Pentecost, The Day of Pentecost (2023)

John 14:23-31 (It is also Memorial day)

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ it is with great joy today that we celebrate the day of Pentecost, that day upon which the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church and the disciples went forth to share with the all those in Jerusalem the wonderful message of Salvation as the Promised Helper Arrives

The Promised Helper

Jesus had promised to send the Holy Spirit.

After his ascension, this is the same Holy Spirit that had spoken by the prophets and shared with them the prophecies that pointed to the coming Messiah, and he would now be at work in them.

The Helper, paraclete, also can be translated as encourager or comforter.

This is one of the challenges when the word is just translated as helper, for it leaves the type of help a little vague, but we to know that Christ sends us a helper who is an encourager and comforter is of great benefit.

The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

If you are looking at our text today, you will see that it mentions the Father sending the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, but in just a few chapters, Jesus promises that He will send the Holy Spirit as well. That is why our Creed says, He proceeds from the Father, and the Son.

Teaching Spiritual Truths

Without the Holy Spirit, the Bible is a closed book.

It is hard for believers to hear this, but you will see the truth of it after a given time. If you share with someone that is a passage of comfort and their response is that they want something else, something more, they do not yet understand the Word of God. The Scriptures remain closed to them.

Godly faith is not because of intelligence, but because of the Spirit.

We tend to associate mastery of any type of text with intelligence, but I’ve read books by highly intelligent people, but their lack of the spirit is evident whenever they quote the Scriptures. There was a book I read some years ago, the author was a gifted psychologist, but every time he quoted the bible it caused me pain. He relied on his intelligence, and did not have the Spirit.

This is why even a child can understand the faith and be saved.

For intelligence is not a measure of a person’s ability to understand the Gospel, at times it can even be a barrier, for it is not by our own reason or strength that we believe, it is because

The Holy Spirit creates faith in our hearts.

That childlike faith that trusts Christ’s promises and imparts to us the truth that surpasses all understanding that clings to Jesus Christ alone for our salvation and firmly and faithfully believes that Jesus Christ died for me, a sinner.

The Day of Pentecost

On this day 3000 were baptized and added to the church.

What an amazing thing it was, but it was not by the power or the ability of Peter, John, James or any of the 120 disciples, but it was the working of the Holy Spirit who worked through them and called people to faith. He did so in a marvelous way.

The Holy Spirit imparted the gift of tongues to share the gospel.

At the tower of Babel, God had divided mankind by languages for they had refused to listen to his command and were heading down the same path that had brought about the flood, and so God confused their language. But on this day the Father and the Son want everyone to know, and so the Holy Spirit brings a gift, the gift of tongues.

According to the text, that means different languages.

The text says they were speaking in other/different tongues and just a few verses later you find that everyone was hearing in their native dialect. Which means if you or I were there on that day they wouldn’t just be speaking in English, but like a Wisconsinite.

For the Holy Spirit works through the Word.

For the Word of God is God-spirited that’s how the Holy Spirit works not just upon our minds, but our hearts, to create inside of us saving faith. So that with our lips we might confess that JEsus Christ is Lord. The Holy Spirit who was sent by the Father and the Son is the one that changes our hearts and brings us out of death and despair and to life in Christ.

Worldly Wisdom

There are those who try to make church a business.

They believe that they can control the work of the Holy Spirit and have a vision for what the Church should be, and their vision doesn’t often align with the words of Holy Scripture.

The world measures success by growth.

They measure the success of the church by 3 parameters, Building, Budget, and Behinds. That is to say the size of the church building and how magnificent it is, and how grand it is. They think the bigger the building the better the church,

the second is applies to budgets, now we are to make our offerings and support the work of the ministry because without offerings, can’t have pastors, lights, or a place to gather, but if our church becomes about the budget then we are a fund raising organization and not the church.

The third behinds, is about how many people you get in on a Sunday morning, that we measure the success of the church by how many are in attendance on a Sunday morning, and if there are many the church is great, and if there are few it must be failing.

When that becomes your goal, the word no longer matters.

What if you have a grand cathedral that lifts the eyes to the heavens when you approach, but there are no services there? Or what if you have a church with all the latest technological marvels, but no one knows the word? What if to fulfill the budget, every sermon becomes about your offering, and the pastor withholds the forgiveness of sins that Christ told him to share, then the Pastor fails as a steward of Christ’s treasures which are meant for you.

If our goal is to get as many people in our church as we can, and people aren’t liking what the Bible says, then we stay silent about those passages and instead change our church to fit what the world wants.

Look at what Christ says, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word...”

We cannot claim to love Christ, and abandon Jesus’ words, a good church, a faithful church is not measured by the size of the building, the size of its budget, or even the number of people in the pew, but by their love for Christ’s word.

Gathering Around the Word

After Pentecost, the newly baptized devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.

What they taught is what came from Christ and what the Holy Spirit brought to their remembrance from their time with Christ and that included what He had taught them from the Old Testament.

They gathered to hear the Word and learn about Jesus.

For what has the Son of God done for you? He lived for you, He died for you, He rose for you, not while you were good, or righteous but while you were yet still a sinner. Jesus did that because Jesus loves you, that’s the word we need to hear, and be reminded of for we fail daily if not hourly to do what is good or right, and we need that comfort and encouragement that comes through the Word that promises you are forgiven.

They also gathered together around the breaking of bread.

Now this is a reference to the Lord’s Supper, where Jesus comes to us in with and under the bread and the wine to forgive our sins and come to us individually and say, Take eat my body that was sacrificed for you, take drink my blood that was shed for you. By it our faith is strengthened against the powers of sin, death, and the devil.

Have you noticed how our Liturgy is divided?

The first part is the Service of the Word, and the Second part is the Service of the Sacrament, the same two things that brought the early Church together? What bridges the gap between those two services is the third part that we still practice today.

They would also pray together.

For when we pray, we do not pray by ourselves, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words. So after the Spirit has worked upon our hearts through the hearing of the Word and the Proclamation of the Gospel, we then pray as the Spirit intercedes for us the saints according to God's will.

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we are blessed that the promised Holy Spirit descended upon the Church on the day of Pentecost, and He has descended upon you as well. For He works through the Word to create faith in your hearts, and He has been promised to be given to everyone who is baptized that they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, that is why we make sure that everyone young or old is brought to the font that they might receive this precious gift for it does not depend upon their worthiness but upon the promise of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In His name. Amen.