The Hope of the Holy Spirit

Call to Worship

Psalm 63:1–4 ESV

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.

Sermon

Last week, we began our series on the book of Acts, and one of the key verses from the passage we looked at said this. Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.””

And this morning, we’re going to be looking at what happened when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, what power did they receive, and how did they become witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. This verse, will be a key theme over the next number of weeks as we go through the book of Acts, first with Peter leading the disciples in being witnesses in Jerusalem, and then in the second half, the apostle Paul starts to lead in taking the good news to the rest of the known world.

This is a long passage, but we’ll break it down, section by section.

Acts 2:1-3 “When the day of Pentecost arrived they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit”

I find this part really interesting, because it marks a brand new understanding of God and His presence in the bible. Previously, God had appeared as a pillar of fire to the Israelites when they were wandering in the wilderness with Moses, God appears and talks to Moses even before that as a burning bush, and so like other times before, God’s presence comes down as something that resembles fire and lands on the disciples. And what it does is really interesting.

Acts 2:4-11 “and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

One of the things that I find so interesting about this verse is it’s connection to one of the passages from the very beginning of the bible. If you recall the story of the tower of Babel, the people of the city of Babel wanted to make a name for themselves, and make themselves important like God, and rule over the earth, and one of the ways they were going to do it was to build a tower up to the top of the heavens. But in the process God messes up their communication, by giving each of them different languages, and spreading them across the earth.

Watch the parallels here. At the tower of Babel, they were bringing glory to themselves, and so God made them unable to understand each other and sent them across the world, now at the day of Pentecost, people have come from all over the known world, they speak wildly different languages, and yet God gives them the ability to understand the disciples speach in their own languages, because the disciples are giving glory to God and not to themselves.

At Pentecost, God is undoing the events of Babel, because there are people ready to truly serve Him and give Him glory, and at this event God begins to create His church, the most multi-cultural group in all of history.

It’s such a cool moment, but when you put yourself into the situation of the people that are out and about and hearing all of the people in the room, likely about 120 people, all talking in various different languages, it would have sounded like absolute chaos. And so what happens next I think is funny, but also fitting.

Acts 2:12-16 “And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:”

The people hear the sound of everyone speaking in a whole variety of languages, and they’re so confused they think that everyone is drunk. And Peter stands up, and he’s like, no we’re not drunk, it’s 9am, and then he preceeds to explain what’s going on by quoting the prophet Joel.

And he says this:

Acts 2:17-21 ““ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”

So what does he mean?

He’s using the quote from Joel to remind the people, who were all Jewish and familiar with the prophet Joel’s writings, that what is happening before them was foretold. This right before them is the fulfillment of that prophecy, the Spirit has been poured out on Jesus’s followers, and they are now waiting for the day of the Lord, and they are now in a period of time where everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And Peter explains that this prophecy is being fulfilled because of Jesus.

Acts 2:22-24 ““Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”

Peter shares the news about Jesus’s death and resurrection with the people. And then he continues on, explaining how Jesus fulfilled not just the prophecy in Joel, but also one that King David had made.

Acts 2:25-36 “For David says concerning him, “ ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” ’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.””

Peter declares that Jesus is Lord, and the people respond to it, it says:

Acts 2:37-41 “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”

I’m so in awe of this passage and this story, it’s such a beautiful depiction of what’s possible through the power of the Holy Spirit, and through the faithfulness of Jesus’s followers. It’s one of my favourite stories from the bible. And I think one of the reasons why, is because it changes everything.

When the Spirit first came on Jesus’s followers it changed their lives, and it marked the beginning of the church and the way that it has run for two millennia.

But I also love seeing how the Holy Spirit changes people.

Think back a couple weeks to Peter denying Jesus on Good Friday, he was absolutely petrified, and then on the beach when he and Jesus are talking, and we can imagine that he was just plagued with guilt and shame and remorse, but what we see in this story is a brand new Peter, one that is remarkably bold. And it’s because of the work of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit absolutely changed Peter, and the thing I love about that is that ithe same thing can happen for us.

When we begin following Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to us, and it has a whole variety of roles. Some of them we see here at Pentecost, and others of them we hear about throughout the New Testament.

Jesus told his disciples this:

John 16:8-14 “[I will send the helper to you] And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

The Holy Spirit acts as our helper, he convicts us of our sins, and leads us into righteousness. He leads us into truth, just like he did to Peter at Pentecost, he showed Peter the truth about how Christ fulfilled the prophecy from Joel and David, and how all of scripture really points to Jesus. The Holy Spirit is able to speak to us through God’s word, our bibles, and is able to show us the truth about God that is in them. And this truth transforms us in a variety of ways.

In the book of Galatians, the apostle Paul listed a variety of different ‘fruit’ that are apparent in the life of someone with the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

The Holy Spirit tranforms our character, and thinking about the Holy Spirit as fire helped me to understand it better this week. Thursday evening, we went up to visit Cassidy’s parents because her Dad is a mechanic and I needed a little bit of work done on our tires, and what ended up happening was there was this one bolt connected to the wheel bearing that just wouldn’t budge, and so Darren, Cass’s dad, got out his welding equipment, and we used white hot fire to change it a little bit, and make it fit better in the torque gun, and ultimately change it so that the shape fit better and came out smoother.

And the reason this makes me think about the Holy Spirit, is because the Holy Spirit is just like that fire, and we’re kind of like that bolt, the Holy Spirit, moves in us like that fire and refines us, and molds our character, and if that bolt had nerve endings I’m sure the fire would hurt quite a lot, but it also would be better off because of it. And it’s the same way with the Holy Spirit, the process of being molded by the Spirit can be painful for us, it can hurt emotionally for us to have to change our ways of thinking, living and being, and growth often requires sacrifice, but when the Spirit shapes and molds, we are better off for it. We gain new perspective, and we become more loving, and joyful, and we have peace; we become more kind and gentle, and we exhibit more self-control.

And along with these, the Holy Spirit also gives hope. And that’s the message I see in Pentecost, it gives us hope for ourselves, hope for the church, and hope for the world.

First, ourselves. Like we’ve just talked about the Holy Spirit transforms us, it produces the fruit of the Spirit in us, it makes us bold like Peter was, it shows us truth and gives us wisdom, overall, it turns us into much better godlier people. And like Jesus taught, the Holy Spirit also gives us hope regarding our sin, the Spirit works in us to help us get rid of the power and pleasure of sin in our lives, and helps to unite us with God. The Spirit also can give us the ability to do difficult things, sometimes miraculous things, like the disciples at Pentecost, but the Spirit can also give us the strength to love and have faith like Jesus. Even when loving people is difficult. I think about some of the political and cultural tensions that would have been happening in the first century, and I’m sure there were reasons that Peter and the others didn’t want to love all of the people around them and share the good news with them, but the Spirit enabled them to anyways.

I also think of the story of Corrie Ten Boom, a dutch lady who lived during the Holocaust, she was taken to a concentration camp along with her sister Betsie, because they had taken in and hidden Jews, and then over the course of their awful time at the concentration camp, they were beaten and mistreated, and her sister died, and yet years later, she met one of the men who had beaten and hurt them in the concentration camp, and through the power of the Spirit she was able to forgive him. Later in life she recounted the event and wrote this:

“It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face. He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. ‘How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.’ He said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!’ His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness. As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

Corrie talked about the current that seemed to pass into her heart, there isn’t necessarily a defined feeling that happens in times when the Spirit moves in us, but there are times when people can distinctly feel it. I have one friend, who gets goosebumps everytime he has a spiritual encounter with God, it’s simple, and yet what’s going on inside for many of us is sometimes indescripable.

The Holy Spirit moves in us in ways we never could on our own, and changes us from the inside.

The Spirit also changes the way that we interact with the others. As Corrie said, “He gives, along with the command, love itself” that is one of the many things that the Spirit is, it is this indescribable love and joy and peace that fills our hearts and lives, and allows us to deal with life better than we ever could on our own. For Corrie, that was a call to radical forgiveness that she couldn’t imagine having on our own strength.

I think also of another person, Horatio Spafford, he wrote one of the songs we just sang: It Is Well. He wrote that song after having news that 4 of his daughters were killed in a shipwreck, and his wife was the lone survivor as they travelled across the atlantic to meet him. And his heart was torn, but despite the sorrow and grief that he experienced, the Spirit allowed him to see that it was well with his soul. That he had peace and comfort from the creator of the entire universe, and that he could rest in the arms of God knowing that he would be provided for.

The Spirit does many things, and this deep sense of peace that made absolutely no sense, but that fell on both Horatio Spafford and Corrie Ten Boom all the same, is a very beautfiful thing, and a very transformative thing that it does in the lives of those who have it.

The Spirit also is present helping to grow the church, at Pentecost, the Spirit moved in Peter to make him bold and to share his message in a language that all understood, but it also moved in the hearts of those hearing the word, and over 3000 we’re converted. That same Spirit is moving now.

Just recently, Cass and I went with some friends to see a new movie called Jesus Revolution, and the movie is based on a true story about what was know as the Jesus Revolution, or the Hippie Jesus Movement, in the states in the late 60s and early 70s. It started with just a tiny church of about 25 people in Costa Mesa, California, and the pastor Chuck Smith, started to open up the church to people who were different than himself, and in only a few months, his church of 25 became a church of thousands, which now as swept across the US, and there are now 1800 different congregations. God specifically used the Holy Spirit during that time to reach hundreds and hundreds of young people who were lost.

And I believe that He can do the same thing again. The pastor, Chuck Smith, who was at the head of this revival, was once asked if we would see if happen again? And his response was, “I don’t know if we are desperate enough”

The people at Pentecost were desperate, the disciples were desperate because they didn’t know what to do with Jesus gone, the other people were desperate because of the state of tensions in the Roman empire, they knew they needed help, they were depserate for it, and so when they heard the message, it says (v.37) “they were cut to the heart”, and the Holy Spirit was poured out on them.

The hippies who were apart of the Jesus Revolution were desperate, they had looked to everything else, drugs, alcohol, music, sex, you name it, and nothing could fulfill them, so they were desperate. And in their desperation they found the good news, and the Holy Spirit was poured out on them.

I believe that we can see the same thing happen, as believers we already have the Spirit comforting us, changing our characters, moving us in the right direction, but I think we can ask for even more. Jesus said this:

Luke 11:9-13 “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, 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!””

The Father wants to give us the gift of the Holy Spirit, but are we desperate enough to ask Him for it? I know very often I’m not, I need to ask for it more, and I think we all do, we need to pray to become more desperate and to have that depseration filled with the Spirit.

I believe that our world is desperate, I look around and I see more and more people depressed by life, I see people who are living in fear, and who don’t know what to do with their lives, people are turning to all sorts of things to try and find fulfillment, and in the end all they’re left with is more and more emptiness, and I think we need to pray for the church globally, that God would move through the Holy Spirit, that He would call people to Him, and that we may be useful to Him in that. Pray, that we would become lights in the darkness of our world, and that we might find opportunities for the Holy Spirit to work in us and to minister to people who need help.

Let’s Pray

Benediction

Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”