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    Jun 08, 2025

    Pentecost Presence

    Passage: Acts 2:1-21

    Preacher: John Repsold

    Series: Holy Spirit in Acts

    Keywords: holy spirit, pentecost, waiting on god, filling, corporate gathering and unity.

    Summary:

    On this Pentecost Sunday we looked at what is often required to experience a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So much of the work is what needs to be done in us as followers of Jesus and in the church. This message seeks to help us be in a place where God can do a fresh, Spirit-led work.

    Detail:

    Pentecost Presence

    Acts 2

    June 8, 2025

    Fellowship Question:  Share about a time when you felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. 

    INTRO:  Welcome to Pentecost Sunday.  This past Wednesday night at our weekly Prayer service, we spent a little time thinking about what it must have felt like for those 120 followers of Jesus to wait those 10 days or so for the filling of the Holy Spirit.  Certainly the resurrection of Jesus some 40-50 days earlier had changed the whole equation of their emotions.  They had moved from despair and grief to joy and anticipation.  They were, in those very days, obeying Jesus’ instruction to “not leave Jerusalem, but wait there for what my Father promised, which you heard about from me,” (Ac. 1:4).  So, they were waiting…and waiting…and waiting. 

                Waiting on the Lord can be a lot of work!  Waiting for Him to fulfill His promises takes patient discipline.  Waiting for Him to “show up” in some way takes perseverance.  Waiting for God to give direction for the next steps in your life can require great patience.

                While they waited, they certainly prayed.  The certainly searched God’s Word, talked about it and tried to apply it to their changing situation, eventually appointing someone to take Judas Iscariot’s place among the Twelve.  They probably shared meals together, maybe took naps and spent time worshiping and singing. 

                But the more they waited, I’m pretty sure the more they longed for God to do whatever it was that would show them that the Holy Spirit was baptizing them. 

    Q:  How many of us have taken an entire day just to wait on God to do something different in our life?  2 days?  3?  A week?  10 days?  That’s a long time.  And the longer they waited without God moving, I can guarantee the more hungry they got spiritually for God to move.

    APP:  I think this is one reason why moves of the Holy Spirit delay:  God wants his people to be hungry for a palpable presence of the Holy Spirit.  He wants us to ache in our hearts for Him.  He wants us to feel the impossibility of doing anything of significance without the Holy Spirit.  I might wish it didn’t feel like it was taking SO long, but God chooses the best time in His calendar. 

                What’s the Jewish backdrop to this historic experience in the life of the Church?

    Acts 2:1-- Now when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.

    “The Day of Pentecost had come.”

    The Jews that week were celebrating the Feast of Weeks. This important annual festival was observed on the seventh Sabbath after Passover (“week of weeks”).  Pentecost comes from the Greek word for fifty, marking 50 days after the Passover.

    At the conclusion of Passover, the first sheaf of the barley harvest would be offered before God in the temple, anticipating the greater harvest that was to follow in the summer. On the fiftieth day after Passover, people from every tribe in Israel scattered around the world would come to the temple in Jerusalem to celebrate in God’s presence. Parents, children, male and female servants, sojourners, the fatherless, and widows would all give thanks and feast in memory of Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage (Deuteronomy 16:9–12).

    “They were all together in one place.” 

    There is something about coming together as the people of God.  That’s why we like to go to camp:  we get to be together for an elongated period of time in the presence of the Lord.

    That’s why we have worship services.

    That’s why we gather for prayer throughout the week and sometimes do prayer retreats for several days.  I really wish that there was at least one annual gathering in our city of all God’s people just to show us and our city who Jesus has rescued in this city.

                Physically gathering together to experience God has always been important.  It was particularly important that Pentecost day. 

    Acts 2:2--“Suddenly a sound like a violent wind blowing came from heaven and filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And tongues spreading out like a fire appeared to them and came to rest on each one of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them.”

                This sound of a violent, rushing wind didn’t creep up on them throughout the day.  It came “suddenly”.  That’s actually often how the Holy Spirit works.  People will be calling upon God when suddenly, God answers.  Everyone feels it…and sometimes hears it. 

    ILL:  It’s what the great Chicago evangelist, D.L. Moody, experienced on a personal level at one point in his life.  It didn’t come with sound or visible fire, but it did come.  In the summer of 1871 two women of Dwight L. Moody's congregation felt an unusual burden to pray for Moody "that the Lord would give him the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire." (They weren’t praying for a tongues experience; they were praying for a Holy Spirit empowering.)  Moody would see them praying in the front row of his church and he was actually a little irritated.

    But soon he gave in and in September began to pray with them every Friday afternoon. He felt like his ministry was becoming lifeless and stale—a sounding brass with little power.

    Two months later, on November 24, 1871, Moody's church building was destroyed in the great Chicago fire. So, he went to New York to seek financial help. Day and night he would walk the streets desperate for the touch of God's power in his life. Then “suddenly.”  Here’s how he described it in his own words:

    “One day, in the city of New York—oh, what a day!—I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to name . . . I can only say that God revealed himself to me, and I had such an experience of his love that I had to ask him to stay his hand. I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world—it would be small dust in the balance.” (W. R. Moody, The Life of D. L. Moody, New York: 1900, p. 149)

    Pastor John Piper has written, “The rising tide of prayer precedes the flood of God’s Spirit. The apostles devoted themselves to prayer as they awaited the outpouring of Pentecost (Acts 1:14). Their friends gathered for prayer when Peter and John were released from custody “and when they had prayed the place was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 4:31). The blinded Paul fasted and prayed as he awaited the filling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:11, 17, 19). Cornelius and Peter were both praying when God spoke to them (Acts 10:9, 30). The church was earnestly praying when God moved to release Peter from prison (Acts 12:5). The teachers of Antioch were worshipping and fasting when the Spirit set apart Paul and Barnabas for the mission that changed the world (Acts 13:2).”

    ILL: Then he gives an analogy to illustrate the experience of the Spirit before and after Pentecost. Picture a huge dam for hydroelectric power under construction, like the Aswan Dam (“High” as opposed to the Lower one) on the Nile, 375 feet high and 12,562 feet across (more than 2 miles). Egypt's President Nasser announced the plan for construction in 1953. The dam was completed in 1970 at the cost of a billion dollars.  In 1971 there was a grand dedication ceremony and the 12 turbines with their ten billion kilowatt-hour capacity were unleashed with enough power to light every city in Egypt.

    During the long period of construction the Nile River wasn't completely stopped. Even as the reservoir was filling, part of the river was allowed to flow past. The country folk downstream depended on it. They drank it, they washed in it, it watered their crops and turned their mill-wheels. They sailed on it in the moonlight and wrote songs about it. It was their life. But on the day when the reservoir poured through the turbines a power was unleashed that spread far beyond the few folk down river and brought possibilities they had only dreamed of.

    Pentecost is like the dedicatory opening of the Aswan High Dam. Before Pentecost the river of God's Spirit blessed the little nation of Israel and was their very life. But after Pentecost the power of the Spirit spread out to light the whole world. None of the benefits enjoyed in the pre-Pentecostal days were taken away. But ten billion kilowatts of spiritual power were added that enabled the church to take the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ to every tongue and tribe and nation in the world..

                There were actually multiple visible and audible manifestations and effects to the coming of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit’s presence had never been seen just like this before.  Nor, to my knowledge, has it every been experienced this way since.  Suddenly, there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Then divided tongues as of fire appeared and rested on each one of them. As they were “filled with the Holy Spirit” they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them.”  (Acts 2:2–4)

    Also according to Luke, Jews from various linguistic groups and locations were gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost. Hearing perhaps the sound of strong wind but certainly the testifying of God’s mighty work in various language, an international multitude of Jews, temporarily in Jerusalem for the Feast, gathered to find the disciples declaring the gospel in native languages that each person could understand.

    The whole experience—seeing Galileans who didn’t know their language speaking fluently about what God was doing through Jesus, in them and in the world—caused curiosity in these bystanders.  Enough so that at least 3,000 of them stuck around to hear Peter preach his first Spirit-directed sermon….and 3,000 people confessed Christ and were baptized.    

    APP:  When God moves among His people, outsiders and bystanders cannot help but begin to ask questions.  This is one of the manifestations or results of a move of the Holy Spirit like this in the church:  people get unusually curious, begin to ask questions and start to listen to the Holy Spirit’s call on their lives too. 

    ILL:  When the great evangelist and revivalist of the 18th century, George Whitfield, was getting the people of Edinburgh, Scottland out of their beds at 5:00 a.m. in the morning to hear his preaching, a man on his way to the church met David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and skeptic.  Surprised at seeing him on his way to hear Whitfield, the man said, “I thought you did not believe in the gospel.”  To which Hume replied, “I do not…but he does.”  [Quoted by Kent Hughes in his commentary, Acts, The Church Afire, Crossway Books, p. 17.]

    ILL:  Pastor Alec Rowlands, a good pastoral friend and mentor of mine from Edmonds, WA, was first exposed to this kind of move of God when a young person in his father’s church in S. Africa in the 50’s.  [Story]

    When the Spirit of God so comes upon a group of God’s people desperate for God in ways that watching people start gathering around them, observing what is going on, sensing that something deeply spiritual and needed in their lives is unfolding, there will almost always be two different responses:

    • Wonder, interest, curiosity, questions and inquiry, and
    • Ridicule, doubt, criticism and rejection.

    This is what happened at Pentecost.

    5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven residing in Jerusalem. 6 When this sound occurred, a crowd gathered and was in confusion, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 Completely baffled, they said, “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that each one of us hears them in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and the province of Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own languages about the great deeds God has done!” 12 All were astounded and greatly confused, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others jeered at the speakers, saying, “They are drunk on new wine!”

    [Slide of location of these regions/cities/provinces]

    Regarding the “opposition” or “rejectors”:  just as it was the Chosen People, Jews, who were accepting Jesus as Messiah that day, so it was God’s Chosen People who were rejecting God’s demonstration of the Spirit. 

    APP:  this has always been the case with revivals and awakenings.  Some, historically, have moved into excesses and rather bizarre abuses.  In some cases, I think, the flesh and the Enemy has hijacked the genuine and replaced it with a counterfeit. 

                But equally true is the reality that in many revivals in history, there have been manifestations of God’s power that make people uncomfortable and caused resistant, carnal or in-name-only Christians to reject or shut down what God is doing. 

                Great Awakening Pastor Jonathan Edwards, while seeing first-hand how people under the move of the Spirit of God would lose capacity to speak or even sit up, believed that true revival was characterized most by genuine spiritual change and Christian practice, rather than merely emotional outbursts or unusual behaviors. While acknowledging that God could work through powerful emotions, he cautioned against attributing all such manifestations to the Spirit of God and warned about the potential for deception and what he called "hypocrisy". 

                This is why God’s people and particularly church leaders during times of Spirit-instigated revivals are called to be discerning and deeply biblically.  Which is exactly what Peter did that Pentecost so long ago.

    As people from all over the world visiting temporarily in Jerusalem as well as residents of Jerusalem marveled at what they were seeing that day, Peter explained the miracle as the fulfillment of God’s word:  Acts 2:16ff--

    “This is what was spoken about through the prophet Joel:

    17 ‘And in the last days it will be,’ God says,
    ‘that I will pour out my Spirit on all people,
    and your sons and your daughters will prophesy,
    and your young men will see visions,
    and your old men will dream dreams.
    18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.
    19 And I will perform wonders in the sky above
    and miraculous signs on the earth below,
    blood and fire and clouds of smoke.
    20 The sun will be changed to darkness
    and the moon to blood
    before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes.
    21 And then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

    Peter goes on to proclaim that what has happened in their hearing is the validation of the lordship of Jesus the Messiah and the realization of the promises of God (Acts 2:29–36). Those gathered are “cut to the heart,” and 3,000 of them receive the good news of Jesus as Messiah and are baptized (Acts 2:41). The rest of the Book of Acts develops the world-transforming changes that have begun in these moments at Pentecost.

    BLESSINGS & TRANSFORMATIONAL TRUTHS THAT FLOW FROM PENTECOST

    1. The Holy Spirit loves to fill God’s people to such a degree that we overflow with praise and testimony to the greatness of God. This is one of the driving reasons I plead with God to do a fresh work of the Spirit in me and, by extension, in you.  When the manifest presence of God falls on a people, they discover an unusual ease and boldness in talking about the greatness of Jesus.  The 120 in that Upper Room found it to be true.  So did Peter.  THE most frequent and clear outworking of people being “filled” with the Spirit in Scripture is that they testified about it to others. 

    APP:  The salvation and eternal salvation of those around us today without Christ may, on the human side of the gospel equation, depend upon whether or not we experience in our generation this kind of Holy Spirit visitation.  Let’s keep inviting God to do this with us. 

    1. Pentecost means Jesus’s promise to guide, teach and be with us is solid…and active… today.

    As painful as the parting at the ascension might have been, Jesus assured the disciples that it was to their advantage that he would go away, “for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. . . . When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:7, 13–14)  Combine that with His promise in Matthew 28:20, “Behold, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age”, and we have confidence that God is guiding, teaching and accompanying us in every event and moment of our lives.  Take it by faith.  Live into it instead of fear or worry or anxiety.  Enjoy the Holy Spirit’s presence…because He’s never going to leave you, like it or not!   

    1. Pentecost has launched the greatest global, transformational proclamation of the Gospel.

    Jesus’s death at Passover and his mighty resurrection three days later signaled the “firstfruit” of God’s victory over sin and death (1 Corinthians 15:20–24). Jesus had accomplished everything necessary for the gospel to run and triumph (Hebrews 2:14–15; cf. Revelation 20:1–3) and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost signals that the greatest harvest has begun. 

    The narrative arc of Acts follows the Spirit-indwelt disciples as they carry the gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). You and I know about Jesus and Easter because of Pentecost. 

    The fact that three thousand souls added to the church on Pentecost hailed from all corners of the Roman world was a foretaste of the explosion of God’s family worldwide. So today, the sun never sets on the church.  Today thousands of language and culture groups know Jesus.  Today people from virtually every tribe, tongue and nation sing with us the praises of God.  Today, hundreds of millions of people are walking in freedom from sin, in the joy of Jesus and in the holiness of God.  You and I are here because of Pentecost.  Ottossons are in DRC because of Pentecost.  And we are all walking through impossible, trying, life-changing and miraculous experiences because of Pentecost.  Our lives and this world is being transformed TODAY because of Pentecost!

    1. Pentecost guarantees to us the coming of a full, complete restoration and celebration of the rule of Jesus.

    At Pentecost, Peter proclaims that the prophecy of Joel 2:28–31 has come to pass. Intriguingly, this prophecy of the gift of the Spirit comes immediately after another striking promise from God in Joel 2:25–27:

    “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lᴏʀᴅ your God and there is none else. And my people shall never again be put to shame.”

    Jesus’s reign is secure and eternal.  But it has yet to come to its fullest expression on the earth. While death has been decisively defeated, it has yet to be put to a final end (1 Corinthians 15:24–26). Even the coming resurrection was guaranteed by Pentecost.

    Pentecost is a pointer that history is inexorably moving towards the restoration of all things. The Bridegroom has come; his Bride, the church, is making herself ready. We await the greatest celebration of all.  As John the Apostle heard, “And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” (Revelation 19:9)

    CLOSE:

    Do you feel a longing in your soul for this fresh kind of outpouring of the Holy Spirit?  Do you sense a growing yearning, even desperation, for an utterly transforming encounter with God?  We probably won’t if we don’t want God to “rock the boat”.  But if we want Him and His kingdom come more than anything, we will become like those 120 in the Upper Room—expectant, utterly obedient, patiently waiting for God, prayerful and even desperate for this kind of move of God. 

    Can we prayer for that work of God in and upon us right now? 

    PRAY