Acts 2:1-21
Flames today
- tongues of fire dancing over every head and all of us
- every single one of us is filled with the Holy Spirit
- everybody speaking a different language
- right here, right now, in church
- "that is not the way to behave in church"
- Scary!
Flames back then
- people from all over the place
- no way they get along
- reversal of the tower of Babel
- united in understanding
What unites us
- people from all walks of life
- not much in common except for:
- connectedness with God
- connectedness with one another
- We have the gift of the Holy Spirit: Me, you, the person sitting beside you
- everyone is different
- God sent a particular message just to your heart. If you don’t tell the story of how God is singing in your heart, who will? And what will happen to the person who needs to hear your story in order to be healed of deep despair, or comforted in grief, or encouraged in adversity, or loved in loneliness, or trusted in a time of self-doubt, or challenged in a time of self-delusion.
Birthday
- Church is about telling the story
- Church is about inviting people to ask for the Holy Spirit
- Pentecost is the birthday of the church
- Today we are having a birthday party
Peter’s sermon
- When everybody was speaking in tongues, some of the bystanders sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
- Peter answers to the wine criticism, by interpreting the present moment through the lens of scripture
- We tend to ask: How does the Bible fit my life? But in reality the question is: What does my life look like in the light of scripture?
Vision
- It’s about handing ourselves over to the Holy Spirit to show us the way
- God pours his Spirit upon all flesh alike: old and young, men and women, people from Israel, Utah or elsewhere
- May the Spirit give you a vision for your own spiritual life
- May the Spirit give us a vision for our church in five years from now
- That may be a scary Spirit-driven vision, may the Spirit be with us!
