Good morning church, Good morning.
A lot of you might not know who I am.
As Rachel mentioned, I've had the privilege of ministering to
this church now for many years. I'm a board member here at the
church and I've been walking alongside this church pretty
much from the very beginning. It's been over a decade.
So I'm just really grateful I'm, I think this might be my first
time preaching here since you've become the garden.
So God's doing a new thing. Amen.
And I'm excited to be here today.
By way of introduction, I like to tell people that I'm a part
of a weird family. I have two younger brothers, one
for many years managed artist for a rapper named Snoop Dogg.
He now is a public defender for the city of Los Angeles.
And he's just passionate about justice, really trying to shake
up the justice system down there.
I have another brother. He goes by the name Bobby
Hundreds. He founded a company, fashion
brand called The Hundreds. I haven't had to buy clothes for
like 20 years. And then earlier this year, he
was named the head of creative over at Disney.
And so he is now going into the Disney World and trying to shake
things up up there. And I became a pastor.
And I think, and I tell my brothers this all the time, I
think I have the best job because I get to go around and I
get to shake things up everywhere, right?
I get to shake things up everywhere through the message
and the power of the gospel. By God's grace, I've had the
opportunity to do this in both sort of like sacred and secular
contexts. And this morning I get to do
that here today. So excited to be here this
morning. I know there is already a title
for this message that was pre populated for me.
But when I was writing up my sermon that the title that I
gave my own sermon in my Word document is The Church in the
Power of the Spirit. The Church in the Power of the
Spirit. And I named it that because I
believe that as a church we are called to shake things up.
We're called to shake things up with the good news of Jesus.
And I don't know if you've noticed, but right now we are
living in a time where we are drowning in bad news, bad news
globally, domestically, locally. I recently talked to a pastor
who is an immigrant. He's trying to go through his
process of citizenship. Things have gotten really
complicated. He tells me he does three things
every day. He says he tries every day.
He prays every day, and he cries every day.
That to me, kind of sums up the state of the world that we're
living in. We are drowning in bad news.
But the church comes with good news for such a time as this.
And the church comes not only with good news, but with the
power of the Holy Spirit. And that's what we're going to
look at here today in Acts chapter 2.
All right, you guys ready? Right.
Turn to your neighbor and say God has a word for you.
Yeah, that's right. And before you get too judgy, go
like this to yourself and say God has a word for me.
God has a word for me, right? OK, let me, let me pray for us.
And we'll look at Acts chapter 2.
All right, Lord God, we thank you for life, for waking us up
this morning, putting breath in our lungs.
We thank you that even as we occupy this space, this space
becomes holy ground. It becomes sacred when the
people of God gathered, you are there in a special way, in a
profound way. And so God, may we sense your
Spirit move through this place just like it did in Acts chapter
2. And may the Spirit then stir our
hearts as we hear your word. We pray these things in your
name. Amen.
All right, Acts 2.
Before we dig in, let me give you some context.
The book of Acts, it's a continuation of the Gospels,
right? In the Gospels, they essentially
tell the story of this guy Jesus.
Jesus comes into the world. Jesus lives, Jesus dies.
Jesus beats death, Amen beats death.
And then Jesus kind of like, hangs around for a while until
he ascends to heaven. He literally flies up into the
sky and disappears. And what we're told in the at
the beginning of Acts is that just like when you go outside
and you let go of a helium balloon, the disciples are left
just, like staring up in the sky wondering what to do next.
But then they remember that Jesus before he ascends, he
gives them both a command and a promise.
He commands them to wait. He says wait in Jerusalem.
And then he promises them that if they wait in Jerusalem, they
will receive power. It says in Acts 1, he says, you
will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.
So that the disciples at this moment, they're, they're,
they're supposed to wait for power to come.
They are in a holding pattern. A lot of you here this morning.
You can relate with this, right? You can relate with being in a
holding pattern, waiting for power.
You're waiting for that job offer.
You're waiting for those test results.
You're waiting for healing. You're waiting for the
government to reopen. You're waiting for God to make a
way where there is no way. You're waiting for power to
come. And that's what the disciples
are doing here. So that brings us to Acts
chapter 2. Let's read this verse one.
All right, first one it says When the day of Pentecost came,
they were all together in one place.
Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came
from heaven 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.
Each of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to
speak in other tongues as a spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God fearing Jews from
every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a
crowd came together in bewilderment because each one
heard their own language being spoken.
Utterly amazed, they asked, Aren't all these who are
speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us
hears them? In our native language,
Parthians means Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea,
Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphlea, Egypt and the
lower parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both
Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs.
We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own
tongues. Amazed and perplexed, they asked
one another What does this mean? Some, however, made fun of them
and said they have had too much wine.
The disciples are gathered in the upper room and then
something supernatural happens, and when it happens there are
only two questions. One question is what is going
on? And two, what does it mean?
First, what is going on? What's going on is what we're
told that there is wind. That word for wind is the same
word that's used in the Bible for breath, the same word that's
used when Adam and Eve are animated to life.
So in this moment, when this wind comes into the room, it's
like God is breathing into the disciples.
So first there's wind and then there's fire.
There's fire and we're told that that the disciples look at each
other and they're like, dude, you got fire on your head.
And, and, and there's fire that's like hovering over the
disciples at this moment. And we're told that this fire
represents the Holy Spirit. If you know your Bible, you know
that the Holy Spirit likes to hover.
OK, Genesis 1, the Spirit is hovering over the waters.
When Jesus gets baptized, the Spirit is hovering over the
waters. And here in Acts chapter 2, the
Spirit of God through fire is hovering over the people of God.
Now as is the Holy Spirit hovers over the people.
The Spirit is then imparting something to the people.
And what is the Spirit imparting to the people?
The Spirit is imparting tongues. Tongues.
Now tongues can be a controversial topic in churches,
right? But what people don't understand
is that there are two types of tongues that are found in the
Bible. The first one is known as
glossolalia. Somebody say glossolalia.
Good job. And glossolalia is is, is is
basically like angelic tongues, heavenly tongues, but to the
human ear, it sounds like gibberish.
And what it requires and the, and the apostle Paul tells us
this is that when you use this gift of tongues, it requires A
secondary gift. It requires another person to
have the interpretation of tongues.
And this is probably the biggest sort of like criticism of of
churches that that that activate the gift of tongues is that you
have a bunch of people speaking in tongues, but nobody
interpreting, no one who has the gift of interpretation that's
supposed to go along with it. But that's glossolalia.
But that's not what's happening here in Acts chapter 2.
What's happening here is not glossolalia.
It's what's known as xenoglossia.
Turn to your neighbor and say, what is that?
Yeah, what is that? Right?
Some of you don't have a neighbor, but you're doing good.
Xenoglossia. Xenoglossia is when people are
supernaturally speaking actual languages, actual language that
are not their own, right? So in Acts 2, what you have is a
room full of Korean people speaking Arabic and an Arabic,
Arabic person speaking French and a French person speaking
Japanese, right? This is not the the gift of
tongues, right? This is xenoglossia.
And you don't need like, the gift of interpretation to
understand what's going on. All you need is a native
speaker. Acts chapter 2 verse 8 says then
how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?
So what's happening? Xenoglossia is happening.
Now the next question is found in verse 12, verse 12.
People are asking, well, what does this mean?
What does this mean? One theory is found in verse 13.
It says some however, made fun of them and said they have had
too much wine. All right, that's one theory.
All right, this is so interesting that when God moves
in our lives, especially in miraculous, supernatural ways,
we have a tendency to explain it away.
We just do, right? You pray for that job, you get
the job and someone says, how'd you get that job?
And you're like, man, I got lucky, had a good interview.
You pray for healing, you get healed.
How'd you get healed? Green tea, mushroom extract,
It's miracle food, right? Well, what about the the one who
did the miracle, right? And so here God moves
supernaturally in Acts chapter 2.
And yet people look at him. They say, oh, that's, that's
just a bunch of people being drunk.
That's they're, they're just drunk, which makes no sense.
I've seen drunk people. Drunk people don't become super
linguists when they when they get drunk, right?
They don't become Duolingo experts, right?
Nobody says, oh, I got hammered last night and then not and all
this Arabic and Japanese came out of me like nobody does that.
So this theory actually makes absolutely no sense, but it
tells you the extent that people go to to try and explain away
the supernatural move of God. It reminds me of a quote by
Charles Spurgeon. He says this.
He said blessed is the man or woman who has done with chance,
who never speaks of luck, but believes that from the least,
even to the greatest, all things are ordained of the Lord.
So what is actually happening here?
This is one of the greatest moments in human history.
And what's happening here in Acts chapter 2, it is the birth
and the formation of the church as we know it.
It's the beginning of the church and it, and it's the moment
where God's people, they become the church and they are
empowered by the Holy Spirit. And this changes everything.
And in particular, it changes the way that they are to live.
That in light of Acts chapter 2 and in the pouring of the Holy
Spirit upon the people of God, we are to live different.
I'm going to give you 4 ways that we live different.
We live by the promises of God. Now.
We live by the power of God, by the purposes of God and by the
presence of God. I usually preach 3 point
sermons. I'm going to give you 4 because
I love you guys and you guys, you know, we're good.
All right, So point number one, we, we live now by the promise
of God in light of Acts 2, we live by the promise of God.
In the Old Testament. What would happen is that the
Holy Spirit was there where the Holy Spirit would come and go.
The Holy Spirit would show up in the Old Testament to certain
people for certain times in certain seasons, and then the
Holy Spirit would go. That's what's happening in the
Old Testament. Every time the Holy Spirit
comes, there is peace and presence and power.
And every time the Holy Spirit leaves, there is a vacuum that
is left. And it happens over and over
again in the Old Testament. This is why King David in Psalm
51, he says, cast me not away from your presence.
Take not your Spirit from me. King David knows what it's like,
right? If you read the story of King
David, he knows what it's like for the Spirit to come on him
and for the Spirit to depart. And so in Psalm 51 is like, cast
not me away from your presence. Take not your Holy Spirit from
me. This is what everybody was going
through. And so people kind of lose their
minds when the prophet Joel shows up with this promise from
God. And Joel in chapter 2 says, and
afterward, this is Joel 228 to 29 says, And afterward I will
pour out my spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophecy, your old men will
dream dreams. Your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my
spirit In those days. God promises through the prophet
Joel that there will be a day where the Spirit of God will no
longer come and go. The Spirit of God will come and
stay. And the Spirit of God will not
be here and there in a stingy way.
The Spirit of God will be poured out all over the place.
It'd be poured out on all flesh. And so you have to understand
that for centuries people waited for this promise to come true.
And it's on the Day of Pentecost.
It's on. It's in Acts chapter 2 that it
happens. It's in Acts chapter 2 that this
promise that God made in the Old Testament comes to fulfillment.
The Spirit comes and doesn't leave.
The Spirit comes and and makes a home and stays and dwells and
remains. I don't know about you.
I grew up in the church. I, I always used to wish that I
lived in Old Testament times when I was a kid.
I was like, man, I wish I could have seen the Red Sea part.
I wish I could have seen that burning Bush.
But you need to understand that people back then, they were
dreaming about 2025. Back then they were like, oh, I
wish it was 2025 because by that point God would have fulfilled
his promise that the Spirit would come and not depart, that
the Spirit would dwell in the people of God.
That's what people are doing back then.
They're envious of us here. When that Holy Spirit is poured
out, it is a reminder that God keeps God's promises.
God keeps God's promises. And what does that mean?
If God keeps God's promises, we are then to live by God's
promises. I once heard of this woman here
in Massachusetts and she failed her Massachusetts teacher
education license exam like 13 times, just kept failing,
failing, failing, failing, failing.
And she was about to take the test for the 14th time.
But then the school that she was working at told her, hey, we
don't care if you pass or fail. We're going to hire you here at
this at this school because you're a fantastic teacher.
You've demonstrated that you have a job here at this church
no matter what you do on that exam.
She went into that exam and she passed the exam.
Now what happened? Maybe lucky number 14, or she
took that test knowing that her future was secured.
You follow me. What if you knew that your
future was secured? What if back in high school, you
knew what school you'd go to, what job you'd have, where you'd
live, what your relationships would be, would be like?
What if you knew all that stuff in high school That would change
everything. That would change everything
about high school. God has secured our future for
us, and because we have the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit
moving in our midst, that Holy Spirit in our lives is a
reminder that God keeps God's promises and that God has
secured our future. Walter Bruggeman, he puts it
this way. He says we do not live by what
we possess, but by what we are promised.
The promises of God are the only grounds for hope in a world of
despair. We then need to live in light of
God's promises because God has secured our future.
And I promise you this, that in this life or the next, things
will be OK. I don't know if you.
I don't know if you believe that I'm telling you right now things
will be OK. There's one writer, He's a
Brazilian writer named Fernando Sabino.
He says everything will be OK in the end.
If it's not OK, it's not the end.
We live by the promises of God. Second, we live by the power of
God, by the power of God. The Holy Spirit in this story
comes in power through fire, right?
In Acts chapter 2, What happens here?
It's not a random thing, right? What happens in Acts 2 is not a
random thing. And, and, and what happens is
that in Pentecost, right? Pentecost was actually a Jewish
festival. It was a Jewish festival that
was celebrated 50 days after a Passover.
And during Pentecost, what Jews would do, they would gather
together and they would commemorate and remember the day
that the law was given to them on Mount Sinai through Moses,
right? That's what Pentecost was all
about. All right.
Now, what you need to know is this.
It's not an accident that that acts to happens on Pentecost on
this Jewish sort of like festival.
It's not an accident. So follow this progression.
In the Old Testament, Moses encounters God in a burning
Bush. So God sets a Bush on fire, and
that's where God shows up in Exodus 19.
Again, if you know your Bible, when they get to Mount Sinai and
they receive the law, we're told that God comes down from Mount
Sinai in fire. In essence, instead of lighting
a Bush on fire, God sets the entire mountain on fire.
The entire mountain is ablaze in Exodus 19.
And now here in Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit comes, the Bush is
not set on fire, the mountain is not set on fire.
We are set on fire. God sets us on fire.
That fire that represented the very presence of God and the
very power of God now rests upon us and consumes us.
We in a sense, we are the burning Bush.
We become the burning Bush. And, and what that means is that
Christ in US makes us more powerful than you could possibly
imagine, more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Now, what do you do with all of that power?
I know what the world would do with all of that power.
But what Jesus does with that power is very different.
Jesus, the way of Jesus is not coercive.
It's not through force. It's not through violence.
We're given all this power, but we're to wield it in the way of
Jesus. And that leads us to the Third
Point, which is that we are live.
We are to live by God's purposes.
We are to live by the purpose of God.
So what are we supposed to do with this power?
There's a purpose that we've been given with this power.
I was recently at Starbucks. I went to get my coffee.
They called out my name. They said coffee for Larry, and
I went to go get it. And this other dude grabbed my
coffee and then like one second later, the woman goes coffee for
Larry and puts out another cup, cup of coffee.
And I look at this dude and this guy looks at me and this guy
goes, he goes, I'm Larry. And I look at him and I go, I'm
Larry. And he says great name.
And I should have said you also have a great name.
But I didn't say that. You know what I said?
I said, how do you know you have the right coffee?
And I don't know. I look back at that moment.
And I don't know why I was so hostile.
Like, the conversation just died, right?
Like, he and I have the same name.
He's being super nice. We should be best friends.
Instead, all I care about is like, I think that guy took my
coffee and I think he's touching like, the lid or like, that's
all I cared about in that moment.
And here's my point that ever since Adam blamed Eve for the
fall, people have been divided and we strive against each other
and sometimes for no good reason whatsoever.
In Acts 2 verses 5 through 11, it says now there were staying
in Jerusalem God fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
When they heard the sound, a crowd came together in
bewilderment because each one heard their own language being
spoken. This is not random.
What we need in order to to to kind of break that striving and
that barrier between people is something supernatural.
We need something supernatural. We cannot do it by natural
means. We need something supernatural.
And this is the way that God does it.
And what we're told is that they're all these nations that
are gathered here in this city. It says Parthians means
Elamites, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia,
Phrygia, Pamphlea, Egypt, Libya, Rome, Cretans, Arabs.
This is not an accident. This is a story that goes all
the way back to Adam and Eve and the division that happened since
the fall. From the very beginning, we've
created walls and created categories.
We've been against each other. We separate by language,
separate by ethnicity, separate by nationality, by class, by
politics. And throughout history, those
divisions lead to violence and war and brokenness.
At Pentecost, God is healing things, reversing things.
He gives everybody this Zeno Glacia so they can understand.
And it breaks down this barrier that exists between language.
And by doing So, what God does is he takes a crowd and he turns
them into a community. God, as he does, as God is
saying, I'm putting the world back together.
I'm, I'm healing the division that was sown into this world
going all the way back to the days of Genesis.
And This is why the power of God manifests as xenoglossia and not
glossolalia, right? And I think there's a role for
glossolalia. There's a role for people
speaking what sounds like gibberish and people
interpreting it. But right now, right now, I
don't know if we need that. Right now, what we need is we
need the power to understand other people's languages.
We need the power to understand other people's cultures.
We need the power to understand other people's stories.
We need the power and the empathy to be able to stand in
other people's shoes. When you do so, you break down
these dividing walls that have been there from day one.
Willie James Jennings has probably the best commentary on
the book of Acts, and he says this.
He says speak a language, speak a people.
God speaks people fluently, and God wants the disciples of his
only begotten Son to speak people fluently too.
But this will require bodies that reach across massive and
real boundaries, cultural, religious, ethnic devotion to
people's unknown and undesired. This is love that cannot be
tamed, controlled or planned. And once unleashed, it will
drive the disciples forward into the world and drive a question
into their lives. Here's the question.
Where is the Holy Spirit taking us and into whose lives?
I like that. Where is the Spirit of God
taking you and into whose lives? We pray for that job.
I'm like, cool, you'll pray for the job, but into whose lives
are you entering into? You're praying about moving to a
city. Cool, right?
But into whose lives is the Spirit taking you?
There's this power, but that power comes with a purpose.
And the purpose is to go and to bring reconciliation, to bring
peace, to wield that power in the way of Jesus.
Finally, finally, we live by the presence of God.
We live by God's presence. Again, going back to the Old
Testament, I don't know if you know this, but but God's
presence was localized in the temple and people understood
that God basically lived in the temple.
And so you'd get to the outer courts and you would feel that
the presence of God. And once you got into the inner
courts, then you really got to feel the presence of God.
And then there's there's a section in the temple in the
very, very center called the Holy of Holies, where people
believe the very essence of God dwelled.
People back then believed that Holy of Holies was like almost
like an elevator that was mirrored in heaven.
It was like a Direct Line to the heavenly realm.
And that Holy of Holies was like a sacred, sacred, sacred space
where very, very, very few people could go into.
That's how the presence of God works.
But in 2025, post Acts 2 and the Holy Spirit being poured out on
all flesh and Christ dying and resurrecting, what then was the
temple? The temple is no longer there
and we then become the temple. And what does that mean?
It means the very essence, the very essence of God is now in
us. This is what the apostle Paul
calls a mystery. It's Christ in us.
This is this is the part that I think that that we just can
quite fathom or understand because it's such a mystery, but
it's also something that we need to press into because if we
understood that it isn't about Christ just alongside of you,
right? This is how we typically picture
God. God is alongside of me.
God is here, God is around. OK, But over and over again,
what we're told by the Apostle Paul is that Christ is in you,
not, not next to you. It's Christ in you.
And what what Christ in you? What that creates is unspeakable
intimacy. It's intimacy that you can't
even possibly imagine. When you understand that, it
changes everything. I recently met someone who
became a follower of Jesus but was raised Buddhist and in a
Buddhist household in Burma. She told me her story and she
said that when she was younger, they're all Buddhist.
Her dad is Buddhist, everybody's Buddhist.
Her dad in Burma took them to a Catholic Church, took the whole
family to a Catholic Church. And the family was confused
about why they were there. And at the end of the service,
the dad said, all right, turn around, everybody look at the
back wall. They look at the back wall.
And she said that there's a picture of like this Italian
looking dude. And his dad goes, that man, his
name is Jesus, and he was, that man is a revolutionary.
Now in Burma, when you've lived under an authoritarian
government for five decades, being a revolutionary is a very
good thing because that man is a revolutionary.
But he brought revolution in a different way.
He brought it in a peaceful way. He brought it to the Roman
Empire, but he did it differently than every other
revolutionary. He did it in a peaceful way.
And the dad told his family, he said, I want you to respect that
man, that revolutionary. I want you to know his name, and
I want you to pray to him. That's what this dad said.
And so in that moment, this girl, she prays to Jesus for the
first time. And she prays.
And she said that when she prayed, she sensed and saw light
and warmth and what she describes as a gentle power.
And when she opened her eyes, she said she could still see
light and warmth and this gentle power.
Ever since that day, ever since that day, whenever she was in
trouble, she said she would pray to this Jesus.
And every time, she said sometimes she would see light,
sometimes she she would sense this warmth, but every time she
would sense this gentle power almost nudging her to go in the
right direction. And then COVID came.
And during COVID she was living alone and struggling.
And so she was praying to Jesus a lot.
And as she prayed to Jesus, she found that Jesus was again
bringing presents and peace and wholeness to her.
And during COVID, she says that two people knocked on her door
during COVID and she was really struggling.
She said she was living alone, really, really, really
struggling. And during COVID, somebody
knocked on her doors. 2, two people showed up and these two
people said, Hey, we were praying.
We were sent by God to you and, and we want to tell you about
Jesus. And she said, I don't, I don't
need that. I I'm ready to be baptized right
now. She was baptized the next day.
She told her family.
The whole family was incredulous.
They're like, what did you just do?
Even though it's her dad's idea to pray to Jesus in the 1st
place, but he never knew that praying to Jesus would lead to
an encounter with Jesus. Since then, her life has been
turned completely upside down in the best possible way.
And she, she discovered this, these are her words.
She said she discovered that she wants to live.
She says she wants to live more than anything she wants to live.
And what she meant is that she wants everything that life has
to offer her. She told me that that Buddhism,
the way of Buddhism, teaches to detach from desire and craving
and clinging and to hold life at a distance to go with the flow
of the universe, because desire in Buddhist thinking leads to
suffering, right? Desire leads to suffering.
This Buddhist thought, this is Star Wars Yoda talk, This is all
of it is true, desire leads to suffering.
But Jesus, she said when she started following Jesus, called
her to do the opposite. It called her to increase her
desire, to increase her desire. And she realized that as she did
that, she realized that she wanted to live.
She realized she wanted life, but you know what she
discovered? She discovered that as her
desire increased, that the Buddhists were absolutely right.
That as desire increased, suffering also increased.
She was like, oh, that's totally, they were totally
right. What she wasn't told is this.
She wasn't told. She wasn't told that when she
does suffer, there is this person Jesus that shows up over
and over and over again and brings light and warmth and
gentle power. No one told her this, this, this
is like it's like she's figured out the secret of living life
because she kind of has, right? This church is the good news
that we have. This is the good news that we
have this week, just very personally, this is this week is
my son's was my son's birthday. It was on November 6th, but he's
no longer with us. So my wife and I lost a child
many years ago. His name was Emmett.
And this last week would have been his 15th birthday.
He would have been in high school, which kind of like blows
our mind. And so it's been, you know,
every birthday of his is always a heavy week in my family.
But I look back and I'm just like, losing my son brought the
most intense suffering in my life.
But that's suffering came from a place of intense love.
And that love, when you love someone in that way, it opens
you up to so much suffering. But in that suffering, I
discovered that there is this person Jesus, and there's always
light, there's always warmth, this gentle power.
There's this person, Jesus who shows up over and over and over
again, church, this is what is promised to us, that he will
never leave or forsake us. He says I am with you always to
the end of the age. We as a church, we live by this
promise, by this presence, by this purpose, by this power.