The true work of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Christ and preach His atoning work, contrasting this with the excesses and abuses of the modern tongue movement. It examines biblical instances of the Spirit's filling, showing that the apostles and early Christians consistently preached Christ crucified and resurrected, not ecstatic experiences or speaking in unknown tongues. The message highlights the confusion of tongues at Babel as a judgment and contrasts it with the unifying message of the gospel at Pentecost, ultimately pointing to the glorious unity of believers in heaven praising Christ.
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I'm going to read the last few verses. We'll say goodbye to the book of the first two chapters of this book tonight, Lord willing. We'll read verse forty-one. And then they that gladly received this word were baptized, and the same day they were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued. said and in prayer. And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.
And all that believed were together, and had all things common. And so their possessions and goods imparted them to all men as every man had need. And they continued daily. with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house to eat their meat with gladness and singleness of thought, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved or ever being saved. I had no idea when we started a few weeks ago that we'd be saved.
so long in these two opening chapters as the twenty-fourth message at the end of chapter twenty, chapter two. When I started out, I went through my library and picked out a number of books on the book of Acts. I had one by Campbell Morgan, a big thick one, and one by Griffith Thomas, one by August Van Ryn, one by William MacDonald, another by a man by him, Macaulay. And I read about ten pages out of them all, since it had taken my back. I just haven't had the time seemingly, or my eyes wouldn't take so much reading. For I tried to depend, more or less, upon what I had learned myself in the last forty years' preaching.
And so I would have been more enriched, I know, in my own soul, as well as in the messages, had I been able to study these other men. Nevertheless, I am grateful for what God has given. It's a nice kind of what we might call kicking up of the fragments. Back when I was a young Christian, he used to go to conferences. They always had one meeting. If the conference concluded on Sunday night, they would have one service on Monday morning, and they called it gathering up of the fragments. In other words, there'd be two or three brethren get up, but more or less give a summary of what had been taken up at the conference.
Some of the major themes, and some of the men who delivered those messages would bring in some points they had omitted. So I thought in connection with tonight's meeting, this would be kind of gathering up some of the fragments of things we have been speaking on. have we been speaking for the last three Sunday nights, or all they were meeting last Sunday night, three night prior to that, on the subject of tongue. And I'm just going to say a few things about that before leaving the subject of tongue. In other words, the excesses of the tongue movement, as we see it today, and the many abuses of this great biblical truth.
For instance, we find these men and women who are speaking tongues, so they say, and they come together, they come from various denominations, and they gather in one place, and they seem to go into these ecstatic experiences, and jabber, and make a lot of noise, like a bunch of J-birds, and no one knows what they're saying, and yet they claim to be filled with the Spirit. Well, all I can say is this. When Christians are filled with the Spirit, do you know the subjects the Spirit of God is going to lead them to speak on and preach on and dwell upon?
Such subjects as the virgin birth, such subjects as the inspiration of the Bible, and also the blood of Christ. The only way to be saved, the only way to have your sins forgiven is through the work of Christ upon the cross. and his wonderful resurrection from the fact of his present ministry at God's right hand and his coming again. Now we'll be noticing as we go through Acts that these were some of the truths that were emphasized by the men who were filled with the Holy Spirit. And when a man is speaking in the power of the Spirit of God or her sister in her private testimony, she's going to dwell upon these things.
for it the Spirit's responsibility and present duty to take of the things of Christ and show them unto us. And the strange thing to me is this, in reading up a lot of accounts, in magazines and newspapers on this tongue movement, that none of these cardinal fools are mentioned. They have come together and spend their time at sea, having some kind of ecstatic experience, and talking away in a language they know nothing about. And they say they are filled with the Holy Spirit. Well, I can't see it. If they were filled with the Spirit of God, they would be giving utterance to these truths that I have mentioned.
And another strange thing is this. These people come from modernistic churches. They come from churches that do not believe in these fundamental truths I've mentioned. and some of the churches are quite familiar, especially the Anglican Church and the Biscopalian Church and other churches, modernistic churches, and these people come from these modernistic churches that do not think these fundamentals, and they gather together and they have this great tongue revival, the Spirit of God leading. And I've seen pictures of the men and women with their hands up with their eyes closed, and This is their great spirit.
They're filled with the Spirit. And yet they leave that tongue gathering, and they go back to those churches. Still, going along with a church that doesn't believe in the virgin birth, that doesn't believe in the blood at the moment, that doesn't believe in the Bible's inspired word of God, that does not believe in the second coming of Christ, I can't peace it together. For if many women are filled with a spirit and speak in tongues as they claim, they would certainly disassociate themselves from any church that doesn't believe in the fundamentals of the Word of God.
Therefore, I can't go along with this modern tongue movement at all. If you were to read some texts in the Acts in chapter four and verse thirty-one, and also You find Peter in chapter four and verse eight, and Paul in chapter nine and verse seventeen, and thirteen and nine, you find texts like this of men who were filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts four and eight. Then Peter filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel, be it known unto you all, And to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom he crucified, whom God raised from the dead, does this man stand here before you hold?
Now notice, Peter was still that the Holy Spirit, as we find at the beginning of verse eight, and what did he preach? He preached Christ and him crucified. There you have also in Acts chapter... nine, or chapter four, and verse thirty-one. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and spake. The word of God was boldness, and the multitude of them that believed were of one heart, and of one soul, and with great power.
gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. Great power and great grace. Here you have two cases of them being filled with the Spirit, and in both cases they preached Christ and him crucified. Then again you have in chapter nine and verse twenty. Paul preached Christ in the synagogue. that he is the Son of God. Verse nine, you'll notice what it says there. And Saul, who also is called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him, and said, O, full of all suppledy and all mischief, thou child of the devil, the enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord.
Here is Paul filled with the Spirit, and he's condemned. And he's wielding up this man who made a profession, Simon Negus. No mention of this going into account. And then again you have in verse Fredrian straightway, the Apostle Paul, I've already mentioned, being filled with the Holy Ghost, it says, straightway he preached Christ in the synagogue that he is the Son of God, and that's in chapter nine and seventeen down the cross. four instances here in the Acts you have them filled with the Holy Spirit. Now the modern people who believe in tongues would say, well, the result of them being filled with the Holy Spirit, they would start speaking in tongues.
It doesn't mention one instance of these four occasions of people and persons who were filled with the Spirit of God, and they did one thing about tongues. They preached Christ, till crucified, raised again. That was their message. And throughout the acts of the apostles, whenever God's people were filled with the Spirit, their message was always nothing about being filled, nothing about speaking in tongues, and these various experiences they claim they go through and have when they're in the power of the Spirit. The pride of resumption, which is often the hallmark of those who claim these gifts, exposes the movement for what it is, not of God.
In other words, it feeds the eagle, the person who says, I can speak in tongues. Gifts in the case that God has singled me out. He's friendly with his spirit. I have a special gift. I can speak in tongues. Others can't. And that feeds the eagle of the person who claims he has the gift to speak in tongues. I want to say this, that a person born with the Holy Spirit can't preach Christ to him crucified with conviction if he has his own ego at the back of his mind. He just can't do it.
A person has got to take this place before God as one unworthy, undeserving, that God should use him with this spirit, with the one glorious goodness and golden opportunity to preach Christ, and Christ only, Christ crucified, Christ sufficient, Christ supreme, Christ is enough. And you need no other. This is the message of the church today. I believe the devil is sidetracking some really hungry Christians, Christians who are seeking a little more experience of the spiritual things, besides having them by this tongue movement to keep them from becoming reacquainted with Christ and preaching and practicing the truth of the old-fashioned gospel of the grace of God.
No one's being edified unless they've got an interpreter there, which is in ninety-nine cases they do not. I mean, concluding this message on the tongue of these messages, I want to mention the three major sections in your Bible where they're mentioned. One is in Genesis chapter eleven, the other is in Acts chapter two, and the other is in Revelation chapter five. In other words, it's judgment, grace, and glory. In chapter eleven of Genesis, you remember the Tower of Babel? God had told the people under Noah's ministry to get into the ark, for they would perish.
They disobeyed God. Then, when they came out of the ark, the eight of them, Noah and his wife, the three sons and their daughters, and people began to multiply upon the face of the earth, instead of slapping as God told them to do, to replenish the earth. They said, we're not going to replenish the earth. It won't be safe. We'll not be secure. We'll be just in little pockets here and there. And we're going to stay together. We're going to congregate together. We're going to build a power that will go up to heaven. And if God ever should send another flood, we'll get a buck.
When God said he never would bring a flood of water from Europe again. Therefore they were able to scatter. But they didn't believe God in either case. God said to get him into the ark, and then after, while building a tower up to heaven. Just in God's word that he would never send another flood. And also God said to the shepherd, the cleanse the earth. We won't do it. We'll stay together. God says, alright. And the Bible says, let us, and that word us, and the pearl indicates that Triune God Let us go down and see what this people have purposed or planned to do.
And God confounded their languages. Now that must have been some experience. Here is God telling upon the race, the human race, because of their disobedience to his word. The confusion of Babylon. This simply means that God confounded their vocabulary, their grammar, their pronunciation, their phraseology. It was all so different they couldn't understand one another. Instead of original oneness and a cleavage of thought, it was a cleavage of thought, feelings, and of ideas.
Instead of it being one as they had been up to this time, one language, there was a cleavage. They didn't think alike. And they didn't feel like they didn't think alike. And here you have confused. Whether this entered into family life, we do not know. It must have been quite a state of confusion. If it is, and there's a wife, she doesn't understand her husband, and the husband doesn't understand his wife, and the children wouldn't understand their parents. I can't conceive the Holy God, however, splitting up a family like that. This family would speak in one language, another family would speak in another language.
Are they being confused? Confused. And that's the meaning of David. We know of no national gods before the confusion of tongues. The heavenly had one language, one religion, and nations were never separated one from another. And here you find... They are just confused. They've got different tongues. Some of them have sprung up since that time because of the judgment of tongues. They had to scatter. This family could speak one language.
Some of them had another family could speak the same language. In their little communities, their little galleries, their little villages. The tribes, the beginning of a nation. of all the nations on the face of the earth sprang from the confusion of tongue at David. God's chosen upon the given race of that time, confusion of thumb. It must have been quite an experience to see those people trying to talk to one another. Of course, the Frenchmen have get along. They talk over their hands anyway, but a lot of people certainly wouldn't be able to understand the other, and they'd have to do their various things.
And it must have been quite unexperienced. There have been various major religions spring up since then. Of course, a lot of minor ones, like tribal religions, so on. But what are some of the major religions? And their theology, their theology, theology, and philosophy in life. Well, this is take the first one, the Greek religion. What do they say? Their language is simply this. You ought to know yourself. Man know thyself. The Greeks seek after wisdom. Man know thyself.
Investigate yourself. Learn yourself. Well, I'll tell you, that's one of the worst studies. I've ever tried to take. I already know far too much about Lester Wilson. Man, know thyself. The Lord help us. I want to know more about my Lord, not myself. In the early days in Carolina, we used to see people getting saved all the time and come together to accomplish their four hundred. Everybody, happy everybody with their Bibles. I would catch five or six of them together in the loop, and I'd walk over, and I'd say, well, are you enjoying yourself?
Oh, we're having a wonderful time. We sure are enjoying ourselves. I'd say, why don't you try enjoying the Lord once in a while? That's something else, isn't it? Of course, I knew what, amen. But so often we're occupied with enjoying ourselves instead of enjoying the Lord. someone who claims that he wants the gift of talent, if I mention his name, you know it, he said, if God has anything more for me, I want it. I want it. That's wanting something for myself, my own personal enjoyment or excitement.
No, I don't want anything more for myself. God has blessed me and given me far more than I deserve. If there's anything I do them, it is that God might give me more power and give him knowledge of his word to preach his gospel, to see each soul and see him say and edify and build up unblessed God's people. That's all I'm concerned with. If you take that away, you take away my life. Man know thyself. And yet that was the religion of the Greeks. Then you have the Romans, not the Roman Catholic Jews, the great Roman Empire.
And their theology and philosophy was, man, rule myself. Discipline yourself. Man, rule myself. Man, what a master. Rule myself. I can't rule myself. I get a lot of trying to do it. So many times people come up to me and they say, I want you to pray about something that's a little private, but I want you to pray for that I'll get the picture of it. Well, what is it? Is it specific? Can you tell me? Yes, I lose my temper. I'd just like to give a picture. I said, you mean you find your temper.
You wish you could lose it. man rule I shall rule I shall God says he that control of his own spirit or rule of himself is better than he that capture the city and if there's anything we need is to control by the power of God let him control him I can't control myself then again The Chinese have a saying, man, improve thyself. Improve thyself.
Take yourself by your bootstraps and pull yourself out. How impossible. I can't improve myself. You might as well ask the barrel of bad apples to improve themselves. That's an impossible thought. Then you have the Buddhists and they say, annihilate thyself. dive thyself, mortify thyself, seclude thyself, and it needs to set yourself afire like many of them have gone out of Vietnam before. And this is their philosophy, this is their theology, annihilate thyself. Put yourself out of the picture.
And they even strive. And the great Brahmin, ancient Indian caste, they say merge thyself. get lost in the great stream of humanity. Disappear and lose your personal identity. Man, merge thyself into the sum of all. That's the very thing God doesn't want us to do. We're individuals, and God deals with individuals. Muslims, they say, submit thyself to Muslims, ideals. and doctrine. And some of the doctrines are very good.
Morally speaking, submit thyself to the Muslim ideals and doctrines. Judaism, which is of God, what does Judaism say? God says, disdue, and thou shalt live. And the soul that similates shall die. and trusted as everyone that continued with not, and all things that are written in the books of the law of the Bible. Now here you have the result of the confusion of tongues. And one could go on and mention many other religions that have sprung up as the result of the confusion of tongues. But this is the point.
What does the Christian say? What does Christ say? Not what Buddha says. on a lot of these other great leaders, Christ himself says, without me, you can do nothing. You can't control yourself, you can't discipline yourself, you can't annihilate yourself. He says, without me, you can't do nothing. Absolutely nothing. So with the Christians, The Christians say, I can do all things through Christ which liveth in me.
I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. And all these other religions and many more are telling man what to do, what not to do. Christ says you can't do anything. The best thing you can do is admit. that you're a poor, lost, helpless, guilty sinner, and accept me. And then if you accept me, you'll be able to do the things that some of these philosophies and religions teach, in the way of moral living. You'll be able to control yourself.
You'll be able to discipline yourself. Yes, you'll be able to die to yourself. and live on to God only through our Lord Jesus Christ. And then you come to what took place here at Pentecost. A table that judges the confusion of tongues. But grace in Acts chapter two hears the gospel preach one message in many languages. A message that unites A message that makes many into one.
A message that presents one body. And all who are saved are in that one body. Instead of what happened that day before the scattering of the human race, here you have the gathering of all who believe into one body. Here's happy unity and togetherness and fellowship. That's the message of Pentecost. one body, one people, one nation, one church. That's it. Then when you come to the final climax of the use of tongue, it's in glory, the revelation five and verse nine.
They sung a new song, say, Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals of the rock. For thou was slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kingdom, every tongue, every people, and nation. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all of are in them heard thyself. heard I say, blessing and honor and glory and power, he unto him the sinner upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and forever.
That's glory. When all voices, perfect voices, my choirs, real professional choirs, have to do a lot of training and practice it. to reach something like near perfection. And you need to have your plot. I wonder what it's going to be like in heaven when there'll be one language. No confusion. No one will miss a note there. Everyone will have his own voice. A voice that will please come to get him with his new resurrected body.
And Christ shall leave. the great congregation. Can you imagine the Lord Jesus Christ with a scarred hand leading the great congregation in the day? Out of every ten tender nations, one song, one theme, the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's glory. So you have the tongue that they gang with judgment and confusion in Genesis eleven. You see the remedy to these various tongues in grace given at Pentecost, the Spirit of God uniting all of every tongue language into one body.
And you see that one body glorified in heaven. And there are one thing is Christ. unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. There will be no sour notes there. We'll all sing like, yes, even Caruso, that particular backseat. We're still going to sing in that day the voice is given us by God, and he is the great singer, the sweet singer not only in Israel, but he himself is the master musician. the leader of the congregation, and what a choir that will be in the coming days.
With glorified voices, you'll sing your utmost perfection when you glorify the Lamb. So that will be the end of tongues, and all I can say is amen, so let it be. And in the conclusion, there are five great We've noticed in these two chapters, and I believe, as I said at the beginning, that these lay a foundation for what we have in the rest of the book of the Acts. And if you had all these messages, heard them, had one take, you often, by this time, had a foundation laid that would enable you to enjoy and learn a whole lot more that's in the name of the book because we're not going to go so slow...
in the remainder of the Acts. But we notice five things especially, like mountain peaks in chapters one and two of Acts. First is the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. You find that in verses ten and eleven in the opening chapter. Then the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God coming down at the second great mountain peak. of truth. Then the result of the Spirit coming down is the formation of the church. That's another wonderful truth. Then you have the use and the abuse of tongues brought in.
Then you have the message of this age, the message that starts the church and perpetuates the church until the church is complete And until Jesus comes, that takes the church to heaven. That's the message that God wants us to preach today. What is that message? Not politics. Not racism. So many today are preaching from the pulpit. Politics and racism and economy and so on. That's not the message of any God-said man. God said to the Lord Jesus said them, As my Father has sent me, so send I you.
Here are one of those lovely couplets found so repeatedly in John's Gospel. As and so, as my Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. As my Father hath sent me, so send I you. What did the Lord Jesus Christ preach? He says, I say nothing of myself whatsoever my Father give of me, that shall I speak. And Jesus Christ did not preach politics. He did not preach racism. He preached nothing along that line. Jesus Christ preached salvation.
He himself was that salvation. And he was the one who laid down his wife, gave himself a ransom for men. He ascended up on high. He sent the Holy Spirit down to commence the church, and to give gifts unto men, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, that they might go out and preach Christ and him through him. Paul says, I determined to know nothing among you. You're not going to get me off on some sidetrack or some detour. I've got one message.
That's Christ and him who he was. A living Christ at God's right hand is the message of this age. One thing we can't all agree with Billy Graham's method. But I don't say one thing, and I pray for him every day. He presents the simple gospel every time he lives before a congregation. And how in the world he's lasted this long? I don't know when he's got the same thing. He says about the same thing every night. He preaches. But why do I ask you to come forward?
He says every conversion in the Bible had a public confession. And I certainly confess to you, poor men. I'll not confess you for whom my father was earning it. And his gospel messages are simple, geared at this too, the circumstances of the time. But Billy Graham has one message, and he's been preaching it ever since he started the age of seventeen. It's the same old gospel. And yet millions listen to him. The gospel, the old-fashioned gospel, never wears thin. Ciric Puritan was asked when he was about, had been preaching some forty years, and five thousand at that time was quite a crowd.
They didn't have the transportation we have today. Every Sunday that metropolitan tabernacle was packed to the door. Somebody asked Puritan, and he mentioned it from the pulpit. Purgeon said, I've been asked, why do you people come for forty years? You sat in my audience, some of you, from young people. Now you're old and gray-headed, older than I am, and still you come. What brings you? Why have you come so long? What is it that has attracted you?
He said, I only had one answer. I preached Christ. and him crucified. And Christ never goes stale. There's nothing aging about him. Nothing will learn over the centuries, over the years, like Jesus Christ and him crucified. Christ consented in all his loveliness and glory. And when I hear a Christian say, well, I get tired of you in the gospel. I want some deep stuff. that fishing is out of fellowship of God. No child of God who appreciates salvation, honors and glum of the Lord gets tired of hearing the gospel.
If it's preached in the power of the Spirit, if it's preached just mechanically, even the leper of the gospel killed it, said the Apostle Paul, it has a deadening effect. But the stairs of enlightenment are when Christ is preached in the stairs. It's going to attract, not be trapped. And so this is the message of the present day. And I'll show you here this passage in closing what it did. In verse thirty-seven it convicted them. They were tricked in their heart. The message must be powerful to do that.
It must be in the spirit. The message must be scriptural. They quoted the Bible, Peter and the Acts spoke the Bible time and time again. That's a message that will be effective, effectual in picking the hearts. It will be in the spirit. It will be scriptural. And it will be Christ-glorifying. You have that in verses twenty-three and thirty-six. Thirty-three rather, and thirty-six. And it would be clearly enunciated. Peter lifted up his voice. And he was clearly understood. No public address system. Three thousand souls were saved.
And we don't know how many more thousands there were there. If three thousand got saved, you'd never see them all get saved. There might have been fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand people there. And Peter's voice did so. Yes, he was clear in his presentation of the gospel. And then, not only is it clear denunciation, but it's personal and exactification. He says, ye men of Judea. You forget others. Now, I'm talking directly to you. You are responsible for the death of Christ. And I'm speaking to you. I'm speaking to you.
These are marks of some of the preaching in the Acts. Again, the gospel not only convicts, it converts. By that in verse thirty-eight, they repented, they were baptized, they received the forgiveness of sins, and the Holy Spirit. They were obedient in verse forty-one. They gladly received the word. Their baptism was an evidence of the reality of that. We have no way of knowing whether a person is saved or not, unless he can broaden his life. We can't look into the human heart and see whether he has life or not.