Seeing Jesus Through The Holy Spirit: The Day of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-13 May 27, 2007
Call To Worship Time: Acts 2:1-13 (NLT):
“On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.
At that time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem. When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers.
They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages! Here we are—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabs. And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!” They stood there amazed and perplexed. “What can this mean?” they asked each other.
But others in the crowd ridiculed them, saying, “They’re just drunk, that’s all!””
The Day of Pentecost:
Today is the day of Pentecost, and that simple story which I just read from Acts 2 tells of the birth of the church, the massive shift in God’s interaction with humanity, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon all those who believed. In preparing for today, I came across a brief article that says what I want to say better than I probably could. Surprisingly, it is from a catholic journal. I’d like to share it with you (slightly abbreviated)…
The Feast of Fire (from http://www.boston-catholic-journal.com/pentecost_feast_of_fire.htm)
The great Feast of Pentecost is upon us! The Holy Spirit Himself, in tongues of fire, alighting upon the hearts of the Apostles and making of a tepid faith a raging fire!
It is the inauguration of the greatest evangel ever proclaimed, one that would resound --- that still resounds --- in every corner of the Earth, in turn setting ablaze, consuming in love, all upon whom it touches, re-creating in God the hearts of men who in turn re-create in Christ unChristened nations.
It is the Feast of Fire that would, through a rush of wind --- of Divine Wind --- become a conflagration that would make of the whole Earth a holocaust of love unto the Father through the Son. It is the Feast of Fire!
... and we yawn.
"Another Holy Day ... thank God it falls on a Sunday!"
Let us be honest. Let us ask ourselves this: have we become smoldering wicks? Were we ever anything more? When was the last time that our flickering ember, buried in ash, set another soul ablaze with the love of Christ? Did it ever? Do we --- did we ever --- possess that holy contagion that spreads throughout our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, our nations, and makes of men and women, impassioned and passionate lovers of Christ and His Church?
Not likely. At least for most of us. So what do we do? Where to begin ... being authentic?
The first step, I think, is to candidly ask ourselves this: "Is it really meaningful, genuinely significant, to me?" For many of us, perhaps most of us --- at least in the West --- the answer will be no. "It is", we concede, "a liturgical Holy Day that is supposed to have meaning for me, but really has none, apart from the recognition of an historical event that occurred long ago and really has little bearing on me today. The Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles. I believe this. It is not, however, likely that He will come upon me. Not this Sunday, anyway, and very likely never."
"Moreover", we contend, "the people upon whom He comes in our day (or at least I have been told) belong to the Charismatic group that meets every week at Church, who are terribly emotional, wave their hands about, faint, make odd sounds, and behave in a way in which I would feel extremely awkward and pretentious. If this is characteristic of the Holy Spirit touching me, I’d really rather He not. My own spirituality is quite different, more restrained, subdued, more contemplative and less ... ostentatious." This is fair --- to some extent. It is clearly the case that the path God sets before me is not the path that everyone else will walk, nor the path to which all are called. God is a good deal more generous in accommodating our spiritual aptitudes than we are of others. We are grateful for that, and we ought to be. Our God, unlike us, is not procrustean, forcing us into molds into which we do not fit. We are not all "Charismatics", or, for that matter, any other generalized "form" into which the Spirit of God is poured as though in that one form (of spirituality) alone God genuinely, or more abundantly, abides ... and from which we, then, can peer with disdain upon other expressions of spirituality as less authentic, less expressive of the genuine love of God…
"There are many rooms in My Father’s House", our Lord tells us, and it is unlikely that they are all equally appointed, in both senses of the word. A God who created each of us uniquely is not likely to call all of us uniformly. He will come to us in the way He knows best, and it is different from the way we think is best for everyone…
Different Paths, But It Still Must Be Real:
Here at Laurier, we have refused to “pick one mold and squish everyone into it”. Instead, we have chosen to love one another, and to put that first. I believe under Scripture that love is the greatest expression of the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit: love for God and love for others. So as we come to worship God this morning, my entire prayer is that the Holy Spirit would fill us, so that we might love God and love others.
Last Sunday I asked you to reflect on the question, is your life full of the Holy Spirit? I don’t mean in the stereo-typical “charismatic” way – that is not the goal. But is God real in your life? Have you met Him, worshipped Him, been transformed by Him? The great danger in recognizing that God meets us in different ways is that it easy for us to conclude that we are ok the way we are – we don’t need to grow or change or be transformed. The danger is to be complacent, to stop, to get comfortable. Now, none of us want to try to force anyone into some different mold, to be something that we are not, but we all want to challenge each other to grow and change and be transformed.
So as we continue in a time of worship, will you pray and ask the Holy Spirit to fill you? Will you ask to meet God in a profound way? Will you open yourself, humble yourself, engage yourself? Will you let the Holy Spirit come and fill you? Even more important is this: what happened in Acts 2 was not an individual thing, it was a community thing. The Holy Spirit came upon the believers as a group, and united them into a church with a mission and a power to break down barriers and change the course of our entire world. We are going to worship together. We are going to sing together and pray together, and then share together (in corporate prayer) what God is saying and doing among us.
Sermon Time:
Earlier this week, when planning for this service, I asked Pastor Sue this question: “So, what do you have in mind for Pentecost Sunday that will make the Holy Spirit “show up” like He did on that first day of Pentecost?” I did have a grin on my face, so that she knew I was just kidding around, but there is a point. The answer, of course, is that there isn’t anything we can do to “make” God do anything. John describes the Holy Spirit like the wind: “The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” (3:8). It is not stretching the metaphor to point out also that we cannot control the wind, we can’t summon it at will, we can’t even, with all our mighty technology, manufacture wind currents that effect whole cities.
Likewise with the Holy Spirit. We are not in control. We can’t force revival, we can’t push people into encounters with God, we can’t press the right buttons and presto! out comes the result we want.
Ironically, we also can’t live the Christian life with power as intended without the Holy Spirit. We can’t live a holy life as intended without the Holy Spirit. We can do nothing of significance for eternity without the Holy Spirit. Once again, we see that we are not in control.
I have a lot of trouble with a lot of the stuff I read today about the Holy Spirit. Much reduces God to a formula: prayer+faith=mighty outpouring of the Spirit. Much reduces God to a vending-machine: put in your money, make your selection, out comes what you want. Much of the time, the not-so-subtle message is “if you just did things like me, you’d be full of the Holy Spirit like me too!” I walk away from messages like that feeling pretty lousy. Like there is something wrong with me, like I am missing something, like I am not spiritual enough or gifted enough or hard-working enough. I don’t think the writers or speakers intend it, but often that message leaves me discouraged.
See, I do want more. I confess: I want more power in my preaching. I want more life in our worship service. I want more urgency and activity in our evangelism. I want more people in our church – and by that I mean more people who do not know Jesus today. I want more courage and intensity in our efforts to fight poverty and injustice. I want more healing, more depth, more joy, and as you hear me preach over and over – more love for God and for others.
Let me tell you something. Every week, before our service, we meet to pray. And every week, my prayer goes something like this: “Lord, this is Your church, this service is for You, we come to worship You, we declare You to be our Head, and we ask You to do everything You desire to do in and through us. We ask You to remove anything that would keep You from doing anything You desire to do.” Every week we seek God in the planning – from the picking of songs to the direction of the message. Every one of our leadership meetings – staff, Elders, admin, etc., we ask God to be in control. We pray for our church, for our people, for the Kingdom of God. Those are good, right prayers. And we are not in control of the answer.
The Hard Part:
That is the hard part. We are not in control of God’s answer. We can’t force the wind.
I love the story in Acts 2. It is inspiring, revolutionary, world-changing. And we can’t reproduce it. There is no formula to follow to get 3000 people saved in one day, as happens at the end of the chapter. There are no spiritual laws of physics to conjure up a great wind and mighty tongues of fire to rest on each of our heads. There is no plan or program that results in a whole bunch of unknown languages suddenly being spoken by people who never learned them. Because: we are not in control.
Why is that a good thing?
Me talking like this is uncomfortable. If you are listening carefully, I hope you are a little rattled. Maybe even upset. Especially as North American Christians, we don’t like being told that we are not in control. Why do we get so upset and un-nerved when we or someone we love becomes ill? – because it brings us to this brink where we aren’t in control. Where our bank account or career or image don’t much matter. Even in the church, we like to believe that if we just do the right things, then we’ll grow and prosper and see great things. We want x+y to =z.
But it doesn’t always. We are not in control. And that is good. As hard as it is to accept that we are not in control, those last four words are harder. “and it is good.”
Let me try to explain why. Instead of our mechanical, rational, institutional, transactional way of seeing, let’s look from the perspective of relationship. God isn’t a formula or a vending machine, God is our Father. Jesus is our brother. The Holy Spirit is our counselor and guide and empower-er. Instead of a formula, we have interaction. Instead of a vending machine, we have a conversation. If we use our human relationships as a model for understanding, we can see that it is not as simple as x+y. Case in point: you bring your spouse flowers on your anniversary, it is appreciated and lets her know she is loved. When you bring her flowers on a different day, for no reason other than you were thinking about her and wanted to show her that she is special, it has a different response. Likewise, in our relationship with our children there are times when they ask, say, for a chocolate bar and the answer is “sure”. Other times, the answer is “no”. When we are immature, we don’t understand the “no” – we want the chocolate bar, we know it tastes good, we feel hungry, we got to have one last time…
The parenting analogy helps us see that while we want what we want, the parent sees the bigger picture. And does what is best. The love for the child determines the best course of action, and then responds accordingly – whether the child understands and accepts or not.
Let’s bring this back to God the Holy Spirit. We can pray for fire and wind and incredible manifestation of the Holy Spirit. We can ask and expect. And we can rejoice when God answers by pouring His Spirit out in power upon us. If that doesn’t happen though – if God doesn’t heal like we wanted, doesn’t use us to lead thousands to faith like we asked, doesn’t give us the feeling of being close, then we have to remember we are the child, and God is in control. We should ask why the answer seemed to be “no” – search our hearts for sin, search our motives for purity, search our desires and see if they correspond to God’s. We should deal with anything that gets in the way – and we should deal with it quickly and harshly. Then, when that is done, we remember that God sees the bigger picture, God is the parent, and His love for us determines the best course of action.
I like the picture, because it is interactive. It is close. Intimate even. The child can keep asking, can wonder why, can even get upset and stomp their feet without fear of losing the Heavenly Father’s love. The child might keep asking and keep asking and then find that it is now dessert time and the answer is yes. Or maybe the answer will always be no, because though it looks good and right, God might be able to see how it might harm, or maybe He just sees something better and wants to give us that instead.
The relationship of love between God and us is the point. It isn’t about flashy experiences, about speaking in tongues, or even about power in ministry. The Holy Spirit is present in our lives to draw us deeper into a relationship of love with God and then for others. That is what matters to God, and I believe God grants us those times of experience for the purpose of building that relationship.
The Place of Prayer:
So where does this leave us? Especially on Pentecost Sunday, what are we to do with the Holy Spirit? The immature part of us wants to sit back and cross our arms and pout – if we can’t have it the way we want it, fine! But then the love of the Heavenly Father draws us back in. The love of Christ our brother comes alongside. The love of the Holy Spirit reaches out and invites us out of our plan and into God’s plan. We can pout on the coach – God will not often force, but that is not the best way…
And herein lies the importance of prayer. You see, real prayer is not about reciting a list of things we want God to do for us and others – real prayer is about entering that conversation with God. It is the child asking, listening, even arguing, but then accepting the authority and decision of the parent. It is interactive, it seeks to see where God is leading and what God is doing and then ask how we can be a part of that. That is the prayer that says, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done.”
That’s an easy prayer to say, but a hard one to mean. If we are brutally honest, most of what we pray for is selfish. That is a harsh word, which I use out of my own experience of conviction. Even when I look at this morning and prayed for another “Pentecost”, God is showing me that my prayer is at least in part because I want to experience that. I want to be a pastor of a church that is alive like that, because it will make me feel good and look good and be successful. Notice how many “I”s and “me”s are in that sentence? That is why I use the word “selfish”. What if God wanted to grow His Kingdom by making me like Job – have everything I value ripped away from me so that I had nothing left but God? Or what if God wanted my ministry to be like Jeremiah’s – whose lament was “Lord, I keep saying what you tell me to say, but it isn’t making any difference!”
Here is how true prayer leads us to maturity: the more time we spend in conversation with God, the more we start to see His perspective. His values. His hurts. And the more that happens, the more our lives begin to be shaped by those values instead of the values of our culture. And as that happens, the more our prayers begin to be characterized by the things that God is wanting to do rather than the things that we want God to do. And then, our priorities and acts of service begin to shift, and that is when, I believe, we most experience the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
A Season of Prayer:
We are beginning a season of prayer. Over the next three weeks, that is the type of prayer journey we want to take. Prayer that listens. Prayer that engages. Prayer that humbles. Prayer that dialogues. Prayer that re-shapes our priorities and attitudes and actions. Prayer that seeks God alone – not an experience of God, not a gift or blessing from God, but prayer that just seeks God.
Prayer that get us to the point when we can pray, and deeply mean, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven.”
