Theme: Send forth Your Spirit
Text: Acts 2:1-11; Romans 8:8-17; John 14:15-17
Introduction: All this week the news has been about the 60th celebration of D-Day. Today all over Europe and America memorial services are being held to celebrate and remember what happened on that day 60 years ago when the allied forces landed on the shores of Normandy. That day signalled the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War that freed the world from the tyranny of Adolf Hitler. Definitely this day is important and needs to be celebrated. But why do we have to forget a greater and much more important event took place today 2000 years ago in Jerusalem. On that day, the day of Pentecost began the ministry of Jesus through the church. On that day men and women were freed from despair and discouragement to lead an abundant life in the power of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost simply means “fiftieth” since it fell on the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Christ. With the presence of the Holy Spirit, a veil was taken away to reveal the prophetic significance of Pentecost. The Jews suddenly saw their whole Jewish heritage in a new light. Not only were the Jewish festivals memorials of what God had done but they also pointed to something God was going to do. These festivals, instituted by Moses under direct instructions from God, are a divinely prepared Timetable of God’s Dealings with His people and mankind. They show us how God dealt with His people in the past, what He wanted them to do in the present, and how He would work with them in the future. They present and reveal an outline for the work of Jesus Christ. Passover commemorated the deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt and found its final fulfilment in the death of Christ on Calvary as the Lamb of God to free the world from slavery to sin and Satan. The feast of first fruits, the ceremony of presenting the first fruits of the harvest to the Lord, found its fulfilment in the resurrection of Christ Who “became the first fruits of them that sleep”. The Feast of weeks, held fifty days after Passover, was observed in celebration of the first ingathering of the harvest of each year. It was therefore no coincidence that on the day of Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit arrived, an amazing harvest of souls took place. The great harvest that began on the day of Pentecost, continues today, and will continue until the end of the Church age when the prophetic aspects of the remaining festivals will also be fulfilled. On the day of Pentecost Christ fulfilled His promise to send forth His Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the only One Who can take the weak and make them strong as happened on the day of Pentecost. But different people have different ideas of who the Holy Spirit is? The Bible teaches that He is a person. Jesus spoke of Him as a Person saying in John 14:26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” The Holy Spirit is not a force or a thing. He is a person and the Scriptures confirm this by the personal ways in which He responds and the personal things He does. The Bible also makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is God and we rightfully speak of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is seen in the attributes that are given to Him and which are without exception, the attributes of God. He is eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. We all need the Holy Spirit and whatever He did on the day of Pentecost He is still willing and able to do for all believers today. Everywhere the early Christians went they made a spiritual impact on the whole community winning many people to Christ. We also need Him to make a spiritual impact in our communities.
To understand Pentecost we need to see it in the light of Babel. At Babel, an ambitious people wanted to build a great city with a big tower but God confused their tongues and scattered them. At Pentecost, the disciples preached the good news of Jesus and all those present heard it in their own languages. Two completely opposite events - at Babel God created confusion and scattered, and at Pentecost, He created order and gathered. At Babel, the diversity of tongues brought an end to the ambitions of men. At Pentecost, a diversity of tongues marked the beginning of the preaching of the good news of Jesus to the nations of the world. At Babel the people wanted to reach to the heavens, to be famous, and to control their future destiny. They wanted to be like God, and they used their skill and know how to do it. Baked bricks and tar was the key to their fame and future, much the same way people today speak of cell phones, computers, the Internet, and genetic engineering. Today some people are using technology to be “like God,” to declare independence from God, to make a name, and to control the future. The story about the Titanic is about man’s misplaced trust in his own inventions and resourcefulness. “Not even God could sink the Titanic,” they claimed at the start of the voyage. They were so confident that they did not even carry enough life rafts to cater for all the passengers. The latest technology assured them that the ship was unsinkable. And yet, ironically, the very technology that was thought would make the Titanic "unsinkable," made her sink even faster. There is nothing wrong with technology, just as there is nothing wrong with baked bricks, tar, and tall towers. It is what we do with them and why we build them. When our faith, hope, and trust is in our capabilities, when we use our technology to reach up to the heavens, to become famous, to amass wealth and fortune, to seize control of our destiny and shake our fist at God, then we are committing idolatry. Are we today not putting our trust in technology? Technology cannot save us and bring us to heaven. It cannot secure our destiny. Only God can do that and He did this by giving us the gift of His Son and the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit empowers the believer to witness and to serve. He or she is to be filled with the Spirit and to refuse to be filled is to act contrary to the will of God. It is the Holy Spirit who empowers us and we constantly need His power if we are to serve God effectively. With the presence of the Holy Spirit the scattering of the people, which began with the building of the tower of Babel, is reversed and God begins to gather His people into one household. At Pentecost it was not human beings but God who was at work and at the centre of attention. The disciples did not preach about themselves and their own accomplishments, but about God and what He had accomplished in His Son Jesus Christ. It is only the Holy Spirit who can reveal and interpret the Word of God because He is God. He glorifies Jesus Christ by revealing His nature, character and ministry. It is very interesting to note that once the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles and the disciples on the day of Pentecost, they no longer had any doubts about where Jesus was. They knew that He had arrived in glory at the Father’s right hand. When a loved one leaves us on a journey, we always urge him to write and inform us of his safe arrival. It is only when a letter arrives in the loved ones own handwriting, postmarked with the name of the place, that we are sure he has arrived. On the day of Pentecost the disciples received a personal letter from Christ postmarked heaven confirming that He “had arrived at the seat of all power and authority.”
Human effort to rise up to heaven is doomed to failure and this is why the mission of the Church is to proclaim the mighty acts of God so clearly that all may hear and believe and be saved. The Holy Spirit did not come to the Church on Pentecost to make us feel better about ourselves, but to send us into the entire world with the Gospel. The Holy Spirit did not come to be a substitute for God the Father or for Jesus Christ, but to lead the world into a fuller relationship with the Triune God. The Holy Spirit did not come to help us build a tower of devotion up to heaven, but to push us into the world with the Word that in Jesus Christ God has dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and has redeemed us. The Holy Spirit did not come to bless our pursuit of self-centred holiness, but to send us to all people, the rich, the poor, the sick, the hurting and those in various forms of bandage for the sake of the Gospel. When the disciples were baptised and filled with the Holy Spirit, they understood the plan of God and the ministry of Jesus far better than they had ever understood it before. They had been very slow and limited in their understanding, but the moment the Holy Spirit came, they had a totally different understanding of the ministry and the message of Christ. They were also empowered and became extremely bold. Before they had lived in fear, even after the resurrection of Christ, hiding behind locked doors and not willing to stand up to preach and proclaim the truth. They made very little impact on the people and Jerusalem was hardly changed or affected by the death and resurrection of Christ. The moment the Holy Spirit came, however, that changed. Peter boldly told the people who had gathered in Jerusalem the whole story of Jesus and His crucifixion. The whole of Jerusalem immediately felt the impact. Within a short time of His arrival, many thousands had gathered and before the day ended, 3000 unbelievers had been converted, baptised and added to the Church. The moment the Holy Spirit came, miracles began to take place. It was just like when Jesus was with them in person. Jesus Christ has fulfilled His promise to His followers by sending the Holy Spirit. He comes to dwell within all who confess Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and the Lord wants His presence to make an impact in us, around us and through us. We can only manifest His presence and glory when every part of our lives is yielded to Him.
We can only receive the gift of the Holy Spirit when we acknowledge our sin of rejecting Christ. Jesus Christ presented Himself to His people in Jerusalem, even as the prophets had foretold. He did not only come with the claim to be the Messiah, but God Himself testified to His identity and authority through the signs and wonders He performed through the Holy Spirit. In spite of this, He was rejected as the Messiah. Worse still He was nailed to a cross. This however did not defeat the purpose of God for He raised Jesus from the dead and has given Him all power and all authority. We can only be spared His judgement when we acknowledge we are sinners and call on His name for forgiveness. This is the only way to be saved. There is no salvation without repentance and belief in Christ. This is the only way for God to forgive sin because His Son, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, has already paid the price for our sin. It is the only way to receive the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, the first fruits of the kingdom to come.
As Christians we have the Holy Spirit living in us and bearing witness with our spirit that we have received the Spirit of adoption and can call God Father. Adoption in Bible times in the Holy Land did not mean making another person’s child your child. It meant something completely different. It meant placing your own child as a son. When a young man grew up and has demonstrated his ability to bear responsibility a ceremony would be held on a specific day to place him as a son. All the elders, neighbours, families and friends would be invited to witness this event that had a great significance in the life of the young man. The boy had always been the natural descendant of his father but at full age when the father deemed him to be ready he would be placed as a son. These stages of growing up are referred to using different words in the Greek language. One word refers to a baby son, another to an adolescent child who is maturing but not yet ready for responsibility and the third for a son who is ready for responsibility and has gone through the ceremony of adoption placing him as a son. We clearly see this in the life of Jesus Christ. We first see Him as a child in the manger and nothing else is said about His infancy until His adolescent years, when as a boy of twelve He is seen in the Temple discussing with the learned men of the day. The next time something is said about Him is when He is thirty and appears at the Jordan to be baptised by John. His adoption was confirmed at His baptism when the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in the form of a dove and the Father spoke from heaven saying “this is my beloved Son, hear Him”. Following the tradition of Bible lands the heavenly Father brings His Son before friends, neighbours and elders of Israel and declares Him to be a Son. The heavens were opened to release healing for the lame, sight for the blind, restoration for the fallen, forgiveness for the sinner, hope for the hopeless, life for the dead and beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning. God wants us to live a fulfilled life and we can only do so when we accept His offer of salvation by “calling upon the name of the Lord,” admitting we have sinned, repenting of our sin and putting our trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour. With God’s forgiveness comes the gift of His Holy Spirit. Have you, in simple faith, accepted God’s offer of salvation and become a son? As sons we can use the Father’s name and have access to His power and wealth.
The fire that was lit at Pentecost spread like a brushfire in the dry season. It spread through the Roman Empire and Asia Minor to all nations. It is a fire that has blazed for two thousand years of history, across nations and peoples. Great political empires have come and gone. Great leaders have risen and fallen. Great churches have been built and torn down. Men have tried to put this fire out. But the harder they tried, the more it spread, and the hotter it burned. It is the Holy Spirit who continues to fan the flames of this fire in the Church. He not only gives us life but also fills us with God’s presence. He is the only One who can lead the believer into a full understanding of God’s revelation to man. When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost and the disciples began to speak in other languages, Peter explained what was happening by quoting and interpreting a prophecy by Joel. Almost half of what Peter said was a direct quotation from the OT, and his teachings on these Scriptures was applied in a most vivid way to the events of Christ’s death, resurrection and the coming of the HS. As soon as the HS came to indwell them, their understanding of Scripture was supernaturally illuminated. Their previous doubts and confusion were immediately replaced by clear understanding and right application of Scripture. The same thing also happened to Paul, who had been trained by Gamaliel, a famous teacher of his day. Yet in spite of all his training and knowledge, Paul in his early years had no understanding of the correct application of Scripture. He understood the cross as the evidence that Jesus was under the curse of God. “Cursed is he who hangs on a tree” was the word of Scripture and therefore Jesus could not possibly be the Messiah. When he received the Holy Spirit, he understood everything perfectly. He then understood that Jesus was made a curse because of our sins so that we could be delivered from the curse and enjoy His blessings. All Christians believe that in the next age we will function in a totally different way. We will have a different kind of body and a totally different lifestyle. But through the Holy Spirit we can taste a little of this lifestyle now in this life. He gives us a foretaste of the powers of the age to come. He is the greatest single help that God has provided for believers who sincerely desire to enter into all the fullness of victorious and fruitful Christian living. We all need the Holy Spirit. Indeed Jesus places an obligation on all believers to seek Him when He says “If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” On this day of Pentecost let us ask the Lord to fill us with the power of His Holy Spirit. Amen!
