How To Face a Giant: Sermon 1 Samuel 17:1-50

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire.

His footsteps shook the very ground they stood on. With every step he took their hearts became more and more afraid. He stood over ten feet tall. The armor that he wore on his body weighed 150 pounds, which was more than any of their whole bodies weighed. The head of his spear weighed 19 pounds and he could throw it with deadly force and accuracy. He was a fearsome sight and just the mention of his name made his enemies quake in their boots and he knew it. He thought he was invincible and most of the people who saw him would agree. He was the original weapon of mass destruction and his name was Goliath. Who could face such a beast in battle and be victorious? Many men had tried and all had failed. Some had said that an entire army could not kill Goliath. So on that day when he stood in front of the army of Israel and taunted them, the men of Israel wanted to do something about it but were too afraid. But in the end it was not a warrior using human weapons that defeated the giant, but a boy welding only the weapons of God.

We face our own giants everyday. That statement has almost become cliché because it has been used by so many preachers but it is true. Everyday of our lives present new problems and new challenges, we remember from last week about the manure that happens in life. Some of these challenges seem as overwhelming as that giant standing before the army of Israel. No matter what it is or how daunting the problem might be with the weapons of God

Fortunately for us God gives us a strategy for going into battle with these Goliaths. We cannot win in a battle of strength, but if we employ a little strategy we might be able to turn the tide on these seemingly overwhelming enemies. Before we see a winning strategy, let’s look at an example what not to do. This example comes from Saul, not the one in the New Testament, but Saul the first king of Israel.

Saul tried to defeat his Goliaths using his own means, ignoring the will of God. He thought he was doing the right thing, but in every decision he made without God in his corner he just fell further and further away from the power of God, until he found himself, the king of Israel, quivering at the sight of this monster. Saul tried to fight his giants on his own and failed miserably.

Let’s switch gears now and talk about a man and a strategy that works. The Bible describes David as a man after God’s own heart, a righteous man, a man who is the true king of Israel, but at the time of the story David is just a boy, but even as a boy he knows the right strategy to face the problems of life. David sees Goliath, he sees this ten foot tall monstrosity but unlike the rest of the great warriors of Israel, he does not fear. Why, because David put his entire faith and trust in God and God gave David the power to defeat the giant.

A few weeks ago we talked about fear and faith and how faith is the enemy of fear. We talked about how faith is inversely related to fear, as your faith rises, your fears diminish and when we have our full faith and trust in God then we have no fear. David knows that God is on his side and he has 100% trust in that knowledge. He does not cower in the face of danger and adversity, but looks Goliath dead in the eye with the full confidence of God and employs the “God first” strategy. You must acquire the power of God before you can defeat your giants but once you have the backing of the Almighty then even the biggest Goliaths are no problem to handle. Once you have God on your side then you can use the weapons of God just as David did when facing Goliath. These weapons of God are found in 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 which was our call to worship this morning. In that Scripture Paul lists the weapons of God that we can use to face our problems, to face our Goliaths with the full backing of God.

First on the list is purity. We must be pure in heart and in mind. We must not have any ulterior motives in facing our problems. We cannot use the weapons of God to rip other people off. We cannot use the weapons of God to exact revenge on those that have wronged us. We cannot use the weapons of God to harm those whom we hate. We must have pure and holy reasons in order to have the backing of God. David had no ulterior motives in facing Goliath. He only wanted to serve God and to bring glory to God through the defeat of this enemy. He didn’t want glory for himself, but glory for God and for God’s people. This wasn’t a power play to take the kingdom away from Saul and it wasn’t an offensive move, remember that Goliath was picking the fight. David was pure in mind and heart and only wanted to serve God and do God’s will. Are we as faithful in our daily lives? Do we do everything for the glory of God? We pray the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday and in that prayer it says “thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven” and we should do everything in our lives according to the will of God and for his glory. I don’t stand to preach to you this morning because I like to hear the sound of my own voice but because I want to do God’s will and glorify God’s name. When we are pure in heart and mind then we are able to use the power of God to defeat any Goliath that comes our way.

The second weapon of God is knowledge. We must have the proper knowledge if we are going to defeat our Goliaths. How can we trust in God’s promises if we don’t understand them? How can have faith that conquers fear if we don’t understand what we should have faith in? We must have knowledge if we are to grow in the Spirit, like we talked about last week. We must study daily in the Bible. We must come to Church, to Sunday school, and we must come to Bible study to discuss this book and to understand what God has in store for us. David had no fear of Goliath because he had knowledge that God was with him and he placed his faith in that knowledge. Before we face the giants in our lives we must have the knowledge and then place our faith in that knowledge that God will bless us in everything that we do is in his will. How do we know what is in his will? We pray, we asked God personally about what he wants in our lives. Secondly, we study this book, because within its pages lies the will of God.

Thirdly, we must have genuine love; this goes back to being pure in mind and in heart. We must have that kind of love that we discussed a few weeks ago, remember agape, that unconditional love, that accepts, forgives, supports, and frees. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that we can have all the knowledge, we can prophesy, we can speak with the charm and eloquence of a Washington DC politician, and we can quote this book from Genesis to Revelation, but if we have not love it is utterly and completely worthless.

Fourthly, and finally we must be truthful in our speech. We have to have open and honest relationships with one another. We have to love each other enough to have the courage to intervene when we see someone being overwhelmed by a Goliath. We cannot simply look the other way. If we cannot be open and honest with one another then how can we be open and honest with a lost and lonely world? David was honest with Saul and told Saul the king that he was wrong and that David could defeat this giant. We have to be willing honestly evaluate our own battles and to be honest enough to tell others and to help others when they can’t see Goliath looming over their head. We must honestly share our knowledge and in love and purity show them that there has never been a giant that God couldn’t slay.

Each of these weapons must be used together in order to weld the power of God. Take one away and the rest are worthless. David needed his sling, but also needed stones, take part one away and the other has not effect. Remember it was not by David’s power that Goliath fell, but by God’s power through David.

We are always going to face giants. They sneak up on us sometimes and other times we are just too blind to see them stand there in front of us. We must always have our God weapons ready and remain on the alert. We cannot defeat Goliath on our own. On our own we simply shake in our boots at the monstrosity. However, with the power of God, we have the courage and the faith to take on any size challenge. We have to things God’s way, because his way holds the power. If we hold fast to God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter in the stormy blast and our eternal home, then God will hold fast to us.

The Planting Parable: Sermon John 20:19-31

Jesus was a master storyteller. When Jesus spoke to large crowds, he mostly spoke in parables or in little short stories. These little snippets contained deep philosophical ideas that Jesus was trying to convey to the people. One reason why he used stories is because like I said above, a good story is easy to remember. You remember the basics of the story and more times than not you remember the moral as well. Another reason is because the things Jesus was trying to say, the truths he was trying to teach were so radical that most people wouldn’t understand and because they didn’t understand they would just blow Jesus off as a kook. Remember Nicodemus, Jesus try to tell him about the kingdom of God using metaphors and examples but Nicodemus could not wrap his mind around what Jesus was trying to say.

One metaphor or parable that Jesus used often was about seeds. The planting and harvesting cycle was something everyone could understand especially the people in the Galilee, out in the country. People planted their own vegetables, their own grains, their own grapes and olives and so the could understand the concept of the seed growing into a plant.

The Scripture reading today is a two for one special. We have two parables that really interconnect together. One story is parable of the growing seed and the other is a more famous one about a specific type of seed, a mustard seed. Each of these fit into one another and both provide a glimpse into the transition from the physical world into the world of the kingdom of God, like we talked about last week. It is that transition point in which we are transformed from the physical world into the spiritual world; it is that point which our parables for today fit in.

The first of these parables is that on the growing seed. At the time of Jesus the planting of seeds must have seemed somewhat mysterious. You put this little thing in the ground and put water and fertilizer on it and almost miraculously it sprouts out of the ground and in a few months is mature and ready for harvest. That was the basis for the parable. The plant grows without the farmer knowing how it grows and the Spirit, which gains a person entrance into the kingdom of God, grows without our knowing how. It is one of God’s mysteries. Today, with the help of modern science, we understand the of process plant development. We know that in many seeds there are little tiny plant embryos and they feed on the starches in the seed and then sprout up and grow. Although plant growth is not longer a mystery the parable is not without worth and it is not without a lesson to teach because we understand about plants but the kingdom of God does remain somewhat mysterious.

Every Christian living on Earth today has something in common. Whether you are Billy Graham, Bishop Dick Wills, Pope Benedict XVI, Brad Smith, or any of you, our faith, our relationship began as a seed. Someone at some point in time planted the seed of the Christian faith in our hearts. It might have been a parent. It might have been a Sunday school teacher, it might have been a preacher, and it might have been Billy Graham. Each one of us had a seed planted and that seed began to grow, some seeds grow slowly and need careful attention and then some seeds are like kudzu and needs no help to grow abundantly.

Most of us living here in the country have had or still have gardens and if you do still have gardens I would be happy to take any leftovers you might have, we love veggies at my house. Anyway, I can remember having a garden at my grandparent’s house and I can remember tenderly planting the seed in carefully plotted rows and then watching the plants sprouting up and then bearing fruit. As most of us know gardens need certain things in order to grow just we do as newly planted Christians. One needs this information in order to produce a healthy garden and one needs this information to produce healthy Christians.

First we must plant seeds in good soil. This is so important that Jesus talked about this earlier in Mark in another parable so I won’t go in depth with this one, that’s for another sermon. However, we do have to plant in good soil, at my house we don’t have a garden because the dirt is too rocky, and the topsoil is not deep enough. So when we plant seeds for vegetables we have to plant in good soil and when we plant seeds for the kingdom of God we have to plant seeds in those who are willing to receive them. The seed of the kingdom will only grow in those people who are willing to surrender to it and have hearts that are prepared to receive it. I could go on and on about this but like I said that’s another sermon.

Another thing most plants need is a steady source of water. Water allows the plants to convert sunlight into energy and it helps to draw in nutrients from the soil. Farmers depend on reliable weather for a good harvest, too much or not enough rain will ruin a crop. Sometimes water has to be brought in from other sources. Those who have houseplants or flower baskets on the porch have to water the plants yourselves. Newly planted kingdom seeds need watering also, but of course we are not talking about H2O. The water we need as Christians is time spent with God. God’s grace and God’s blessings pours over us like rain. Sometimes we have to go get the water ourselves when our kingdom plants get dry. We have daily Bible study. At Annual Conference this past week, we received journals to use in our daily Bible readings and I have only been doing it for a few days but I can tell a difference, I feel more spiritually refreshed. I cannot overemphasize the importance of spending time everyday with God. You might say “I don’t have time I’ve got to work and the cook dinner and by that time I am too tired”. I say you have to make time. God gives us more than we could ever repay and so should be give God at least 15 minutes back to him everyday. It’s not that much to ask. Spending time with God is one of the most important things we can do to help our kingdom seeds, our kingdom plants grow.

Many of us grew up on small farms. Some of you all may still have farms that you tend to. If you have ever had cows or horses or any type of farm animal you know that there is one inevitable by-product, manure. Manure comes with the same regularity as death and taxes and you have to do something with it. The more animals you have, you guessed it, the more manure you have to deal with. We deal with manure everyday in our own lives. Murphy’s Law seems to be always in affect. We have to deal with bad things on a daily basis and it comes in many different forms. It might be overdue bills, it might be large amounts of debt, and it might be a sickness that has come to you or to a family member. It could be any number of things but we all have to deal with it in one way or another. Adam Hamilton a UMC pastor in Kansas City talks about dealing with the manure on the farm and in our lives. We can try to ignore it. I try that strategy when it comes to dirty laundry in the floor. We can see the bad things in life piling up higher and higher and ignoring the problem only works to a certain point and then the pile is so high that you have an even bigger problem on your hands. You can try to burn the manure in a pile. Many people try to drown there problems in alcohol, drugs, and other vices, but just like burning that manure it only makes things worse. God’s plan for manure in our lives is the same plan that smart farmers have. If you take manure and work in with other soil in a compost heap or as we did on our farm we let the cows work it in with their hoofs in the hall of the barn. The product of that is very rich and fertile soil that can be used as fertilizer. God wants us to deal with the bad things in our lives. To work the problem and to learn from our mistakes and when we do this, then we have fertilizer that helps our kingdom plants grow strong and mature. We cannot ignore the bad parts of life, we cannot try to destroy them with any outside means, we can only work the problem until the problem is solved and then we are much stronger than we were before.

Once our kingdom plants become mature then we being to bear fruit and fruits are holding places for seeds. Many people keep some of their harvest to use as seeds for next year. Once we are mature in the kingdom of God then we can produce and plant seeds in other people. In fact that is what we are called to do by Jesus. It doesn’t have to be a big seed. That is where the second parable comes in. The mustard seed is the tiniest of seeds, only a speck in your hand and yet with proper nourishment it grows to be a large plant than bears its own fruit. Many things that we do as Christians plant seeds for the kingdom. We can help out a neighbor, we can give can goods to the Help Center, we can visit someone in the hospital; there are numerous things to

How is your kingdom plant this morning? Are you still a seed? Are you mature and bearing fruit? Are you planting kingdom seeds in other people? Are you in need of nourishment? I hope that I have given you some ways to make your life in God through Christ more productive so you can begin bearing seeds for God’s kingdom. We must always be growing in our relationship with God. We cannot stay spiritual babies and we cannot stay spiritual seeds. God’s plan is for us to live abundantly and bear fruit and live our lives to full potential. We can only do it with the help of God.

The Nicodemus Conversation: Sermon John 3:1-17

If you had the opportunity to have a conversation with Jesus, what would you ask him? Many Christians have thought about this scenario many times. Several songs, including a big hit “I Can Only Imagine” have been written about meeting Jesus face to face. If Jesus were to knock on your door and have a cup of coffee with you, what would you talk about? Would you ask him about the future? Would you ask him about loved ones that have left? I have thought many times about all the questions I would ask Jesus when I get to meet him.

Well, the man in our story today had just that opportunity. Jesus has entered Jerusalem with a big splash. In the Gospel of John, Jesus enters Jerusalem at the beginning of his ministry not toward the end overturns the money changers tables. After the confrontation at the Temple, Jesus became the talk of the town. Everyone wondered about this young upstart from the country. Most of the Jewish authorities began to see Jesus as a threat, but one in particular became very interested in what his rabbi had to say.

Nicodemus was an older man. The Bible says that he was a ruler or a leader of the Jews, which probably meant that he was a member of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was a council based out of the Temple who was given judicial authority in Jerusalem, by the Roman government. This was the same group that would try and convict Jesus in a few years. So Nicodemus was a prominent man in the community. He had spent most of his life studying the Torah or the Law of Moses, which we know today as the first five books of the Old Testament, so Nicodemus was extremely well versed in the laws of the Jewish people.

You see the Jewish people at that time, and especially the higher class Pharisees, were almost obsessed with the study and the keeping up with the law. The Ten Commandments were a good starting point, but these commandments lacked the detail that the Jews were looking for and so they came up with a supplement to the Book of the Law which was called the Mishnah. This book put into incredible detail the laws of the land. For example, the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy was too vague and so details had to be added. For example, you could not sew or remove more than two threads from a garment. You could not carry anything with you, even a bed mat, we remember the man that Jesus healed on the Sabbath and told him to pick up his mat and go home. The man got into trouble with the Jewish authorities because he was working on the Sabbath. The point I am trying to make is this, the Jewish people believed their salvation depended on the learning and keeping of the laws set forth by God. They were concerned about the physical world and their actions in this world.

This is the mentality that Nicodemus had when he went to seek out Jesus. His mind was focused on the physical world and not of spiritual things. So he goes out at night, because he dare not jeopardize his reputation by being seen talking with Jesus, and he finds Jesus, but what should he say. So Nicodemus thinks he can catch more flies with honey and he can with vinegar and so he pays Jesus a compliment. He says that Jesus must be sent from God, because no one can do the things Jesus does apart from the power of God. This differs from the opinion of some of Nicodemus’ colleagues who claim Jesus is from Satan or some other place apart from God. But I think Nicodemus did see something special in Jesus.

Jesus responds not with a “thank you” or even a “Hi. How are you?” Instead, Jesus really blows Nicodemus’ mind. He says “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above”. I can imagine the look the Nicodemus gives Jesus and I can also imagine the Nicodemus was probably thinking “O.K. Maybe this guys is nuts.” Nicodemus doesn’t understand what Jesus is talking about because Jesus and Nicodemus are thinking on different levels. Nicodemus has spent his entire life focused on the physical world, specifically the law and order of this world. Jesus, on the other hand, is speaking of a different animal altogether, the spiritual realm.

Jesus mentions the Kingdom of God to Nicodemus. We remember that on Palm Sunday the people cheered Jesus because they thought that he was the new David sent to reclaim the kingdom of Israel on Earth, but in fact he came to usher in a new kingdom of God, a kingdom not of the physical but of the spiritual. The same thing was happening to Nicodemus, when Jesus said kingdom of God, Nicodemus probably thought Jesus was talking about the kingdom of Israel on Earth. Nicodemus thought when Jesus said “born from above” or another translation is “born anew”, he meant a physical birth. Nicodemus was imagining his mother giving birth to him now as an old man and was greatly perplexed. His mind was on the physical but Jesus was talking about the Spiritual.

There is a big difference between the physical world of the flesh and the heavenly world of the Spirit, Jesus calls this the Kingdom of God. This might seem an unnecessary statement but so many times we failed to fully understand what Jesus is saying because our minds are locked in the physical world and so we do not understand things spiritually. The Kingdom of God is a new way of thinking and a new way of seeing. The physical world is fully of violence and hatred. The physical world is fully of injustice and sorrow. We see the effects of the physical world, everyday on the news. Those in the physical world are programmed for selfishness. They believe that the only thing that is important is themselves and their happiness, with no concern for others. The physical world is full of conflict and war. The Kingdom of God is a place of peace. It is a place that the Bible tells us that no tears fall and no sadness is known. There is no pain, no sickness, and all people are treated like equals. It is the place that we have to look forward to. The Kingdom of God is that place where the streets are paved with gold and light of Christ is always around us. It is through spiritual not physical means that we will enter into the Kingdom of God.

That is what Nicodemus could not understand. He had spent his whole life keeping these physical laws in order to gain entrance to God’s kingdom, but he was beginning to realize his way wasn’t going to cut it. Jesus told Nicodemus that we must be spiritually reborn because we have to be deconstructed to our physical mindset and be reconstructed to a new way of thinking in the spiritual world. We have to die to this world and be reborn in the Spirit. That is how the connection is made with God and that is how we gain entrance to the Kingdom of God.

We must focus our minds to the Spiritual before we can truly understand what God wants for us in our lives. It is through the Spirit that we communicate with God. We cannot do this through physical means. We call God on his cell phone or shoot him an e-mail. Prayer is the way that we talk to God and prayer is done through the Spirit. Even though we speak the words out loud or to ourselves, it is the Holy Spirit in us that connects us with God. God knows what we will ask before we even ask it because we are connected to God through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus used the metaphor of birth to describe this change from the physical to the spiritual. He does this because just like a new baby has to grow physically, so do we have to grow spiritually after our rebirth. We will have to crawl before we walk, we will have to walk before we can run, and along the way there will be times when we slip and fall. Even as we get older we still slip up sometimes. The awesome thing is that the God we serve is always there to pick us up and sets us back on our feet. He is infinitely patient with us, but just like with a child, he wants to see us grow continually. You wouldn’t let your 10 year old still use diapers or carry him or her in a stroller and so it is with God. We must always grow spiritually, learning from our mistakes.

What must I do to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? A better question might be what must I do to be reborn? Several people asked Jesus this question. This is a question that is a sticking point between denominations. Some believe that one must be baptized before they are reborn, but the United Methodist belief and my belief is that we are already reborn when we surrender to the call of Jesus. The water we administer is just an outward sign of an inward promise, a physical sign of a spiritual change.

Are you focused physically or spiritually this morning? Are you problems in this world overwhelming your spiritual life? We all reach this point sometimes, even pastors. We must maintain our spiritual lives and keep our spiritual focus, because we never know what God might be trying to tell us today.

Light My Fire: Sermon Acts 2:1-21 Penetcost Sunday

Well today is the day of Pentecost. The day we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit given to humanity and it is the day that we celebrate the birth of the Church. In preparing the sermon this week, I learned some interesting things about Pentecost. First, the term Pentecost does on originate from the events that we read in the second chapter of Acts. The word Pentecost means “fifty” and it refers to the Jewish Festival of Weeks that took place fifty days after Passover. Pentecost celebrates the beginning of the harvest of wheat. So, the coming of the Holy Spirit just happened to fall on that day and we therefore refer to the story as the story of Pentecost.

That word has grown into different references. For instance, there are “Pentecostal” preachers and “Pentecostal” churches, which usually refer to those non-denominational churches that we see everywhere in this part of the country. The word Pentecostal usually means that the church or preacher has the “Holy Spirit” in them and they are loud and boisterous. We even imagine a tent revival and a fire and brimstone preacher just a hollering and sweating, if they only new that the original meaning of the word was the Greek word for 50. However, as with so many words, once the term “Pentecostal” developed that popular definition the original context means little. We, however, should not allow the term “Pentecostal” to be limited to tent revivals and fire and brimstone preachers. For if, we take the word to mean the day that the Holy Spirit came down and the day the church was born then we should all be proud to associate ourselves with the word “Pentecostal”. We should be ecstatic to have the “helper” or “advocate” as Jesus referred to the third part of the Trinity, on our side.

The events of that day give the Church today a blueprint or an instruction sheet on how to perform evangelism, which is a good thing because making disciples for Christ is our job has a church and God always provides help with he asks us to do something and so he provides us with an outline to go by. The outline consists of three stages and each stage is part of the story. The first stage is when the disciples were all in one place together and that they had a unified message. The second stage is when the Holy Spirit provided the right tool at the right time. Finally, the third stage is the reaction of the people to the message of the apostles, some were amazed and astonished and some were naysayers.

Consider the first stage a pre-stage or a time of preparation before the apostles went out on their mission. Jesus told them to stay together in a place until the time in which the Holy Spirit was to come. Jesus did not want them to go wandering about on their own and Jesus knew that none of them could go make disciples without the help of the Holy Spirit and without working together so, all the apostles including the newly elected Matthias, who came in to replace Judas stayed in a house together and together they prayed and waited to the helper that Jesus promised to come.

They all stayed together in one place as a community. One of the big things I hear from people who are not in church is, “I am spiritual not religious” or “My faith is private and I don’t need to go to church. I can talk to God here by myself as well as I can in a church building full of people.” A few weeks ago I mentioned an author by the name of Jim Wallis and one of the books he has written states that “Faith is always personal, but never private.” Our relationships with God are deeply personal, but they should never be kept to ourselves. In his book, The Community of the King, Howard A. Snyder says mainline Protestantism has changed its way of thinking from the spiritual growth of the community to that of the individual. He goes on to say, “Too often the Church has been seen as a collection of saved souls than as a community of interacting personalities.” The Church should not be a collection of saved souls that only comes together for a couple of hours on Sunday morning and then all going their separate ways. We must be unified as the Body of Christ and love and support one another as Christ loves and supports us. We must strengthen our community and be joined together before we can go out and make disciples for Christ.

Our church should serve as a type of spiritual “home base.” Those of us who played freeze tag or hide and go seek in our youth understand the concept of “home base”; it is a place in which we all safe from being tagged and we can recover from the action of the game. Our church should serve as that place of rejuvenation. As we go out during the week, doing the work that God has called us to do, whatever that might be, we are faced with all kinds of challenges and temptations that leave us spiritually drained. We come to Church to be renewed and recharged, just like a cell phone is recharged. A church service serves two purposes. The first and most important purpose is to worship God, but an amazing thing happens in the process. As we worship God, he pours out his Spirit on us leaving us renewed and refreshed. So just as the disciples needed to remain as a community so the church today provides us with community.

The King James Version adds another interesting word to the story. The KJV says that not only were the apostles in one place but they were of one accord. This would lead us to believe that the apostles had a unified message in which to preach to the world. They might not have all agreed on every detail but they all had the basics down pat. They all believed that Jesus is the Son of God and died and is risen from the grave. Not only do they believe this but also most of them there saw it firsthand. Just as the disciples had a unified message, so we as the Body of Christ should have a unified message to proclaim. That message is the Gospel of Jesus, the good news, and this message has not change in 2,000 years. It is the same today as Christ himself first proclaimed it. Just as those disciples were unified under the Gospel so should we be unified under the Gospel of Christ.

While the apostles were sitting in the house together the Holy Spirit came upon them. The Spirit came in the form of both fire and wind; these are two symbols that God uses in the Old Testament. God spoke to Moses as a burning bush. God came down in the form of fire to consume the wet offering left by Elijah to demonstrate God’s power over Baal. God came in the form of a whirlwind to answer Job. So fire and wind were symbols that they apostles would understand as the presence of God. The Holy Spirit descended and filled the apostles with power. What gift did the Spirit give the apostles? It was the gift of language. The Spirit allowed the apostles to speak in language they had never heard before. God could have given the apostles any gift, he could have made them taller, or louder so they would speak to more people. He could have given them intelligence and wisdom. Why did God give the disciples the gift of language?

I think it is because although the message remains the same, how we proclaim that message must always change with the environment in which we find ourselves. Each audience is different and the way we speak to each audience must always transform. Many different people filled Jerusalem, all of them Jewish but all speaking different languages. Therefore, the opportunity was there but the apostles did not have the right tools. They had a message but they had no way to spread that message effectively. The Holy Spirit gave them what was necessary to spread the Gospel just as it does for the Church today. We must understand our audience and adjust, not the message itself, but how we speak that message to others. For instance, if I was to preach to a group of teenagers and then later to a group of elderly ladies in a retirement home, do you think I could use the same message? Could I preach the exact same sermon to a country church as I could a church in Nashville? Probably not. I would have to adjust the way I talk to each group. I couldn’t talk about video games or the Internet to the group in the retirement home and making references to The Andy Griffith Show might not work too well for the teenagers. So before we begin to spread the Gospel we must first understand our target audience. It might be our co-workers or, it might be our grandkids. Remember the message itself does not change, but how we present that message must always change with the audience we are presenting it to.

Once people hear a message in a way that they can understand, there is always a reaction. This reaction can be similar to the reaction of the crowd to those men all of a sudden speaking in a different language. People could react with amazement and astonishment or with skepticism and cynicism. Most of the crowd that day reacts positively. They were amazed that they were hearing the message of the Gospel in their own native language. Sometimes we will be received with astonishment and amazement, but we must make sure that the people are reacting to the message not to the messenger. The Gospel has the power, it almost preaches itself, and all we have to do is use that power to spread the good news.

Still others will react negatively. Some in the crowd that day were sneering and trying to poke fun at the apostles saying that they were drunk. Now I don’t know how many drunken people you have been around, but the ones I have been around don’t usually start speaking in a foreign language. But Peter is not dismayed at all he reacts classically, by saying “These men aren’t drunk as you suppose, because it is only nine in the morning.” Not that these men don’t drink or even get drunk, but that they haven’t had time to get drunk yet. We have to prepare for both kinds of reactions. Some might seem eager but need a deeper understanding of the message and some might try to blow us off, but if we remain persistent, in love, and let Christ and his Gospel do the work then we can be amazed and astonished ourselves at what the Holy Spirit can do.

So what was the result of that day? Later in the book of Acts we learn that 3,000 people made a commitment to Christ. The Church was founded and the foundation of the Church is that message that never changes, but always must evolve in the way it is presented. The disciples had to start by forming a community and by forming a unified message. They also had to wait for the right time before the Holy Spirit entered into them and provided them the tools they needed. They used those tools that proclaim the Gospel in an effective way. They prepared for any kind of reaction that they might face. They were successful because they had the help of the Holy Spirit. The good news is that the same Holy Spirit is here today and has not lost any of its power. We can be just as effective as the Church founders that Pentecost Sunday 2,000 years ago. We only need to use the tools that the Spirit provides.