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.
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,
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,
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,
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.