Pentecost is the forgotten
holy day. We celebrate Christmas for a
month, Easter for a week, but have you ever seen a store have a Pentecost
sale?
Even so, Pentecost is as
important as Christmas or Easter. Christmas celebrates the coming of Jesus and Easter
the completion of His mission. But
Pentecost celebrates both the coming and the fulfillment of the work of the
Holy Spirit--who is just as important as Jesus.
So why don’t we celebrate His coming?
I
think it is because when Jesus came, He came in the form of a human baby. We relate to babies. When He died, it was
physical—a cross. When He resurrected,
there was an empty tomb. But the Holy Spirit comes in a form we never
physically see. We only see the result of His coming. We tend to dismiss as unimportant things which
are beyond seeing and hearing. When microbes were discovered, people could not
believe that unseen bugs could cause disease. When electricity was discovered, people
could not believe it could make light. Yet we all know the power of germs and
electricity today.
We have the same trouble
believing that God’s unseen Spirit can cause spiritual success or failure. We
are more likely to believe that our own effort or lack of it makes Christianity
work. We think if we only try harder we can succeed. Yet without the Spirit, our
efforts to do God’s will are doomed to fail.
The church has been analyzed
and scrutinized by worldly thinkers to understand why it succeeds or fails. It
has been examined as a sociological movement, a business organization, a
psychological phenomenon and a movement. Yet all such efforts neglect the power
of the Holy Spirit, which God says is the key to our success.
The same is true for us
personally. If we do not have the Holy Spirit, then the church is nothing but a
set of empty rules and dogmas. It is a
sham, a fake and a fraud. The only difference between the strength of the
church and the strength of false religions is Pentecost. Without it, the church
would and should cease to exist.
But what about the Cross?
Surely, the cross of Christ is the central doctrine of the church. But without the Spirit, the Gospel is of no
effect. The Spirit moves us to repentance, gives us power to preach, applies
the truth of the Gospel to our lives and changes our hearts accordingly. Without the Spirit, the Gospel is like a
light bulb sitting on a shelf in a store—all potential, no power. It is like a
bomb without a detonator, an unfertilized egg, or a seed in a plastic bag.
Without the Spirit, the Gospel cannot change a thing. It is dead, without
chance of fulfillment.
For years the church has been
trying to function without the power of the Spirit and has gotten nowhere. Suppose I buy a shiny new sports car. The
salesman tells me the car will go from zero to sixty in thirty seconds. “That’s
pretty fast,” I say. But six hours later
I return it to the dealer. “You’ve sold me a lemon,” I say. “You said it had
all that power, but I’ve been pushing it all day, and I’ve only managed to move
it a couple of hundred feet.”
The salesman asks me. “Have you put gas in it?”
“Gas--what’s that?”
Without gas, the car will not
go. Without the Spirit, the Gospel is useless.
The Christian life was not
designed to be lived on our own power. Without Pentecost, the Christian life
sputters. We win no one to Christ, do no great works, and make no difference in
the world. Until Pentecost, the church cowered in the upper room. After
Pentecost it made three thousand converts in a single day. We need the same
power to make a difference.
What difference does
Pentecost make? Pentecost brings us five
things.
Pentecost brings influence. The Spirit
Himself to the rest of the world only through those who have been touched by
Him. A rushing wind was the first sign of Pentecost. We cannot see or feel
wind-we only feel the effect of it or hear the sound of it. We cannot see the
wind itself.
The world does not see the Spirit
within us, only its effect. Just as we judge the wind by the trees, the world
judges the power of our faith by its influence upon us. If we are truly changed by the Spirit of God,
People will come looking for Him through us.
Pentecost brings fire. The second sign of Pentecost was fire. Fire cleanses
and purifies. That is why we cook food.
It purifies metals. The Spirit
refines us into children of God.
It is impressive to see
someone who has lived a pure life, but it is even more impressive is someone
who has overcome an evil life. When a
person successfully changes, we are awestruck by it. The Holy Spirit is the only power that can
clean our lives, and make us fit for Him. No matter how bad our lives are, the
Holy Spirit can change us into someone better.
Pentecost brings unity. The
third sign of Pentecost ws the ability to speak in tongues. This is a reversal of the Old Testament
miracle at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.
At Babel God split the world by confusing their languages. At Pentecost,
people were united by the understanding of tongues. The diversity of languages,
customs and race no longer stood as an impediment to the Spirit. They literally
became one people. When the Spirit comes, diversity gives way to unity.
There is an example of this
in Charles Colson’s book Born Again. Charles Colson was one of Nixon’s men who went
to jail for his part in the Watergate cover-up in the Seventies. He became a Christian in prison. While in jail he joined a prayer group with
three other men—a liberal democrat congressman sent to prison for corruption, a
member of the Black Panther Party, and a former Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux
Klan. How could such men worship
together? It is impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost brings boldness. At
Pentecost Peter preached boldly on the street less than a quarter mile from the
high priest’s house where he had denied Jesus fifty days earlier. He had been afraid of the high priest’s
servant. Now he was afraid of nothing.
This boldness does not come
from men. It comes from the Holy Spirit.
Only He can give us the power to be so bold.
Pentecost brings wisdom. Not
only did they speak, but they spoke wisely.
When they were finished, the people were moved greatly. They turned to Peter, who had never been
asked this question before, and said “What should we do?” Peter knew just how to answer them.
“Repent and be baptized, and
you will receive the Spirit.”
Doubtless we should ask the
same question. What should we do? If we are to do what God commands, we
desperately need the power of the Holy Spirit.
All Christians have the Holy
Spirit, but He is not active in all believers. Most Christians have only a
fraction what the Holy Spirit wants to give us. Our sins, doubts, and misbeliefs
keep us from experiencing most of what God has promised, and keep us wallowing
in our own fears and worries. We are like
elephants cowering at the sight of a mouse, millionaires afraid to spend money
on a cup of coffee, or kids at Christmas who can’t believe there presents under
the tree are for them. We are unaware of the power at our disposal. We have the
potential power, but without the boldness to use it, we do not possess it
practically. We have the Spirit, we are just not filled with the Spirit.
So how do we get filled?
Jesus gave us directions in Acts 1:4-5
“He
ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the
Father, which, he said, ‘you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but
you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’”
They prayed for the Spirit.
But what does that mean. Real prayer means three things—waiting, committing,
and asking.
Jesus told them to wait for
the Spirit. Don’t go out to convert the world on your own power.
It is easy to say we must get
busy. But get busy doing what? If we want to make a difference, we must get
busy waiting. We must seek the Spirit or
our actions are useless. The disciples were men of action, and it must have
frustrated them to be told to wait. But they waited and prayed. In time, God
brought the power to transform the world.
While they waited they were
learning commitment. They were not
following their own ideas or desires, but bending their wills into subjection.
They were praying--probably also fasting. They were not working, sleeping,
fishing, selling, collecting taxes, or any other kind of thing. They were learning
to submit. The Holy Spirit will do us no good if we don’t obey Him. We must
learn obedience before we can be used by the Spirit. To the extent that we
submit ourselves to the Spirit, the Spirit cannot use us.
While they were waiting and
committing, they were also asking. We must ask for the Spirit to receive
it. Do you want the Spirit—really want
Him, in spite of what He may cost you? If you receive Him people may think you
are strange, even a fanatic. People may turn against you. People may think as
they thought of Peter, that you are “drunk with new wine.”
In order to be filled with
the Spirit, we must not let what people think worry us. We must lay aside our
fears, our inhibitions, our worries for the future, our despair, our laziness,
our worldly concerns, and follow Him. If we are worried about what the person
next to us will think of us, then we cannot be filled with the Spirit. If we
are worried that God will be embarrassed by our failure, then the Spirit cannot
use us. If we worry that we will not have the power to continue, the Spirit
cannot use us. But if we obey in spite of our worries, then the Spirit can
overcome our worries and they can be dead.
Worry is the greatest enemy
to the Spirit in most of our lives—not sin, not misbelief, but an unwillingness
to confront our worries.
If you want the Spirit, all
you have to do is ask, wait, then step forward and claim it. If we do this,
then Pentecost can become the greatest day of our lives—the time when the Holy
Spirit transformed our lives forever.
Pentecost:
The Forgotten
Holy Day
Acts
2: 1-14
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