Pentecost is the celebration and remembrance of the gift of the
Holy Spirit. Jesus had promised his
disciples, I'm going away. We read this passage.
He says you should be glad I'm going away.
When's the last time you were glad someone was going away?
I mean, if I had been hanging out with Jesus, I would not have
been glad that he was going away.
I was like, this is not good. I've, I've staked my life on
being with Jesus as one of his disciples.
I left everything to follow him so that I can have all of him,
just as we sang earlier. And Jesus said to his disciples,
you should be glad that I'm going away, because if I don't
go away, I cannot send to you, the advocate, the spirit of the
truth, the one who will be with you.
He says I cannot send him unless I go away.
And so he's fulfilling his promise.
Today in the life of the church, we celebrate Christmas, we
celebrate Epiphany, we celebrate Lent, we celebrate Easter, we
celebrate Ascension Day, Jesus ascending into heaven.
And so now we also celebrate ascension, not ascension, but
Pentecost of him giving the Holy Spirit.
God showing up. The Holy Spirit is God showing
up among us. This is the promise of Jesus.
We're going to read from Acts chapter 2, the experience of the
disciples receiving the Holy Spirit and what that was like.
They had gathered in an upper room.
They had been in prayer together, 120 of them in a room
together, men and women waiting and praying to receive the gift
that God had given them. And so this is how they
experienced it. 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 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.
Now they 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.
Utterly amazed, they asked, aren't all of these who are
speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us
hears them in our native language?
Parthians, Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea
and Cappadocia, Pontius and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the 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 for the disciples in that upper
room? They've experienced what we call
a theophany. A theophany is God appearing
Theo, God phony to appear, God appearing.
Throughout the Old Testament, we have lots of occasions where God
showed up in a theophany. Some of them were quiet, some of
them were just an accompanying person with Abraham and Sarah.
But on other occasions it was as if God was present in a storm of
wind and fire, or God was present in the wind, God was
present in the fire. And so we want to look at those
two metaphors that are present in the language of Luke in
trying to understand how God has appeared in this passage.
The Spirit he speaks of as a wind, a rushing wind, like the
breath of life. In that moment when the day of
Pentecost came, they were all together in one place, and
suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came
from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
Notice Luke is very careful in his language here.
He didn't say, and our robes were blowing in the wind.
He actually says there is the sound of a rushing wind.
That's what they were experiencing, an audible sound
that rushed in among them. The wind or the breath of God as
a sound, as a reality, is present at the very beginning in
Genesis. In Genesis 1 it says that the
Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
The Spirit of God was present in this creation moment, stirring,
creating a wind in that moment. In chapter 2 of Genesis, it says
that God breathed the breath of life into this inert body that
he had made from the dust an Adam, an earth creature, and
then God came and breathed the breath of life into a Dom.
This same word is used of the Spirit of God, this wind in
Exodus. The Spirit shows up in the
liberation of God's people when they're cornered at the Red Sea
and Egypt and Pharaoh are angrily pursuing them.
The people are in a panic about what they're going to do, and
Moses prays and God tells him to raise your hands in the wind
parts the Red Sea, blowing and creating away for them.
The Spirit of God is involved in creation, in the bringing of
life, and in the deliverance of his people.
In that moment, it is as if the people of God from Egypt are
born again as a new people. Paul would later use that
language to say they were baptized in that moment as they
crossed over from Egypt into the wilderness to become the people
of God. Job had an experience of God
speaking from a storm with a great wind that was present
there. And then Ezekiel, he had perhaps
what is one of the most famous experiences of the Spirit of
God, where God shows him a valley full of dry bones.
The hand of the Lord was on me, Ezekiel says.
And he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in
the middle of a valley. It was full of bones.
How many of you would be happy in that moment to be in a valley
of Boones? You'd be a little spooked out.
I know some of you don't even like to go walking where I love
to walk. I love to go walking in the
cemetery here in Vancouver. It's huge.
It's a park. It's where Vancouver goes to
remember, and it's a great place to walk.
But I know some of you have said, Craig, I'll never go for a
walk there with you because you don't want to go in a valley of
death, in a valley of bones. The language here is that which
is dried up, disconnected. And the Lord, it says, asked
him, Son of man, can these bones live?
And I said, Sovereign Lord, you alone know it goes on in that
moment to say that God told Ezekiel prophecy to the bones,
preach to the bones. Have you ever felt like you were
talking to dry bones? I met a pastor once.
His name is Fred Smith, quite famous.
He was on an airplane, and we were talking about his
experience as a seminary professor.
And he says, yes, I teach preaching.
And I said, well, what is that like?
You know, I've been to seminary and but what is it like these
days? And he says, oh, you know, one
of the things I do is that I have my students go to the
cemetery and preach. I'm like, really?
He says, yeah, if they can learn to preach to dry bones with
passion, they can learn to preach because that's what
they're going to do every Sunday.
So Ezekiel prophesied to the bones.
He preached to the bones, and it says that they began to move and
come together, and the sinews and the ligaments and the
muscles and skin, it all came together, but there was no life
there. Then he said to me, Prophecy to
the breath, prophecy, Son of man, and say to it, This is what
the Sovereign Lord says, Come breath from the four winds, and
breathe into these slain, that they may live.
So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath entered them, and
they came to life and stood on their feet, a mighty army.
Wow. What Ezekiel saw in that moment
was the Spirit of God bringing life to those who were dead.
Later in that same passage, God says I will send my spirit to my
people that they may live. This is what the breath of God
does. And so it's fitting that in
trying to explain this experience, Luke says in Acts 2
that they heard the sound of rushing wind.
Do you know, hearing is another theophany, another experience of
God appearing, and it's it came after the great catastrophe in
Genesis chapter 3, where death was now enlarged in its impact
on Adam and Eve on creation itself.
Death itself had gotten a grip through the lies of the devil,
and it says that the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord
God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
What did that sound like to hear God walking in a garden?
What had been the sound that they love to hear now became one
they feared, and they feared God, and so they hid from the
Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Have you ever been afraid and hid to hide yourself?
Maybe you hide in the open because you're afraid about the
true condition of your heart and life.
They hid among the trees, but the Lord God called to the man,
Where are you? And he answered, I heard you in
the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked.
So I hid. And God said, Who told you that
you were naked? The sound is the theophany, the
sound of the rushing wind. And the sound of the rushing
wind of God is not one that's meant to stimulate fear in us,
though we have lots of reasons for being afraid of shame, a
fear of the future. Oh, I don't know if I want God
to have that much access and truth of my life because He
might send me somewhere I don't want to go.
He might 'cause me to have to speak to people I don't like.
He might I I've heard all kinds of reasons.
He might take something away from me.
But God comes to breathe life again.
Why did God seek Adam and Eve in this moment to bring life to
them again? Why did God send the Spirit like
a rushing wind to bring life to His disciples who were hiding in
fear? The doors were locked in fear,
but the Spirit of God came like a rushing wind to breathe life
into them and to animate them, so that the church was born at
Pentecost. But the Spirit of God also comes
as a fire. It says that they experienced
the Spirit of God as tongues of fire, as the fire of God.
Notice it says 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.
I would be anxious if I saw fire floating in the air.
What an experience. Luke is trying to describe what
he heard from the disciples in their experience of God in the
gift of the Spirit. But the theophany of fire is one
that's also present in the Old Testament, and one that had been
prophesied by John the Baptist. Moses experienced the fire of
God when he was in the desert, having run 20 years earlier away
from Pharaoh and away from Egypt.
Now in the desert, Moses was a shepherd and he saw a fire, a
burning Bush, and he makes his way towards it.
And the most mysterious thing about it was that the Bush was
not consumed. There was fire, but the Bush was
not consumed. And then he had a word that
spoke from the Bush to him that said, Moses, take your shoes
off, for the ground you're on is holy.
The holy making fire of God was present in that moment.
This is the theophany of fire and God appearing, making holy,
setting apart, purifying. In Exodus chapter 13, God's
presence with Israel was a pillar of fire leading the way,
and if the pillar of fire stopped, they stopped and made
camp. If the pillar of fire moved,
they moved with it. This was God appearing.
But in Exodus chapter 24, when God is getting ready to give His
word to Israel, Moses and the elders who went up the mountain
had to give a word to say God is a consuming fire.
Do not come up here if you have not consecrated yourself for
this moment and God is seen as a consuming fire.
It's almost that refiner's fire that's referred to by the
prophets, burning out the dross from metal so that it's
purified. In Genesis chapter 15, God shows
up as a fire in the night, a torch and a burning pot to
establish a covenant. And so that fire was this sense
of the presence of God. Again, setting aside Abram and
his family for the purposes of God in both in in Psalm chapter
18, David refers to both the wind and the fire as the
judgement of God. So when this appeared, when the
Spirit came, the prophetic word of John the Baptist about Jesus
is being fulfilled. John the Baptist says I baptize
you with water for repentance, but after me comes one who is
more powerful than I, whose sandals I'm not worthy to carry.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear the
threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning
up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
Therein is this judgement. Picture that that when the fire
of God appears, it is both a gathering and a separating.
Have any of you ever harvested wheat?
Anybody harvested rice? You have to gather it up and
separate the kernels from the rest of the plant.
The kernels of rice and wheat are what you want.
The rest of the plant is chaff. It's not needed.
The wind could blow it away, or you could gather it up and use
it as fuel for the fire. And so this is the picture of a
harvesting with fire. He's going to baptize with the
Holy Spirit and ultimately he will harvest with fire.
And so it's really interesting to me, the tongues of fire are
described and they're set in motion as an army to speak, not
an army with a sword, but an army with a tongue that can
speak the truth from a purified heart.
This is the birth of the church. Yeah, Go back and do that one
when God examines his church and an ultimate judgement.
Paul used this theophany of fire to remind us to be careful about
how we build, how we build on this foundation of Christ in our
life. And he says no one can lay a
foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus
Christ. If anyone builds on this
foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or
straw, their work will be shown for what it is because the day
will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire,
and the fire will test the quality of each person's work.
It's almost as if he's saying, look, the Holy Spirit comes
among us as a truth burning fire, and we get a little taste
of it now by the Spirit in our life.
The world should get a little taste of it now by the presence
of the church at UBC in your faculty in Vancouver, in Canada,
across the world, wherever there are believers in the church
that's present, the Spirit of God should burn as a word that
brings truth and truth that illuminates how we are building
our lives because of the presence of God among us.
The Spirit of God is trying to do that work to breathe life
into us and to purify our lives and to set us free to speak.
Some of you are afraid to speak because you believe yourself
disqualified because of sin in your life.
You hesitate to speak because sin still grips your life.
The flesh still has its way, and God comes like a burning fire, a
consuming fire. The writer of Hebrews says to
liberate your life, your heart, and your tongue so that you can
speak. Look what happens to those
disciples. The Spirit of God is empowering
them to speak to the nations. And now there is not a sound of
the rushing wind. There is the sound of many
tongues speaking many languages all at once as 120 people rush
out of that house into the streets and begin to preach.
And people are astonished. Well, they are speaking my
language with a Galilean accent. I remember when I was trying to
learn French when I first came to Canada, I thought I'm going
to be a citizen of Canada. I should speak both official
languages of Canada. And so I got a set of cassette
tapes on how to learn French. And every morning I would push
that button and it would have me parrot back the French.
Ultimately, Ellen said this is destroying my peace in the
mornings. And I did not learn French, but
my friend Pierre was exploring Jesus and he was from Quebec.
And so I got a French and English New Testament and we
would sit and we would read the Bible and he would say, oh, read
to me in French. And so I would read to him in
French and he'd say, you have an accent.
But on this day, all those listening to that 120 preachers
speaking multiple languages, languages they didn't know said,
how is this? You speak with a Galilean
accent, You're speaking my language.
And this is what I hear. I hear you declaring the wonders
of God in my language. And this was the sign of the
presence of the Spirit, communication that touched not
just the head, but the heart, and announced the glory and
beauty and majesty and awesomeness, the wonderness of
Jesus Christ. This is what the Spirit of God
is meant to enable. All of them were filled with the
Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues as the Spirit enabled
them. Now that we're staying in
Jerusalem, God fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
And when they heard the sound, a crowd came together in
bewilderment because each one heard their own language being
spoken. It's all as if the Spirit
functioned that day as a universal translator.
Why? Because the universal love of
God had been expressed in the person of Jesus Christ, in the
work of Jesus Christ at the cross, in His death, His burial,
His resurrection and ascension, the universal love of God had
been expressed for all. It includes all who will make
the exclusive claim of their own life that Jesus is Lord.
This is the move of the Spirit of God to enable you to
communicate, to talk, to speak, and for some of you to learn
languages, to learn culture so that you can intermingle with
others and share the gospel of Jesus.
You become Google Translate because it's translated not just
by the words of your mouth, but the very life of the sincerity
of your love for Jesus and for His Church.
When we surrender to Jesus, He fills us with His Spirit.
This is what He's promised. Those 120 disciples had been
preloading surrender into their life.
They were open for God to do something.
They were open for the gift and Spirit of God to arrive, and
when He did, He had full reign in their life.
He fills us with His Spirit so that we can know Him.
He fills us with His Spirit that we can become like Him.
He fills us with His Spirit so that we can join Him in His
mission. This is the very mission of
Origin Church, is it not? We joyfully invest in
relationships to spark, do you hear, to spark a life journey
with Jesus. We are the theophany of God most
often utilized by God these days.
We are not secessionists who believe somehow the Spirit of
God and the gifts have stopped. No, we believe they continue the
promise of Joel to to Israel that their sons and daughters
would prophecy. We still believe.
We still believe that all the gifts of the Spirit operate with
men and women who have surrendered their life to Jesus
so that they may invest in relationships and spark a life
journey with Jesus. And this is what a life journey
with Jesus looks like. I want to get to know you more,
Lord. I want to become like you, Lord.
I want to join you in your mission.
Come Holy Spirit, come in a moment we are going to celebrate
the ultimate in the theophany of God.
The God appeared in the person of Jesus Christ in flesh and
blood, and the invitation to the table is open to all who would
confess their faith in Christ. He is Lord.
The invitation to receive the bread is to remember the body of
Jesus broken for us. The invitation to receive the
cup is to remember His blood was poured out for us, for the
forgiveness of sin, and to establish a new relationship
with us and all who would believe.
And it's His Spirit that animates us in the ministry of
both Word and Spirit, like Ezekiel, we could have a lot of
words. We can have a lot of words.
And it appears that they have a impact.
Oh, people got together. Look at the crowd in this
valley. But there was no true life there
until the Spirit came. And you have been invited not to
a ministry of just words or acts of service.
You have been invited to a ministry of the Spirit as well.
Are you learning such a life? Are you learning such a life of
dependence on the Spirit of God to empower the words and service
of your life? That's the question for us to
hold in this moment before we receive the Lord's Supper.
Let's stand together.