Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2003 : June 8, 2003
The Kind of Church God Wants Us to Be: A Church that is Filled with the Spirit
Pentecost
There is usually a good and a bad side to every issue, depending on your perspective. When you think of fire, you probably think it is something bad. You could lose your home to fire. You could be burned by fire. Fire means destruction. But at the same time, fire can be used for good. It gives warmth on a cold night. Fire can be used to heal, like when using fire to cauterize a wound to stop bleeding.
Many times God has chosen to reveal his presence with fire. Can you think of any examples? In the Old Testament, we think of the burning bush, the children of Israel being led by a pillar of fire out of Egypt and through the wilderness. God's presence was shown in the temple by a cloud of fire and smoke. God even described himself in Scripture as a consuming fire.
Today is the Day of Pentecost, one of the three great festivals of the Christian Church, along with Christmas and Easter. On the Day of Pentecost, God the Holy Spirit showed his presence to the early church in what seemed to be tongues of fire. This gives us a great opportunity once again to look at the early New Testament Church in Acts to see The Kind of Church God Wants Us To Be. From the account of Pentecost, we see that we need to be A Church that is Filled with the Spirit.
Although we might think that Pentecost began on this day in the New Testament, it was already around as a major feast in the Old Testament. The word Pentecost actually means 'fiftieth' because the feast of Pentecost happened fifty days after the Passover Sabbath. It was also known as the Feast of Harvest or the Feast of Weeks. It was a day that was set aside to give the firstfruits of the harvest to the Lord, knowing full well that more harvest would come in. This was such an important feast for the Jews that they would try to do everything they could to make it to this feast every year. So you can imagine how many people were in the city of Jerusalem for this special day. But just as God had plans during the Passover of that year because it would the feast during which Jesus was crucified, so that year would see a very special Feast of Pentecost as well. John the Baptist had said that he was baptizing with water, but one would come after him who would baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit. He was referring to Jesus, of course, who had said the same thing about himself.
Those prophecies were fulfilled on this Feast of Pentecost. We read that Jesus' disciples "were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." The disciples got the message. Jesus told them to stay in Jerusalem until he had poured out the Holy Spirit on them. They knew the Spirit was there in three ways: the violent wind (like the rushing of a tornado which many describe as a hundred freight trains rumbling past your ear), the tongues of fire, and also their ability to speak in different languages. Now in today's world that wouldn't be a very strange: a person who could speak another language. Same thing back then. Many people knew Greek, which was the universal language. They also knew their local language. But what the disciples were doing was simply miraculous, and to see that you have to remember who these men were. They were uneducated, ordinary men, many of whom had probably never gone more than a few miles outside Palestine. Many of them had ordinary jobs, like fisherman, that certainly would not have had a need for knowing many languages. But now they would all be fishers of men. The disciples could have communicated in Greek -- every Jew who had come from every corner of the globe would have understood that. But to hear the disciples speaking in the mother tongue of every Jew who was there was not only a miracle that amazed those who heard but it also spoke to their hearts. It would be similar to maybe your grandparents who might speak German -- they are most comfortable with it, like a warm blanket on a cold night. That is the blanket that God the Holy Spirit chose to wrap the message of the gospel in that day. Even though they were speaking in all kinds of different tongues or languages, their message was the same, and it was put forth by their spokesman Peter. He got up and addressed the crowd telling them that this day was a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel in the Old Testament when God would pour out his Spirit in the last days. Peter said the last days had arrived. Jesus had fulfilled Scripture by coming and living perfectly as the promised Messiah and Savior. But he had also died a torturous death on the cross. After our text Peter told the crowd that had gathered the reason why Jesus was put to death: "Let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."
Certainly those scoffers who thought that the disciples were drunk needed to hear the law in that statement -- you murdered the promised Savior! They needed to repent of that and every sin and turn in faith to him who is both Lord and Christ, Jesus. But even the God-fearing ones in the crowd needed to hear the law as well, as do we. We need to see that we are among those who sent Jesus to his death as well. Would we have been one of the mockers in the crowd that day who thought the disciples were drunk? Who knows? But we can think of all kinds of ways that we mock God today with our sinfulness, our laziness at not being willing to share the message of salvation, our pet sins that maybe only God knows about. That is how we mock God -- by our sins. Jesus had to suffer and die our hell for those sins. How sad that we can point to sins every day that caused Jesus to go to the cross and die for us. But when we recognize that sin and repent of that sin, turning to Jesus for its complete forgiveness, we also hear the gospel in Peter's words: "God made Jesus...both Lord and Christ." That means that all our sins are forgiven through Jesus' life and death, and assured to us in his resurrection.
In fighting forest or prairie fires, fire fighters often set smaller fires themselves in front of the fire. That way, when the fire reaches that point, there is no fuel for the fire to consume. If the winds don't change, the fire should eventually burn itself out. We know that our sins have earned for us the fires of hell. But Jesus stepped in front of us as the fuel for all of God's holy and fiery wrath against our sins. He set his cross up right in the path of that fire and it consumed him -- he suffered the fires of hell. But because he did that, the fire of God's wrath against our sin has been spent. There is no more fire to come to consume us for eternity. Now we are free to serve our God who saved us and by his Spirit called us to believe his message about Jesus. Through the fire of faith, you have eternal life. Through the fire of faith, your sins have been forgiven.
God wanted his Spirit to be revealed -- the tongues of fire showed that. But we also see that because of the message that they had to proclaim, their tongues were on fire to tell everyone what they knew.
The disciples' tongues were on fire to proclaim the message of forgiveness. But tongues being on fire with the message of forgiveness must come first from a heart being on fire with that message, a heart that is filled with the Holy Spirit. The disciples who spoke with their risen Lord on the road to Emmaus on Easter afternoon said that their hearts were burning within them as Jesus opened the Scriptures to them. It was the same for believers in the Old Testament. The prophet Jeremiah said it this way: "His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot." The same is true for you and me, 21st century New Testament believers. Even though we've been in the last days for thousands of years already, our hearts are still on fire with the gospel. We cannot contain it either, because God's mercy is new every morning.
Then why is it that we often find ourselves afraid to tell others about the word of forgiveness that is burning within us? Maybe an illustration would help. Take a sponge and squeeze it, making your hand a fist. If you dip your fist with the sponge in it in water, what happens? Your hand gets wet, but no water gets into the sponge. If you take your hand out of the water, the sponge is still dry. But what happens if you open your fist underwater? The sponge is filled with water -- every opening lets the water in. Then when you take the sponge out of the water, it is filled with water. When you squeeze it, the water runs out. This water represents the work of the Spirit in our hearts. When the Spirit brings a person to faith, he is the one who opens our upraised, mocking fist that shouts against God, "I want nothing to do with you!" But when the Spirit opens our heart to be receptive to the gospel, we are filled with him and his message. Peter said in his first letter, (1 Peter 1:23) "You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God." We are children of God through faith, repenting of our sins and receiving the forgiveness of sins Jesus bled for on the cross. But we're not done with the Spirit. He needs to be not only a part of our lives, but the most important part of our lives. This goes back to last week's theme. God wants us to be a church that craves his word because that's how the Spirit works -- through the word. Jesus said, (John 15:5,7) "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." How does Jesus remain in us? "If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you." As Christians, when we immerse ourselves in the Word of God, we are opening ourselves up to the Spirit's influence, like a sponge being filled with water. When that word of life has cut us to the heart because of our sins and then healed us again with the gospel of forgiveness in Jesus, we are now full of the Spirit -- ready to use that word as it guides us in life and as our tongues are on fire to proclaim it.
The fact is, the word of forgiveness in Christ can't burn within us or set our tongues on fire to proclaim that message if we distance ourselves from that word of forgiveness. But when we are in the Word, we are in the Spirit and the Spirit is in us; we are in Jesus and Jesus is in us. There are no two sides to this issue. Either stay connected to God's grace through Word and Sacrament, or your fire for the gospel will burn out. But when we immerse ourselves in his word, we will see that our hearts cannot contain that message of full and free forgiveness. Then we will also see that our tongues will be on fire to proclaim it to the world just as the disciples did on the Day of Pentecost. Amen.
