Communion with God
Acts 2:1-11
We’re in a series looking at the Holy Spirit and how you can have a more intimate relationship with God. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is really about the Holy Spirit’s interaction with the Apostles. The beginning of that story is the Day of Pentecost. But to understand Pentecost and our Scripture today, you have to understand its context. The Festival of Weeks or Shavuot in Hebrew occurs 7 weeks after the Passover. It is one of 3 High Holy Days for Israel where attendance was mandatory. Thus, Jewish pilgrims from various nations would travel to Jerusalem for this Festival. It was a joyous time of giving thanks and presenting the first offerings from the summer wheat harvest in Israel. The celebration also focused on the giving of the 10 Commandments. Jews believe that it was exactly at this time that God gave the Torah to the people through Moses on Mount Sinai. While Passover freed the Jews physically from bondage, the giving of the Torah redeemed the Jews spiritually from their bondage to idolatry and immorality. So Shavuot symbolizes the "completion" of the people of God. What was understood in the physical realm of the Torah and the wheat harvest was made manifest in their lives. The early fruits have come in but imbedded in this celebration was also the implicit promise of a later spiritual renewal of Israel. So imagine the pilgrims walking out of the Temple having just celebrated the physical blessings of God and seeing the disciples receive a spiritual blessing unlike anything they had ever seen before. That blessing is the gift of the Holy Spirit not only renewed their bodies and spirits to carry on the mission of Jesus but now gave them the last thing needed to carry on the work of Jesus, the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Now they are complete to begin the mission of Jesus. So what do we learn about the Holy Spirit from the Day of Pentecost?
First, the Spirit comes in community. That seems to fly in the face of our American culture of rugged individualism where we think faith is a private matter. When you’re born in the faith, you are also born into the body of Christ. When you receive the Spirit, it is in the body of Christ. The Spirit is not just given to one individual but to all the disciples who were gathered there. Why? We’re better and stronger together than we are by ourselves. God’s Spirit always comes into community. You now have what the Apostle’s Creed calls “the communion of saints.” God knows we can’t do Jesus by ourselves. This is why we need community. So to be a part of Christ, I have to be connected to you and you have to be connected to me. I can’t do it alone. Say it with me, “I can’t do it alone. If you are connected to Christ then you’re connected to the body of Christ. It is in this community of faith where you are to be nurtured.
When God gives the Holy Spirit in community, there is always a diversity of people present of different tribes and tongues. “Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.” When God’s Spirit was poured out on both men and women, young and old, slave and free, without distinction, each received the Spirit of God. Philip Yancey writes, "As I read accounts of the New Testament church, no characteristic stands out more sharply than [diversity]. Beginning with Pentecost, the Christian church dismantled the barriers of gender, race, and social class that had marked Jewish congregations. Paul, who as a rabbi had given thanks daily that he was not born a woman, slave, or Gentile, marveled over the radical change: ’There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ "One modern Indian pastor told me, ’Most of what happens in Christian churches, including even miracles, can be duplicated in Hindu and Muslim congregations. But in my area only Christians….mix men and women of different castes, races, and social groups. That’s the real miracle.’ Diversity complicates rather than simplifies life. Perhaps for this reason we tend to surround ourselves with people of similar age, economic class, and opinion.” One of the problems with Christians is that they change churches like they change clothes. Most people try to find a church that thinks and believes just like you. The problem is that if you find a church like that, you will never grow in your faith. We need people in our lives who are different from us and thus are going to challenge us, pull us and stretch us in our faith. We need a diverse community of faith. Yancey puts it this way, “Church offers a place where infants and grandparents, unemployed and executives, immigrants and blue bloods can come together. Just yesterday I sat sandwiched between an elderly man hooked up to a tank puffing oxygen and a breastfeeding baby who grunted loudly and contentedly throughout the sermon. Where else can we find that mixture? When I walk into a new church, the more its members resemble each other—-and resemble me-—the more uncomfortable I feel."
Second, when the Spirit brings diverse people together the spirit unites us. Acts 2:2 says, “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.” A word about symbols in the Bible. Wind is a metaphor for God. In Genesis 1:2 we see that the wind of God is blowing over the formless and dark waters of the earth before Creation began. In the parting of the Red Sea as Pharaoh and his troops were bearing down on God’s people, God showed up in a strong wind which parted the Red Sea. So God often shows up in the wind. Verse 3 says, “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.” Now fire in the Bible is a symbol of God’s presence, like when God spoke to Moses, he did so from a burning bush. When God led the Israelites through the wilderness, he did by night through a pillar of fire. In the Old Testament, whenever God presented himself through fire, it was to the community. I want you to notice that the fire of the Holy Spirit separates and rests on each person so now not only is God entering the community, he is entering communion with individuals and it is in this common experience of receiving the Spirit that they are united for the mission of God.
Third, the Spirit enables us for the work of Jesus. In verse 4 it says, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” Jesus spoke alot about the Holy Spirit right before his crucifixion. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.” Now an advocate is someone who someone who speaks for you, who supports you and who defends you. That is huge because that means God is always in your corner. God always has your back. Is that not awesome? When you don’t know what to say to someone in sharing your faith, the Holy Spirit will guide you. When you think you don’t have the power or the ability to accomplish God’s will, he’ll provide it for you. When you don’t have the wisdom to know what to do, God will guide you. When other people attack you because of your faith, God will defend you. So Jesus is coming to you to empower, guide, comfort and protect you in the Holy Spirit, enabling you to do the work of the Jesus Christ in the world. Is that not awesome?
Fourth, the Holy Spirit prepares the world for the Gospel to be heard, even before we go out into the world with Gospel. “When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.” Jesus is universal. Through, Jesus, God speaks in every language and every culture. “Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
In his book “Eternity in their Hearts”, Don Richardson a Missionary writes of cultural compasses in other cultures and their language that point to one and only one person, Jesus, preparing the way for the Gospel to be heard. He tells the story of Robert Morrison who landed in China in 1807 and began to translate the Scriptures into the Chinese language with the help of a Chinese man with a limited English vocabulary. Chinese uses more than 200 pictures to combine in different ways to make Chinese words. When they got to the word righteous, he asked how to translate it and when his Chinese helper wrote the word in Chinese, Robert Morrison saw him use two symbols. On top was a picture of a lamb and on the bottom was the symbol for I, first person singular. So when the Chinese were writing the word righteous, they were writing the symbols which mean the lamb over me. Jesus, the Lamb of God, spoke through the Chinese language and that became the cornerstone for Robert Morrison introducing them to Jesus, the lamb under whom you and I are found to be righteous. This led him to study the language even more intently to discover other signs within their language and he found more than 120 other spiritually significant messages of the Gospel within the Chinese language. So Robert Morrison discovered these symbols within their own Chinese language and used them to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. Now two centuries later, Christianity is the fastest growing faith in China with more than 30,000 people per day coming to faith.
Don Richardson also tells of moving with his wife and newborn child to an island north of Australia. They were assigned to reach a new tribe that was recently discovered living in the swamps of that island and were cannibals. The name of the tribe were the Sawi but there was one problem: the Sawis were cannibals and always at war with other tribes. But the Sawi had heard positive reports for two years about the pale people. They told the other tribes that they would like to welcome one into their community and they responded that you are worst of the worst, cannibals and always at war with others, and they are few and will never have one come among you. These comments cut them to the heart but they decided anyway that if one would come to live among them, they would accept him into their tribe. When Don moved there, the tribe helped him build a 400 square foot home on stilts so it would not flood. When it was completed, he brought his family there and began to learn the Sawi language. He used the point method. He’d point to things with the hope they would tell him the word for it. He pointed to himself and they said, ‘didi’ then his wife and they said, ‘didi’ then to a dog and they said, ‘didi’ and then to a canoe and they said, ‘didi’. And he thought ‘Lord have you brought me all the way around the world to a people with a one word language? How will I ever tell them about Jesus?’ And then he realized that ‘didi’ meant finger. Later he learned to point with his lips as the Sawi did. After 6 months, having learned enough of the language he began to tell them about Jesus and when he got to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus with a kiss and they immediately began to cheer Judas, thinking that Jesus was a dupe. He was shocked. He prayed for wisdom. Not long after, warfare broke out between two Sawi villages and he begged for peace but to no avail. They said, ‘You seem to think that making peace is easy as it is for you and the pale people but it is not for us.’ He began to think that peace amidst a people that loved treachery and betrayal was not possible. But then he heard of a custom of when a chief wanted to make peace with another village, he could do so only when he gave his son as a peace child to the other village. Their child would be raised in that other village. That was a sacrifice so great that everyone would accept it with great sincerity. And people would come and last. And then it happened. A man named Kyo gave his only son as a peace child and peace came among the two villages and it was then that Don saw how he could proclaim the Good News about a God who gave his only son as a gift of reconciliation and peace. He proclaimed Jesus as the greatest gift of peace to all generations. It was then they realized Judas had betrayed a peace child and it was now Jesus they exalted.
Where the Holy Spirit is present, it tears down the barriers that stand between us and others and between us and God. Ephesians 2:14-15 says, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace” and bringing the world by us through the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit to be reconciled to Him. Amen and Amen.
