resurrection and this is the empowerment to be witnesses to that resurrection. So not the Holy Spirit of the Trinity but the Son of the Trinity is the center of Pentecost.

Now on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to bring the believing remnant into union, just like all those little grains were ground together and put into a loaf of bread that was useful, so now those who had experienced resurrection in their hearts through regeneration would then be brought together in a body. Now we know that body to be the Church. The Church was born on the day of Pentecost. However, throughout the rest of the morning I am not going to treat the Church in the book of Acts; we’re going to pretend we don’t know anything about the New Testament. We’re not going to read Paul back into Luke here at this point. We’re going to let the Feast of Pentecost unroll and look at it as a Jew would have looked at it in that day. Then we have a true historic perspective, because all these feasts, Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Pentecost and the fall cycle were not given to the Church; they were given to Israel. Now the Church benefits from them but always remember these are given to Israel, not the Church: Israel! And therefore, Pentecost is not a Christian feast; it is a Jewish feast and we benefit from it but it is primarily a Jewish feast.

Now there’s another thing that’s very interesting about Pentecost, particularly at this time in the book of Acts. At this time in history it was genuinely believed by the Jews, and you can verify this by looking at the Talmud, it was genuinely believed by the Jews that the day of Pentecost, like the day of Passover marked the Exodus, the day of Pentecost marked the giving of the Mosaic Law at Mount Sinai. Now this is interesting because basically the day of Pentecost spells the New Covenant, the new giving of the Law and this time who is on the mount giving the law but the Lord Jesus Christ at the Father’s right hand, He gives the Law. And so it’s a new law-giving, a New Covenant, that comes into operation on this day.

The reason Pentecost is so difficult to treat is because of a problem in prophecy. Jesus Christ died on the day of Passover; Jesus Christ rose from the grave on the day of Firstfruits. Now on the day of Pentecost, fifty days later, the Holy Spirit comes. Now the Holy Spirit comes exactly on schedule, exactly according to prophecy. God has upheld His part of the plan but here’s the problem. The nation Israel remains nationally in rejection against Messiah, so on the day of Pentecost you’ve got a complicated situation. God has undergone His process of literally fulfilling history but Israel has not responded to Christ nationally and so it’s like God’s program comes along at 50 miles an hour on the road, locks the brakes, everything stops. The Holy Spirit comes and there is a pause; Israel, what are you going to do. Are you going to get right with God now? Are you going to repent? Are you going to trust in Christ as your Messiah nationally or not?

Why do I mention this? Because the addresses given in Acts 2 and Acts 3 are not simple Church Age gospel presentations and when we get down to Acts 2:38 and “be baptized,” we are dealing not with a gospel presentation; we are dealing rather with a kingdom presentation to the nation Israel. When Peter gets up, yes, the gospel is part of what he says but that’s not his main point. In the first place neither Peter nor the apostles really realize that the formation of the Church has happened yet; they’re not going to realize that for years after Pentecost. But right now all they think of is the nation Israel and getting that kingdom back. So the plan of God has come through Passover; it has come through the Firstfruits, and it has come to the day of Pentecost and stopped; it stopped because Israel hasn’t gone on; it hasn’t gone on in response to the Word of God.

So when we start going through Acts now, in Acts 2 you’re going to see some partial fulfillment but now whole fulfillment and it’s complicated by this fact that the nation remains in rebellion although the Holy Spirit has come in obedience. Two factors, and that complicates the prophecy. So anybody that wants to pull a little piece of doctrine out of Acts 2 is going to have to work to do it; this is an extremely, extremely complicated chapter. Let’s look at it verse by verse.

Acts 2:1, “When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. Now let’s remember that those who are there in one place, probably in the house of the mother of John Mark, are not all the Christians. All the Christians did not speak in tongues on the day of Pentecost; there were at least 500 up in Galilee, they didn’t speak in tongues on the day of Pentecost; only a small group of believers spoke in tongues on the day of Pentecost and that was this special group that had remained in the city of Jerusalem. And they were speaking in tongues, not because of something happening spiritual to them as much as it was beginning the ministry in Jerusalem. This giving of tongues, first off, is not given to all believers on the first day. “They were all,” that is, all those listed in the Acts 1:15, “they were all with one accord in one place.” There are many hundreds of believers elsewhere who do not participate in the day of Pentecost and they are not excluded from the body of Christ.

Acts 2:2, “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.” Notice something, it doesn’t say the house was filled with the wind. It says it was filled with the noise of the wind. Now anyone who’s lived in Lubbock for a while knows what the noise of the wind is. And if you hear a noise that sounds much like a freight train coming down the tracks I would suggest that you duck because that is the noise of a tornado, and although I haven’t heard one personally except on a tape when I was doing some work in the weather service studying this phenomena, and I can tell you that it sounds very impressive because it sounds like it’s coming way off in infinity towards you, it’s just a deep, deep sound that seems to go out away from where you’re located. It’s a roar, a roar that conveys power, and that’s the sound that they hear in this room; the whole house hears this but no wind blows. If somebody had been smoking the smoke would have gone right up straight all during this day of Pentecost; no wind circulated in the room.

It was just the noise, but it was a noise that was recognizable as associated with wind. And since it was we go back to one of our great natural illustrations in Scripture. And this is an area, someday we’re going to put out a publication on the natural illustrations of doctrine in creation. Wind; wind is always a picture of a spirit, either God’s Spirit or evil spirits but wind is this picture. Jesus pictured the Holy Spirit to Nicodemus this way; Daniel in his vision, remember what he said when he envisioned the rise of the great dictatorship in future history, how did Daniel symbolically picture that? The wind blowing on the sea; the sea is a picture in the Bible of men without the Word of God, drifting to and fro; water takes on the form of its container, it’s pliable, it compromises, it can be blown through influence, it has no inherent stability of its own, and therefore God the Holy Spirit uses the sea as a picture of unstable humanity without doctrine.

And in the book of Daniel you have the wind blowing upon that sea and the winds from the four heavens are angelic forces that operate on mankind to bring… what comes out of the sea in the book of Daniel? The monster; what is the monster? The kingdom of man. How do we interpret that? The spiritual forces work on doctrine-less humanity to create from it the monster of the antichrist’s government. That is a produce of spiritual working on unbelieving humanity. Now conversely when God’s Spirit goes to work on humanity He too works spiritually. And so whereas you have the rise of the monster out of the sea, now in Acts 2 you have the rise of the Church out of the sea and it’s the same thing but this time instead of the spirits of Satan it is God’s Holy Spirit that does the operating.

So verse 2 is the audio, verse 3 is the visual, audio-visual aid. Audio in verse 2, the wind and the Spirit; the visual in verse 3, fire. “And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as a fire, and it sat upon each of them.” Now the word “cloven” fools you because in the original it’s a participle, not a noun and it means the “cleaving tongues like as a fire,” so in this picture we’ve got fire. Now keep in mind, in this case probably it looks much like a flame but every time you see “fire” in the Scripture it’s just their noun for life. If Luke were to walk in this auditorium he would see this gas that’s being illuminated by these electrodes in these fluorescent tubes, he would look at that and say that’s fire and we’d say that’s not fire, it’s just electrical energy. But the word “fire” was as far as they defined it in that day. So apparently this fire was a strange sort, we might say just an electrical energy type thing, Moses saw the burning bush, the bush appeared to burn but wasn’t burning; obviously it wasn’t the same kind of flame as we’re used to seeing oxidizing gas. So the fire here is some sort of thing of light and it comes into the room as a streamer. Sometimes this happens if you’re out in an area where you’ve got a lot of ungrounded things in a lightening storm, if you’ve ever seen St. Elmo’s fire or you’ve seen ball lightening, these kind of phenomena, you’ll be sitting in a room and all of a sudden a three foot ball of fire will come right in the door; I wouldn’t advise touching it, you’d get a little shock if you do, but it’s kind of harmless, it’ll go across the floor, maybe hit the furniture and divide in three or four parts and roll all over the place and then dissipate. It’s a real weird situation but what it is, it’s static electricity in some form, really which no one knows how it forms, but it’s associated with electrical phenomena. There are all kinds of things so what I’m doing here is avoid just this simple idea of fire as an oxidizing flame, it could be something else.

Anyway, what Luke says, it came in in streamers, and these streamers broke out he said, just like turbulent gas in oxidizing flame, you have these. It’s middle voice, they were cleaving themselves, it’s as though the flame had intelligence, it was just kind of going like this and as it entered the room it just divided and boom, boom, boom, boom, everybody got shampooed with the stuff. So this was the audio that happened that day, on the day of Pentecost. “…and it sat upon each one of them.” Now let’s tie these two symbols together and look what doctrine we’ve learned. The wind is a symbol of the spirit; the fire is a symbol in Scripture of God’s holiness. And so what do we have: the Spirit of holiness. Of course the Holy Spirit when He manifests Himself manifests Himself as wind and fire because those are the two standard symbols of Scripture for the manifestation of the Spirit of holiness. It’s not unusual that it would show up in this form. Let’s go on and see what happens.

Acts 2:4, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. [5] And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. [6] Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded because every man heard them speak in his own language. [7] And they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, Behold, are not all these who speak Galileans?” The Galileans were looked upon as sort of the country clods by the metropolitan Jerusalemites. And if you wanted to speak of someone derogatorily you referred to them as some dumb Galilean. We’d say a clod and they’d say a Galilean, so translated, “Behold, are not all these who speak clods? [8] And how hear we every man in our own language, wherein we were born? [9] Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia,” there are the eastern group of people; the Parthians and the Medes, bordering on India, that’s how far east these Jews came from. Up until the word Mesopotamia in verse 9 you have eastern, you have the far east represented. “…and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,” which is Asia Minor, that’s the near east represented. [10] “Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya around Cyrene, and the strangers of Rome, [both Jews and proselytes],” there you have Africa and the west represented, so look at the groups of people. People from the far east, people from the near east, people from the west, people from Africa, three continents. [11] “Cretans, and Arabians,” the islands of the Mediterranean and down south in the peninsula of Arabia, “we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. [12] And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What means this? [13] Others mocking, said, These men are full of new wine.”

Now first some observations; do you notice in verse 6, in verse 8, they are speaking in known human languages. There’s no gibberish, there’s none of this business about drawing your bath tub to 80 degrees as I read one minister saying and you lie back and let your tongue to blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu and it comes out as this is speaking in tongues. None of that stuff, none of that junk, that fraudulent ridiculous religious garbage. This is a supernatural, lofty, wonderful, majestic miracle of God, of people speaking in another human language, at least 14 are mentioned in this passage, 14 different languages, known languages. But there’s something more to this because in verse 8 there’s a little expression about these languages that tells you how they were spoken. It says “we hear every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born.” Now what does that mean, “wherein we were born?” It means with the dialect of your native locality. I grew up near New York and people in that area, there’s a Brooklynese, and so they have this Brooklynese way of speaking and that’s the dialect, it’s still part of English, not the Queen’s English but American English, and it’s a dialect particular to Brooklyn. And what Luke is telling us here is that when these people went to speak they not only spoke in the known human languages but they spoke with the home dialect. That’s what was so miraculous. Conceivably they might have gone to a language school and learned it but they wouldn’t learn all the fine native dialects; the only way you learn that home dialect is to actually have lived there. So that was one of the great miraculous features of this whole thing. If there had been Jews from Brooklyn they would have heard about toirdy tird street, in their own native dialect.

Now, there is a prophecy of what went on here, the speaking in tongues. You notice in verse 11, they spoke of “the wonderful works of God.” Now we’re going to try to interpret verse 11, what was actually said when they spoke in tongues; it’s important for obvious reasons and one thing we know they didn’t say is they apparently did not preach the entire gospel in those languages. How do we know that? Because Peter goes on to preach the gospel. Well, if Peter goes on to explain, he gets up and he says hey, these guys aren’t bombed out of their minds, it’s too early for that, obviously they weren’t all teetotalers, he was saying if they’re going to tie one on give them a little time, this is too early in the morning for that kind of thing. So he goes on and he explains the details of Christ’s life. He starts out in verse 22, “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God,” he goes through the life of Christ; verse 31 he talks about the resurrection, he goes on in verse 32-33 to talk about the ascension.

Well if these people had preached the gospel in these native languages, why is it Peter has to get up and explain it in Greek? Take one of those Parthian Jews, he comes all the way down, thousands of miles from Parthia, to Israel. He gets in Israel and he can speak this language and he can speak Koine Greek. Now what language do you think he’s going to be most fluent in? Obviously Parthian. Now if the gospel were to be clearly communicated the choice would be Parthia, not Koine. So Peter gets up in Koine and explains what was previously preached in Parthian. The only deduction you can make from that is that what was preached in Parthian was not what Peter’s speaking in Koine. Peter’s speaking something new in Koine that was not previously spoken in Parthian for that Parthian Jew. He’s learning something from Peter. So then what are “the wonderful works of God” in verse 11. If the wonderful works of God is not the gospel then what is it? Is it this praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord business? No, it’s not that either. The “wonderful works of God” is a term you’ll find used in the Septuagint, the Old Testament, for announcing God’s historic work. It is used, for example in Deuteronomy 11:2 for the Exodus. It is always a repetition of something God has recently done, “the wonderful works of God.”

Now to convey that in modern English the word “wonderful” has kind of lost its force for us, we would say the miraculous work of God. Now this is a guess but it’s a guess based upon this consideration and other Scriptures, some of which you’ll see this morning. I am guessing that what they said on that day of Pentecost was they said the King has sat down, the Messiah reigns, it was short ejaculatory sentences, simple subject, simple predicate in Parthian or in Elamite, whatever it was, these various dialects. It was not enough so that if you had sat there you would have said the King sat down at whose right hand? Christ ascended into heaven, what, what are you talking about. In other words, bits and pieces only was spoken in languages, they were real, it wasn’t gibberish but they were just short ejaculatory sentences, just tidbits of what God has recently done because the most recent miraculous work of God is the ascension of Christ. And so I believe that that’s what they were teaching on the day of Pentecost and that’s why the people said they must be drunk, nobody’s sitting at God’s right hand; that was the reaction.

But we can substantiate my speculation if we turn to Isaiah 28, the only prophecy of tongues in the Bible. It’s marvelous to observe that in light of all the conflicts over time the major spokesmen for the charismatic movement have never dealt with this passage, that is to my knowledge, and I have read pretty extensively in their works and Isaiah 28 is really neglected, and yet it’s a key. Isaiah 28 is the prophecy of tongues. Let’s look at it; Isaiah 28:11-12; thousands of years before Pentecost Isaiah prophesied and he said, “With stammering lips and another tongue will He,” God, “speak to this people.” Who? “will speak to this people,” who’s “this people?” Israel. So what does that prophecy tell you about tongues; it is primarily directed to Israel, not Gentiles. It’s not a sign to everyone that breathes; it is a sign to the nation Israel. That’s what tongues is for, that’s what it’s prophesied to do. It is a special signal to the nation Israel that something is happening.

What’s happening? It says in verse 12 that the tongues will speak to this people, “To whom he said, “This is the rest wherein ye may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing; yet they would not hear.” Verse 12 up to the word “and” is a prophecy of the millennial kingdom. The word “rest” and “refreshing” are both technical terms that Peter is going to use in his speech. When Peter in Acts 3 gets to the point of baptizing he says you believe, you be baptized and the times of refreshing will come to you. Now what is he talking about? Being saved in the Christian sense? Negative! He is talking about trusting the Lord and having the millennial kingdom come right there; that’s what he’s saying. It’s an offer of the kingdom to the nation Israel. It is not a simple evangelistic sermon that can be modeled for the rest of the Church Age.

In this passage in Isaiah 28 verse 12 is telling us that the Jewish people had the kingdom preached to them but they wouldn’t listen and so therefore God is going to speak to them “with stammering lips and another tongue.” Who preached the kingdom to the nation Israel? Jesus Christ did; didn’t He go around saying the kingdom has come, the kingdom has come, and the people refused to listen, so God says, I’ll preach to you now through “stammering lips.” Now the word “stammering lips and another tongue” doesn’t mean blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu kind of stuff, what it means is known barbarian non-Semitic languages. Many of the Semitic languages, once you master one you can kind of, if you’re a language type, you can learn Aramaic and Arabic if you know Hebrew because the grammar is very simple. The stammering lips were Japhetic Gentile languages and this is what God is saying; I’m going to speak to you now, you wouldn’t listen to me when I spoke to you through Semitic languages so now you’re going to get it and you’re to get it through Gentile languages. So there’s no support in this passage either for some sort of a blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, there’s only known human language, that’s the only concept, known human language.

But now to correctly apply Isaiah 28 we’ve got to look at the context of it. Go back to Isaiah 28:1 and look at the context because the context really solves the problem. “Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of those who are overcome with wine!” Does that sound like the nation Ephraim, which is the northern kingdom, does that sound like they’re just so spiritual and so wonderful and absorbing the Word so much that they’re just going to be blessed with speaking in tongues? Not at all, that context shows you the nation is damned, it’s under discipline so the context of speaking in tongues, far from being a context of blessing, is a context of cursing; cursing upon the nation for its apostasy.

Let’s look further in this, Isaiah 28:7, Isaiah goes on to describe the national leadership of the country, “But they also have erred through wine,” like all the wino’s in Congress right now, “and through strong drink are out of the way. The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink,” notice, leaders cannot habitually drink without making stupid judgments and stupid judgments are being made in this country by idiots who hit the bottle at 5:00 o’clock. A friend of mine went to Washington recently and he said you should see what happens at 5:00 o’clock when the offices all clear out; everybody can’t wait till happy hour. The same thing was happening here, and notice verse 8, good picturesque verse, “For all tables are full of vomit,[and filthiness, so that there is no place clean],” if you’ve been around people that drink you know what happens after a while, and this went on and on until, as Isaiah said, just walk through the stuff. Good picturesque language for describing apostasy.

In the middle of all this apostasy Isaiah kept saying judgment, judgment, judgment, judgment, and apparently he preached very short sentences, very simple language because when you preach to spiritual morons you have to use simple language, they don’t understand anything else. And when we come to Isaiah 28:9 we have a shift in the speaker. Verse 9 is the sarcasm of the apostate people that are all over the table full of vomit, and here they are lying in it and Isaiah comes in, judgment, judgment, judgment, judgment and these people kind of look up {slurring} huh, what’s he say? And this is what they say, “Who is He going to teach knowledge? And whom shall He make to understand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. [10] For precept must be upon precept; line upon line; here a little, there a little.” And what they’re doing is they’re ridiculing Isaiah’s message; they’re saying Isaiah, what are we? Babies, that we have to be taught like little infants weaned from the breast? Who is it you’re trying to make understand? We are the leaders of this country, we’re not babies. So it’s sarcasm. Now what God does and in verse… the justification for the difference in speaking has to do with prophetic literature, if you want to know why I do this we can have a discussion sometime privately if you want to justify that, but we have a shift in speaker again in verse 11, when God is then saying okay, you people, you don’t like baby talk, okay, I’ll give you baby talk some more; this time it won’t be Isaiah coming into your vomit filled tables saying judgment, judgment, judgment, this time you’re going to hear the Babylonian soldiers come in there and they’re going to kill you and they’re going to rape your women and they’re going to pull down the buildings and you’re going to hear Me speak now and you’re going to hear it baby language, kill ‘em, destroy ‘em, rape her, that’s what you’re going to hear. So if you don’t want to hear the simple baby language of Isaiah stick around, you’ll hear some real good baby language. And then after the prophecy in verse 13, Isaiah says God’s going to speak this through Gentile soldiers, “But the Word of God became,” in the Hebrew it’s the word become, “became unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept,” in other words it became to them baby talk, it became something to despise, so the context.

Let’s pull this together; the context of Isaiah 28: what does Isaiah 28 tell us about tongues? First of all it tells us that tongues is going to be known human languages and they will be Gentile languages, and if you look carefully at the list in Acts 1 most of those people come from Gentile speaking areas. So Gentile languages, the first thing we know from the prophecy of tongues, not gibberish but Gentile languages. [Tape turns] … Isaiah 28, it is to happen at a time when the nation has rejected the Word of God. It is not a sign of spiritual blessing, it is an announcement to the nation that what you despise hearing from the prophets you are now going to hear from others, speaking in Gentile languages; so it’s a sign of cursing, not a sign of blessing.

Several other observations from this passage. Do you notice in verse 7 that the context of the prophecy of tongues is drunkenness. Now isn’t this interesting because when tongues comes on the day of Pentecost the people who stand for the drunks are the ones who accuse the people speaking in tongues of drunkenness. See the irony. The people who are drunken in Isaiah are the ones who are being talked to in tongues, and things are so screwed up that by the time you get to the book of Acts these people who are being spoken to who are spiritually the drunks, they’re saying you’re drunk, they put the shoe on the other foot. Another thing, in verse 9 and in verse 13 this is said to be baby talk; again notice the end of verse 9, Who are we? Are we people “weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breast,” are we just babies. And what does Paul say tongues are in 1 Corinthians 14? Baby talk, “When I was a child I spoke as a child; when I become mature I put away childish things,” and it’s a picture of the fact he’s saying tongues was for the infancy of the Church, and now the Church is becoming mature with the completed canon of Scripture we don’t need this baby talk any more. So a lot of your New Testament applications of Isaiah 28 are there in the context if you’re willing to look.

Let’s go back to Acts 2 and see what else happened. These people hear the wonderful works of God in various languages. Apparently no coherent message, it was just a ejaculation about He sat at the Father’s right hand, He ascended into heaven, He’s seated at the Father’s right hand, this went on and on and somebody said hey, wait a minute, hold it, somebody pull all this together and explain it, what’s going on here. So now in verse 14 Peter stands up, and notice he stands up with eleven men, not ten, eleven; one plus eleven is twelve and there are twelve apostles here, not eleven. Twelve apostles, which proves that Paul is not considered part of the twelve apostles at this point.

Acts 2:14, “But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto the, Ye men of Judea, and all that dwell at Jerusalem,” notice he does not say you Gentiles afar off, he says you Jews. This is addressed to Jewish, not Gentiles, Jews. “…be it known unto you, and hearken to my words; [15] For these are not drunk, as you suppose, seeing it but the third hour of the day,” he’s being a little humorous here. If you’ve been around a person who drinks a lot you know when they start hitting the bottle in the morning you’ve got problems. That’s when real alcoholism has set in, they can’t wait to get their first cup of coffee before they hit the bottle.

Acts 2:16, “But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel,” now we’re in for a big long treat on the prophecy of Joel. Usually at this point we have to spin wheels and wonder, wait a minute, look down through the prophecy of Joel, verses 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 and you look at it and you see things that did not happen. For example, in verse 19, “And I wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath: blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. [20] The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood,” that didn’t happen literally on the day of Pentecost. And so every once in a while you’ll have someone read that and they’ll say aha, see, they didn’t interpret prophecy literally, Peter wasn’t interpreting that literally, he was just applying it and that’s the way we should do with all prophecy, don’t interpret it literally, just interpret it symbolically. Well, is that the way we ought to do it? Not at all. Peter was interpreting it literally and I’ll show you why.

Sooner or later when you study exegesis under a good teacher at seminary you will come up to the discussion in the classroom about what we call IF’s, introductory formulas. Introductory formulas, and it’s quite a detailed study in itself; it demands a lot of exegesis, but what it is, it discusses the subject of how New Testament authors quote the Old Testament, and how they introduce the quotes from the Old Testament. They have certain particular IF’s and these IF’s have to be studied or you’re going to be very much led astray. Now a particular IF that you’re used to seeing in Matthew was this one? “That it might be fulfilled, which was written by the prophet….” That’s Matthew’s favorite IF. It is one IF. There’s another one, “it is written….” These are favorite IF’s, but when we come to verse 16 Peter uses a very peculiar IF or introductory formula. When he introduces this prophecy from Joel he doesn’t say this is fulfilled, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of by the prophet Joel,” now if he had said that we would be in trouble, that would conclusively prove that Peter was interpreting the prophecy allegorically. But he doesn’t do that. He introduces it, “this is that which is spoken by the prophet Joel.” Now if we could find some other place where Luke reports the same IF and study that other place, we could then determine the system that Peter is using of interpretation.

Let’s turn to Acts 13;40, here the identical IF is used, the identical introductory formula. Now let’s look at the prophecy, how it’s handled over here, what it is, and see if we can then go back to Acts 2 with our new information and correctly interpret the passage. Notice how it’s introduced, the context is they synagogue that is rejecting the gospel, and so, “Beware, therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets.” “That which is spoken of by the prophets,” same IF, “that which is spoken of by the prophet Joel.” And he quotes in verse 41, “Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish; for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no way believe, though a man declare it unto you.” Now we know where that prophecy is, so follow me; here’s what I’m going to do. We’re going to go back to where that prophecy comes from; we’re going to ask our self the question, what does that prophecy really mean back there where it comes from, then having said that we’re going to say now how does he use that prophecy. Is he arguing right here that that prophecy is going to be fulfilled in that Jewish synagogue, or is he doing something else with that prophecy.

The quotation comes from Habakkuk 1:5, “Behold among the heathen and regard, and wonder marvelously; for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.” Now keep reading and look what it is. [6] For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling places that are not theirs. [7] They are terrible and dreadful,” and so on. Do you know what that is? That’s a prophecy of the destruction of the Jews in 586 BC. It has nothing to do with Jewish synagogues in Christ’s day, or does it. Literally that prophecy was already fulfilled. Do you hear that? That prophecy was already fulfilled by the time the apostle quoted it in that synagogue. What did they say in that synagogue? “We preach Christ to you and it you reject Christ then beware that that which is spoken of by the prophets,” Habakkuk in particular, “come upon you.” Now we know the fulfillment in this case and we know the fulfillment can’t be the fulfillment they’re quoting. What they are saying is the general principle of this prophecy will be fulfilled among you, the general principle that if you reject this, then suffering is going to come upon the nation. That’s the principle of the prophecy. So this particular IF that is used should be really translated, “this phenomenon is that kind of thing spoken of by,” that’s the force of this particular IF.

While we’re over here turn to Joel 2; here’s the passage that Peter is going to quote after he uses that IF. This is the same kind of thing that was spoken of by the prophet Joel. Joel 2:28, “And it will come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. [29] And, also, upon your servants and upon your handmaids in those days will I pour out My Spirit. [30] I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. [31] The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come. [32] And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the LORD shall be delivered; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD has said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call.” Keep on reading Joel 3:1, “For, behold, in those days; and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, [2] I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for My people….” Now what do you suppose that’s a fulfillment of? Obviously it can be none other than the fulfillment of the Second Return of Jesus Christ. That’s all that can be referring to, look at that, the judgment in the valley of Jehoshaphat, that’s speaking of Christ’s return, when Jesus Christ comes back He’s going to have a U.N. meeting outside the southeast portion of the city in the valley of Jehoshaphat and representatives from every nation are going to come and going to be judged, as He explains in Matthew 24 and 25.

So the fulfillment of Joel is actually Second Advent. So now let’s draw a time line and see if we can get this together. Christ comes back; He is going to come back in judgment, that’s Joel 3:1. Now that’s the “great and terrible day of the Lord.” Before that “great and terrible day” according to 2:31 at the end, these phenomenon are going to happen, “the sun shall be turned to darkness, the moon to blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.” So out during the tribulation there’ll be the rest of the prophecy of Joel. Now the first two verses of the prophecy of Joel, “I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh,” and verse 29, “upon the servants and upon the handmaids,” in other words, there will be no social barriers, no stratified society, the Holy Spirit will come in and form a perfect society; obviously Joel 2:28-29 is a summary statement of the work of the Holy Spirit all the way from the tribulation on into the beginning of the millennial kingdom. So verses 28-29 form the introduction and technically then verses 30-32 form the work of the tribulation. That’s the breakdown of Joel’s prophecy in its historic context. Again verses 28-29 predicting a work in the latter days by the Holy Spirit. It will include the geophysical disturbances of the tribulation, verses 30-32, and finally the great judgment in the valley of Jehoshaphat in Joel 3:1. It has nothing to do with the Church at all.

What Peter is doing, just like the apostles are doing in Acts 13 with that other introductory formula, again let’s look at it, this phenomenon is that same kind of thing spoken of by Joel; what is it that’s spoken of by Joel. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit in the days before judgment.

Now let’s turn back and see if we can get Peter’s threat. This is a threat to the people that are listening to that sermon on that day at Pentecost. By the way, I hope you managed to read when you were back in Joel that last phrase, because now I want you to read Acts 21:2 and I want you to see what Peter conveniently leaves out; he’s very exact in how he quotes, “And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Boom, he stops. You remember what that verse said in Joel, it kept on going, and what did it says, because in Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be salvation. Why? Because of the judgment in the day of the Valley of Jehoshaphat. That’s why. And so Peter excerpts the end, he cuts verse 32 off when he quotes this and it shows you right here, he’s applying the prophecy of Joel to what happened on the day of Pentecost, he is not claiming it fulfills what Joel prophesied.

He is saying… here’s the principle; you know, he says, as well as I do that in those latter days, before the great and terrible day of the Lord the Holy Spirit is going to call out a believing remnant. And what he’s saying is baby, you’d better be part of the believing remnant or you’re going to get judged. That’s the principle. So when he gets up on the day of Pentecost he’s saying exactly the same principle. He’s saying God is doing a work in this day, imminent to the destruction of Jerusalem which is going to come in forty years, and you’d better call on the name of the Lord or you’re not going to be saved; that’s the point. And historically every believer evacuated the city of Jerusalem in the year 69 AD and when the Roman armies crashed the walls finally, and they destroyed under General Titus there was not one believer left in the city of Jerusalem; all had evacuated out of the city and that’s why to this day the Jewish community calls the Hebrew Christians the meshuman [sp?], the people who deserted, because they deserted the city just before it’s destruction by Titus.

So Peter then says in Acts 2: 21, he ends with an evangelistic appeal. He ends in the middle of the threat and he says you people must respond or face a kind of judgment like the day in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and the irony is going to be that in forty years after this sermon was given, marching through and destroying Jerusalem, mainly from the north, down the Valley of Jehoshaphat and surrounding the city was the armies under Vespasian and Titus and wiped them out. Peter’s warning this nation; this is not a simple evangelistic sermon; in context this is a threat sermon directed to the nation as an 11^th hour appeal to trust Messiah before this horrible thing comes upon the earth. That’s what it’s all about. And therefore our response is are we going to be part of the saved remnant; we are looking at it from the same point of the Church Age now but it’s the same principle, the Church Age isn’t going to go on forever. Are we going to personally respond to the Word of God and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ or face judgment.

Shall we stand and sing….