I want to ask that you would turn with me to the book of Acts today, and today we will be looking at Acts chapter 2, specifically verse 33. But I want us to read verses 29 down through verse 36 in order to get the context before us. Let us stand for this reading of God's holy word. beginning in Acts 2, verse 29. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being, therefore, a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on the throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Thus far, the reading of God's holy word. You may be seated. At this time of year, Many are redirected to the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it is often the case that in the world and in the Church it is easy to make too little of Him. The world makes too little of Him by ignoring him, by distorting the message about him, whether he is God, for example, or by simply noting that he was born and saying nothing more. But at this time of year, there is also a danger for the Church to make too little of the birth of Christ. I'm reminded immediately of our catechism speaking of Christ's humiliation, and it says that Christ's humiliation consists in his being born, and that in a low condition, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, the cursed death of the cross, and continuing. under the power of death for a time. Too often even the Church only says Christ's humiliation consists in His being born, period. We need to remember, dear friends, that as we consider Jesus Christ, whether His birth or any other aspect of His work, Christ came for a purpose. He was the eternal Son of God. His humiliation consists in His being born. It is hard for us to grasp this, but we must recognize that the very fact that the Son of God took on human flesh is enough to cause angels and men to worship Him eternally, even if He had done nothing else, because He is the eternal Son of God. But He was not simply born. His entire life was a life of suffering and obedience, a life of suffering obedience, a life that he lived not for himself, but for others, and a life that culminated in his death on the cross. We have no command and no promise in Scripture for setting apart December 25th to remember Christ's birth. But we do have a command in God's Word to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. And so often it is easy to single out one aspect of His person and of His work to such an extent that we lose the bigger picture. And here is the looming question. This Christ who was born of the Virgin, this Christ who lived and who died, what is he doing now? And where is he as you and I are here in this place on this day, on this Lord's day by the way, which we do have a command to keep and a promise attached to the keeping of it, which no other day has. This, in other words, is the true and only holy day of the church. And in it we are required to glorify and worship Christ and the whole Christ who was humiliated, who was exalted. What do you make of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you make too little of him? Do you ignore him? Or have you come today for communion and fellowship with a living Christ who is seated at the right hand of the Father? We are continuing this brief series on the Trinity and the life of Jesus Christ. And as we come to our text today, the element of his life that we face is his exaltation. I've titled this his ascension, but really I've misnamed it. It's not simply his ascension, but what is called his session. is sitting down at the right hand of the Father, where right now he rules and reigns over heaven and earth, just as he does over you in this room today. And the message that we have from our text today is that Jesus Christ received the Spirit from the Father, that he might pour out the Spirit on the church. And in this theme, we will see what our relationship to Jesus Christ must be and should be today. And we're going to see this in three parts from our text. First, we're going to see that he received the Spirit by his exaltation. Secondly, that he received the Spirit from his father. And lastly, that he poured out the Spirit on his church. Now, first we see that Christ received the Spirit, and we see this on the surface of our text. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. Now, we need to understand something of what's going on here. This is one of the most momentous occasions in the entire Bible. What we are reading about here in the book of Acts is on the same level of importance as the incarnation of Christ, as the death of Christ, and the resurrection of Christ. That is the pouring out of the Spirit upon the church. In other words, something extraordinary is happening, something that is just as unrepeatable as the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is. And that is this special outpouring of the Spirit from Jesus Christ in heaven. In other words, what we see going on here is not simply people experiencing the gifts of the Spirit, but God in Christ introducing something new into the history of the world. Before, what happened was if you wanted to be saved and you lived in the Old Testament times, you would have had to travel, as many of the people in this very chapter were doing, to Jerusalem. You would have to be, if you were a man, circumcised and join yourself to the Jewish people. You would keep their feasts. You would honor their sacrifices. You would either relocate to Israel or you would travel to worship at the required feasts. You see, there was a Israel and Jerusalem centered focus up to this chapter. But now, as it were, when people are gathered from every region to Jerusalem for the feast. The Holy Spirit. Begins to reverse. The Tower of Babel. You may remember the story of the Tower of Babel. people united together in their sin and their rebellion against God. Even as the nations rage against the Lord and against this Christ today, whether they know it or not, this is what happened. And the people were of one language and were able to unite in a peculiar way. And God looked down upon them in their rebellion and in their sin, and he scattered them. He divided them He divided their speech. They could not cooperate. They could not communicate. And out of the wreckage of Babel, the Lord chose to save people out of the nation of Israel. But now, with representatives from the nations coming to Jerusalem, as they've done for centuries, He pours forth the Spirit. And what happens? There is a united language. Everybody hears the works of God in his own language, in his own tongue. He hears the apostles and their friends speaking to them, the great things of God, as you see in verses 1 through 11. And then as they begin to do this, at the end of the chapter, after the sermon is preached, 3,000 souls are added to the church. Why is this event unrepeatable? Because here God, who once called the nations to Jerusalem, is now sending the apostles from Jerusalem to the nations. And they go, that is, throughout the book of Acts, from Jerusalem to the greater region of Judea, to Samaria in chapter 8, and to the uttermost parts of the earth in chapters 10 and following. This is a momentous occasion. But what is the emphasis here? Well, the text that I've chosen in verse 33 not only brings the entire chapter to a high point and a climax in terms of what is going on. It also describes this great event in terms of the persons of the Trinity. Christ is the actor on the stage. Christ is the one who has poured out the Spirit, but Christ has received him from the Father. Have you noticed what's going on? Does anything strike you as peculiar? After all, we've considered the birth of Christ. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Spirit was there from the beginning. We saw his baptism. The Spirit descends upon him from heaven as a dove. He is the man who had the Spirit without measure, the man who is full of the Holy Spirit. And yet now, in this text, we are told that he received the Spirit. He received the Spirit from the Father when he ascended into heaven in your human flesh and mine, and sat down at the right hand of the Father." Now, this not only gives us a clue to the significance of Christ in His glorious person and work for you and I, and the relationship He has to the Father and to the Spirit, but to the continuing mission of the Spirit in the Church today. I want to illustrate this in a couple of ways. Here, Christ receives the Spirit, and our big question that is facing us is, simultaneously, in what sense does he receive the Spirit, and then why is this significant to us today, as we consider this person and this glorious Christ? Well, in what sense did he receive the Spirit? Have you ever puzzled over the statement in John's Gospel Specifically, in chapter 7, verse 37, when Jesus says, or rather John says about Jesus, that the Holy Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus was not yet glorified. If you read it in Greek, it's actually a little bit more shocking. The Holy Spirit was not because Jesus was not yet glorified. We supply given in the translation, because we know something's missing. Well, John, as it were, is trying to shock us and trying to grab our attention that what Jesus does in Acts chapter 2 in pouring out the Spirit is in some respects different than anything God has done in human history. It is as though the Spirit was not. Now, this doesn't mean the Spirit didn't exist. We see the Spirit in Genesis 1 hovering over the face of the waters in creation. We see the Spirit constantly in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, striving with the people, leading the people, accompanying the people. The Psalms describe that generation as grieving God's Holy Spirit. We see the Spirit writing the law in the hearts and minds of the saints, not only in the New Testament, but in Isaiah and other parts of the Old Testament. And we see, perhaps most famously, Jesus in his conversation with Nicodemus. Unless you are born of water and spirit, unless you are born from above, Nicodemus, you cannot enter the kingdom. You cannot see it. Are you the teacher of Israel and you don't know these things? You see, Jesus' expectation is, the Old Testament taught Nicodemus, you must be born again. You must be born of water and the Spirit. The Spirit was present, the Spirit was active, the Spirit was mighty. And yet, John says, the Spirit was not. Because Jesus was not yet glorified. The point is this, what the Spirit is doing in Acts 2 has no counterpart, no parallel, no comparison in the Old Testament Scriptures. And the primary emphasis is on the power that accompanies the preaching of the gospel. I won't belabor the point, but think about what's going on. The text begins with 120 people in the upper room. And in some sense, we can say that even though this glorious Christ, which we've been considering in recent weeks, was baptized and received the spirit, lived a perfect life, suffered an unspeakable death and rose from the dead. This is all he has to show. For his earthly ministry, 120 people. men and women gathered in an upper room, and then faltering Peter, Peter who denies Christ three times in spite of his protests, Peter who is weak, Peter who is impetuous, Peter who is fallible, preaches his first sermon and has 3,000 baptisms in one day. Now as an aside, I guarantee you those weren't by immersion, otherwise it wouldn't have been one day, it would have been several weeks. first to get the water and then to practice it. One day, the Spirit of God is there. Three thousand souls come. This is evidence of Christ's exaltation. Now, I want to try to tie this together and explain what's going on and what we're witnessing in the text. I want to mention another text maybe you've thought about. Romans chapter 10. Faith comes by hearing, hearing literally by the word of Christ. How should they believe him whom they have not heard? They must hear Jesus. They must have the word of Christ if they are to live and if they are to be saved. Where does it come? How do we get it? How do I hear the voice of Jesus Christ if I'm to be saved? And if you're to be saved this day? The answer is in our text in Acts 2. You could say this. The real preacher on that day was not Peter. It was Jesus Christ. The real acts that we read of in the book that bears that name are not the acts of the apostles, but the acts of Christ. the acts of Jesus by the Spirit, whom he received from the Father. Now, I want to ask you this question in this light. How do you regard the preaching of the Word? I did not ask you how do you regard the preacher, whether in this church or in any other place. That is irrelevant and unimportant at this stage. But how do you regard the preaching? Do you come expecting the voice of Christ? Do you expect, through the Scriptures, Jesus Christ to speak to you? As I mentioned in Sunday School this morning, this is not a dry intellectual endeavor. This is not simply to pique your curiosity regarding what these things mean and how they relate to you in a general way. This is to bring you into not only a vital relationship, but a face-to-face encounter with the Christ. Do you hear his voice today? Do you recognize that the same Christ, with the same power of the Spirit, continues to work through the preaching of the Word throughout the centuries? In other words, if Acts chapter 2 didn't happen, we wouldn't be here today. The church wouldn't be spreading to the ends of the earth. How then, dear friends, do you regard the preaching of the Word? Do you come with prayer? Do you come with expectation? Do you come longing to know Jesus Christ? Do you come expecting the Spirit's power to work in you? And the only way any of you can do that today is by embracing Christ and all of his promises through faith. Will you not do so? I wanted to labor on the context for most of our text, but this brings us to the second point. Christ not only received the Spirit in His exaltation, but He received the Spirit from the Father. Now, you may ask at the outset, what is the significance of this? The text does state it. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, having received from the Father the promise of the Spirit, he poured out what you are now seeing and hearing. Well, among other things, let me say, as I did last week, it is so easy for us to miss these great Trinitarian passages in the New Testament. People question the Trinity. People often neglect it, put it on a shelf as though it is something that has no relevance to the Christian life or even to the faith of the gospel. But, my dear friends, here it is as the canvas upon which the New Testament is painted. We could no more remove these Trinitarian statements from the gospel than we could remove the canvas from a painting and suspend the painting in thin air. We cannot do it. We would not do it. And yet, dear friends, do we not often miss the very structure of the gospel explained in terms of these divine persons. And I want to reiterate what I've said before. We must not think of the gospel in terms of receiving benefits, not even in terms of receiving promises, but in terms of receiving persons coming to the father who gave his son for you. Who sent His Spirit to you? Who brings you sovereignly and powerfully to Himself? Do you know the Father? Do you know the Son? Do you know the Spirit? Have you experienced their power in your life? Is their work integrated into your Christian faith? Intertwined? Inseparably worked into it? It was, even in Peter's preaching. He can't even explain what's going on. Without saying this is Jesus. He's acting. He's here. He's present. He's poured out the spirit and he's received him from the father. Now, there's something about our text that simply reflects who God is. From eternity. God is the father. The son. And the Holy Spirit. As we say in our creed, which we did earlier in this service, the son is very God of very God. He is the only begotten son of God. He is a son, but he is an eternal son. He is not born like any son was or any daughter was in this room, but he was born from eternity. He was not created. He did not come to be, but eternally He is related to the Father, and He is God, equal with the Father, and so the Spirit. He proceeds from the Father through the Son, but He does so from all eternity. And all these profound truths that we can scarcely wrap our minds around, we confess as an act of worship in our service today, which we've done. But notice that who God is, reflects what he does. Because the Son is begotten of the Father from all eternity, because the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son from all eternity, so we see the divine works. It is the Father here taking the initiative, the Father representing the entire Godhead, and yet the Son is acting simultaneously, and yet the Spirit is the gift. received by the Son from the Father. Now, there's no way to get around this. The Spirit is the gift in the text. This has led many people over the centuries to say, you see, the Spirit is not a person. The Spirit is not divine. If anything, he's like a box or an object or something that you can give to somebody and pass around. You don't give people. You give gifts. And yet what you need to see here is this. The New Testament does present the spirit as a person. He is a person who can be grieved. He is a person who can be lied to and blasphemed against. And he is a divine person. Yet, we often think about the humiliation of Christ and the voluntary condescension of the Son of God to become human flesh. But what about the Spirit? He's not humiliated in the sense that Christ is. He doesn't take on human flesh. And yet, voluntarily, the third person in the Trinity, your God, your Creator, your Lord, condescends to be sent by the Son from the Father as the great gift to the Church. This should move us to love the Holy Spirit, to rejoice in the Spirit who comes to us from the Father through the Son. It reflects the order of who the persons are from eternity. But this is also how God works in time. This also teaches us something else. He received the Spirit from the Father. This affects and reflects the way you must approach God. If anything, I've been stressing in the last several weeks that we must be self-consciously Trinitarian, but we must be Christ-centered. What do I mean? Well, let me ask you a few questions. Would you come to the Father? Would you call Him your God and your Father? Then I say to you from God's Word, no one comes to the Father except through the Son. You cannot, you will not come to the Father unless you come through the sacrifice of Christ, through the righteousness of Christ, through the resurrected Christ, through the exalted Christ. In other words, if you would come to the Father, the Scriptures immediately send you to Christ to go to the Father. But then what of the Spirit? You must be born again. You must have the Spirit's power at work in your life if you would be a Christian and inherit eternal life. And yet, dear friends, where does the Spirit direct you? John gives us the best inspired summary. Jesus, rather, in John's Gospel. When He will come, He will come to glorify me, for He will take what is mine. And he will reveal it to you. His work, his job is to take your hearts, your faith, and to place them on me and to direct them to me. You see, all these things fit together. You must come to the father through the son. And if you ask, how do I know today that the spirit is at work in my life and in my heart? I ask you another question. Do you come to Christ? through him and because of him. There is no greater indicator, and I'm tempted to say no other indicator, of the work of the Spirit in your heart today than to ask whether you have embraced Jesus Christ. He is a Christ-centered spirit. Are we Christ-centered people? Is this how you view the gospel? Those who seek to come to the Father, such as the Jewish people and many others today, without coming through the Son, do not have an adequate view of their own sin or of the holiness of God and of the remedy that God alone provides to this problem. Those who emphasize the Spirit and focus on a mystical communion with God through the Spirit tend to bypass the Son. I mentioned to you, but it has been some time, that in the 17th century there was a Quaker version of Pilgrim's Progress. And those of you familiar with Pilgrim's Progress know what happens. And some of you have heard me say this before, but it is so important and it is such a litmus test to your Christianity and to mine. The pilgrim comes and he sees the cross. In other words, he sees Christ and his work and the burden of his sin falls from his back and falls into a pit never to be seen anymore. And so he is assured, so he is free, so he comes to the Father through the Son, by the Spirit. But in the Quaker version, the man ascends the hill. He sees a bright light which represents the glory of God. And as he contemplates the glory of God, he loses consciousness of himself. And then, as he does, all of his burdens are relieved and he directly comes to God. Here is the looming question. Yes, there is an emphasis on the Spirit. Yes, there is an emphasis on experience, which we must have. But where is Christ? Where is Christ in that scheme? I ask you to search your own hearts. Have you so emphasized the spirit? That you've neglected Christ. In whatever way. Let me put it positively. If you have a healthy view of the spirit, then you will know, as our text says. That Christ sent him. From the father. He is the Spirit of God and He is the Spirit of Christ. And there is nothing that He loves to do more than to glorify Jesus Christ in the hearts and in the worship of His people. Does your soul resonate with that today, dear friend? That is what happened to these people. Men and brethren, what shall we do? Repent and be baptized, every one of you. In the name of the Lord Jesus, repent of what? You crucified Him by lawless hands. You are the sinner. You deserve the wrath of Almighty God. Repent of your wrongdoing. Repent of your sin which grieves God and come with nothing other than clinging to Jesus Christ. Be baptized as the sign and the seal that your sins are washed. that Christ is your Savior, your very baptism becomes a profession of faith, that you have no hope other than in Him. I ask you, does this resonate with you, dear friend? Well, the last thing, which is not only my third point, but my conclusion, is that Christ received the Spirit in order to pour Him out on the church. In other words, this text is primarily about Christ. Christ's relationship to the Spirit. Christ's relationship to the Father. But also, Christ's relationship to the church. And we've seen the significance of this time. He is pouring out the Spirit. And the Spirit shows His power then as now. through blessing the ministry of the Word. We've seen the relationship of the Christ to his Father and to the Spirit. But what about you today? This is the great event in Scripture that explains everything else that the New Testament writes. For example, when Christ describes giving gifts to the church in Ephesians 4, says he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and he gave gifts to men. In his ascension into heaven, when he was seated at the right hand of the Father, he was victorious in the fullest sense of the term. He triumphed over sin. He triumphed over death. He trampled Satan under his feet. He crushed the head of the serpent. And now, as king and as Lord, he begins to exercise his kingship in his full glory. And he sits down. And the Father gives him the Spirit in this special way for this special work. And Paul is essentially telling us, here you are as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Each of you is a measure of the grace of God if you are a Christian. You have different gifts. You have different callings. But this is why. This is where it comes from. Here is the author of your gifts. It is Christ, not only the incarnate Christ, but the exalted Christ, the Christ who is ruling and reigning from heaven. Do you realize the primary place where we see Jesus demonstrating his glory? And his rule. Is in the church. In some sense, everything we see unfolding in Acts chapter 2 should challenge and transform not only our view and thoughts of Christ and of the Trinity, not only our view of preaching and its significance and its importance, but of the Church itself. Christ sent the Spirit to gather the Church. He sent the Spirit to equip the Church. Now, if we recognize that apart from Christ, we have no access to God as our Father, we also need to recognize this, that apart from the Spirit whom Christ poured forth from the Father, we might as well not be here this morning. If we didn't hope in the Holy Spirit to continue to bless us by gifting us, by bringing us to Christ, by being present in our worship today, We would probably be better off doing something else this morning. By the way, doesn't this highlight the importance. Of the church and her worship. Is Christ less present. In evening worship and in morning worship. Is the spirit less powerful. In one service over the other. If we can, do we want to be where we most experience the presence of Christ and the power of the Spirit, in the ministry of the Word, in the gathering of the Church? At this point, people often say, well, show me in the Bible where you have to come to two worship services. Well, I want to say today, I shouldn't even have to make a case for it. Do you want to worship the Father? Do you want to know Christ? Do you want to know and experience the Spirit's power in your life? This is how he works. This is where he works. This is what he does. This is what he's been doing for 2000 years. Since we read this text, do we want him? Do we desire him? Do we long to know more of the power of the Spirit in our lives? My dear friends, the Christ who was born in the manger in Bethlehem is no longer a babe in the manger. He was not simply born. He was not simply humiliated. He was exalted, and so He is today. Let us bow before Him. Let us worship Him as our exalted and reigning Lord. And let us go forth from these doors and throughout this week rejoicing in Him as our God and Savior. And may we know the presence of the Spirit in our hearts. Let us pray. Almighty God, we thank You for Your majestic and Your glorious Word. We pray that You would apply it to our hearts and fill us with much thanksgiving as we celebrate our Lord Jesus Christ in his humiliation and exaltation on this Sabbath day. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.