It’s pouring with rain. Put your umbrella away!
In the 1920s Mr Ira Yates purchased a farm in West Texas in the United States. In many ways he was like a lot of other ranchers and farmers. He had a lot of land, and a lot of debt. He wasn’t able to make enough on his ranching operation to keep up with his monthly mortgage payments, so he was in danger of losing his ranch. With little money for clothes or food, his family (like many others) had to live on a government subsidy. Day after day, as he grazed his sheep over those rolling West Texas hills, he was no doubt greatly troubled about how he would pay his bills. In 1926, on a hunch, he invited a seismographic crew from an oil company to investigate whether there might be oil on his land. They asked permission to drill a wildcat well, and Ira Yates signed a lease contract. At a depth of 340 metres they struck a huge oil reserve. The first well produced 80,000 barrels a day. Many subsequent wells were twice as large and 30 years later the government tested one of the wells.
It still had the potential flow of 125,000 barrels of oil a day. Sixty years later in 1985 the one billionth barrel of oil was produced; and as at 2009 it was estimated that there are another 1 billion recoverable barrels of oil available; and Mr Ira Yates owned it all. The day he purchased the land he received the oil and mineral rights. Yet, he’d been living on government hand-outs. He had been a multimillionaire living in poverty. The problem was that he didn’t know the oil was there even though he owned it.
Are we anything like Mr Yates pre-1926? Do you know that God’s oil - God’s fuel - God’s Holy Spirit is available to you, ready to flow through you?
On the day Jesus was taken up in the clouds, taken up into the heavens, he said this: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8).
God wants each of you to know him as Heavenly Father. He wants you to know his character and his forgiveness, as revealed in Jesus. God wants to do something that Christians sometimes miss out on. God wants to fill you with Himself. God wants to fill you, refill you, and going on filling you every day with his Holy Spirit so that you can point others to him.
Jesus was clear that the Father ‘will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him’ (Luke 11: 11-13). If an earthly father knows how to give good gifts how much more does a perfect heavenly Father! He also told his disciples that a time would come when they would be arrested and brought before rulers and authorities. In other words, a time would come when they would be under severe pressure because of their faith but Jesus said – as he would say to us – “Do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say” (Luke 12:12).
Do you ever get tongue-tied when you’re asked to explain what you believe? I do.
Do you sometimes walk away from conversations thinking: “I wish I’d said this, or I wish I’d offered to pray, or I wish I’d pointed them more to Jesus”? I do.
Do you long to see this community transformed? I do.
Do you long for the sick to be healed, for broken lives to be restored and for people to know Jesus better?
Do you sometimes feel tired or apathetic? I do.
Do you ever feel like your tank is empty? Do you ever feel like your battery is flat? Sometimes I do.
There was an occasion with our old Ford Mondeo when the petrol gauge was showing empty and the orange petrol light had been on for about 20 miles. I drove to the garage and to my dismay I couldn’t remove the petrol cap to fill my tank. It was stubbornly stuck and would not budge, and it needed my friendly car mechanic to free it up for me. Some of us need our tanks to be filled with but something is stuck.
As we celebrate Pentecost today – remembering when God first poured out his Spirit upon the early church – God so wants to resource, refresh, refine, re-energise and reboot us. When the believers were filled with the Holy Spirit for the first time they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them (Acts 2:4). They declared the wonders of God in the native tongues of everyone within earshot (2: 5-11) because God gave them the words to say; and I believe that God still does that today.
What do I mean? Well for us here in Billericay it most likely means that when God fills us with His Spirit he enables us to communicate with people in a way they can understand. It can sometimes seem like teenagers speak a different language but filled with God’s Spirit we will be better equipped. Filled with His Spirit we will choose our words more carefully – something that I need God’s help with. Please, Lord, help me know when to speak and when to be silent!
It’s pouring with rain. Put your umbrella away!
What a sight and a sound it must have been! The believers were metaphorically on fire with God’s love, declaring aloud the wonders of God and drawing a multi-ethnic crowd as they did so. Many in the crowd were amazed and perplexed (2:12) but some made fun of them. Has anyone ever made fun of you because of your joyful love for God?
Some said, “They have had too much wine” (2:13); but St. Peter addressed the crowd and pointed out that they were not drunk on alcohol. It was not that kind of spirit they were filled with (2:14-15).
No, Peter said that an old prophecy was being fulfilled (2:17-21). God’s Spirit was being poured out – and God’s Spirit is still being poured out in the lives of real people today, changing lives, transforming relationships, renewing and purifying attitudes, and communicating the Good News with unbelievers.
So who can be filled with God’s Spirit? Every willing person can and will be filled; young and old (2:17).
Verse 17: “Your young men will see visions [and] your old men will dream dreams” and this is not having a doze after Sunday lunch with your mouth open kind of dreams. No, this means that both young and old will see the future as it could be in God’s hands.
Young men, God wants to give you a vision for your life, your work, your friends, and for your God-given ministry. So, will you let God fill you with his Spirit?
Old men, and I’m using that term because that’s how St. Paul phrases it. Old men; God wants you to dream His dreams of a better future for your family, your friends, your neighbours, your church, and your community. So, will you let God fill you with his Spirit?
No-one is exempt! God’s Spirit and God’s team, his body for his mission through his church is for all.
Sons and daughters will prophesy (2:17). That means you will speak the very words of God into other peoples’ lives. God will pour out his Spirit on men and women and they will prophesy – verse 18.
Imagine a church full of people filled with God’s Spirit!
Are we the church that you can see in your mind’s eye? Do we want to be such a church? I do!
5 biblical examples of the Holy Spirit at work:
1. Men and women filled with the Spirit become bolder. St. Peter healed a man and was arrested. In Acts 4:8-10 Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit said to his opponents, “If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this …it is by the name of Jesus Christ …whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.” Peter then went on to tell them that “salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (4:12). Holy Spirit-inspired boldness!
2. In Acts 7 we read about Stephen shortly before he was stoned to death: ‘Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God’ (7:55); and his last words, Holy Spirit-inspired were this: “Lord do not hold this sin against them” (7:60).
The Holy Spirit enables us to forgive like Jesus.
3. Peter and John placed their hands upon new believers (Acts 8:17) and they received the Holy Spirit. They had been baptised but had not received the Spirit and that could be true for some of us. If it is, there will be an opportunity to be prayed for to receive God’s Holy Spirit.
4. On one occasion while St. Peter was still speaking, ‘the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message’ (Acts 10:44). This time it was a group of people who had not been baptised first. For this group, receiving the Spirit came first, and baptism followed soon after.
5. The Holy Spirit is both comforter and counsellor.
In John’s gospel Jesus says this: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counsellor to be with you for ever – the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16).
Henry Montgomery-Campbell, whilst Bishop of Guildford in the early 1950s was presiding over a clergy prayer retreat at Farnham Castle.
A Vicar was bored with the retreating and nipped out to do some shopping in Farnham town centre. As he departed he bumped into the Bishop and felt he owed him an explanation. “My Lord, the Holy Spirit has moved me to go into town and do some shopping.” The Bishop replied, “I feel bound to tell you that at least one of you is wrong. Today is early closing.” Naughty Vicar! The Holy Spirit will never ask us to lie, or to do anything contrary to God’s word, the Bible.
When it comes to the Holy Spirit are we anything like Mr Yates before the oil was discovered? It was always there, just covered up and unused. Are we anything like my old Ford Mondeo with an empty tank and a stubborn petrol cap that won’t budge?
It’s pouring with rain. Put your umbrella away!
The Holy Spirit has been poured out (2:17); but in the Church of England too often we think of it like pouring a cup of very English tea – just enough for a taste in a tiny and very delicate china cup; just enough for me.
When the Bible says the Spirit has been poured out it is a deluge, a constant waterfall; and in our recent study of Ephesians in the Bible we came across this: “Do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery; instead, be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). A better translation would be this: “Be being filled with the Spirit”, or we could paraphrase it like this: “Go on being filled all the time with the Spirit” – because the outpouring of God’s Spirit is on-going. But some of us have our umbrellas up, keeping the deluge of the Spirit at bay. We keep dry; but religion without God’s Spirit is very dry indeed.
It’s pouring with rain. Put your umbrella away!
Today’s Bible reading ended like this: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (2:21). If you want to know Jesus, God’s Son who died for you upon the cross but rose victorious – if you want to know him then ask him to come into your life and he will come. If you desire be filled with God’s Holy Spirit just ask and he will come and live in you. Let’s pray.
