My kids have recently discovered the old Looney Tunes cartoons. Many of you will remember those cartoons, and their characters: Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Sylvester, Elmer Fudd, the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, etc. Though there were always different episodes, and if you remember those old shows, you know that there was essentially one storyline that got played out week after week: one character pursuing an objective and never attaining it.
Elmer Fudd for years tried to get rid of Bugs Bunny and never succeeded.
Sylvester always tried to have Tweety Bird for lunch and never succeeded.
And, of course, Wile E. Coyote trying desperately, week after week after week, to catch the Roadrunner and he never succeeded.
And what was crazy about all this was that these characters – Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote especially – were brilliant. They made intricate and complex plans. They rigged up the most fantastic machines (or ordered them from Acme). They were masters of disguise. They knew their targets intimately: knew their routines, their habits. Wile E. Coyote always knew what road the Roadrunner would be racing along, and exactly when. He knew everything he needed to know to succeed. He had at his disposal all the resources he needed to succeed. Only he never succeeded.
I thought about these guys when I came to Acts 2.
Acts is about the church as witnesses to Jesus: proclaiming a Jesus who died for the sins of the world and is risen and alive. Jesus commissioned his followers to this a number of times:
You will be my witnesses (Acts 1:8).
Go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28).
Repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in my name to all nations (Luke 24).
That’s the mission of the church.
But it seems to many of us in our day and culture, to be a Roadrunner kind of mission: always pursued but never attained.
Church is not about numbers, we know. And yet I notice in Acts how often the author Luke draws attention to numbers — Chapter 2: three thousand were saved… Chapter 4: number came to about five thousand… Chapter 5: more than ever, believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of men and women… Chapter 6:1 the number of disciples was increasing, and 6:7 – the number of disciples multiplied greatly… Chapter 9: the church multiplied.. Chapter 11:21 – a great number turned to the Lord… And so on.
The church by definition is the community who knows Jesus and makes him known, and the church in Acts was not only doing it, but doing it effectively. It was so natural for them. They talked about Jesus all the time. Peter said, We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard. In Acts 3, Peter and John are going to the temple and they encounter a lame man begging for alms. He asks them for money, and Peter says, ‘I’ve got no money, but I’ll give you what I do have: In Jesus’ name, get up.’ And the man is healed.
The church didn’t strategize initiatives to reach their neighborhood. They didn’t meet that morning and say, ‘Okay, we’ll go out two by two. Peter and John, your area is the temple. Your goal is to initiate 5 spiritual conversations, and whenever one of you is speaking to someone, the other person will stand off to the side quietly praying for him.’
They just lived their lives and naturally proclaimed Jesus as they did it. They were intentional, certainly, but never forced, and never unnatural.
But it has come to feel unnatural for us, hasn’t it? For whatever reason – fear, apathy, busyness – while we know that we are about making Jesus known, it somehow often feels like it would be forced, unnatural.
Like Wile E. Coyote, the North American church has become a genius at mission and evangelism: we order all kinds of stuff from the ACME catalogue of evangelism: we order video series, we create outreach events, we’re trained to go door-to-door or to initiate spiritual conversations, we do demographic research to understand non-churched people, or this or that generation, we make changes to everything from dress, sermon presentation, music style, sanctuaries, to parking and greeting. Yet the church in North America is getting smaller.
But increasingly we at church feel a real desire to see people come to Jesus, don’t we? It is one of the signs that God is on the move here. We care about the people around us, and know that they need Jesus. We long for more of God, and know that our experience of God increases as we serve his kingdom and love people in his name. We have that desire.
But here’s the question: what should we do, then, in order to naturally and effectively make Jesus known? What was the secret to the success of the Acts church? It can’t be the current strategies and tools. If we count on these things to suddenly make us naturally and effectively make Jesus known, we will become the Wile E. Coyote Baptist Church – always chasing, never reaching, re-strategizing every year with a new vision and plan for outreach, but never really seeing people encounter Jesus. And we will always feel that sense of defeat and guilt and failure.
So what is the difference between so many churches in our day – programmed and ineffective – and the church as we see it in the book of Acts – naturally and effectively missional?
The difference, most simply put, is that one is a church-driven or self-driven model and the other is a God-driven model. It is by God’s Holy Spirit, not self-effort, that Jesus is made known to the world. Where the Holy Spirit is, the church gets rabidly all about Jesus, and only by the power of the Holy Spirit does the church naturally and effectively declare Christ to the world with great results.
Understanding this is a beautiful thing, for it frees us from the sense of defeat we have at failing at something we can’t do ourselves anyway. It frees us from anxiety at trying to do something that seems awkward and unnatural, and gives us hope that the Spirit who lives in us wants to and will bring Christ to people through us in a way that is entirely natural to our personality, abilities and context. Instead of trying to be what we’re not, and then being ineffective, by the Spirit we can be who we really are, and then see God at work.
That’s the reality that that we see throughout the book of Acts, and it begins right here in Acts 2, in one of the most celebrated passages of the Bible: the account of Pentecost, and the birth of the Christian church.
The story of Acts is the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the growth of the Christian church from Jerusalem to Rome, the hub of the Empire. In Acts 1:8 Jesus told his followers, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. The beginning of the fulfilment of that promise and commission took place on Pentecost.
When I was in college, I played indoor soccer. We would routinely get to the arena forty-five minutes or more before the game. We would dress, warm-up and have our pep-talk. Then we’d take to the field and warm up the goalie and so on. But when the whistle blew, it was game on, and suddenly everything would come into focus for us. It was time to actually get out and do it.
Here in Acts 2 it is ‘game on’. In accordance with Jesus’ command, they have been waiting. But now, it starts.
In this passage the Holy Spirit comes, fills the followers of Jesus, and the global mission is officially launched. The game is on. Because where the Holy Spirit is, followers of Christ get missional: naturally and powerfully declaring Christ to the world, with great results.
Let’s look at it.
Acts chapter 1 ends with the followers of Jesus, 120 of them, in constant united prayer, and Mathias has just been added to the apostles, filling the place left empty by the betrayal of Judas.
Chapter 2 begins – When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.
Pentecost was the feast of the Jews in which they celebrated the harvest, honoring and thanking God for the harvest. It was one of three Feasts for which Jews would travel to Jerusalem. It was not unusual for Jews to come to Jerusalem for Passover and remain the fifty days through Pentecost. So on Pentecost there would be in Jerusalem Jews from all over the Roman world.
When Pentecost comes, fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection and ten days after his ascension, the community of Jesus is all in one place, when suddenly the Holy Spirit comes upon them in power. Jesus had promised this. In fact, this was precisely what they were waiting for. Jesus had ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait until they were ‘baptized’ (literally, ‘immersed’) in the Holy Spirit, which would happen in ‘a few days’.
It took ten days. Then the Spirit came, and the experience of his coming involved sound, sight, and then speech.
First, sound… the disciples heard something. Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
Not wind, but the sound of a wind. That is, they heard something that they would immediately identify with the Holy Spirit. For in both Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament) and Greek (the language of the New) the words ‘wind’, ‘breath’ and ‘spirit’ are the same word.
In Genesis 1, for example, in the creation account the ‘wind’ or ‘spirit’ of God is stirring over the primordial waters.
The wind or Spirit of God represented or was associated with the power of God, and specifically with his power to give life and being. So we have the Spirit hovering over the waters of creation as God’s creative power is about to be exercised, bringing into being land and sky and mountain and sun and star and plant and beasts.
In Ezekiel 37, his famous vision of the Valley of Dry bones: Ezekiel is brought to a valley filled with human bones. No life, no hope of life. It is one of the many Biblical pictures of what sin does.
God asks Ezekiel, ‘Can these bones live?’ And Ezekiel says, ‘Only you know.’ God says, ‘Prophesy to the bones, ‘God says, I will make you live, and give you the breath of life.’ Ezekiel prophesies, and there is a rattling throughout the valley as the bones come together, and sinews and flesh cover them, but they remain lifeless.
God says to Ezekiel, ‘Prophesy to the breath (or wind) and say, ‘Come, O breath and breathe on these slain, that they might live.’ Ezekiel prophesies to the breath, and the Spirit of God sweeps in and the breath of life comes into them, and the corpses become living beings, a vast army.
God then interprets the vision to Ezekiel and says, ‘These bones are my people, Israel. They are hopeless, cut off from me. But I will raise them up ‘from their graves’, says God. I will bring them back. And ‘I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live.’
This prophecy to Ezekiel is being fulfilled at Pentecost. God is creating a new ‘Israel’, as we heard last week, whose identity as God’s people is not centered in ethnic heritage, but in the person of Jesus, and in this new community of God’s people he is putting his Spirit within them. Before, he had placed his law outside of them, giving them a shot at conforming to his character by trying to live up to it, by performing and keeping the rules. But all the Law did – exactly what God intended it to do, by the way – was reveal that by human effort, people cannot earn the title ‘God’s people’. Instead of giving life (relationship with God), it brought death (separation). So God said, ‘I will give you life. I will place myself, my Spirit, within you.’
Because the Spirit of God is the Spirit of life. There is no spiritual life without the Spirit of God. And the Spirit gives life where he wills. Though the Spirit is in the church, the church does not direct the Spirit.
In John chapter 3, Jesus said to Nicodemus: The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
There is a mystery, and ‘unharnessibility’ to the Spirit. The wind has power that is available to us. If we set our sails to it, it can move us across the waters. If we set up a windmill, we can access its energy. It can refresh like a breeze. It can destroy like a hurricane. You can’t see it, but you can see what it does, as it bends the trees. You can feel it.
But we can’t control it. We can’t box it up for use at our convenience. It blows where it wills. The best we can do it cooperate with it. So it is with the Spirit. You can see when he is present, and in action. You can see the effects of his presence. But we cannot command him or package him so that he shows up on our schedule.
The Spirit blows where he wills, not where we will. He is not to be controlled.
Jesus said, I have come that they might have life to the full. The church of Jesus Christ would be a community of life, and if the church would become the vehicle by which God moves people from death to life, it could only be because the life-giving power of the Spirit of God would be present and active in the church. And the coming of the Spirit – the breath, the wind – at Pentecost signified that.
They heard a sound, the sound of wind, and it was the first sign of the Spirit of God coming on them in power.
The second sign was what they saw: They saw fire: And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them (2:3). Again, not real fire, but the appearance of fire, that separated and rested upon each one.
If wind represents the power of God, fire was always associated with the presence of God. Moses encountered God in the burning bush on Mount Sinai. God was visible to his people in the pillar of fire in the wilderness. God’s presence descended on Mount Sinai in fire.
And here at Pentecost, God comes to the disciples and is manifested by the appearance of fire. And the fire separates and rests upon each one. It’s a beautiful picture of the equality in the church. Everyone could see that everyone else had the presence of God resting on them. The twelve apostles didn’t have the presence of God to the exclusion of the others. The men didn’t have the presence of God to the exclusion of the others. Mary and Jesus’ own brothers didn’t have the presence of God to the exclusion of the others. There was no place for pride.
Which is significant, because in the Gospels we read frequently that the followers of Jesus were very concerned with who was greatest among them. That concern vanishes where the Spirit of God is present. They saw that God had rested on each one of them.
But please don’t think that when the presence of God comes in such a fashion that it is always a ‘nice’ or a ‘feel good’ experience. For the Spirit of God is the Holy Spirit, and if the power of God is life-giving power, the presence of God is a purifying presence. The image of fire in Scripture is often an image of the twin work of God’s judging and refining of his people.
When John the Baptist announced the coming of Jesus, he also spoke of Jesus sending the Holy Spirit, and he spoke it in the context of judgement. John said this about Jesus: He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
Where the Holy Spirit comes, he brings conviction. Sin gets uncomfortable. When God is present in your life by his Holy Spirit, you will see an increased love for what is right and good, and an increased commitment to holiness. You will increasingly recognize and the hate sinful patterns in your life. You’ll notice apathy, temper, lust, greed, shallowness.. and you’ll turn from it. You will also notice an increased awareness of and care for the poor. You’ll see an increase in joy, patience, generosity, compassion. You will have a greater, deeper love for Jesus and the accompanying increase of obedience to him. Your character will change as an individual because the Holy Spirit is a purifying presence in your life.
True for the church, too. One of the signs of the Spirit’s work in a church is a transformation of the personality and the values of the church. And we are beginning to see that here again. The hymn says, ‘Revive us again. Fill each heart with thy love. May each soul be rekindled with fire from above.’
They heard the wind and saw the fire. And wind and fire would have been to them obvious symbols of the Holy Spirit of God. They knew it as the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.
They heard wind… saw fire… The third sign of the coming of the Holy Spirit was speech: They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
They spoke in other tongues or other languages. In the Old Testament, when the Holy Spirit came upon someone in power it was often for prophecy, for the declaration of the word of the LORD. That’s the case here, for the crowd that assembles makes the astonished comment: We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. The Spirit who is the life-giving Power of God, the Spirit who is the refining presence of God, is also the Spirit of proclamation.
The disciples immediately, filled with the Spirit, begin declaring the mighty works of God, and certainly the mighty work God had done in raising Jesus from the dead, which was the subject of all their preaching in Acts.
It was natural for them to begin speaking. Again, as Peter later said, We cannot help but speak of what we have seen and heard. Because the Holy Spirit is all about Jesus, and where the Holy Spirit is present and active, God’s people are increasingly compelled to proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ: not just in preaching, but in conversation. And this proclamation of Jesus has power, divine power. It is not just natural, but it is effective. And before this day of Pentecost is over, three thousand people will have repented of sin and turned to Christ for forgiveness and been baptized.
Because when they heard the word of the Lord, they were cut to the heart, Acts 2:37. It wasn’t because Peter was a great preacher. It wasn’t because what he said was true. It was because the Holy Spirit took the word of God as it was proclaimed and he penetrated it deep into the hearts of the listeners to bring conviction. That is the only way the Word of God ever bears fruit. The Word and the Spirit go together.
And the church that naturally and effectively makes Jesus known is not so much the church that operates in the power of the Spirit, but the church in which the Spirit operates through the church. And so throughout Acts, the Holy Spirit repeatedly shows up, and any power and effectiveness in the church is his power and effectiveness.
We think that God says to us what Home Depot says: ‘You can do it. We can help.’ God does not say, ‘You can do it. I can help.’ His word is, ‘I will do it. You join me.’
What happened when the disciples, in the power of the Spirit declared the wonders of God here in Acts 2?
There were in Jerusalem at the time, devout Jews from all over, who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover or Pentecost or both. And the noise either of the wind or of the disciples speaking in other tongues drew a crowd, and the crowd was amazed, asking, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?
And before the day is done, 3000 come to faith in Jesus, and the global kingdom of God is launched. What this is is the tower of Babel in reverse. In Genesis 11, we read that as people multiplied again after the Great Flood, they said to each other: Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.’
What did they want? They wanted security and fame: They wanted to build a tower that would be a monument to themselves, and that would keep them from being scattered throughout the earth, even though God’s explicit word to them was to fill the earth and exercise dominion over it as God’s representatives. They were in rebellion. And God dealt with their rebellion by confusing their speech so they could not understand each other, and as a result they were scattered.
What happens at Pentecost reverses that: People gathered from all over the Empire and having different languages are enabled by God to understand what is spoken, and a monument to God’s glory is created: the Church, who will disperse as agents of God’s Kingdom in the world. The end of this Kingdom venture is described in Revelation: a great multitude that no one could number, from all tribes and peoples and languages in worship of God (Revelation 7:9).
This is the ultimate fruit of the mission of God, exercised by His Spirit through his Church. And it began at Pentecost. And it is the Mission to which we are invited, called to participate. And it happens by the Holy Spirit.
So the question is: When does the Holy Spirit come? It’s great to know that it’s all a work of the Holy Spirit, but do we then just sit around hoping he’ll show up, and until then we’ll just muddle around being the church…?
We’ve already said the Spirit, like the wind, blows where he wills, and that we cannot summon or control him. So if we want the Spirit to have his way among us, then what do we do?
Well, we ask for him to come. We pray.
Jesus once encouraged his disciples to pray, and as motivation said to them: If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?
‘Lord, we are hopeless and helpless unless your Spirit acts in us and through us.’ So we ask.
And yet, I’ve often been struck by the fact that in Acts, even though the Holy Spirit shows up constantly, not once do we see them asking for the Holy Spirit. He just comes. So when and where does he just show up?
The Holy Spirit comes to an obedient church that is all about Jesus.
Jesustold his disciples to wait in Jerusalem, and so they did. And as they obediently waited, the Holy Spirit came in power.
Jesus said, ‘You will be my witnesses.’ And so that’s what they did. And the Spirit routinely filled them and enabled them to speak with power about Jesus.
When Jesus was their Lord and their centre, the Holy Spirit was all over that, because the Holy Spirit’s own ministry is to testify to Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes alongside those who are committed to what the Holy Spirit is committed to: namely, the honour of Jesus in more and more people, and more and more in each person.
If we give ourselves wholeheartedly to know Jesus and to make him known, to desire his glory and pleasure above all other considerations, we will never have to ask for the Holy Spirit to come. He’ll show up so fast we’ll wonder what happened.
When, not just to keep the rules, but out of love for Jesus, we are obedient: we love each other, we don’t let money rule us, we set aside anger, we have concern for the poor, we speak truth (but in love)…. when love for Jesus compels us to live this way, the Holy Spirit comes, he enables and fills….
How do you recognize a church where the Holy Spirit is a living, active presence? Is it when people speak in tongues, or raise their hands in emotional worship? Is it when people are getting healed?
The surest sign that the Holy Spirit is present in a church is that people are talking about Jesus, are looking more and more like Jesus, are concerned for people who don’t know Jesus. People might not even talk about the Holy Spirit. Which is fine. He doesn’t need to draw attention to himself. He draws attention to Jesus, and shows up among people who want to draw attention to Jesus.
And then you see what we see in Acts: They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the Word of God with boldness. The full number of those who believed were one in heart and soul… With great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
How does that sound?
Amen.