[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Well, I haven’t yet gotten in the habit of giving titles to my sermons.
And when I read this text, I thought I’d be real smart and come up with something creative.
And so I came up with, Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit?
But if you just do some quick Googling, you’ll see that this has been thought of before.
And it turns out that this is a common theme or a common question to ask and
not just, I think, for us Lutherans who are sometimes maybe often rightly accused
of being hesitant to talk about the Holy Spirit. I think it actually happens among
Christian denominations and that’s because we try to make it be something
from our own mind and not from the Word of God. And I think also that Luke’s
account of the day of Pentecost, it may very well also play a part in our
hesitation and our apprehension about talking about the Holy Spirit. And I
guess I kind of want to take a little bit of a different approach today with
that epistle lesson because it’s easy to kind of get caught up in the drama of
what’s going on with this special outpouring of the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost, and even to draw ourselves into this debate about what Luke means by
speaking in tongues, and then of course what this might mean for us individually.
And I think we would be clear about this to say that by the power of the Spirit,
the Apostles, they were actually speaking in known languages, albeit it
were languages that were foreign to them, so they weren’t in fact babbling this
incomprehensible language that only the Spirit could translate for a select few,
and so I don’t think that should be lost on us. We also don’t know often what to
make of this manifestation of the Holy Spirit because we get a little too
focused on these outward signs that are going on and we don’t focus enough maybe
on the end of this text and what the Spirit actually accomplishes the day of
Pentecost. So we might ask ourselves, does the Holy Spirit still come in like this
rushing mighty wind? We’re in tongues of fire, we’re speaking in tongues proof
that I have the Holy Spirit in me? What if you doubt that you even have the Holy
Spirit at all? Is this feeling I’m getting the Holy Spirit? What does it
mean if I don’t feel anything? How can I be sure? Well thanks be to God that He
does indeed give us assurance of the Holy Spirit because He’s given that
promise to us in His Word and the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of the
Pentecost is the fulfillment of that promise. Now I think there are some
inherent dangers in our misunderstanding of what actually occurred on that day.
And in doing so, I think we find ourselves in one of at least two
different camps, and the first is that we look at that and we’ve decided that this
is what the Holy Spirit has to look like if he’s going to come to me, and then
that is how I’m going to receive some type of special gift. And in thinking
this way, we become prideful because we think that we are receiving the Spirit
in a certain way, that we now have these special spiritual gifts. So I think we
find ourselves on what we could generally call the charismatic tradition
which says that while the Holy Spirit does indeed dwell in all believers, you
have to work to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Maybe your Holy Spirit tank is
three-quarters full, and that’s good but not good enough. To become filled with
the Holy Spirit, you must receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, this baptism
of fire, this second baptism apart from the one true baptism of the water and
the Word. And this isn’t a physical fire like at Pentecost, but it’s a spiritual
fire that consumes you. So it’s no coincidence that the symbol for most
Pentecostal churches is a flame. And ideally for the Pentecostal or the
charismatic, this baptism of the Spirit manifests itself in some visible way,
most often in one of these spiritual gifts that I mentioned. So we’ve probably
all seen these videos of, you know, I would call them extreme Pentecostal
churches, where you see this miraculous healing, the speaking in tongues, and yes,
even handling venomous snakes. And most of these instances are accompanied by
loud music, loud raucous music, maybe shouting and screaming, and then we see
what looks to appear as to be uncontrollable body movements. And so in
that world, the ability to heal people, to speak in tongues, even to prophesy, and in
extreme cases handle serpents, is in this visible manifestation of the Holy
Spirit and the spiritual gifts given. And this becomes proof that you are filled
with the Holy Spirit. But what if that never happens? Well, maybe you fall into
despair because you don’t feel it. I don’t feel like I have the Spirit. We look at
what happens on Pentecost and like the Charismatics, we focus on that visible
sign. No doubt, becoming the Holy Spirit that day was a sensory experience. It
was physical, the sound of the wind, the flames, the babble of languages. But if we
don’t experience these spiritual gifts through the baptism of the Spirit as the
Charismatics claim, we must. And the conclusion we too often reach is
that God has then deemed us unworthy of receiving the Spirit. Worse yet, we doubt
the truth of God’s Word that he promises the Holy Spirit to us and that the Spirit
has and does continue to come to us. So we willfully reject the Spirit that has
indeed come and we fall into unbelief. And I think the second pitfall is the
sense of insecurity that kind of comes with those who shrug off the Holy Spirit
as something or someone ethereal, that it’s not something of substance, and I
really kind of think this is our danger is that the Spirit is then going to come
to us and make us do something we don’t want to do. We don’t want to ever lose
control of our body but we also have to understand that one of the fruits of the
Spirit is actually self-control. So we confess the Trinity but sometimes we
don’t know what to make of it and so we can take him or leave him, the Holy
Spirit that is, especially if the activity on the day of Pentecost is
what we’re going to get. We don’t need a Holy Spirit that is going to make a
public display of his work. And so when this expresses itself in what we would
call enthusiasm, then the person becomes vulnerable to ridicule, to being
seen by others as some sort of religious zealot or fanatic. And what if that
turns out to be me? So I wanted to explain by telling a story from my
childhood, I remember I was a member of a very conservative, traditional Southern
Baptist Church, and this lady had been visiting for several weeks, and I think
she made the mistake of sitting down in the middle section where all the older
people sat, which meant that she couldn’t go unnoticed. It was hard to
sit there and be inconspicuous, and one particular Sunday I happened to be
sitting there with my grandmother. I sat with my grandmother because she would
bribed me to sit with her by putting sticks of gum in her Bible, and a hymn
was being sung, and everyone noticed that this lady had raised her hands and her
arms, and I think maybe she was even starting to sway a little bit. And
needless to say, she drew a little bit of attention to herself. I wondered what
was wrong with her, and I’m sure everybody else did too, and I’m pretty
sure that she was the main topic of discussion at the lunch tables across
town after that service. And the discussion was more like not, what did
you think of the pastor’s sermon, but what did you think about the crazy lady?
And I wouldn’t be surprised if someone in the church gave her a good talking to.
We don’t do that here, and I imagine some because I was probably one of them
thinking that, uh-oh, she might have the Holy Spirit in her, and if that’s what
that looks like, I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want the Spirit to cause me
do something that makes me look like a fool. And let’s be clear that this, I
would call it animosity, works against piety as well. So then we have to know
that there is a difference between being enthusiastic and enthusiasm, and there
is a difference between piety and pietism. But that’s a topic for another
sermon. So then, the charismatic view is that the Holy Spirit brings chaos and
randomness, and sometimes we unfortunately take in this view when we
think the Spirit causes people to lose control. We take this sensation of the
coming of the Spirit at Pentecost to mean that the Spirit takes over certain
people and becomes responsible for their actions. It gives those exceptional
spiritual gifts that not everybody is privileged to receive. You may say,
well but didn’t didn’t the Apostles didn’t the Spirit cause them to lose
control of their tongues now we have to assume there was this great cacophony
going on at Pentecost because some of the Apostles were said to be drunk but
why did these men assume that the Apostles to be drunk well the text tells
us each one was hearing him speak in his own language so surely these men knew
what the Apostles were saying, my theory is they weren’t mocking the Apostles
themselves, they were mocking the message that the Spirit had brought through them.
And then this is why Peter stands and gives what some might regard as this
first Christian sermon. He wanted to establish order and control. And then he
goes directly at these supposed men of Judea, reminding them of what they’ve
been taught by recounting the words of the Prophet Joel, and in the last days it
shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and that
everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. So that’s why we
don’t place our attention solely on the physical manifestation of the Spirit and
we must not claim spiritual gifts that the Spirit does not give or despair when
doesn’t. Peter’s sermon shows us the true gift of the Holy Spirit, and that is the
gift of faith. And the Spirit gave the Apostles the ability to preach the
gospel of repentance, and the Holy Spirit worked that repentance in the hearts of
over 3,000 who were baptized that day. That doesn’t sound to me like chaos. It
sounds like comfort. Indeed, we should consider the name that Jesus gives for
Holy Spirit. In John 14, he promises to send to the disciples the paraclete, the
helper, the comforter who will wipe away their tears of grief, the advocate who
promises to go to the Father on their behalf, the Spirit who does the same for
us. So brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit brings order and peace, not chaos.
When we see how the Scriptures describe the work of the Spirit, we see it is
wonderful and calming and not frightening. The Spirit is spoken by the prophets to
reveal God’s will to all people. He gathers the nations and unites them in
one tongue and one faith. He causes the gospel to be translated into every
language and gives the power to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. He sanctifies
us and makes us holy. He gives us the gifts of our vocations so that we may
then in turn practice good works in love of our neighbor, not just for some but
for all. And so to claim our own unique gifts of the Spirit robs him of the
divine gift of faith which he gives to all who hear and believe the Word of
God. That Word of God which we confessed just moments ago in the words of the
Nicene Creed. We confess God the Father who created all things. We confess
God the Son, Jesus Christ, true God and true man who was crucified, died, buried,
resurrected, and ascended for our salvation. And we confess God the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit who has given us life, speaks to us through the word, comes to us
through one baptism for the remission of sins, calls and gathers the whole
Christian Church throughout all eternity, who promises to raise us and
all believers on the last day. And we spent the last few weeks in the season
of Easter hearing from the gospel of St. John, and so today we ought to remember
what Jesus said to the disciples about the Holy Spirit. That is, that the Spirit
would teach them in all things and bring to the remembrance all he gave to them
that the Spirit would bear witness about Jesus that the Spirit would guide them
into all truth because the Spirit speaks with the authority of the Father and
that the Spirit will bring the gospel to them and then by and through them he
will send it throughout all the world to the glory of God the Father just as he
does for us, and that’s the promise that was fulfilled on Pentecost. So to have
the Holy Spirit dwelling in us is simply to have God dwelling in us. Your tank is
always full. Spirit teaches us the Word and guides us in the truth. He comforts
our hearts and minds in a world that is turned upside down. The power of the
Spirit gives us the ability to live by the Word and yet live in this world that
turned upside down, and the Spirit then can produce the fruit in our lives to
the glory of God the Father, the fruits of which St. Paul wrote love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and yes, self-control. So how
blessed are we to have the Holy Spirit in our lives as our paraclete, our helper,
our comforter, our advocate, that the Spirit calls us by the gospel, he
enlightens us with his gift, he sanctifies and keeps us in the true
faith. So don’t be afraid of the Holy Spirit. Instead pray that the Father and
the Son would send us the Spirit to rule our hearts and minds and bring us to
faith in Christ for eternal salvation. In the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit. Amen. Now the peace of God which surpasses all understanding
guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
