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May 27, 2007
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Relationship
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Living in the Spirit"
Acts 2:1-16
- The Day of Pentecost was a Jewish harvest feast day - it was to be 50 days after the day of "firstfruits" which was the day they were to wave a sheaf of the "first grain harvested" before the Lord at the temple (Lev. 23). At Pentecost they were to bring 2 loaves of bread baked from that grain along with seven lambs and other burnt offerings. It was a day of sacred assembly - a Sabbath day and celebration day. Jews from every land would come to Jerusalem to celebrate it. This is why there are crowds in Jerusalem on this Pentecost, when God transformed the day by pouring forth His Spirit upon the waiting Apostles and followers of Jesus.
The Spirit was poured out on this day in fulfillment of the promise God had given through the Prophet Joel and others. Again before Jesus' ascension, He reiterated this promise instructing his Apostles and followers to wait in Jerusalem until the "gift the Father promised" had been poured out upon them. So, they had waited the ten days from the day Jesus ascended until the Day of Pentecost.
Jesus had said that those that waited would receive power when the Holy Spirit was poured forth upon them and that they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria and unto the ends of the earth. The book of Acts tells the story of this expansion of the Gospel message around the world.
John the Baptist had said that God had promised that Jesus would baptize people with the Holy Spirit (John 1:33). When speaking to the woman at the well, Jesus had told her that the water He gave would become in the one who received it a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14). And He had told the crowds in Jerusalem that "whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By which Jesus meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive" (John 7:38-39).
With these and other passages of Scripture the apostles in that room still could not have known exactly what to expect when the Holy Spirit came upon them, but the Spirit came with great power and like water filled them and like fire emboldened them.
As we just heard read: the place was filled with the sound as of a mighty wind and then they saw tongues of fire above each head and then they were filled with the Spirit and began to declare the mighty works of God in languages previously unknown to them. It was a wild and loud racket that proceeded from that place. But with God's presence, with God's Spirit comes joy and elation that would have buoyed them all up. There was no fear in this experience only that sense of the awesome presence of God.
- It is clear here that the tongues spoken were other human languages. This is not a statement that all tongues are other human languages, but that here, these tongues were languages given to them as a witness to Jesus. The commotion from the room and rooftop where they were, was heard in the streets causing the crowds to be stirred with perplexity.
Luke beginning in the 5th verse writes that these in Jerusalem were Jews from "every nation under heaven" and in the listed nations Dr Luke has carefully recorded the descendants from the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham and Japheth! Thus Pentecost was the beginning of the reversal of what had happened in Babel in Genesis 11 where the languages were confused. Here the nations once separated are now being brought back together. The language barrier was supernaturally overcome as all were gathered together in Christ, "prefiguring the great day when the redeemed company will be drawn 'from every nation, tribe, people and language'" (John Stott, Acts, p. 68, ubp).
What an earthshaking day this was, the birth day of the Church and a brand new beginning point for all of humanity. No longer was the Holy Spirit restricted just to a select few - prophets, kings and occasional craftsmen, but now God had deemed to pour forth His Spirit onto all flesh as Joel had prophesied.
This passage makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is God come to dwell in His people. He comes to empower them to be witnesses for Jesus - which we see in the book of Acts as expressed by who the apostles are, how they lived and what they speak when God gives them opportunity. It is a witness demonstrated by how they pray, how they trust, how they relate to those around them.
In Acts 2 the witness is through the commotion on the roof and through Peter's message. In Acts 3 the witness is in Peter responding to the prompt of the Holy Spirit to reach out to the man by the side of the road this time, a man Peter had walked passed multiple times perhaps for years until the Spirit directed Him to look. That response ended up raising that man from his infirmity.
In Acts 4 that witness is seen by the authorities as the courage and wisdom with which Peter and John carried themselves before them. And later that witness is expressed as all the disciples trust God and ask for Him to still perform mighty signs through their lives.
In Acts 5 that witness was to rightly bear suffering for the Name of Jesus.
All this was down "by the power of the Spirit". So, to live by the Spirit, to witness to Jesus in your life is not only what you speak, but who you are. Indeed that is what Jesus promised it would be in this passage saying, "you will BE my witnesses…"
Tom Jacobson the pastor of the Fellowship Community Church in Forest Grove shared about a missionary couple who has worked in Japan for many years. He said their housekeeper and helper with the children was a Japanese woman with whom they could not share the whole Gospel for she would feel obligated to convert to please them. But eventually she did make a commitment to Jesus through the testimony and opportunity given her by another member of the church community. After she had converted, they asked her what had prompted her to convert and she immediately answered: "I saw how you lived your lives and I wanted to have what you clearly had in you."
- Sometimes I have been guilty of trying to package Jesus into something I can give to others forgetting that before I speak my life is already speaking, and it is by that life that the witness for or against Jesus will first go forth.
So if you and I are to live in the Spirit what must we understand to do so?
It is helpful to know that you already have the Holy Spirit if you have been born again, if you have trusted Jesus for your salvation-for when we become believers we are given the Holy Spirit. Indeed, we have been born again by the Spirit of God - so God becomes resident in our lives with belief. This is said numerous places. If you look in Ephesians 1: 14 and 2 Corinthians 1: 21-22 you find that the Holy Spirit is given as a seal of our salvation, as a deposit to our hearts of what is yet to come in our lives. So, you have the Holy Spirit at birth into Christ.
But to have the Spirit resident does not make Him president, as the old evangelists used to say. We still must surrender to what the Spirit is speaking to us. We must respond to the Holy Spirit as He speaks to our lives.
In Ephesians 4 Paul says that we can grieve the Holy Spirit by how we relate to others around us. And it is clear that we don't want to grieve the Holy Spirit.
And Paul writes in Ephesians 5 in our memory verses for these year to not get drunk on wine but instead to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to speak to one another in Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs!
So, if the Holy Spirit is resident, we can choose to be full of God's Spirit or full of some other spirit. As I choose to be filled with wine or not.
Once our brother Dave Burke was asking the Lord why people don't respond to the presence of His Holy Spirit. In response God gave Dave a dream. Now this is a normal way for God to speak - through visions and dreams. In the prophesy Peter quotes later in chapter 2 from Joel, it is written that "your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams." So, Dave is in good company dreaming dreams from the Lord!
In his dream, Dave saw an enormous waterfall from heaven. It was continuously pouring out water on all the earth. The roar and rush of the water spread out into large droplets and mist that filled the air. The people in the dream were like animated cups, plates, beakers, pitchers, jars - in all variety of shapes and colors. Some vessels danced in the down pour and rejoiced as water streaked their up turned faces. Others were like floor tiles that grumbled in irritation as the water bounced off their flat, hardened surfaces; and they crawled away like insects trying to find a crevice to hide and avoid the deluge. Those receiving the water were containers in all variety of sizes and uses. They were all being filled to their capacity and overflowing. Deep pitchers to pour and fill others, tall slender beakers gushing up like fountains, shallow cups that could only hold a small portion, huge basins, wide mouth jars, serving bowls, dainty wine glasses, stout mugs, and so many more. Some were unique styles like they had been made in a beginning art class. Many were rejoicing and dancing in the water falling, laughing and splashing each other with the excess that overflowed. The tall, strong ones lifted their heads to heaven and bathed in the solid streams as long as they could stand it. And the force of the rushing water did not damage them. The smaller ones were content to be filled by the mist and overflow from others, and were never fully aware of the source of the waterfall. All were constantly moving and sloshing water out, but they were immediately refilled by more falling water.
And he saw the Lord's mighty hands reach down through the water into the crowded vessels to adjust them like a potter shaping clay. Gently, tenderly, purposely. The fallen He lifted to be filled again. The deformed were straightened to collect and hold the water better. The well formed containers he enlarged in depth and girth. And himself a little vessel, glimpsed a collection of large cisterns jars partially hidden by the spray and their overflow was like the volume of the waterfall. And the flat tiles which scurried away, the Lord tried to shape into saucers and shallow cups, but they kept flattening themselves and running off.
The Lord interpreted this dream to be a visual representation of how the Lord fills each of us with His Holy Spirit to over flowing, as much as we can hold, but not enough to damage us. His hand is constantly in our lives, picking us up and molding us. God is ever patient with our progress. Seeing the final product and assured that persistence will grow us into a reservoir.
I see this waterfall as such a huge picture of God's overflowing grace into our lives. So, when we hear the command "be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit" that we encounter in our memory verses this year, we are not to "work" at this except to make ourselves available to what God wants to do in and through us. We open and let God move in our lives. We accept what God wants to do. We say "yes, fill me" and the rest is up to the Heavenly Father.
Come Holy Spirit!
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