“When the Spirit Comes” (John 16:4b-15)

For the next few minutes I want you to imagine that you are in the upper room with Jesus and his followers. (I am tempted to suggest that you close your eyes, but I don’t want you to fall asleep!)

It is the fateful night before Jesus’ crucifixion. They have gathered for the Passover supper, observed for more than a thousand years, since the time of Moses. It was intended as a festive occasion, celebrating the liberation of God’s people from centuries of slavery under the cruel hands of the Egyptians. Yet I can only imagine that on this particular occasion the air must have been fraught with apprehension and foreboding.

The disciples could not have known exactly what lay ahead. But Jesus did. And almost certainly they must have picked up on the mounting hostility that had been surrounding him since their coming to Jerusalem only a few days before. And if that weren’t enough, Jesus had already taken the unleavened Passover bread and broken it with the ominous words, “This is my body, broken for you…” And then the cup of wine, saying, “This is my blood, shed for you…”

Perhaps you have noticed already, however, that, unlike the other three gospel writers, John makes almost no mention of the Last Supper. He gives it barely a mention—just a single word in passing. And there is a reason, for John’s focus is on something else: on Jesus’ words of comfort and assurance to his followers, words that John would carry with him for the remainder of his life.

It is clear that Jesus knows what lies ahead of him. And this is his last opportunity to prepare these, his closest companions, for the sequence of events that would lead to his crucifixion—not to mention all that would be happening to them after that!

In the dozen verses that make up our passage for this morning Jesus assures his followers that, even though his time with them is coming to its end, they will not be left alone. In chapter 14 he has already promised them that he would not leave them as orphans—that he would be giving them another Helper, the Spirit of truth, who would be with them not just for a few short years but forever. Now, as we come to chapter 16, Jesus unwraps that promise for them, to give them some more extended teaching on who the Holy Spirit is and what he will do.

The word that Jesus uses for the Holy Spirit both in chapter 14 and in our passage this morning in our English Standard Version Bibles is “Helper”. If you look at other translations, you will find that it is rendered “Advocate”, “Comforter”, “Counsellor” and “Friend”.

The challenge for translators is that very often a word in one language has no exact equivalent in another. The original word that in our Bibles is translated “Helper” literally means a legal advisor—that is, someone who is called in to assist another person in court, whether as an advocate, a witness, or a representative.[1] For this reason my own preference would be to go for “Counsellor” or “Advocate”.

But we don’t need to sweat over words, because in our passage this morning Jesus himself sets out for us exactly what the Holy Spirit’s role will be—in relation to the world, in relation to his followers (which includes you and me today) and in relation to himself.

He will convict the world (4b-11)

First, then, in relation to the world: Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement”. So let’s take a moment to try to unwrap what Jesus means when he tells us that the Holy Spirit will convict the world.

Other translations render that phrase “expose the error of the world” or “prove the world wrong”. The word literally means to cross-examine, to put to shame, to treat with contempt, to accuse, to bring to the test, to refute…[2] I had a little fun this past week and asked the internet to give me some other synonyms and here are a few of the alternatives that it came up with:

invalidate; discredit; give the lie to; debunk; show in its true light; knock the props out from under; shoot full of holes; blow out of the water; blow sky high…

I suspect you get the drift!

So often the world’s idea of what is right or good is diametrically opposed to what God himself has set forth and commanded. You may remember way back in chapter 3 of John’s gospel, when Jesus warned Nicodemus, “This is the judgement: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” (John 3:19)

Centuries before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah had mourned,

All of us have become like one who is unclean,
   and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
   and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

And in the New Testament the apostle Paul echoes that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

We live in a world and in a society that is morally and spiritually spinning out of control. Gender confusion is considered healthy behaviour. So-called abortion rights are protected by the courts, no matter the precious lives of the helpless ones within their mothers’ wombs. Assisted suicide is upheld by legislation as a morally acceptable, even desirable, way for life to end. And in the nation to the south of us there is a man who likely will be convicted of criminal offences and who clearly has no moral judgement, who could easily be elected president.

It is clear to me that, left to our own devices, we human beings cannot be relied upon to choose good over evil, truth over falsehood, right over wrong. Yes, there have been and there are many noble exceptions. And there are times when truth and righteousness have prevailed. Yet there is also a sad trail of wreckage that goes all the way back to when our first forebears spurned the wisdom of God for a fruit that they found pleasing to the eyes and naïvely thought would bring them wisdom.

It is the Holy Spirit who is able to unmask the lies that the world would have us believe and to lead us into the truth. That is not to say that Christians have not taken the wrong path and do not continue to do so—and sometimes with cruel and calamitous results. But it happens when we close our eyes and shut our ears to the Holy Spirit. As the psalmist pleads, “Today, if only you would hear his voice, ‘Do not harden your hearts…’” (Psalm 95:7-8).

He will guide you (12-14)

If the first role of the Holy Spirit, then, is to expose sinful thoughts and attitudes, the second is to be our guide into what is true and right and just and good.

Some years ago Karen and I spent a day in the village of Ghadames, an ancient Berber settlement in the Sahara desert, near the border of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia. Its history can be traced back six thousand years. No doubt we would have found it interesting just wandering through its curving whitewashed passageways and admiring its palm-shaded oasis. Had we known more than a word or two of Arabic, it might have been even better! But what made all the difference was that we had a guide. And Tahar took us into places we never would have known about or even imagined were there. He explained its history and traditions and introduced us to some of its people. In a word, he was able to bring it all to life—to make sense out of what otherwise would have been a mystery to us. And we would have left Ghadames never knowing what we had missed.

So it is with the Holy Spirit. Jesus promises that he will be our guide, to lead us into all the truth. Now I don’t believe that the truth Jesus is referring to in these verses is what we might call scientific truth. More than once people have gone wrong by thinking they can treat the Bible as a kind of scientific manual.

No, the truth that Jesus is talking about here is that the God he came to reveal is a God who is sovereign over all creation. Yet he does not dwell in blissful isolation on some remote throne in the heavens. No, he is personal and accessible to every human being. What is more, he loves you and me. And we’re not just talking about some wishy-washy feel-good love but a costly love—indeed a love that shouldered the ultimate cost, borne in the pain and shed blood of his own Son on the cross for your sins and mine.

The truth that Jesus was talking about is discovering “the wisdom from above”—the wisdom that in the Bible’s words is “pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere” (James 1:17).

The Bible warns us that this kind of truth, the truth into which the Holy Spirit guides us, is something that the world by and large just does not “get”. The apostle Paul described it as “a wisdom not of this age or the rulers of this age” but “the secret and hidden wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 2:6-7). Yet, as Jesus himself has promised, this is the truth that sets us free, free to become the women and men that God has created us, that Jesus has redeemed us, and that the Holy Spirit empowers us, to be (John 8:31-32).  

He will glorify me (14-15)

So the Holy Spirit comes to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement. He comes to lead us into the truth—and specifically the truth that is in Jesus. And all of this brings us to a third point that Jesus left with his disciples. And it is a point that really flows from the first two. That is, the Holy Spirit comes to glorify Jesus.

Indeed without the Holy Spirit we would never be able to claim Jesus as Lord in the first place. For it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to recognize Jesus for who he is. The Holy Spirit does not come to point us to himself. He comes to point us to Jesus. He does not stand at the centre of the stage, for he does his work in the background and for the most part silently and unseen. It is for that reason he has sometimes been called the shy member of the Trinity.

Yes, there were the big events like Pentecost and the conversion of the Gentiles in Cornelius’ house. But those are the exceptions, the high points, the events that made the headlines—while all along, quietly in the background there were those faithful souls in their thousands, who “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers … with glad and generous hearts and having favour with all the people” (Acts 2:42,46-47).

This past week, as I was preparing for this morning, I came across these very helpful words from a Pentecostal website:

The Spirit does not reveal himself. The Spirit reveals Christ. The fullness of the Spirit is the fullness that he gives as we gaze on Christ. The power of the Spirit is the power we feel in the presence of Christ. The joy of the Spirit is the joy we feel from the promises of Christ.[3]

And so it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to proclaim from our hearts with true conviction, “Jesus is Lord!” It is the Spirit who empowers us to worship God in joyful adoration. It is the Spirit who makes it possible for us to bear witness to Jesus with genuineness and authenticity.

In the next moments we will pause to do what Jesus did with his disciples on that last evening before his crucifixion. With them we will hear his words, “This is my body, given for you…” “This is my blood, shed for you…” As we take the bread into our hands and bring the cup to our lips, may we also take the opportunity to open our hearts afresh to the Holy Spirit, to the Spirit of Jesus, that he may be glorified in our lives.

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[1]     See D.A. Carson, The Gospel According To John, Pillar New Testament Commentary, p. 499

[2]     See Carson, p. 534

[3]     https://thecophq.org/holy-spirit-the-shy-member-of-the-trinity%EF%BF%BC

“The Wind Blows Where It Wills” (Acts 2:1-4)

 

It’s probably been a long time since you were in a room with a hundred and twenty people. But I want you to do your best to imagine it anyway. You might even need to close your eyes for a moment—as long as you promise not to fall asleep!

The scene I want you to form in your minds is, of course, the upper room in Jerusalem. There Jesus’ followers had been gathering ever since the day he had been taken up into heaven. You may recall that he had left them with the command to wait for the gift the Father had promised, when the Holy Spirit would come upon them.

Luke tells us that they had faithfully followed Jesus’ instruction, joining together constantly in prayer. Ten days had now elapsed. It was the festival of Pentecost, seven weeks after the celebration of Passover. And next to Passover it was the biggest holiday of the year, marking the beginning of the barley harvest. You might think of it as a little bit like Thanksgiving, with people travelling from all over the empire to celebrate.

The big difference was, though, that instead of going back to their family homes, everybody came to Jerusalem. So the city was chock-a-block with people. And as a result the upper room must have seemed like something of an oasis—even with a hundred and twenty people packed into it!

Then something strange began to happen. Suddenly from out of nowhere the quiet murmur of prayer was overwhelmed by the roar of a violent wind. We’re not talking about a gentle spring breeze here or even a howling gale. Think Dorian. Think Juan. Now start multiplying. This was a wind that tumbles down trees. This was a wind that churns up waves that tower over the masts of ships. And Luke tells us that the roar of it filled every corner of the house where the hundred and twenty were assembled.

What could it all mean? I can only imagine that those first believers were utterly mystified. I know if I had been there I would have been shaking right to the marrow of my bones!

At the beginning of creation (Genesis 1:2)

But let’s stand back for a moment and from the safe distance of nearly two thousand years and let’s try to gain an understanding of what was happening on that Pentecost morning. Because what those first believers were experiencing was in fact just part of a much larger story. So over the next few minutes I want us to try to capture a view of that broader picture—and that will begin by going all the way back to the opening verses of the Bible.

There we are confronted by a remarkable picture. It is one that our human minds really aren’t capable of conceiving: absolute nothingness. The author of these verses uses the words “formless and void”—utter, impenetrable darkness. Yet over it all we find the Spirit of God. The words in Hebrew are Ruach Elohim.

Now that word ruach can mean not only “spirit”, but also “breath” or “wind”. So it is that one translation of this verse runs, “The wind of God swept over the face of the waters.”

Now if you’re a gardener like me, wind is not always a welcome phenomenon. In fact, it can be downright annoying. It’s the wind that blows the snow into three-foot drifts that I have to plow to get my car onto the street in the winter. It’s the wind that blows down the leaves from the trees in the fall and playfully scatters them all over the lawn so that I have to spend hours raking them up.

But the wind of God—Ruach Elohim—is just the opposite. As the ruach sweeps powerfully over the waters, order appears out of chaos. From the swirling formless plasma there begin to appear earth and sky; land and seas; trees and plants; sun, moon and stars; fish and birds and land animals. Then finally, bearing God’s own image, human beings. And like an artist standing back and looking at his work, the Bible tells us that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”.

So it is that a primary work of the Holy Spirit is to bring order out of chaos, beauty out of confusion. And that was exactly what was happening in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost.

Just try to put yourself into the minds of the disciples for a moment. Their lives had been a roller coaster. Just eight weeks before, they had been surrounded by a cheering crowd waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna to the king!” as they made their way into Jerusalem. Five days later they had stood by helpless as they watched the one they had come to believe was their saviour hang dying on a cross as a convicted criminal. Then on the third day after that they had had to get their minds around the fact that the same man they had seen put to death was alive. And yet, while little doubt may have remained on one level, what were they to make of it? What did it all mean?

Enter the Holy Spirit, to bring order out of chaos, to make sense out of what in the eyes of the world would have been (and for many still is!) nonsense.

On the shore of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:10-22)

On to another scene now, this time with the Hebrew people on the banks of the Red Sea. It had been a dramatic time for them. They had lived through the long series of plagues that had afflicted the kingdom of Egypt. And then the worst had struck, taking in its wake the firstborn son in every Egyptian family. But it was this final tragedy that had led to the fulfilment of what had seemed an impossible dream. It was what allowed them to escape from their life of slavery in Egypt and find a land that they could call their own.

They had set up camp near the shore of the Red Sea, when word came to them that the Egyptian army was just over the horizon. Needless to say, they were panic-stricken. “What have you done to us?” they shouted at Moses. “Better to have been slaves than to be slaughtered like animals!” As the sun set, a powerful wind began to blow from the east. It blew all night, so that when daylight returned, the sea had dried up and the Hebrews were able to cross over into safety. As we all know, the Egyptian armies were not as lucky. Their horses and chariots bogged down in the soft ground and before they could escape, the sea had rushed back into its place.

And here we have a picture of a second work of the Holy Spirit: to bring hope into an atmosphere of despair, victory in the face of defeat. That too must have been the experience of Jesus’ followers in the upper room. Yes, they knew that Jesus had been raised from the dead. But realistically what was going to happen to them? Would they remain a tiny cluster of devotees who clung together around some fond memories? It wouldn’t surprise me to find that they were still locking the doors for fear of being found out by the authorities.

But now there was no longer any need for fear (or indeed any possibility of secrecy), as the Holy Spirit caused the sound of their joy-filled praises to flood out onto the street below.

In the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

There is a third scene that I want to share, that underlies the events of Pentecost. It comes in what to me is one of the most arresting passages in all of Scripture—in a vision that God gave to the prophet Ezekiel.

Ezekiel tells us that he is led by the Spirit of the Lord (and once again it is that same word, ruach—breath, wind) to find himself standing in the middle of a valley—a valley full of bones. Countless numbers of parched and whitened bones surround him in every direction that he cares to look. As he gazes around at this scene of desolation, God puts the question to him, “Can these bones live?” Then God instructs him to command the bones, “Dry bones, this is what the Sovereign Lord says… ‘I will make breath enter you (and here again it is that same word, ruach), and you will come to life…’ ”

Hardly have the words left Ezekiel’s mouth than he begins to hear a rattling sound as the bones come together. Soon they are being covered with tendons and flesh and skin. But Ezekiel observes that there was no breath, no ruach, in them. Again God tells Ezekiel to prophesy, “Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.” As he does so, they raise themselves to their feet. And God gives Ezekiel the promise, “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live…”

Thus we see a third work of the Holy Spirit: to bring life where there is death. History tells us that, of the eleven apostles in that upper room, all but one would suffer a martyr’s death. But they would go to their deaths in the firm conviction that there was nothing that could separate them from God’s love in Christ. In the words of their future co-worker Paul, “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” (Romans 8:11)

As a result, they would go to their deaths in the comfort of the Spirit-implanted conviction that nothing could separate them from Jesus’ love. In Eugene Peterson’s rendering of Paul’s words, “The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less” (2 Corinthians 5:5).

One night in Jerusalem (John 3:1-8)

Let’s shift now to one further scene. It’s a starry night in Jerusalem. Two figures can be seen in deep discussion. “Rabbi,” says one, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God…” To which he receives the enigmatic reply, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

“But how is this possible?” Nicodemus asks. “How can someone be born when they are old?” And Jesus replies, “The wind blows where it wills. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

On this festival of Pentecost we remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit continues at work today—in the midst of a confused and increasingly confusing world, in the midst of military wars and culture wars, in the midst of a growing environmental crisis, in the midst of a global pandemic—to bring the assurance that there is a God who reigns over all and whose good and perfect purposes will come to fruition—and that Jesus Christ has won the victory over sin and evil and death.

But it remains to you and to me to catch the wind—to allow God’s Holy Spirit to blow in us and through us. It will be unsettling. And no doubt he will rearrange your life a little. Perhaps more than a little! But the adventure will be worth it…

“No Condemnation!” (Romans 8:1-11)

Allow me to begin by saying what tremendous joy it gives me to be worshiping with you “at” Messiah once again. Even though we can’t be with one another physically, it has been a joy for Karen and me to be able to join with you virtually for your online services.

At the same time, I have to say that my heart has bled for you all over the events of recent weeks. Your experience of the novel corona virus has been far more severe than ours out here on the edge of the continent. But in your case to the fear and isolation associated with covid19 have been multiplied several-fold by the brutal death of George Floyd and then by the rioting and destruction that followed it. The sight of familiar and much-loved places lying in ruins has been heartbreaking. Needless to say, you are in my prayers regularly, but how much more in the wake of these dreadful events!

Here at our church in Halifax we have been making our way through the book of Job in recent weeks. In the midst of indescribable suffering—after the loss of property, family, and finally his health, plagued by constant, unabating pain, Job cried aloud to God, “Why?” “Why?” “Why?” Perhaps there have been times when you have found yourself asking the same question.

Last week we heard a powerful sermon from Dave on the apostle Paul’s discussion of the power and inescapability of sin in Romans, chapter 7. As he concludes the chapter, Paul utters what seems his own cry of desperation: “Wretched man that I am!” he exclaims. “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

By contrast, our passage this morning from Romans 8 begins with one of the most positive affirmations in all of Scripture: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

What Paul gives us here is not a suggestion. It is not a speculation or a theory or an idea. It is an unequivocal statement of absolute fact. I don’t know how to state it more emphatically! I love the way Eugene Peterson translated Paul’s words in The Message: “Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.”

One of my vivid recollections of our years in the Midwest is of those enormous thunderclouds that would gather and seemingly within minutes could turn a sunny, bright, warm day into the darkness of night—sometimes to the point where the streetlights would go on. Some of you may remember camping one year at William O’Brien Park when there was a tornado warning. We were all instructed to leave our campsites and gather in the restrooms until the storm had passed—hopefully without taking us with it!

What a relief it was when, after some pretty fierce winds and torrential rain and more than a few resounding claps of thunder, the clouds parted and we were able to go back to our tents! Maybe that gives us something of the picture that Paul wants to paint for us here, when he declares, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The clouds have passed. The rumbles of thunder have receded into the distance. The birds have begun to resume their evening chorus.

The cross of Christ rescues us
from the penalty of sin

But we need to ask ourselves, how is all this possible? If we are incapable of rescuing ourselves (and this was the point that Paul was at pains to get across in Romans 7) what has happened to make the difference? I want to say that there are two things.

The first is that Jesus Christ through his death on the cross has rescued us from the penalty of sin. The story goes all the way back to the second chapter of the Bible, to the day when the Lord God brought Adam and Eve into the garden of Eden. As they gazed on its splendor and beauty, God told them that all this was theirs to tend and to reap. “But,” he warned them, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 1:17).

Well, we all know what happens in the next episode in the story. Adam and Eve chose not to put their trust in God’s word. Instead they chose to doubt his fatherly care and good purposes for them. And no sooner had they made that decision than the dark cloud of death began to overshadow them.

The letter of James speaks of the Bible as a mirror that gives us a true reflection of ourselves. As with so many of the stories in the Bible, we fail to see the meaning of the account of Adam and Eve if we do not see ourselves in it. Adam is me. Eve is me. And Adam is you and Eve is you. And the dark cloud that hung over them hangs over me and hangs over you to this day.

Back in the Dark Ages, when I was first ordained, there was a prayer we recited at funeral services that went back to the tenth century. It began like this: “In the midst of life we are in death…” “In the midst of life we are in death…” That is the tragic reality for the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. So it is that we heard the apostle Paul cry out in chapter 7, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

The answer (like the answer always is in church, it seems!) is Jesus. When Jesus hung on the cross and uttered those words, “It is finished,” it was not that his life was ending. No, it was because in offering himself up in that one perfect act of sacrifice, he had vanquished sin and death once and for all. His was a cry not of defeat but of triumph. As Paul wrote elsewhere,

‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:54b-57)

So it is that, because of what Jesus has done for us on his cross, a shaft of bright sunshine cuts through the clouds that have hung over the world since the days of Eden. Sin and death are defeated enemies.

The Spirit of Christ rescues us
from the power of sin

“Well, John,” you might want to say in reply. “Perhaps that is so. But the fact is that we still sin and we still die. So how have things changed?” Allow me to respond by offering what has been for me a very helpful illustration. It comes from an author and theologian named Oscar Cullmann, who lived at the time of the Second World War.

On 6^th June 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed on the shores of France. By dawn on that same day thousands of paratroopers had also touched down behind enemy lines, securing bridges and exit roads. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history and the cost in lives was enormous. Yet by the end of the day, all knew for sure that the Nazi hold on Europe had been broken.

However, the Nazi powers did not finally capitulate until eleven months later, on 8^th May 1945, the day we call VE Day (whose 75^th anniversary was celebrated just a couple of months ago). During those eleven months the warfare continued to rage fiercely and the fatality count continued to rise. Yet all along the Allies were certain that victory was in their hands.

That, said Cullmann, gives us something of a picture (albeit very imperfect in many ways) of where we stand as Christians today. Our victory over sin and evil and death was assured at Golgotha. But we still await VE Day—the day when Jesus will return and all creation will be renewed. Between those two days the warfare continues to rage. We witness it all around us in our society today in what can only be seen as a mounting, almost frenzied, opposition to the Christian message.

Yet in spite of all that is going on around us, I want to affirm, both from Scripture and my own experience, that the primary battleground has been and always will be within the confines of each of our own hearts.

In this regard I have often found myself falling back to the words of the celebrated Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. As many of you probably know, he spent eight years living amid the horror and brutality of a Communist prison camp in the Soviet Union. It was out of that experience that he reflected with these words:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

And this is where Paul’s second point comes in.

Just as Jesus gave his life for us on the cross to rescue us from the penalty of sin, so he now gives us his Holy Spirit to rescue us from the power of sin. Paul will have a good deal more to say about the Holy Spirit in next week’s verses from Romans—and I certainly don’t want to steal from next Sunday’s preacher! But in this morning’s verses Paul sets before us a choice. And the options are clear.

In Paul’s own words in verses 4 through 8, we can choose to live according to the flesh; or we can choose to live according to the Spirit. How do live according to the Spirit? Paul gives us three picture-words to make what he is saying clear. The first is to walk—to walk according to the Spirit or, as he puts it elsewhere, to walk in the Spirit. What does it mean to walk in the Spirit? Surely it means having the Holy Spirit as our constant companion moment by moment in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. It is what 17^th-century monk Brother Lawrence called the practice of the presence of Christ—consciously seeking him and keeping him in our company throughout the day.

The second expression Paul uses is to live in the Spirit. That is, to allow the Holy Spirit to be the one who dwells at the center of our lives; the one who gives meaning, joy and purpose to our life; the one who stirs deep within us at the very core of our being, who animates us, who shape our character and makes us who we are.

Thirdly, we are to set our minds on the Holy Spirit: to allow him to guide our thinking. I don’t know about you, but it is very easy for my thoughts to go in all the wrong directions—to think in ways that are selfish, uncharitable, impure and unworthy. How much we need the Holy Spirit to take our thought lives—to purify them and to raise our sights to look upon Jesus, day by day!

Well, Paul has taken us over a lot of ground in this brief passage. One author has said, “It is no exaggeration to say that [these verses] contain a complete picture of the Christian life as Paul understood it.” May God bless you as you seek to live that life and to share fully in Jesus’ victory over sin and death—trusting in his sacrifice on the cross and living day by day in the power of his Holy Spirit!

“The Real Miracle of Pentecost” (Acts 2:42-47)

I wonder how many people had their TV sets switched on yesterday morning at 5 o’clock. That’s when the CBC coverage of the royal wedding began and for the next five hours I can only imagine that millions of viewers were glued to their screens, trying to catch a glimpse of this or that celebrity among the six hundred who were invited to the event.

Long before it took place, countless hours of television time had already gone into the anticipation of the wedding—and for the publicists it was all big money. While the costs of the wedding are estimated to top $36 million, it was expected to generate over $860 million in revenue. If it is anything to go by, memorabilia sales alone for the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton seven years ago amounted to more than $380 million.

By this time you may already have been asking yourself, “What is this preacher fellow getting at—and what does all of this business about royal weddings have to do with the Bible anyway?” Well, for Christians today is the anniversary of another big event, when three thousand souls were added to the fledgling group of Jesus’ followers who had come together that morning to pray.

Little could they have imagined when they gathered in the upper room that they would be swept off their feet (spiritually if not physically) by a “rushing mighty wind”, touched by fire, and speaking in languages never before heard from their lips! So completely strange was what happened to them that it is little wonder that it all began to attract a crowd of people who were no less amazed and perplexed than they were. “We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

So today, while the rest of the world is recovering from the royal wedding or preparing for Game Five in the playoffs between Vegas and the Jets, we Christians quietly celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. And quite rightly our attention is fixed on the miraculous events that occurred that morning: the mysterious whistling of the wind, the flames of fire that divided and settled on each of the believers, and the praises of God in all the varied languages of the known world.

It was a remarkable event—and I don’t know how many times I have preached on it over the past forty-plus years. Yet this year as I began my preparations, it dawned upon me that my attention has always been focused on the events in the opening verses of Acts, chapter 2. At the same time it began to occur to me that maybe what Luke wrote in the closing verses of that same chapter has even more to teach us about the real meaning of Pentecost and about the work that the Holy Spirit yearns to do in you and in me. So allow me to read them to you.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Devotion

There are three aspects of this brief summary of the first days of the church I would like us to focus on. The first of them can be summarized by the word “devotion”. Luke begins, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

My Greek lexicon tells me that those words “devoted themselves” can be translated in a whole variety of ways: “persist in”, “attach oneself to”, “be faithful to”, “be busily engaged in”, “hold fast to”, “persevere in”, “spend much time in”. By now probably you get the idea. Those first believers were not prepared to allow anything to stand in the way of learning from the apostles or from coming together regularly for fellowship, worship and prayer.

Early in my own walk with Christ many years ago, my pastor encouraged me to begin memorizing Scripture. The first verses I ever committed to memory were Psalm 119:9 and 11, and I quote them as I learned them in the old King James Version:

Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed thereto according to thy word…
Thy word have I hid in mine heart,
that I might not sin against thee.

It seems to me that those early believers did exactly what Psalm 119 counsels us to do: they were taking God’s word to heart with an unshakeable commitment to the apostles’ teaching. Now of course they had no New Testament and they wouldn’t for a couple of generations. But they had the apostles themselves and they spent time learning from them, drinking in their words—and we’re not just talking about a weekly twenty-minute sermon or even a forty-minute one. Acts 20 tells us of an evening when the apostle Paul went on talking till midnight—to the point where one young man drifted into sleep and fell out the window!

But the point was that they could never hear enough. Like the two companions who met with Jesus along the road to Emmaus on that first resurrection day, I can only imagine that their hearts burned within them as they learned from the apostles and opened the Scriptures together.

Some years ago we had the privilege of hosting Ernest Gordon, who had been held captive in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma along what was known as the railway of death. Although he was not a believer at the time, he and some of his men began reading the New Testament together. It did not take long before they found that they could not put it down, for they had the amazing experience that the same Jesus whom they found on its pages was there among them.

Yet much of this seems so far from the experience of the church in our part of the world today. A recent study revealed that only forty-five percent of those who regularly attend church read the Bible more than once a week. Almost twenty percent say they never read the Bible—and that is about the same percentage as those who read it on a daily basis. [1] That seems a far cry from our early forebears who lived in the shadow of Pentecost, who could not get enough the apostles’ teaching. Would that the Holy Spirit would stir the same thirst in us today!

Awe

Those first believers showed a devotion to the apostles’ teaching. But Luke also tells us in verse 43 that “everyone was filled with awe”. Again, if you read that verse in the old King James Version, it would sound like this: “And fear came upon every soul.” The word in the original in fact is phobos. We find it in words like “claustrophobia”, the fear of small spaces, “acrophobia”, the fear of heights, and “arachnophobia”, the fear of spiders.

There was a German philosopher of a century ago called Rudolf Otto, who came up with the phrase mysterium tremendum—the sense of something so mysterious that it causes you to tremble. This, he said, is what happens to us when we come into the presence of the living God.

We see it in Moses as he tended his flocks in the wilderness and approached that strange bush that burned but was not consumed. The book of Exodus tells us that when Moses began to realize in whose presence he stood, “he hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God” (Exodus 3:6). Or think of Isaiah in the temple, as he gazed at the six-winged seraphs and heard their cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty…” and felt the stone floor shuddering beneath him. “Woe to me!” was all he could think to utter, “For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:3-4).

Or we can turn to the New Testament, to the story of the centurion who came to Jesus on behalf of his servant. “Lord,” he said to him, “I do not deserve you to come under my roof…” (Matthew 8:5-9) Think too of the occasion when Peter and his companions had just hauled in an enormous load of fish because Jesus had told them to let down their nets in spite of there being no fish. He fell down before Jesus and wailed, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:1-10)

Our forebears in the faith had that same sense of awe as they gathered to learn from the apostles, to break bread and to pray together. The letter to Hebrews tells us,

You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24)

How we need to ask God to inspire in us that same sense of awe—each time we gather to take time to come before him consciously and deliberately and ask him to open our hearts afresh to the unfathomable mystery of his love and power. I have no doubt that we would know more of the Holy Spirit’s presence if we did.

Community

A devotion to the apostles’ teaching, awe in the presence of the living God—and a third characteristic of those first Christians I would like to emphasize comes in a word for which there is really no adequate English equivalent. It is the word koinonia. Most often it is rendered “fellowship” as we see it in this morning’s passage. But if you think of fellowship (as I suspect most of us do) as what happens over a cup of coffee after the worship service, then we have fallen woefully short of what the New Testament means when it uses the word koinonia.

What it really means is having something in common on a profound level—and Luke gives us a picture of how that works out in practical terms in those last verses of Acts 2. Let me read them to you once again:

All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts…

Now for us who have been immersed from infancy in the independent-minded, freedom-loving principles western society, that is a strange and even frightening picture. It may relieve you to know I am not advocating that we seek to replicate detail for detail all the practices of the early church.

What I am saying is that there was a genuine sense of caring and sharing among those first believers that you would not have found outside the church. I remember some years ago a pastor friend telling me of a member of his church who was part of a small group that met for Bible study and prayer. The man happened to work for a tobacco company. Over time he became convinced that as a Christian he could not in good conscience continue to do this and he shared it with the group. To his surprise, they all agreed that if he felt that this was the direction in which God was leading him, they would give him any financial support he might need in order to make the change—and they ended up caring for him and his family for the better part of a year until he found a new job.

Those people knew the meaning of the word koinonia. It was our Lord Jesus himself who said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). And so I don’t believe it was by coincidence that Luke concludes the day of Pentecost with these words: “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

As we look back on the mighty, rushing wind and on the tongues of fire that came upon those first believers, may we pray not for them to happen again, but for what they led to: to a wholehearted devotion to the apostles’ teaching, to a life-changing awe as we gather in the presence of the living God, and to a sense of community that is costly and real. In a word, may the Holy Spirit lead us to being the authentic body of Jesus in the world today.

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[1]     Ed Stetzer, “The Epidemic of Bible Illiteracy in Our Churches”, Christianity Today, July 2015