A Series on the Holy Spirit - Part 1.

All right. So as Pastor Nedley said, welcome to church and welcome to Pentecost Sunday. It's going to be a good Sunday. Pentecost Sunday is the time of year where we talk about the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell upon all believers.

Whenever we get to this day and time of year, I know there are so many people who come from many different backgrounds. Maybe some of you grew up in church traditions where you never talked about things of the Holy Spirit or gifts of the Spirit or anything like that. So you don't really have a frame of reference. Or maybe you came from a church tradition where that's all you talked about, to the extreme, maybe a little bit too much, where you never really opened your Bible but all you did was talk about the Holy Spirit.

Maybe you had a really healthy balance or maybe you have no church tradition, so you have no idea what your expectations should be today. When I think about the Holy Spirit and my upbringing, there are two different types of people that come to mind for me.

One is my friend's mom in high school. Our whole friend group would get together and play sardines. Has anybody ever played sardines? It's way better than hide and seek. Hide and seek is like for children, right? Sardines is like we're ready to level up.

Well, our friend's mom was a pastor. She had a church and it was this really old creepy church building that she would let us come in after dark, late at night, to play sardines. Of course, as a high schooler, this was so epic. Someone would always hide a really creepy toy that would be making noise in the nursery. It was all sorts of wild.

But she would play with us, and we would hate it when she played with us because she would always win. Every single time she would win. We'd be like, how are you doing this? How do you win every single time? And she would just say the Holy Spirit tells her. She'd pray. I'd be like, is that the point of the Holy Spirit? To help us win sardines? That's kind of lame. But also I kind of want that because she wins sardines every time.

The other person that comes to mind when I think of people that have formed the idea of the Holy Spirit is this other pastor who passed away a few years ago here in Madison. He was one of the first people when I was a young pastor here in Madison that really took me under his wing. His name was Pastor Roger.

When I moved here, I was 21. I came here to start a college ministry. A few years later I decided to start the church and I was young and broke and had no idea what I was doing. He would call me randomly on the phone and we'd have conversations like this. He'd say, Abbie, how are you doing? And of course, my prideful self would say, I'm doing so good. God is so good. He'd ask me, how's the ministry? I'd be like, things are so good. It's amazing.

But then he'd go on and ask me really specific questions that would get really annoying. Like he'd say, you know, I was just praying about you and I felt like I just needed to ask you, are you eating? I'm like, yeah, of course I'm eating. But I'd literally just finished my last thing of cereal and didn't know how I was going to eat again.

He asked me this. He's like, no, I want to ask. Have you eaten more than just cereal today? I'm like, who told you? Are there cameras in my house? He's like, I was just praying for you and I felt like the Lord told me I was supposed to send you a check for $200 to buy groceries for the next couple weeks.

Those are the type of people where you see them so connected to the Holy Spirit that you want to be like that. Not just the person who says it was the Holy Spirit who helped them beat all these teenagers at sardines as a grown adult, but the type of person who decides they're going to be so in tune with the Spirit and praying not just for themselves but for other people. They're going to allow the Spirit to meet them so they can be used in powerful ways.

We're going to talk about the Holy Spirit today. Our big takeaway, if you get nothing else out of this message, is this: through the Holy Spirit we have comfort, we have connection, and we have communication. There's a lot that comes with this, but as I was praying, these are the specific things I want to highlight. Through the Holy Spirit we have comfort, we have communication, and we have connection. All of this is to help us fulfill the Great Commission.

It's been a few weeks since Easter, when we talk about the power of the resurrection. What happens next is the day of Pentecost, where the power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead comes upon us as believers. We now have access to that fullness and walk in that authority so we can have comfort in God and his love. We can be connected to God in a deep, intimate, powerful way that wasn't possible before. We can communicate with God, not just for ourselves but for other people as well, and communicate on his behalf so we can continue to go and make disciples of all nations.

Why Pentecost?

What do we do with that? Well, we're going to follow Jesus' instructions. We're going to read about when the Holy Spirit came in Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 13.

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire and separated and 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. Now they were staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they had heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked, aren't all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome. Both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues. Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, what does this mean? Some, however, made fun of them and said they have had too much wine.

Acts 2:1-13

Let's pray. Holy Spirit, we thank you for this day that we get to remember and celebrate the day your Holy Spirit came and fell upon all believers. We ask God that in the same way we know that your Holy Spirit is here with us. Would you come and fall again? Would we hear from you? God, would you meet us here?

Lord, would you come and would you continue to comfort us and give us the power to comfort others? God, would you help us to feel so connected to you today? Would your Holy Spirit come in these next few moments, Jesus, we pray. Amen.

I'm going to start by answering some questions as we walk through these scriptures. The first is, why Pentecost?

Remember, up until this point, Jesus died, he was raised back to life, he appears to his disciples. In Acts chapter 1, verse 4, it says Jesus gave them this command. He said, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. So they gathered around him and said, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom of Israel? They're like, this is it. The kingdom of God is here and now.

But he tells them to wait and to say he's going to come and baptize them with the Holy Spirit and they need to wait.

Here's the thing. As we look around at what's happening in our world and even in our own country and so close to our hearts, I've probably had more moments in the past few years, few months, even few weeks of saying, Lord, what do we do? I know we're called to make disciples. I know the mission of God's heart is for all people to know him and love him, to see his kingdom come. I know Jesus left heaven to come to earth and empowered us to carry that out. But how do we do that?

Last week I was in London with a group of pastors hearing stories of shootings taking place and violence happening around the country. It seems like it just keeps getting worse and worse. The week before that, I was with some students in Israel where we're literally in Palestine hearing people tell stories of what's happening there. And we were somewhere else in Israel in a kindergarten that's also a bomb shelter so the kids can stay in school when the missiles are hitting throughout the day.

And you can't help but think, okay God, what do we do with this? How do we continue to live and say yes, we know we're supposed to pray and we know we're supposed to make disciples and all I keep coming back to is Holy Spirit, we need you. We need you to guide us. We need you to give us wisdom. We need you to give us the words to pray as we talk about that. We can intercede for other people.

We need the Holy Spirit, and the good news that we do have the hope we can cling to is that Jesus left us with his Holy Spirit. But the reality is that for so many years and for so many of us, maybe in moments of our lives, we silence it and we try to come up with our own ideas and our own plans. But it's going to continue to run dry if we do not stay connected to the Holy Spirit. That is the only way we are going to fulfill his mission and see kingdom come.

As we look around and we see people being oppressed and lacking, we need to say Holy Spirit, come. We need your mercy. As we look around and see people who need healing, physical healing to continue to live and thrive the way God told them to do, we need to say Holy Spirit, will you come? Will you heal these people?

When we look at all the things and changes that need to be made, the people in positions of power writing these policies and leading our country and nations and world, we need to pray for Holy Spirit wisdom, for God's kingdom to come and for his will to be done.

There are so many moments where we sit back and say God, what do we do? We need his Holy Spirit. This is why the day of Pentecost is so important for us to remember. His Holy Spirit, the comforter, the advocate, the one who gives us guidance and wisdom, is here and we can communicate with him. We can talk to him and we can rely on him. Because if we are going to see the Great Commission, we're going to need to continue to pray kingdom come over and over again.

The background of Pentecost

We're going to talk about some of the background of Pentecost. The day of Pentecost was first introduced at the Feast of Weeks in Leviticus, where we first find this. In the New Testament, when we see they're gathering on the day of Pentecost, this was just a part of their tradition. This is what they did. They would go to the temple for this feast. In Exodus 23:14, we see this, and it's also in Deuteronomy, where it says three times a year they would celebrate the feast.

So this was the tradition at the time. When Jesus says stay here in Jerusalem, it's because he knew this was practical. He's saying, yes, I'm going to come, but don't travel back home. Just stay here in Jerusalem. I'm going to come. And he knew they would be there on the day of Pentecost for that feast.

Where did Pentecost take place? This is one of my favorite things. When we get to look into the Bible, we get to see all these different clues. At first, if you read it, it might not make sense, but you start to look at all these different hints and the more you read it, the more fun it gets. And you start to understand what's actually happening.

Some people get really annoyed with these stories, but six years ago I went to Israel for the first time. For six years I've had plenty of stories to tell about that trip. I just went again about two weeks ago, so now I'm fresh with even more stories. Get ready, here we go. Day one of another maybe six years of me talking about this trip.

When you go to Israel and see this place, some things start to make sense a little bit more. The promise was about to be fulfilled. Prophecies were about to be fulfilled. In the Old Testament, the day of Pentecost wasn't something new in the book of Acts. This was a feast they were celebrating. The first Pentecost when it took place in the Old Testament was on Mount Sinai, and it was after they sacrificed the lambs. It was 50 days after they sacrificed the lamb. That's why this is so cool. 50 days after Jesus, the Lamb of God, was slain, the day of Pentecost took place. How cool is that timeline? We're seeing like Old Testament to New Testament, God's story just coming to life here.

They would go to the temple for three feasts: Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Passover, the lamb was slain. Pentecost, here we are.

We read in Acts that suddenly there was this great wind, this blowing violent wind that came from heaven and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. A lot of people assume at first that it must have taken place where Jesus had the last supper, like this small upper room. But in Acts 1:13, it says when they arrived they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas. They all joined together constantly in prayer along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, with his brothers.

But then when we see the day of Pentecost take place, it skips over to Acts chapter 2. This leads us to think maybe they were somewhere else. There are other clues too. The temple in the Old Testament was often referred to as the house of the Lord, because that's where they believe God's presence resides. So the house where they were sitting is more than likely the temple. It was likely these upper steps. We see this because in Acts chapter 2, Peter gives a sermon and references 9 AM. It might seem random, but they would have different calls to prayer as a part of these feasts where they would go to the temple. So he's referencing this. It leads us to believe that when this is taking place, it was going to be on these temple steps.

But what we do know for sure is it was birthed out of a lot of prayer. In verse 5, it says now they were staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. Every nation under heaven.

I love this verse so much because once again we see that when God said he created all of us in his image, right? And then we know throughout time that some people were oppressed, some people were persecuted because of their race, because of their ethnicity, because of where they were from. And here it says all nations were represented. Now again, it's pointing to the fact that they're there for this feast because everybody from every nation would come for that.

But I just want us to take a minute and celebrate the fact that this was a prophetic act of God saying, I'm going to pour out my spirit on all people, no matter your race, your ethnicity, we were all created in the image of God. He's saying gathered here, all nations, I will pour my spirit out. Once again, I think we just see the love of God and the heart of God that he includes this for us to remind us of this. It's going to be people that look like us and people that don't look like us and people we've never seen in heaven before. That is what God is looking for. All believers, he was pouring his spirit out.

I also want to talk about as we continue this series on the Holy Spirit today and Pentecost. Next week we're going to be talking about the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We're going to be talking about praying in tongues. We're going to be talking about the Holy Spirit and prophecy, the Holy Spirit and his mission. But today we're just really talking about Pentecost.

I do want to highlight the difference between the indwelling of the Spirit and the empowerment of the Spirit. When we ask Jesus into our heart and surrender our life to him, we receive the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to come and dwell within us. What we're seeing take place on the day of Pentecost is the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came upon them and baptized them, which we're going to talk about more next week.

So you can have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within you when you surrender your life to Jesus and to his Lordship, and then there's the empowerment, which is what's happening at the day of Pentecost.

Going through some of the things we see here in the Old Testament compared to the New, what was before was that the only way you could hear from God was when the Holy Spirit would come upon a few people. It was usually priests, prophets, kings, rulers. You see Jonah, when God's presence came upon him and gave him a word. Eventually he comes back after getting swallowed by a whale. But this idea that the presence of God was coming upon a few people to speak on his behalf.

In the New Testament, we see Jesus walking alongside people. He was God. He was fully human and fully divine. He was walking alongside them. And then now, because of Jesus' death and resurrection, when he ascended into heaven, he left us with his Holy Spirit that now lives within all of us who believe.

We get to communicate with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not just randomly upon us. It's not next to us or beside us, but within us so we get to communicate with God. We see that now the temple was not just a place like it was in the Old Testament where God's presence would reside. Yes the temple was Jesus but now we are the temple of God and his Holy Spirit lives within us.

What this means for us

On Pentecost Sunday we celebrate this as a church. We celebrate all of this. A few things again with our big takeaway that I want us to remember is we're celebrating that we get to be comforted by the Holy Spirit and also that we get to bring comfort to other people. We're celebrating that we get to communicate with God. We get to hear directly from him. And also we get to speak on his behalf to other people.

We're going to talk about that when we talk about things like prophecy. We get to be so connected to Jesus and the Father through the Holy Spirit. And we can help other people be connected to him through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I'm going to keep reading in Acts chapter 2, verse 14. In this, the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they're speaking in other tongues in all these different languages, and they receive this power. Then all of a sudden Peter stands up in front of the crowd and raises his voice and says:

Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem. Let me explain this to you. Listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk because you suppose it's only nine in the morning. No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel in the last days. God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Acts 2:14-21

What was the power of the day of Pentecost? The church was birthed. The church was birthed on the day of Pentecost. It went from Jesus holding the presence of God to the presence of God now being within each and every one of us. We now have the power to go and fulfill the great commission.

Easter was saying, okay, it happened. God gave us this mission. But it's saying we obviously cannot do it on our own. We need the Holy Spirit to be empowered to go and fulfill the mission of seeing kingdom come and making disciples of all nations. It's prophecy being fulfilled and it's promised being given.

There are a couple of things about this that I absolutely love. One is the fact that it's Peter who gives this message. We all know the story of Peter, right? Peter who just before this was denying Christ, had abandoned Christ, and now he's the one getting up and giving this beautiful sermon explaining what just took place. That is wild, especially in our human understanding.

When you look back in life at a classmate, a roommate, maybe a sibling who was just that wild child, and then all of a sudden you're seeing that they're the chosen person God is using to start the church. I can't imagine what the other disciples were thinking. I'm sure it was all holy thoughts, but if it was me, I'd be like really? I didn't abandon you. I was here. But it's Peter.

I think that's significant for us to understand. There's nothing that can separate us from the love of God. There's no point where you can turn to him and surrender and say God, I'm ready now, and he's not ready to use you. There's a quote I wanted to read that I love when it talks about the day of Pentecost and the church giving birth. The church exists to announce to the world that Jesus is its Lord. This is the good news. When it's announced it transforms people and societies. It transforms.

That is telling us why Pentecost. It's so we have the power to help bring transformation to people's lives around us. He also said, the church is the single multi-ethnic family promised by the Creator God to Abraham. It was brought into being through Israel's Messiah, Jesus. It was energized by God's Spirit and called to bring transformative news of God's rescuing justice to the whole world.

When we look around and say God, what do we do? How do we live as your followers? How do we make sense of what we're seeing on the news? God, what is our role in this? It is to bring restoration. It is to bring healing. It is to bring justice. That is our role in this, but we need the Holy Spirit to empower us to do so.

The last quote is by William Seymour. The Pentecostal power, when you sum it all up, is just more of God's love. If it does not bring more of God's love, it is just simply counterfeit.

I laugh about it, but I think about the story of my friend's mom who was like, what's the point? To win games and live a good life and have these really cool moments with him? What is it for? There's purpose and power in the Holy Spirit to bring transformative justice and power to see God's kingdom come. We now are the body of Christ and his presence dwells within us.

Does that change things for us knowing that? If we really believe that, would that change the way we live? Would that change the way we interact with people? If you knew that your prayers, when you call upon the name of the Lord, that it could heal, that it could restore, would that change the way we live?

The Holy Spirit and obedience

It says that the Holy Spirit fell on all believers. The Holy Spirit fell on all believers when they were obedient to what was before them and open to believing that what Jesus said was true.

But I want to talk about this because what I don't want us to get confused with is that the Holy Spirit does not come upon believers as a reward for good behavior. But being obedient to what has the Lord already told you to do? What has he set before you? And are you open and willing to receive?

What I love about this is that the disciples had a rhythm of prayer. They had a rhythm of going to the temple and meeting with God. When the Holy Spirit showed up on the day of Pentecost, that was a place they were already going to be worshiping and praying. God's Spirit showed up.

For so many of us, we forget about the ways that when we start to establish these rhythms of coming to God, we really believe he's going to show up? Because he has and he will. He says he pours out his spirit on all men and all women, all sons, all daughters, old and young, every race, every ethnicity, all of it.

This is why it's so significant and I don't want us to miss this today. Because the reality is that today in our world, racism still exists. We have it in our neighborhoods, in our cities, in our world. Patriarchy, sexism, it still exists. But years ago, Jesus is saying through his Holy Spirit, through Peter, he's reminding them of what God said through the prophet. He's saying it's all people, all believers, every race, every ethnicity, all sons, all daughters, that I am going to pour my spirit out.

It was prophetic then and it's prophetic now. We get to walk in that and say, okay, we have a role to play in this. We are to seek justice, we are to seek mercy, but we are going to need the Holy Spirit to do that. We can't do it on our own. My human brain and flesh cannot come up with the words or the policies to put into place to bring world peace. We need the Holy Spirit because what Jesus is trying to do is build a type of kingdom that is counter-cultural and looks nothing like this world.

We're going to need the Holy Spirit to come in a supernatural way and show us how to do that. We're going to need to rely on him for that.

When we talk about the Holy Spirit, sometimes it's like, that's so weird. How do we do that? It's supernatural and it is supernatural. My heart is that we as a church would start to lean into that in a way of saying how do we make those supernatural things that might feel a little weird, might feel a little counter-cultural, super normal in our lives? So we are just walking in and learning how to come before people and say you know what? I just have something that I feel like the Lord put on my heart. Can I share that with you?

And speak hope in a moment. Be the type of people that we're praying in the morning because we have rhythms of prayer in our life. A shameless plug for our rule of life, if you haven't seen it on our website at newculturechurch.com. It's a rule of life, a set of practices where you're praying in the morning and all of a sudden somebody's put on your heart and you're like I need to call them and make sure they have money for gas, because we all know that's going to be a real thing in a couple weeks here, right?

And say hey I just felt like I'm supposed to fill up your tank with gas. How did you know that? The Holy Spirit just told me, right? We need to show people the love of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was so strategic in his mission of reconciling all people because he knew he was going to need all nations to reach all nations. That's why when they started speaking in tongues and representing all these different languages, have you ever been in a place where because someone spoke your language or because someone looked like you or they talked the way you talked or they said they watched a show you watched, that you just felt seen and you felt known and you felt like you belonged?

How cool is that? God did that on the day of Pentecost where he said I want to make sure every single person knows that they are seen, that they belong. He wants to use each and every one of us and the unique ways he has shaped us and formed us to continue to show more people his love.

Are we ready to receive that type of outpouring of the Holy Spirit? If we're in a place today where we need comfort, where we need communication, maybe you just haven't heard from God in a while, where you need that connection to feel close to him, we're just going to create space today. We're just going to close in a time of worship and prayer.

Waiting on the Lord

The reason we're doing this is Jesus gave them specific instructions. When it seemed like all hope was lost, the Savior of the world was finally back from the dead, and then he is leaving them again. He said, wait. For us today, probably even more than now we need the Holy Spirit in that type of way. We need to wait.

But there are two types of waiting. There's the waiting where you just sit still, and then there's the waiting like when you think of a server and someone's waiting on tables, where you're going and doing and being active.

Maybe some of you today as we close in this time of worship, you just need to sit before the Lord. That's okay. Maybe some of you need to worship and pray and you already know things that the Holy Spirit is leading you to intercede for and pray for. You need to do that and wait on the Lord in that type of way.

But regardless, we're just going to take a few minutes to close before we go outside and celebrate and have a feast on Pentecost. We're just going to wait on the Lord. I wanted to close and you guys can stand with me. I'm going to show a couple pictures of where we were just at in Israel.

These are the temple steps, the southern steps, going up to the temple mount. These were a part of their tradition when it was one of the three feasts. You would walk up these steps and you would read the Psalms of Ascent. You would be praying and worshiping. But looking at the next picture, all the steps are a little uneven. Some are really wide and some are really short and small. These are the actual steps.

These are one of the few places we know almost without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus would have walked. Jesus was teaching on these steps and his Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, probably on these steps or somewhere in this area.

What I love about these steps is it shows us that for some of us, we think our relationship with the Holy Spirit and our relationship with God should only look one way. Maybe you think the second I say yes to Jesus, everything's going to make sense. Or maybe you're wired and think the second I surrender my life to Jesus, the Holy Spirit's going to come upon me and we're just going to rest and it's going to be this nice easy life.

But these steps they would have been walking up, some were quick, okay we got it, we're there. And others, it took a little bit. The pace continued to change. What does it look like for us to approach the Holy Spirit in that way where we are staying connected to him and his pace and knowing there are going to be moments where things just make sense and it clicks and we're going, and there are going to be moments where we just have to slow down and watch where we're stepping and pay more attention to the pace of the Holy Spirit?

So wherever you're at today, maybe you have never really thought much about your relationship with the Holy Spirit but you're open for the outpouring. You're open for more of him in your life because you do believe what we've talked about. The hope of the world is through the power of the Holy Spirit that lives in me. So God, I'm going to be open to you today as we pray and worship.

We're going to close in this time of worship and I do want to invite you to pray and worship and be open to the Holy Spirit. Over these next few weeks we're going to have Tuesday night worship and prayer. I'm going to encourage you to show up because the Holy Spirit is going to continue to come upon believers, but we're going to have to choose. Are we going to show up? Are we going to be open? Are we going to be obedient to what the Holy Spirit is asking and stay in pace and in step with him?

I'm going to pray and invite the Holy Spirit to come. If you're comfortable, position yourselves. Would you extend your hands forward as a sign of ready to receive?

Holy Spirit, just like years ago, people stood and sat and walked and worshiped and prayed as a part of their rhythm, we stand here on this Sunday as a part of our rhythm, worshiping and praying, believing Lord that the hope of the world is you, Jesus, and that your Spirit is now within us to go and bring hope and bring healing.

But we need you to first come and comfort us. We need you first to come and connect us to you in a deep and intimate way. God, we need to hear from you. We need clear communication. We stand here today with our arms open, asking for an outpouring of your Holy Spirit to come.

Would you meet us here today, Jesus? In your precious name we pray. Amen.