The familiarity of this text invites a preacher to try “standing”
in different places in the story, to gain a fresh perspective. We know the
basic elements of the story quite well and probably have a tendency to focus
on the spectacle of the signs—wind, fire, and tongues. Those are clearly
important elements in the story, but one way to gain a fresh perspective is
to think about what may have been going on in the hearts of these 120 or so
Jesus-followers. Who were these people? All we are told is that they gathered
in somebody’s upstairs room during the days prior to Pentecost, praying
and waiting on God to do something. What else do we know?
Many of them had staked their lives on the life and teaching
of Jesus of Nazareth. They believed Him to be Messiah, yet those hopes were
crushed barely 50 days before when Jesus was crucified. But then, resurrection!
And then 40 amazing days between Easter and Christ’s ascension into
heaven, when the risen Jesus appeared to them on many occasions. It’s
hard to imagine the impact of those experiences. Suddenly one day Jesus said,
“I’m going away and I want you to wait here until you receive
the Holy Spirit.” And He left. Taken up in a cloud into heaven.
The group did follow His instructions. They went back into the
city and gathered in a room, where for 10 days they waited and prayed and
talked and waited some more. I don’t think it takes very much imagination
to understand what must have been going through their minds during those hours:
everything Jesus had taught them, the miracles He had performed, the conflicts
with the Pharisees. As great as all of that experience was, I can imagine
them asking, “But now what? We’re sitting here waiting for—something.
Where is this going to leave me? I’ve risked a lot here. Will this faith
really work? When it really matters and I need God’s help will anything
happen?” With those questions pressing in on them, these disciples waited
on the edge of a miracle.
Our text is the account of that miracle, the miracle of Pentecost.
What happened on that first Pentecost and what continues to happen in the
life of the church from that day forward becomes an amazing answer to the
“so what?” question being asked by these uncertain followers gathered
in an upper room.
God has always wanted our relationship to Him to be so much
more than a set of rituals we go through or a list of doctrines in which we
believe. God has always wanted to be in us, to take up residence in our hearts
and restore us to His original dream of who we would be. In the First Testament,
when the people of Israel were on their journey out of Egyptian slavery, we
become well acquainted with the nature of these folks—people who were
grumbling and complaining nearly the whole time. Moses was the leader and
he’d just about had it. No matter how God helped them and what God provided
for them, these ungrateful people were always craving more. In Numbers 11,
God provided manna for them to eat in the desert, but they didn’t want
manna; they wanted meat. So God said, “Okay, meat it is. In fact I’m
going to give you so much meat that in a month’s time it’s going
to come spewing out of your nostrils and you will loathe it!” Isn’t
that a nice picture? And Moses was mad because God was going to give them
what they wanted. He said, “God, don’t you know that for these
people it will never be enough?” Moses was ready just to wash his hands
of the whole bunch. But that’s when he said something that goes to the
very heart of what God really wants to do for His people. Moses said to Joshua,
“I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the
Lord would put his Spirit on all of them!” (Numbers 11:29). What was
he wishing for? That faith would go from head to heart. That religion would
go from duty to passion. That spirituality would go from one part of life
to the very breath of life.
It’s what the prophet Jeremiah longed for when he preached
the word of the Lord saying, “This is the covenant I will make with
the house of Israel after that time . . . I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people”
(Jeremiah 31:33).
It’s what the prophet Joel predicted when he said, “And
afterward, I will pour out my spirit on all people” (Joel 2:28). Peter
quoted that passage here in Acts 2, later in his Pentecost-day sermon.
God’s Answer
God the Holy Spirit wants to take up residence in me, live in
me, fill me, and empower me—to do what? To live the life of Jesus in
this world, to be fully reconciled and redeemed—restored to God’s
original plan for me that I might live before Him with “clean hands
and a pure heart.”
The response is to receive the gift of God in the Holy Spirit.
But this is not to suggest that our response is passive. This gift is active
and changes the way we live in the world and with one another. The presence
and work of the Holy Spirit is intensely personal but it is not private. Acts
2, and indeed the whole book, makes it clear that the purpose of the Spirit
was to empower the church for witness.
Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit
comes on you, and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). The very first
thing these Spirit-filled believers did was hit the city with proclamation.
Suddenly in verse 5, the scene shifts from the upper room to the streets of
the city where people from all kinds of places were hearing the good news
in their own language. The Holy Spirit does come to comfort, to teach, and
to bring peace. But the very first gift given by the Holy Spirit is the gift
of witness. The Holy Spirit gives us the courage and the power to be witnesses
of Jesus Christ to our world.
The whole story of Pentecost is not a story of how the Spirit
comes to ease the life of the believer; it’s a story of evangelism.
Preaching the Text
(For the full manuscript
of this sermon go to www.preachersmagazine.org and click on “Sermons”)
We come from a world where the value of anything seems predicated
upon what it can produce. Concern for function even attaches to how we evaluate
people. What’s one of the first questions when you’re getting
to know a new person? “What do you do?” If they say something
impressive, we’re impressed. If they say something ordinary, we judge
them to be rather ordinary.
For many in our culture, including many of us, the cry of the
age is, “That’s nice, but what does it do?” I’m wondering
if that kind of question even functions a bit within our faith?
We see the impressive “machinery” of our Christian faith. We talk about and study the great truths of the gospel. We affirm our belief in God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. We read in the Bible and we confess together that when we come to Christ in faith we are forgiven, healed, and made new. Yet as great as all of that sounds, I can still hear the question, “Yeah, but what does it do?” In other words, “How does this faith really work in my everyday life?” It’s this “so what?” question that can drive a compelling sermon on a very familiar story.
