What did they do during that 10 days? The Apostle Peter may have been the most outspoken of the twelve apostles in Jesus' ministry on earth. I think there are two things that are clear, and that should dominate our thinking. That's how we live the Word, that's how we drink in the Word, and it changes our life and it banishes the fear, gives us confidence in who we are and what we are to do. Number one was the Roman Empire. What's the next step?" If you keep yourselves from doing these things, you will do well. Shavuot | Definition, Meaning, & Facts | Britannica As the first volume ends with the Great Commission, the second volume begins with it (verse 8). As you read on in Acts chapter 1, one of the main things they did was to choose a successor to Judas. "He appeared first to Mary Magdalene out of whom He had cast seven demons. And it is Christ in us that is that hope of glory. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Acts is the record of how our Lord is fulfilling the Great Commission by using weak and fallible men. Red flowers may adorn alters and other areas. Did they doubt themselves? Think of it! "And they looked steadfastly in toward heaven," verse 10, "as He went up, and behold two men stood by them in white apparel." That's a little-understood part of what was taking place. But on that morning as they gathered, made their preparations, put on their clothes, walked to the location where they all were gathered, and they were about 120 disciples as chapter 1 of Acts tells us, they no doubt had a lot on their mind. Again, what they thought that they were becoming a part of was a movement that was noble, that was good, there had been many movements of other Messiah-type figures at this period of time in Judea. (I wonder if they were waiting for that cloud to move out of their line of sight. These were redeemed from among men being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb. And so they didn't really think about that, and yet all of a sudden it came upon them. And it was the high priest and those people who had engineered His death, and they knew the power that they did have. The bonds of trust among the disciples were beginning to be frayed. And continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.". 5In this regard, it is similar to the words of the two angels to the women at the tomb, as seen in Luke 24:4-7. During the Temple period, the first fruits of the harvest were brought to the Temple, and two loaves of bread made from the new wheat were offered . The apostles were witnesses of our Lords resurrection (1:8, 22; 2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39-41; 13:30-31). Long before modern advertising, the Bible had its own versions of before and after. In Genesis, we have a picture of man before the fall and after. In the Book of Judges, we have Gideon as a fearful and reticent man (before), and then we have Gideon after as the brave warrior. 7The apparent contradictions between this account and that of Matthew 27:3-10 are not insurmountable. The Feast of the Ascension ranks with Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost in the universality of its observance among Christians. No, He said wait till, wait in Jerusalem, and so they were there and they continued. And that power would be what would begin to banish the fear, the troubling, doubt, that they had, coupled with the Word of God that they were to have. These accounts of like what we have read in the gospels and others for a 40-day period. "And all who believed were together and they had all things in common. Think about that among our own relationships with each other. In his last face-to-face meeting with the Ephesian elders, Paul spoke to them about their responsibilities as shepherds. Because they were seeing Christ risen and they saw Him in a bodily form, but then they were attributing something different to that. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. I was going to get on a Greyhound bus. '", And so Luke's account gives us a very specific instruction, how He told them, You wait in Jerusalem and then you will receive the power from on high. And that is what they were doing as they waited for that period of time to come about. 9 For if there was glory in the ministry that produced condemnation, how much more does the ministry that produces righteousness excel in glory! They had not been a part of anything like that before. Then what looks like tongues of fire rests on the followers of Jesus, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That is how the mission of the Church is done and that is how then that vision of a community, of a Church, of a people who are rooted in the Word of God, who actually do care for one another, is accomplished; by no other means, by no other means. And there was fear of the unknown, of what was going to take place, fear of the future. Consider these elements: First we find the doctrine of the Trinityin the first chapter, which speaks of the Father (1:4), the Son (1:4, etc. If Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, then the Spirit is the sap equipping us for the Christian life. And you will be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." But I had to go to St. Louis about 100 miles north of my hometown and pick up what they called an express bus, that would go through the larger cities. When Jesus arose from the dead, He did not remain with them continually, as He once did. So, let's continue our Book of Acts Bible Study. Jesus waited 40 days from the time of His resurrection till the day of His ascension into heaven. During those 40 days, He provided them with many convincing proofs that He had indeed risen from the dead. They looked upon them then as liars, charlatans, or fools, maybe a bit delusional. He boasted of his victory over Israel, and we read, The king of Israel replied, Tell him the one who puts on his battle gear should not boast like one who is taking it off (1 Kings 20:11).2, The point is that one should not boast before his victory, but should wait until after. In 2 Corinthians 3 and 4, Paul makes the same point, showing how much more glorious the New Covenant is to the Old and that New Testament ministry is to the old, because of the Holy Spirit. There is additional evidence that our Lord spoke to the apostles about the mystery of the church during these 40 days. And then it came to an end, it came to a close. And it is also the mission of the Church, we see right here, it has begun. Peter's Life Before Christ. The Cross And Christs Suffering For Sins (1 Peter 3:18-22), 6. Luke chapter 24. In the midst of all of the gnats, let us not miss the camel of this text, namely that the Holy Spirit was soon (not many days from now, verse 5) to come upon them, empowering them to carry out the Great Commission. I would like to look at Acts 1 in three segments: Verses 1-11 From Christs Resurrection to His Return, Verses 15-26 Filling the Vacancy left by Judas. Pentecostal Christians believe in the direct experience of the Holy Spirit by believers during all of their services. The inference is, Dont just stand here; get going!5. He had a long way to come to be the one to stand up and to give the sermon on this day, but he did it. It wasn't there and so a lot had happened in that 50-day period that brought them to that morning of Pentecost. What we read about back in Matthew 28:19 of the gospel being taken to the world. The vision of the Church was coming together and the mission of the Church was being accomplished. Everybody who gets up and gives a sermon in a congregation, that sermon before it's ever posted on a website, has been reviewed or at least approved by individuals within the congregation. We get on to verse 40, the wrap-up: "With many other words, he testified and exhorted them saying, Be saved from this perverse generation, that those who were, who gladly received his word were baptized; about 3,000 souls were added to them. Sunday Before Pentecost. If we can make that decision and live with that reality that there is a God who lives, and before Him we stand every single day of our life and every major decision, every small decision of character, and the decisions that we make in the privacy of our own mind, and in our own actions that not everyone knows about, not even our mate, all are in accordance with righteousness and a desire for righteousness. If we can borrow a phrase that we've used over the last two years, two phrases, they labored in the Word and they lived in the Word. Four fishermen - Peter, Andrew, James and John - are landing their catch when they are approached by Jesus. And God will expose sin, ours to ourselves, sometimes to others. We, again, don't necessarily always pause and think about this, in these hours and days following Christ's resurrection. Simply because there were 10 days of waiting, watching, and praying before Something Big happened to the church. Pentecost always occurs 50 days after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and ten days after his ascension into heaven. We learn that it was Peter who provided the leadership (1:15). They watched Him rise until a cloud obscured their vision. Peter and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James were there. That is the vision that Jesus has for His Church as articulated by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:16, and they had it at this moment. We know in Acts chapter 2, when we turn there and look at the story alluded to in the sermonette here this morning, that they were gathered together. This is the threefold commission that is given to this group of disciples where they are to be witnesses of Him in the city of Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samariathe wider region of the country, look at it as kind of the wider counties of the country of Israel at the timeand then ultimately, to the end of the earth, to take the Gospel and to be a witness of God, to do this. Pentecost starts in a locked room with believers waiting. The Roman Empire was not anything to fool around with. That's how I imagine it and He was home, He was back at, He was at the third heaven. And if those are the weapons of our warfare, then we can handle them. And yet some doubted. Lukes account of our Lords ascension is brief, but informative: 9 After he had said this, while they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud hid him from their sight. Why did the apostles speak of the coming of the kingdom of God as its being restored? And so I made a certain few inquiries, I got on the bus, didn't miss it. Jesus was appearing to the apostles for 40 days until His ascension, and so there had to be 10 days left until Pentecost. Before Pentecost: What Were They Thinking? - United Church of God Their disbelief would extend not only to the idea that the dead could come back to life, as He did, but then they doubted the truth of these witnesses. "What do we do?" First, there was an unmistakable "sound like a mighty rushing wind" that "filled the entire house" where the believers had gathered. 4 So Barnabas and Saul,sent out by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus (Acts 13:1-4, emphasis mine). It is also called Whitsun, but does not necessarily coincide with the Whitsun Bank Holiday in the UK. Acts 2:1-13 records the events of this Pentecost, about 10 days after Jesus' ascension. Apparently, two angelic figures appeared to them as the disciples were kind of watching Christ go. In 2 Peter chapter 1, 2 Peter chapter 1, Peter writes, "Grace and peace be multiplied to you and the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. And He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures.". This then begins to be the anchor and the soil into which they can anchor a life of faith that they were to have and to develop. And what happened? He spent days and days, and weeks and weeks doing that, bringing new dimension of understanding to the Scriptures that they had never had. I was standing there gazing, not quite knowing what to do. What do I do about calling a priest father at my Catholic University? What Is Pentecost? - dummies It would further seem that this is the room where the apostles had been staying the previous 40 days. A firstfruit is one who follows Christ. And there wasn't a Jew in Jerusalem, not a rabbi, not a priest who'd ever understood Joel or the Psalms in that way, nor would they have ever dreamed of applying it to what had happened just weeks earlier, with the arrest, crucifixion, and death of this Man called Jesus of Nazareth. That's been the hallmark of our feature. And it is in that, we reach the real nexus, the real critical point of our life before God, where we recognize that, with the Holy Spirit, we are taking on the very nature of God, the divine nature. They remind us that most of the twelve apostles disappear in Acts and the Epistles, and not just Matthias. There is a great difference between before and after.. The Word of God. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God (1 Corinthians 15:3-9). And we can have the power to believe that, and to grow together and develop together as a bride of Christ, and accomplish His work and His purpose and His will. Pentecost occurred 50 days after Easter Sunday or 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead. 3. Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13) | Bible.org That is what we shall seek to discover in our study. He was interested in the gospel, but a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus (or Elymas) opposed them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the truth. What is the day of Pentecost? | GotQuestions.org The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. From Psalm 69, they recognized that Judas betrayal was part of the divine plan. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. 30 He is the reason you have a relationship with Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:26-31). What is Pentecost? Why Does It Matter? - Mark D. Roberts Some of the women mentioned in Acts 1:14 may well have been those who accompanied Jesus and His disciples, and who also contributed to His support (Luke 8:1-3). Pentecost - Wikipedia We see this confirmed in Acts 5: And we are witnesses of these events, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him (Acts 5:32). Others have sought to justify this action on the part of the apostles. "And He said to them, 'Thus it is written, thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and the remissions of sins would be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem, and you are witnesses of these things. Ministers in church often wear robes with red in the design as a symbol of the flames in which the Holy Spirit came to earth. So it's something for us to examine in our own way, see how much of that is being demonstrated in our life. And you have to understand that and realize that, that's what they were doing during that period of time as well. At the end of the 40 days, Jesus was taken up into heaven. Then follows a marvelous after photo, which displays a beautiful person, so different from the before photo.
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