Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we embark this morning on a survey of one of the most important and comprehensive chapters in the New Testament. If Romans 8 and Revelation 21 are both peerless and unique in their comprehensive descriptions of the Christian life and the world to come, respectively, so Acts 2 is peerless and unique in its picture of what the church is and what the church ought to be. The text before us is certainly one of the great mountain peaks of Christian teaching. We will take our time scaling its slopes and surveying the majestic view they afford us; indeed, I plan to spend eight weeks on this chapter alone, getting a good orientation toward what Luke has to say to us about the foundation, progress, and activities of the church. What we will see in this first segment of the chapter is that Jesus kept His promise and poured out His Spirit on the whole church. That coming of the Spirit attracted the notice of world Jewry, and it provoked a divided reaction among those who witnessed it.
