Wind and Fire

Welcome again.

My name is Thomas, one of the pastors here.

! Delighted to welcome all of you, especially if you're new or visiting.

! This is a special Sunday, as we've been saying.

It's Pentecost.

It's the birthday of the church.

We celebrate the birth of this movement that we're still a part of.

But, you know, when we look at the beginning of this movement,

the rise of Christianity, scholars widely agree,

and these aren't just sort of Christian or Bible scholars.

These are historians, sociologists, people like Rodney Stark,

before he was converted to Christianity.

They widely agree that the rise of Christianity in the first three centuries

dramatically altered the ancient world,

dramatically changed the landscape.

The question is not whether it happened, it's how it happened.

What made it possible?

How did a small, with all due respect, socially unimpressive movement

made up largely of the poor, of former slaves, people without power,

how did a tiny little movement made up of people like that spread across all races,

all classes, all nations, until even the Roman Empire couldn't ignore it,

until even emperors who were persecuting Christians reluctantly had to admit

that Christians were the only ones holding the fabric of society together

as the late Roman Empire crumbled?

How is such a thing possible?

And the answer that we're going to look at this morning

is quite simple and yet unfathomably deep.

The answer, of course, is the Holy Spirit.

It's the only possible explanation.

So, this morning, we're fortunate enough to have a historic record

written by a physician and historian named Luke,

and he gives us an eyewitness account of the moment

the Holy Spirit was poured out on God's people and the church was born.

So, we're going to look at this event, which we refer to now as Pentecost,

and we're going to consider the meaning of Pentecost for us

as we look back 2,000 years later.

The meaning is this.

The meaning of Pentecost is that there is God's presence with us.

Pentecost means God's power through us,

and Pentecost, of course, reveals God's purposes for us.

So, let's pray, ask God to guide us,

and then we're going to open His Word together.

Lord, we thank You for Your Word.

We thank You for the joy it brings.

We thank You for the comfort it brings and also the challenge.

We pray that as we open Your Word, Lord,

that Your Spirit would open our hearts,

that as we consider the written Word,

we would come face to face with the living Word.

And, of course, we pray all of this through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And it's in the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.

So, the first thing we want to consider as we think about Pentecost

is the presence of God.

What does Pentecost have to say about the presence of God?

The word Pentecost simply is a reference to 50th.

It's the 50th day since the Passover.

It was one of the big three Jewish festivals.

And Pentecost is happening here in the first century.

And Jesus' disciples, it says, are all gathered together in one place.

This isn't just the 12.

This is commonly understood to be all of Jesus' disciples,

which is about 120.

So, at this point, we have about 120 disciples,

men and women, and they're all gathered together.

And we know from the previous chapter that they are gathered together,

and they're praying, and they're waiting.

They're praying, and they're waiting.

The reason that they're waiting is because Jesus told them to wait.

He made them a promise, and He said,

I want you to wait until this promise is fulfilled.

Before His crucifixion, Jesus, in John 14, if you want to read about this,

Jesus says, don't be afraid.

I'm not going to leave you and abandon you like orphans.

I'm going to come back to you.

And He says, in the meantime, I'm going to ask my Father,

and my Father is going to send another one to comfort you and help you.

He's going to send someone called the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit is going to be in you and with you,

and through the Holy Spirit, the Father and I are going to be with you and in you.

We're going to make our home with you.

And then after His resurrection, Jesus appears to them again,

and He reminds them of this promise in Acts chapter 1.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

He says, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift that my Father promised,

which you have heard me speak about, right?

Back in John 14.

For John baptized with water, but in a few days,

you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Now, at that time, they didn't understand much more about what this meant that we might,

if this is our first time hearing it.

So, they're waiting, and they're praying, and then, lo and behold, everything changes.

Luke says, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind,

and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

And He goes on to say, divided tongues of fire appeared to them and rested on each of them.

So, all of a sudden, they're waiting and they're praying, and then wind and fire.

And in the Bible, in the Old Testament, wind and fire are markers, they're indicators of the presence of God.

So, wind and fire come into this room.

The problem is, all throughout the Old Testament, the presence of God, although beautiful and mysterious,

is also terrifying.

It's dangerous.

Some people learn the hard way that if you get too close to anywhere where God's presence dwells,

you're likely to lose your life.

You're taking your life into your own hands.

It's dangerous.

It would be like us trying to draw near to the sun.

We can't survive being anywhere near it.

And yet, somehow, at Pentecost, this holy God comes down again, and there is wind and there is fire,

but this time the fire does not consume them.

Now, that's a mystery, right?

Because in the Old Testament, the reason that human beings couldn't get near God is because God is a holy God,

and human beings are sinful.

We've rebelled against God.

We're spiritually disconnected from God.

And so, to try to come into the presence of a holy God, we can't survive that.

But somehow, the fire comes to rest over each of these disciples, and it doesn't consume them.

And it raises this question, how is such a thing possible?

And, of course, the answer is because Jesus has made them clean,

because Jesus has made them holy,

because the fire of judgment already fell on Christ on the cross.

And what that means is that this holy fire of God's presence is now able to rest on His people

as a sign of mercy and power and blessing.

So, Pentecost means that grace has cleansed us so completely

that instead of fearing God's presence,

we can actually be filled with God's presence.

And it's hard for us to imagine how radical that would have been

for these first century pious Jewish people.

But this is the first great meaning of Pentecost.

For those of us who follow Jesus, meaning we,

at some point we came to Jesus, we said,

we want to follow you, please forgive our sin,

we want to turn from that, we want you to cleanse us and make us holy,

we want to devote our lives to your word and your way.

So, for those of us who have done that,

God is no longer an abstract idea.

God is no longer a theological concept that we write about and study.

God is not some distant being who may or may not be watching us from afar.

It means that the living, holy God is with us

and even more radically in us.

So, we're not meant to merely know things about God.

We're meant to know God himself.

We're meant to experience God.

Sometimes that comes with deep feeling.

There have been times in this church, very recently,

where we all sort of left saying that the Holy Spirit was moving and powerful

and we're moved and we're emotional, right?

There are times, a recent worship gathering that Hillary and I were at

with our diocese where there was this movement of the Holy Spirit

and people are speaking in tongues and people are weeping

and there's this powerful move of the Holy Spirit, right?

And then other times, we experience God quietly, right?

Through prayer, through worship, through a reading of Scripture,

through receiving the sacraments.

And that experience is not this emotional high,

it's more like the steady, warm embrace of a loving parent.

It's the comfort that you would feel if you're a small child

and you're in your room and it's dark and you're scared

and a parent comes in and they put their hand on your hand

and they say, don't worry, I'm here.

And it doesn't make the darkness go away,

but all of a sudden, it changes the darkness

because you're not alone in it

and you have this reassuring hand of your parents saying,

I'm here and you're safe and it's okay and you're not alone.

So sometimes that's what it's like, right?

And the reassurance of God's presence means that God is with us

whether we feel it or not.

That's the amazing thing, right?

So for us gathered here, for those of us who are Christians,

let me ask you this.

Is there anywhere in your life where you are living

as though God has left you alone?

Right?

Where are we living as though we are alone?

As though God isn't with us?

And for those of us who desire to experience God's presence more,

I'll tell you right now, there's no formula for that, strictly speaking.

Anybody who tells you there's a formula for that

is trying to sell you something.

There's no formula for that.

But it is worth noting this,

that these men and women did not have this powerful experience

of the presence of God as the result of dynamic preaching,

as the result of highly emotive worship music,

as much as I personally love both of those things,

they experienced the presence of God through prayer.

And friends, I don't know a single person in my life,

any of my mentors, any of the people that I've looked up to,

any of the people I know who regularly experience

and encounter the presence of God,

I don't know a single one of those people

who does not also have a rich, consistent prayer life.

Prayer is the vehicle into God's presence.

It's through a prayer meeting that the church was born.

So it says in chapter 1,

they were joining together constantly in prayer,

is what it says.

So I would encourage you to do this.

If you want to experience the presence of God, pray.

Pray that God would meet you.

Ask to experience His presence more in your daily life.

And when you come to worship, like we've gathered this morning,

come with expectancy,

with a kind of openness to encountering the Lord here.

And if you're someone who longs for the presence of God

and you feel like you look back and lately

you just haven't experienced it that much,

and that's frustrating and discouraging,

I love what Frederica Matthews Green says.

She's an Eastern Orthodox deep thinker, beautiful writer.

And she says this.

I think it's in her book, The Jesus Prayer.

If you haven't read it, I would highly recommend it.

But she says our hunger for God itself,

if you're hungry for the presence of God,

that itself is a sign

that you have most likely already experienced.

God's presence.

And she says it's like when you're walking through a mall.

Remember back when we had shopping malls?

You're walking through a mall.

This is back in the 90s,

which our kids think was when humanity peaked.

And then it was all downhill since the 90s.

But back in the 90s, we had shopping malls

and you'd be walking through

and maybe you just ate lunch

and you're not even hungry,

but all of a sudden you catch this whiff of cinnamon.

And you're like, where's that coming from?

And like that, you're all of a sudden hungry again.

And you're going through, you know,

looking, trying to find the Cinnabon place, right?

And she says that's not something that you manufactured.

You didn't whip that up

out of your own kind of imagination.

Like you were going along

and all of a sudden,

some particle of spice or sugar or butter

made contact with your olfactory receptors, right?

And because of that contact,

it awakened the hunger in you

and you're like, I've got to have a cinnamon roll.

And she says it's the same thing with God.

If you're hungering for God,

it's because somewhere along the way,

you came in contact with Him.

You felt His presence

and what you're wanting is more,

which, amen, of course you should want more.

So don't worry,

if you're hungering for God's presence,

it means you've already tasted it

and there's more to be had.

So Pentecost is about God's presence,

it's also about God's power.

God's power.

Jesus very clearly has given us a mission

by us, I mean those of us

who would consider ourselves Christians,

part of the church.

He's given us a mission that by design

we cannot accomplish on our own strength.

He's given us an impossible mission.

And in John 14,

He tells His disciples something amazing.

He essentially says,

if you understand what He's saying in John chapter 14,

John 14 · chapter mention

we read a snippet of it,

Hillary did a moment ago.

He's essentially saying,

the time is going to come

when my ministry is going to pass to you.

In other words,

I, Jesus says,

I'm going to continue my ministry

through my disciples,

through you.

But they cannot do this

in their own strength.

You cannot continue the ministry of Jesus on earth

with human effort alone.

And that's why in Acts chapter 1,

Acts 1 · chapter mention

Jesus tells them to wait

until the Spirit comes.

He says in verse 8,

but you will receive power

when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

And then after Pentecost,

this amazing thing that we just read about,

the ministry of Jesus continues through His people.

So, if you continue reading the book of Acts,

this account from Luke,

you see Christians doing what?

They're preaching,

they are healing,

they're teaching,

they're serving,

they're giving generously of everything they have,

they're evangelizing and sharing the gospel,

and people are coming to faith,

they're showing incredible mercy,

they're casting out demons,

they're starting new churches.

We see this incredible explosive growth.

And it's not that Jesus has stopped working

and handed it off to the successors.

It's that Jesus is continuing to do His ministry,

but through His Spirit-filled body.

Paul, in the reading that we heard

from 1 Corinthians 12,

refers to the church as the body of Christ.

This is now His body doing His ministry in the world.

Right?

So, Jesus' power to bring healing

and reconciliation and renewal to the world

has now been distributed

among all of God's people.

And this is what we refer to as spiritual gifts.

Spiritual gifts.

Quick definition of spiritual gifts,

the continued ministry of Jesus Christ

in the world,

through individual Christians,

by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's what spiritual gifts really represent.

So, think of sunlight.

You know, sunlight,

actually pure sunlight is white.

It's white light.

It contains all the colors of the rainbow.

So, think of pure sunlight

being refracted through a prism.

And it's refracted into a brilliant array of hues.

All the colors in the spectrum that we can see

and in many that we can't see, right?

Now, think of the spiritual gifts in the same way.

You have the sort of the pure ministry of Jesus

that is refracted through the prism of the church.

And then you have all of these hues,

all of these various gifts,

all these parts of the ministry of Jesus

that are now shining through

every individual Christian man and woman, right?

It's like a great prism.

So, you have, instead of colors,

you have all of these gifts.

You have some people who are teaching

in the way Christ would teach.

You have some people showing the mercy of Christ

or showing leadership

or some people who have the ability to bring healing.

You have generosity.

You have service.

You have encouragement and administration

and evangelism and prophecy.

We have all of these gifts

being refracted through the church.

So, every Christian

has their own combination of gifts.

Every Christian, when they use those gifts,

reflects and shares in the ministry of Christ

in some way.

So, right, so what?

For those of us who have repented

and put our faith in Jesus,

you have the Holy Spirit,

which means you have spiritual gifts,

which means you share in the ministry of Christ

on earth right now.

Christ desires to work through you

in all of these various ways.

So, Jesus desires to work through some of you

to deepen our understanding of God's Word.

And that's how He wants to work through you.

Jesus is working right now through some of you

to disciple and form the faith

of our children and our youth.

So, when they're being discipled

by somebody like Tom or Camille or Anna

or Lisa or Tim or Alex, right,

that's Christ discipling them, right,

through those men and women, right?

Christ wants to bring physical and social

and emotional and spiritual healing

through some of you.

You have a gift of healing.

Christ wants to meet practical,

tangible needs in our community

through some of you.

He wants to generate and steward resources

for our church through some of you, right?

So, the question is this.

What gift has God given you

that you may not currently be using?

What gift has God given you

through the Holy Spirit

that you may not even be aware of?

Bill Bright, the guy who founded Campus Crusade,

now called Crew, years ago,

used to tell this story

of a West Texas rancher named Yates.

And during the Depression,

Yates was struggling to keep...

He had a sheep ranch.

And he was struggling to keep the ranch.

He could barely pay the mortgage.

His family was living on government assistance.

It was kind of dire times for them.

And then an oil company

asked permission to drill on his land.

And right at just over 1,100 feet,

this company strikes

one of the largest oil reserves

in the history of the country.

The first well they put in there

produced 80,000 barrels today.

I'm not an oil man,

but that sounds like a lot to me.

And...

But here's the astonishing thing,

and the reason I bring it up.

Yates owned the mineral rights

all along to that oil.

It was always there, right?

He had been a millionaire,

multi-multi-millionaire,

living in poverty

because he didn't know

what was right under his feet.

And the point is,

I think there are a lot of Christians

who are living the same way, right?

I think a lot of Christians,

you know, in Christ,

we have been given the Holy Spirit.

We have His presence,

His gifts,

His power,

but I think we tend to live

as though we are poor

and powerless

and alone.

But it's right here, right?

It's right here.

Pentecost reminds us

that God has already given His church

everything we need.

So why do we operate

out of scarcity

when there is such abundance

to be enjoyed?

The question is whether

we will be willing

to receive His gifts

and offer them

for the good of the body

or not.

So one of the main goals

this year,

again,

if you're part of our church,

member,

regular attender,

maybe you're new

and soon you will be

a member,

a regular attender,

but anybody who's part

of our church,

one of the main goals

is to see every member

and regular attender

come to a place

where they know

and they are actively

using their gifts.

I think one of the biggest things

that holds churches back

is when that doesn't happen,

right?

And one of the best things

that we can do as a church

is to help you figure out

what are your gifts,

what is your share

in the ministry of Christ

and how do we open that up,

right?

How do we get that flowing

so that everybody benefits?

Because all these gifts,

it says,

are for the common good.

They're for the good

of the whole,

right?

So how does that happen?

There are certain needs

only you can meet.

There are certain roles

only you can play.

There are certain hands

only you can hold.

So Pentecost is about

God's presence.

It is about God's power.

But all this has a purpose.

The purpose of the Holy Spirit,

the purpose of the spiritual gifts,

the purpose of that big oil reserve

of spiritual power under our feet

is to build up the church

and bear witness to Christ.

And that is crystal clear

if you read these passages

that we just read.

Jesus says in Acts chapter 1,

Acts 1 · chapter mention

you will receive power

when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

Why?

And you will be my witnesses

in Jerusalem, right,

where they are,

and on all Judea and Samaria,

the larger region,

and to the ends of the earth.

It's a spiritual map

of the mission of Christ.

So God's mission

is to spread the gospel

through us

to every tribe, tongue,

and nation of people on earth.

And it's beautiful

how God gives us a preview of this

at Pentecost.

Right?

See, as I mentioned

at the beginning of the sermon,

Pentecost is one of the big

three Jewish feasts

where everybody would make

a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

So you literally have

Jewish pilgrims

from every part of the known world

all streaming into Jerusalem

at this time of year.

And so you have all of these people

from kind of an international gathering

of Jewish people

all together in one place.

And it is no coincidence

that the first public miracle

of the Holy Spirit

is that the gospel is heard

in all of their languages.

This shows

that God's mission

is not cultural domination.

God's mission

does not take the shape

of taking one culture,

calling it superior,

and imposing it

on all of the other cultures.

Right?

God's mission

is not cultural domination.

It is gospel translation.

Right?

It is the seeds

of the gospel

being planted

in different cultures

and places

all around the world

and then taking root

and then growing up,

reflecting all of the goodness

and truth and beauty

of those cultures

and of those languages.

So God's kingdom

is by design multilingual.

It is multi-ethnic.

It's multicultural.

So the gospel

is meant

to be planted

in and redeem

all of these various cultures.

I think it's a beautiful idea

to think

that the kingdom of God,

the new Jerusalem,

the new heavens and earth,

it's going to be decorated

and it's going to reflect

the beauty

of all of the various cultures

that have developed

over the centuries.

The best of those things

will be captured

and redeemed

and then put on display

and it will enhance

the joy

and the beauty

of that place.

Right?

So again,

this is a big bold vision

and like it or not,

God intends

to accomplish this

through us.

And then in the Bible,

as we often say,

the church is God's plan A

for the world,

there is no plan B.

This is it.

It happens through

very normal,

ordinary,

struggling people

just like us.

This means,

of course,

if God wants to reach

the world with the gospel,

right,

of course this means

that we need to be

raising up,

sending out,

and supporting missionaries

to go to other parts

of the world

to share the gospel.

We do this now.

My hope and prayer

is that in the years to come,

we would greatly scale up

and increase

what we're able to do,

sending out

and supporting missionaries.

Right?

Something I hope to see us

do much more

in the years to come.

But do not make the mistake

of thinking

that it is limited to that,

a few people being sent out

as missionaries.

If we're reading this correctly,

we're all,

everybody in this room,

we're all called

to be missionaries.

We're all actually

full-time missionaries.

It's just that most of us

are called

to be missionaries here.

We're called

to live out our mission here.

Right?

Through our relationships

with our family

and our friends

and our neighbors.

Through the work

that God has given

many of us to do.

Through the vocation

that God has given you.

You have access,

many of you,

I'm just kind of looking

at various faces

and I know what you do

and I'm thinking,

each of you has access

to people and places

and spheres of influence

that most of us

don't have access to.

God has opened

certain doors

and you've gone

through those doors

and now you're in that place

where we can't be.

And by we,

I mean the church.

Right?

God has placed you there.

It's not by accident.

So, we all are called

to participate

in this mission,

in the places

where God has planted us.

But we have to be willing

to embrace it

and live it out.

We have to be willing

to live for God's mission.

Right?

John Ortberg

has this great image

and I find myself

coming back to it

all the time.

It's a little book.

I can't remember

the name of the book

but it's essentially

a book called,

I think,

Our Shadow Mission.

Shadow Mission.

And that's the concept

of the book

is that he says,

he talks about

a shadow mission

that every one of us

has a God-given mission

and then there's also

the potential

for a shadow mission.

A shadow mission

is like a distorted version

of the mission

that God has for us.

It's what happens

when our true

God-given mission

gets hijacked

by our desires,

our wounds,

unresolved trauma,

ego,

fear,

insecurity,

selfishness.

So for example,

you may have a person

who is called

to lead

but they drift

into a shadow mission

of needing control.

Or you have a person

who is called

to serve

but they drift

into a shadow mission

of needing

to be needed.

Or a person

who is called

to proclaim

and teach truth

but they drift

into a shadow mission

of always needing

to be right.

Or the smartest person

in the room.

Or you have somebody

who has a mission

to build

and grow the church

to see more people

come to faith

and grow in their faith

but they drift

into a shadow mission

of building

a personal platform.

Right?

So we see this

all the time.

And the point is this,

the Holy Spirit

gives the church

power for God's mission.

So we have the power

that we need.

We have everything

that we need

right here in this room.

But one of the great dangers

for spirit-filled people

is that we can take

God's gifts

and use them

in service

of our shadow mission.

You can misuse

these spiritual gifts.

And so instead

of being motivated

by love

and obedience

and humility

and the kingdom of God

we can allow ourselves

to be derailed

by self-protection

and self-promotion

and self-justification

and self-importance.

And so a final question

that I would want you

to reflect on

as we go our way today

is this.

Are you right now,

to what extent

do you feel like

you are living

in alignment

with God's mission

in your life?

Or are there ways

that you see yourself

drifting toward

more of a shadow mission

version of that?

Where you're using

these God-given resources

that you have

in ways

that serve

self-promotion,

self-justification,

self-protection.

Right?

I would say

that all of us

to some extent

are always going

to be struggling

with that

to some degree.

So it's not like

show of hands,

you know,

you're out.

We're all,

we're all dealing

with that

all the time.

This is one

of the main reasons

it is so vital

to be part

of a church community.

Because you need

people in your life

who know you,

who know your gifts,

who know the power

and the beauty

when you're using

your gifts

to serve the Lord

and can also detect

when you're kind of

veering off course

and the kind of people

who you have

the relationship

and the permissions

have been given

where they can pull you aside

or you can pull them aside

and say,

I feel like you're kind of

going off course here.

And where else

are you going to find that?

You're only going to find

that in the church.

This is why we need,

I think on our own

it's almost impossible

to stay on course

with God's mission

for our lives.

I think we're almost

invariably going to go

off course

and pretty quickly.

So let me just pull

all of this together.

What does Pentecost

mean

for us?

Right?

Number one,

it means God's presence

with us.

The holy God

who once filled

the tabernacle

and the temple

so that the priests

could not even stand

to worship

who made the ground shake

and the mountains tremble

dwells inside you

by the power

of the Spirit.

Pentecost means

God's power

working through us.

It means

the ministry

of Jesus Christ

continues on earth

through you

right now.

And it means

God's purpose

is ever before us.

The Spirit

is given

so that we might

bear witness

to Christ

in our homes,

in our jobs,

among our neighbors,

in the world,

not only with our lips

but with our lives.

So the invitation

is this,

let us not live

as though God

is far away

or absent.

Let us not live

as though we

are powerless.

Let us not live

as though our life

has no purpose

or mission

because the Spirit

has been poured out.

God is with us,

Christ is working

through us,

and the church

has been sent

for the life

of the world.

Let's pray.

Our Lord in heaven,

we thank you

and recognize

immediately

that these are

things that,

should they remain

mere concepts,

have no power

to change us,

much less anything else.

And if there is

anything to be reminded

of,

it is that we need

your Holy Spirit.

We need more of you.

Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit

in us.

Lord,

so we pray

for your Spirit

to fill us,

to overflow,

that all we do

would be an overflow

of your presence

and your love

in our lives.

We pray this

for our community

and we pray

for the good

of those who might

come to know you

through our common witness.

We pray this

in the name of Jesus.

Amen.