The Age of the Spirit | Acts 2:1-13
Intro
I want to invite you to turn with me now to Acts 2. We're going to be in verses 1 through 13 this morning. I don't know if you use AI at all yet. I know we have some in our church who work in that field specifically and have studied extensively and others of you who probably dabble in some things here and there and maybe throw some questions at ChatGPT occasionally and others of you who maybe want nothing at all to do with it. The first time I plugged a prompt into ChatGPT, I was blown away as I watched text appear on the screen in specific response to the prompt that I had given to watch it spit out in complete sentences detailed answers. I don't know if you've had that experience. It's mind-blowing. It's incredible technology. And like any technology, AI raises hope of potential benefits, as well as all kinds of fear about the potential misuses and abuses, there's anxiety and uncertainty about its potential impact. Not to mention all of the ethical questions that it raises.
One thing is for sure, AI is here and it is shaping the world in which we live. It's interesting as you look at all of human history, people describe history in terms of distinct ages based on usually some significant technology or development or characteristic that marked that time, technological or social or cultural. So we speak of the Stone Age or the Bronze Age or the Iron Age, defined mainly by the material that they use for their tools and their weapons, or there's the Classical Age defined by the flourishing of the Greeks and the Romans and their philosophy and their thinking on government and science and literature, or the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration. And then just think of like the last 100, 150 years and the accelerated, unprecedented rate of development through the Industrial Age and now into the Information Age and nobody knows what to call the next age, Artificial Intelligence Age. What a time to be alive.
Well, according to our text this morning, the age that we live in, in world history, is defined by an event more revolutionary, more life-changing, more promising than the advent of AI or any other technological development. And I want to invite you to stand with me if you're physically able, as we read God's word, we stand out of our reverence for God and his authoritative word. These are the very words of God.
Acts chapter 2, beginning in verse 1.
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested[a] on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”
Luke tells us that it was on the day of Pentecost, that was the second of three major Jewish festivals God had commanded his people to observe and celebrate throughout their history. On that day, the disciples of Jesus are gathered together in one place, similar scene to what we saw back in Acts chapter 1.
In fact, this group is probably most likely made up of those 120 or so followers of Jesus mentioned back in chapter 1 verse 15. And while they are gathered together, God poured out his own Spirit on them all. This was a supernatural event with observable effects. They heard what sounded like a violent wind. They saw what looked like flames of fire descending and resting on each one of them. And each one of them began to speak out loud in other languages, as the Spirit of God enabled them to declare the mighty works of God. And the sound of their verbal praise must have caused some kind of scene. Luke doesn't specify, but we imagine they must have spilled out of that room that they were gathered in into the streets because a crowd assembles out of curiosity. Loud noises and commotions tend to draw a crowd. And so this crowd gathers together.
We know later on in Chapter 2 that this crowd is made up of thousands of people. Over 3000 people are there. And because it was Pentecost, because of the holiday there, there were Jews in Jerusalem from all over the world. And Luke, who we know to be a doctor, he's a methodical, careful author and historian, he draws repeated attention to the response of this crowd, to the events that happened there that day. He describes them as bewildered and amazed and astonished and perplexed. Those words convey a sense of confusion and curiosity mixed with awe. And their collective bewilderment is captured at the end in this question. One question, but Luke communicates it as if they're all asking the same thing. What does this mean? What's the significance of this? It's one thing to witness a commotion. It's one thing for a crowd to assemble around it, but to start asking, what's the significance? What does it mean?
Well, the events that took place on the day of Pentecost are massively significant to all of human history and to the church in every generation and to your life personally. Acts 2 describes unique events with massive ramifications. Now, this passage does not describe what your everyday quiet time should look like. It doesn't even describe what every Sunday in a corporate worship gathering like this is going to look like. What happened here recorded in Acts 2 on that specific day, the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, that's not everyday life. But it is nonetheless relevant to your life. Acts 2 describes a unique, unrepeated historical event in redemptive history.
And the Bible is full of such events. Just think about Moses at the burning bush. It's not everyday life or Israel crossing the Red Sea or the giving of the law at Mount Sinai or the birth of Christ. Events that you might say, man, if I could have been there to see that and experience that myself, how incredible would that have been? It's not everyday life. This is one of those kind of events, but that is not to say Pentecost is irrelevant to you. There are plenty of historical events that did not happen to you, but directly affect you. Just think if you're an American of the significance of the 4th of July. We celebrate that day year after year. Even though you weren't there, it would have been cool to be at Independence Hall, to witness the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but even if you weren't there, generations later, your life is shaped by what happened on that day and the ramifications of that Declaration of Independence, and you enjoy certain liberties and freedoms as a result of those events.
Well, similarly, the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost, it marks the moment as our Sovereign Grace Statement of Faith says, that God's people were reconstituted as his new Covenant Church. The moment that the people of God were reconstituted, reconstructed in continuity with what God had been doing throughout human history, and having for himself a people to bear his name, and yet marking a new work of God in human history through the Church of Jesus Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit on Earth, and the proclamation of the Gospel. So if you had been there at that time, you would have seen and heard things that you don't see and hear every day. But what happened there has shaped all of human history down to the present day. The day of Pentecost marks the beginning of what we could describe as the Age of the Spirit. You live in the Age of the Spirit. And it's more significant than the industrial age or the information age or the AI age combined. Because in this age, in the Age of the Spirit, God is fulfilling his promises. God is manifesting his presence on earth. God is empowering his people. And God is at work in history to save this world that he loved and gave his son to redeem.
God is Fulfilling His Promises
That's what Pentecost means for us. Luke begins his narrative in Acts 2 by setting this context, when the day of Pentecost arrived. And the King James, I like this translation. It says, when the day of Pentecost was fully come, Luke uses a word here that has a sense of fulfillment. Like it wasn't just the day of Pentecost, it was like the day was fulfilled, it had fully come.
And Luke uses that language back in his gospel in Luke 9:51, when he says,
When the days drew near, or when they were fulfilled, they had fully come for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.
Like the sense that this was a providential, sovereignly orchestrated moment in God's plan. And that's the first hint in this text. It's a subtle hint, but it's a hint that something is unfolding according to God's plan to fulfill something that God purposes to do in the world. And the next clue is this specific day on which the event occurred. Not by chance, but by God's plan, the Day of Pentecost.
Pentecost is the Greek word for 50th. It referred to the Feast of Weeks. And in the Old Testament, God told His people to count 50 days after the Passover Sabbath, the Sabbath that happened during Passover. Why is that significant? Well, 50 days after the very first Passover, that Passover was celebrated in Egypt before Israel left and God brought them out of slavery, 50 days later, they arrived at Mount Sinai, where God revealed himself to his people and gave them the law.
So the Passover Festival was, for God's people, a placeholder. It was always pointing forward to a better, truer, richer salvation that would be accomplished through Jesus Christ, the Passover lamb, who would shed his blood so that all who are in Christ will be saved from death and from the wrath of God. Jesus fulfilled the Passover forever when he shed his blood for his people at Passover. And by his blood, Jesus established a new covenant. 50 days later, corresponding to the arrival of Israel at Mount Sinai and the giving of the law, God gave his Spirit from heaven, fulfilling God's promise to establish a new and better covenant for his people.
This was not on a whim that God decided to have a change of plans or do something different. No, this was in fulfillment of what God had been saying to his people for ages and generations that he was going to do. He was going to give them a new and better covenant.
Now the problem with the old covenant, I think this is crucial to understand in our thinking, the problem with the old covenant was not the law itself. It's not like God had given some commands that looking back, he thought, you know, on second thought, not so helpful. No, the problem was the sinfulness of human hearts that perpetually break God's law. And the law was external. The law itself is powerless to change anyone's heart. It can't empower you to obey it. It can tell you God's righteous standard, but it can't cause you to obey and keep that standard. And so in the end, it just leaves you guilty and condemned and deserving of death.
But even in the time of the old covenant, God was promising a new covenant marked by the transforming power and presence of his own Spirit. Listen to the words of the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 36, when he says to God speaking through Ezekiel,
And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
That will be a new work. God not merely revealing from outside externally what his law requires, but God putting his spirit inside of his people and empowering them supernaturally to trust him and treasure him and love him and obey him and to walk in his ways. That's the work. This now is the age of the Spirit. If you are in Christ, that means you are in this new covenant. The law was written on stone, but the Spirit writes on human hearts. The law kills, but the Spirit gives life. This is massively significant for all of human history and for the church and for you. Other prophets also foretold this coming work of the Spirit when God would pour out his Spirit. We're going to look at this more detail next week when we get to Peter's sermon, answering their question, what does all of this mean? But he quotes the prophet Joel, who said in Joel 2:28,
It shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.
This is not a new thing. God was foretelling it. Now it's being fulfilled. Isaiah foretold the same thing. Isaiah 44,:3
I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground.
This is the language of restoration and refreshing and renewal. I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. John the Baptist, the last prophet of the Old Covenant Age, he promised this would be a defining mark of the Messiah, God's anointed king, when he said, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And then Jesus makes the same promise at the end of Luke's Gospel.
We just saw a few weeks ago at the beginning of Acts chapter 1, he's promising his disciples, wait here until you receive the promise of the father. So the events on Pentecost then mark the beginning of the fulfillment of all of these promises that God had piled up for his people for ages. And that means what happened on that day is of eschatological significance, it's a big word we use, eschatology is just the doctrine of last things. In other words, the outpouring of the Spirit, it means the last days have arrived. God's promises are being fulfilled. You live in the age of the Spirit, and all of these promises from God are coming true in his people.
God is Manifesting His Presence
Second, on Pentecost, we see that this is what God is doing in the world. God is manifesting his presence. The outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost, it was dramatic and discernible. That is striking in Luke's account of these events. Listen again to verses 2 through 4.
Suddenly, there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it, that's the sound, filled the entire house where they were sitting, and divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues or languages as the Spirit gave them utterance.
This is nothing less than the manifestation of God's own presence. Those very first two words, and suddenly indicates that what happened here was an act of God. This was not something that they did, the disciples gathered in that upper room, not something that they brought about by their own praying or pleading. They did not cause this or control this at all. This happened to them, and suddenly there came from heaven. So this is heaven breaking into earth in history, and the sights and sounds of it were discernible to their natural senses, but the source was divine. This is the presence and the activity of God himself. More specifically, it's the activity of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, and he is fully God.
Luke tells us there was a sound like a mighty rushing wind that filled the entire house. They heard sounds like the Greek word is literally a violent rushing wind. Luke doesn't say whether or not they felt a wind, so we only speculate on that, but the sound filled the house. We live on the Great Plains. We are familiar with the sound of violent wind. How many times have you been woken up in the night by the sound of wind against your house? There have been times that the wind just howls all day long. And we get to the end of the day, I just look at Barbara and say, I feel exhausted by that sound, like rattling all day long. It sounded like the roof was just going to be ripped off. Violent wind. We are familiar with that sound. There's times where there's a storm, and I'm listening trying to discern, is that thunder or is that the wind? I can't tell the difference always. Just imagine what it sounded like in that room, in that moment. Luke tells us, divided tongues of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
So there's a visible appearance, something they witnessed with their eyes. Now, growing up, I always pictured when I heard this, tongues like a human tongue, like that muscular organ in your mouth, but somehow on fire. But actually, tongue is a common way of just describing flames of fire figuratively. Flames look like tongues. We talk about the flames licking the logs in the fireplace. So flames of fire visibly appearing over each person, and both of these signs, the wind and the fire, they are clearly associated with the presence of God all throughout scripture. When God's glory appeared to Ezekiel, listen to his description of what he saw in Ezekiel 1.
As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north and a great cloud with brightness around it and fire flashing forth continually.
Fire and wind are symbols of God appearing, manifesting his presence. When the Lord passed by Elijah on significantly Mount Sinai, where the law was given, there was violent wind and fire. And then God passes by and speaks and is still whisper to Elijah. Psalm 104.3 says,
God makes the clouds his chariot. He rides on the wings of the wind.
God appeared in a pillar of fire to Israel and a burning bush to Moses. This is all representative of the manifestation of the presence of God to his people. But here's what's so shocking about this particular occasion. It doesn't happen in the temple like Isaiah's vision. Behold, I saw the Lord seated on a throne in the temple. It doesn't happen on the mountain of the Lord like Israel at Sinai with Moses or Elijah at Mount Sinai hearing from God. It happens in some upper room, in somebody's house, in Jerusalem.
In this new covenant age, God's presence is no longer limited to the Holy of Holies, a place restricted. Nobody could go in there except the High Priest and he only once a year, as the author of Hebrews tells us. We know from Luke's Gospel account, the curtain separating the Holy of Holies was torn when Jesus died on the cross. That's a significant event that that curtain is torn, indicating access to the presence of God. And here it's fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when the manifestation of God's presence appears to the people of God in somebody's house. And God is with his people. After Christ ascended, he poured out his Spirit on all his people. And so, therefore, in this age, there is no more temple. There's not a brick and mortar building where you have to go to meet God there in that location because God's Spirit is in all of his people, wherever his people are gathered all over the world. Because in this age, God is making himself known to the world through people like you.
Does that not amaze you and humble you and excite you? The real gift, the real miracle of Pentecost is actually not the speaking in foreign languages, it's God's own presence with his people. God gives himself to his people. That's what he is doing. He is the gift in the age of the Spirit when he is with his people in a new way.
God is Empowering His People
Verse four says,
and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
So there's a supernatural ability happening here in addition to the wind and the fire symbolizing God's presence. They are supernaturally empowered by the Spirit of God to speak these foreign languages. That's what other tongues means. And three times Luke repeats for us that this crowd made up of Jews from every nation under heaven, they could understand these words in their own native languages.
Now, they are shocked and bewildered by that because they did not expect people like this to be speaking their languages. Because, it's clear to them, the disciples are not cultured cosmopolitan people. They don't look like the kind of people who have traveled the world and studied foreign languages. They look, well, like Galileans, which is just kind of a way of saying, they look like hicks. What are they doing? Speaking our languages. They don't expect it at all. Where do they get this ability? Well, they were filled with the spirit. That's where this ability came from.
And when we think of filling, probably the first thing that comes to our mind is like filling a container with some other substance. You pour water into a container and you fill it up or you fill up your tires with air. But one author helpfully comments on this passage. We should not think of the Spirit as some sort of heavenly gasoline that fills up our tanks. And then you start to use it up, use it up, use it up, and then you need to be refilled like that.
Now, the word filled, it can refer to capacity, but Luke frequently in his Gospel and in Acts uses the word filling figuratively, like when he describes people who are filled with wrath or filled with fury or filled with awe or wonder or jealousy or confusion. That's the language he uses. They were filled with confusion. They were filled with wonder.
So the point is not that the Holy Spirit is an emotion like that. Emphatically, he is not an emotion. In fact, the Holy Spirit is not a power or a force. He is a person, which is why we speak of him with personal pronouns. He, him, he is the third person of the Trinity. But when someone is filled with awe or jealousy, think about what happens. They are stirred by that. They are empowered and motivated. They are moved to action by that. When someone is filled with the Holy Spirit, it's not so much about how much or how little, how full their tank is.
It means that person is empowered by the Spirit of God to speak and to act, to glorify God in some particular task. In fact, most occasions where Luke describes someone as being full of the Spirit, he immediately then describes them speaking in some way. As he does here, verse four, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. But then jump ahead to Acts 4, verse 8, then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, St. Peter, who is filled with the Holy Spirit here in Acts chapter 2. So it's not like he got filled up and then he ran out and he needed. No, in this moment, moved, animated, empowered by the Spirit, he said to them, or Acts 4:31, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. These are people who have already been described as being filled with the Spirit. And again, they are described as filled with the Holy Spirit. And they continue to speak the Word of God with boldness. Or Chapter 13, Paul filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, indicates that there is supernatural power from God to speak and to glorify God with words.
The empowering presence of the Spirit produces Spirit-inspired speech in his people. Doesn't mean that every single word, every believer then says is written down for the church in all ages and all times. But it does mean that those words are glorifying to God and bearing witness to people. Worship and witness are the kinds of speech that comes out. What did the crowd hear? Verse 11, we hear them telling in our own tongues, the mighty works of God. I wish that was written down for us to know what are they saying about God and what he has done in history? What are they saying about Jesus Christ and what he accomplished through his life and his teaching and his death and his resurrection? How are they describing the mighty works of God? It was worship and it was witness at the same time. The outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost means we live in the age of the Spirit when God is empowering his people to glorify Christ and proclaim the gospel to the world.
Now before he ascended into heaven, Jesus described the coming of the Spirit as an experience of being clothed with power from on high. And in Acts 1-8, remember, the Spirit is linked to power and witness. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses. That's a promise. You will be my witnesses, not by your own strength, not by your own boldness, not by your own ability to articulate, not by your own winsomeness. You will be empowered by my Spirit to be a witness. Maybe you've noticed this in your life. When I think about times when I have been most profoundly aware of the Spirit's presence and help and empowerment, I think most of those experiences are moments where I was talking in some way, I was praying for someone or with someone, or I was praising God, I was singing words of praise, declaring the mighty works of God, and I'm affected by the truth that I'm singing and the Spirit opens my eyes to see, or I'm sitting with someone over coffee talking about their life and counseling and experience the Spirit bringing words and thoughts to mind. Or if you've ever been empowered by the Spirit to open your mouth and share the gospel with an unbeliever, I was talking with Jordan about this the other day, the time I least want to witness to somebody is right before I open my mouth. And then when God grants you that courage and you just get into a gospel conversation as you start to go and you just amazed that the Spirit of God is working through you to share the truth of the gospel with somebody else, and you just know the Spirit of God is working associated with this Spirit-inspired speech. This is what the Spirit is doing in this church age.
God is Saving the World
The providential timing, the circumstances surrounding the outpouring of the Spirit emphasize to us God's gracious disposition to this wicked and broken world. Jesus promised that his disciples would be empowered for witness. Remember, he said, in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. So there's a geographic, a global component to this promise of witness. You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth. And what's so remarkable about the circumstances on which God chose to pour out his Spirit is that providentially that promise is symbolically fulfilled in an instant. Because at that moment, there happened to be, in Jerusalem, Jews gathered from what Luke describes as every nation under heaven. He emphasizes that point again, verses 9 through 11, when he names the specific nations represented in this crowd. If you map that out, they are stretching from modern day Iran and Iraq in the east all the way to Turkey and Italy in the north and the west, down into North Africa, these countries of Libya and Egypt to the south, all over the known world at that time. And providentially, they're in Jerusalem for this festival, which was one of the few festivals Jews had to travel back to Jerusalem to observe and celebrate.
Now, these are Jews or proselytes, meaning they were Gentiles who had converted to Judaism. How did Jews like that get scattered to the four winds? What were they doing in all of those countries anyway? Well, that came about because of the unfaithfulness of God's people to God's covenant. God warned them clearly in Deuteronomy 28 of all the curses listed for covenant unfaithfulness. Listen to this warning.
The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And the Lord will scatter you among all peoples from one end of the earth to the other.
So the Jews are scattered to all the nations because of their own sin. It's a curse from God. It's a reminder of their own unfaithfulness. But listen to the way that Ezekiel described the future outpouring of God's spirit as a specific reversal of that curse.
I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you and I will put my spirit within you.
Directly reversing that covenant curse, the events on Pentecost, not just the wind and the fire, but the presence of Jews from every nation under heaven. It is a clear indication that Christ has broken the curse for breaking God's law. And Jesus now is restoring God's people. He is gathering them back together.
There are also remarkable parallels here to the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. If you remember that story before Babel, all the earth had one language, common tongue. At Babel, they rebel against God and try to build a tower from earth to heaven to reach God. What happens on Pentecost? God pours out his Spirit from heaven on earth. At Babel, God thwarted their plans and confused their language. At Pentecost, God is making his wonders intelligible in every language. At Babel, the nations were dispersed, but here at Pentecost, God is keeping his promise to gather and unite the nations in Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.
The day of Pentecost has even more symbolic meaning. On the first day, after the Sabbath that happened during Passover, Israel was commanded to take their first fruits of grain and wave them before the Lord. The very first harvest that they brought in, not to eat it, but to offer it to God, which is a tremendous act of faith, saying, we're not going to eat this that we have grown, we're going to give it to you, trusting there's going to be more of a harvest coming in.
So that was the first fruits offering. And it happened on the first day after the Sabbath of Passover. What happened on the first day after the Sabbath of Passover when Jesus was crucified? He rose from the dead on that first day, which is why Paul calls him in 1 Corinthians 15, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. He is the first fruits from the dead. Pentecost then happens 49 days after that waving of the first fruits. 49 days after Jesus is raised from the dead, God begins to gather in to his own people, these scattered people from all of the nations, assuring us that Jesus is just the first to be raised from the dead. There will be more, thousands more, tens of thousands, millions more because he is the first fruits and he has conquered sin and death and all people from anywhere on earth who trust in him, their sins will be forgiven and they will be united to Christ to live with him forever. He is the first fruits of what we will be and what we will experience, which assures us, what is God's disposition to this world right now? What's your disposition to this world?
When you think about all the chaos, the insanity, the sin, the corruption, everything going on in the world that seems so broken and unfixable. Deists think of God as, you know, he created the world and then he just steps back and he has nothing to do with it at all throughout history. Others probably think God must just be so mad, like he's got his arms crossed and he's scowling at us and shaking his finger and just waiting to pour out bolts of lightning on the earth. This tells us what God is doing in history is saving the world. He so loved the world, he gave his son to save it. He so loved the world that he poured out his Spirit on earth so that it wouldn't just be Jesus alone who's raised from the dead, but everyone who trusts in him. Doesn't that give you hope for the world? Hope for history?
This is unbelievably good news that in this age, the age of the Spirit, God is saving the world through his son and by his Spirit. The age of the Spirit has arrived. Just how incredible it would have been to have been there on that day to witness these things for yourself, to see and hear and experience these things. But Luke tells us at the end, there were people there who did see and hear these things. And some of them mocked. The very last words in this passage, verse 13, they mock, these people are filled with new wine. They're drunk. That's what's going on here. Which is a warning to us that witnessing a miracle is no guarantee that you will trust in God.
Plenty of people give us the excuse for their unbelief. Well, if I saw it, I would believe it. Not true. Lots of people have seen lots of things. Israel at Mount Sinai saw the thunder and the lightning and heard the sounds and received God's law. And then walked out and worshiped golden calves and grumbled and complained all the way through the wilderness. Seeing does not necessarily mean believing. Paul wrote to the church in 1 Corinthians 14,
If therefore the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?
You're mad, you're drunk. That's the response of an unbelieving heart to the work of God in the world. So don't be surprised if those who don't know Christ mock and scoff at first. But more importantly, take this to heart. This is a sign of God's gracious disposition toward the world, as well as a sign of his judgment on unbelievers who prove their unbelief. Not God's fault, not because God has not revealed himself. It's because their own hearts are hard toward him.
What's your response to Christ and his work in history? He has made himself known. He has given his life for sinners like you. He has poured out his Spirit to restore his people and reveal his presence. Are you amazed or are you indifferent? Do you doubt or do you trust? May God grant you grace to trust in and rely on Christ that you may be saved and that in you, the saving purposes of God may be known on earth.