(Other passage: 1 Corinthians 12:4-13)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)
Henry Welles had an idea more than a century ago, an idea we still abide by today. In 1866, the United States had just emerged from a terrible and bloody civil war between our Northern and Southern states. Henry, a drugstore owner in Waterloo, New York, heard stories about our crippled and maimed surviving soldiers and suggested closing all the shops in town for one day to honor the soldiers who had been killed during that war. A retired major general, Jonathan Logan, had a similar idea at about the same time. His idea was to honor the soldiers who survived. He led the veteran through the town to the cemetery where they decorated the graves of their fallen comrades with flags. This memorial ceremony was called “Decoration Day” by the townsfolk.
Two years later, both Welles’ and Logan’s ceremonies were joined, and May 30 became the day for commemorating our soldiers from the Civil War. In 1882, the commemoration included soldiers from all previous wars, and the name was changed to Memorial Day.
Ninety-nine years later, in 1971, President Richard Nixon declared Memorial Day as a federal holiday on the last Monday in May.
Most Americans today recognize Memorial Day as the official start of the Summer Season. An overwhelming majority of American worker have the day off. Yet, according to a Gallup poll, only 28 percent of Americans know the true meaning of Memorial Day. Many get it confused with Veterans Day, a holiday that celebrates our living service members and veterans. Three out of four Americans have no clue about why they have a barbecue scheduled this weekend.
Likewise, very few Christians know the origin of Pentecost or its meaning. Many believe that the word “Pentecost” was coined as the name for the day the Holy Spirit appeared to the disciples.
Actually, Pentecost began about 15 centuries before that. It was originally called the Feast of Harvest or the Feast of Weeks. Deuteronomy 16:9–10 states, “Count off seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. Then celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the LORD your God has given you”
And the Book of Numbers (28:26) states, “On the day of first fruits, when you present to the LORD an offering of new grain during the Feast of Weeks, hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work.” On this day the first loaves that were made from the wheat harvest were offered.
Seven weeks from Passover works out to 49 days, so the following day, the 50th day, or “Pentecost,” was the celebration day. The purpose of Pentecost was for the Israelites to show their gratitude to God for their harvest, thereby acknowledging that God was the one who provided for them by giving them the harvest.
According to the Book of Leviticus (23:17) the two loaves used on Pentecost were leavened, as opposed to the unleavened bread used for Passover. Since the Passover memorial represented the haste in which the Israelites left Egypt, the Feast of Harvest celebrates the availability of normal food again for them.
As part of the festival, each worshipper would recite verses 3 to 10 from Chapter 26 of Deuteronomy. The first verse reads, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land the Lord swore to our forefathers to give us.”
That land was the Holy Land promised by the Father to Moses.
In choosing the celebration of Pentecost as the time to initiate the disciples of Jesus into their new lives through the Holy Spirit, the Father showcased the great harvest of everlasting life through Jesus, who had been crucified at the start of Passover 50 days before. The 120 disciples in the initial blessing of the Holy Spirit, as well as the 3,000 others they baptized that day, were the first fruits harvested for the Kingdom of God through the resurrection of Jesus and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
God’s timing is always perfect, and many events in the Bible foreshadow later ones to follow. The sacrifices of the Old Testament are representative of the single, perfect sacrifice of Jesus for us. The festival celebrating the physical harvest of God’s people foreshadows the spiritual harvest we heard in today’s reading from the Book of Acts.
Pentecost did not begin with a roomful of disciples in the third decade of the first century; it was made complete through them by the same God who introduced it 1,500 years before.
You see, originally Pentecost was for the Israelites. No other group or nation celebrated it because no other group or nation had the same relationship with God as Israel did. Following the resurrection of Jesus, however, Pentecost became an international invitation to initiation in the Kingdom of God.
Speaking in the languages of everyone who passed by is as clear a sign as any of us could hope for. And evangelism spread incredibly. Think about the number of baptisms that day: 3,000. Churches that baptize one person each month, which is pretty good for a lot of American churches would need 250 years to reach the same number that the early church did on its first day!
That’s the power of the Holy Spirit at work.
And if we’re willing to open our hearts to him, the Holy Spirit can give us those same spiritual gifts that the early church received.
Many theologians claim that the days of spiritual gifts have been long gone. They have obviously never seen the churches in Africa or Asia at work. Miracles continue to abound there. The same thing can happen here.
I think we’re intimidated by the idea though.
Look at it this way. Have you ever had to get a gift for someone you didn’t know? You have no idea what they might want or need, or even what size they might wear. So you end up buying them something they neither need nor want, that probably doesn’t fit them either.
But the gifts that God gives us, the spiritual gifts, suit us perfectly. Paul lists just a few of the many spiritual gifts God provides for us. Teaching, mercy, administration, discernment, leadership, hospitality, and so on, are not “one size fits all,” are they?
No. Some of those spiritual gifts sound appealing and others would not fit our personality types or character. And yet God makes our gifts fit us perfectly.
That means he knows us even better than we know ourselves. We cannot be anonymous when it comes to God. We can’t just blend in with the crowd. He knows us. He created us for a special purpose to fulfill his plan, and he gave us the spiritual gifts we’ll need to follow his will — even though we might not even realize what our purpose is yet.
And unlike earthly gifts, our spiritual gifts modify according to our spiritual development. Imagine that, a gift that improves the more you use it.
Cars don’t improve by driving them more; they wear out. Every earthly gift wears out from use. And every spiritual gift improves with use.
There appears to be one universal spiritual gift, sort of a prerequisite that is included with any other. Origen, one of the early church fathers described it this way:
“Now among spiritual gifts there is one that is indeed the greatest of them all, namely that word of knowledge which is imparted by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:8) … The supreme function of knowledge is, therefore, to know the Trinity; and, in the second place, to know God’s creation, even as did he who said, ‘For He hath given me the true knowledge of the things that are….’” — Origen (185-254)
When the Holy Spirit provides us with divine knowledge we often try to resist it. I think of it as having four stages. If we can let ourselves get through the first two, the last two stages are wonderful blessings. Those first two stages really hold us back though.
The four stages are Conviction, Correction, Commitment, and Contentment
Conviction
How many of us like being told we’re wrong? Not many hands being held up. It’s part of our prideful, human, and often sinful, nature. The Holy Spirit shows us where we are sinning; where we are choosing to follow our own will instead of God’s will; where we are being willful instead of willing.
And we rebel against that.
Many years ago, while on a visit to England, a wealthy Chinese businessman was fascinated by a powerful microscope. Looking through its lens to study crystals and the petals of flowers, he was amazed at their beauty and detail. So he decided to purchase one of these devices and take it back to China. He thoroughly enjoyed using it until one day he examined some rice he was planning to eat for dinner.
Much to his dismay, he discovered that tiny, living creatures were crawling in it. Since he was especially fond of this staple food in his daily diet, he wondered what to do. Finally he concluded that there was only one way out of this dilemma: he would destroy the instrument that caused him to discover the distaseful fact! So he smashed the microscope to pieces.
That’s how we usually react when we see our faults; we stop looking at them.
Correction
Stage two often happens despite our best efforts to prevent it. Correction. Our sins become exposed and we now have more interest in repentance. The bookkeepers at the office discover you’ve been embezzling funds, or you spouse finds out about that affairs you thought you were hiding, or the police pull you over and arrest you for driving while intoxicated.
If we accept the conviction of our sins by the Holy Spirit, correction is a lot easier to deal with. Correcting our sinful ways means obeying God’s will instead of our own.
The Holy Spirit provides many opportunities for us.
A hardened unbeliever went one day to see—but not to hear—George Whitefield when he preached outdoors to a great throng. In order to have a good vantage point, he climbed a nearby tree. Putting his fingers in both ears, he began to watch the mighty preacher. Then a persistent fly lit on his nose. He shook his head, but the fly wouldn’t move.
Just as he removed a hand from an ear to flick the fly away, Whitefield quoted the verse, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt. 11:15). Then he spoke of the willful refusal of many to hear the Spirit’s voice. The unbeliever was so impressed by what happened that he opened not only his ears to the gospel, but also his heart.
Commitment
Once we accept God’s will in our lives, and choose to follow Christ, we establish a commitment to our Father in heaven that cannot be broken. Letting the Holy Spirit into our heart to convict and correct us changes our nature permanently into a soul that loves the Lord.
It’s really an acceptance of Christ’s commitment to us, because he died for us. He is the one who chose to allow himself to die on the cross for our sins so that we could be forgiven. Our commitment to him pales in comparison.
Contentment
The final stage, after we accept the conviction and correction of the Holy Spirit, and commit to using our spiritual gifts to follow God’s will as a disciple of Jesus Christ, is contentment.
The wonderful and incredible peace of Christ. The feeling of inner joy and ease that only unity with our Savior can bring. A level of contentment that fills us as we enter the Kingdom of God.
Not the afterlife — the present Kingdom of God that Jesus ushered in. We can’t enter it totally yet, but we can be part of it while still on this plane of existence.
This is the contentment available within the body of Christ. Greater riches await us than we can ever imagine. The kind that last forever instead of the kind that rust and decay. All we need to do is accept the gifts that the Holy Spirit is offering us. Eventually we will all pass through the first two stages of spirituality.
The last two stages require our participation though. God will not force us to accept his gifts, but we can never reach the level of spiritual contentment he has planned for us unless we open our hearts fully to him.
The Holy Spirit is with us right now, in this room. As I offer this prayer, I earnestly hope you will open your hearts.
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy your consolations, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
