As the Spirit gives Utterance
I brought the Pentecost message this past Sunday. Here is an excerpt from the sermon:

We celebrate Pentecost as a Christian holiday, but Pentecost is a Jewish holiday as well. The apostles were in Jerusalem, waiting for a sign from God. Jerusalem was a busy place, because everyone had gathered to celebrate Pentecost. The apostles still celebrated Jewish holidays, because they were still Jews, they were still circumcised, they still kept Moses' law, like Jesus told them to do, they still attended synagogue regularly, like Jesus did with them, and like Paul did after them. They were Jews that recognized Jesus as their Messiah.

One chapter back in Acts, we see that Jesus ascends into heaven, and he tells his gathered apostles to wait for the arrival of the Holy Spirit. And he says to them, in Acts 1:8-9, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."

The part about Acts 2, the Pentecost story, that most people will remember, is the speaking in tongues from the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit doesn't just show up out of nowhere, they were waiting for it. Jesus told them to wait, so they waited. While they waited, Pentecost came to Jerusalem. Pentecost in Jerusalem was like Friday the 13th in Port Dover, or Relief Sale Weekend in New Hamburg, people showed up from all around, specifically to that city to celebrate the holiday. The disciples waited for the Holy Spirit, and while they waited, their city grew full of these Jewish pilgrims. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a mighty wind blew threw the room, and it seemed as though everyone was receiving their own flame. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the gathered apostles began speaking in different languages. The Jewish pilgrims, in town for the Pentecost holiday, spoke many different languages. When the Holy Spirit filled Jesus' apostles, the languages that they spoke, weren't the languages that they understood, but the Jewish pilgrims did understand. They heard and understood, and they were amazed, "how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born?" The apostles spoke, as it says in my New King James translation, "as the Spirit gave them utterance".

These two stories are very obviously connected. When you see two stories in the Bible that have similar events, pay attention, there might be something you're supposed to understand.

In Genesis, God saves the people from death with the ark. He tells them to spread out and cover the whole earth. The people don't spread themselves out, they starting building the tower and city of Babel and God uses language as a tool to help spread out the people.

In Acts, God has just saved the world from their sins with the sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus tells the apostles to spread the good news of his message. The apostles are in one place until the Holy Spirit comes and uses language as a tool to spread the good news.

The news of Jesus was not supposed to be limited to Jerusalem, and it was not supposed to be limited to the Aramaic language. We cannot limit God. Some people try to limit God's love. If you are a Christian and still hate someone, then you are limiting God's love. If you only use the Bible as a black and white rulebook, then you are limiting God's word. If you love Jesus, and are a part of the Kingdom of God, but you don't live it, you don't show it, and you don't talk about it, then you are limiting God. We may be ordinary people, but we serve an extraordinary God.

   [ posted by William @ 12:52 PM ]