THE DAY OF PENTECOST 06 B

There was a boy riding his bike outside a church. The priest saw him and told him to come into the church and the boy said, “…But they’ll steal my bike.”

The priest explained how the Holy Spirit would take care of it, so they went inside. The priest showed the boy how to make the sign of the cross and told the boy to repeat it... “In the name of the Father, the Son…Amen.”

The priest said, “What about the Holy Spirit?” The boy replied, “Its outside taking care of my bike!”

Many people don’t know much about the Holy Spirit. They don’t know, for example, that the Holy Spirit is a person. Jesus said on one occasion, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept HIM, because it neither see HIM nor knows HIM.” Jesus is telling us that the Holy Spirit has personhood. The Holy Spirit is not an active force or an impersonal cosmic energy. The Holy Spirit is a person. That is why we say that the Holy Spirit is the third PERSON of the Holy Trinity.

The Bible speaks throughout its pages about the Holy Spirit. In the very beginning in Genesis, we see the Holy Spirit present at the creation… “And the Holy Spirit was hovering over the waters.” At the creation of man we see that God breathed into Adam the breath of life. That word breath is the Hebrew word ruach which means breath or spirit. So God was breathing into Adam not only human life, but a human spirit. Humans are created with a human spirit in order to relate to the God who is Spirit.

Throughout the rest of the Old Testament we see that the Holy Spirit came upon particular people at particular times for particular tasks. The Holy Spirit was not living inside them, but came upon them to empower them to do something special.

Bezalel, in Exodus 31, was anointed by the spirit for artistic work. The Spirit came upon Gideon for leadership (Judges 6). The Spirit of the Lord was upon Isaiah causing him to prophesy. These are a few of the examples of the Holy Spirit coming upon particular people at particular times for particular purposes.

God says through the prophet Jeremiah that there was a promise of a new thing. That new thing is predicted in Jeremiah 31:31-34. “The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “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. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me from the least to the greatest,’ declares the Lord.”

The promise is that there is coming a time when people will have a personal relationship with God. God will put his law in their minds and write it on their hearts. God elaborates further in Ezekiel when he says, “I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

There is coming a day, God says, when I will soften your hardened and rebellious heart by sending my Spirit to live inside of you. He will help you to know my law and move you to better follow his commandments. We no longer have to try to rely on our own strength to keep the law. It will not be a matter of will power, but God power.

Finally God says that there is coming a time when, as he says in Joel 2, “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions.”

These prophecies and predictions remained unfulfilled for at least 300 years.

The coming of Jesus brought increased activity of the Spirit. We see the Spirit’s activity in the lives of John the Baptist, Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah, and Simeon. But still the Spirit was only coming on a few particular people.

Then John the Baptist links the Holy Spirit with Jesus. “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matt. 3:11).

To baptize (baptidzo in the Greek) means to overwhelm, to immerse, plunge, drench. When Jesus was baptized it says that the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove. Jesus was the first Spirit-filled man. Jesus received power through his baptismal encounter with the Holy Spirit and his ministry began at that point. He was led by the Spirit.

Jesus predicted the Spirit’s presence when he said at the Feast of the Tabernacles (reminiscent of the words of Ezekiel 47), “If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not yet been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (John 7:37-39).

After Jesus’ resurrection he appeared to his disciples on one occasion, as our gospel lesson says, and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:21-22). This was reminiscent of the very beginning of human life when God “breathed into Adam the breath of life” and he became a living being. God breathed into Adam a spiritual nature with which he could relate to God who is spirit.

Now Jesus was breathing into his disciples the spiritual breath of new life. They were being born again of the Spirit. They now had a new nature, a new beginning. After Jesus had imparted the Spirit to the disciples he was to appear to them again right before his ascension. He was to tell them that they needed to wait in Jerusalem until they had been “clothed with power from on high.” They didn’t know what that meant, but these men and women (who had the Holy Spirit living inside of them) were lacking something. They were lacking the Spirit’s power.

While they were waiting for this power from on high our first lesson said that there was a sound of a mighty rushing wind that came into the room. Tongues of fire descended on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Many who heard them speak were perplexed at what they were hearing. Some thought they were drunk. Peter preached a sermon to all these people reminding them that the disciples were not drunk for it was only nine-o’clock in the morning. Peter went on to explain that what was happening was a direct fulfillment of what the prophet Joel had predicted.

From that moment on these disciples receive three new things. They received new languages. These languages in this case were ways to testify to the power of God who had given these disciples (none of whom knew how to speak the languages they were given). All who had gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish Feast of Pentecost were astonished, knowing what they were hearing was impossible. The gift of tongues would later be used sparingly in church settings, and would become more prominently used as a prayer language, a way of communicating with God when prayer comes from deep within us. We are talking to God not to man.

These disciples also received a new boldness. From this time on they went all over much of the known world to risk life and limb to tell others about Jesus and to start new churches with the new converts.

Finally, they received a new power. They began to turn the world upside down because of the Spirit’s power in them. They were able to make an astonishing number of converts in a short time. The Church began to grow exponentially.

The promise of the Father was not just for the apostles, nor was it just for the 120 gathered at Pentecost. The promise was that this outpouring of the Spirit was to be available to all who believed in the Lord Jesus and asked him to fill them.

Jesus said, “If you fathers who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

So, shall we ask him?

Some of you are in the place where you never have invited Jesus to come and be the ruler of your life. You sense an emptiness inside of you that nothing else can fill. You have a thirst that can only be quenched by Jesus Christ. Come to him and drink of the water of life. Turn away from all that you have done wrong saying sorry to God. Turn to Jesus and invite him in, then thank him for saving your soul and giving you his Holy Spirit.

For those who have accepted Christ let us pray that Jesus would fill us with the Holy Spirit. May he fill us with new languages, with a new boldness to tell others about him, and with a new power to do his work in the world in a way that makes a difference in the lives of others.

Let us pray to God using the words of the song you find in your service bulletin.

Spirit of the Living God,

Fall afresh on me.

Spirit of the Living God,

Fall afresh on me.

Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.

Spirit of the Living God,

Fall afresh on me.