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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from the book of Acts, the second reading. You may be seated.
Before Jesus’ ascension, he had told his disciples, his beloved apostles, to wait until you are clothed from on high with power, meaning from the Holy Spirit. Today is that 50th day, that Pentecost day upon which these apostles were blessed with this extraordinary and miraculous power that dwelt within them during their time here on this earth and died with them when they died. Just as was said in the Old Testament reading when the spirit of Moses was poured out upon the 70 elders. When they prophesied, the text talks about, and they did not continue doing so. It ended with them.
But America being America, in the 1920s it sprang up on the California coast of the city of Los Angeles. The Azusa Street Mission. And all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit took on a different timber in American Christianity. And as all things tend to start in California that are unusual, so this too. This was the beginning of the Charismatic or Pentecostal movement within American Christendom. The Pentecostal or Charismatic movement claims to have special powers by the Holy Spirit that are extraordinary or different than what the Christian church has been confessing for 2,000 years.
In fact, what that female preacher in the Azusa Street Mission did was nothing more than re-raise a dead topic that was condemned by the church in the 4th and 5th century and has always been condemned as not from God. But as soon as you draw a line there, you raise questions, don’t you? And the church has drawn a line there, and there have always been questions. When these men and women who were given this gift of being able to speak in an other known language, and that’s the key. It was not some prayer language or spirit language. It was a known language. You have all had to have learned Spanish or German or French or Latin, and you know all of the vocabulary you had to memorize and the work it took and how you had to hear it and recite it back and so forth. That’s how normal people like you and I learn a foreign language.
These disciples, which before this day, they numbered maybe 120, the text said, these disciples were given the gift to speak in other known languages, and they are listed in the laundry list in that text: Parthian, Medes, Elamites, residents of Cappadocia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, and so forth. All of them being known dialects and known languages. Right? This is the gift that God gave to His church to kick off the Christian church’s beginning.
And all of these people who were in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost went back to their homes in these various places, and with them they took that message that they heard proclaimed from these men and women. And that is how this church got started.
Now Peter, when he said what he said, and stopped all of the hullabaloo, and gave an interpretation of all these events, he gave two interpretations. One, that these events were nothing more than the fulfillment of the prophecy by Joel that had already been out there in the Hebrew Scriptures. Two, and we’re already known. Because you and I know, nothing in the Scriptures, do the disciples or the church have a concept of what this day was until the interpretation is given by the same Holy Spirit.
The second one is that we live in the last days. The days of when the earth and the sky will give forth things that will let us know we are not a long way off from Judgment Day. Those two interpretations were given clearly by Peter. But the real bulk of the information about the Holy Spirit is really in Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John, the 14th, 15th, and 16th chapter. He taught the apostles in the upper room before he went out to the garden to pray.
In the upper room did he teach the apostles about the Spirit coming, that he, that is the Son, Jesus, would give them another helper who would be called the Spirit of truth, who would reveal truth, incarnate, meaning Jesus, who said himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
Now the miracle or the mystery that Jesus spoke about here is the mystery that he speaks about to you about the Holy Spirit. He says to these apostles in the upper room, and he says to you, “You know the Holy Spirit. He dwells in you.” And that’s where the mystery arises. Because you and I don’t have a physiological response to which we can point and say, “Ah, that’s the Holy Spirit.”
And yet you know you have to have the Holy Spirit, or you would not be able to believe in Jesus anymore. But there is no visceral response or intellectual response that dignifies and lets us know that’s the Spirit. And yet, you know He is in you and you believe in Him. There will always be examples of people who can remember a day or weeks prior where they did not believe in Jesus and an event happened in their life by the Word of God being worked on them through the Holy Spirit and they believed in Jesus. That will always be as we read later in the book of Acts.
But most of you never remember a time when you didn’t believe in Jesus. Yes. And you can’t explain to any other human being who is a non-believer how you know you have the Holy Spirit and why He dwells in you. And yet you know it is true. This work that He does in you revealing the truth that is Jesus.
Jesus, a little bit later in those chapters of John, says, “He will teach you all things, not some things, all things, and bring to remembrance all that I have said to you.” You know those moments when maybe the Scripture is being read in the service or the preacher’s sermon, or maybe you’re reading and having a devotion at home or portals of prayer or reading a hymn or singing it, and all of a sudden some connections of Scripture and spiritual truths come to pass within your brain? That’s the Holy Spirit. He is the one who brings these connections to you.
So why don’t you have that light go off all the time? Ha, ha, ha. Well, he’s dealing with kind of a faulty start in your head to begin with. Your and I head is not always the brightest light bulb in the bunch to get these connections that he’s doing. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God that though we cannot explain it, we know He is our Lord.
That’s one of His works within you, to bear witness to Christ, what He has done in you, for you, and with you. You received it at your baptism, and it has been dwelling in you, and you know He dwells in you ever since. Now, the other work that the Holy Spirit is working in you, which Jesus mentioned in the Gospel of John, is that He will give you the ability to bear witness about Him.
In the Gospel reading this morning that you heard from the center of the church where the Gospel came out to you, Jesus talked about this river of life flowing out of you. And you didn’t have to think it into happening. You didn’t have to will it into happening. You didn’t have to even cultivate it to happen. The Spirit does it without you realizing. That is what God the Holy Spirit is doing in you.
So consider those 120 believers before the 3,000 came in that day. The Holy Spirit didn’t go, “Oh, well, this guy’s a little shy and backwards. I’m not going to give him that gift of being able to speak in another known language because, you know, he’s shy and backwards.” No, the Spirit used him. This woman struggles with anger. “I’m not going to use her because that could be counterproductive in proclaiming the truth.” The Spirit still gave her the same gift. He struggles with anxiety or depression. “I’m not going to give him that gift because that would be counterproductive.” He gave the gift to every single one of them and they were not cookie cutter people. They were as quirky and as unusual as the people that make up this congregation today.
Some backwards, some forwards, some very extroverted, some very introverted, some very intellectual, some not so intellectual, some very confident, some very fearful. The Spirit chooses you and out of you, as Jesus said, flows the rivers of water, living water. And you’re not doing it. He’s doing it. The work of God in you.
So where does Satan and your own flesh always want you to look? Where? Here, for validation. And God, through His Holy Spirit, is telling you, “Look not here, look to what I have revealed to you in the Scriptures about you and about me.” That’s where your confidence is at. That’s why God gave us the Spirit, that we would have confidence and consolation in this world of so much turmoil.
And He uses people of all ages, from little children and infants to the senior and elderly and all of us in between. He uses every age. You know it. You’ve seen it. And it’s been told to you. That’s the gift of His Spirit working mightily within you. That’s your identity as a baptized child of God.
You remember memorizing in catechism class the third article of the Apostles’ Creed, which is one of the gifts that Luther gave to the church. Right? When Luther makes it very clear about the work of the Spirit is to call you to faith, to gather you into a body of Christ, to enlighten you with His gifts of forgiveness and mercy, to sanctify your life through all stages and make you holy. And this is the kicker, to keep you in the one true faith.
God be praised that He keeps me in the one true faith and that it’s not up to my failing mind or my failing body to keep me in the faith, but it’s His Holy Spirit that does it. God be praised.
So if this is the work of the Spirit in your life, and it is, then you can be confident that He’s going to use you. He will use you to bear witness about Him. What could be better than a broken man’s life, sharing that with another broken man, the forgiveness that makes him whole? Amen. What can be better than a struggling woman bearing witness to the same thing to this struggling woman that makes her have peace?
What more power can a young child who’s living with the aftermath of divorce in his or her life tell another young child who is also living through it, “Here’s where my hope is at”? That’s what God has done in His Holy Spirit: to use you.
And all that you have about you, just as He was very indiscriminate in giving that Spirit out to those 120, He has been very discriminating in only giving it to those who have been baptized into His name. And you are them. You know Him. He dwells in you, Jesus said.
You are the people of God whom God uses. With your broken and busted lives that are imperfect examples of a Christian. Amen. He uses you. He doesn’t use righteous people who have nothing to hide. He uses struggling people who are tempted to hide those things in their life, but sit in the corner like the publican. “Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner.” He uses those kind of people. That’s the Spirit’s tools in you: unpolished people to unpolished people.
And just as he just mentioned in that gospel, the rivers of living water or living life or the Spirit flows out of you, he keeps that promise. But he also keeps this promise that the people whom you witness to, he will complete his work in their lives. It’s not yours to do; it’s the Spirit’s to do. Yours is only to bear witness as one broken person to another, as one sinner to another, as one redeemed by the blood of Christ to another who needs redeeming by the blood of Christ.
That’s His promise on this day of Pentecost. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
