Last Days & Living Hope | Acts 2:1–21 | The Fire That Launched the Church
Watch This Week’s Sermon on Pentecost
On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out just as Jesus had promised. The wind blew, the fire fell, and the church was launched—not with confusion, but with conviction. In this sermon, Pastor Mark Groen preaches from Acts 2:1–21 to show how the Spirit’s coming brought boldness, clarity, and mission to the early church—and how that fire still burns today.
This message challenges modern assumptions about Pentecost and calls believers to remember that the same Spirit who empowered Peter now empowers us to proclaim Christ in a world that desperately needs to hear.
Go deeper with 5 Devotions on Boldness, Clarity, and Gospel Fire based on this sermon.
📖 Click to Show the Transcript of this Sermon
Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week we dig into God's Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us. I find it fascinating how often the biggest wildfires, even the most massive of infernos that consume thousands of acres, can be traced back to something small. A single spark.
A forgotten campfire, a discarded cigarette, a downed power line. Investigators will go back after the blaze has been extinguished and they'll walk through the charred remains and they will investigate until they find that one tiny ignition point. It was something small. that sets this whole thing in motion.
And that's incredible. A single spark becomes a force that can't be contained. And that's what comes to mind to me when I think of Pentecost. Because what we see in Acts 2 is a fire.
Now it's not a destructive fire, it's a holy fire. And it begins not with a crowd or a commotion, but with a small gathering of Jesus' followers in a room, and they're waiting, just as He told them to do. And then it happens. A sound like wind, tongues like flame, words spoken in languages that they'd never learned.
And from that spark, the fire of the gospel began to spread. And that fire is still burning today. Last Sunday, we looked at the ascension of Jesus. He went to the right hand of the Father.
We learned that He is reigning there. That was the point of the first chapter of Acts. That the ascension is not a conclusion of the ministry of Jesus, it's actually the beginning of His reign. And now as we arrive at Pentecost, we see how the church was launched.
So as we look at the story here at the beginning of Acts 2, it's something that we know pretty well. There's a lot happening. But when we come to verse 1, it doesn't seem like much, does it? A group of people gathered in one place.
That's not a terribly exciting way to start a story. But business picks up really quick because there is this sound like a mighty rushing wind that fills the house. And I think we've all had a moment somewhat similar to this, right? Because there's a lot of different ways that excessive noise can be made in our time, right?
So maybe you've dozed off on the couch, and a loud vehicle passes by, wakes you up, and it seems to you as though it's driving right through your living room. Maybe it was a storm that you didn't know was coming, and then suddenly there's this wind and it rattles your house a little bit. It startles you. Those type of rushing sounds are quite unsettling actually.
They make you feel like you aren't in control. And that's likely what the disciples felt as that sound filled the room. They had been waiting. They were sitting there as they had been told.
They didn't know when this was going to happen. And they didn't know what they were expecting. So I'm guessing this took them by surprise. And you know how when something happens when you're in a group of people, the first thing you do is you kind of look around to make sure that other people are experiencing it as well.
Like, are you feeling this? Am I the only one who feels the floor shaking? I'm guessing this happened in that room that day. I'm guessing they were all taken aback.
And when they looked to see if other people were experiencing what they were experiencing, imagine seeing these flames above their heads. This was an amazing thing. And all of this wasn't just noise for the sake of noise. It wasn't fire over their heads because the room was dark.
The idea that is being called upon here, it's calling back to Old Testament imagery. And what's happening is this is reinforcing the idea that this is the continuing of God's story. The story of God's people is a story that is continuing. Yes, something new is happening.
Something different is going on. It is new. But this helps us to understand and help them to understand that this isn't detached from the Old Covenant. This is a fulfillment of it.
The story of the people of God is one story. And so as we see the Spirit coming in power upon them, we need to remember here that this isn't chaos. I think we imagine this as a moment of sort of unrestrained spiritual activity and wildness here, but I think we have let our modern understanding or modern image of large group gatherings influence how we think this might have been. But what is happening here isn't the Spirit coming to disciples and now they're acting out in an outlandish way.
What happened here was the Holy Spirit coming in power just as Jesus had promised. God was inaugurating the church And he wasn't doing it with confusion and chaos. The signs that we see here in this passage aren't about some sort of spectacle. They're about something greater.
The wind blew, the fire fell, and the disciples were filled with the Spirit. And what it did was it took these men and it emboldened them with the purpose of the gospel. And again, for some reason, I think we imagine this all as chaotic. Maybe it's just me, but in talking to people, I think this is how generally we view this.
But as Luke tells this story, we don't really get the idea that there's chaos going on here when we consider the details. Because there in verse 4, we see that they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now that is an accurate and very good translation of the words in the original language there, tongues. But unfortunately, When we read the word tongues, we don't think of languages.
For some reason, over the course of the last 115 years, we've gotten this idea that these are unintelligible gibberish. When we hear tongues, that's what we think of. But how we should read this sentence for our modern way of talking is that the Spirit gave them the ability to speak in other languages. as he gave them utterance." This was intelligible.
There was order here. This was the proclamation of the Word of God in real human languages. This was not something that couldn't be understood. And we know this because of what Luke tells us in the next few verses here.
Pentecost was a big ritualistic festival that happened every year. It was known as the Feast of Weeks. So it took place 50 days after Passover. And so there would have been people from all over the Roman Empire coming to Jerusalem for this ritual, for this festival.
Similar to the way that people came for Passover around the time when Jesus was crucified. So, over the course of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people had been scattered into exile because of their rebellion, right? That's kind of the story, this flow of the Old Testament, that these people had been sent out to exile. Well, God would bring them back to the land, but they didn't all come back.
People remained all around the world. And so at these festivals, at these rituals, people would come back to Jerusalem from all over the Roman Empire. And many of these families had been in exile, had been out of Israel for generations upon generations. So they would not have spoken fluent Hebrew more than likely.
Yet what we read here is that when they start to speak, they are understanding them. These are languages that would not have been known outside of Israel. Notice what it says here. These are Galileans.
Galileans don't know the language that I speak thousands of miles from here in a remote part of the Roman Empire. They don't know it. This wouldn't have made sense to them. This is not a language that they hear when they come to Jerusalem for the festivals.
This brings out my point. What was happening here is not chaos. This is order. This is purposeful.
God is doing something. The signs are wonderful, but they're not the point. What's really important here is that they are now hearing what God is doing in their own languages, and they're able to take it back to where they came from. So it's important that we very quickly remind ourselves of the bigger biblical story that is playing in the background of all of this.
Think back to that well-known story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. there the pride and the arrogance of humanity led to confusion and led to a scattering of people as God disrupted their plans by confusing their language. But here in Acts 2, Babel is undone. This is a reversal of Babel.
is There comes understanding and clarity. This proclamation of the gospel in languages all around the Roman Empire are going to bring together the people of God. That's the big thing that's happening. This undoing of Babel.
And that leads us to the second thing that I want us to be sure that we see in the passage today. That the gospel is going out to the nations. Because as people are amazed at what is happening, We see accusations that these people are drunk or something. And Peter gets up to set things straight.
He lets them know what is exactly happening in verses 15 through 17. He tells them that this is the fulfillment of what the prophet Joel had to say. Once again, we get this idea that even though something new is going on here in Acts 2, that this was the plan all along. It's something new, but this is where we were headed through the Old Testament, through the promise of the Messiah, through the life, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus.
This was the destination. This is where we were going. Pentecost shows us that this was the plan. That the gospel would go out to the nations.
We have the fulfillment of all that is promised in the Old Covenant coming together with people of every tribe, tongue, and nation worshiping God. And when we read here Peter's quote of the prophet Joel, we naturally find ourselves focusing on the fantastic in the text, right? We are drawn to that. We hear the words prophecy, visions, dreams, We hear all of that and our minds immediately go to those things and dwell on them.
And rightly so, they're fantastic. You know, if you have somebody sitting here doing nothing and somebody over here jumping around and singing for you, which one do you pay attention to, right? We're drawn to activity, to the fantastic. But we need to make sure that we understand that what is happening here, The gospel going out to the nations is what is the most spectacular thing of all.
In the past, the gospel went to one people group. The message of God went to one people group. And now, something amazing is happening. It's going out into the world.
It tells us that the Spirit is going to be poured out on all flesh. That is more amazing than any dream or vision or prophecy. This statement is astounding. Because up until this point, the focus was just on the Israelites.
They were the ones who were clean. They were the ones who were set apart. They were God's people. But now, the Spirit goes to all flesh.
And what is being expressed here isn't that every human ever is going to have the Holy Spirit. That's not what this means. All flesh means Gentiles, people who are not Israelites, all people groups. This is amazing because now Gentile people, the ones who were considered to be unclean, they are now a part of the family of God.
And as amazing as prophesying, having visions, and dreaming dreams can be, that's nothing compared to this idea that God is gathering a people for Himself from every tribe, tongue, and nation. That He is making the unclean clean. They are going to be a part of the family of God. And we see this clearly in the last quote that Peter gives us from the prophet Joel.
This is an astounding proclamation. It shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Astounding, but what do we do with this truth? Our minds are naturally drawn into focusing on the miracle in that upper room, but what happened there wasn't just for that handful of people.
The message leaves that room that day and it goes out into the streets, right? And from there, that message is taken to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. The gospel is for all people. Remember what we've seen over and over when we've been in the book of Revelation recently.
The people of God are from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Pentecost is the opening of the floodgates. It starts the mission of the church. The gospel is going to spread like a raging wildfire and the room in Jerusalem was the spark.
But I want us to realize how important it is that those who were there that day boldly proclaimed what they had seen and heard. The signs that were on display that day, they gotسانی System:
everyone's attention. But it was the proclamation of Christ and Him crucified and the work of the Holy Spirit on their hearts that turned the spark into the fire. So what I want us to see as an important part of this passage today is the boldness of what Peter and those who heard the message that day did.
Think about the timeline of what has occurred here. Pentecost is 50 days after Passover. That means that less than two months before this, Peter was denying Jesus in that courtyard around the fire. Now, he boldly steps into the streets to proclaim the message of Jesus in the city where he was crucified.
Why? Because the Holy Spirit came upon him in power and equipped him with boldness and from this moment the church goes out boldly to spread the message of Christ in him crucified. And we don't look at Peter here today in an attempt to psychoanalyze his behavior and determine what caused this great personality change in him. Because it was not from within Peter himself that change came.
He was transformed by the Holy Spirit. From a fearful denier to a faithful witness who was one day martyred for proclaiming that Jesus had been crucified, rose again, and was now reigning at the right hand of the Father. Only the Holy Spirit can do that good work. The same Spirit that brought fire in that room is the same Spirit who gave Peter boldness, and that same Spirit has dwelt in the people of God throughout the ages.
The work of the Holy Spirit is not to stir up chaos, but to convict us of sin and unbelief. to regenerate our hearts that we might have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit works in us to bring us to repentance and to assure us of salvation. And the Spirit works in us to empower us to boldly share the gospel.
And we remember the day of Pentecost today, not only to remember the birth of the church, but to be reminded that the spark of Pentecost is still a fire that is burning today. and we are called and empowered to that same mission that Peter and all the disciples of Jesus have had throughout the ages. The mission hasn't changed. And so here's a question I want us to dwell on this week.
What are you doing with the fire that you've been given? The Holy Spirit in that room is the same spirit that indwells us. If you've been given the gift of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are not living in that faith by your own power or strength. The Spirit that emboldened Peter launched the church, and it continues to bring people to faith from every nation.
That's happening still today. And this means that we not only have a mission, It means we are not left alone in that mission. It's not just me that has this calling. It's every single believer.
All of us. It's just as the work of the Spirit didn't stay in that room at Pentecost. We need to move the message from this room into the streets today. The mission of the church didn't wait for strategy meetings or for fundraising.
It began with boldness and obedience. They didn't stay in the room until they had a plan. They proclaimed the gospel. The gospel was the plan.
So this truth brings us to another set of questions. Where are you called to speak boldly? And who in your life needs to hear? Pentecost is not just about what happened on that historical day ten days after the Ascension.
It's also about what we are called to each and every day. The spark of Pentecost became a fire and it's still burning. The gospel is true and every day people come to repentance and faith in Jesus. So let's depart from this room and proclaim the truth of the gospel boldly.
Christ is risen. He is ascended. He is reigning. The Spirit has been poured out.
The fire still burns. So let's carry that light out into the world. Amen. Let us pray.
Gracious and merciful God, we thank you for the gift of your word that it tells us the truth of the work of the Spirit. We pray, Lord, that that spirit that is in work in us today would help us to boldly depart from here with the message of the cross. That we would declare that Jesus is Lord, that others might hear and believe the good news of salvation through him. May we use this light of the gospel to bring light to a dark and dying world.
Embolden us to proclaim. Build us up. that we might be your servants, that Christ would be glorified for all that He has done. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray.
Amen. Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website, edgertonfrc.org.
