Day of Pentecost

This Sunday is Pentecost Sunday on the church calendar.  It's the day we remember the events of Acts 2, the Holy Spirit filling the disciples and the effects that had on them.  How can get that back?  How can we retrieve the power the church had at the beginning?  We got a couple ideas!

This message is based on Acts 2:1-21.  To read it now,click here.
 
 
 
Author and preacher Fred Craddock tells a story about a lecture he was giving: A few years ago, when he was on the west coast speaking at a seminary, just before the first lecture, one of the students stood up and said, "Before you speak, I need to know if you are Pentecostal." The room grew silent. Craddock said he looked around for the Dean of the seminary, but he was nowhere to be found.
 
The student continued with his quiz right in front of everybody. Craddock was taken aback, and so he said, "Do you mean do I belong to the Pentecostal Church?" He said, "No, I mean are you Pentecostal?" Craddock said, "Are you asking me if I am charismatic?" the student said, "I am asking you if you are Pentecostal." Craddock said, "Do you want to know if I speak in tongues?" He said, "I want to know if you are Pentecostal." Craddock said, "I don't know what your question is." The student said, "Obviously, you are not Pentecostal." He left.
 
We usually use the word Pentecost as a noun, as in the Day of Pentecost.  What are we talking about when we do that?  It was the day we celebrate the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples, giving them incredible power to build the early church.  If you were to look up Pentecost in your dictionary you’ll see the primary definition, probably the only definition, is the Christian feast on the 7th Sunday after Easter.  It’s a noun.
 
The word Pentecostal is an adjective, which can describe anything related to the Pentecost.  But in reality, the only definition we really use refers to the religious bodies emphasizing those things taught in Pentecostalism.  But the list given of the teachings in Pentecostalism are these:  revivalistic worship, baptism conferring the gift of tongues, faith healing, and premillennial teaching. 
 
Well honestly, If I look at each one of those, I find that I am very close to adhering to the teachings of Pentecostalism.  I do believe that worship should revive us, and I pray regularly for a revival in our church and in our community.  I believe in faith healing, and have seen it personally, I have laid hands on people and prayed for their healing and they were healed.  Not often, but I’ve seen it. 
 
I’m even premillennial, I believe Christ will physically return to the earth, and set up His 1,000-year reign.  I don’t go much for the speaking in tongues, but I believe that originally that term meant speaking in other languages, and I heard of a woman who was called to go to China to be a missionary, and the entire congregation gathered around her and prayed for her, and when she woke up the next morning, she could speak fluent Chinese.
 
If you look our reading this morning, in verse 4, it says, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”  There is a footnote to the word tongues, which says languages.  And in verse 8-11 we see 12 different people groups, each with their own language, hearing the 12 disciples speak to them in their own native language.  So the gift of tongues in the early church referred to being able to speak a foreign language.  And if the story is true about the lady being able to speak Chinese, that might suggest that it’s not just a gift limited to the early church, but that God can give that gift where He sees fit.  I believe he can.  So with that disclaimer on tongues, as long as we agree that we’re talking about an actual language, then I guess I’m Pentecostal. 
 
Which brings me to a question.  I mentioned earlier that the church usually uses the term Pentecost as a noun.  We don’t really use the adjective, we leave that to the charismatics.  Is that right?  Or can we use it as an adjective?  And if you are like me, can you use it to describe yourself?  Are you Pentecostal?
 
While the dictionary suggests Pentecostal means things related to the Pentecostal church, I want to suggest that it should mean things related to the Pentecost.  I really think that what the definition is lacking is the reliance on the Holy Spirit.  Pentecost marks the coming of the Holy Spirit.  That should be the essence of anything “Pentecostal.”
 
I believe that if the church is going to alive and relevant in the world, it is going to be Pentecostal, it is going to be fully reliant on the Holy Spirit.  And those churches that are growing today have a Pentecostal mindset.  I’ll go so far as to say that the Pentecostal church didn’t start 100 years ago, it started right here in Acts 2.  And if we’re going to be serious about our faith, we’ve got to be a part of it.
 
But as I read Acts 2, and then look out over our congregation, I see a pretty big disparity.  The fire has been extinguished, the power of the disciples has dissipated, the Spirit seems pretty small by comparison.  Why?  How did we get here?  How do we get it back?  How do we recapture this life, how do keep this fire burning, how do get God’s spirit moving? What must exist in us, around us, and through us, if we are going to be Pentecostal?  I think we need to go back to the early church.  What did they do?  I’ve identified three simple things:
 
1. We Are To Be Of One Accord.  The early church was together.  In our reading this morning, it starts out before they were filled with the Holy Spirit, but they were together in the upper room.  In Acts 2:44-47, we see, “all the believers were together and had everything in common…  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.  They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.  And the Lord added daily those who were being saved.” 
 
We are a family, but we only see most of our family once a week, if that.  Now we have the two services, but I don’t think that’s the problem.  Less than a third of us are going to Sunday School classes, even fewer to the fellowship events.  We aren’t coming together to support one another nearly enough. 
 
John Ortberg once told the story of a friend who made his first trip south. On his first morning in the Georgia he went into a restaurant to order breakfast, and he discovered everything came with grits.  Never heard of grits, so he asked the waitress, "Could you tell me, exactly what is a grit?" Looking down on him with a mixture of compassion and condescension, she said, "Sugar, you can't get just one grit.  They always come together."
 
John Wesley taught there was no personal holiness without social holiness, and Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard says, "You can no more go to God alone than you can go to the North Pole alone."  We're just like grits...you can't get just one. They come together.  For us to flourish as God’s people, for us recapture the fire of Pentecost, we’ve got to spend time together.  It’s only been in the last 30-50 years that there has been an emphasis on our individual faith, at the expense of the corporate faith, which is the church body.
 
2. We Are To Join Together Constantly in Prayer.  We saw in Acts 2:42, prayer was one of those things they were devoted to.  In chapter 1:14, “they all joined together constantly in prayer.”  In his letter to the Colossians, Paul wrote, “Devote yourselves to prayer” (4:2).  In Paul’s 1st letter to Timothy, he wrote, “I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing” (2:8).  And one of my favorites, from James’ letter, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (5:16). 
 
We all know the power of prayer.  We all know that we should be doing it.  I don’t have to spend much time here talking about it.  But still, Tuesday evenings at 6:30 are the least attended events that we offer.  Which is part of why our prayer time was a little different this morning.  We need to come together in prayer, praying together.  We won’t do it that way all the time, but once in a while it will be good.
 
3. We Are To Repent.  We do a fairly good job looking for repentance in new believers, but not so much in making sure that we’re confessing our sins to one another, and repenting of those sins as we journey along.  In our reading, Peter stood up and began to speak to the crowds, and we only read a portion of his message, but he ended it with a call to repentance.  We see it in verse 38, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you.”  Jesus’ ministry was a call to repentance, in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (3:2).
 
Now both of these were aimed at people who were not yet saved, right?  But are we perfect as soon as we’re saved?  Don’t we still struggle with sin?  Isn’t there a need for repentance as long as there continues to a struggle with things to repent from?  In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he writes, “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance” (2:4).  In his 2nd letter to the church in Corinth, he writes, “Godly sorrow brings repentance” (7:10).  Both of these verses are written to churches, to people who have already accepted Jesus as their lord and repented of their worldly ways.  Yet, there continued to be ongoing sin which they needed to deal with.  All of us has some ongoing sin we need to deal with, so we should be quick to confess that sin and repent of that sin when we see it. 
 
In Randy Hyde’s book, Time to Deliver, he tells a story of a wealthy family from Massachusetts who took a month's vacation every summer to the coast of Maine, taking their maid with them. The maid had an annual ritual at the beach. Each year, she would settle herself on the beach, Then she would hesitate while taking deep breaths and working up her courage to enter the icy-cold water. Finally, she would daintily extend one foot and lower it slowly into the water until she barely had her big toe submerged. Then she repeated the act with the other foot. Then, having satisfied her urge for a swim, she would go back to her chair and umbrella and spend the remainder of the vacation curled around a book.
 
I'm afraid that may be how many of us approach our Christian commitment. Are we afraid to give in to the Holy Spirit, to truly experience the power of the Pentecost, fearful that we might lose control? That's what it is really all about, isn't it? Control. We want to be in control. Well, if Pentecost is to do nothing else, it should remind us that we are not in control, not even - or perhaps I should say especially - of ourselves.  We are God’s.  Our church is God’s.  And God move where He will.  And we need to let go, and let Him move.