In his sermon titled 'The First Sermon in the New World Order,' Peter Allison discusses the events of Pentecost as described in Acts chapter 2. He explains that this event marks the beginning of a New World Order where Christ reigns following His resurrection and ascension. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh, fulfilling the prophecy of Joel. This is evidenced by the apostles speaking in different languages, which serves as a sign to unbelievers. Despite some mockery from onlookers who accuse the apostles of being drunk, Peter stands to preach, emphasizing the primacy and importance of preaching in spreading God's Word, a practice that has been central since the Old Testament times. The sermon highlights the continuity and fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies in the New Testament era, with the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the continuation of prophecy. Peter argues that preaching remains the God-ordained method for spreading the gospel and edifying the church, as demonstrated by the apostles' dedication to daily preaching. He also addresses the continuity of prophecy, showing it as a consistent message from God, delivered by the Spirit, and its role in the church's mission. Through the sermon, Peter Allison underscores the unwavering truth of God's Word and its fulfillment through the ages.

Our Scripture reading is Acts chapter 2. I'd like to begin at verse 12 to Capture the thought that begins in verse 14. Acts chapter 2 verse 12. So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, whatever could this mean? Others mocking said, they are full of new wine.

But Peter standing up with the eleven raised his voice and said to them, Men of Judah, and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and heed my words, for these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel, and it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams, and on my men servants and on my maid servants I will pour out my spirit in those days and they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into May Jehovah bring His judgments of old to mind and comfort us in them.

Heavenly Father, sanctify us by Your Word. May this word that we have heard be mixed with faith. May You sanctify my sinful lips to proclaim the riches of Your gospel of grace. Of your gospel of grace. We pray that you would feed us this morning.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Last week, I likened this Pentecost to the beginning of the New World Order. And a world order where Christ has begun His messianic reign. Where He is reigning in the midst of His enemies, those who are raging against Him. So this then becomes the first sermon of the New World Order.

Christ is reigning, although His full investiture may not be completed until AD 70 and the destruction of the temple, but Christ has completed His cross work. He has defeated death, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven, He has the legal right to reign. And He has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God. And this millennial reign we saw last week and in the previous weeks will continue until all of his enemies are defeated. We saw also in last week that in the speaking of tongues that is described in the passage just before what we read, that this speaking in tongues that accompanied the coming of the Holy Spirit, that It met all the requirements that Paul gives in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, but especially in 14, regarding tongues.

That these are languages, they're not unintelligible sounds. These men, these apostles are speaking in languages that are known and people can understand them. Many are impressed, they are amazed, they are a little confused. They hadn't seen anything like this before. These people, these languages were understood by those who heard them.

And the other thing Paul says, or another thing that Paul says about them is that they were assigned to unbelievers. Assigned to unbelievers. And that's exactly what we see in this passage. These tongues that are spoken at Pentecost, They're understood by all those who hear. They're hearing in a language that's native to them.

And they are amazed. They are impressed. It's just an amazing sign to them. Something that they hadn't seen before. But others mock.

It's like the mockery of all holy things. It's what we might call trash talk today. They were mocking what was happening in front of them. They didn't understand it either. They didn't know what it was.

So they made up something derogatory and they said that these were drunk with new wine. And I think this is the very start of the rage of the nations that Psalm 2 speaks about against Jehovah and against His Christ. This is the very first sign in this New World Order. Christ has ascended, He has now sent His Holy Spirit. There's this amazing outbreak of people, many people, 120 people probably speaking in tongues of all these different nations that are represented there, And there are some that are mocking this, scoffing at it.

But it's only the third hour of the day. And so how does Peter respond to this mocking of this holy outpouring of the Spirit? He gets up and preaches. That's how he responds. He preaches to them.

And I think this is another example. If we were to step back and look at all of Acts, and then even the whole New Testament, and then all of Scripture. This is another example of the primacy of preaching. The centrality of preaching. The whole book of Acts is filled with sermons of the apostles.

Like this one. Just like the Gospels were filled with Jesus sermons in many different settings and contexts. And they were a great variety of sermons. A great variety of style of preaching. And so while this is the first sermon of what we call the New World Order, it's not the first sermon.

God has not changed the primary means by which He has made Himself known, which is the preaching of His Word. The prophets are filled with the sermons of the prophets. Sermons were regularly preached throughout the Old Testament. Acts 15 tells us that Moses was preached in the synagogues throughout Israel. For Moses has throughout many generations those who preach Him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath." So preaching is not something that is new.

This is how Peter responds to the rage of the nations and this mocking of the work of the Holy Spirit. It's to preach God's Word to them. You see, preaching is the means that God has ordained for people to find out about God. It is the means that God has chosen to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ. The law and the prophets were until John, and since that time, the Kingdom of God has been preached and everyone is pressing into it, Luke says.

See, this was Jesus' plan for the apostles. Before He ascended, He said to them, thus it is written, And thus it was necessary for Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and the remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations beginning with Jerusalem." That's what he told them in Luke 24, as He's about to ascend. That they were to be preaching everywhere beginning in Jerusalem. Acts 5 says that the apostles did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus the Christ daily in the temple and in every house. Daily?

Did you catch that? Daily? They're preaching daily. We think one sermon a week is enough. Maybe it's a lot.

But following the example of the apostolic church, under Calvin's leadership in Geneva, sermons were delivered every day in the Geneva churches. Ministers were assigned every church in the city to preach. And on Sunday, there were at least three sermons. There was a sermon at 8 a.m. There was a catechism sermon at noon, and there was another sermon at 3 p.m.

And then it was the practice for the ministers to preach every day, Monday through Saturday, and then three times on Sunday. And then they would get the next week off and somebody else would preach every day. And then they would preach on Sunday, and then every day the next week. That was the regular schedule. Because the primary means that God is ordained, for us to be edified, for the church to be built, for the elect to be gathered, for His people to be brought into salvation is the preaching of the Word.

It's not through all these other means like movies or dances or other events, although sometimes Music is certainly a part of our worship. But the central focus of our worship is the preaching of the Word. And that is the way it has been since Moses' day. Since the establishment of the church in Moses' day. Preaching has been this central means by which God's church is built and established.

Now, preaching, as we all know, is a foolishness to the world. Those who want to teach us how to win friends and influence people say, don't preach at them. That's not going to win you any friends. That's not going to influence people. And so, Paul told the Corinthians, for since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

Paul saying this is foolishness to the world, But this is the means through which it pleases the Lord to accomplish His purpose. So that. Why is that? Why is it that it's not with words of human wisdom, that It's not with great displays of learning and eloquence. It's so that our faith would not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

That's why God used only 300 people under Gideon to defeat the Midianites. So that everybody might know that it was the Lord that did it. And that's why the Lord uses the foolishness of preaching, so that He is glorified and no person. We can say, I can say with John the Baptist, He must increase, but I must decrease. Peter stands up then with the other eleven to address these scoffers.

Matthew Henry states that they left the rest of the people that were speaking in tongues to continue speaking, all the wonderful works of God to those who were believing, to those who were amazed at what they were hearing. But the apostles turned their, and Peter is the speaker here, turned their attention to these scoffers. And so he stands up to preach this. Now, that may be a common posture for preaching, but it's not the only posture in Scripture. Jesus sat down at times to preach.

In fact, many times, He sat down to preach. He sat down in the synagogue after He had stood up to read the Word. He sat down to preach. He sat down in boats to preach. So standing may be what we do, but it's not the only way that preaching can be accomplished.

But in this case, Peter stands to preach. And the first thing he does in his preaching, I think we want to see three things that he does. The first thing he does is to correct their errors. He preaches against this error. He didn't ignore it.

He didn't say, well, that's one way to look at it. He counteracted it. He corrected it. He said, no, that's not what's going on. They're not drunk.

This is only the third hour. And on feast days, Josephus tells us that they would typically not even eat until after this time. So Peter, first thing he does is to correct their error. The second thing he does is to teach what we say the indicative. He declares what is.

He teaches. There are many different kinds of sermons in the Scriptures, but they all have two basic elements. And the first is that they teach. They state what is truth. God's Word is truth.

And so Peter identifies right at the outset what is going on here. What does this mean? Peter says that what is happening here on this day of Pentecost with all of these people speaking in tongues, he said this is what Joel spoke about in Joel chapter 2. And then he goes on to quote this text at length. He's saying what's happening here before you is something that was prophesied in the Scriptures.

This is what was spoken by Joel. And so this is a very significant statement. It's a very significant point here. The New Testament is providing an infallible interpretation of when Joel's prophecy would be fulfilled. The New Testament is telling us when Joel's prophecy would be fulfilled.

That it's now. It was being fulfilled in their day. So If we look at Joel 2, we can look at the context of this passage that Peter says is what is happening. Joel Chapter 2. He says in beginning of 2, to blow the trumpet and sound the alarm, and let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming." A day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, like the morning clouds spread over the mountains, of people great and strong, the like of whom has never been, nor will there ever be such after them, even for successive generations." And he goes on to talk about this day of the Lord and to describe it as a day of great power, a day of great events, fires, earthquakes, the mountains leaping.

Then he says in verse 12, Now therefore says the Lord, turn to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart and knot your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness." And then he says again, blow the trumpet, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and nursing babes. This is an assembly, a sacred assembly, a convocation that should include the children. Nursing children even, it says.

And then Joel goes on to say in verse 18, The Lord will be zealous for His land and pity His people. And the Lord will answer and say to the people, Behold, I will send you grain and new wine, and you will be satisfied by them, and I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations, but I will remove far from you the northern army, and will drive them away into a barren and desolate land." That's speaking of the northern, the Assyria came down from the north. And he says, verse 21, Fear not, for the Lord has done great and marvelous things. The fig tree and the vine yield their strength. Be glad then, you children of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for He has given you the former rain faithfully, and He will cause the rain to come down for you, the latter rain.

And the latter rain in the first month, and the threshing floors, will be full of wheat, and the vats will overflow with new wine and oil. And I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten." He calls the swarming locusts, the crawling locusts, the consuming locusts, the chewing locusts, He calls them all, my great army which I sent among you. He said He would restore what they had eaten. And you shall eat plenty and be satisfied. And praise the name of the Lord your God who has dealt wonderfully with you.

And my people will never be put to shame. And then you will know that I am in the midst of Israel. I am the Lord your God and there is no other, and my people shall never be put to shame." And then he says, and this is the part where Peter starts quoting, and it shall come to pass afterward, after these things, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. And your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. And also on my men servants and my maids servants I will pour out my spirit in those days.

And I will show wonders in the heavens and the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness, the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass, that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be a deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the remnant whom the Lord calls." And this is what Peter says is this prophecy of God pouring out His Spirit on their sons and their daughters, their old men and their women so that they prophesied. He said this prophecy is being fulfilled today in your midst.

So the first thing we see in this prophecy is that it is saying it's in the last days. In the last days, Peter said, it shall come to pass. Now that's Peter's speaking in the Spirit. He turns that afterward, it shall come to pass afterward, into the last days. The last days, he says, and it shall come to pass in the last days, God says, that He would do this.

The last days in the Bible usually refers to the end of the Old Covenant. The temple and its sacrificial system, the priesthood, the feast, the seventh-day Sabbath, all the things that are connected with the Old Covenant. When those things pass away, the Bible calls that the last days. In Genesis 49, when Jacob was about to die, he called his sons to him and he said, gather together that I may tell you what shall befall you in the last days. And then he goes on in verse 10 to say, the deceptor shall not depart from Judah, nor the lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the people." And everybody agrees that he is speaking there of Christ.

Christ coming. And so Jacob calls that when Christ comes, the last days. And his prophecy to his sons was about what would happen in these last days when Christ came. Hebrews says, and we read verse 1 of 11, that in these last days, God has spoken to us by His Son whom He has appointed heir of all things and through whom also He made the world. In these last days God spoke through His Son.

He spoke previously through in many ways through visions and so on, but now in these last days, He's spoken through His Son, identifying the time when Jesus is on earth as the last days, just like Jacob did. James talks about in chapter 5, talks about the rich. He says to the rich, your gold and silver are corroded, present tense, not will be, but they are, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in these last days. Not that you will heap up treasure in some future last days, but they had already heaped up treasure now in what he called the last days.

This is the time between Jesus' earthly ministry and the destruction of the temple that completely removed and destroyed the Old Testament sacramental system. The priesthood, the sacrifices, the seventh-day Sabbath, all of that, the feasts, all of that was destroyed. And the temple has never been rebuilt. And I don't believe it ever will be, because it's passed away. And the time that it passed away were the last days.

And so it should come about in these last days that Peter says God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh. In these last days, the first thing that Joel says would happen is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist said, I baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. That's what John the Baptist said. And Jesus, after His resurrection, in the previous chapter we looked at, as He's preparing His disciples for His departure, as He speaks in those 40 days, as He was speaking to them of things pertaining to his kingdom, he said, John truly baptized you with water.

He said to his apostles, John truly baptized you with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. And when Peter was called on by the Jews, the circumcision, to defend why he had eaten with uncircumcised people when he went to Cornelius' house and preached to them, ate with them, and baptized them, This is what he said. He said, that as he began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them as upon us at the beginning. And then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He had said, John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. When Peter saw the Holy Spirit fall upon these Gentile believers, He remembered what Jesus had said to him and the other apostles about being baptized with the Holy Spirit.

And when he saw that, he thought of water. And he said, well, who can forbid water to these who have received the Holy Spirit as we have received the Holy Spirit. See, the water baptism points to the work of the Holy Spirit. It doesn't point to anything we do. It points to what the Holy Spirit does.

And that's why we pour or sprinkle water onto when we baptize. Because this is representing the work of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is poured. The Holy Spirit sat upon these apostles and people in their room. The tongues of fire sat on their heads.

They weren't thrown into the fire, but it sat upon them. Pouring or sprinkling is the only mode that is ever commanded in Scripture in terms of baptism. It's always sprinkled or poured. Now many people are baptized in other ways. As long as it's with water in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we would recognize that if it's a believing church.

We would recognize those other forms as baptisms. But the form that we believe Scripture teaches is pouring and sprinkling. Now the objects of This baptism are all flesh. I will pour it on all flesh. That's all without exception.

That's not all without exception, every individual, but it is all without regard to classification. All flesh, meaning people of all nations, of all tongues, of all tribes, can now be Christians without first becoming Jews. And the effect of the having of the Holy Spirit results in prophecy. It's prophecy. Sons and daughters would prophesy.

Prophecy is the message from God given by the prophet when he prophesies. And that message can be received in many different ways. In Numbers 12, the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud and fire and stood in the door of the tabernacle. And He called Aaron and Miriam and they went forward and He said, Hear My words, if there is a prophet among you, I the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak to him in a dream." You see, that's what Joel is saying here.

Your young men, You're going to dream dreams and they're going to see visions. Your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. This is the means by which God would deliver His message to His prophets. And so that's how Joel describes this. And that passage then goes on to explain that Moses was different, because God spoke with Moses face to face, so it's not the only way that God can deliver His message.

In the case of Moses, he spoke not in a vision and not in a dream, but face to face with him on the mountain. And he's spoken like that with other people as well. But the point here is that visions and dreams is simply the one way that God makes himself known to his prophets. And the result of God making his message known to his prophets is that there is prophecy then. Prophecy happens as a result of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

And there's something else that happens here that I think is worth pointing out, and that is that, or it's significant, and that is that this passage connects Old Testament prophecy with New Testament prophecy, and shows that they are the same thing. Prophecy in the New Testament is the same as prophecy in the Old Testament. It is God revealing His message through people. And the same requirements apply to New Testament prophets as Old Testament prophets then, if prophecy is the same thing. See, Peter connects this New Testament meaning of prophecy with the Old Testament understanding of what prophecy was.

In Acts 11, verse 27 and 28, Luke writes that these prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch, and one of them named Agabus stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar. See, this is a message that's coming by the Spirit. It's like that's the equivalent of the Old Testament prophets saying, thus says the Lord. When He would come, He would identify Himself as This is the Word of the Lord. I'm the Lord's messenger.

This is not my words. This is God's words. And so, it's identified the same way. Agabus says this by the Spirit. And then, the other requirement of a prophet in the Old Testament is that everything that they said had to come to pass without fail.

If one thing of all that they said didn't come to pass, they were a false prophet, and false prophets were to be executed. One thing, if they said a hundred things, and 99 came true and one didn't, that made them a false prophet. So this in Acts 11, what Agabus prophesied, it came to pass. It happened. Agabus gave a message as a prophet of God, which God revealed to him by the Spirit that a great famine would take place, and that's what happened.

Or in Acts 21, Agabus again predicts what would happen to Paul. It says that he would be bound and delivered to the Gentiles. And I'd like to look at this just a minute, because this is often used to try and show that prophecy in the New Testament is somehow different from prophecy in the Old Testament. So in Acts 21 and about verse 10, it says that After they had stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea, and when he had come to us, he took Paul's belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, thus says the Holy Spirit, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles." Now when we heard these things, both we and those from that place, we would be the company of people with Paul, which would include Luke, the author of this book, we and those from that place pleaded with him not to go to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart?

For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. And so when he would not be persuaded, we ceased saying, the will of the Lord be done." So this again is a New Testament equivalent. Agabus is speaking by the Spirit. Thus says the Holy Spirit. This is what he says.

Thus says the Holy Spirit, thus says the Lord, the Holy Spirit is God, and he tells what would happen, that you're going to be bound and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles. Now some have argued from this passage that New Testament prophecy is different from Old Testament and that the actual words of New Testament prophecy do not possess a quote divine authority unquote. And Wayne Grudem is an example and he goes on to say of Agabus and this prophecy that quote, using Old Testament standards, Agabus would have been condemned as a false prophet because in Acts 21, 27-35, neither of his predictions are fulfilled. Are fulfilled. Well, what's in 27-35 is Paul going down to Jerusalem.

But the problem there is he's combining an erroneous deduction with the actual prophecy that Agabus gave. He's combining a deduction that the people made. Agabus made a prophecy by the power of the Holy Spirit that he would be bound and given to the Gentiles. And the people who heard that prophecy then on their own made the deduction that well if that is going to happen then he shouldn't go. But Paul went anyways, didn't he?

He wouldn't be persuaded. Well, if we look here, we see Agabus never said, Thus says the Lord, you shall not go to Jerusalem." Paul was not disobeying the Word of God. Agabus simply made a statement about what would happen. And Paul said, I am willing to go. I am willing to be bound.

He wasn't resisting the Spirit. He wasn't disobeying the Spirit. Indeed, what Agabus said did come to pass. Paul was bound, and he was handed over to the Gentiles. And he ended up in Rome by the end of this book.

So prophecy is the same thing. It comes the same way. It comes by the power of the Holy Spirit, and it is the same thing in the New Testament and the Old Testament. 1 Corinthians 13, 2. Prophecy is described as knowing the mysteries and the knowledge.

And the word mystery in the New Testament is simply what God reveals to man by His Holy Spirit. Prophecy edifies. It brings God's Word to His people. It reveals the secrets of the heart. And Joel's promise here is that this prophecy that was once very limited would be widespread.

And we see at Pentecost all of these people. Verse 4 says, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Not just a few. All filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to speak with other tongues as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance.

And so this passage teaches us that the Word of God is sure that not one thing that God has ever spoken will ever fall to the ground. And this should be something that we carry with us every day. That everything that God says in His Word happens. God is not mocked at what we sow, we will also reap. And we're not the exception to that rule.

What we sow, we will reap. That's what God's Word says. God's Word says that He will protect us, that He will provide for us. And everything that God's Word says will come to pass. He does protect us.

And we can place our lives, our livelihoods, our physical well-being, we can place that in God's hands. And the Bible says that, for example, that He is coming again to judge the world. And that will also happen, just as this prophecy happened. This prophecy was given hundreds of years, probably around 700 years before. And yet, it came to pass exactly as Joel prophesied.

Because all of God's judgments, all of His Word comes to pass. All of it is true. Every promise in God's Word is yea and amen in Jesus Christ. They are all fulfilled. It's all true.

Even the things that are hard for us to believe, or hard for us to live out, or hard for us to imagine. God's Word always comes to pass. Heavenly Father, we thank You that again and again you have shown us the truth of your Word, the certainty of your Word, the power of your Word, for it is by your Word that the worlds were made. It is by your Word. And by the power of your word, that sinners are brought from darkness into light, that rebels against you are subdued before you and made your friends.

Lord, we thank you for your power in our lives, your power to protect, your power to provide for us, Your power Lord that has subdued us to You and made us willing, willing servants. We ask Lord that wherever we have doubted Your Word that you