Come Holy Ghost

Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire and lighten with celestial fire. Father, we ask that you would continue to pour out your Holy Spirit upon us, that you would pour out your Holy Spirit and fill us with your Holy Spirit.

And as your Holy Spirit fills us, Father, may your Holy Spirit help us to submit to your Holy Spirit and to be dependent upon your Holy Spirit.

And to become more open and surrendered, Father, to you in the power of your Holy Spirit. Father, we ask that you would do this mighty work in us today.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Please be seated. Some of you might have heard this famous feminist line from the 60s or the 70s.

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. So just sort of keep that in your mind. And we're going to look at a Bible passage before we look at Acts 2.

Something that Jesus said, just that we had that gospel reading a few minutes ago. A little bit after that, John 16. So it was the same context. He's in the upper room with his disciples.

Judas is gone. He's going to be captured. All of that. Andrew, could you put John 16.7 up? Those of you who are regulars here know sometimes it's just very helpful for us to say the Bible passage together.

And so if you would join with me in saying this text out loud. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.

For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. Now we're going to read that text again in a moment because I just want you to get the full weight of it.

For many Christians, our daily walking life, we in a sense say, I need the Holy Spirit like a fish needs a bicycle. Isn't that true?

For many of us, how we go through our days. For many churches, how they organize their schedules. How they think through their future. In our minds and in our hearts, we say that.

We need the Holy Spirit like a fish needs a bicycle. And for many of us, we actually don't entirely agree with what Jesus just said. We don't think that it's better that the Holy Spirit is present here than if Jesus was physically present here.

For many of us, we would say, wouldn't it be vastly better than rather than having George up front, we had Jesus up front. Wouldn't that be vastly better than having the Holy Spirit in our midst?

That's how, in fact, many of us think. So let's read this verse of Jesus together again. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.

For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. Note, he says, it is to your advantage.

The whole thing, him going away in the coming of the Holy Spirit, is to our advantage. So just sort of mindful of that, let's go back to the text that we're going to look at this morning.

And it's Acts chapter 2, verses 1 to 11. Or we'll probably look at actually Acts 2, 1 to 13. And so if you have your Bibles, it would be great if you open them, because what we see here is Jesus keeping his promise.

The Holy Spirit coming upon human beings in a completely new way, as a result of Jesus dying upon the cross, rising from the dead, ascending into heaven.

There's, in a sense, a new coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus keeps his word. God the Father keeps his word. And this is the dramatic event, world-changing historical event, that Luke, using eyewitness testimony, records for us.

So let's just read it and hear what it has to say. It begins like this. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And just sort of pause there for a second.

Pentecost is one of three primary Jewish festivals that, in the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament, Jewish people call the Tanakh, that all Jewish men in particular, but Jewish people, were to come to Jerusalem three times a year.

And this is one of the three of them. In your Old Testament, it would be called the Feast of Weeks often. It's sort of interesting that Luke here uses the Greek way to refer to it, not the Jewish way to refer to it, because Luke is writing to Greeks.

He's writing to pagans. He's writing to us, not to a synagogue. He's writing to us. And he uses the word that we would understand, that we would tend to use. And so it's one of the great three feasts where Jewish people from all over the world were to come to.

And if you think about it for a second, like if you lived in Jerusalem, you were there for it. If you just lived in Galilee, you might be able to come to it fairly regularly.

But the Jewish people, if you hear what, when John was reading about Acts 2 and all those different nations, it gives you a picture of the Jewish, how scattered the Jewish people were all over the planet.

And so if you were one of those Jewish people that were captured by Nebuchadnezzar and brought to the Babylonian Empire, and you now live very, very far away, or if you were Jewish and you lived in Rome, you would not be able to come to Jerusalem three times a year.

In fact, it might be a little bit like Muslims today with going to Mecca. A good Muslim is to make one pilgrimage to Mecca once in their life. And so for many Jewish people back then, they might only have one time that they would be able to go to Jerusalem.

That would maybe have been their prayer, that once, that God would allow them to live long enough and have the resources, that once in their life they could go to Jerusalem for one of these festivals or maybe several. And there's good archaeological reasons and anthropological reasons to believe that Pentecost was the time that the most Jewish people came to.

And the reason was, the weather was the best. I mean, let's be honest. How many people say, I think I'd like to go holiday in Arizona in the middle of July?

You don't go to Arizona in the middle of July. People who go to Florida for the winter, well, even people in Florida like to leave Florida in the month of July, right? So the weather is just not very favorable.

So in terms of travel, in terms of weather, this, of all of the Jewish festivals, the weather was the best as a general rule. So it might literally have been, there might have been anywhere between 100,000 to 200,000 Jewish people who were gathered, not to have the Holy Spirit fall upon them because they were just devout Jews.

They wanted to be there for one of the festivals. And this was the festival where the harvest was celebrated. And it was a celebration of faith because it was the beginning of the harvest and they were thanking God for a big harvest.

So the harvest hasn't all come in, but they're thanking God for a big harvest. They come to gather. And that's why there's so many Jewish people here. So let's go back to, we'll read verse one again. Just sort of pause, keep your finger there if you want.

Now, the Holy Spirit is invisible. Some of you have maybe seen some modern creeds where they'll talk about the Holy Spirit being unseen. That's a terrible translation of the creed.

China is unseen, but you can get on a plane and see China. The Holy Spirit is unseen because it's invisible. And invisible is the more important way of understanding.

The Holy Spirit's invisible. So how would you know if Jesus kept his word? How would you know if he was going to send his Holy Spirit upon people? You wouldn't know because the Holy Spirit's invisible. And so what we're going to see here is a miracle, a mighty act of God, where God pours out his Holy Spirit.

If you read through Book of Acts, it's probably the case that there's 120 people in this room. It's men and women, people who we know as famous people like Jesus' mother Mary and some of his half-brothers and half-sisters, some of the apostles, all of the apostles, and then other nameless people, but probably about 120 people in the room.

And how will they know that God, that Jesus has kept his word? So what's going to happen is that the miracle is going to have three ways for them to recognize that the invisible has just fallen upon them and rested upon them.

And as you can see here, the first is something to do with their hearing. It doesn't say that the room is filled with a mighty wind. In other words, if you went back in a time machine and you happened to be able to slip in the room, you wouldn't see their hair rustling.

It doesn't say that. It says, look at it again, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind. It's like a hurricane-type sound.

And it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Just to give a very, very partial thing, I don't know how many of you have been to Niagara Falls, but when I went to Niagara Falls like a few years ago, I have not been there since I was a kid, and I was quite far away from it, and then it dawned on me that there's this deep sound, and I realized it's the falls.

And when you go really close to the falls, it's a sound that the body knows. Like there's something physical about the sound, and that's what's being described here.

And for Jewish people, this is a significant thing because the Old Testament word for Holy Spirit is also the word for breath and for wind. So it's resonant.

It echoes all sorts of Old Testament texts. So they hear a sound, and it would be as if we were right beside Niagara Falls. It's as if we were right in the middle of a hurricane or a mighty gale, and a sound like that that the body feels fills the room.

And then in verse 3, we see the second sign that God is doing something invisible, but a second sign that God's doing the invisible, and that's in verse 3, and it has to do with the eyes.

And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And notice here the language is not that it was fire, but that it looked like fire.

It's very, very, it would be as if you go back in time, or you know, the equivalent of the Ottawa Citizen or the Globe and Mail or the National Post or the Ottawa Sun. The reporters are there, and they ask people, you were in the room, like, what did you see?

And they say, well, I know it wasn't fire, because it didn't burn, but it sure looked like fire. I don't know how else to describe it other than it looked like fire. And actual tongues of fire came and rested upon every single person who was in the room.

Nobody was left out, men and women, apostles and people who are completely unknown to us, just ordinary people. It looked like fire, and it came and rested on each one of them.

And that's the second thing. And once again, this image of fire for a Jewish person, this is a very, very powerful image. In Exodus 3, how is it that God appears for the first time and reveals his very name?

He reveals his name as I am that I am, Yahweh or Jehovah, I am that I am. He reveals it to Moses in a burning bush. The bush is on fire, but it's not consumed.

And many, many times in the Old Testament, fire is a sign of God's presence. So God gives a visual sign that he's doing something invisible and powerful.

But the third sign is actually the most important out of all of them. And the third sign is verse 4. Now, why is this the most significant?

It's the most significant because this is the sign that makes them realize that something dramatic has happened, and it's actually in them. It's affected them.

Because if any single one of you all of a sudden was to speak a language that you had never known, you would realize that something unbelievably dramatic had happened.

If I started speaking Hungarian, I know there's some people here who speak Swahili. If Daniel starts speaking Swahili, I don't think he knows any Swahili.

You can just go around the room. You know, if Neil here or his wife Cynthia starts speaking Mandarin, that's the most dramatic aspect of this whole thing.

It's the one that makes them realize most that it's real, and that it's not just real and external. It's not just a weird vision and an auditory thing that they've heard, that it's something that's actually happened inside of them and changed them.

And I'm not going to get into the discussion about how what's happening here in Acts 2 is a little bit different than what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians about other types of tongues. It's obvious in 1 Corinthians that it's talking about a different type of tongues because there's a need for interpretation.

But, you know, we all know when we're, like just the other day when I was in, of all places, Starbucks. I know that's a real surprise to some of you, but I was in Starbucks working on this sermon, and off on the side there were two people talking.

I think it was Russian. I don't know if it was Russian, but I know it was a language. You just know it's a language. It's not like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not, you know, we know that there's a language.

And there was another couple of people, they looked Chinese. I don't know if they were speaking Cantonese or Mandarin or what, but they were speaking a language. And so all of a sudden, if I burst into speaking another language, if you started speaking another language that you did not know, you would know that something miraculous and powerful has happened to you and in a sense is in you and has changed you.

And so you put the three of them together, and you see that this is Jesus keeping his word. And if you go on to read the rest of Acts, you'll see that Peter understands that it's fulfilling ancient prophecies of the last days of God's Holy Spirit coming upon people.

It's interior, it's real, and it would truly convince them. But it's the next thing which is really, really, really shocking.

And it's the next part of the miracle, which is the constant challenge to the church. Because one of the constant challenges to the church is that we will slide into the normal ways of the world and want to create a type of religion where people have to come to us and fit in with us.

It's a very, very powerful thing. One of the things about, like in marriage, one of the struggles in marriage is that we don't realize that we have some aspects of our family identity and practice, which is just like ours.

And so the man has that and the woman has that, and they get married, and there can be a struggle over what type of soup you buy. Well, of course it's Campbell's.

No, of course it's the cheapest. Of course it's Crest. Of course it's Colgate. Of course you roll. Of course you squeeze. You know what I mean? Like, of course the toilet roll goes in that way, and the paper comes this way, not this way.

Like, what are you thinking? Right? And so it's very, very easy. And then when it goes beyond that, and then, you know, you're married, and you have kids, and the kids marry, and so there's a new man or a woman who's coming into the family.

You want the family, you want the person to fit into the family. And it can be a struggle. It's just a natural human problem. And so this is a dramatic miracle, but if the miracle just stopped there, well, it'd be just, well, that's pretty cool.

God, wow, he gives his Holy Spirit. The next part is where the real challenge comes in terms of how we actually live our lives. So look at verse 5.

Now, there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. Remember, I've already explained that. They've come for this feast. There's archaeologists, anthropologists estimate somewhere between 100,000 to 200,000 people were probably there for this event.

Not all right there, but in the area of Jerusalem for the holiday. Now, there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. It's obviously an exaggeration.

And at this sound, the multitude came together, and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we hear each of them in his own, each of us in his own native language? Now, we're going to go back and look at this because somebody might say, that's not particularly shocking, George. Well, what draws the crowd isn't the sound of the rushing mighty wind.

What draws the crowd is that when the rushing mighty wind comes, you just imagine if all of a sudden this room was filled, people would, some people would cower, people would shout out, and maybe people would start saying, let's get out the door.

And it's a surprise when you start shouting out and you realize, I'm speaking Hungarian. You know, somebody else is speaking Finnish. I don't know. You know, somebody else, whatever. And then as the Holy Spirit comes upon these people, it turns from shouts of terror into shouts of praising God.

And as they're shouting to praise God, that is the noise that comes out of the room. And it's obvious that the people, the disciples and apostles, they all, maybe they start running out of the room because it's a bit frightening what's happening.

And then they just keep going. And as they're going, they're realizing they're not shouting in fear, but they're shouting and they're praising God in many languages. And it's the many languages which draws the people. Louise and I, in the fall, we'll be celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary.

And so 35 years ago, after we got married, we went to Quebec City for our honeymoon. And the end of October in Quebec City isn't tourist season. You know, there's the summer and then there's the winter, but late October, November is not really tourist season.

And we went to Quebec City for our honeymoon. And after we'd been there a few days, Quebec City is very, very French. And after we'd been there a couple of days, we were in a place and, you know, I hadn't entirely realized that you never hear English spoken.

Like you just never hear English spoken. And I had this brief moment of what it must feel like to be an immigrant who comes to this country and they don't, and they come to this country, they've come from a country where they don't speak English.

Because Louise and I, we were in this place, maybe it was like a, like a, anyway, like a food court or something. And all of a sudden, about two tables over, we heard a table of people speaking English.

And it, whoa, they're speaking English. like I had this tiny little window of what it must be like for somebody to come from Syria or China or Pakistan or a country where English isn't the primary language and what it must be like to never hear your own language and all of a sudden be somewhere, especially for the early immigrants, the first person maybe to come from a country like that and all of a sudden hear their language spoken.

And so, you know, there wouldn't have been a whole lot of people come from like way north of northern Persia and they might only have rudimentary Greek or Latin or rudimentary Hebrew.

They might have really been struggling to try to be understood and all of a sudden they hear their language being shouted out, shouted out. They notice it, they come running.

They come running to hear their heart language. God uses their heart language to draw them. Not so much the other signs and the crowd wouldn't know about all that other stuff, but God uses their heart language to draw them.

And the other thing which is so neat about that, look at this, verse 6 again, and at this sound, now that we know what it is, the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language and they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

This is really important. It's a really important thing. Many of us, one of the reasons that, you know, that quote from Jesus about us not thinking the Holy Spirit's of value, one of the deep fears that we have is that the Holy Spirit, that if we get close to God, that it will annihilate us, that it will somehow hurt us, that it will somehow, getting close to God, getting the Holy Spirit bigger in our lives will somehow diminish us, and that's our deep fear.

But here we see in the text that when the Holy Spirit comes upon people, it doesn't diminish us, it makes us more human, because it would be as if I speak in Hungarian, and there's actually somebody here who's a native Hungarian speaker, maybe a couple, and the wife turns to her husband and said, he's speaking in Hungarian, and he has a Canadian accent.

See, the Holy Spirit doesn't come upon them, and all of a sudden, they are speaking, if it was English, Oxbridge English. They're speaking English as if, and this is what Galileans are hillbillies, right?

The Galileans are hillbillies. They're rural, lower working class, not as well educated, and in most cultures, there is a lower working class, uneducated speech pattern.

We can often pick it out. Not as, you know, maybe not as much in city areas, but especially in rural areas, in some parts of Canada, in many other parts of the world, there's a distinctive way of speaking. So God doesn't take away the fact that they're lower working class, and uneducated, and now have them speak the equivalent of Oxbridge Hungarian.

They speak good Hungarian with a Galilean accent. Actually, Andrew, could you put up the first point? This is the important, one of the really important things for us to get from this text.

Evil erodes and removes human differences, but the Holy Spirit makes us more ourselves and redeems uniqueness.

Evil erodes and removes human differences, but the Holy Spirit makes us more ourselves and redeems our uniqueness. On Wednesday, my wife and I had supper with another couple on Elkin Street.

We were at the Clock Tower Pub on Elkin Street, and, you know, we're just sitting out there having a really, it was a really nice evening, having a nice time, and we start to realize that across the street at the Human Rights Memorial that there's a band being set up, a small band, and that they're playing some instruments, and they're just singing different things, and all of a sudden, I realize they're singing a praise song.

Whoa! I had my back to turn around, look, and it was a praise song. It was a song we sing here. And then, because I'm really thick sometimes, maybe lots, and it clues in on me, oh, the big pro-life march is tomorrow.

This is probably something connected to that. So we continue, you know, Louise and myself with this other couple, we're having a nice, you know, chat and meal, and all of a sudden, one of the others noticed that there's a group of about 20, 25 people coming towards this display, and they're carrying banners, and here's the big thing.

There's two men who have red bandanas covering their face. A young man only wears a red bandana to cover his face when he wants to intimidate with violence, right?

Or a woman. They don't want to engage in free speech. They want to stop free speech. They want to intimidate with violence. And sure enough, it was a group of hardcore activists who came to take over the space.

And so we finished our meal, and we went over, the four of us, probably all for different reasons, but all of us went over because we wanted to support them.

I'm old. You know, God loved them. The three people up on the stage, they all looked like they were, you know, like 18, 19, 20 people. There's just a few other people around, and we just wanted to support them.

And these people come and they sort of try to take over the stage, use their banners to cover them up, and eventually, but you know that there's this threat of violence which is there. And in fact, it turned out that this was a spot for a prayer vigil to end abortion.

And eventually, lots of people start to come. The organizers, of course, are calling the police. The police come and they do nothing. And you know that there's going to be some violence.

There was eventually some small violence. The pro-life crowd, I'm not trying to make any political statements here, and I'm not definitely saying that people who are in favor of abortion are all going to be violent like some of these people were.

But there were four young women who were there, and they were, it was really quite remarkable and quite, I think it affected me more than it affected my wife because the other couple had gone by then.

There was just an amazing amount of anger and hatred as they went around the crowd expressing their anger and hatred when not blowing their whistles and shouting, including shouting things like, we'll be here tomorrow and you should fear us.

In front of police who of course do nothing. And anyway, here's the thing for these four young women who are just so obviously radiating anger and hatred and probably some type of deep woundedness as well, but you don't know any, you don't notice anything distinctive and unique about them because the hatred and the anger has overwhelmed them and removed human uniqueness and difference.

And that's what evil and vices do in our lives. A man who is consumed with pornography loses his distinction and uniqueness as he's captivated by the screen.

A man or a woman who's drunk, a room of drunk people are all very, fairly similar. They might think they're being really witty, but they're not.

And so what we see here in this miracle is it's really amazing because the deep fear of our lives is that as the Holy Spirit comes more deeply into our lives or as we get closer to God, that God will somehow diminish us.

but it's a lie that we tell ourselves. The fact of the matter is that when we give ourselves to evil or we give ourselves to vice, it's evil which removes human uniqueness.

It's evil which removes human difference. But when the Holy Spirit comes, we keep our accents. we become the selves that we were really meant to be.

Our uniqueness is increasingly redeemed, not removed. And so this is one of the really, really powerful things about this text.

And just look at it again because there's another powerful thing about this text that addresses our hearts. Let's read it again. Verse 6, 7, and 8. And at this sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

And they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? And that's going to give a list of a lot of languages.

Here's the next thing. Andrew, could you put this up on the screen, please? Jesus did not launch and empower a come-to religion. He launched and empowers a go-to faith.

I mean, this is a great tragedy. You know, one of the things that happened in the first, like one of the reasons, like when you look at the book of Luke and you want to have a sense that the book of Luke or the book of Acts or anything in the New Testament that it's accurate, not only are there thousands of manuscripts, literally thousands of manuscripts in Greek, which is the language that was written, but there's thousands of manuscripts in Latin.

They translated it into Latin and thousands of manuscripts in Syrian and many other languages that in the early days the Christian church understood that it wasn't, that Jesus hadn't empowered a come-to religion.

If you want to know the gospel, yet God will learn Greek. You know, if you want to be a devout Muslim, you have to learn 7th century Aramaic.

And for many Jewish people, although it's not an actual doctrine, it's in fact their practice, is if you want to really read the Old Testament, the Tanakh, you have to learn Hebrew.

And of course, the church has been guilty of it. You know what, at some point in time, several centuries later, the service becomes all in Latin. It's part of the English Reformation and the Reformation, generally, you know what was the first important, the first real work of French written?

You know what it was? Calvin's Institutes. Those of you who are a bit familiar with history know that the thing which revolutionized, that really the beginning of written German as an important language was Luther.

And in the English Reformation, it was Tyndale and Wycliffe and the English Bible and then the Book of Common Prayer, of which we are part of that legacy. And, you know, but it's just more than that.

It's very, very easy for congregations to say, we just want to sing the hymns that we like. We just want to sing the musical forms that we like. We just want to have practices the way that we like. And of all those people out there, if they want to know the truth, they've got to fit in with us.

But Jesus doesn't, didn't launch and doesn't empower come to religion. He empowers and launches a go-to faith.

And that's why churches should not only be sending to all over the world, but that even in our community.

See, this is so, so, so important because, you know, one of the things about human beings is that we get frightened often by differences. And this is such a profound challenge. And I don't know what it is that you're frightened.

Maybe some of you are, you know, tremendously frightened of people who live in Rockcliffe. Or maybe some of you are tremendously frightened of people who would vote conservative. Or people who would vote NDP. Or maybe you're frightened of people who are struggling with transgendered issues.

Or maybe you're frightened of people who dress like really, you know, punk or really gangster. Or you're frightened by people who are, like, deeply involved in the gay community. And that's a human problem, by the way, folks.

That's a human problem. And this text is saying that as the Holy Spirit has a role in our lives, it's going to make us look and not see them as enemies.

But to cry out to God and say, Lord, are you calling me to learn how to speak in such a way that they can hear? that they can hear?

That's what the Holy Spirit does. And that is so important for us to lose that fear of the other.

And rather than looking at the other as a threat that we would fight or persecute, to look at the other and say, Father, could you pour out your Holy Spirit upon them?

Could you pour out your Holy Spirit upon me? I don't know how on earth to begin to talk to somebody immersed in the world of 70 different genders. Father, help me to learn how to talk, how to pray, how to love, how to share.

Pour out your Holy Spirit upon me, Father. Please, Jesus, pour out your Holy Spirit upon our church. Obviously, we have to speak in the tongues of people who come, but, you know, in all of our structures, you never sacrifice the gospel, you never sacrifice the Bible, but there's a whole lot of other stuff.

We just need to be sensitive of what, how they hear, what they speak. We were once they. Right?

And, you know, here's the other thing. Let's look at the text. The Holy Spirit, it's funny, you know, when we often think of the Holy Spirit, we think of emotion. You know, we think of charismatic gatherings.

Some of you joke, I'm not making it, I'm not putting it down, you know, you joke about how you used to wave the flags and dance and, you know, run around the room and there's lots of emotion. It's definitely not Anglican and stayed.

You know, that old Anglican lethargy, I mean, liturgy that Anglicans are, you know, so historically famous for. But, you know, what's causing the emotion?

Let's look a little bit here. We'll see, there is in fact deep emotion here in the text, but we see that the Holy Spirit is touching our emotions in a bit of a surprising way. Actually, Andrew, if you could put up the point and then we'll read it and we'll see.

The Holy Spirit touches our hearts to redeem and change our heart. The Holy Spirit touches our hearts to redeem and change our hearts.

And here, you have to understand that the heart is not referring to the emotion, but that the heart is referring to that part at the sort of deep within us out of which our emotions and our thoughts and our will and our aesthetic experiences arise.

And in a sense, you know, sometimes when I'm counseling people about things that are going on in their lives, I try to have them to think about how they emotionally react to things.

Because how we react emotionally shows what we value, shows what we long for, shows what we trust in, shows what we are putting our hope in, shows what we think gives us meaning to our lives, shows us what we fear.

And so I say, I'm not asking you to change your emotions, but the next time you feel that, like I'll maybe have them tell me a situation and ask them what the emotion is that went along with it.

And for many of us, we just think that our emotion is natural, but one of the gifts I can give in counseling is say, well, I wouldn't react emotionally to that at all. Like I wouldn't have that emotion if that was the thing.

I often tell them a story from my past of two people, me and another person, experiencing the exact same thing with having radically different emotions as a result of it, you know, in the presence.

And I said, so ask yourself what it is that your heart is seeking, longing for, giving meaning to. And so what is happening here is that the Holy Spirit has come into them at the level of their heart and it's changing what they put their hope in and trust in.

You see, that's why, you know, when I was a non-Christian or, you know, those of you who have been non-Christians, if you hear that somebody has given their life to Jesus, your heart sinks, you go, oh no.

Oh. You know, I remember in my early days of my Christian faith that dealing with parents or trying, I mean, I was just a kid so I couldn't really deal with it, I'd just pray about it, but their kids become a Christian and it's not, whoa, my kids become a Christian, they're not going to be doing drugs like they were doing before, they're going to be drinking less.

It was actually almost for some parents as if it was worse that they'd become a Christian than that they were coming home drunk. But for a Christian, it's praise God, did you hear that Sarah just became a Christian, she gave her life to Jesus?

See what's going on there? To change in what we value, what we put our hope in. And that's why when the Holy Spirit falls upon these disciples, all of a sudden, you see the natural human reaction, natural, natural human problem is that if we can't do something that we can boast in about ourselves, we feel unhappy.

But if we do things that we can boast in or brag about, we do feel happy. And it's a very common human problem that when somebody else does something that they can boast in or brag in, if we don't care for them that much, their success, so that they can boast, makes us sad.

Isn't it? Be honest. We're not all perfect with Jesus yet. It's a human problem. And so, but one of the things here is that the disciples aren't going out saying, whoa, be honest here for a second, whoa, we were in church on Sunday and it sounded like we're in the Ottawa little theater, it sounded like there's probably about 120 people here and it sounded as if rushing wind came in and tongues of fire and I was speaking Hungarian and Daniel was speaking Mandarin and Joey was speaking Swahili and we'd be thinking, whoa, just wait till I tweet this.

Wait till I put it on Facebook. For some of us, people will buy me beer for years to hear this story. And not just the cheap stuff, they'll buy me good beer for years so I can tell them the story again.

but they're not thinking to themselves, they're boasting in God, not themselves. It's touched their hearts.

We have to sort of, you know, let's just read the rest of this. We'll close it up fairly quickly but there's a couple of final things. Look at verse 8. I'll just try to read.

And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language, Parthians and Medes, Illamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

See, Andrew, could you put up this prayer? I think it's number four. Here's a prayer we need to pray. Lord, please give me the gift of tongues. Please help me to tell of your mighty works in words that touch the heart.

You know, I've shared with you, you know, the Holy Spirit coming doesn't make us apologetic ninjas or evangelistic ninjas and we always have the right moves and we can parry the other blow and we can knock them out.

A lot of times you tell people about Jesus, you share something, it just, it goes south, it goes bad, it goes wrong and that's fine. God just calls us to be witnesses, not to be superstars because the real work is the work of the Holy Spirit and we just need to walk away and say, Father, I don't know what happened, I tried to do my best, help me to do better in the future but may you pour out your Holy Spirit upon that person.

You're sovereign, pour out your Holy Spirit and then in the future, Lord, help me when I tell people just an act of witness, Father, please give me the words so that your Holy Spirit will touch their hearts.

Give me the gift of tongues. Give me the gift of tongues. And just look at the response, by the way, this is really important. Remember I said that the Holy Spirit coming upon us, it preserves, it makes us more ourselves, it preserves our freedom.

Look at the response of people to this Pentecost day, verse 12 and 13, and all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean?

But others, mocking, said they are filled with new wine. The Holy Spirit touches each of these people, all of the people, and some of them are really thinking, whoa, what's going on?

If you read the end of the story, 3,000 people give their lives to Jesus. We don't know how many were there, maybe it was just 5,000 listening or what it is, but it isn't that everyone gives their lives to Jesus.

Some of them just say, oh, they're drunk, goofballs, gosh, you know, you bring in these hillbilly Galileans and they come to places like Jerusalem and they defecate all over the place and they, you know, they urinate and they get drunk and gosh, I wish they'd just go home.

And others say, whoa, their heart's being touched. Could you put up the next thing?

Oh, actually, put up the John quote again. Could you all say this John quote with me again, please? Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you.

Because of the death upon the cross of Jesus, Jesus dies upon the cross and he bears my doom and he offers me his destiny.

It's an act of sacrifice, an act of exchange, and I can receive it by faith. And when I receive it by faith, God's power comes upon me to make me right with himself.

And when God's power comes upon me to make me right with himself, because I have just trusted that I cannot deal with my doom and my own, I'm trusting Jesus to do it for me.

I'm trusting his death and resurrection. I'm trusting him as my Savior and my Lord. Jesus gives to every one of the people, everyone who gives their lives to Jesus, ordinary people, he gives the Holy Spirit.

And apart from that, the stole of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit might come and visit us. He might come and try to convict us of things that we do that are wrong. But he comes and he's like a visitor.

He comes and he convicts. But when we give our lives to Jesus, even an ordinary person, the Holy Spirit, rests upon us. He dwells in us.

He makes his home in us. Andrew, could you put up the next point, please? Before the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Holy Spirit might visit a person.

Now, Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit to live in ordinary people who trust Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Friends, if you haven't given your life to Jesus, maybe right now you're thinking that I am the biggest idiot in the world.

And that's fine. But for some of you, if you haven't given your life to Jesus and you are at all thinking, it might very well be that the Holy Spirit is prompting you to give your life to Jesus.

You are experiencing right now the Holy Spirit's work in your life. And so, I ask you, I urge you to not resist but surrender.

To cry out and say, Jesus be my Savior, Jesus be my Lord, come Holy Spirit, live within me. There's no better time than right now to do that. And for all of us, I'm going to ask you to stand right now.

Andrew, could you put up the final prayer? For all of us, I ask you to stand in closing. For some of us, we just need to pray this prayer because we're Christians. Because if we're honest with ourselves that the way I began the sermon that we in fact are living our lives saying, I need the Holy Spirit like a fish needs a bicycle.

And now you realize you need the Holy Spirit. You need to surrender and be filled with the Holy Spirit and live in the power of the Holy Spirit. And for some who haven't given your lives to Jesus, you've called out to Jesus right now and this is also your prayer.

Maybe it's your conversion prayer. And I invite you to pray it with me in closing. Dear Lord, please forgive me for not believing you when you said, nevertheless, I tell you the truth.

It is to your advantage that I go away. for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

Lord, you have kept your promise by giving your Holy Spirit to your disciples. Please make me a disciple of Jesus gripped by the gospel, living filled with your Holy Spirit, submitted to your Holy Spirit, dependent on your Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Father, pour out your Holy Spirit upon us. Make us, Father, an Acts 2 church so that we might not boast ever in ourselves but boast in you.

This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.