preached by Dr. Neil Smith at Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Kingstowne, Virginia, on , May 20, 2018

THE AND YOU

Acts 1:1-8

Today is the Day of Pentecost, which is considered the birthday of the Christian church, because it was on Pentecost that God fulfilled His promise to send the Holy Spirit upon the followers of in .

Pentecost, or “the Feast of Weeks” as it is also known, was one of three harvest festivals celebrated every year by the Jewish people. It was always held on the 50th day – hence, the name Pentecost – (seven weeks and one day) after the Jewish . It was an annual festival of thanksgiving that marked the end of the grain harvest and acknowledged God as the One from whom all blessings flow and to whom all praise belongs. By the time of the , Pentecost had taken on a second purpose: To celebrate God’s giving of the law of .

As you can tell from reading what took place on the Day of Pentecost in , it was a “ festival,” with Jews from all over the Roman world converging on Jerusalem to celebrate the feast.

The Christian celebration of Pentecost, of course, is not about either the harvest or the giving of the law to Moses. It is about the giving of the Holy Spirit to the followers of Jesus in fulfillment of God’s promise, and the implications of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers and the life of the church. In determining the date of Pentecost for the church, we use the , not the Passover, as the starting point, which means that Pentecost is exactly seven weeks after . If you count Easter as day one, Pentecost is 50 days after Jesus from the dead.

To reiterate the importance of Pentecost for us as , it was on the Day of Pentecost – 50 days after Easter and ten days after the into heaven (:9; cf 1:3) – that God sent the Holy Spirit in a dramatic demonstration of power on the community of believers in Jerusalem, as described in Acts 2:1-41. It was the birthday or beginning of the church as a missional or missionary community empowered and set on fire by God to take the message of the to their neighbors in Jerusalem but also in ever-expanding circles until the whole world knows of Jesus and His saving love. That is still our mission as the followers of Jesus today. And it is the same Holy Spirit who gives us the power and the gifts we need to be Jesus’ faithful witnesses in the world today.

Do you believe that? I hope you do. With all my heart I hope you believe it with all your heart. Because it is true. And because our fulfillment of the mission – the that Jesus has given us – depends on the ongoing presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and our willingness to allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through us, just as He did in and through the 1st-century followers of Jesus, as well as faithful Christians in every century.

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This may all seem academic or ancient history to you. But this biblical background and perspective on Pentecost and its continuing significance for us in the life and witness of the church today is important for us to understand if we want to serve God’s purposes in our generation, which can only be done in humble and continual reliance upon the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. The truth is that we are impotent and we will be ineffective in our mission to the degree that we neglect the Holy Spirit and His work in and through us.

THEOPHILUS

There are several things I want to point out to you in these opening verses of the Book of Acts. The first is to recognize that Luke is its author, and that Luke sees Acts as a sequel to his “former book” (1:1), which is the Gospel of Luke. While Luke does not identify himself by name in the opening credits of the Book of Acts, he does mention , to whom the Gospel of Luke was also addressed (Luke 1:3). We don’t know anything about Theophilus beyond what Luke says. We know the name Theophilus comes from the Greek words theos (which means God) and philos (which means love or friendship). When you put them together, the name Theophilus means “one who loves God” or “one who is loved by God.” Theophilus may be the name of an actual person. Or it could be an alias for an actual person. Luke addressed him as “most excellent Theophilus” in Luke 1:3, which was a title of honor in that time and may mean that Theophilus (whether that was his actual name or not) was a high- ranking official in the Roman government.

We don’t know for sure, but what we do know is that both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, along with the rest of the , are addressed to all of us who also bear the name Theophilus, because we are and will always be loved by God. Your name is Theophilus. My name is Theophilus. Every person in our church family, from the youngest to the oldest, is Theophilus. And so is every person in our community. So is every person in our mission field as a church. So is every person in your personal mission field. Our mission is to communicate and demonstrate the saving love of Jesus to everyone we can, starting right where we are, as Jesus says in verse 8, where He speaks of our Jerusalem, and to the ends of the earth, until the whole world knows, and is invited to receive His grace and love in salvation from our sins and the gift of life with Him forever.

You are Theophilus. You are God’s beloved. You are the reason Jesus came. You are the reason Jesus went to the cross. Never forget who you are. And never forget that people all around us are Theophilus, too.

JESUS’ MINISTRY CONTINUED

The second thing to notice is that the Book of Acts is the continuation of the ministry of Jesus. Luke says in verses 1 and 2 that his “former book” – the Gospel of Luke – was “about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven” – that is, until the ascension of Jesus, which Luke describes in Acts 1:9. After His death and resurrection, Jesus appeared to His disciples on a number of occasions over a period of 40 days, before He went up into heaven. The Gospel of Luke, like Matthew, Mark, and John, is about the ministry of Jesus –what He did and taught – during the 33 years of His life on earth as God in the flesh. 3

Luke says the subject of his gospel was what “Jesus began to do and to teach” (emphasis mine).

The subject of the Book of Acts is what Jesus continued to do and teach after His ascension into heaven, as expressed in the ministry and witness of His apostles and of the church as a whole, through the Holy Spirit whom God promised to send not just to be with us as His followers but to take up residence in us. As one theologian has put it: “The work of the Holy Spirit is the extension of the ministry begun and now continued by Jesus Himself, and the deeds of the church are the fruit and expression of that ministry” (Frederick Dale Bruner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit, 156).

The ministry of the church today is a continuation of the ministry of Jesus Himself, to be carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit and under His direction. This is more than a theological affirmation. It is more than a philosophical concept. It is more than a theoretical declaration. It is a foundational truth with real-life implications. It has implications for your life and mine. It has implications, too, for our life and ministry as a church.

Lots of voices down through the centuries have warned of the danger of crowding out the Holy Spirit with our pet programs or thinking that our preferred methods are better than the ways and means of the Holy Spirit. A. W. Tozer, the author of The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy, once said: “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.” (Quoted by Alan Redpath in Christian Life magazine; accessed at www.preachingtoday.com.)

I don’t mean this as a criticism or indictment of our church. Tozer died in 1963. So I know he wasn’t referring to our church when he said this. But I hope his assessment does not accurately reflect the state of our church and its ministry. I hope we are more in tune with and responsive to the Holy Spirit than this. But it is worth considering, isn’t it? It is worth asking, isn’t it?

Are we depending on the Holy Spirit and His work in and through us to fulfill our mission, to see lives changed, to impact our community with the gospel, and to make disciples who are equipped to serve Christ in the church and the world? Are we open to the leading of the Holy Spirit in our church’s life and mission? In our own lives? Or do we expect God to operate in the boxes or programs or ways of doing things in which we may have confined Him, intentionally or unintentionally? These, I think, are questions worthy of your – and our – consideration.

Living as a Christian or doing the ministry of the church in our own power – without the promised power of the Holy Spirit – is an exercise in frustration and futility. It is not the way it is supposed to be.

When Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in 1992, an older woman named Norena suffered extensive damage to her home. She got an insurance settlement, and repair work began. But 4 when the insurance money ran out, so did the contractor, leaving an unfinished home with no electricity. Norena lived without power for the next 15 years. For 15 years, no heat when the winter chill settled over South Florida. No air conditioning when the temperature climbed into the 90s and the humidity was just as high. Not a single hot shower.

Without money to finish the repairs, Norena got by with just a small lamp and a single burner. Her neighbors apparently didn’t notice her lack of power. After all those years, someone tipped off the mayor of her town, who sprang into action. It took only a few hours of work by an electrical contractor to return power to the house.

Norena got by all those years. But she missed out on the power that could have enriched her life in a powerful (!) way. How often, I wonder, do we just get by spiritually or limp along in our lives as followers of the Lord Jesus without availing ourselves of the power source God Himself has given us in the person of the Holy Spirit? How often do we hamstring the work of the Holy Spirit in us either by active disobedience, by feelings of self-sufficiency (as if we don’t need the help of the Holy Spirit), or just by being too distracted by what Jesus referred to as “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things” (Mark 4:19)? Or maybe by our ignorance of the role of the Holy Spirit? How often do we put the Holy Spirit in a box in our church’s life by being unwilling to consider new ways of doing ministry?

The ministry of the church today is to be a continuation of the ministry of Jesus, carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit.

THE PROMISE OF POWER WITH A PURPOSE

This brings me to the third thing I want you to see in these verses. The Holy Spirit, Jesus says in verse 4, is “the gift my Father promised” – a promise Luke records at the end of his Gospel, in Luke 24:49, and about whose coming Jesus speaks to His disciples at length in John 14-16. It is a promise to be fulfilled within a few days of Jesus’ ascension (Acts 1:5). As we see in verse 8, it is the promise of being filled with power from the Holy Spirit – with the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the promise of Holy Spirit power to be given for a specific purpose. That purpose, Jesus says in verse 8, is for witness. The power of the Holy Spirit is to be given – was given, has been given, and is still to be given – to Jesus’ followers, including us today, so that we will be His witnesses and missionaries in the world.

This promise was given not just to the 11 disciples but to all the believers, men and women alike, numbering 120 or so (1:15), who came together as followers of Jesus. It is still meant for each of us personally and for the church, for all of us who are followers of Jesus today. Do you see that?

PROMISE FULFILLED ON PENTECOST

The promise of the Holy Spirit was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost. Luke describes what happened that day in Acts 2. I urge you to read it, to meditate on it, to think about it, to pray about it, to talk with one another about it. 5

The Holy Spirit came upon the believers in Jerusalem in power that day. It was a dramatic event. Not the sort of thing that happens every day. But it sure got people’s attention and attracted a crowd, which Peter subsequently took providential advantage of and preached the first Christian sermon (2:14-41). The coming of the Spirit was accompanied by three things: There was the sound of a rushing, gale force wind; the appearance of fire that settled on each of the believers; and the believers being given the ability to tell of the wonders of God in the languages of the people who had come to Jerusalem for the festival (2:1-12).

Some observers thought the believers must have been drunk (2:13), even though, as Peter pointed out, it was only nine o’clock in the morning (2:15). They were not filled with cheap wine. They were filled with the Holy Spirit, which was God’s intention not only for these first followers of Jesus, but for all of Jesus’ followers in all times and places.

The wind and fire and gift of languages are not God’s usual ways of operating. Not always, but most of the time God works more quietly. However the Holy Spirit manifests Himself, the thing to understand is that, since His coming at Pentecost almost 2,000 years ago, the Holy Spirit is the birthright of every Christian. The gift of the Holy Spirit is given to every true follower of Jesus. Without exception.

When you put your trust in Jesus Christ and received Him as Savior and Lord of your life, you also received the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came to take up residence in your life. Receiving the Holy Spirit is not a separate, subsequent, second experience of grace, as some Christians believe. Being filled with the Holy Spirit (:18) is not a one-time event. It is meant to be an ongoing experience, to be repeated whenever our souls begin to run dry. But you receive the Holy Spirit – you are baptized with the Holy Spirit – when you come to faith in the Lord Jesus.

Not only is the Holy Spirit with you as a follower of Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives in you. But says you can quench the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19, ESV). You can put out the Spirit’s fire (NIV). You can neglect the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. You can let the power of the Spirit go unused. You can go through your whole life without letting the Holy Spirit unleash His power for witness, for service, for ministry to you.

THE HAND IN THE GLOVE

Corrie Ten Boom, the wonderful Dutch Christian who told the story in her book The Hiding Place of how her family helped nearly 800 Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust in World War II by hiding them in a closet in their home, used the analogy of a glove to describe the work of the Holy Spirit and our part in it. She would hold up a glove and say that the glove cannot do anything by itself, but when there is a hand in it, it can do a lot of things. She would point out that it is not the glove, but the hand in the glove that acts. Then she would say: “We are gloves. It is the Holy Spirit in us who is the hand, who does the job. We have to make room” in the glove “for the hand so that every finger is filled” (Corrie Ten Boom, Each New Day).

Every analogy has its limits when it comes to the work of the Holy Spirit or, especially, if you’re trying to explain the nature of the . But this, I think, is a very helpful analogy. 6

Spiritually speaking, we are like a lifeless glove that can do nothing and accomplish nothing unless it is animated and directed by the hand of the Holy Spirit.

This applies both to individual Christians and to churches. God’s desire for each of us, for our church, and for the Church as a whole, is for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit the way a hand fills a glove. God’s desire for us is to be the instruments through which the power of the Holy Spirit is unleashed in our world: • to take the gospel to the end of the street and to the ends of the earth; • to be Jesus’ witnesses; • to embody the love and compassion and mercy and generosity of Jesus; • to care for those who are hurting or needy; • to stand up against injustice and violence and evil and hate in the name of Jesus; and • to spread the fame and love of Jesus from shore to shore and to every nation, race and language.

I believe God’s vision for us is bigger than we can imagine. I know it is bigger than anything we can ever bring about through our self-propelled efforts.

There is more to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, more to do with the Holy Spirit and you that I want to explore with you next Sunday. I know next weekend is a weekend, but I sure hope you will be here if possible. If you can’t be here, you can still join us on FaceBook or watch the sermon on our YouTube channel. Can you believe how tech savvy we’ve become?

DOES THE SPIRIT HAVE YOU?

Let me leave you today with this: In his book Keeping in Step with the Spirit, J. I. Packer says the operative question for a sincere follower of Jesus is not: “Do you have the Spirit?” The answer to this question is unequivocally: Yes, you do. You received the Holy Spirit when you came to faith in Jesus. The real question, says Packer, is: “Does the Spirit have you?” Does the Holy Spirit have all of you, or only some parts of your life? Are you holding back some part of your life from the Holy Spirit? Are you trying to keep the Holy Spirit at arm’s length? Are you afraid of surrendering to His control in your life?

It is true: When you surrender to the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, when you allow God the Holy Spirit to have sovereign and free reign, your life will never be the same. When the people of a church let the Holy Spirit have His way – totally – the life of that church will never be the same.

My plea to you is this: Let’s take the risk. Let’s live dangerously. Let’s ask God for His Pentecost power to be poured out on us. Today. Lord, let it be so. To the glory of Your name. Amen.