The Holy Spirit: Still on the Job!

[Below, you'll find the message presented at both worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, and live stream video of both services. Today is the Day of Pentecost, the third great festival of the Church Year.]

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost already was a festival on the Jewish calendar long before the events described in today’s second lesson. That’s why there were Jews, both those born Jews and converts, from every part of the known world gathered in Jerusalem. It was a day of obligation, if you will, which every Jew would have expected to participate in at least once in their lives.

Pentecost had its roots as an agricultural celebration, celebrating the spring harvest. But for God’s people, the Jews, it was also a festival celebrating the giving of God’s Law at Mount Sinai.

God’s people loved God’s Law. “Oh, how I love your law!,” Psalm 119 says,  “I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies.” (Psalm 119:97-98)

But for all the love God’s people had for the Law, they were no more successful at obeying it than you and I are. Paul, the Jewish Christian apostle, speaks not only for himself but also for God’s ancient people and for you and me (and the whole world) when he writes, “...in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” (Romans 7:22-23) Whenever we resolve to love God with our whole being and love our neighbors as we love ourselves, we fail. Such love is foreign to our sinful nature. If we are to love God and love others as God commands us to do, that love must come from outside of ourselves.

The people gathered in Jerusalem had no idea what they were in for on that Pentecost Day! They were just there to be outwardly obedient to God’s Law.

The Jews gathered in Jerusalem didn’t know it even though nine hundred years before, God had foretold it through the prophet Joel. God said that when Jesus, the sinless Savior, paid for our sin with His life, the sun would “be turned to darkness and the moon to blood…” (Joel 2:31) (Sounds like Good Friday to me.) But at this, God would pour out His Holy Spirit in ways not seen since the Spirit moved over the waters to create the universe in Genesis. “Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” (Joel 2:28) This describes what happened to the fearful disciples of Jesus in that upper room on the first Christian Pentecost. The Holy Spirit was poured on them, just as He is poured on you and me in the waters of Holy Baptism.

The 120 disciples of Jesus also didn’t know what they were in for as they gathered in the upper room either. This was true even though Jesus had told them what was going to happen. Just before He was arrested, He had said, “...it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” (John 16:7) And He also told them why this was so. “When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he’ll expose the error of the godless world’s view of sin, righteousness, and judgment: He’ll show them that their refusal to believe in me is their basic sin; that righteousness comes from above, where I am with the Father, out of their sight and control; that judgment takes place as the ruler of this godless world [the devil] is brought to trial and convicted.” (John 16:8-11, The Message]

Jesus had told the disciples He would send the Holy Spirit so that they could share the Gospel, the good news, with all the world. The Holy Spirit would give Christ’s Church the power to tell and to share the message that “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” (John 3:36) By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church would be given the ability to tell the world that, “In Jesus Christ, all your sins are forgiven and you are free to trust in that truth!”

Because of this Holy Spirit, Jesus says elsewhere, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12)

Think of that, friends! Jesus says that with Him back in heaven at the right hand of God, after He has sent His Church the Holy Spirit, His Church–you and I–will do greater things than He had done in an earthly ministry in which He proclaimed good news to the poor, freedom for the captives, sight for the blind, (Luke 4:18), and everlasting life for all who are turned from sin and trust in Him. (John 3:16; Mark 1:15)

On the first Christian Pentecost, we see this happen. The Holy Spirit descended on those 120 disciples, giving them the power to speak plainly about the mighty works of God, including the mightiest of all, when God the Son took on human life, died on the cross to set sinners free from death and condemnation, and rose again to open eternity to all who trust in Him.

The Jerusalem crowd is stunned! They hear the sound of a violent wind from heaven, then hear these Galieans speaking to them in their own native languages about Jesus. It’s bewildering!

But Peter–of all people, Peter, impulsive, foot-in-the-mouth, brave-talking-but-not-always-so-brave-living Peter–explains everything. (If that doesn’t prove the power of the Holy Spirit, nothing does!) Peter recalls what Joel had said and realized that, despite his imperfection and sin, the Holy Spirit had come to him and the other disciples so that they could proclaim new life for all who turn to Jesus.

By the power of the Spirit, Peter knew what he needed to say next: “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Acts 2:21)

Later, speaking in the passive voice about something only God could do to people who hear God’s Word coming from a preacher’s mouth, Peter would tell the crowd, “Be repented and baptized,” that is, “By, the Word of promise from God, be turned to Christ and receive new life in His name.” (Acts 2:38)

On that first Christian Pentecost, God used the disciples of Jesus speaking His Gospel Word to do greater things than Jesus had ever done: 3000 people were baptized into the Kingdom of God!

So, what about today? Is the Holy Spirit still open for business today?

Well, Christianity is the fastest growing religion by conversions in the world today. In places like Ethiopia and South Sudan, in underground churches in China and North Korea, and other places where people haven’t grown self-satisfied or self-righteous or jaded, as we see among people in North America and Europe, the Church is growing at a Pentecost Sunday-rate.

But it’s not just in places like these that the Holy Spirit is at work today. This past Thursday night, I was honored and happy to accompany Jim Lopez and Warren Mansfield to one of the monthly dinners of Whole Truth Ministries. Whole Truth helps those recovering from addictions to get new starts in life. If you ever want confirmation that the Holy Spirit is active and bringing people to new life in Christ, go to one of these dinners. The hunger of those people for Jesus is at least as big as their hunger for the great food Jim prepares each month.

And even here, even today, we know it is the Holy Spirit Who proclaims Jesus in God’s Word and in the Sacraments, the Holy Spirit Who claimed us in Holy Baptism and gives us the ability to call on the name of the Lord Jesus, Who saves us, Who gives us new and everlasting life with God!

Pentecost is still happening! The Holy Spirit is still on the march in our world, in our lives, and in the Church, in this church! May He give us the power and the confidence that He gave the first disciples to march in time with Him and share the good news of Jesus with a world still in desperate need of Him. Amen

[The painting is Pentecost by Titian (1488-1576)

When the Holy Spirit Shows Up

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, this past Sunday.]

Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost was a festival of the Jewish calendar long before the Pentecost Day we Christians commemorate today. Pentecost was a harvest festival, marking one of the two harvests that happened in Israel every year. 

But Pentecost was more than just an agricultural celebration. It happened fifty days after Passover. 

Passover, you know, celebrates how God delivered His people from the angel of death and from their slavery in Egypt after they smeared the blood of an unblemished lamb on the doorframes of their dwellings. Fifty days later on Pentecost, God came down to His people at Mount Sinai to give them His law, the Ten Commandments.

Our Christian celebration of Pentecost comes fifty days after Easter, remembering the day when Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, rose from the dead. Ten days prior to the events described in our second lesson for today, Acts 2:1-21, the resurrected Jesus ascended to heaven. 

Even before that, as we see in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus promised that He would come to His Church again. Like God descended from heaven to give His Law to His ancient people, the Jews, Jesus would descend again to those who belong to Him. Jesus, God the Son, would send God the Holy Spirit. “[T]he Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you,” Jesus promised.” (John 14:26) Pentecost is the fulfillment of that promise.

Our lesson from Acts, too long for us to go through in detail together this morning, is divisible into three sections. 

The first section, verses 1 to 4 tells us that the Holy Spirit came to the first disciples. 

It happened when “they [the disciples] were all together in one place,” Acts 2:1 says. What were they doing at the time? Acts 1:14 gives us the answer: “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” 

There is nothing more important for the growth of our faith, the mission of the Church, or the usefulness of the Church to the world than helpless prayer. 

In fact, if our praying isn’t helpless, we aren’t praying. Without a clear understanding that we can do nothing without Jesus (John 15:5), we’re not praying, we’re just talking. You can be sure that as the 120 disciples of the early Church, a smaller number than gathers at Living Water each Sunday morning, prayed together on that Pentecost, they were feeling helpless. Jesus had risen from the dead, confirming that He was God the Son Who conquers sin and death for those who call out to Him as Lord. But He had also given them a huge job: “...[Y]ou will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8) The disciples were to go into the same world that had rejected and crucified Jesus and say that He had risen from the dead and that all who turn from sin and trust in Him have life with God that never ends. 

“Wait a minute,” the apostles might have thought on hearing Jesus' commission. “We have a bad track record for perseverance in the face of opposition. How are losers like us going to be Your witnesses?” 

But Jesus had told them that they would fulfill His mission for them after He sent His Holy Spirit. 

And so, helpless, not knowing anything about the Holy Spirit, they gathered together to pray. 

They trusted in Jesus’ promise, “...where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20) 

They prayed for God to come to them in some way, much as many of you have been praying in regard to Reach Forward in recent months. 

This is when the Spirit came to them. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” (Acts 2:4) The Holy Spirit has been empowering the Church’s witness for Christ ever since. 

We saw the Holy Spirit’s empowerment of the Church’s witness for Christ this past week, as dozens of you and other members of North American Lutheran Church congregations brought help, love, and prayer in Jesus’ name to those affected by the Dayton tornadoes.

The second section of our lesson from Acts shows the varied reactions people have when the Word about Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, comes to people. 

Acts 2 recounts three reactions. 

The first was a positive one. This reaction is exemplified first in the praying disciples themselves. Despite their previous fears, they were emboldened to go into the streets and share Jesus with others. Later in Acts 2, we’re told that some three-thousand people also reacted positively to the disciples’ message of new life through faith in Jesus and came to believe in Him. 

The second reaction was from people who were bewildered and amazed (Acts 2:6-7). Like people trying to figure out how a special effect was accomplished in a movie, this group, drawn from around the Mediterranean Basin, pays little attention to the message the Spirit spread through those first disciples, instead wondering how the disciples were speaking in their own languages. 

Their bewilderment is matched by some people at Aldi when our Living Water young people help them load their groceries in their car or give them a quarter for a shopping cart. “Why are you doing this?” they sometimes ask. “Because God loves you,” our kids say. In a dog-eat-dog world in which there’s always a catch, people are bewildered when the free gift of new life through Christ is made known and accessible to them. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit! 

A third group had a different reaction on the first Pentecost: They wrote the whole thing off as craziness. “They have had too much wine,” they said (Acts 2:13). 

Last week, a friend re-posted on Facebook something I wrote about people who commend a perverted understanding of Christian faith. A friend of hers commented that all Christian faith is perverted. When I tried to explain how Christ has forgiven me and worked at transforming my life over the past four decades, the commenter wrote to say that she was sorry that I had been brainwashed and that Jesus hadn’t died for my sins. My prayer is that God will use me to gradually open her to Christ. But even when our witness is empowered by the Holy Spirit, the good news of Jesus will, at least at first, be written off by some who find it too good to be true.

In the third section of our lesson from Acts, Peter, who denied knowing Jesus three times after Jesus was arrested, stands up and tells the throng in Jerusalem the gospel, the good news, that every human being needs. 

Quoting the Old Testament prophet Joel, Peter says: “...everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Acts 2:21) 

We don’t have to do anything. 

We don’t have to jump through religious hoops or have it together or know the secret handshake. 

When the Holy Spirit prompts us to call on the name of the Lord Jesus to be our God and Savior and only hope, we know that we are saved. 

And so are those who come to believe in Jesus as we share this good news with them! The Holy Spirit is the One Who makes all of this possible.

“But, Pastor Mark,” some will say, “how can I receive the Holy Spirit?” If you’ve been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit and believe in Jesus, you already have the Holy Spirit. He’s the one who enables you to believe, however imperfectly, and to confess, however haltingly, that Jesus is Lord. He’s the One Who empowers you when you feel defeated by life or sin to trust that no matter what, the crucified and risen Jesus can still be trusted to give you life, forgiveness, and eternity.

Others will say, “Pastor, I feel guilty. I’ve never had an experience of the Holy Spirit like the disciples did on the first Pentecost.” Someone has pointed out that no two miracles of Jesus were precisely the same. It’s a mark of God’s infinite creativity and of the individual relationships Jesus desires with each of us, that while faith in Christ and growth in that faith are always sparked by encountering Jesus in the Word and in the sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion), God can come to people in many ways. 

On the first Pentecost, God’s Spirit came to His people on the rush of a loud and mighty wind and came to still others in the proclamation of ordinary Galileeans, filled with the Spirit, speaking good news to the Jerusalem crowds. 

God came to the Old Testament prophet Elijah not in a wind, or an earthquake, or a fire, but in a whisper. 

The apostle Paul teaches us that if we can believe in Jesus as our Lord, the Holy Spirit has come to us. “I want you to know,” he says, “that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

If you call out to the God revealed in Jesus, you can trust that the Holy Spirit is living in you. 

You can trust too, that the Holy Spirit can use you to bring the good news of Jesus to others. As a Christian, you’re among God’s Pentecost people! Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]