“When the Wind Blows”
Acts 2:1-21, 40-41
Before Jesus was taken back up into heaven He told His disciples to “wait” for the gift His Father had promised.
He said, “John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
So, they returned to Jerusalem to the Upper Room where they had been staying.
We are told they “joined together in constant prayer.”
They also cast lots to choose an apostle to replace Judas—Judas the one who had betrayed Jesus.
And they waited expectantly for this gift Jesus had promised.
There is no way they could have known what to expect for they had not experienced it yet.
They trusted and believed something big was going to happen, but what?
Earlier, before Jesus was crucified and resurrected He had said to the disciples that after He is gone God the Father will give them “another Counselor” to be with them forever—the Spirit of truth.
He said that this “Spirit of truth” will live with them and be in them.
And because Christ lives they will live also.
Then He said that “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit” will teach them all things and remind them of everything Jesus told them and that they will have peace.
He also said “the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father will testify” about Him, and you—meaning the disciples—must also testify.
What do you suppose you would have made of that if you had been one of the first disciples?
Whatever they made of it, no matter how little of it they understood, they had come to believe that Jesus could be trusted…
…and so…
…they waited.
And they only had to wait a little while until, on the Day of Pentecost, which was a Jewish Feast celebrating the first fruits of the harvest—they literally became those first fruits!
“Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
They saw what seemed like tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them…” and… “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”
This is the same Spirit that hovered over the waters in the beginning of Genesis before God created the heavens and the earth.
It’s the same Spirit God breathed into the clay He used to form the first humans in His image—and thus, bring them to life.
It’s the same Holy Spirit God promised to “pour out” in the last days.
It’s the same Spirit Jesus told Nicodemus about when He said a person must be born again in order to enter the kingdom of God.
“The wind blows wherever it pleases,” Jesus told him, “You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
And in the beginning of John’s Gospel we are told that everyone who “receives Christ…to those who believe in his name,” He gives “the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a [parent’s] will but born of God.”
“For that which is flesh is flesh.
That which is Spirit is spirit.
You must not be surprised by my saying you must be born again.”
Yes, on the Day of Pentecost, the new Creation began.
The disciples, the first fruits of the Spirit, were born of God.
All things became new.
That frightened band of men and women who had been in hiding in fear of ending up in the same fate as the Crucified Lord, ran out into the streets and told the crowds: “God has made…Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
And when the people heard this they were cut to the heart because the Spirit was blowing and the Truth was being shared.
This is what we celebrate today.
It is the beginning of the Holy Spirit taking up residence in flesh and blood human beings like you and I.
It is the beginning of the Church.
It is the beginning of a new movement—the movement of God—which would, in just a few short years, take the world by storm.
(pause)
What is it about the Holy Spirit that changes people?
What is it about the Holy Spirit that gives power to the powerless?
What is it about the Holy Spirit transforms hearts and lives in such ways that people the people who receive it become new…become children of God?
I was listening to a speaker a couple weeks ago.
He is a well-respected “Pastor to Pastors” in this area.
And he was telling us that from a young age he suffered from debilitating fear and depression.
When he got a little older he sought out help from a counselor.
Finally, his counselor threw up his arms and said to him: “You are the weakest man I have ever met.”
A few years later, the Holy Spirit blew in this man’s direction, and he was open to it.
He received it.
He was born again.
And his life took on new meaning.
He had a reason to live and a story to tell.
And boy, did he share with us that day!
But at the end of his presentation, as he stood before approximately 100 pastors from around our city, he looked out at us and said, “As I stand here in front of you I remain a very scared man.”
He added, “I still suffer from depression.”
Then he said, “I am still the weakest human being in the world.
But this has become my ministry.”
And that, my friends is what the Holy Spirit can do to human beings.
“For when I am weak, then I am strong,” proclaimed the Apostle Paul.
When Peter went out into the street to preach on the first Pentecost morning, he hadn’t prewritten his sermon.
He hadn’t planned what he was going to say to the thousands of people who gathered.
As a matter of fact, if anyone had told him a few minutes earlier what he would be saying and who he would be saying it to he wouldn’t have believed them.
For, this Peter is the same man who crumbled to the dust in fear on the night Jesus was arrested.
He couldn’t even bring himself to admit to a lowly servant girl that he even knew Jesus.
And now, here he is telling the very folks who put Jesus to death that they are guilty of murdering God.
And we are told that “those who accepted his message were baptized, and about 3,000 people” were born of the Holy Spirit that day.
How can that be?
It was the work of the Holy Spirit, was it not?
There is no other explanation.
Peter was simply the willing vessel through which God’s message was proclaimed.
On his own, Peter couldn’t have done that—wouldn’t have done that.
He’d have still been holed up in the house with the other disciples.
And as a result, nothing would have changed.
But Peter had been prepared.
He had waited for the Spirit as Jesus had commanded.
He had prayed with the others continually.
And when the wind blew the Spirit entered Peter and the world changed.
And the result of the Fall of humankind began to be reversed.
Those who were once dead came to life.
And the Children of God began to, once again, populate the earth.
You know, it is by grace through faith that we are saved.
We aren’t saved by anything we can do on our own.
We aren’t saved because we are born into a particular family or have the right color of hair.
We aren’t saved by anything we can do on our own.
No, “it is the work of God.”
And the work of God is that He took on flesh, became one of us, was murdered and rose again…
…and then sent His Holy Spirit into the world as the change agent for all who will receive Him.
And to all who will believe, He begins to mold us into His image to become the people and live the lives we were created in advance to live.
I want to ask each of us this morning to look inside of ourselves…
…to evaluate our lives, because we know.
Are we living the life God created for us to live?
Have you been born of the Spirit, born of God?
Have you been brought from death to life?
Do you have a story to tell?
Has Jesus given you new life?
Is there a spark of the divine living in your heart?
Has the Spirit blown on you?
If you haven’t had this experience, don’t be dismayed.
Instead, wait and pray for it.
Seek and you shall find.
Ask and it will be given to you.
The Bible tells us that in God’s eyes, you and I and everyone else who has ever lived are like a treasure that someone hid in a field…a treasure that God searches for until He finds it.
In God’s eyes we are like a pearl of great price, and God is like a merchant searching for that pearl.
When He finds us, He goes and sells all He has—gives everything, even His very life—to have that pearl.
We are all like lost sheep, who, God in Christ goes looking for and looking for until He finds us.
We are the lost coin.
We are the Prodigal son and the older brother.
And God is the Father…waiting for us to return and to come into the party.
I know it’s hard to believe when we think about who we are and what we have done, but you and I and everyone who has ever lived are the apple of God’s eye.
He laid down His life in order to reclaim us as His own.
And then, He sends His Holy Spirit our way.
And when it comes, we are given the opportunity to choose whether or not we will accept it, receive it, be born of it and become Children of God.
And this new life in Christ doesn’t solve all our problems, but it does give us the strength and the will to turn our problems and short-comings into our ministries through which we bless others.
Everyone has problems.
Everyone has some kind of monkey living on their back.
We are all handicapped in one way or another.
We all have some ugly places in our lives.
But when God’s Spirit blows our way, God can turn those ugly places into beautiful places.
Isn’t it just like God to turn our weaknesses into strengths?
For it is more often than not because of our weaknesses that we turn to God and accept God’s invitation of new life in the first place.
What are the weak places in your life?
What do you struggle with?
(pause)
If you are saved, how has God used those weaknesses to bring you to Him?
How has God, how is God using your weaknesses to minister to others?
And if you are not saved, what are your weaknesses?
What makes life difficult for you?
Would you like for those weaknesses to became strengths through which God changes you, saves you, and uses you for the good of the world?
I think God uses our weaknesses because that is where it is most evident that we need God’s help.
This is where we must most fully and completely rely on God to overcome and be triumphant.
And the more we rely on God the better our lives become.
The more we rely on God, the more we find ourselves loving God and loving other people.
The more we rely on God and the less we rely on our own natures—the more we are transformed into the image of Christ.
Do we become perfect in the sense that we no longer have weaknesses?
No, certainly not.
And as soon as we might be tricked into thinking this is the case, we will stumble, trip and fall over our pride.
That’s exactly what happened to Peter the night Jesus was arrested is it not?
“I will never abandon you Lord.”
“I will never deny you.”
But the prideful, overzealous, unpredictable and, at the same time, fearful Simon Peter, well, he became the first leader and spokesperson for God’s Church.
Look what God can do?
Look at what God will do, if we are willing to receive His Spirit when it blows our way.
I was born again my first year of leaving home for college.
And I had been a mess when I left.
Not too many years ago, I overheard my dad telling someone else, “When Kenny came back from college that year he was a completely different person.
It was amazing.”
And, oh, what a journey it has been and continues to be as I seek to take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of me.
And I am forever thankful that He has taken hold, even though I have often let go of Him—He has never let go of me.
And I’m still a mess.
I’m God’s mess.
But I’m a mess; a mess with a mission and a love in my heart I could have never imagined possible.
Notice on the Day of Pentecost that the Holy Spirit blew through the entire room where the disciples were sitting.
And then they saw what looked like tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
As the Church of Jesus Christ, we are a corporate body upon which the Holy Spirit blows.
We are also made up of individuals, each of whom the Spirit has come to rest and indwell in our own unique lives and fill our own unique places of weakness.
Without the Spirit we are nothing.
With the Spirit we can do all things.
We are all weak.
But if we rely fully on the Holy Spirit God has given us we are all strong.
The church and individual Christians get in trouble when we try and go it alone.
We need the Spirit and we need one another.
This morning, I feel led to call all of us, on behalf of God the Father Who has sent us the Spirit of Truth and given everything in order to find us and claim us as His children, to commit or recommit ourselves to this Church, the ministries of this Church and to relying on the Holy Spirit of God rather than those weak and ugly places of our natural selves for our strength, our mission, our ministries, our very lives and salvation.
Can we do this?
Will we do this?
Lord help us to do this.
Amen.
