Day of Pentecost - Tongues on Fire

Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

Acts 2:1–21 NIV

1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. 5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” 13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.” 14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 17 “ ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. 18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. 19 I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 20 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. 21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

6/8/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Mission Moment

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 2: Mission Moment

Feed My Sheep

Opening Prayer:

Living God,

you have created all that is.

Send forth your Spirit to renew and restore us,

that we may proclaim your good news

in ways and words

that all will understand and believe. Amen.

Pentecost: Tongues on Fire

Beginnings

We love to celebrate beginnings in our faith. We get excited about birthdays and, to a lesser extent, anniversaries. The two most significant celebrations of the year are Christmas and Easter. Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birth into our world, an essential beginning. Easter is the celebration of His coming back from the dead, as the first kind of permanent resurrection, and the model that we all hope to follow.

Today is Pentecost. Pentecost, historically the third most important Christian holiday, commemorates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and is often referred to as the Church's birthday. Some people expect that Easter is the birthday of the Church. And most churches, when they are founded, don't start on Pentecost Sunday. They usually start on Easter. For many, Pentecost feels like a lesser milestone in faith compared to Jesus' example, sacrifice, and resurrection, which we celebrate at Christmas and Easter. By the time Pentecost comes—the Holy Spirit dwelling in and transforming us—it can feel less significant than Christmas or Easter. Even Pentecostal groups often regard Christmas and Easter more highly than Pentecost. But Pentecost is a new beginning, where God empowers us through the Holy Spirit to share our faith with others. And it has to do with how the faith that God has planted in us and raised to bear fruit is then shared with others. God does this by empowering our communication, supernaturally, with His Holy Spirit.

Solomon’s Temple

The first Temple of God was built as a step up from the Tent of Meeting, also known as the Tabernacle, which Moses and the Israelites used before entering the Promised Land. We find the dedication of this first great Temple in 2 Chronicles 6:12-7:22. Here is a summary of how worship in the Temple began.

As Solomon stands before the altar of the Lord with all of Israel assembled, he asks God to continue keeping His promise for him and for all the people who follow after him, reminding God of his promise that David would never fail to have a successor sit on the throne of Israel if his descendants were careful to walk according to the law that he'd given him. Solomon questions whether God would truly dwell on earth with humans, acknowledging that the heavens cannot contain Him, much less the temple that has been built. Yet, he asks that God's eyes be toward that temple day and night, the place that God would put His name.

He prays that God will hear the prayers of His people and come to judge them when they sin against one another. He asks that when people sin and the heavens are shut, they may come to the temple to receive forgiveness and protection. When drought, famine, war, or plagues sweep across the land because of the sins of the people, they could come to the temple and receive forgiveness. Solomon also prays for foreigners who come from distant lands because of God's great name and asks that God would hear their prayers when they pray toward the temple.

When Solomon concludes this prayer, a great fire descends from heaven and consumes the burnt offering, just as the fire had appeared in the cloud that filled the Tabernacle during the time of Moses. After celebrating for days and offering sacrifices in the new temple, God speaks to them from heaven and says, "I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices." God then made a covenant with the people. He tells them that if they humble themselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from their wicked ways, He will hear from heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their land. He promises that his eyes and heart will always be on the temple. However, God also warned that if the people turned away from him and served other gods, he would uproot Israel from the land and reject the temple, making it a heap of rubble. The temple would become an object of ridicule among all the people.

This temple was to be a place that drew all people into God's presence. As Solomon prayed, he knew the temple could not hold all the people of God, let alone all the people in the world. It would be a beacon, a lighthouse that people from distant nations could look toward and direct their prayers, symbolically pointing them to the God who lived in heaven, and they knew that He would hear them.

Jesus the Temple

There are similarities in the purpose and the way God would meet with His people that flow throughout the entire Old Testament and into the New Testament. The Temple was the place where people went to or directed their prayers toward, communicating with God. It was also where they went to be in God's presence and learn about Him, and where God's Word, as recorded in the scriptures, was kept and protected.

In John 2:19-21, Jesus told the Jewish leaders, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." They replied, "It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you're going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body. When Jesus referred to his body as the temple, he was talking about what it meant to be God in the flesh—the incarnation, that holy mystery we celebrate at Christmas, and the sacrifice He made for us before Easter. Just about the time the disciples are starting to understand that Jesus himself is the temple, Jesus returns to heaven. But he tells them he's going to send his spirit to be with them, to draw them into God's presence always and everywhere, not just in one particular place or at specific times. So the disciples waited for the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus had instructed them to do.

And just as it had done in the temple with King Solomon and in the tabernacle with the pillar of fire from the sky and in that burning bush, fire appeared in that place. This time, it was not over a sacrifice of livestock they had prepared, but rather over themselves, as they offered themselves as living sacrifices to God. It was not one great big flame, but each of them had a piece of that flame above their heads. The mighty wind rushed in, and God's word emerged from their mouths. The previously fearful disciples boldly preached to the diverse crowds in the city. All of the people who came from all over the Roman Empire heard God speaking to them in a way they could understand, in their language.

The Jews focused on God hearing their prayers in times of sin, suffering, and danger. They wanted a sanctuary where they believed God would dwell, or if they could reach out to Him, He might hear them, forgive them, and come to rescue them. That very much one-way communication they were concerned about was never a concern because God hears His people wherever they are. God had turned the tables, and now He was making it possible for everyone to hear Him. Language was no longer a barrier. We know we're all different. We know it takes us multiple times to hear something before it sinks in and we're able to understand it, and then we're able to take action. But on Pentecost, God enabled all people to hear Him. If they responded to His call, they would know salvation and be invited into a loving relationship with God.

Pentecost

Too often in church, when we think of Pentecost, we focus on speaking in tongues, as if it were a gimmick or a secret language. But the power of Pentecost, just as the power of the temple, the tabernacle, the burning bush, and every other time God showed up, was always in the fire, not in some trick that we as humans do. Pentecost is about God communicating through us to others in a way they can understand. Sometimes, their experiences connect with our own like two halves of a whole. At other times, it may seem illogical, but God communicates supernaturally.

I once pastored a church where the congregation had experienced significant division. The church was located right across the street from a university, and we had college students walking past our church, going to and from class, almost every single day. However, in the more than 60 years that the church had been in existence, it had never had a ministry for young people. They just did ministry for themselves. The issue was that they liked their own people and avoided others. They didn't want to get to know anyone else. We spent years learning about Jesus and opening ourselves to His guidance.

One Sunday morning, a visiting professor from China, an atheist, was walking down the sidewalk. One of our ushers invited him in. When it was over, I went to greet him. He apologized for not standing up in the congregation to introduce himself and said he would come next week to do so. I told him not to worry, that we don't ask guests to introduce themselves in front of everybody. But he came the next week and handed me a small thumb drive with a PowerPoint presentation to help introduce himself to everybody. That Sunday, Zhang Bo introduced himself as a Chinese professor, with slides of Chairman Mao and communist symbols. He then offered to teach our children Chinese, but He was not American, not Christian, and most of the parents didn't trust him. I felt bad, so I offered to take some lessons myself, although I am a terrible language student. Over a few months, I didn't learn much Chinese, but I learned a lot about him, and he learned a little bit about Jesus.

Before he left, he asked to come on Wednesday night to see the church one more time and share something with them. He stood up and sang a song without any musical accompaniment. It sounded like a beautiful ballad from the Lord of the Rings movie, but it was all in Chinese, and I didn't understand a word of it. He told us that the song was about friendships that last forever. Then he said that before he came here, he didn't know Jesus. We'd welcomed him, made his heart feel strangely warm, and now he knew Jesus and was going back to China to share Jesus with others.

That night, he'd brought a friend, another visiting professor from China who had just arrived, and he told us that we were to take care of Jane the same way that we'd taken care of him. I was to continue my Chinese lessons with Jane as well. We had a similar experience with Jane, and then Jane brought another friend named Snow. Snow was a math professor and could barely speak English. One Sunday afternoon, as we walked to the school cafeteria to have lunch together, she looked at us and said that every time she was around us, she felt like she was being baptized.

We surrendered to God and let Him work. And God transformed the lives of people who were so different from us, lived on the other side of the world, and spoke a language that we could never comprehend. They struggled with my sermons, even printed versions. But it didn't matter. For a church that couldn't see beyond the doors of its sanctuary and the same people and same families who'd been attending there for 60 years, God used those same people and transformed the world and fueled the underground church on the other side of the world in a place where Christians are persecuted for their faith. And they had even more stories like that in the years that followed.

Language and experience are no barriers for God. Pentecost is the celebration of the beginning of the church. The church begins when we are ready and willing to offer ourselves to God, learning new things about Him and others as He transforms our communication and shares His love through our words and actions in ways that go far beyond what we could ever dream or imagine. When you're willing to wait on the Lord and respond to His Spirit, not just on Sunday morning, but every day, everywhere you go, you may not notice that fire of the Holy Spirit above your head, but I guarantee you, all of those around you will. As God works through your words and actions, others will call on the Lord and have their lives transformed.

Are you listening to God, or are you spending all your time trying to get Him to listen to you?

Will you wait for the Holy Spirit to come and fill you, transforming all you do and say?

Will you be a living sacrifice for Jesus and allow Him to make you into His Church today?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for hearing us when we pray. Thank you for being with us when we could never reach you.

Some of us today don't know what it means to call on you and be saved from the sin that has filled our lives. You promised that all who call upon your name, you will come and rescue, no matter where they are, who they are, or what they have done.

Some of us today are just barely saved, and we are trying to live worldly lives, hoping that when this life is over, you will take us somewhere better. We struggle to follow you and to give up the things that we want for the things that you want. The idea of being a living sacrifice is terrifying. We need your Holy Spirit, Lord, to draw us back to you. We need to hear your voice, feel your touch, and learn to trust you.

Some of us have been trying to serve you with all of our might and are exhausted and worn out. Lord, we need your strength. We need to trust in that strength instead of our own. We need you to take us beyond what we see as our limits and help us to see the way you do. We need to learn to wait on you.

And some of us are waiting on you. We've laid our lives down, and we're ready for anything you want to send us. Lord, take us. We are yours. We are your church, to do with as you please. Draw us all together, build us up, and nurture in us that faith that grows, blooms, matures, and bears fruit that goes further than we can see or imagine.

In Jesus' name, Amen.