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***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.

Dallas: If you take the sheets that have been handed out, let’s look at those just for a moment and then we’ll launch into our diatribe for the evening. First of all, if you would, look at the outline of the Book of Acts. This is on the back of the page that has a text on the front or, if you like it, on the front of the page that has a text on the back. At any rate, it’s on one side or the other. It says, Outline of the Book of Acts.

Now this evening I want to cover essentially A and B under Arabic number one. Under Arabic number one, A and B. And I hope that you will keep the general structure of the book before you as we go through it. I will not spend much time on it, but I think it is awfully important for you to try to have a general conception of just where the parts of the book fit.

I have outlined the Book of Acts in terms of what I see to be the central movement in that book, which is the shift of the divine community from the Jewish nation to Roman civilization. And therefore I have the two divisions, the divine society or community comes within the Jewish nation. You can mark out one of those communities, one will be quite enough. That’s the first part and actually the shortest part of the Book of Acts.

This does not last long, of course, it was a long story and that’s what the Old Testament was about and that’s what the Gospels were about, you know, that Jesus told people not to go to the Gentiles. Now Jesus was on the earth, he told people do not go to the Gentiles, isn’t that right? He had a work to do and it was in the Jewish bottle, it was in the Jewish pot that he was going to do his work. Now Jesus was not a great legalist and when he came across someone like the Syrophoenician woman who had great faith and great need, he met it. But he told his people go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Why? Because they were ready. Not many of them, but within the lost sheep of the house of Israel there was a prepared people upon whom the fullness of time had come and they could hear his message.

Do you ever ask yourself why didn’t, as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, God say okay Jesus come on die, let’s get this over with, right? And so killing right there on the spot and the sacrifice is made and the sins are all paid for and everything’s done. Do you ever ask yourself why it didn’t happen that way? Why as Dave pointed out, it took millennia and he beautifully emphasized some of these changes.

You have to sometimes spend some time adding up the changes. You know the story of Achan, isn’t that a heart-rending story? I just bleed when I read that story. Achan did something wrong, it wasn’t really much but it was wrong. That’s not the part that breaks your heart. The part that breaks your heart is they took his children and his wives and his whole family and as I recall even his cattle and took him down and stoned him to death, stoned all of them to death, heaped stones on them.

Why was that? It wasn’t until much later, much, much later that we find the words, the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Now that’s quoted today to assure you that if you sin you’re going to die but the point of the verse in that passage was a person dies for his own sin, not for somebody else’s sin. Let it no more be said in Israel that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children sinn’s teeth are set on edge. See that was used to illustrate a principle that you could suffer for somebody else’s sins. If I had some sour grapes and I stood up here and ate them, your teeth would go on edge. Isn’t that true? In fact they’re probably on edge right now. And that fact was taken to illustrate a principle. But Jeremiah says no more. See there are so many things that had to be changed.

And Jesus came within the Jewish pot because that was the pot which was ready to receive the treasure. Well not quite because it was also the pot which was ready to blow up and expel the treasure because it didn’t want it, as we shall see.

So that first section of the book deals with that and then very early we see the divine community spreading out, moving its center outside of Jerusalem, goes to Samaria, goes finally you get the first really fully established center in Syrian Antioch. And it is from there, it is from Syrian Antioch that we have the mass explosion across the western world, Asia Minor, Rome, that we see under Paul. We’ll see all that later but I just wanted to call attention to the general outline and say that it is under Arabic one, points A and B that we’ll be working this evening.

Now if you will take the sheet which says Tuesday, the meaning of Pentecost. This sets our theme for the evening with the verses which I ask you to memorize. I dwelt on these verses some last night at some length. I want to return to them and especially to the first verse and if you would simply look at it with me.

Psalm 14, 12, truly, truly I say unto you, he who believes in me the works that I do shall he do also. Let me take a moment and let that soak in. It may be viewed as a threat, it may be viewed as a promise, there are many ways you can look at it. He that believes in me, the works that I do shall he do also. And greater works than these shall he do because I go to the Father.

Did you notice the because, we talked about that some last night. What is the causal relation? You should understand that now because he could go to the Father that the Father could come into us and dwell in us and do greater things than the Son did while he was incarnate. But I want to stress the point that those who believe in him do the works which he did. And I want us to begin this evening by thinking what were those works.

If you look at the outline on the screen, the works of Jesus. I said last night that Jesus came to bring present the kingdom of God. We have to start out with a statement about what the kingdom of God is.

What is a kingdom? A kingdom is first of all a group of persons, isn’t it? A kingdom is a group of persons. And in that regard the kingdom of God is very much like the kingdom of men. In many other ways it is very unlike the kingdom of men, but in this regard it is the same. It consists of a group of persons in intimate relations of allegiance and help, of allegiance and help, of allegiance and mutual nourishment, encouragement.

Now this again is something which is true in some measure of every kingdom. And it is true of the kingdom of God. It is a personal order in which individuals live, really live in one another. Now we’re speaking of the kingdom of God. Just have an old man-made kingdom. You have all these people saying, huh, I can get along without you. I don’t need you. Who needs me? So many people are so imminently dispensable in human kingdoms for purposes which often don’t have much to do with anything that’s good.

But not so in the kingdom of God. And the allegiance in the human kingdom is an allegiance to some central organ or organization. Not so in the kingdom of God. The allegiance to God and to one another in the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is something which pervades the whole body of the kingdom. The allegiance is to one’s brothers and sisters. It is to God, the two great commandments, love towards God and love towards neighbors.

Have you ever wondered what a neighbor is? What is a neighbor? Jesus was faced with that question, wasn’t he? He told the parable of the good Samaritan in answer to that question. But I think it is useful to say, to just break it down into the English. You know what a boor is? A boor is, well, now if you say someone is a boor, you’re saying they are a crude rustic fellow. It used to be in Middle English boor just means a peasant, a person who lives in the land. And a neighbor is a nigh boor. It is a boor who is nigh to thee, nigh boor. Middle English for the boor that is nigh thee, you’re a boor too, and we’re all boors. A neighbor is just the nigh boor, the one who is close to you.

To love your neighbor as yourself is to love the ones with whom you have to do, the ones you need, the ones who are close by. The love and allegiance in the kingdom of God, then, is something which pervades the whole body. And for this kingdom to fill the whole earth is simply for that kind of love and that kind of allegiance to take in everyone on the face of the earth. That’s what we pray for when we pray, thy kingdom come. What’s the next clause? Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, the whole earth. That’s what we pray for when we pray for the coming of the kingdom. We pray for every person on earth to be taken in to that family and allegiance. The kingdom of God.

Now Jesus taught and preached the kingdom of God. And there were two things mainly that he preached about it. One is, he preached its availability. He preached its presence at hand.

Look at Mark, the first chapter with me. And let’s try to bring this message alive. In the first chapter of Mark, in the 14th verse, after John had completed his work, John the Baptist had completed his work and was put into prison, Jesus came into Galilee. Where had he been? Well we know from the other accounts where he had been. He’d been in the desert, hadn’t he? He’d been in a desert place. He had been in his time of testing. And now he comes into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, the good news. He’s proclaiming good news about God’s kingdom.

Now what is that good news? The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand, turn and accept this good news. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand, turn and accept this good news.

Now what does that mean? Well one phrase in the English version is misleading given a certain ideological context and that is the phrase, the kingdom of God is at hand. That is often read as the kingdom of God is about to get here. And then you have a theory to the effect that it was about to get here and then the Jews got ornery and it didn’t come. And that it won’t be here now until they finally get things straightened out. Or at least God will straighten them out and it will come or something to that effect.

But now look, this verse isn’t saying that the kingdom of God is about to come. It is saying it has already arrived, it’s here. The kingdom of God is at hand. You read it and break it down and you’ll see that’s what it’s saying. What this verse is saying is something like this. Because I want to know where the coffee is. And it’s over here in a room, it’s in the kitchen, let’s say, and we’re walking down the hall and you say to me, we’re there, turn and go in, the coffee is at hand. Now watch, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is right here, turn and accept it, walk into it. That’s what he’s saying. The kingdom of God is here, it’s available. All you have to do is turn and walk into it.

That’s true today, that’s true now. It’s available right here, anyone can walk into it, it’s right here. That’s good news, that’s why it was good news. Paul said don’t say it’s over the ocean or up on the mountaintop, don’t say it’s way down on the earth, the word is nigh thee, it is in thy heart, it is the word of faith which we preach, it’s right here. God is available, do you like to have God as your king, okay, don’t have to do anything except just turn and walk into it.

Now that raises problems though because people have strange conceptions about what the kingdom of God is like. You see, Jesus taught a lot about what the kingdom of God is like, you see Jesus when he came, as we said last night, he announced the acceptable year of the Lord, right? The year of the Lord’s favor, remember the verse I went over last night, quoted from Isaiah 61, quoted in the fourth chapter of Luke, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to poor people, you don’t hear much of that. Even the captives are free to lift up the downtrodden, right, lift burdens, lift burdens.

How did he do that? He did it in two ways, by teaching a truth which set people free, the truth about God, about the kingdom of God, and by presenting a power which would set people free beyond their own abilities to accept, beyond their own abilities to do, he brought the power of God to bear upon their burdens and he released them from physical infirmities, he set them free from mental bondage, which was deeper than any mere lack of truth.

But the preaching of the truth about the kingdom of God was the main instrument of his releasing from bondage, that’s what he gave most of his time to. He helped many people, he never helped people in order to teach doctrine or to prove anything, he just helped them because they needed help. That’s the only reason he helped them, he knew that you could never convince people’s minds by performing miracles, you can’t, you know, can’t do that, just upset them, really that’s right, just upset them, or they’ll just explain it away with something like that, you can never, you can never convince people by performing miracles. Those confirm the word accepted, they confirm the word accepted, but they do not bring acceptance of the word.

And the teaching of the truth about the kingdom of God, I’m so glad Dave got into the Beatitudes, I want to go into them too, and I want to just second and say some things just right along the line he was talking about, and I want to try to make a very strong point about the teaching about the kingdom of God which Jesus gave by looking at the Beatitudes, and I wish you’d turn back there, you’ve already got the page worn on that touch, so just turn back there a few moments, the fifth chapter of Matthew, or the Luke versions, I like those and you might compare those in Luke 6, but let’s use the Matthew versions because I have a few axes to grind with this version in particular.

Now let’s put this in a context, a lot of people go through a lot of puzzlement about just what, who Jesus was talking to, and in order to understand who He’s talking to you have to read both before it begins and after it begins, after it ends in the Sermon on the Mount, because you get the context set very nicely there.

So let’s look at Matthew 4, the 23rd verse, this follows the passage which we’ve just read from Mark, if you look back in the 17th verse of Matthew 4 you’ll see from that time Jesus began to preach and say, turn, for the kingdom of heaven is available, turn and walk into it. Now as He worked and taught, down the 23rd verse we see the things He was doing, and Jesus went about all Galilee teaching, here are the things He did, and note the order would you, teaching in their synagogue, proclaiming, announcing the gospel of the kingdom, announcing the gospel of the kingdom, remember that announcing is something different from teaching, He did both of them, announcing the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease among the people.

Now I want you to bring before you the group of people in verse 24, because they are the group of people to which the Sermon on the Mount is addressed. And His fame went throughout all Syria, sometime get a map and look and see where that was, this was not a small thing, throughout all Syria, and they brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, now bring the picture before you, who these people are, sick people, divers diseases and torments, and those that were possessed with devils, and those that were lunatic, moonstruck is what that means, you know, they used to believe, you ever think about that verse where it speaks about the sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night, right, you ever wonder about what do you mean the moon smite me by night, well now Dave’s told you what the moon and the sun and the rest of these things were, they weren’t just these shiny things we think of them, they were things which could really smite you, lunatics, people who, yeah, I’m not surprised at all, I didn’t know it, but I’m in my old age I’m getting where nothing surprises me, that’s an interesting fact, maybe there’s something to all that werewolf business we heard about, that’s very interesting, it’s certainly true that the positions of the moon, the stars, the sun, the weather and all of these things do have an effect on us, that’s the element of truth in astrology isn’t it, and there isn’t anything like astrology or these other things which doesn’t have some important element of truth, so there’s some element of truth in that, in any case lunatics, and those that had palsy, what is palsy, it’s a disease where you have trouble controlling your members, right, shaking, and he healed them, and there followed him great multitudes of people, now what kind of people, just the kind of people we’ve been talking about, people with troubles, people afflicted and those who wanted to help those who were afflicted, from Galilee and from Decapolis and from Jerusalem and from Judea and from beyond Jordan, and seeing the multitudes, the crowds, seeing the multitudes, he went up into the mountain and when he was set, his disciples came unto him, his disciples gathered around him, and he opened his mouth, as an indication, you know, you want to say well why does it say he opened his mouth, anyone would know he had to open his mouth if he was going to say anything, right, you know, well but if that was the fashion to indicate that he was going to speak, that was the manner in which he indicated now, quiet, everyone could see him, many of them couldn’t hear him, he tried to shout it all down, he couldn’t hear him, opened his mouth, and he taught them to say.

Now if you see at the end of the seventh chapter, the twenty-eighth verse, and it came to pass, the end of the seventh chapter, the twenty-eighth verse, and it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine. Now the translation here doesn’t help us because it doesn’t reveal to us that the word the people here is haaklos, which is the same as the word translated the multitude in the first verse of the fifth chapter, that’s the group he’s speaking to, he’s speaking to the people, the multitudes heard him. And the people, the multitudes were astonished at his doctrine. He’s talking to that group of people.

Now you say, well why are you laboring that point? Well because you see, if you want to understand what the Beatitudes are, you have to know the people he’s talking to. You can get in real trouble with the teachings of Jesus if you try to read him as you might a Western teacher. Jesus did not teach systematically. He taught in a concrete context, he spoke to existing difficulties, he did not give general laws, he taught by paradox, by contradiction, and that is the way that Eastern teachers taught. In fact, that’s the way Western teachers taught in the earlier days. If you go back and you read the oldest Greek philosophers, you’ll find them teaching by paradox. You read the Proverbs and Proverbs says, answer not a fool, next thing it says answer a fool according to his folly. Now how do you do both of those?

The teaching that you find in the Bible is not as systematically concerned as we are ourselves. Jesus did not teach systematically. And you have to understand the kind of teaching which he did in order to understand the point of his message, and if you don’t, you will crucify yourself on his sayings.

Let me give you a law from the words of Jesus, okay, look in the Gospel of Luke, the, I think it’s the 12th chapter, but I’m wrong because it is the 14th chapter, the 12th verse. Now I’m going to give you some advice here from the words of Jesus, now I want you to make sure that you do it, okay, because you take seriously his words. Now watch what he says, when you make a dinner or a supper, don’t call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor your rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee again and recompense be made thee. But when you make a feast call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind, and I shall be blessed. Now don’t you ever have your parents over for supper again. I see I’ve helped someone tonight. Is Jesus saying you cannot have your friends over for supper? Is he saying, no, he’s speaking to a particular point, he’s correcting a situation. If you’re going to understand the teachings of Jesus, you must always understand the situation in which he teaches.

Now let’s think about the Beatitudes again. I could illustrate that point with many, many of his teachings, especially the Sermon on the Mount. I just want to look at the Beatitudes. What are the Beatitudes? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are, and so on, they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Ye are the salt of the earth.

You know verse 13 goes with what goes before it? Ye are the salt of the earth. Who’s the ye? Well, it’s the people he’s talking to, right? Now who’s the people he’s talking to? It’s the multitudes, the multitudes of needy, ignorant, helpless, oppressed, broken people.

And why is he saying, blessed are they that mourn? Because he’s got people in front of him who are mourning. And why is he saying, blessed are the poor in spirit? You know most of your modern translations completely ruin that verse. They say things like, blessed are those who know that they’re poor in spirit. There’s nothing about knowing that you’re poor in spirit in there. But most of the people who translate the modern versions do not sufficiently understand that what Jesus is doing, he is taking people who are counted as un-blessable and saying, yeah, some of those are blessed.

What are the poor in spirit? He’s talking about people who are deprived in spiritual gifts. He’s talking about the ignorant. He’s talking about the not too bright. He’s talking about the untalented. And he’s saying, blessed are some of those. That whole list is a list of people who were regarded as un-blessable. And they are taken directly from the people sitting in front of them. And that’s why then when he gets done, he says, you are the salt of the earth. You are the salt of the earth. You common people, you people without degrees, without position, without anything but trouble, you are the salt of the earth. In you, God dwells. In you, God works. He goes on to say, you are the light of the world. Verse 16, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. You are the light of the world.

Simon and Garfunkel have this song. It contains the line which I have written in green up there. Blessed are the spat upon, sat upon, matadon. And they have seen more, I guess it’s called Simon, it’s not Garfunkel that writes these things. Simon writes them. He has understood more of what is being said in this passage than many of the people who translate the Bible. Blessed are the un-blessable. That’s what Jesus taught.

Now why are they blessed? Why are they blessed? Are they blessed because they mourn? No, they’re blessed because they shall be comforted. Are they blessed because they’re ignorant? No, they’re blessed because they can have the kingdom of God. Are they blessed because they’re persecuted? No, they’re blessed because God is with them. Theirs is the kingdom of God again, right?

This is not a command to go out and mourn. It isn’t a command for anything. It’s a statement. It says blessed are they that mourn. It is not a statement that everybody who mourns is blessed because you can mourn and stay in your bitterness. It is not a statement that if you’re ignorant, you’re in the kingdom of God because you can be ignorant and be in the kingdom of the devil. It is not a statement that if you’re persecuted for righteousness sake, you’ve got it made. You may not be able to handle it. And as Paul says, you may give your body to be burned and it profits you nothing. These are not general guarantees. They are statements with a point.

What is the point? The point is that those who are regarded as un-blessable by men are blessable in God’s eyes. There is no one. There is no circumstance who is beyond the blessing of God in the kingdom of God. Blessed are the un-blessable.

If Jesus were here today and he were to write Beatitudes, who would he include? Blessed are the people who are without work, for they shall get jobs. Blessed are the people who are old and on a pension and can’t feed themselves rightly. Blessed are the people whose family has just broken up. Think of the person you think of as un-blessable. That’s the one he’d say is blessable. He wouldn’t say they’re blessable because they’re old and poor. That isn’t a blessing. They’re blessed because the kingdom of God is open to them. Open to them all they have to do is walk into it.

You know the Beatitudes have actually hurt so many people. I know people, for example, who have turned away from the Christian faith because they thought that in order to be a Christian you had to be poor in spirit, you had to mourn, you had to go get persecuted for righteousness sake. We have to be very careful that we understand the manner in which Jesus taught.

And what Jesus was doing, he was taking the prevailing standards of who was blessed and he was turning it right side up. And notice I didn’t say upside down, it was already upside down, he turned it right side up. Who is blessed? Blessed are those who have a good income, right? Blessed are those who have a house at the beach. Blessed are those who are well educated and have got a job. Blessed are those who are so good looking that when they walk by girls stick their nose into the ice cream cone they’re eating. You know that commercial of the guy who comes in the shirt and this girl’s walking up eating ice cream cone. Poor dumb thing, I mean. Now we know very well who are blessed, don’t we? Blessed are good looking people, people who really look good. Blessed are people who have slender figures. How about this one, blessed are the fat. Blessed are the fat. You know you want to find out what this is about, you write a set of Beatitudes for today, would you? Do that. Write a set of Beatitudes today. It’ll do a lot for you. It’ll bring you to understand the message of the kingdom of God that Jesus preached.

Now he faced just the prevailing attitude. There’s a passage in John where it speaks about all the people going after Jesus and this hoity-toity guy with five doctor’s degrees and all the rest of it, he says, This people that knoweth not the law are cursed. Ignorant people. They can’t be blessed. They’re cursed. Well certainly ignorant, there’s no blessing. Not even bliss, as they say. But ignorant people can be blessed, and I’ve seen a few that way. Fat people can be blessed. That’s the teaching of the kingdom of God.

Now Jesus came and brought that and he lifted burdens with it. Because you know what? In the heart of nearly every individual you will meet, you know what, if you could peel it all back down to the last layer, you know the message you’d find in there. I’m not blessed. I can’t be blessed. You know that? There is almost universally that feeling of being beyond blessing. That’s why all the facades, we spend our life manning the facades. This is me. This is me. Hey, this is me. All the while in there, I hope they don’t find out what I’m really like.

You know I’ve had people in the church that I’ve gotten to know well. And finally gotten to know them well enough that they would say to me kind of sheepishly, you know I’ve been so afraid you’d get to know who I was. And then wouldn’t have anything to do with me. That’s the beatitudes are for people like that. They’re for people like you and me. People who feel that if anyone ever really got to find out what I was like they wouldn’t have anything to do with me. That’s the message. Talk about lifting burdens and the horrible burdens just beyond those abstract conceptions. When you get into the lives of people and you find the horrible things that lie upon them, the things that happened in their childhood, the awful things that happened in their childhood that have permanently branded them as outcasts, they’re blessable, you know, they’re blessable. And the realization of that just lifts the burden, lifts the burden, see.

You want to set people free? You want to do the work of announcing the release of captives? That’s the main part of it. Jesus knew that. Jesus knew that.

Jesus didn’t just lift the burdens by speaking the truth about how people are before God. He also lifted the burdens by the direct application of the power of the kingdom of God to the bodies and minds of people.

John the Baptist said, John the Baptist may have written Ecclesiastes, you know. In those last days, you can bet he went through that whole scenario. And he fell into serious puzzlement. He was the one who recognized Jesus first. He is the one who first saw him and said, behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. Let me tell you, when you’re on the inside of the dungeon looking out and you know you’re not going out of there with your head on your shoulder, thinking about these things, it’s one thing to sing, sing and smile and pray, that’s the only way, just to sing and smile and pray you’ll drive your cares away. That has its place. It’s a good thing, it’s good medicine for some things. You can do that. I’ve done it. But then there are other situations.

John was in one of them. And in the seventh chapter of Luke, he’s about to get it. And he has been lying in that dungeon and he says in the 19th chapter, I’m sorry the seventh chapter, I beg your pardon, the seventh chapter of Luke and the 19th verse, he’s heard these reports of Jesus and something about those reports disturbed him. Think reading it from the present point of view that John would say, wow, that’s great, that’s him, wow. But what’s the next verse say? John calling unto him two of his disciples sent them to Jesus saying, are you the one? Are you him?

You see, John did not know what the Messiah wants to be like. He didn’t have that firmly settled in his mind. And what he heard of Jesus called Jesus into question as the Messiah. Because Jesus was not acting like the Messiah they had expected.

Jesus gently reminds him, I’m sure, of many conversations that he and John had had. They were cousins, you know, and they were raised in a lot of intercourse with one another as young men. And Jesus sends him a reminder, go your way, tell John what things you have seen, verse 22 in the herd, how the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are hearing some good news for change. Just reminding John, that was the work of the king. He and Jesus had worked that out, I’m sure, and he was just helping John’s faith.

But you see, that’s the way Jesus brought the kingdom, and that’s the way we are to work also. That’s our work. Now it may not be your work individually, but it’s our work. As the body of Christ, this is our work. This is what we’re to do. We are to announce the truth about the kingdom of God, and we are to minister the power of the kingdom of God.

That verse then means just this. When it says, truly, truly, I say unto you, he who believes in me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, that’s what it’s talking about. Are you ready for that?

Well, there was a group of people who were ready for it. They didn’t know it, but they were, and they were in this room. They were in this room down there in Jerusalem, and they were in a bad spot, and as I said last night, they didn’t know much else, but they had been through enough with Jesus, and he had told them very clearly that he wanted them to stay right there, and they thought they’d better do what he told them, and so there they are in the first chapter of the book of Acts, and the 14th verse, 14th verse of the first chapter of the book of Acts.

These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Now there was a whole bunch of women who had followed Jesus throughout his ministry, and they had been in Jerusalem when he died, and they were staying in there. They were hanging with it, and when the men were standing off on a distant hill watching him die, with the exception of John, the women were at the foot of the cross. The women were there, and the women were praying. These all continued in prayer and supplication with the mother of Jesus, and I love the phrase, and his brethren.

They finally got around to it, right? They thought he was crazy. They tried to come and lead him out, and save him from himself. They chided him. They said, hey Jesus, you better get up there to Jerusalem. You’re the big prophet. The big prophets are supposed to go up to Jerusalem when they have the feast, right? Hey Jesus, you better go up. Jesus said, well, it’s all right. When the time comes, I’ll go. They really gave him a rough time.

And I wonder if you’ve thought of what it would be like to have been raised in a family with Jesus as one of the kids. Do you ever think about that? Ooh, ooh, man alive. I mean, what would that have been like? So we don’t want to knock old James and Joseph, his half-brothers, his brethren, his half-brothers. They had a problem. Believe me, they had a problem. But they came around, and they’re there in the upper room.

They’re prepared. They’re ready. They have been through the crash course. They’ve been through boot camp. They’ve been through some pretty heavy battles. They have been sent out. And there’s a whole bunch of them there. It isn’t just these guys. You know, we sometimes get to thinking as if there were just those disciples of the apostles and maybe a few women. Oh, when this thing lands, there’s 120 people there. There wasn’t just 12 people that Jesus sent out, as the book of Luke tells us there were others, 70 also, whom he commissioned in the same way and gave power over all of these things and sent them out before his face to preach the kingdom of God and to do the works which we’ve just been discussing.

They were prepared people. Will you keep that in mind? Because what’s going to happen is not for unprepared people. You get an unprepared person and you put them in a Pentecostal situation that just burns the insulation off the wires and burns their house down. That’s right. That’s right. It happened over and over and over and over. It’s a prepared group.

Boy, they have been through it. Suppose someone came to you and said to you, hey, I want you to come up here and spend ten days on this stage up here praying. You do that? Could you do it profitably? Most of us couldn’t do it profitably. There’s too many other things we need to do. We really need to do them. They’re in our hearts. They’re in our minds.

But let me tell you something about these people in the upper room. There wasn’t anything else which they thought they’d better be doing. There wasn’t anything else. They had one thing to do and that was stay right in that upper room. They had that settled. They had tried everything else.

Now they didn’t have that settled when Jesus died. When Jesus got killed, Peter hung around for a while and he said, fellows, I’m going fishing. Which was his way of saying, I’m going back to my old job. Right? That was his old job. He says, well, the party’s over, boys. It was lots of fun, thrilling, but now business is business. We’ve got to get back to work. I’m going fishing.

You don’t hear any of that stuff out of Peter now. Because let me tell you, that interim period was one in which there was lots of growing done. There was lots of teaching done. That 40-day period got some things straight in their heads. Not everything by any means. And that 10-day period of prayer got them straighter yet than 50 days after Jesus rose, after Jesus was dead. Fifty days. Plenty cost. Fifty, right? Fifty days after the Passover.

The second chapter, the day of Pentecost was fully come. Now I gather that what that means is the sun was well up, people had the sleep cleared out of their eyes, they’d had breakfast, the day was fully come, things were getting underway, it was a big day, a big, big day. There were lots of people in town, the streets were busy, and all of a sudden, now these folks are still continuing in prayer and supplication in the upper room. And then something begins to happen.

I want you to notice that there are phenomenal manifestations, that is manifestations to sense involved in these events. They were all with one accord in one place, and suddenly there came a sound, a sound from heaven, like a rushing, mighty wind. This sound filled all the house where they were sitting, the sound came from heaven. God knows how to make an impression, he knows how to make an impression on people like you and me, and you believe me, if that were to happen in this room, it would make an impression. Probably more than an impression than we could digest, and so probably that’s why it’s not going to happen. On the other hand, the same effect can be brought about without the sound, and it has happened over and over throughout the ages, but in this case there was a sound.

And I think it’s because of the highly unusual circumstances, something was going to happen here like it never happened before. And God was going to make an impression, not just on the people in that room, he was going to impress the whole city. And the first thing he did was he made a sound.

Now why did it come from heaven, a rushing, mighty wind, well you could spend a lot of time on the symbolism of that. You could go back into the Old Testament and study the promises of what was going to happen, and the Holy Spirit came, it was going to come from heaven, it was going to come like opening streams in high places, rushing down to the earth. Very symbolic, the sound came from heaven, but not just a sound.

That appeared unto them, cloven tongues as a fire, like fire, and it doesn’t say it is fire, it wasn’t fire, but it was something like fire. It looked like tongues, and it sat upon each of them. You know what an aura is, an aura is? It’s possible now to photograph them, isn’t it? You know how auras change, depending on what’s going on, they change. A lot of study is going into this now, you ever ask yourself why they painted halos on saints? You ever ask yourself about Moses’ face which shone so brightly that they had to put a veil over it? Well let me tell you, that stuff that sat upon them like cloven tongues is the same stuff that they saw on Moses’ face. It was like fire, it was a visible manifestation of something that was happening in the spirit of those people. So that’s phenomena number two, a sound, an outward manifestation of fire, something like fire, sitting upon people.

And then something strange began to happen. They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, that is the Holy Ghost got inside of them. First of all it was out here buzzing around like a swarm of bees, then it was setting upon them like flames of fire. Now it gets inside of them and something begins to come out. They’re filled, filling means inside, right? Filling is inside and when that gets inside something begins to come out.

Let’s talk a moment about spirit because the books fully talk about spirit, right? The Bible talks about spirit, what is spirit? You ever find a definition of spirit in the Bible? You have to understand what spirit is and what it means simply by looking at what it does. Spirit is an agency, unseen, invisible, which acts. It is a source of power, it is a source of action, it is a source of action. In the first verses of the Bible we see that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. The Spirit of God in that primal situation moved, the Spirit moved. Spirit is an unseen source of control, of guidance, of action or agency.

And in this case the Spirit brought forth other languages, other tongues, unknown tongues as the Spirit gave utterance. These people were talking in languages which were other than their natural language.

Now if you try to break this down carefully it isn’t all that clear exactly what was happening. But in any case there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven.

Now you say why did the Spirit express itself in tongues? Well it was because there was a job to be done. The job was determined as much by the day as any other time. There were people in Jerusalem on this feast day from all over the world. They were right there ready for the show to go on. They were the ones who were to be impressed. So how does it work?

Well when this was noised abroad the multitude came together. Now the multitude included all of these people with all of these different languages from all over the world. And they came together and were confounded. They were amazed, confounded. They were amazed. Why? Well because every man heard them speak in his own language.

Now this is a part in part where it is puzzling. It isn’t clear, for example it isn’t clear that you have this person here who’s speaking in Latin and this person here who’s speaking in Phrygian or whatever you know language. And so the people from Phrygia heard this chap speak and said wow that’s amazing he’s a Galilean. He’s speaking in Phrygian and one from Rome heard this lady speak and said wow that’s amazing she’s a Galilean she’s speaking perfect Latin. It isn’t clear whether it was that kind of distribution or whether there was something happening in the process of communication such that each individual heard the whole group speaking in their language. In other words the fellow from Rome heard everybody speaking in Latin. And the fellow from Phrygia heard everyone speaking in Phrygian. And the fellow from Cilicia heard everyone speaking in Cilician, right? You see those two different possibilities. It isn’t clear at all what was going on here. I’d like to split a lot of philosophical hairs over that because language is extremely interesting to me. But I’m not going to. I just hope you see that there are various possibilities as to what could have been happening. The upshot is the same in all cases. They heard them speak in their own language.

And they were all amazed and marveled saying one to another behold are not all these which speak Galilean? And how here we every man in our own tongue our own language wherein we were born. And then you get a list of the people who were involved. And if you look at a map, which you ought to do, if you look at a map and locate all of these places on you get a very interesting distribution of what might be called the known world. See the Lord can be so economical when he wants to be. Because this story was going to be shortly all over the world. And people who didn’t even believe it were going to tell it. You can bet they were. You’d better believe that they were. They were going to go home and tell their grandkids about this.

And they were all amazed, verse 12, and were in doubt saying one to another what meaneth this? And others mocking said these men are full of new wine. They’re drunk.

Now the group upon which this came did not expect anything like this to happen. They had no idea of how the promise was going to come or what it would mean. God in his sovereign agency took their willing cooperation, their openness and used it in such a way that he could accomplish his purposes. They were a prepared group.

But I want to insist and I have put in green here. They were prepared, but not perfect. They were by no means a perfect group, far from it. They were not perfect after it happened, much less before it happened. We’re going to see that very shortly.

Now I put that in because I want to get at the idea that somehow if we’re going to have God come upon us we’ve just got to get it all right, and we’ve just got to be perfect. Well you know if that’s the way it is you’ll never make it, because you’re not going to be perfect until God comes upon you, and so if you’ve got to be perfect before he comes upon you, you’re never going to make it. Perfection is God’s work, that is something which he accomplishes.

But you see God is not just concerned to work with perfect people. Yes thank goodness. God works with willing people. God works with open people. He doesn’t require perfect people.

We return to that theme verse which I stressed last night. We have this treasure in a clay pot. In order that the excellency of the power should be of God and not of us. The excellency is in the power, it is in God, it is in the spirit which comes upon this group.

Now the phenomenon we have described, but I want to go on quickly to the effect. I want to say just a word or two about that, and then I want to get right into what the apostles did, how they began to act, and how God began to work with them.

The effect of this was to make a group of respectable people who had written this little group off. This little group of outlaws, this little group of followers of the condemned criminal who had written them off, the effect of that was to make them turn and say wait a moment, we better listen, we had better look at this, this is astounding.

And of course when Peter begins to preach, a different kind of effect takes place. And I want to get into that in a moment. But the effect of the gift of tongues in the book of Acts is nearly always, I’ll have to qualify that nearly later, but nearly always as you study it, is to bring a group of people who thought they were on the inside and this other group was on the outside, was to bring them to look at the other group and say hey, God is over there too. It is to give the people who believe that they have got God all bottled up in their vessel a shock at seeing hey, God is already over there.

What happened in the case of Philip? He went up into Samaria, didn’t he? Crazy deacon, didn’t know anything better, just took off and preached. But the evangelists, people got on fire, Samaritans did. And Peter and John had to go up and check this out. Notice how subtle it all is. Just as the Jews in Jerusalem could not believe that this ragtag bunch of Galileans could have God in their midst until God came upon them in a special way. Now those ragtag Galileans cannot believe that God is in the Samaritans. So they’ve got to say well, Peter and John, you better go up there and check this out. So Peter and John, they go up and check it out. And the Holy Spirit is there, the manifestations of the Holy Spirit is there, and what do we find them saying? Well, they say something like well, since God’s already here, maybe we’d better come along. We didn’t have this in mind, you know, Samaritans are bad people, half-breeds, all mixed up in their religion, but here it is.

Peter’s over at the house of Simon the Tanner, in Joppa, what we call Haifa today, right? Haifa is Joppa. And Peter is there, and Cornelius, the centurion, has a vision. Now we’re really getting bad now, I mean Samaritans were bad, but the Romans were worried. They weren’t even half-breeds. And besides, they were the oppressors of the people. But God sees Cornelius, and he says, Cornelius, your prayers and your alms have come up to God. That’s what the angel in the vision says to him. Sin for Peter.

And what is happening to Peter about that time, any of you know? He’s having a vision, oh boy, and he’s up there, he’s hungry, he’s hungry, isn’t that interesting how God uses things like that? He’s hungry, and so he has his vision, and this blanket let down, or sheet let down, all these dirty creatures on him, you know? Things like pigs, and all that stuff. And the angel says, rise Peter, kill and eat. Oh, not so, he says, I would never do a thing like that, we don’t eat that stuff, it’s dirty. God says, rise Peter, kill and eat, you know, and after a while he gets the message.

These stories are so interesting, you know, these visions, and they’re so human, the reaction. We often think if we just had a vision, everything would be all right, but gee. My favorite is old Zacharias, you know. The angel is standing there and says, you’re going to, your prayers are answered, Zacharias, you’re going to have a baby, all right? You’ve been praying all these years, and you’re going to have a baby. And he says, now get there, he says, how do I know this is going to happen? The angel standing here, see, he says, how do you know this is going to happen? Listen, I’m Gabriel, do you want to know how this is going to happen? See, aren’t we funny, honestly.

And Peter, in this vision, got the angel there, I’m not going to eat any of this stuff, see. Peter was learning a lesson, he was being prepared, and while that vision was going, there came a knock, a message to go, to Cornelius the centurion. And Peter preached the gospel to him. He first listened to Cornelius’ story, and he preached to him, and the Holy Spirit fell. Well, he got in trouble for that, he was called on the carpet for that, you just don’t go around preaching the gospel to these Romans. What does that have to do with Romans? After all, we’re still in the Jewish pot, remember that, okay? Christianity is still Jewish, still Jewish, at that time.

So the gift of tongues is always a move to impress those who thought there was a group that was shut out, but after all, that group isn’t shut out at all.

You know this happened just recently, in our own country? You know the one thing which moved the conservative church to let people in the door who are as hairy as some of you are now? That’s right. We can look at the book of Acts and say, how could they wonder about whether or not a man could be saved if he still had his foreskin? But there are a lot of people, a few years ago, who would have said nobody with as much hair as this fellow on could get in. And they were deadly sincere about it. Deadly sincere. But the Spirit of God went under the hair. He said, don’t pay attention to that hair. It doesn’t have anything to do with it. And these kids started in doing all kinds of things, including speaking in tongues. And now here you are in all your resplendent glory. Your hair flying. It’s great. You see, the Spirit of God moves in that way. And His manifestations are for posies. They aren’t for our entertainment. They are for purpose. And that’s the effect of the gifts. The gift of tongues in this part.

Now I’m going to move a little faster. I wanted to labor those points. Because you see, this is the initial coming of the Spirit of God upon the group.

Now many people say, what’s peculiar about Pentecost? The Spirit of God was around before then. Well I hope that you’ve gotten a clue from last night and tonight already. In the previous cases where you see the Spirit of God manifested, it is always associated with some particular individual. For example, John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb. Jesus received the Spirit of God without measure. Samson had the Spirit of God come upon him. Many of the workers in the temple were taught to do what they did by the Spirit of God.

But now the Spirit of God comes upon a group together. Not upon individuals. It comes upon a group together. That’s what’s new about it. And because the receptacle is much larger, the inflow can be much larger. The receptacle is different now. It’s a group. And it is a group of people which are going to be woven and bound together by the Spirit of God in a way which no group has ever been bound together before. Never. Never. A unity so intimate and so complete that Paul has to grapple for analogies to express it. And his favorite analogy is the body.

We all know that you don’t find the fingers lying around over here alive. And eyeballs lying over here alive. Right? Fingers and eyeballs have to have a certain integral relationship to one another before they stay fingers and eyeballs. Right? Now that is an intimate connection. A very intimate connection. And the Spirit of God came here upon a group. The purpose is entirely different from what it has ever been before. The degree is entirely different from what it has ever been before.

You know that tongues were not new. There had been tongues before. Practically all of the manifestations of the Spirit of God were not new at the day of Pentecost. They were here before. Tongues are even expressed in religions other than Christianity. Do you know that? And you can have whatever explanation you want of that. The point is simply that the tongues are relatively exterior. What is important is the Spirit which gave itself expression through those tongues.

Now, what we have seen thus far is God acting upon a group of people. Now we’re going to see God acting through individuals in the group. We don’t have much time this evening, but I want us to get just a little way into this.

As we saw earlier, the two works of Jesus were speaking and lumping together healing. Now we see exactly those two same works on the part of the disciples. The works that I do shall you do also, right? Same works. Same thing. But the effect is much greater. Jesus never had in his words the effects that Peter had. Isn’t that astounding, that old cornball Peter? But Peter did a greater work on the day of Pentecost in a very tangible and real sense than Jesus had ever done. Of course, the secret is Peter didn’t do it, right? Peter didn’t do it.

Well, but he did do it. He stood up and he said, these men aren’t drunk. This is that which was promised in the prophet Joel. And he began to speak about what was happening and then he turned in the 22nd verse of the second chapter. Now he begins to speak to them about why this has come to pass. Ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, him being delivered by the determinant counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken.

Now it’s very useful to watch in these early sermons of Peter how many times the second person pronoun is used. He talks to them and says, you did it. They knew what he was talking about and he called them murderers. Indeed, he called them murderers of their Messiah. That’s not the sort of thing which they would be inclined to take just in the normal course of things. No, but they took it.

Now there’s going to be a kickback, but watch what happened. After his sermon in the 37th verse, we see, 37th verse of the second chapter, they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

You see, the mark of the work of the Spirit of God when it comes to work with man is always the following. The effect of the action is utterly incommensurable with the act. Utterly incommensurable with the act. And you’ll have to tell me whether or not incommensurable is spelled correctly up there or not. I got to thinking about it. I thought there was supposed to be two Ns, right? So correct it, please. Incommensurable.

Well, what that means is simply that there is no direct relationship to the energy put forth, the effort put forth, the action done, and the effect realized. Think of what happened to Jesus. He got run over. He got killed. He didn’t say anything like this. He didn’t go around accusing people of specific murders, which everyone knew had happened. He called them enough names, all right. But this is a very, very sharp denunciation. And the effect of this was the conversion of a large number of the very people who had killed Jesus Christ.

Peter says to them, turn. Change the direction you’re going in. Be baptized to every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, the very thing that they were talking about. You receive that for the promises unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off. That finally got to Lemon Grove. Made it here. All who are afar off, right? Even as many as the Lord our God shall call, and with many other words, he kept right on preaching, did he testify and exhort, saying, save yourself from this untoward generation, this direction, this generation which is going in the wrong direction.

And then they that gladly received the word were baptized. Now, what happened to those people? Well, what happened to those people is that the Holy Spirit of God created conviction in their hearts, and they believed something so tangibly they could see it.

Peter did not give an invitation, dear heart. He did not wheedle and cajole. He did not beg. He did not try to get them to do anything. He spoke words which created a vision by the power of God, and that’s the work of the ministry. The work of the ministry is to create faith in the hearts of the hearer. It is not to try to get people to have faith. It is to speak the word in the power of God so that faith is created.

There’s an old bit of language, older theologians and ministers used to speak of fastening, saving impressions upon the soul. That’s the work of the ministry. The work of the ministry is to say things in the presence of God in such a way that the people who hear them cannot turn them off. When they stoned Stephen, what did they do? They stopped their ears. They stopped their ears and ran upon him because his words were like screwdrivers going in there, just grinding away, and stopped their ears as they might. Those words came through and they had to kill him. Even that didn’t stop it because it was God who was speaking. It was God who was speaking.

They that gladly received the word were baptized and the same day they were added unto them about 3,000 souls. 3,000 souls. Had 120 to begin with, so now we’ve got 3,120 if you’re keeping count. It’s interesting, by the way, to just keep count as you go through the book of Acts.

They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine, that means they kept hearing the apostles teach. When you say apostles’ doctrine it sounds like they’re reading a systematic theology or something. It just means they were there constantly listening to the apostles teach. They were there with them in fellowship, breaking bread and in prayers. Fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

And all that believed were together and had all things in common. And sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need. And they continuing daily with one accord in the temple, note in the temple. That’s where it happened. Daily in the temple, they moved now out of the upper room. They are no longer the little group of outlaws with nowhere to go. They have moved into the temple and they’ve taken, pretty well taken over at least the outer courts. And all you hear all day long is Jesus, the resurrection, Jesus, the resurrection, Jesus, the resurrection.