I thought I’d start today by sharing some of my experiences
with speaking in tongues… my sort of Acts 2 experiences … I was prayed for to
be filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe I received the gift of being
enabled to speak in another language, one I had not learned… On about four or
five occasions I have prayed for people in tongues, and they have told me I’ve
spoken in their mother language and they have understood what I said. The first
time was at a healing meeting in Tauranga praying for a Maori man called
Dallas. He wanted me to pray for his varicose veins, I didn’t know how to pray
about that, I didn’t even know what they were at that stage, so I asked him if
I could pray in tongues. He said yes, and so I did and afterwards he said to me
“do you realise what you just did?’ …now I was worried I’d done something
culturally inappropriate, so I said no and was getting ready to apologise, but
he said you just prayed in fluent Maori, which much to my embarrassment I do
not speak. He told me I had been praying against powers and principalities and
giving praise to God. Hopefully what was needed in that case in his life... At
least he could feel that God was there for him in a way that acknowledged who
he was.
Another time in a service I felt the Spirit tell me to pray
for a cook island man in tongues, after asking I could I did, and he told me
that while he didn’t speak his own language, he had understood enough to hear
God say “I have called you name”. which was very encouraging for him, as he was
wrestling with being at Bible College and every one mispronouncing his name,
butchering it, were his exact words, and being made to feel he was being squeezed
into the mould of being just another beige pakeha. What a good thing to hear
God say ‘I know you by name’ in a pacific language…He has gone on to be a
leader within the Pacifica community and country. Now I have enough problems
with English, as I’m reminded of so often, and languages are not my thing…
However the Holy Spirit ministered in those situations… by power even in my
weakness witnessing to those people the love of Christ.
I believe very much that the presence of the Holy Spirit is
for all believers today, just as it was promised, just as it happened at
Pentecost, and that the Holy Spirit empowers and enables and gifts his people
to witness to the risen Jesus as Lord and saviour, in word and in deed. Between
easter and today, Pentecost, we have been exploring witnesses to the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. We’ve looked at the women and Mary Magdalene, the
pair on the road to Emmaus, Thomas, Peter and the disciples as they were
commissioned to be Jesus witnesses and saw him ascend to heaven. Today we are
rounding that series off by looking at the witness of the Holy Spirit: the Holy
Spirit being poured out on all who believe, as a sign of a new age initiated by
Jesus life, death and resurrection. Affirming Jesus as Lord and messiah. That’s
the focus of Peter’s message at Pentecost… The pouring out of the Holy Spirit which enables all who believe to
witness to the risen Lord Jesus, in word and in how we live as a community.
Let’s have a look at the text, Luke’s account of what
happened at Pentecost. We are going to do it by looking at the passage almost
in three acts. We are going to look at the experience, the coming of the
spirit, the explanation, peters message and the expectation, how then do we
respond…
Experience or rather should I say Encounter, because while
it is easy to get caught up in the phenomenon, the special effects, you could
say that occurred at Pentecost and focus on them, we need to realise that
behind them is an encounter with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an
impersonal force but is the third person of the Trinity, is God present within
his people.
We are told it was Pentecost, one of the three pilgrim
festivals in Jerusalem, which is the festival of first fruits a harvest
festival fifty days after Passover. The city was full of devout Jews from all
over the roman empire, and the followers of Jesus were all together in one
place, Not just the twelve, but the women and possibly up to about 120
people. Then there is the sound like a
rushing wind. Now I’ve been praying at midday all this week in this church
building and it has been inspirational to hear the wind blow over the roof top
in anticipation of Pentecost. The wind is a sign of theophany of God turning up
in very real way. In the Old Testament it is reminiscent of the Elijah’s
encounter with God on Mt Sinai and even Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the
dry bones where the wind of the spirit blows and bring life to the bones, even
creation in Genesis where the spirit of God was said to hoover blow over the
formless void. Here it is new creation.
Then tongues of fire. A visual sign of the presence of God, you might
look back to Elijah again, the burning bush in Exodus, the fiery cloud that led
the Israelites through the wilderness. It’s God turning up in the person of the
Holy Spirit.
These tongues of fire now split and came to rest on all the
believers who were there. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. In the Old
Testament, God dwelt with his people, and special people were said to be filled
with the spirit to achieve special tasks, but now the spirit comes and dwells
in all believers. The dwelling place of God is now with humanity. This is
something new. Each believer is filled with God’s presence, as a sign of that
they are enabled to speak in another language.
Now in the past some Pentecostals believed that you needed
to speak in tongues to be filled with the spirit, because that is the Pentecost
experience, but that is not explicit in scripture and it made a lot of people
feel like second class Christians. In the New Testament there are whole lists
of gifts that God gives his people for the common good and the growth of the
church. The key gift is God’s presence within us, God fulfilling his promise to
dwell in his people. At this point these tongues were important as a sign because
Jesus had said the disciples were to wait in Jerusalem until they received
power and they would be his witnesses in Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the
world. It was a prophetic sign of the universality of the gospel mission, it’s for
all people.
It's interesting that it seems that there is almost a scene
change between verse 4 and 5, as suddenly the believers are out amongst the
crowd, and the Jews from all over come to see what is going on, and hear the
disciples speaking in all their languages, speaking of the wonders of God. We
get that comprehensive list of where people are from, the whole array of Jewish
diaspora. The Holy Spirit is good at dissolving walls and taking us out of our holy
huddle into the world around us, to speak of God’s mighty deeds. To witness to
Jesus, of course in Acts 10 at Cornelius’ house we see that this meant beyond
just the Jews to gentiles as well. We gathered here today are evidence of that
on going spirit powered witness, 16,225 km away from Jerusalem, almost 2,000
years from that Acts 2 Pentecost, gathered from all over, to worship and
proclaim Jesus as Lord and saviour.
Now Luke tells us of the crowds reaction. They are filled
with wonder, these yokels from the sticks are speaking our language? But we see
that others are skeptical and mock the disciples, they are all drunk. Miracles
and experiences alone are not enough to induce faith as bible commentator dean
Pinter says “faith requires not only hearing but careful explanation from the
word of God. The Holy Spirit leads us into all truth… That is what Peter then
does.
So lets turn to look at the explanation of what happened, or
should I say the expounding of what happened, as Peter shows from scripture
what is going on and what it means. Its worth noting the change in Peter. Here
is Peter who denied knowing Jesus when challenged by a servant girl beside a
fire in a courtyard, now filled with the spirit standing up before a crowd of
over three thousand, and boldly proclaiming Jesus as Lord and messiah. Prepared
to speak and contend for the gospel.
Peter’s message is based around three scriptures from the
Old Testament. The first from Joel speaks of God’s promise that when the
messiah comes it will issue in a time when God promises to pour out his spirit
on all flesh. That the disciples are not drunk rather this passage is being
fulfilled. Joel’s prophecy is comprehensive in that list of all people… men and
women, and they will prophesy, that is they will speak forth God’s word. That
more than tongues is a sign in Old and New Testament of God’s spirit. Old and
young, will see visions and have dreams revealing God’s will and purpose for
the world, regardless of social status, on your servants as well… even the
group with the least status and protection, woman slaves. There will be signs and wonders, which Paul
ties into the miracles and signs and wonders Jesus did which attested to who he
was. Acts is full of signs and wonders that Jesus does through the disciples by
the Holy Spirit. Peter uses the words last days in quoting Joel, and there is
the idea of this new age being the beginning of the last things, a looking
forward to a future end point. But key to this prophecy is that all who call on
the name of the Lord will be saved.
Peter then moves on to show that Jesus life his death and
particularly his resurrection are signs that he is indeed the long awaited for
messiah and… the Lord… in whose name we can be saved. He quotes from
Psalm16:8-11 to show that it was God’s purpose that a descendant of David would
die and be raised to life again. I wonder if that was one of the verses that
Jesus used with the pair on the road to Emmaus to show the messiah must die and
be raised to life again. The word holy one in that psalm is tightly tied to the
Jewish understanding of the messiah. The holy one, anointed by God. David was
not speaking of himself as Peter says you can go and visit his tomb over there…
but Rather Jesus who the Jews had had crucified through the roman authorities… God raised Jesus to life again, and at this point you can imagine Peter waving
his hand at those assembled when he says this ‘we are all witnesses”. He then
quotes Psalm 110 again attributing it to David to show that the Messiah would
be raised to life and glorified and seated at the right hand of God. The
pouring out of the Holy Spirit is evidence a witness to the fact that Jesus
raised to life again is Lord and messiah.
The crowd now ask each other how we will respond to this. So
let’s turn to look at the expectation, how they and we respond. This section is in two parts… Peters
call for repentance and then how the community lived.
Peter tells them to repent and be baptised for the
forgiveness of sins, in the name of Jesus the messiah. It is the name of Jesus
by which they are saved. Repent means to turn around from going one way to
going another, and here it is going their own way and turning to follow Jesus
as their Lord and saviour, baptism shows that they are sorry for their sins and
can be forgiven. In this case it is through Jesus that they are forgiven. As
they do this peter tells them they too will be filled with the Holy Spirit,
that is God’s promise a promise not just for those first believers at Pentecost
but for all who would believe. Them and their children a way of saying it is
not just for that generation but for successive generations, and those who are
far off… It’s almost if we too come into the picture. It’s for us as well…
Then the chapter finishes with a cameo a brief summary of
what the early church is like, what it means to be a spirit filled community…
not just expectation in response to the message of Jesus but a community
empowered to witness. I want to quickly
work through that summary and look at what it says about a spirit filled
community today. They were devoted to the teaching of the apostles; a spirit
filled community, builds itself around the word of God, we shouldn’t be
surprised by that as in John’s gospel Jesus said the spirit would lead us into
all truth and recall the things that Jesus said. Revival round the world draw
people to hungry for God’s word. They devoted
themselves to prayer, mission starts in prayer as we commune with our Lord and
are changed by it. They were devoted to fellowship and unity, meeting for big
events at the temple and also sharing hospitality in each other’s homes. It
meant more than just a cuppa after the service as it tells us they shared all
things in common. They devoted
themselves to the breaking of the bread, that may speak of hospitality, but
also to remembering Christ’s death and resurrection as they shared the lord’s
table together. There was a renewed
sense of worship, as they were glad and praised God and rejoice… moves of God’
spirit down the ages have often mean a renewal of worship music and creativity.
There was a genuine sacrificial love and concern for the poor, they sold their
possessions to meet need. There was a concern for the lost as there were people
coming to Christ each day… and the there were many signs and wonder being done
by the apostles… the spirit continued to use miracles to witness to Jesus
Christ in their midst. All these things were the outworking of the Holy Spirit
presence in their midst… they were the way in which they witnessed to the risen
Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and saviour.
People…that brings us to today as we celebrate Pentecost… we
have come to believe in Jesus as Lord and messiah… we too have been filled with
the Holy Spirit, God dwells in us, in all of us. The Spirit leads us into all
truth… it opens the scriptures to us, reveals where we need to repent and
change. The Spirit enables and equips us to love one another and it empowers
us, just like those first believers in Jerusalem to witness to the risen Jesus
Christ. At the beginning of the thy kingdom come season of prayer this year archbishop
Justin Welby of the Anglican church said that we are all called to witness to
Jesus and that a witness is called to tell what they have seen and heard when
called on, and to live out of the truth that they know’. We constantly need the
fresh infilling of God’s Spirit to enable us to do that. The great thing is
that Jesus told us in Luke 13 that our father in heaven is a good God and knows
how to give God gifts to his children… So will give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask him… today may you be filled afresh with the presence of God, with the
Holy Spirit in Jesus name… amen.
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