Pentecost - May 24, 2026

Well, good morning.

And welcome to Trinity Burke, this Pentecost Sunday.

My name is Matt, and I'm one of the uh pastors on staff here.

Um, before we dive into our text this morning, I would encourage you to uh have a Bible open in front of you.

If you don't, if you didn't bring one with you, that's totally fine.

So you can hop up, grab one from the back.

If you're on your phone, I'll just assume you're looking at the Bible app and have it on airplane mode.

Um but um but again, if you don't have a Bible with you, please feel free to hop up, grab one from the back.

Um before we begin, if you just take a brief moment to pray with me.

God, we pray that you will give us open ears to hear, open minds to understand, and open hearts to receive what you have for us in your word this morning.

And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all your people's hearts be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

So, like I just said this morning, alongside the really the global church, we're celebrating the amazing day of Pentecost.

Now, this is the day when the very breath of God, the power of God, was poured out over the disciples in the city of Jerusalem.

Now we're gonna we're gonna really zoom in and focus on the passage from 1 Corinthians that uh that we read earlier.

But it is important for us to look at how Luke sets the scene for us in the book of Acts, chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

So if you would sit with me there just for a moment, Luke paints a picture of the coming of the Holy Spirit for us when he writes in Luke chapter 2, or sorry, Acts chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention Acts 2 · chapter mention

Luke's the author, books of Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, and divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each of them, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Now, can you can you picture this in your mind, this incredible scene?

The rushing winds and the tongues of fire falling upon the disciples.

Now, but if we think about if we think about this group of people who this happened to, this happens to a group of people who in the last 50 days, because Pentecost was celebrated 50 days after the Passover.

So after the past 50 days, they've seen Jesus die, they've seen Jesus rise from the dead, they've seen Jesus then appear to them after he rose from the dead, and then they've seen Jesus ascend into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father.

And like no pun intended here for Pentecost, but what a whirlwind of events to happen to someone in 50 days' time.

Now, this is a crazy scene, but this scene, it ought to be very, very comforting for us.

Now, the disciples, after all this, they were probably exhausted.

And I almost certainly think that they didn't particularly feel ready for what was about to happen.

And I personally, I don't think they may have even felt super spiritual in that moment.

And if you ask them what they were doing, I think they would probably say they weren't doing anything per incredibly memorable or incredibly amazing in that moment.

And yet, this is the moment that God pours out his power and his presence upon them.

Now, this is good news for them.

This is good news for that group of tired and weary people who were uncertain of what was going to come next.

And the reason why we celebrate Pentecost and remember this story is because it's good news for us too.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God's free, grace-filled gift of the Holy Spirit is poured out on us as well.

And it's dwelling within us just as much as it was with the disciples.

Now it should amaze us, it should bring us great joy that for every believer in Jesus, it doesn't matter how you feel, because sometimes our feelings can be misleading, or sometimes our feelings can even be dangerous.

But here's what we know because of Jesus, because of the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that hovered over the waters in the beginning, the same spirit that came upon the prophets in the Old Testament, the same spirit who raised up a whole army of dry bones in Ezekiel 37, the same spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, the same spirit who fell upon the disciples, is the same spirit who indwells each and every believer today.

Now, as we dive into 1 Corinthians this morning, that phrase is gonna come up again and again and again.

So as we look at these verses this morning, let's rest on those three words that are gonna keep coming up this Pentecost Sunday.

The same spirit.

Now, if you would turn to me and uh to 1 Corinthians 12, verses 4 through 13.

1 Corinthians 12:4–13

Now we're sort of flying in to 1 Corinthians blind this morning, kind of parachuting into a very specific text.

So just for this for the sake of time and just to give us a little bit of context as to what's going on in the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul is writing to them because the church was kind of a mess at that time.

There was a lot happening, and they were just trying to figure out what was going on this side of Pentecost.

They were trying to figure out what it was like to live as a post-Pentecost church, and they were a mess.

They were having a hard time figuring it out.

And one thing they were having a hard time figuring out was their understanding of the person of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Now I hope this isn't true for you, but there may be some of you who at some point in your life were at a church that was a mess when it came to the person and the work of the Holy Spirit.

And I would love for us here at Trinity to be a church that when it comes to the person and the work of the Holy Spirit, we ground ourselves in what Scripture says.

So if you have your Bible open in front of you, you'll notice that Paul, we're actually gonna start in verse one.

So you'll notice that Paul starts this chapter in verse one like this.

Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed.

Now I think I think Paul is being uh being a little cheeky here because this is a potentially kind of passive-aggressive way of him saying, hey, you really don't know as much as you think you do.

Right?

Concerning spiritual gifts, I don't want you to be uninformed, right?

You don't know as much as you think you do.

So what seems to have happened to the church in Corinth is that the church tried to live into the practices for what it looks like to live as a post-Pentecost church.

Now, if you look at the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit had been poured out over particular people at particular times and particular places at particular events.

But remember what the prophet Joel said.

He said that the Holy Spirit would one day come and be poured out over all flesh, over all people.

And this has now happened.

The Holy Spirit has come and he's now poured out over all flesh and over all people.

And the church is figuring out what do we do now?

How do we live as post-Pentecost people?

And they were having a hard time with this, we're having a difficult time figuring it out.

And Paul writes to them because one of the primary things they had wrong was this.

One of the main things they had wrong was this.

They saw that the different manifestations or the different gifts of the Spirit was the same as different measures or levels of the Holy Spirit.

So uh here's here's what this would look like and why it's such a dangerous way for the church to think and operate.

And um, because I'm not super creative, I'm gonna use my um my dog and my cat's names as uh as examples here.

So if we had Luna, who's my dog, if we had Luna on one side and she had a gift that all the believers viewed as less important or less value to the life of the church, they then would have thought that Luna had a less measure or outpouring of the Holy Spirit in her.

But if Walter, who's my cat, on this side had a gift that they thought was much more valuable to the church and much more important to them, they would have thought that he had a greater measure or outpouring of the Holy Spirit in him.

So Luna over here with a lesser valuable gift, or a gift they thought was less valuable, they thought, oh, she must have a lesser outpouring of the Holy Spirit in her.

And Walter over here, who's got this incredible gift that's of great value to the church, they would have thought, oh, he must have more of the Holy Spirit in him.

Now, do you see how harmful this would be?

Here's Walter with this amazing spiritual gift.

He must be so in touch with the Holy Spirit and doing all the things right.

But Luna over here, who has a gift that's viewed as less valuable or less important, she must have less of the Holy Spirit dwelling in her.

Now, do you see how this understanding could tear up a church or a community of believers?

But the good news is that this cannot be true.

There are no inferior spiritual gifts, and there are no superior spiritual gifts.

There's not one believer who has less of the Holy Spirit, and one believer who has more of the Holy Spirit.

There's not someone with one quarter portion of the Holy Spirit, and one person with a three-quarters portion of the Holy Spirit.

And this cannot be true.

It can't be true that somehow Luna has less of the Holy Spirit than Walter does if they're both believers.

You see, the degree to which you yield yourself to the Holy Spirit, that can change, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

But the measure of the Holy Spirit that you have in you, that can't change, and that can't vary from person to person.

Right now, what we're gonna do is we're gonna focus on the person of the Holy Spirit.

And like I said, it's the same Spirit who dwells within every believer.

Different levels of yieldedness, of surrender, different gifts, but the same spirit.

And this is what Paul wants us to make sure the church is informed about when it comes to the person and the measure of the Holy Spirit.

Every believer is indwelled by the same Spirit.

He doesn't portion himself out differently to different people for different things.

So that's why Paul is taking so much time here to correct the church in Corinth and the church today when and if we think about the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts incorrectly.

A church or a community of believers can go downhill quickly when it thinks that some people have more of the Holy Spirit than others.

And then in these communities, the way you can tell that someone has a more of a portion of the Holy Spirit is by what gifts they have.

So there is no better Sunday for us to think rightly about the Holy Spirit than the day of Pentecost.

And the day we celebrate when the Holy Spirit came down.

So now we'll look at 1 Corinthians just a little bit longer and consider first the unique sameness, the unique consistency of the Holy Spirit.

So look at verses four through six when Paul says that now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.

So my dad's laughing back there because he knows it's true.

Uh so I've had people tell me that our family is repetitively redundant about many things.

But um, if you see here, Paul's being kind of redundant.

He's basically saying the same thing three times same spirit, same Lord, same God.

So why is he doing this?

I think he does this to ground the spirit in the unity of the Trinity.

So look at the language that Paul is using in these verses.

The same Lord, same spirit, same Lord, same God.

Now, the original Greek words that Paul uses here are pneuma or spirit, Kyrios or Lord, and Theos or God.

And uh Kyrios is a word that the disciples they often use to refer to Jesus as Lord.

So what he's saying here is God, Spirit, Lord, or Spirit, Son, Father.

So in grounding the Holy Spirit as one of the three persons of the Trinity, Paul is reminding us that the Holy Spirit is a person.

The Holy Spirit is a person.

The Holy Spirit isn't a thing that can be divided amongst people.

And also the Holy Spirit isn't, it isn't like Star Wars, right?

The Holy Spirit isn't a force that some of us can access more than others.

The Holy Spirit is a person.

He's the same person in you as he is in me.

And Paul grounds this in the person of the Spirit, in the person of the Son, and of the person of the Father.

So look at these verses with me again.

Verse 4, Paul says, There are a variety of gifts.

Verse 5, a variety of service, and verse 6, a variety of activities.

So we can think of manifestations, the gifts, the manifestations of the Spirit, what we receive.

Services we can think of as what we contribute, what we provide, activities are what we do.

So we have gifts, we have services, and we have activities.

But look at these, look at these passages, look at this passage again.

Look at who.

And notice I said who here instead of what undergirds all of this.

Paul writes that around all these things, around the gifts, the services, the activities, is the same spirit in verse 4, the same Lord in verse 5, and the same God in verse 6.

What an amazing Trinitarian approach to our one God.

So when we get down to brass tacks here, what is Paul trying to tell the church leaders in Corinth, who were all over the place when it came to the person and the work of the Holy Spirit?

What is the point that he's really trying to drive home?

And I think the point he's trying to drive home is this is he's telling them that though the manifestations or the gifts of the Spirit, those may be different in every believer, the measure of the Spirit is always the same in each believer.

We may have different gifts, we may have different ways that the Holy Spirit has blessed us, but we all have received the same fullness of the Holy Spirit.

So behind all these different gifts, the bedrock, the manifestation of the Spirit is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

So every single person in this room, like I said, we have different gifts.

We are all very different people.

Some of us more different than others.

I consider myself a pretty different guy.

But um God has given us all these different gifts, these different manifestations of himself.

It does not mean he's given us different measures of himself.

We've all received the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

And Paul reinforces this, he backs this claim up in verse 12 by using the image of a human body.

He says, For just as the body is one and has many members, hands, head, legs, nose, ears, and all the members of the body, though many are one, so it is with Christ.

And he does this again in verse 13, for in one spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews, Greeks, slaves, free, and all were made to drink of what?

Of one spirit.

Living into the fruit and the gifts of the spirit, that's great.

That's awesome, and I encourage you to do it.

But first, you have to understand the person of the spirit.

But the question, the question that remains for us is this.

After we understand the person of the spirit, the question that remains is this are you yielded to the spirit?

Are you growing in surrender to him?

I pray this may be true for all of us.

And it's it's vital for walks with Christ to become more in step and more in tune with the Holy Spirit.

However, learning to walk in the Holy Spirit and learning to grow in our spiritual gifts, it's not the same as trying to gaining more or attaining more of the Holy Spirit.

We don't practice our spiritual gifts so we can we can level up on the Holy Spirit scale.

It's not it's not like a video game where you fight some kind of some kind of boss and you gain more spiritual gifts and you level up on your Holy Spirit power.

Like that's not the way it works.

The Holy Spirit has already given us the fullness of himself.

Right?

Our problem here, our problem isn't that we are failing to get more of God, right?

He's already given us the fullness of himself.

The problem is that we have not given him the fullness of ourselves.

But the good news here, the good news is that the Spirit helps us yield more and more and give more of ourselves to God one step at a time.

And Paul teaches us about the amazing, the incredible consistency of the Holy Spirit.

He teaches us about the sameness of the Holy Spirit, and then he teaches us about the amazing variety of the gifts of the Spirit.

We can understand and celebrate the variety of these amazing gifts so long as we understand that it is the same Spirit, the same God who gives them to us.

So then what Paul goes on to do is he lists a variety of gifts that the Spirit may give to you as you surrender yourself to him.

But he's so clear that even before this, he lists these gifts, that none of these gifts are inferior for Luna, like we mentioned before, or none of these gifts are superior for Walter, like we mentioned before.

And then Paul goes on, what he does next is he goes on to tell us why.

He goes on to tell us why there are no superior gifts and no inferior gifts.

And first, look at verse 7.

Paul writes, To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

And on this room, there are so many different gifts that we celebrate in people.

Now, how incredible is it that we are not all the same.

What a blessing that is.

Praise God, right?

But, however, we we have to be careful because our church or any church, it would become dysfunctional if we started to become jealous of one another's gifts, or if we started to celebrate our giftedness or someone else's giftedness more than someone else's.

And the reason we can't do this is because what we're celebrating in ourselves and what we're celebrating in other people, it isn't ours.

What we're celebrating is the God who's given us these gifts for the common good.

When we celebrate spiritual gifts, like before, we don't say, oh man, praise Luna, she's got this awesome gift.

Or praise Walter, he's got this incredible gift.

No, we We praise God because he is the one working his spirit through them.

And Paul writes about why gifts aren't superior and inferior again in verse 11.

He says, all these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions each one individually as he wills.

The Spirit gives these gifts as he sees fit.

That means, and please, please, please hear me when I say this, that you should never worry or be anxious or even be embarrassed about the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given you.

Especially if you've ever been in a context where you've been told that your gift is of lesser value or is inferior.

That is a lie.

That is a lie that the enemy is whispering in your ear to pull you away from your walk with Christ.

But in the same way, in the same way, we must also make sure that we don't brag about our gifts, right?

Because there are no gifts that are superior.

Because as verse 11 says, the Spirit apportions gifts as he sees fit.

And the same Spirit who gave you a gift can also take that gift away.

And Paul goes on to list all these amazing gifts.

And the list that he gives in 2 Corinthians, it's some of the gifts, but there's other passages that give us even more gifts.

And that doesn't even include the fruits of the Spirit, which is in a different passage.

But in here he lists gifts like wisdom, knowledge, healing, and prophecy.

But we must remember that these gifts aren't ours.

They are grace-filled gifts from God.

Now, here at Trinity Burke, we believe that these gifts of the Spirit do continue today.

Here at Trinity, we believe in the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit and that He is alive and active in our lives in this very moment as we speak.

And we believe that the gifts and the fruits of the Spirit that continue today.

The Holy Spirit wasn't just active with the disciples and then stopped.

The Holy Spirit is alive and working today.

And Paul, he encourages us to lean into and pursue these gifts.

In fact, we at Trinity, we also encourage you to lean into and explore your spiritual gifts.

I would love for you to lean into if you feel like you have a gift of healing.

Read more about it, talk to us about it.

If you feel like you have the gift of tongues, I would love to hear you praying for someone in tongues after a service.

That's incredible.

But first, we have to get these two things straight.

We need to get these things straight.

That the manifestation or the types of gifts should not be confused with the measure of the spirit.

Verse 11, all are empowered by one and the same spirit.

And second, the manifestation of or types of gifts you receive is completely up to the will of the Spirit.

Verse 11, again, he apportions to each one individually as he wills.

But no matter what gift you have, you can rest on the fact that it has been given to you as the Holy Spirit wills, and your gift is good because God is good.

Where the church in Corinth went wrong, and where we often go wrong, and where I myself, I often go wrong, is when we focus on the gifts or we focus on other people's gifts instead of the one who gives the gifts.

Now the point of spiritual gifts, the point of the gifts isn't to glorify the person who has them.

We're not trying to glorify ourselves or other people with spiritual gifts.

The point of spiritual gifts is to glorify God.

The point of our gifts, the point of the spirit working isn't to glorify ourselves, is to glorify God.

Now, the only question that remains is how do we how do we access these gifts?

How do we how do we get more in tune with the Holy Spirit?

Remember what Jesus says in Matthew 7, verses 7 through eleven.

Matthew 7:7

Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, it will be opened.

For which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone.

Or if he asked for a fish, we'll give him a serpent.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?

The Holy Spirit gives gifts to those who ask.

But also remember the story of Pentecost in Acts 2.

The Holy Spirit also gives gifts to those who are weary, to those who are tired, to those who are exhausted, and to those who aren't necessarily feeling very spiritual in that moment, who aren't feeling very ready.

The Spirit gives gifts to those who ask, and the Spirit gives gifts to those who are too tired to even think about asking.

All we're asked to do, whether it's in tongues of fire, in a rushing wind, or if it's in a gentle rain, like what we have out there this morning, all we're asked to do is to yield, is to surrender.

Now, concerning spiritual gifts, what Paul wants us to be informed about is this that we yield, that we surrender to the person of the Holy Spirit, and that we continue to surrender as He, the Holy Spirit, distributes gifts as he wills.

Now, if this, the Holy Spirit, in my opinion, is the most confusing person of the Trinity to really understand, right?

We can understand the image of a father pretty well, understand the image of a son pretty well, but a Holy Spirit is a little bit different.

So if this confuses you, like it has me often, like it has me when I wrote this sermon, if it worries you, if it intimidates you, or if the idea of the Holy Spirit in your life excites you, or if you have any questions, please, please don't hesitate to reach out to Mike Ride, shoot us a text, give us a call, shoot us an email.

We would love nothing less than to go on a walk with you and get coffee and talk about how the Holy Spirit is working in our lives and how the Holy Spirit is working in your life.

So please don't hesitate to reach out to either one of us.

The Holy Spirit is alive, the Holy Spirit is active, and the Holy Spirit is working in the life of every believer.

So with that in mind, let's close by praying together.

Dear Lord, thank you so much for this morning, this Pentecost Sunday.

Father, I pray that as we learn to live and walk this side of Pentecost, Lord, that you pour out your Holy Spirit upon us.

God, I pray that we may rest in the fact that we've all received the fullness of your spirit.

God, I pray that we may yield and surrender more and more to you as we learn to live and walk in your ways together.

Pray this in your holy name.

Amen.