Let me wish you all a Happy Birthday and can I say that none
of you look a day over two thousand years old. Why am I wishing you Happy
Birthday? Well today is Pentecost
Sunday, it is the day when we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit in power
on those first disciples fifty days after Passover and Jesus death and
resurrection. It has been called the birthday celebration of the Church. At its
core the church is a spiritual being, yes it’s very human institution with all
its foibles and faults. But it is also that we are God’s spirited people called
to live in a new way, and it came into being with the coming of the Holy
Spir
We’ve been working
our way through Jesus teaching on the Holy Spirit and last week and this week
we are finishing that off by looking at the first disciple’s experience of
receiving the Holy Spirit. Jesus had said that after he had gone back to the
father he would send another Paraclete to be with and within his followers. The
Paraclete: A trusted friend who would come alongside and advise…One like Jesus,
the Holy Spirit, who is the third person of the Trinity… the spirit of truththat would teach us and bring to mind all that Jesus had said… The spirit whowould witness to Jesus, convict the world of their need for God, and enable usto be witnesses as well… the breath of God, that would bring new life as Godcomes and dwells within us… now in the Pentecost story we see that become a
reality.
Luke’s account of Pentecost is in three sections, the first
is a narrative of what happened, of the coming of the Holy Spirit, which
focuses on the physical signs that accompanied this event. The second is
Peter’s speech, in which Peter explains to the crowd what is happening and why
, he does that it terms of God’s promise from the Hebrew scriptures, in
particular the prophecy we had read out from Joel chapter 2 and also focuses on
what God has done through the life, passion, resurrection and ascension of
Jesus. It marks the beginning of the Church being witnesses to Jesus alongside
the Holy Spirit. The last section of the narrative tells of the impact of the
Spirit’s presence on those first believers. Today we are going to focus on the
first and last section of Acts Chapter 2, the coming of the Spirit and what a
spirit filled community looks like. It’s not that the middle section isn’t
important and we’ll look at it in passing,
but we’ve focused a lot on what’s in there in this series already.
Out of all the Gospel writers Luke would fit best into our
modern day setting. Hollywood would love him because he has written a sequel to
his account of Jesus life and mission. In his introduction to what we call
Acts, Luke tells his intended audience that in his first book he had written
all that Jesus had begun to do and we are to see what is going to happen in the
life of the church now as being what Jesus continues to do through his
disciples by the Holy Spirit. Both the gospel and Acts, give an account of the
Holy Spirit coming and enabling the ministry and mission of Jesus to happen. In
the gospel, in Luke chapter 3, the Holy Spirit comes on Jesus at his baptism,
That coming is accompanied by physical manifestations, a dove and a voice from
heaven saying ‘this is my son in whom I am pleased’. Luke chapter four then
starts by saying ‘Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit’ and we get an account of
the beginning of his mission. In Acts we see the Holy Spirit again descend on
the disciples all gathered together in one place, its accompanied by signs, a
noise like a wind, tongues of fire alighting on each of the believers gathered
there and those believers speaking in
the different languages of the known world. And we are told that the believers
are filled with the Holy Spirit. They then begin their ministry and mission.
Pentecost is a festival to celebrate the wheat harvest, but
had also had religious significance placed with it as celebrating the giving of
the law to Moses on Mt Sinai. In Israel’s thinking At Passover they celebrated
God’s saving acts in bring Israel out of Egypt and with the coming of the law
we have Israel being constituted as God’s people. So with Jesus death and
resurrection being God’s saving action for us over sin and death with the
coming of the spirit we have God constituting his new people, A people that would be draw together from all
the different people of the world.
Fire and wind are symbols from the Old testament of
theophany, times when God shows up in power: Like the fiery pillar at night with the people
of Israel as they came out of Egypt and travelled through the wilderness. Like Elijah
and the prophets of Baal Mt Camel, with the fire from heaven. Like Elijah encountering God at Mt Sinai, after
being depressed and feeling so alone encounters God in a violent storm and then
the reality of God in a small still voice.
The difference here with the fire is that in the Old
Testament it is God’s presence with his people corporately and in Acts the fire
lights on each individual believer. In the Old testament God was present with
his people and specific leaders were said to be filled with the Holy Spirit to
achieve specific tasks; like making the tabernacle, prophecy, but now every
believe is filled and baptised by the Spirit. AS peter will say it is for you
and your children and your children’s children.
The other difference in the Pentecost story is the
phenomenon of speaking in different languages, and this is the one that Luke
focuses on. We are told that the as the spirit filled the believers they were
enabled to speak in languages they had not learned. That those who had come to Jerusalem from
round the whole of the known world, were amazed because they heard these
Galileans, thought of as uneducated local yokels, speaking in their native
languages. In the scriptures such manifestations of the Spirit are called signs
and the disciples speaking in these different languages is a sign of the
universality of the Gospel, the scope of the mission Jesus was calling this new
people to of being witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of
the earth.
Speaking in tongues
is mentioned as a gift of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12 and like in the
church in Corinth it is a rather controversial gift. Some say this was a one
off experience for the church, others have said that you have not received the
Holy Spirit unless you speak in tongues. Both of which, I believe are wrong. AS
you read through the New Testament you see that there are many times when it
talks of God sending his spirit to fill people and it is not always accompanied
by speaking in tongues. God gives the gifts that you and I need for the setting
we find ourselves in. It’s more correct
to say that being filled with the Holy Spirit enables us to witness to Christ
and to speak God’s words and tongues is a specific manifestation of that.
I have no problem believing that the gift of tongues is for
the church today because my experience of that is kid if like the Pentecost
experience.
I first encountered it in a very Presbyterian way, At the
Presbyterian church I grew up in, we had one of our elders say at the end of a
worship time. I believe God wants me to give a message in tongues, which he
gave. Another elder on the other side of the church them gave what you might
call a prophetic message or a word of encouragement in English. The minister
asked if the elder who had spoken in tongues though that was the interpretation.
Then the wife of another elder stood up and said that she had been a teacher in
Tonga for many years and although the language wasn’t Tongan she understood
some of the words in the message in tongues, and they appeared where she would
expect them to in the translations.
In my own experience at a healing meeting I was asked by a
man to pray for him, he was going into hospital to have an operation on his
veracious veins. I didn’t know what to pray so I asked if he minded if I prayed
for him in tongues. He said that was fine and so I did. When I finished he
turned to me and said ‘ Do you know what you’ve just done’. I was a bit worried
as he was Maori and maybe I’d just done something culturally inappropriate. So
is aid with trepidation “no”. Well You just prayed for me in fluent Maori and I
understood every word you just said. I don’t speak Maori by the way. So I
thought I’d better ask him what I had said and he replied, just in case it was
simply a new recipe for watercress and pork bones. He told me I had been giving
praise to God and praying against powers and principalities. I don’t know id
the man was healed or not, but isn’t it God to want to speak to someone who was
concerned and worried about an operation
in his own mother language, letting him know that God was in control.
It happens occasionally, one time I was praying for a Cook
Island man and again I didn’t know what to prayer for him only that God wanted
me to pray for him in tongues, so I did. Afterwards he told me he didn’t know his
own language that much but had understood enough to hear God say ‘I know you by
name”. He went on to tell me that he was studying theology and where he was
studying he felt he was being forced into the mould of being a beige Pakeha (Maori
name for people of European ethnicity) and his Cook Island culture was being
ignored. The thing that really irked him was the way that people butchered his
name, so it was liberating and healing to here God say “I know you by name”.
It is easy to miss amidst the physical manifestations in the
Pentecost narrative the central and important truth that the Holy Spirit came
and dwelt on all who believed. We don’t always need the special affects the
reality is that God gives his spirit to his people. It tells us that all who
were gathered there were filled with the spirit. And as Peter explains it was a
result of God’s desire to dwell with his people. A sign of the new age that
Jesus life, death and resurrection has heralded.
It has been interesting that with the renewal of the
charismatic and Pentecostal movement there has been a growing interest and
emphasis on the manifestations of the spirit whereas Acts finishes its account
of Pentecost with the manifesto of the Spirit, how the Spirit presence impacted
the lives of that first church and what I feel we can see as the marks of a
genuine moving of the Holy Spirit today.
Firstly it results in a renewal of worship. It tells us that
the disciples were full of joy and giving thanks to God. It tells us that there
was a heightened sense of awe and wonder at what God was doing.
Secondly there was genuine repentance. In response to peter’s
sermon the crowd asked ‘what must we do to be saved’, they turned to God. It
shouldn’t come as a surprise that this is a response to the movement of the
Holy Spirit as Jesus had said one of the roles of the Spirit was to convict the
world of their need for God.
There was a growing desire to learn more form the word of
God. The first church devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles. Again this is a response to the movement and
presence of the Spirit of truth.
The spirit was preforming signs and wonders in and through
the worshipping community.
There was a desire for Christian unity and love. The believers meet regularly and practised
hospitality. They focused on breaking bread together. They held everything in
common.
There was a heightened concern for the poor which resulted
in compassionate action. The believers
sold what they had and gave the money to those in need.
There was an increased emphasis on prayer.
There was an emphasis on evangelism, proclaiming the good
news about Jesus and demonstrating that through how they lived. God was adding
to their number daily those who were being saved.
I'm sorry Steve... I can't see how this is a comment... I'm sorry if I've missed the connection and the interaction you are wanting to make>.. I am forced to think that you simply republished of one of your blog posts on my blog with an invite to follow your blog. I'll leave your comment up for a while and see if you get back to me, I'm always open to discussing things, otherwise I'll delete it as spam.
ReplyDeleteMy last comment related to a comment someone had made and as they did not respond in a week I have removed it as spam.
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