Party (Homecoming week)

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a great privilege to share the Word of God with you today and celebrate Homecoming together.

I think sometimes, at least from an outside perspective, the church as a whole is seen as a Fun-Free zone. Now we could go into the historical reasons as to why this perception exists and there are undoubtedly moral differences between the church and the world that add to that perception. But sometimes, if we’re honestly looking in the mirror, which I hope is always the case at our church, the church as a whole on a cultural level has perpetuated that perception by being a bunch of fuddy-duddies opposed to ever smiling.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we should be irreverent. God is Holy and has called those who know Him to be Holy as He is Holy. That is set apart. But Holiness is not set apart from Happiness. There ought to be great joy in gathering together to praise God. We ought not be too stuffy to share a smile and a laugh together. In the book of Ecclesiastes we are told that there is a season for everything, for instance in verse 4:

Ecclesiastes 3:4 ESV

a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

Now, us Baptists have a particularly hard time with that last one! Some might say its because they think dancing leads to sin, I think its because we struggle with rhythm!

But what I want to get at in this introduction this morning is that God has licensed and even commanded us to be a celebratory people! It is truly a joy to be here today and to celebrate the history of what God has done through the years at Durbin Memorial Baptist Church. I hope that this day is truly a celebration and there should be joy amongst us! May we share smiles and stories and snickers as we gather together today!

If I’ve had the opportunity to speak with you one on one over the last few months, you may have heard me talk about something I call, “The Theology of the Feast.” The basic principle is that in our culture, and in my life in particular I saw that I had made an idol out of eating. Every meal was a decadent endeavor. As God kept this idea of the Feast in the forefront of my mind, I was convicted that I was overeating to find a cheap comfort that ought to have been found in God. But baked into the Theology of the Feast, is also the reality that food is good and a natural centerpiece for the gathering of people. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with others have been at the dinner table. God designed us to enjoy His creation, both through the consumption of food and the community of His people. In His great design, He has converged the two! So while what I call the “Theology of the Feast” recognizes that not every meal should be a self-centered feast, it also recognizes that there are times where we can come together, enjoy community and leave the calorie tracker at home. That is what we are doing this morning following the service when we gather downstairs. It is what will be doing on November 5th when we have a children’s celebration and chili cook-off.

And these kinds of celebrations are nothing new. In the Old Testament, God gave 7 feasts to the Israelite people. Each of these had theological grounding and point to the work of Jesus Christ, so while they were reverential times of learning and reading of the Law, they were also times of gathering and Feasting! They were a party! They were times of joy and gathering! We learn in Colossians 2 that Christians are not necessarily beholden to the Old Testament prescription of specific feasts at specific times, but as we think about the purpose of the feasts we should see that the principle remains:

It is good to gather with glee for the glory of God!

If you would, turn in your Bibles to Acts 2. We have spent the last two weeks walking through the first chapter of Acts as a church, but if you weren’t here for that, don’t fret! This is a great place to jump in. If we were to boil down the last two weeks to a simple lesson it would be this: Christ is the center of all things. Christ is the center of Scripture. All of it points to Him. His life, death, and resurrection to pay the cost of sin for whosoever believes in Him. Christ is the center of the Church. Everything we do flows from the mission Christ has given us to do and is a response from what He has already done to us and is currently doing through us. As we begin to walk through the text this morning, we will continue to see how all things point to Christ, with this scene taking place during one of those feasts I just referenced. Begin with me in Acts 2:1:

Acts 2:1 ESV

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.

As we arrive on the scene this morning, the setting is Pentecost in Jerusalem.

Before we get into what occurs on this specific Pentecost, lets take a moment to understand what exactly Pentecost is. It is one of the seven feasts commanded by God to the Israelites in the Law. The word “Pentecost” means 50 in greek. This feast was also known as The Feast of Weeks. It took place 50 days or 7 weeks and 1 day after Passover. It was a celebration of the harvest. It coincided with the first batch of grain being ready to be harvested for the year in Israel.

I’m going to try to quickly and accurately summarize the theological implication of the feast of Pentecost and the feast it is directly connected to, Passover: The Passover Feast commemorated the time when the the blood of a lamb was sprinkled on the doorpost of Jewish homes which caused the Spirit of the Lord to pass over those homes during the last plague on Egypt. A spotless lamb was sacrificed to provide covering for the people inside the homes. So the Passover feast symbolizes God covering His people through Sacrifice. Pentecost, coinciding with the first grain harvest of the year, celebrates God’s provision and continued supply of sustenance for His people. It also celebrates God’s giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai, where He provides His people with order and separates them from being a nation like any other.

It is by no coincidence then, that the death of Jesus of on the Cross, where His blood was shed for the forgiveness of sin coincided with Passover, and now He has commanded His disciples to be together on Pentecost in which something incredible is going to happen in which God will be providing for His people with spiritual sustenance. We will see this in a few moments, but we are about to witness the coming of the Holy Spirit! The Helper through whom believers understand the grace of God in Truth. The Spirit who helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words when our prayers fall short on their own. The Spirit who seals believers for the day of redemption. The Spirit who leads us and gifts us for service.

The original Pentecost feast celebrated God’s provision for physical needs but it was a picture pointing to this moment we are reading about this morning in which God is providing for our spiritual nourishment with the Holy Spirit.

Just prior to the Ascension of Christ we looked at a couple weeks ago, Jesus instructed His disciples to sit tight in Jerusalem and wait not many days, because the Holy Spirit was coming to them.

Some have asked the question why did God make them wait to be empowered by the Holy Spirit at this time? Why didn’t Jesus just give them the Spirit’s power at His ascension or even before? Well I believe our answer is right here in the history of the feasts. God’s plan for His people extends all the way back to beginning of History. It traces from the Garden, through Abraham, to the formation of Israel. The books of the Law, the rules, the feasts even were not just frivolous events meant to occupy time. They were pointing us to the reality that God is in control and is working out His plan to bring redemption to fallen creation. For roughly 2000 years between Moses and Jesus, the Israelites had been celebrating Passover and Pentecost. For 2000 years those feasts were pointing to the great work God was accomplishing through Jesus Christ. The convergence of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit shows us that God was always and always will be in control, working out His great plan.

So in our text this morning we read again Acts 2:1 “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.” And those involved had to think that this was just another average celebration of pentecost. The time had come for the first grain harvest so let’s get together and praise God for His continued provision for our physical needs. The disciples even couldn’t have been sure something incredible was going to happen. All they knew was that Jesus told them sometime soon the Spirit’s power is coming at some point not far from now. So they gathered together for this feast and they must have been astounded by what happened next:

Acts 2:2–4 ESV

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 and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

The imagery in this scene is scene is almost unimaginable. All of a sudden something like the sound of a mighty rushing wind filled the entire house! We’re all acquainted with the great power of the wind and the sound it brings with it! Just last March our state saw record breaking winds, I know them well because they blew my fence over! There is a powerful whistling tone that comes with a mighty gush of wind. Something like that happens in the place where the disciples are gathered together. Then divided tongues as of fire appear to each of the disciples and rested on them. There have been many artists who have tried to encapsulate what exactly it looked like in the room as all of this was happening. You can make a note to search those pictures up on Google after this, but I don’t think that what is being described here is capable of being fully processed by any of us that weren’t in the room at that moment. The author of Acts, Luke, is using metaphor to describe a scene that goes beyond natural occurences. The use of “LIKE a mighty rushing wind” and “AS of fire” is metaphoric language that gives us a glimpse at something that goes beyond the limits of language. This doesn’t mean that this is an imagined story that didn’t really happen, but rather that what really happened goes beyond our imagination. The point of this record isn’t that we should all be able to perfectly picture everything that happened in this specific moment. The point of this record is for all of us to see, praise, and fear, by that I mean revere God for the mighty act He accomplished here!

I love to have discussions with brothers and sisters about what heaven is going to be like when we get there. We have a lot of theories and great discussions. I encourage you to even talk about that around the table in our fellowship meal following this very service. It’s a great topic. But the reality is that our limited human minds are incapable of fitting what heaven is really gonna be like in them. 1 Corinthians 2:9 “But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—”

The tangible experience described in Acts 2:2-4 is a glimpse of heaven of Earth. It is God acting in a glorious way that can only be partially described within the limits of human language. We aren’t to get caught up in the mechanics of HOW all of this went down, but instead glorify God for WHAT went down. The wind and the fire point us to the very presence of God! Ezekiel prophesied that God would bring life to dry bone by filling them with His Spirit and giving them breath from the four winds of the earth. The same God who gives life through His breath presented Himself to Moses in the burning bush and to the people of Israel in the pillar of fire. We are seeing a climactic intersection of the Old Testament prophecies, appearances, and allusions in this place with the disciples of Jesus.

And in that verse 4, something incredible happens to the disciples. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterances.

Now, we will come back to the utterances in a moment when we get to the next half of our text, but I think it is important to explain first what is NOT happening here. This is not the normative experience for regeneration. To say it another way, this is not the picture of what it looks like when someone receives Christ as Lord. Peter recognized Christ as Lord when Christ was still with him. In John 13:10 Jesus declares that the disciples around Him, less Judas Iscariot the betrayer, are already clean. They had been saved by grace of God through Faith in the Son, a faith that would be completed and fully realized in the resurrection. Jesus calls the disciples His own during the high priestly prayer of John 17. We aren’t given a clear picture of exactly WHEN the disciples were regenerated, born again believers, as may be true for many of us today who have grown in the church and fully believe without knowing a specific instanteous moment, but it is clear for the disciples that they were already saved before this moment in Acts 2. Further, in the other accounts of conversion given in Acts after this, there is no requirement given for rushing winds, flaming tongues, and foreign utterances to those who are being saved. In Acts 16, The Philippian jailer asks Paul and Silas, Sirs, what must I do to be saved. They respond with believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. The Jailer believes, he and his household, they are baptized, then they gather together as a household and have a feast to celebrate that the entire household believed in God!

So what is happening on the day of Pentecost is not the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, though it is true that regeneration comes from the Spirit, what is happening here is the EMPOWERMENT of the Holy Spirit for a particular ministry. There was a ministry that was happening under the power of the Holy Spirit, and that ministry is the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It always comes back to Christ. We will see the particulars of that message next week as we walk through Peter’s Proclamation, but now the Spirit is manifesting in a tangible, powerful way to get the attention of the city of Israel, to bear witness to what God has done through Christ. After the wind, the fiery tongues, and the utterances fueled by the Spirit we read this:

Acts 2:5–11 ESV

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.”

The Festival of pentecost brought Jews to Jerusalem from all over the world. This festival took place in the best time of the year in terms of traveling conditions. People would come from all over to be together in Jerusalem and celebrate God’s provision.

I’m a big fan of festivals. I’ve been to quite a few around the state. Casey County Apple Festival, Old Fashioned Days in Williamsburg, Court Days in Mt Sterling, Spoon bread festival, Chicken Festival, Daniel Boone festival, Nibroc! (That’s Corbin spelled backwards by the way!) I love going to festivals eating the food, hanging out with friends and family. People watching. You really see some things when you go to a festival!

Now I tried to do some research this week on what all would happen at the festival of Pentecost in Jerusalem on any given year. Unfortunately someone forgot to put the itinerary online. But I can tell you this. There were families of devout Jews that had made that pilgrimage plenty of times. This was a regular occurence and a big deal. They had made travel arrangements, secured lodging, were ready for the feast. I’m sure they did some people watching. But I can guarantee you the folks in Jerusalem that had traveled from all over the world to be a part of this festival, never had dreamed that would hear a sound like a mighty wind, then as they got closer the sound of over a hundred people speaking in languages and dialects of the places they had traveled here from. “The breadth of representation stands out in Luke’s list of nationalities, spanning most of the Roman and Parthian Empires: from Rome to the Caspian Sea in the north and from North Africa to Mesopotamia in the south. The path from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth begins to be paved at Pentecost. ”

The utterances of the disciples were the languages of nationalities from all over the face of the earth converging together with a unified message: telling the mighty works of God.

What an amazing and perplexing sight this had to be. That is in fact how it is described in the last two verses from our primary text today.

Acts 2:12–13 ESV

And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Everyone was amazed at the events unfolding before them. These disciples of Jesus speaking in languages formerly unknown to them, languages that connect to the heart language of folks gathered from all across the globe. All hearing a unified message of the mighty works of God.

In these final two verse we are shown that there was a mixed a response to the message being given that day. Some heard and wanted to know more. The scoffers in the crowd blamed the commotion on having too much wine.

That is how it often goes: The work of the Lord is met with skepticism and scoffing. But we must not let the negative opinions of the scoffers take away from the work of the Lord. I’ll give you a little spoiler alert to something we will see in the coming weeks as we continue through this text: about 3000 souls would be saved on this day. 3000! 3000 people would hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and understand the grace of God in truth! What an amazing day! To God be the glory!

What happened at this Pentecost was an amazing work of God that goes beyond our expectations and should cause all to honor Him. It was also a special occurence, not the normative expression of the Holy Spirit. Throughout the book of Acts we see God preparing for the future church by special and specific expressions of the Holy Spirit for particular purposes. These expressions each confirm the growth of the Kingdom, they are transitional occurences that show the expansion of Christendom to new peoples.

Before we conclude this morning, I would be remiss not to show the normative expression on the Holy Spirit. If what we have read this morning is a special expression for a specific purpose, then what does the movement of the Holy Spirit look like in a regular people at a regular church in a regular time?

We can find this answer in the book of Ephesians:

Ephesians 5:18–21 ESV

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

For the regular church in a regular place in a regular time, being filled with the Spirit looks like communicating with one another, singing with one another, giving thanks to God with one another, and submitting to or serving one another out of our shared reverence for the Lord.

These are the kinds of things we try to highlight every single time we gather and continue to do the rest of the time in between. As we reflect on the history of Durbin Memorial Baptist Church today, I am overwhelmed by the stories I have heard about people being there for one another in their time of need. In just the last few months I have been the recipient of saints addressing me with psalms and spiritual truths.

The local gathering of the church is a grace of God and spirit fueled for our comfort and God’s glory! Durbin Memorial Baptist Church has been and will continue to be a grace of God fueled by the Spirit for our comfort and God’s glory! It is a sincere Joy to be in the house of the Lord, gathered with His people, hearing His Word and Singing His praises. The Church is and should be a party celebrating the great glory of God.

We celebrate those things specifically on days like Homecoming. We have extra singing, and a meal following the service, those are good things, but they are just special vessels through which we celebrate the Spirit that is always within us, uniting us in a shared salvation. Even when we don’t have a “special” occasion, such as today, our gatherings and our lives are to be celebrations! Celebrating the grace of God made known to us through the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit!

We celebrate because the Spirit has made it known to us that we are broken creatures. Our sin separates us from a Holy God.

Three Circles

Explain.

And here’s the tie back to what we’ve looked at this morning. Today we are celebrating Homecoming. A special occasion that has brought you here with us. You may have been expecting to see old friends, eat good food, and hear great music. All of those are great things in this celebration. On the day of Pentecost we looked at this morning, that was another sort of homecoming, people gathering together to celebrate. But those who gathered didn’t expect to see the power of the Holy Spirit and hear about the mighty works of God through Jesus Christ, the Son. That may not have been your expectation this morning either. But that is what has happened! We celebrate not because an organization has lasted 83 years in the corner of Clay’s Ferry. We celebrate because we have been grafted into the organism of the Body of Christ! There is something much bigger than a yearly celebration happening today. Festivals and Feasts come and go, but being a part of the body of Christ lasts forever! I don’t have a mighty wind or flaming tongue or foreign language for you, but I have something greater. I have this message for you:

We join the body of Christ by realizing our ineptitude, our brokenness, our sin, repenting thereof and believing in Jesus Christ who lived and to restore a broken creature like ourselves to Holy God.

If you really want to be a part of the party today, if you really want to be filled with the Spirit and participate in the life of the church, repent from your sin and cling to Christ. Christ is worthy to be served. God’s power and worthiness has been displayed all throughout history, one culmination point being the Pentecost we read about today, my final question this morning is this:

What is your response? Are you unfazed? Do you think I sound like some drunk off his rocker? Or are you amazed? Intrigued? Convicted? Seeing your need of a Savior? If that is you today, come find me, come forward during this hymn of response. I can’t save you, but by the grace of God I can introduce you to the One who can.

Let’s pray.