Filled for Mission

Greeting

Hi everyone. My name is Amy. I am the director of discipleship and community. It’s been four weeks since I started this job. Thank you all for welcoming me and my family into the church. Lets pray and we’ll get started.

"Hello, my name is Amy Ng, I serve as the Director of Discipleship & Community, would you please stand as you are able for the public reading of scripture? Today's reading is from... Insert Scripture... Reader: This is the Word of the Lord, Congregation: Thanks be to God."

Scripture Reading

New International Version (2011) Chapter 1

Acts 1:8

New International Version (2011) Chapter 2

Acts 2:1-13

This is the word of the Lord

Intro

In the first sermon Brandon gave us an overview of pneumatology - the theology of the Holy Spirit and taught us how to pray the ancient prayer “come, HS, come”.

Last week he introduced the work of the HS in us, namely God gives us a new identity, and shared some personal ways he has seen the HS work in his own life.

Today we are continuing on the path of considering what it means to live a Spirit Filled Life.

We are going to unpack the event of Pentecost when God poured out the Holy Spirit onto the people in Jerusalem and what that means for the church now.

This matters because believing that the Holy Spirit is essential to our faith. You cannot call yourself a Christian if you don’t believe in the Holy Spirit. We put our faith in a triune God. It’s a package deal.

However, believing in the Holy Spirit is not the same as trusting in the Holy Spirit. There are many Christians who believe in the Holy Spirit but have no idea what it means to trust in the Holy Spirit.

Trusting in the HS is equally essential because without trusting in the Spirit your Christian life is going to dormant and barren. Without trusting in the Holy Spirit, christianity becomes a set of moral laws that’s crushing and cruel. Without trusting in the Holy Spirit, our spiritual life would be malformed by the desires of our flesh, the enemies accusations, the temptations of this world. If we are fighting this battle alone without the Holy Spirit, who has the confident to say they will win?

Jesus knew this and so right before he ascended into heaven - he sat with his discipleships and told them a couple of things. One, stop asking about when I am going to restore the kingdom of Israel and conquer Rome. The times or dates of when that’s happening is none of your business. This information is not for you to know. Totally applicable for us now in 2025. Next time you hear someone prophesy another rapture and wonder if it’s true or not, here’s your answer.

#2, stay in Jerusalem and wait for the gift that the Father promised.

The gift of the Holy Spirit. When the HS comes on you, it will come with power, and you will be emboldened to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Golden Thread: The Holy Spirit fills us with power to be on mission.

I want to invite you to consider these two questions with me:

what is the power of the Holy Spirit?

and what does it mean to be on mission?

Transition

What is the power of the Holy Spirit?

First, the power of the HS makes us new.

In Romans 8:11 “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”

What Paul is saying here is that the Spirit who overcame death and raised Jesus to life dwells in you - YOU will also be raised to life when you put your mortal bodies to death. The word mortal here is the word “man kind” which is more than the flesh and blood how we are biologically made, it includes our ego, conscience, desires, preferences, temperament. Paul is referring to this idea - to die with Christ so I can live with Christ.

I don’t know about you, but when I first took my faith seriously in college, the death I experienced was a social death.

It was surrendering over relationships that led me away from God, away from the Church, away from my values, away from my purpose. It was extremely hard because it was an entire friend group that I had to cut off. Some of them actually cared about me. It’s almost never a bad time when I hang out with them. I felt young, wild and free. Being with them made me feel like I belonged and was wanted. Like I was part of something more than being the plain old boring me.

I wasn’t going to church the first few years of college because I gave away all of my weekends to hang out with my none-believing friends. I wasn’t looking out for my younger sister like I should have. I wasn’t applying myself at school even though I’ve been given the privilege to attend school here as an international student.

I was fully aware that these relationships were shallow and deep down I knew I didn’t actually belong. But they’ve become my companion and I was scared of being alone. They’ve become an emotional crutch for me and a distraction from my actual problems. So even though I knew these people were not good for me, I was too afraid to leave.

My flesh said - you need them to be happy.

The enemy said - you’re nothing without them.

But God said - I have so much more for you.

He knew I was stuck in my ways and too weak to make a hard decision so he had to intervene.

One night I blacked out at a party and when I woke up the next morning I learned from my sister that I was in a fight with another girl who I thought was my friend. She accused me for stalking this guy I briefly dated and called me other names that I won’t repeat up here. The night ended with us almost getting physical with each other and while a police officer came because of noise complaint, I ran way from him and from my sister who happened to arrive at the same time to pick me up.

When I woke up the next morning, I was heart broken and furious by the betrayal of this girl who was my friend up until last night. I was so embarrassed that I made such a big scene in front of everyone. I was ashamed of myself because this is what I’m going to be remembered as. The crazy girl who stalked her ex and cant keep it together at parties. I was mortified. I was crashing out.

I had never been more disappointed in myself than in that moment.

I cried the entire morning. I didn’t know it then, but looking back I believe that was the Holy Spirit grieving in me.

He was grieving over the sins I’ve done and that has been done to me. God gave me a taste of the crushing weight of sin that Jesus had to put on his shoulders for me that morning. I saw myself as a sinner in need of grace. I was desperate.

That was how God knocked on the doors of my heart and pursued me to come home.

Now that the illusion of belonging and companionship have been shattered. God knew I had to make a decision on what’s next.

Do I go back to these people and try to patch things up one by one and maintain this visage?

or do I trust God when he says I have so much more for you. Repent and come home.

The idea of forgiveness was like fresh water in the dessert. My conscience was so heavy and crushing, I knew more than anything I needed forgiveness.

It was through this death that God brought me back to life. I experienced the power of the Holy Spirit when I responded to God in repentance.

God will often lead you to die in order that you may live. It will look different for each person but if you find yourself in a season of wilderness and valley, take heart because that is where you will encounter God.

The same spirit who resurrected Jesus from the dead lives in you.

Don’t be afraid of letting go because all of that can be holy ground for God to do something new.

Second, the power of the HS strengthens us. Ephesians 3:16 “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,”

The power of the HS makes us new. It also strengthens us to fight the good fight.

After this incident I was determined to follow Jesus and turn my life around.

I cried my eyes out in remorse, confessed my sins to God and apologized to my sister, prayed my heart out for God’s forgiveness and grace. This was a life changing day for me. like a rock bottom moment in life. But I woke up the next day and my life was more or less the same. I still had the same people hit me up to hang out. I still eagerly replied their text. I was still the same old me from the outside.

But something changed within me, God was on my heart.

I wanted to please God like you would want to please someone you love. I cared about what God thought of me. These were changes that weren’t visible on the outside but my heart changed because I encountered God’s love for me at rock bottom. When I deserved nothing but his wrath, he instead loved me perfectly and welcomed me home.

Out of his mercy and grace, he willingly offered to share his glory with me. What kind of God would do such a thing?

When someone turns away from sin and decides to follow Jesus, the spiritual battle in the beginning is always the most intense.

On one hand your eyes have finally been open to see just how dirty and unclean you are. When you are in the presence of a holy God, you can’t help but feel exposed and ashamed. Just like how Adam and Even, when their eyes were open in Eden, they hid from God out of shame.

On the other hand, you are constantly battling the voices in your head that’s your desire that the enemy uses as a foothold to make you believe that you’re beyond saving. That God can’t possibly change you. That maybe God is good - but there’s something better out there. Listen to your heart, listen to your feelings, go with the flow and make it easy on yourself. You will never be enough anyways. Why bother trying?

This is why change in the beginning often feels like you’re taking one step forward, three steps back.

You have to learn to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to give you strength to endure and persevere in this fight.

In the beginning of coming back to faith, I struggled a lot with shame. I experienced shame in the form of anxiety.

What if God doesn’t actually love me? what if he runs out of patience for me? yah he might forgive me this time… but what about the next?

Just because we become Christians and give our life to Christ, it doesn’t mean we stop sinning or that our problems go away.

God never promises to make our problems go away, he promises to help us and be with us in the problem.

And so what I had to do was learn how to fight against my anxiety with his word. In the full armor of God Paul taught in Galatians, our only defense is the sword which is the word of God.

When I was overwhelmed by regrets and shame. And the voice inside me would accuse me of being unworthy and I wasn’t repenting enough, I had to learn to pray 1 John 1:9 “when you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive”

When I felt lonely because I had no friends, I learned how to pray Joshua 1:9 “be strong and courageous, for I will be with you wherever you go.” and go on prayer walks to get that energy out while being solitude.

When I was in between jobs and felt like the world has forgotten about me, that I was insignificant and wouldn’t amount to anything I prayed “you prepared a table before me, in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

The power of the Holy Spirit will strengthen you to endure and persevere through the ebb and flow of your faith journey.

Finally, the power of the HS convicts us. 1 Thessalonians 1:5 “because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.”

Conviction is another word for belief. It’s putting your faith in who God is and what he has done for you.

It’s believing that you are a sinner in need of grace. That you are totally dead in sin. Not just half dead. But 100% dead and can do absolutely nothing to help yourself.

On of my NT profs said this: total depravity (which is the state we are in before Jesus saves us) is when you are dead in a coffin and there is an antidote or potion to bring you back to life sitting right next to you. But it doesn’t matter because you’re dead and you will stay dead unless someone feeds that antidote to you.

That person is the Holy Spirit. Encountering God will cause you to depend on God because you are fully convinced that without God you are nothing. Just like what Jesus teaches about the vine and branch in John 15 “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

One of my youth group girls from a previous church was dating a guy in college while she was sophomore in high school. She knew this was not a relationship that her parents wanted for her. If you have a teenager at home, you can probably guess where this is going. Typically what happens when you tell a teenager to do something, they 8/10 times will do the very opposite thing. This situation escalated very fast because she went behind her parents back and stayed in touch with him anyways. This girl loves and respects her parents but she was also head over heels for this guy. I had the privilege to be invited into the situation because I was her mentor. But she also hid this from me. Her parents were frustrated with her because they would catch her lying and it was really straining their relationship and putting stress on the entire family.

I prayed with the family and met with them regularly for a few months. It seemed like there was no any progress. But on one Sunday she heard the pastor preach on 1 John 1 “ that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”

This verse convicted her to stop lying to her parents and finally put the relationship to an end. She confessed to her parents that night and surrendered this relationsip over to God.

She told me afterwards her heart sank when she heard the sermon. It struck a core and made her see herself clearly that being in this relationship with that guy made her a liar. She was living a double life.

God is in the business of changing hearts, not just our behaviors. Changed behavior is a fruit or product of a changed heart. Thats why in Prov 4:23 it says above all else, guard your heart. For everything else you do flows from it.”

Life didn’t actually get easier for her after she confessed to her parents and cut this guy off. In fact, it got worse for a bit. Her parents forgave her but there was still consequences she had to face. They didn’t trust her for a while. She was really struggling mentally and emotionally because she suddenly lost her best friend and that left a huge hole in her heart. She needed constant reminder of forgiveness and grace. She needed extra care and attention from her community. She had to rely deeply on God to heal from this wound.

And this became her witness to her friends, Christians or none christians. When this blew over and she finally came out of it, her confidence in God increased so much because she encountered God.

I think this is an encouragement for all the parents who are struggling with their teens and tweens at home. Instead of trying to control their behavior and straining your relationship with them, get on your knees and pray for them to encounter God personally. I am only here because I have a mother who interceded for me before God by praying unceasingly. That they would know the voice of their shepherd.

A transformed life is a life of dependance on God. Which is why in the beatitude Jesus said “blessed are those who are poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

The power of the Holy Spirit makes us new, strengthens us, and convicts us.

What does it mean to be on Mission?

The power of the Holy Spirit makes us new, strengthens and convicts us.

He does this in the life of a believer so that we can be on mission for God.

We want want to grow and deepen our lives in Christ not to optimize our lives ; we do these things so that we can be messengers of a gospel that preaches reconciliation and peace with God. We are sent out into this world because we have been chosen to shoulder this work of reconciling humans with their Maker.

I want to shift gears now and go on an excursion as part of my conclusion.

In 1:8 Jesus said to his disciples the Holy Spirit will come and give you power. God will empower you through the coming of the HS and you are going to cross boundaries geographically, socially, culturally and ethnically to be my witness.

Jesus told his disciples this then was taken up into heaven right before their eyes.

The disciples were left without Jesus again, until ten days later. The Holy Spirit came and the church was born.

Pentecost is commonly known as the Feast of Weeks. It’s one of the three great pilgrim festivals of the Jews. It’s celebrated on the 50th day after the Passover. If you do the math here, Pentecost is taking place 10 days after Jesus’s ascension.

The opening of chapter 2 is quite theatrical. With visuals and sounds choreographed by God. We find Jesus’s disciples obediently waiting in a house in Jerusalem as he commanded them. They saw what seemed like tongues of fire that came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Sooo many question marks around this, am I right? I think most people assume this is the same kind of speaking in tongues that Paul dealt with at Corinth. But I want to spend some time to explain what Luke is doing here.

Luke is making a reference to Moses receiving the law on Mount Sinai just after they were delivered from Egypt.

Jewish rabbis kept commentaries on the Old Testament called the Midrash. This is common literature so Jesus and his disciples aka Luke would’ve read this at some point in their lives.

In Exodus Rabbah 5:9, a classical Jewish commentary on the OT compiled around the 5th–7th centuries CE says this:

The voice went out and was divided into seventy tongues, so that all the nations might hear. And all the people saw the voices (Exodus 20:18) — they saw that which is ordinarily heard. They saw the fiery word come out from the mouth of the Almighty as it was engraved upon the tablets. The word would turn to each and every Israelite, saying, ‘Do you accept upon yourself this commandment?’ and he would answer, ‘Yes.’” — Exodus Rabbah 5:9

I wanted to take an excursion to explain the significance of this day because to my Christian brothers and sisters God did not plan this event randomly.

God is a God of order and wisdom.

He speaks to us and reveals himself to us through types and shadows and patterns that we find all throughout Scripture. T

he Old Testament unlocks the principles that has been given to us in the NT and is absolutely critical in our understand of faith and who God is. This is how we witness with confident and power.

God doesn’t claim to be who he is without giving us reasons to believe in him.

For my friends who are still exploring the christian faith. You might ask, “is he worthy?”

I pray God will draw you in and take a closer look at what Jesus is about. There’s so much history that undergirds the Christian faith. A lot of suffering and pain, but God has never left his church defenseless. If you are wondering if God can be trusted, I hope knowing that God did not pick a random day in history to pour out the Holy Spirit will encourage you on your journey to stay curious and know that God handle all of your questions and doubts if you will only bring it to him and ask him to reveal himself to you.

The week of Feast under the the new covenant became the birthday of the church.

The devout, God fearing Jews making the pilgrimage from Parthia Media, Elam (modern day Iran), Mesopotamia is modern day Iraq, Pontus and Asia are modern day Turkey, Egypt and North Africa, Rome, and Greece will return home at the end of this feast.

They will go home a new person. Strengthened and convicted to be witnesses of the Messiah and partner with the Holy Spirit in the work of the Gospel.

The church was gathered then scattered. Just like what we do every week. We gather on Sunday, then we scatter to different corners of our neighborhood so we can love our neighbors here and now.

I want to wrap up by sharing this quote Jesse shared with me the other day by our current pope, pope Leo 14th.

Brothers and sisters, today a new missionary age opens up in the history of the church. If for a long time we have associated with mission the word “depart”. the going out to distant lands that did not know the Gospel or were experiencing poverty, today the frontiers of the missions are no longer geographical, because povery, suffering and the desire for a greater hope have made their way to us. Mission is not so much about “departing”, but instead “remaining” in order to proclaim Christ through hospitality and welcome, compassion and solidarity.”

The power of the Holy Spirit will lead us to hostile places. It will make us uncomfortable and misunderstood but God calls us to enter into that anyways. Right after the HS came, Peter preached and about 3000 people came to Christ that day.

Conclusion