This sermon was preached at WPC Belconnen’s Sunday morning service on October 24, 2021. This sermon expounds Acts 2:14-47.
In the first 13 verses of Acts 2, Luke narrates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Church at Pentecost. We saw, in Luke’s account, that God poured out His Spirit on Jesus’ followers on that day and announced it with the supernatural signs including the sound of a roaring wind and the appearance of tongues of fire, which rested on each of Jesus’ disciples. These disciples, men and women, were then empowered by the Spirit to declare the Gospel about Jesus in languages they did not know and had never learned. A great crowd of Jews was drawn by these remarkable signs and gathered around Jesus’ disciples. But the crowd was bewildered and did not know what these signs signified. So the Holy Spirit empowers Peter to stand before them and tell the great crowd gathered there exactly what was happening. Peter’s sermon – an impromptu speech empowered and guided by the Holy Spirit – achieves several very important purposes. 1. Firstly, he refutes the critics who tried to claim this miracle was simply a drunken babble. 2. Secondly, he explains that the miracle that everyone has seen and heard is a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. 3. Thirdly, he shows that the cause of this miracle is the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. 4. Fourthly, he invites his hearers to respond rightly to the risen and glorified Lord Jesus in repentance and faith – when they do so, they would also receive the Holy Spirit and be added to true Israel – and enter the kingdom of God.