Sermon: Pentecost - Rev. Kevin Johnson

The day of Pentecost marked one of the most dramatic moments in Christian history when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples with unmistakable power. The disciples had been waiting together in Jerusalem, following Jesus' instructions to tarry until they received heavenly power. Their waiting wasn't passive but filled with expectation, like a family in a hospital waiting room anticipating good news. When the Spirit arrived, it came with the sound of violent wind and flames of fire that rested on each person, representing God's uncontrollable yet constructive power.

The most remarkable aspect of this event was that the disciples began speaking in languages they had never learned. These weren't unintelligible utterances but real languages that the international crowd in Jerusalem could understand perfectly. Jerusalem was filled with pious Jews from every nation who spoke different languages, and they were amazed to hear these Galilean fishermen declaring God's mighty works in their native tongues. This miracle reveals something profound about God's heart - that divine love transcends all cultural and linguistic barriers.

The Holy Spirit's work extends far beyond that first Pentecost day. The Spirit serves as a divine artist, painting countless portraits of Jesus on human hearts using the unique gifts, cultures, and backgrounds of each person. Rather than erasing our particularities, God uses them to draw people into divine love in fresh and meaningful ways. The Spirit gives each person gifts not for personal glory but for the common good, enabling us to help others understand God's love in their particular context. Even during seasons of spiritual drought when we might not feel the Spirit's presence, we are invited to wait expectantly for God's movement, knowing that the Spirit continues to work in unpredictable but always loving ways.

Discover the incredible power of Pentecost and how the Holy Spirit transforms ordinary people into extraordinary witnesses for God. This powerful biblical story from Acts 2 reveals one of the most dramatic moments in Christian history when the Holy Spirit descended with wind and fire upon the disciples in Jerusalem. Learn about the miraculous gift of speaking in tongues, where disciples suddenly spoke languages they never learned, allowing people from every nation to hear God's message in their native language. Explore how God speaks people fluently, transcending cultural and linguistic barriers through divine love and grace. Understand the Holy Spirit's role in drawing people to God, giving spiritual gifts for the common good, and working as a divine artist who paints portraits of Jesus on human hearts. This message examines how the Spirit uses our unique personalities, backgrounds, and cultures to reveal Christ to others in fresh ways. Whether you're experiencing spiritual growth or going through a season of spiritual drought, discover how to wait expectantly for the Holy Spirit's movement in your life. Learn practical ways to recognize the Spirit's work, understand your spiritual gifts, and be open to God's unpredictable but loving transformation. Perfect for anyone seeking to understand the Holy Spirit's power, spiritual gifts, divine calling, Christian transformation, biblical miracles, Acts 2 Pentecost, speaking in tongues, spiritual awakening, God's presence, divine love, Christian faith, spiritual growth, biblical teaching, and how God moves in our lives today. This biblical exposition offers hope and encouragement for believers at any stage of their spiritual journey.

Transcript

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Our scripture today comes from the Acts of the Apostles, starting in chapter 2. I invite you to hear the word of the Lord. When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven, like the howling of a fierce wind, filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified, because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. They were surprised and amazed, saying, Look, aren't all the people who are speaking Galileans? Every one of them? How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? Parthians, Medes, and Eliamites, as well as residents in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages. They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, what does this mean? Others jeered at them, saying, They're full of new wine. Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his head, his voice, and declared, Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem know this. Listen carefully to my words. These people aren't drunk as you suppose. After all, it's only nine o'clock in the morning. That is funny. It's okay to laugh. Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel. In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions, your elders will dream dreams. Even upon my servants, men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days, says the Lord. I will cause wonders to occur in the heavens above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire in a cloud of smoke. The sun will be changed into darkness, and the moon will be changed into blood before the great and spectacular day of the Lord comes. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. This is the word of God for us, the people of God. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the thoughts and meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight. For you, O Lord, are our rock and our redeemer. Amen. So if you can hearken back with me to those times, and we would all be huddled behind couches and things in the living room, right? Waiting for the guest of honor to come. And we had to have a complete hush among us, even though that maybe wasn't completely necessary. And then at some point someone would get the giggles like seven minutes in, right? And they would start laughing a little bit, and then someone else would go, shh, and you'd have to all be quiet again until the guest of honor would finally walk in. When Pentecost arrived, the disciples were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound from heaven, like the howling of a fierce wind, filled the entire house where they were sitting. You see, the disciples have been instructed by Jesus when he ascended that they will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in just a few days. And so they were instructed at the end of the Gospel of Luke to stay in the city until you have been furnished with heavenly power. So that's what the disciples did. They are there together, waiting. He had to imagine that out of excitement for a couple days, they sang and they prayed together and waited. Then they took the time to replace Judas with a twelfth disciple and waited some more. Now, every parent has the goal of introducing their children to good music before Kids Bop takes over or something like it. And so, while Adelaide was about two years old and three, and I pick her up from preschool, I started to play for her Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Okay? And I really like Tom Petty, and I specifically started playing for her the song The Waiting. And so much so that when I would try to play other songs in Petty's catalog for Adelaide, she would say, No, Tom Petty! I want Tom Petty. And she thought that that was specifically was only the song The Waiting. And that with the lyrics of the waiting, right in the choruses, the waiting is the hardest part. Every day, get one more yard, you take it on faith, you take it to the heart, but the waiting is the hardest part. That's what the disciples were feeling. They no doubt got to wondering when this was going to happen. Maybe some of them started to wonder if anything was going to happen. I was struck by this old word for waiting, well, thinking about this passage this week called tarry. T-A-R-R-Y. The disciples were tarrying in the upper room. They could not force the Holy Spirit to come. They were like the family of a birthing mother in the waiting room. You should have seen Laura's dad when this was happening. He was going crazy in the waiting room. They hoped that something good was coming, and they were anxiously awaiting it. To tarry is to linger. It's like what we do after a great meal or a great gathering with our friends. We want to linger around. We stick around, not wanting that moment to end. The disciples have nothing to do but to tarry. And then it happens. Suddenly. The howling of a fierce wind. God's movement is like that of a wind we cannot see. It is powerful and it overtakes everyone, and it is undeniably strong. That wind came out from heaven. It does not originate on earth. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each of them. How do we explain what happened here? Tongues of fire alight each of the disciples, it says. Does that mean they all have like a little flame above their heads? Is it more like they're illuminated Moses' style so that God's glory is somehow visible in their very appearance? I'm not really sure. But we know that when fire shows up in the Bible, it's often a sign of God's presence. We've got the burning bush, right, where God speaks to Moses out of a bush that won't go out, and Moses knows that it's God's presence there speaking to him. We have the pillar of fire that went before the people of Israel in the desert. It was God's presence with them. It would go in the middle of them in the midst of the camp. We've got the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and Elijah prays down God's fire from heaven to alight his sacrifice, thus defeating the prophets of Baal. So we have this presence of God that shows up as an uncontrollable force, as powerful as a violent wind or fire. We know the destructive power of both of these things. We see the effects of wind that tear through communities in a tornado or a hurricane. We know the power of a wildfire that spreads and can't be contained. That's what the Holy Spirit is like. That's part of why the Holy Spirit is a big deal. Because the Spirit brings the uncontrollable nature of God into our lives and into our relationships. But the Spirit doesn't come in a destructive manner. What happens? They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their own languages. Maybe you've heard the term speaking in tongues before. Maybe you've seen it happen yourself. Doesn't necessarily always happen in Methodist churches. Us waving ribbons around is about as Pentecostal as we might get. But usually that is practiced in more charismatic traditions, and it's usually unintelligible speech. But that's not what happens in this passage today. Instead, this group of Galilean disciples who likely spoke Aramaic, which came from Hebrew in their everyday life, they start speaking in languages that they have never spoken before. And the languages that they speak make sense to the hearers. We hear that there were people in Jerusalem from all over the Mediterranean world at that time, and they spoke different languages from one another. And now they hear the good news of God in Jesus Christ in their own tongue. Learning a new language is a challenging endeavor, especially as an adult. It involves mispronunciations, wrong grammar structures, and it is just plain hard. That's why it's called a foreign language, for a reason. But the people who end up fluent in a language end up loving a culture. Because the only way they can sound like a native speaker is by taking on the love for the way that language has been developed and carried out within a particular culture. In his commentary on this passage, theologian Willie Jennings says it this way: speak a language, speak a people. God speaks people fluently. And God, with all the urgency that is with the Holy Spirit, wants the disciples of his only begotten Son to speak people fluently too. God speaks people fluently. The witness to the God of Israel has sounded like the Hebrew language up to this point in history. And God is doing a new thing. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God is drawing people to God's very self who are from other places. Right? The mission Jesus told the disciples as he ascended was to Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Y'all, we are the ends of the earth. They couldn't have even imagined us as the ends of the earth at that time. They were just talking about the area around the Mediterranean Sea, as far as they knew. And God is providing the way for the ends of the earth to be welcomed into God's community. The Holy Spirit is drawing them through these disciples who are speaking in their own languages. This is what the Spirit does. The Spirit draws us into relationship with God through Jesus. As Methodist people, we call this provenient grace. It means that there is no amount of striving that we can do to reach God. But there comes a point where the Holy Spirit keeps nudging us, keeps wooing us, keeps drawing us into relationship with God. This is what happens to the first disciples when they tarry. When we tarry, we can be caught up in the love of God. And the hearers of the disciples are amazed. They say, we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages. They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, what does this mean? They are going to hear the message of Jesus from Peter, probably for the first time. And the Holy Spirit doesn't just fall on the 12 disciples that day. No, it tells us that at the end of the day, over 3,000 people were received into the community. They were baptized and they received the Holy Spirit. What I love about how the Holy Spirit works is that the Holy Spirit is always for others. The Holy Spirit in church history has been called the person without a face. Because the Holy Spirit is always lifting up others. If you try to look around all of these biblical windows, we don't see many pictures of the Holy Spirit, right? Other than a dove at Jesus' baptism. But the Spirit always is glorifying the Son. And the Spirit opens you and me up to say yes to God. The Spirit enables us to speak in ways that allow others to hear and to understand God for the first time. Peter answers the people's question: what does this mean by placing the events in a prophetic context? They have now entered what the Bible calls the last of days. Peter is saying that since Jesus ascended and is pouring out his spirit, a new era has been ushered in. This era is only possible through the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Part of the big deal about the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit, as one who lifts others up, gives gifts. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit gave the gift of languages that needed to be heard by all of these hearers in order to understand the good news of Jesus. The passage we heard from 1 Corinthians 12 speaks of the various gifts that the Holy Spirit gives. What is incredible about these gifts of the Holy Spirit is that God uses our particularities and our personalities in order to draw people to God's very self. And when we are able to use the gifts that God has given to us, it brings us great joy personally. The Spirit is constantly giving and is helping people be drawn into relationship with God and sent to be love for God's world. I love how Paul talks about this when he is speaking about a variety of gifts given by the same Spirit. He says, a demonstration of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good. So the Spirit gives each of us gifts in order to help God's love make sense to people in their context and in their particular way of understanding. In his book, The Giving Gift, theologian Tom Smail says it this way. He says, think of the Spirit much more personally and creatively as an artist whose subject is the Son, S-O-N, Son of God, and who is concerned to paint countless portraits of that subject on countless human canvases using the paints and brushes provided by countless human cultures and historical situations. I love that. The Holy Spirit is an artist who is always painting the Son of God, but this artist is doing it in new and different ways in order to draw all people into the loving embrace of God. That's why the Holy Spirit is a big deal. Friends, we would not know God were it not for the Spirit. The Bible would not speak a fresh word to us were it not for the Spirit enlivening it. Worship would always be boring and dead if the Spirit were not drawing us into deeper relationship with God. Oh, you might not always feel the Spirit moving. You might be in a drought where it feels like the wind and the fire of God has not been in your life for a long time or maybe forever. The invitation for us all today is to tarry, to wait expectantly for the Holy Spirit to show up and to send us out to be love for God's world. Willie Jennings writes, This is love that cannot be tamed, controlled, or planned. And once unleashed, it will drive the disciples forward into the world and drive a question into their lives. Where is the Holy Spirit taking us? And into whose lives? Friends, the Holy Spirit is moving. Will you allow yourself to be moved? Will you open yourself to be lit with a tongue of fire, to be sent by the powerful wind of God? It will be unpredictable. But allowing the Spirit to take you will always draw you into the loving embrace of God. In the name of our God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.