The sign next to the expressionless face said: “The Motionless Man: Make Him Laugh. Win $100.” So several people gave it all they had. For hours they pulled their faces into strange contortions, told jokes, made fun of him, did stunts — but nothing worked. He was totally unmoved and his face showed no expression. Bill Fuqua, the Motionless Man, is the Guinness Book of World Records champion at feeling and doing nothing. In fact, he appears so motionless during his routines at shopping malls and amusement parks that he is sometimes mistaken for a mannequin. When I heard about Bill Fuqua, I thought of a lot of church folk I know. They have mastered the art of feeling nothing and doing nothing. Someone told them a long time ago that you could be emotional about some things, but religion wasn’t one of them. You never know what is going on inside. The few times there is an expression on their face is when they frown because someone clapped or said “Amen” in church.
But if you read the book of Acts, the New Testament church was anything but expressionless. It was full of emotion, enthusiasm and power. People were coming to Christ in large numbers because of the faithful witness of the people who claimed the name of Christ. In fact, as we read in the Scripture today, they were so expressive that people made fun of them and thought they had too much wine. There was so much joy that people who did not know Christ could not understand it. There is a reason that the words joy and rejoicing are abundantly sprinkled throughout the book of Acts.
It’s interesting isn’t it, that the church of today is perceived as uptight and robbing people of the joy of life, when the opposite was true in the early church. They were accused of having too good of a time — so much so that they were accused of being drunk. It was the only way the world could explain it. Unfortunately, there is very little which is unexplainable about most churches today. The church today is accused of being boring, and many people feel they have enough boredom in their lives. But the church of that day was so radical and exciting that people were being drawn to it by the thousands. Listen to just a few of the verses that talk of the growth of the early church: “Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day” (Acts 2:41). “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:46-47). “But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand” (Acts 4:4). There are over a dozen places in the book of Acts which talk about great numbers coming to Christ at one time. And this was due to the work of the Holy Spirit, and the radiant and powerful lives of God’s people.
We in the modern day church have done such a good job of controlling our emotions that we have almost eliminated them. Some have kept their desires in check so long that you might think they no longer have desires. We have formalized our religion and practiced such restraint that the world sees little to desire from us. C. S. Lewis writes these amazing and insightful lines, “Indeed, if we consider the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
As I began to think about Pentecost and the meaning of the Holy Spirit, I wanted to think again about the reality of the Holy Spirit and the reason that God sent his Spirit into the world. When I asked why the promise of the Holy Spirit was given, I came up with three answers. The first is: The Promise was given to help us experience God. This is a wonderful thing. Think about the fact that we serve a God who wants us to experience him. He wants a relationship with us that is intimate, real and full of emotion. Think about the fact that God has designed us to desire human relationships that are intimate, real and full of emotion. If we were made in God’s image, we can be sure that he wants that same kind of relationship with us.
Without Jesus we would never have known completely what God was like. But he came to live before us that we might know him. So why do we need the Holy Spirit? Without the Holy Spirit we would never be able to connect with God. In his human form, Jesus could only relate to one person, or at best a few people, at a time. And even then his relationship with us could not be as intimate as his Spirit living inside of his people. Jesus understood this, and that is why he said, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).
What does the Holy Spirit do? The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin — that is, he convinces us that we have sinned and are in need of God’s forgiveness. He brings about real guilt that we might experience real forgiveness. In this way he makes it possible for us to come to God. He brings about a spiritual awakening. He connects us to God. Before the atonement of Christ no one could have the Spirit of God living in them, because it was impossible for God to dwell in the presence of sin. But once the atonement was made, by the merits of the blood of Christ in his death on the cross, then those who came to God could have their sins forgiven and their guilt removed. Their inner house was now a proper dwelling for the Spirit of God. Men and women could experience God in a way they had never been able to before. The Scriptures say to us, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 1:13). We believed. We confessed our sin. We turned from our sin in repentance. The grace of God then did a work in our hearts which brought us into a right relationship with God. Our lives were then filled with God, and we inherited eternal life and the kingdom of God. All of this because God in his goodness sent the Holy Spirit. It is the coming of the Holy Spirit into the world that we recognize on Pentecost Sunday. Because we can experience God, we have something wonderful to celebrate.
This is something totally different from religion, it is a relationship. It is something different from formal ritual, because it is an ongoing celebration of our life in God. It is not about doctrine, it is about an experience with the living God. It is never stale, because his mercies are new every morning.
The second reason for God sending his Spirit was: The Promise was given to empower us to live for God. One thing it is impossible to overlook, as you read the book of Acts, is that the disciples were truly different people than they were before the coming of the Holy Spirit. They were spiritually dull. They often didn’t get it when Jesus tried to teach them. They were timid and afraid. Peter denied the Lord, and the rest of the disciples deserted him. But after Pentecost, Peter not only stood up to the authorities who tried to silence him, but after they beat him, he went right back out and started preaching again. Here is how the Bible tells the story: “They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 5:40-42). What an amazing transformation in the lives of these men We need that same kind of transformation in our lives.
Like the Lion in the Wizard of Oz we need new courage. Like the Scarecrow, we need a new brain — a new way of thinking. Like the Tin Man we need a new heart. And like Dorothy we need someone to help us get home. All of this happens when we are filled with the Holy Spirit. When we receive the promised Holy Spirit into our lives, we too not only have a new way of thinking, we get a new heart, new courage and we find ourselves at home. All of that translates into a new power in our lives. Jesus told his disciples: “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). The power of a transformed life was part of the promise.
Peter knew what it was like to run from danger and then, after the filling of the Spirit, be empowered to stare it in the face and stand his ground. He wrote to strengthen others who had failed in the area of courage: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:3-4).
We are powerless to live the Christian life on our own. Try it in your own power and you will fail. But when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will live in the victory of a new life. When Jesus lived on the earth as a human being, he empowered the disciples to do miraculous things. But when he left the earth, he sent the Holy Spirit to empower his followers. As Jesus was the presence of God for the time of the early disciples, so the Holy Spirit is the presence of God for our time.
The third reason the Holy Spirit was promised is: The Promise was given to make us a part of a kingdom. The Christian experience is not just an individual experience. Our experience is a part of something larger. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we are a part of the body of Christ. We are members of a kingdom that is larger than ourselves. James said, “Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?” (James 2:5). We are a part of something bigger than ourselves — something wonderful and eternal.
The writer of Hebrews says, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). This kingdom of which we are a part cannot be shaken by the trials and tragedies of life. Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
E. Stanley Jones, in his book The Unshakable Kingdom, writes: “H. B. Wells, who when fumbling through history in search of the relevant came across the fact of the kingdom of God and was shocked as by an electric shock: ‘Why here is the most radical proposal ever presented to the mind of man, the proposal to replace the present world order with God’s order, the kingdom of God.’ It is. So I’m excited with a divine excitement. As a possible last fling, I’d like to fling my blazing torch of the Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person [of Jesus] amid the burned out heap of extinguished or dying enthusiasms, to set them ablaze again with the relevant — the really relevant, the fact of the kingdom of God on earth exemplified in Jesus.”
Jones, in speaking of the kingdom of God, says, “We cannot be at cross purposes with ultimate reality without getting hurt, vitally hurt.” The opposite is even more true: We cannot live in harmony with ultimate reality without being blessed, vitally blessed. Something wonderful happens when we are not only connected with God, but connected with the world and the way God has made it. Our lives take on a harmony with the world around us and we find ourselves excited about life again. We are running with the grain of the world instead of against it. We begin to understand that Christianity is the secret of the universe, and when we understand that and live in harmony with the principles of life which Jesus gave us, life takes on new meaning and joy. Life begins to make sense and finally begins to work. We discover that when we placed our faith in Christ, it was well placed. We have a new vitality, a new hope, new joy.
Paul said, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead” (Philippians 3:13). There is one great aim and goal of our lives as we set our eyes like flint on the kingdom of God. But, so often, the people of this world do not have one great thing they do, they have a hundred things they dabble in. They are always questioning and never believing; always seeking and never finding. But when we come to Christ something changes. You know who God is, who you are and how life works.
It is possible to resist the Holy Spirit and find yourself at odds with life because you are at odds with the kingdom. You may remember that Amy VanDyke told us in her testimony that at one point in her life she was disturbed that she was feeling guilty over doing things that she knew did not please God, and was upset that none of her friends seemed to deal with guilt, because most of them had not been brought up in the church or Christian homes. At that point she asked the Holy Spirit to go away and stop bothering her. And he did. From that point on she felt no guilt, but she was not any happier. Fortunately, the time came when she wanted the Holy Spirit to come back into her life and he did. But it is possible to resist the Holy Spirit.
How do we stop resisting the Holy Spirit and receive the Holy Spirit? The Bible says, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). That is it. We confess our sins to God, ask for his forgiveness, turn from sin and turn to him, and he fills us with himself. Your life can be full of God. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21). This is not something we do, it is something God does for us. And God is wanting to do it for you now.
One of the daughters of Malcom X wrote her memoirs, telling what it was like to be raised in the home of the famous black leader. Ilyasah Shabazz was the third daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz. Betty Shabazz took the girls to the mosque every Sunday, but when they were visiting their grandparents in Philadelphia, they went to Friendship Baptist Church. Ilyasah loved the church, especially the praying and testifying and the singing of gospel music. She writes, “I loved the singing that went on. I wanted to feel whatever powerful force was causing all of these people to sing and clap so heartily. I never did catch the Spirit, but I always kept the hope.” Probably no one told her that she just needed to open her heart to the Spirit and that he was more than ready to come in.
Rodney J. Buchanan
May 30, 2004
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
