Fire and Wind: The Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts and our Lives today (Index) .

Between Easter and Pentecost for the past few years I have preached a series looking at what the scripture has to say about the Holy Spirit. Last year in a series called 'Come Holy Spirit" we looked through the Holy Spirit in John's Gospel focusing on that wonderful title that Jesus uses for the Spirit 'Paraclete' the trusted friend who comes alongside and is able to give advise.

This year we have taken a seven week look at the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts... focusing mainly on the four times it speaks of people being filled with the Holy Spirit. It has been a bit of a whistle stop journey rather than a verse by verse chapter by chapter trek. We've seen that the focus of the Holy Spirit's presence in Acts is to enable and empower the new people of God to be witnesses to Jesus Christ from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. That the spirit does that by giving the believers courage to speak the Gospel... in the Old Testament the sign of someone being filled with the spirit was that they prophesied or 'spoke forth God's word and its seems natural that this is what would happen with people in the New Testament, they would speak God's word. The word and truth that the Holy Spirit according to John revealed to them in its fullness. They lived in a way that reflected the Kingdom of God, they dedicated themselves to the apostles teachings, prayer, joyful worship, hospitality and concern for those in need; they loved each other and held things in common. The Spirit also moved in power through their ministry as they witnessed to Jesus Christ risen from the dead and showed his compassion and love to those in need.

The Image that I chose to go with the Series is one I discovered which I believe both encaptulates the idea of Wind and fire but also encapsulates the logo of The Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, the burning bush from Exodus 3, Which for me reflects my hope that as a denomination we may again be filled by the Spirit as we are called by the Holy God, who sees and hears and cares and Sends and goes with, to witness to the risen Jesus Christ in our neighbourhoods cities, this nation and to the ends of the earth... Of course one of my running gags about New Zealand is that it may not be the ends of the earth... but just maybe you can see it from here.

I have used several commentaries for this series. Manly... I Howard Marshall in the Tyndale New Testament series... Darrell Bock in the Baker Exegetical Commentary On The New Testament  series... and  Ajith Fernando in The NIV Application Commentary Series. I found them all great companions and guides for looking at the Book of Acts, I particularly enjoyed the fresh perspective that Ajith Fernando bought coming for a Sri Lankan background and being a long term mission practitioner as well as an insightful scholar.

The purpose of this post is to provide an easy to follow Index for this series. It may seem rather arrogant of me to presume that people will find my preaching worthy of reflection and reading But my hope is that The Holy Spirit may use my attempts at faithfully expounding (opening up) the Word of God to teach, encourage, strengthen and inspire...

Acts 1: 1-26... What's in a Name And Waiting on The Holy Spirit (A series Introduction)

Acts 2:29-47 A Snapshot of being God's Spirited People

Acts 3:1-26 Witnessing in The Power of The Holy Spirit (it's a Lot More Ordinary Than you Think)

Acts 4:1-31 Shaking Off The Opposition: Praying for the Holy Spirit's Power In the Face of Set
                      Backs 

Acts 10:1-48 Out Of The Comfort Zones: The Holy Spirit leads Us Into Mission across the barriers

Acts 19:1-21  Did You Receive The Holy Spirit When You Believed?

Acts 2:1-21,37-47 And They Were All Filled With The Holy Spirit... (Pentecost Sunday)


Does this selection mean that the Spirit wasn't at work in the other chapters of Acts?... No in fact I happen to agree the idea that the Book of Acts is more about the continuing work of Christ through the Holy Spirit in the lives of the Early Church rather than about the Acts of the Apostles...  It is a very human story as well as very much a God story  and like all the way through history the Spirit has been involved in leading and guiding in the midst of the church getting it right and getting it wrong, focusing on mission and dealing with maintenance.

"All of Them Were Filled With The Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-21,37-47)... Fire and Wind (part 7)

 

For better or worse the Holy Spirit is often equated just with the Pentecostal movement. It is the biggest movement in the Christianity in the past century... Don’t get me wrong I’m just stating a fact not putting them down… I mean some of my best friends are Pentecostals.  Ajith Fernando sees that the great contribution of this  Pentecostal and charismatic (that’s those who stayed in mainline denominations) movement… “is to give back to the church the importance of a subjective experience of Christ through the Holy Spirit, both in one’s personal life and in corporate worship.”  In our reformed tradition we have a tendency to focus on the transcendence of God which lead to an austerity in worship and the Pentecostal emphasis on the immanence of God balances that out.  However Fernando also sees one of the results of the rise of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements has been that it has caused two extremes, … on the one hand “Charasmania”… an over emphases on the importance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in particular tongues and on the other hand “charasphobia”… those who have been put of the Holy Spirit because of all the emphasis on those weird gifts. It’s been hard to actually maintain a solid and biblical understanding of the Ministry of the Holy Spirit in the church between these two extremes… to go beyond wrestling with the manifestations of the spirit to fully understand the manifesto of the Holy Spirit in our lives. That’s why for the past few years between Easter and Pentecost we’ve focused on what the scriptures have to say about the Holy Spirit.

Last year we looked at what Jesus had to say about the HolySpirit in John’s gospel. We saw that the spirit was the means by which we would know God’s presence with and in us, because the Spirit is God. That Christ would come and dwell with us by the Spirit. That the Spirit would lead us into all truth: remind us of Jesus words and help us to fully understand who Jesus is. In all that the Spirit would give us peace and wholeness that the world cannot take away because the world did not give it. We saw the wonderful metaphor Jesus used for the Holy Spirit …Paraclete, the trusted friend who draws near, comes alongside and provides advice, a councillor and comforter, someone to lead us and guide us.

This year we’ve been focusing on the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. We’ve seen that the emphasis for Acts is how the Promised coming of the Holy Spirit enables the church to fulfil the mission given to us by Jesus, as Luke puts it, to be witnesses to the risen Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. We’ve focused on that in this series because that is what Acts focuses on, we actually need the whole of scripture to know the whole of the breadth and depth, the totality of what God is doing by his Spirit in and through us.

Well in the church calendar it’s Pentecost Sunday… from the Jewish festival of Pentecost… Pentecost gets its name from being celebrated 50 days after Passover. It was the festival to celebrate the end of the barley harvest and acknowledge the start of the wheat harvest. It also was a time when the Jews celebrated the giving of law through Moses at Mt Sinai. For the Christian church Pentecost is when we remember the sending of the Holy Spirit on those first believers and on us. We’ve already looked at this event in this series and what I want to focus on today is  ‘All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” and what that means for us today.

To get that point we need to some preliminaries…The passage in Acts 2 that we had read out to us today follows the pattern of a gospel miracle story, it was written by the same person who wrote Luke. We have the setting for the miracle, in Jerusalem at Pentecost, then we have a description of the event itself… The sound like the rushing wind and tongues of fire coming upon the believers, who were gathered together, and we are told that all the believers were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different languages. They started praising God and telling of the mighty things God had done. People gather and react in one of two ways… they are amazed and want to know what it means or they write it off as a bunch of yokels drunk on wine and gibbering. Then we have the miracle explained for us, remember in scriptures miracles are not unexplained supernatural phenomena they are signs that point us to God. So Peter explains what is happening and what it means, he links it back to the scriptures and shows how what is happened is about the death resurrection and exaltation of Jesus and invites people to respond to that. Then we have the narrative of what happened as a result of the sign, we see people come to believe in Christ and because of the Spirit’s presence and we see the believers living out their faith.

Our focus is that they were” All filled with the Holy Spirit”… The first thing I want to say is that this is not about the believers so much as about God.  This is a narrative about God keeping his promise. That God would come and dwell with and in his people in a new way. Peter in his sermon uses a quote from the prophet Joel to show this was God’s intent… ‘in the last days I will pour out my spirit on all people”. Peter will go to explain that with the coming of Jesus that this new messianic age had been bought into existence, the kingdom of God was inaugurated the last days had come. Isaiah 44:3 which peter alludes to at the end of his sermon says I will pour out my spirit on you and your descendants. Ezekiel 36:26- 27 says “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. “ …God was doing what he had promised.

Jesus had said God would send his spirit on those who believed. They were to wait in Jerusalem till it happened. In Peter’s sermon which focuses on Christ we see that it is because of Christ we have been put right with God and he is able to come and dwell within us. Fire in the Old Testament is often connected to God’s Judgement and cleansing and in this case we see that the tongues of fire come and settle on each believer, they are judged to be in Christ, forgiven welcomed in. We are able to be filled by the Spirit because of the very promise and action and grace of God.

Secondly it was all of them who were filled with the spirit. In the Old Testament there is a sense that God dwells with his people by his Spirit, we have the cloud and fiery pillar in the exodus.  The tabernacle and then the temple, Ezekiel has that wonderful special effects filled vision during the exile of God’s presence moving from Jerusalem and going with the exiles. But it’s in a very general way and it only speaks of specific people being filed with the Spirit of God usually for specific tasks: For leadership, prophecy, the first people who are recorded as being filled with the spirit are Bezalel and Oholiab who were filled with the spirit to design and build the tabernacle.

The fire now touched everyone Now God dwells within everyone and Peter reiterates this by refereeing to the prophecy in Joel.  In three parallels it says that God will pour out his spirit on all people and is very clear to express that across the barriers of gender, age, and social status. Men and women, and both will prophecy, God will dwell and empower and enable men and women.. There is no age barrier, Old and Young will see vision and have dreams. David Strickland our minister in Titirangi,  was from Pennsylvania, and I remember him telling the story of how revival came to a part of that State through the children playing church and the spirit coming with manifestations like in Acts 2, and they rushed off to tell their older brothers and sisters what had happened and it happened again and finally the parents caught on as their children shared it with them. Age is not a barrier. Then we see it was even to be on the servants and salves as well, again both male and female. The poor and powerless.  In fact one of the criticisms of Christianity early on was that it was just a religion for women and salves… yup praise God it is.  Even the believers themselves were being written off as just a bunch of Galileans, but God chose and often choses to start  new things and do great things through folk who are not at the centre of the power and status of their times. The church in the west has tried for too long to do what it is called to do from the centre of power rather than realising it’s by the Spirit and often from the edge that God moves.

And we really do need to talk about the “and they all spoke in tongues”… because for many people that is sort of the sticking point… it’s the charasmania or charasphobia bit right? Over the past few weeks we’ve looked at the occasions in Acts where it talks of people being filled with the Holy Spirit and in three of them it mentions tongues as well.  But here as in other parts of the acts it seems to be in terms of the idea of it being a prophetic act. In Acts 2 the sign is that all the gospel  was for all people, more time is spent in Acts 2 giving us a rundown of all the people who were there and heard the mighty acts of God being spoken in their own tongues that in telling us about the event itself. The sign was that the believers were being enabled to be witnesses to the ends of the earth, and in terms Jews from the Roman world we have them listed from east to west. The Good News of redemption in Jesus Christ was for them, and as we see as we go further through Acts it was not only for the Jews from those places but also for the gentiles as well, and of course as we sit here in twenty first century new Zealand we know it was for the whole world.… the tongues was a sign of that wonderful grace not of believers being filled with the Spirit.

The idea that speaking in tongues is the sign of being baptised in the Spirit, does not actually stand up to scrutiny either in scripture, where the one Spirit gives  gifts the church for the common good. As I said before the first people who were said to be filled with the spirit in exodus didn’t speak in tongues, unless like me interior design for you is a whole different language, or again like me the instructions for raising tents seem to equally be written in a different language. In scripture even Acts 2 evidence of the presences of the Spirit is in the way the people lived and loved each other.  Nor does it hold up experientially, I know people who are amazing saints who you just feel God’s presence oozing from who don’t or didn’t speak in tongues. However I agree with Ajith Fernando we should be open to all that God has for us. I actually find it a helpful Gift from God in my Christian walk. (here is a link to my testimony about Speaking in tongues as part of another message... Speaking in tongues the problem gift)

There is something quite amazing about the fact that the Jews in Jerusalem heard it in their own language as well. You might expect that it would be easier to speak in Greek or Aramaic the dominant common language of the day. But everyone heard their own native birth language being used what I call their heart language, Christianity was not to be a colonising conquering faith, the faith of empire (sadly that has been what has happened in history) but rather to speak good news and new life into every culture. The new people of God are not designed to be a homogeneous unit but filled with the great diversity of the tapestry of humanity  together in Christ, all filed with the same spirit. There is a real challenge for us in our increasingly multicultural world on how we are to live that out and we need the spirits presence to do it.

They were all filled with the Spirit… we shouldn’t be surprised by that because they and we are all invited to know God personally in Christ, God presences himself in a new way with his people, with and in each one of us drawing us together as community. ..We shouldn’t be surprised because it’s not just leaders and people for special tasks like in the Old Testament …because we are all called and commissioned to witness to the hope we have in the death resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit It is for you and you and you… and your children and your children’s children.

Did you receive the Holy Spirit When You Believed (Acts 19:1-21)... Fire and Wind (Part 6)

Can you imagine going into a car yard and buying a brand new car, not a real flash car just the basic model without all those fancy optional extras, leather seats, mag wheels, pumping stereo system, with mp3 docking and Bluetooth so you can play music from your phone, although as the father of teenagers I am told that last one isn’t really an optional extra it’s an essential… you’d told them you don’t want those optional extras.  You jump in, inhale that nice new car smell, settle yourself in, they may not be leather but its more comfortable than the beaten up seat in your old car, you put the key in the ignition and turn it and… well nothing… nothing happens… you try it again and nothing happens just the click sound….What’s going on here?

You pop the bonnet  go round to the front, open it up… … but there is no motor in the front. It’s you didn’t think you’d bought a VW Beetle but just to make sure you open up the boot as well no no motor there either.  You go back to the dealer who is standing there smiling at you and ‘ask what’s going on?’ and he says “Oh with this model the motor is an optional extra”? crazy right… totally and utterly ridiculous, A bit like trying to be followers of Jesus without the Holy Spirit.

We are working our way through the book of Acts as a way of better understanding the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the early church and hopefully in our lives today. The passage we had read out to us today in Acts 19 has I believe a lot to teach us and tell us about the spirit, about mission and about witnessing to Jesus Christ.

The passage we had read out to us today is the story of Paul’s ministry in the city of Ephesus.  It’s a challenging passage, for the first time we see the Christian faith go head to head with the worldview of pagan religious practise… What you might call magic or occult practises. It’s a story that shows the way in which the new believers moved from a synchronistic understanding of the Christian faith, standing with a foot in both camps if you were, to abandoning their pagan religious practises and embracing the Christian faith fully.   It’s a passage that because of the setting focuses on what we might call the move of the Spirit in power, through signs and wonders, in the face of the overt spirituality of the people of Ephesus God moves in power to reveal the truth about Jesus. That the Christian faith is different you can’t just use it like another magic formula.

But the passage starts with Paul’s encounter with a group identified as disciples who did not know about the Holy Spirit, who had not received the spirit. This isolated incident has been used as I Howard Marshall says to emphasise that the receiving of the Holy Spirit is a secondary experience separate from salvation. It’s contributed to the idea that there are two classes of believers the haves and the have not’s… those who are supposedly filled with the spirit and the others.  I’m going to focus on this first section and then round up with some comments on the rest of the passage.

Paul’s coming to Ephesus follows on from the story of Apollo’s a good preacher and bible teacher who seems to have gone about telling people about Jesus but only had half the story. His focus was on the baptism of John the Baptist simply for repentance with no understanding of new life in Christ. We are told that Pricilla and Aquilla spent time sharing the rest of the gospel with him. The implication is that the group at Ephesus had come to a sort of version of faith through Apollos’ teaching. Paul has to correct their understanding as well.  For Paul the fact that the believers hadn’t received the spirit was a sign that they hadn’t fully understood and responded to the reality of who Jesus was, his death and resurrection. They were not Christians more disciples of John the Baptist.  When they believe because of Paul’s message he baptises them in Jesus name, they are the only people who it is mentioned are re baptised in the new testament, he lays hands on them and they receive the Holy Spirit, as a sign of that they prophecy, which is to speak forth God’s word and speak in tongues.  The problem we have is what are we to make of this rather interesting and anything but common occurrence? What does it have to do with us to day?

Some as I mentioned before say that it means that people can believe in Jesus and still need to be baptised in the Holy Spirit as a second experience, and it needs to be accompanied by signs like speaking in tongues.  People often point to things like John Wesley taking of his heart being strangely warmed or the azura street revival which is the birth of the modern Pentecostal movement as examples of this happening. This often has more to do with coming into a fuller awareness of the spirits presence and power in our lives because when we come to put our trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour that God sends his spirit to dwell in us, to be with us. The Holy Spirit is the means by which we experience the rejuvenation that comes in Christ.

I think a lot of people are like these disciples in Ephesus because we can say “o we didn’t even know about the Holy Spirit’ we think it’s like an optional extra for the super spirituals rather than the abiding presence of God in our lives. To use the analogy I started off with its kind of like we don’t realise that it is the Spirit that energises and enables our faith to go somewhere like the engine does on a car. Did you receive the holy Spirit when you believed?... yes… are you allowing your life to be filled by the Spirit? That perhaps is the more pertinent question.

The resting image in our service today contains a verse that is from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where he invites his listeners to be filled with the spirit, in English this seems to be referring to a one off event, but it is in a Greek tense that we have trouble translating into English , it has the sense of be filed and keep on being filled with the spirit, of an ongoing relationship. Paul had contradicted it with Don’t get drunk on wine and there is a sense that being drunk is being under the influence of more and more alcohol, to be filled with the spirit is to allow ourselves on an ongoing basis to be filled up with the very presence of God.

 

The challenge is that often don’t cultivate that in our lives. We forget to ask God to send his spirit more and more into our lives, our call to worship this morning came from Luke’s gospel where Jesus invites us to ask and to seek and to find and that God who knows how to give good gifts to his children will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask, we ask to know more of God’s presence in our lives.  Again in his letter to the Ephesians Paul invites his follower as they live by the Spirit, as they have experienced the new life in Christ by the Spirit, then they are to walk in step with the Spirit. Allowing God to speak into our lives as we open ourselves up the scriptures and prayer regularly as we respond to what we have heard and allow our lives to change, in the way we treat each other and care for others. You only have to watch TV police reality shows to see what people who are under the influence of alcohol walk like and act like, right. To walk with the spirit is to be made more and more like Christ; its fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control.

Ok let’s look at the rest of reading this morning. As I said before Paul is ministering in a very different spiritual environment than many of us are used to. We might relate to Paul arguing on a cognitive level with the Jews in the synagogue and for two years preaching and wrestling with the gentiles, it’s interesting to note that Paul strategically chose Ephesus because it was the central city for the whole province of Asia minor and the church spread throughout the region. We see that in that environment God chose to reveal himself through a series of what even Luke calls extraordinary miracles. When people are held captive by overt occult practises then God’s presence and the gospel can have some very powerful and profound effects.  At church last night we had a fundraiser for the 'One on One Medical Mission' to East Timor, and we were addressed by Annie Chen, a GP from Christchurch who has been doing mission work in Cambodia and East Timor, Annie shared about the amazing miracles God was going, but not so much miraculous healings, more miracles of the way people suddenly were turning up to be involved in caring for the poorest of the poor, and the way God lead her to the neediest. She shared about sensing that God was saying that their was a girl waiting in Cambodia to be sponsored to train to be a medical doctor, she went to Cambodia and the  Spirit lead her to one girl whom she asked and who aid she was wanted to train to be a doctor but couldn't get a sponsor.  We are not told that Paul actually sanctioned the practise of taking handkerchiefs and sweat bands of his to other people and them being healed, I’m not sure that it is suggesting such things are normative in the church today. In fact I wonder if its wasn’t part of the people of Ephesus seeing this new faith as being like the old occult ways, simply a magic formula to make everything alright. In the ruins of Ephesus they have found amulets that contain the scripts in the name of the God of Abraham and Jacob and in the name of Jesus.  A bit like the seven sons of Sceva thought they could use Jesus name without knowing him. In this passage we are supposed to see that the demonic is real, and that it recognises Jesus name and power but that you don’t just use it like a vampire hunter might use the cross, if you know what I mean. There is a reality about who God is what Christ has done for us and the presence of God with his people through the Holy Spirit that is different.

While people may look at speaking in tongues and prophecy as signs of the Spirits presence, which they can be, because God does show up like that sometimes but as I look at this passage the thing that shows me the Spirit of God was at work is the way the believers grow in their faith. AS a result of what they see of the power of God, they give up their occult practises and occult books and scrolls which probably refers to  charms they would have worn round their necks as protection or as ways of getting prosperity and  burn them and choose to live a more Christian life style. Up to then it seems like is often the case that they were very much living in two worlds in the kingdom of God but still very much hedging their bets, in fact we know by the debate in 1 Corinthians about eating food sacrificed to idols that they were stuck between their culture and their new faith.  But here we see them making a very costly choice, and the amount of money mentioned here for these occult items is vaste. They chose to live in a new way and it has a profound impact on the city they are in, which is both positive and negative, if you read on you see it causes riots and Paul is imprisoned.

A couple of quick summary points. If you are caught up or dabbling in occult stuff, horoscopes, spiritualists, Tarot cards etc your Christian faith will struggle to grow and you need to renounce it and get rid of that stuff. I was up on a hill out at Piha one night and I felt the spirit say repent of involvement with horoscopes as I’d never read one seriously in my life I felt that was strange, but I asked God to forgive me, a long time after that I was again on a hill out Piha way and I felt the spirit remind of that prayer and took my mind back to when I was a young fella I used to wear an Aquarius sign round my neck all the time and I used to hang it up in pride of place in my room when I wasn’t wearing it. Obviously God wanted to deal with that and any negative effects it was having on my faith.

In other ways we might find ourselves compromising our faith, and western materialism is one that we don’t often see, we are caught up in viewing life and our goals and our success and joys in what we have and our standard of living and I can see that stopping us from fully experiencing life in Christ. 

Lastly we need to look at the question Did we receive the Holy Spirit when we believed? The answer is yes but often I think we kind of forget it whereas we need to be asking God for more of his presence in our lives all the time and opening our lives up receive more of that presence, in prayer and the scriptures in fellowship in service. I’m always happy to pray for people to be filled with the spirit because I am aware we all need to know God more and more in our lives.

Electronic Operators, the Burning Bush and Encourgaement to Pray In All Circumstances from jesus Parable of the Persistant Widow and the Unjust Judge (Exodus 3:1--12 and Luke 18:1-8)

I have been noticing recently that I'm getting older... my hair is having a race between turning grey and falling out... but at least it's competitive and lets face it I'm old enough to remember why the picture of the right is funny from the first time round. and I’m getting to that stage in life where I’m struggling to keep up with technology, at least that’s what my kids tell me. I’ve recently got a smart phone and I’m definitely not sure I like the idea of my phone being smarter than I am. And the number of times it tells me I’ve pushed the wrong button and the way it tries to predict and correct my words make me think that it thinks it is smarter than me. And it makes me seem rather dumb as people get these garbled txts for me with weird words plonked in the middle of them. But one piece of modern technology I definitely don’t like is electronic operators. You know when you ring a company or a government agency, even my doctors office, and instead of getting to talk to a real person you get to talk with a machine and have to navigate your way through countless menus before you can get to someone who will help. Anybody else find that frustrating? Or just down right annoying?...If you do then press 2.

 

A while back I wondered what it would be like if God Installed an electronic operator to deal with prayer in supposedly a more efficient way.

EO: Hi you’ve reached prayer central

If you are praying a prayer of Adoration Press 1

If you are praying a set/read or liturgical prayer Press 2

If you are praying a prayer of confession Press 3

If you are saying grace before a meal please Press 4 and depending on the time of day expect a delay.

If you are praying a prayer of intersession, that’s praying for others Press 5

If you are praying a prayer of thanksgiving Press 6

If this is your first time praying Press 7 and we will take you through the process in three easy to follow steps.

If you are praying “the sinner Prayer” Press 8

 

Person: Oh OK I’d better press 5

EO: You have chosen ‘Intercessory prayer’.

If you are praying for the World in general Press 1

If you are Praying for a specific country Press 2 And access our Continents directory.

If you are Praying for your city Press 3 And access our city directory.

If you are Praying for your church Press 4 And access our Denominational directory.

If you are Praying about a health issue Press 5 and Access our Medical directory.

If you are praying for family members then Press 6

If you are praying an emergency prayer Press 7

If you are Praying for the Lost Press 8

Press 9 if you wish to hear these options again and 0 if you wish to be returned to the operator.

Person: Oh I’ll Press 7 If it wasn’t an emergency prayer before but it’s getting that way…

EO: You’ve selected Emergency prayer Hold the line please. RINNG, RINNG, RINNG Click.

You’ve reached the voice mail for “God”. “Hi I’m Not in at the moment Please leave your name, phone number, church affiliation and a brief message after the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” BEEP.

Person: Oh ah It’s Heinrich Morse, 347 0002, St Emma’s at the mall here, Umm I’m Just praying to you about my mum’s health. She’s Ah really sick, the doctors say she doesn’t have that long to live and that it’s only a miracle that can save her now. I tried to get you this morning but well I just got your answer machine again. I really would appreciate an answer”.

EO: Thank you.

Press 1 to end this call.

Press 2 if you want to hear your message played back.

Press 3 to delete your message

Press 4 if you would like to re-record your message.

Press 5 for the soothing music of the heavenly choir

Press 6 If you are going to continue praying and would like to access another department.

 

You know sometimes prayer can seem like that... right? Sometimes we pray and the only answer we seem to get is the mocking echo of our voices off the walls and ceiling, or deafening silence as we shout our prayers into the void. We pray and we feel we are not heard let alone that any answer comes. That somehow God is otherwise occupied, too busy with world affairs to worry about our concerns, or just away from the office. He’s gone home left the phone off the hook, put his feet up and fallen asleep in front of the tele…Now before you all go moving away from me just in case of a lightning strike in some of the psalms of lament people of faith have thrown that sort of accusation at God, as they feel abandoned in their suffering.  And it can be easy to get despondent and give up. It’s as if the gates of heaven we’re closed tightly to us and we are left pounding on the doors hoping someone will hear us.

But God Jesus says is quick to answer pray, He doesn’t fob us off. He hears our prayers and he answers. God doesn’t have an Electronic Operator, or voice mail or an answer machine. God’s open twenty four hours a day, and you don’t need a touch tone phone to get through. God’s schedule is never too full that he will tell us to go away and come back another day. God doesn’t have a guard dog secretary to keep people away. But rather ‘God will see his chosen Get Justice quickly’.

In the bible reading we had this evening from Luke 18 Jesus told a parable to encourage us to pray. I have a suspicion that many of you here today could relate to that, from a position of powerlessness and the edge of society wrestling to make someone in authority hear and respond to your need.

Jesus talked of a widow who went to an unjust judge to demand justice. In Jewish culture care for widows and orphans was an important part of the way people were to honour their covenant relationship to God. If it was in a modern setting, she would have gone to his office to see him. She’d have made an appointment and been seen but then heard nothing from the judge. Why should he deal with this issue, she is just a poor widow there is more important and lucrative things to deal with. She’d rung back almost everyday, left messages on his phone, sent emails, she’d come back to see him and he’d told his secretary to tell her he was out, then she’d taken to waiting for him in his waiting room. He’d had to tell her a few times as he went out to lunch with important people that he didn’t have time at the moment. She’d even started waiting outside his door every morning and night… he used to park his flash car outside so everyone could see it but now he simply drove into the security parking area under the building and took the lift up to his office. She’d got his home phone number and mobile and kept ringing. Now when he walked down the street or drove past a crowd he thought he saw her there on the side of the road looking at him… He’d look up when he was out to dinner or lunch and he’d catch a glimpse of her, or at least he thought he did. Perhaps he could take out a restraining order… but she’d even started to appear in his dreams. This can’t go on… It’s wearing him out…So finally, even though he’s not interested in justice, he goes into the office one day rings her up sees her and deals with the situation… and he gets the first full night’s sleep he’s had for a while.

Well how is that an encouragement for us to pray in every situation?

The hope we have Jesus is tells us is that God is not at all like the unjust judge. In fact all the way through scripture God is affirmed as being a just judge, full of mercy, for and with his people. The hope we have when we pray is in the very character of God.

In our other reading this evening from the book of Exodus we have God revealing himself to Moses in the burning bush. And I love the fact that the logo of our church is the burning bush because of what it tells us of God’s very nature. Moses encounters the Holy God in the burning bush, not a distant disinterested deity, but one who has drawn near. God tells Moses that he has heard the cries of his people, he has seen their suffering and that God cares and will deliver them and he is sending a saviour to free them from their troubles and slavery, and he will go Moses. God’s nature is revealed… God hears, God sees, God draws near, God cares, God sends and God goes with. We can come to God in prayer because the God Moses encountered at the burning bush is the same God who is the father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the same God who hears and sees and care and answers and sends and saves today.

Coming back to Luke chapter 18, we only need to see who is telling us this parable to see it is true, God sees, God hears, God cares about our suffering about our slavery to sin and to death that he has drawn near, as John tells us in the prologue to his gospel, the word became flesh, as he tells us in that most well-known of scriptures John 3:16 “for God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. We see it in the way Jesus invites the outcasts to come to him, he owns that most beautiful of titles, which was thrown at him as an insult but is so full of hope and the compassion of God “Jesus a friend of sinners” you look at the gospels and see how he sees and hears the needs of the poor and the sick and heals them. How he challenges the authorities of his day to be about Justice and mercy, how at the cross he asks forgiveness for those who persecute him and invites a repentant thief hanging on the cross beside him to be with him today in paradise. …In the fact that he willingly gave up us life on a cross so that you and I may have our sins forgiven and know abundant life in Christ.

It is the same God who meets with by the Holy Spirit today. Who the writers of the New Testament can say ‘cast your cares on him because he cares for you’, ‘we may boldly approach the throne of grace Hebrews 4… That if we say that we are without sin we call God a liar, but if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just,…there it is again, the very character of God… he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The one, Jesus told us, knows how to give his children good gifts and will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.  We have a God who hears and who sees and who cares and who draws near and who sends and in that is encouragement to pray… in that is the assurance that God will see his people get justice quickly.

And like many of Jesus parables this one finishes with a challenge, “but when the son of man comes… referring to Jesus second coming… will he find faith on the earth?” Will he find people who have put their faith and trust in Jesus as their saviour and who are willing to trust him in all circumstances, to continually and persistently come to God  and trust in the sure knowledge that God is with them and for them, that he hears and sees and cares and draws near and responds. The parable we are looking at is most often known as the parable of the persistent widow, and she is the model for us of the life of faith. Coming to God and never giving in or losing hope. Even when the answer is wait or no she is willing to keep putting her trust in the fact that she will receive justice. Jesus words from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:7 sum up that faith… Ask and it will be given to you, Seek and you will find, and Knock and the door will be opened … they also are backed up by the very character of God, God knows how to give good gifts to those who ask him.

Out of Our Comfort Zones... The Holy Spirit leads the Church into Mission (Acts 10)... Fire and Wind: encountering the Holy Spirit inn the Book of Acts and in Our Lives Today (part 5)

It may be easy to read the bible passage in Acts 10 that we did today and not realise that we are reading an account of one of the most seminal moments in history; A moment of revolution, a moment of transformation, a moment that changed the world forever.  Think, Rosa Park refused to move down the back of the bus to let a white man sit down, that was like lighting the fuse of the civil rights movement. Or respected Maori elder Dame Whina Cooper, deciding to start walking from her home on the Hokianga to Wellington to protest for Maori land rights, galvanised a nation to face there past and this injustice, a journey we are still on. Like those things On one level it seems to be a very small event, it involves two men coming together across a geographic distance, an offer of hospitality and the sharing of a new Idea,. At another level it is totally a profound God moment, two people coming together across one of the deepest cultural and religious divides of history, sharing great good news of God’s love and grace: it’s the moment where God shows the fledging church that the good news of salvation and inclusion into God’s people is not just for a chosen few but for all peoples, for Gentile as well as Jew.

We are working our way through the book of Acts to encounter the Holy Spirit in the lives of those first believers and to understand and hopefully experience the movement of the same Holy Spirit in our lives today, individually and as a church. It maybe hard to relate to such a  quantum leap as we read about today but there is so much from this narrative that I believe speaks to us today.

If you’ve been coming along regularly while we’ve been going through this series you’ll notice that we’ve done a big jump this week. Last week we looked at Acts chapter 4 and the way in which those first believers responded to opposition to their message and mission. Between the two passages we have the story of the early church wrestling with trouble within itself and growing persecution from the religious authorities in Jerusalem, culminating in the death of Stephen. Amidst that we see that God continues to answer the believer’s prayer that we looked at last week and gives them the courage to boldly speak God’s word and continues to perform signs and wonders through their ministry. The spirit continues to lead the church and enable people to witness to the risen Jesus Christ. We see the sovereignty of God, Philip being taken to the Kings way to meet a eunuch from Ethiopia who becomes a believer and of course Saul a passionate persecutor of the followers of Jesus, encountering Jesus on the road to Damascus. Both these events lead us to what we read this morning. The Ethiopian eunuch becomes a believer, Paul not only becomes a believer in Jesus but receives a call proclaim Jesus name to the gentiles. All the way through we see the Holy Spirit at work in the church doing the things that Jesus had said the Spirit would do, leading them into all truth, giving them peace, enabling and empowering them to be witnesses.

Then we come to what Darrell Bock calls the most important unit in Acts, where the gospel goes out directly to a gentile and his household for the first time. The drama unfolds like a play told in eight scenes in four parts.  We have the open part where almost in parallel we have God speaking through an angel to Cornelius, a roman officer, and then to Peter, setting the scene for what will happen. Cornelius is called a god fearer that is a non-Jew who is attracted to the Jewish faith, Cornelius showed his devotion in his prayer life, like we saw in Acts 3 he was keeping the hours of prayer and through the way he willing gave money to the poor. He is told that God has heard his prayers. Peter who is simply praying sees a vision of a mix of clean and unclean food and is invited by God to go eat, he is invited to look beyond his cultural and religious worldview to see what God is doing in Christ.

Then in the second part we have the journey and welcome, the barriers start to come down, Peter invites the men who had come from Joppa into the house he is staying in, which would have been a no-no in Jewish culture, risking ritual uncleanliness and then as peter goes to Cornelius’ house he goes and breaks the barrier even more by accepting hospitality in the gentiles house.

The third part consist of the speeches, Cornelius recounts what had happened and how he had been visited by an angel and Peter who had been confused by the vision he had now understands what God had been saying and tells Cornelius and his household about Jesus life and death and resurrection.

Then we have the fourth part, we have an account of the acceptance of the gentiles into God’s kingdom and people as the Holy Spirit comes on them just like it did on those first believers, it convinces Peter that God indeed has called all peoples into a new relationship with him as their people in Jesus Christ, so he baptises them, which is that sign of acceptance and inclusion. Beyond what we read today in Acts 10 the story concludes with in Acts 11:1-18 with the news being bought back to the believers in Jerusalem and an acceptance by the church that  the good news of Jesus Christ is for the gentiles as well.

I want to draw some points out of this narrative for us today. The most important ones come out of the fact that in this narrative we see that this God at work.

All the way through from beginning to end we are shown that this is the work of the God. God hears Cornelius’ prayer he sees Cornelius’ devotion and concern for the poor and God answers, God sends an angel to meet with Cornelius, God speaks to Peter in a vision, Challenging Peter’s perceptions of who is and isn’t clean. Note that Cornelius needs an intermediary and that God choses to speak directly to Peter. In the timing of the coming of the envoys to see Peter we sense the hand of God, divine timing. In the speeches that both Cornelius and Peter give we see a re affirming of God’s roll, and Peter rightly focuses on the fact that at the core here is the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that this is now for everyone. Then it is the spirit that confirms this, in coming upon the people gathered even before Peter had stopped speaking. There is no apostolic intermediary here, it’s a God thing. The whole of the trinity is involved its god from start to finish.

Firstly, for us today one of the ways that people talk about mission is that it is seeing where the Spirit is already at work in the world and going and joining our efforts with what the spirit is already doing. Like with Peter it is often a matter of having our eyes opened our preconceived ideas challenged so we can see and act with the compassion and good news of Jesus Christ.

Fortunately this is not like some cosmic where’s Wally hunt we know the heart of God that has been revealed to us in the gospels and scriptures and it points the way for us. Very often that mission comes knocking on our doors.   One of the things about living in Auckland is that it is like the whole world has come to us... we are one of the most multi cultural cities in the world. At our garage sale yesterday I was talking to someone about the marriage course we are running and a man over heard us and was very excited that we were encouraging people to work on their marriages. he told me that he knew people who worked and studies for many years to be an engineer or a doctor but were not willing to put the same effort into becoming a better husband or father. he was a Muslim and was very open to speaking out our different faith and I've invited him to drop by anytime he wants and continue the conversation. Mission knocks at our door, even when you are simply trying to sell people  second hand books.

In the Genesis creation narrative the Spirit of God is hovering over the Water’s, it’s a picture of the ocean being stirred up by the wind of the spirit and that is what the Spirit continues to do with us today stir us up. Still water can easily become stagnant and anything but fresh and life giving, we need God to stir us up to what he is calling us to do on a constant basis. To be carried on the current of the spirit working in history. I have friends who are leaving their safe jobs here in Auckland to head to Kolkata, to work with a group that sets up businesses to help women who have been trafficked in the sex trade. It is part of the spirit stirring people up to help with the invisible people who are caught up in the resurgence of slavery. But of course one of the ways the spirit has been stirring up the church in the west is to realise that our mission field is not always way over there but its right here around us. You just have to walk through the main street in Panmure to see what one of the only growth industries is there. We can see that this stirring up and joining what the Spirit is already doing is already happening in our midst… It’s interesting in the first few weeks I was here at St Peter’s I read an article in the herald about the isolation felt by new mothers in the suburbs and saw that in mainly music and the community that grows round the playgroup here that God has stirred us up to help meet that need. God is wanting to reach out to the suburban families in our city.

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t our parish council meetings recently we’ve been trying to get away from simply doing devotions to studying the scriptures a bit more closely and allowing them to speak into our situation here and give direction.  Our last meeting was just after Easter and on Easter Sunday I had preached on Mary, Thomas and Peter encountering the risen Jesus and we’d skipped the account of Jesus meeting his disciples on the shore of the sea of galilee. As we read it one of the things that stuck out to the group was Jesus call to the disciples as they were out fishing and hadn’t caught anything all night, to put the net over the other side. Jewish fishermen would traditionally only use the one side of their boat for that, and as they were prepared to look at a new way of doing something they were all very good at, they caught a massive amount of fish. There was a sense of being invited to think of fresh expressions of new ways to be the church. The way we structure ourselves and think of ourselves is very much the model we have inherited of the small community church in Scotland or England and maybe that will not serve us that well in twenty first urban Auckland.

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ust another couple of quick things to finish with… The first is that God actually lead Peter in several small steps to a very challenging and revolutionary thing. Did you notice it? Before he went God led him to open his own home in hospitality. The Spirit guides us step by step and its often as we open ourselves up to new things and new possibilities that it leads us further into what God has for us. The important thing is that we are willing to take those first steps. Peter didn’t even fully understand what was going on and it was only when he arrived at Cornelius’ door and the maybe only when he saw the spirit come on those gathered just like it had at Pentecost that he fully understood… That’s the element of faith and trust.

And lastly, that God is able to confirm things for us because it is God who calls us into new fields and into mission even across the social barriers of our day and time, as an outworking of God’s compassion and love for all peoples. But you know it’s often only as we are willing to step out in our lives that we see that, maybe that first step is even to simply invite someone to church or to tell people we’ll pray for them in a dark situation, or say hi to someone outside our normal sphere of friends. Mission is God’s work from first to last, he is with us and for us.

Our vision as a church is that “we are called to be an authentic, vibrant, sustainable community, growing as followers of Jesus, and inspiring others to join us on the Journey” and you know I sense that that authenticity and vibrancy and sustainability will grow only as we are open to the leading of the Holy Spirit as a loving community beyond our walls and where we are here. That growing as followers of Jesus is a call to do just that to follow Jesus where he leads us by the Spirit, even if it is out of our carefully constructed comfort zones into the unknown, trusting that he can confirm his leading. Inspiring others to join us on the journey is to be on the journey: The adventure of proclaiming Jesus to all peoples.