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.