1 Acts 2:22-38 (Prop needed a LAMP, plugged into a socket, but not switched on) I ve brought some extra light today. (Try to switch it on it doesn t work.) Ah well I ll manage without. Well, what an amazing day that was! At the start of the day, that group of weak and fearful disciples, unsure what to do next, now that Jesus has ascended into heaven. Then all of them are filled with the Holy Spirit as they gather together, and the power of God flows through them. Then Peter preaches that amazing and powerful message to the crowd of Jews from all over the known world. And what a sense of the power of the presence of God on that day of Pentecost! That sermon had something very special, exciting and dynamic about it. After hearing that sermon, 3,000 people became Christians. That doesn t mean they just started going to Church. It means that 3,000 people gave their lives to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Master, and Saviour 3,000 people took themselves out of their own keeping and entrusted themselves into His keeping turned their backs on the way they used to live their lives and dedicated their lives to Him. 3,000 people whose lives were radically and permanently changed on that day, when they heard Peter telling them Whoever calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved. Sometimes it s easy to ask, Why, God Why don t you do it NOW??? I mean it s great being here with brothers and sisters in the Lord. And it s really nice getting together to pray, and to meet each other and to sing hymns together but it s hardly the same as that day of Pentecost, is it? What do you say when someone asks you What s so good about God? What do you say? Some blank looks. Because we need the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit we can t even see the wonder of God, around us and in our lives today much less tell others about them. It s like in the Gospel of John. Jesus said, Father glorify your name And the voice of God sounded from Heaven, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. And the people said, Oh that was thunder. That was just thunder.
2 Brothers and sisters, we re like that. We re just like that. We encounter the wonders of God and we discount them, or we somehow don t even notice them. We need the Holy Spirit, to make God s love and power real to us. Some years ago, I was preaching here and I shared my own experience of some years before, of being filled or baptised with the Holy Spirit, at a worship meeting, soon after I became a Christian, and I shared about my wife Maggie s Baptism with the Holy Spirit a few weeks later when we were praying together in our home, when I laid hands on her and prayed for her to be filled. So, finding myself preaching on Pentecost Sunday, it s good to go a little deeper into this important Christian teaching. Now, in our Anglican Church, we have many spiritual treasures, handed down to us from those who went before us. One of those spiritual treasures is the 39 articles of religion, which, even today, form the basis of what we in the Anglican Communion believe. One of those is article 6, It s headed, Of the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation. and what it says, in that poetical and difficult language of 1662 is something like this: Everything you need for salvation is in the Bible if it s not in the Bible, you can t say it s necessary to believe it! So what does the Bible say about the Holy Spirit, and the experience that the disciples had, at that first Pentecost? Well, most of the passages are in the Acts of the Apostles, and I invite you to search the scriptures for yourself, to confirm what I m saying. I say again if it s not in your Bible, then you don t need to believe it, because it s not God s Word. What the Bible shows is that, from Pentecost onwards, either at the time when a person gave his/her life to Christ and became a Christian, or afterwards, there was another experience, or event. The Bible sometimes says people were baptised with the Holy Spirit and sometimes the Holy Spirit came upon them or fell upon them, sometimes they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus taught his disciples in advance about this. He said to His disciples, just before he ascended into heaven, You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. This second experience was accompanied by a rich empowering to do the work of God. It was also normally accompanied by another gift one of the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit listed in your Bible, in 1Cor:12 the ability to pray to God in another language, what is sometimes called, speaking in tongues and you may have heard that this is still experienced by many millions of Christians throughout the world today. This was, and is, a definite, recognisable event there was no doubt about whether or not a person had received the Holy Spirit. In Acts 10, Peter is led
3 by the Holy Spirit to preach the good news about Jesus to Gentiles for the first time a Roman Centurion called Cornelius, and his household. With Peter are some other Jewish Christians. Peter told them about Jesus, and about how Jesus had paid the price for our sins, and now calls people everywhere to turn to Him. The Bible goes on to say that While Peter was still saying this, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the other Jewish Christians were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues, and extolling God. This was such a clear event that no-one could deny that it had happened and Peter said to the other Jewish believers, Can anyone deny water for baptising these people who have received the Holy Spirit, just as we have? A little later, in Acts 19, Paul met some Christians and asked them Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? One of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit is called in the Bible the Word of Knowledge Paul knew that there was something missing. No, they said, We hadn t even heard that there was a Holy Spirit. And the Bible tells how Paul taught them about the Holy Spirit, and when Paul had laid hands upon them the Holy Spirit came upon them, and spoke in tongues, and prophesied. There were about twelve of them in all. Some might say yes but it s not very intellectual or very dignified is it? all this speaking in tongues and I ve heard that these people raise their arms in the air too and even get quite excited isn t that just getting carried away? Brothers and sisters have you ever seen our dignified and intellectual brothers and sisters at a football match or even just watching their team playing on the telly? Don t they get excited sometimes! And that moment when the team is moving the ball forwards and towards the goal and will he get through and GOAL!!! YES!!! YES!!! Brothers and sisters: The Lord and what he s done for you and what he wants to do WITH you and IN you is much more wonderful than someone scoring a goal. And if your God isn t more exciting than a goal at a football match, then I say to you Your God is too small. Your God is MUCH too small. Your idea of what God wants to do for you, and with you, and IN you is too small, because God is bigger than that. God is more exciting than that. So first a question Have you called on the name of the Lord so that he can save you?
4 I hope and pray that you have, or that you will. And that you will feel more and more hunger to find out about this second experience the experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit, or Baptised with the Holy Spirit, because that s a baptism of power, and changed those disciples on the day of Pentecost from weak and powerless Christians into powerful witnesses to the risen Christ. 3,000 new Christians after one sermon. So what will the Holy Spirit do for you? The Holy Spirit will enable you to really know that you are forgiven, to really know that you re saved, that you belong to God. The Holy Spirit will empower you to really praise God in a new way to really know the joy of the Lord in a new way. The Holy Spirit will enable you to really care for those that are lost. Sometimes out there in the world I have to really work at it not to cry there are so many people looking so hard for real satisfaction, and not finding it. Really searching for happiness searching with Drugs, and Sex, and overeating, and chasing after money and possessions and status searching so hard and not finding the only real source of happiness and the joy of the Lord The Holy Spirit will empower you to witness to tell others about Jesus easily and naturally because you re so thrilled with Him. Jesus said, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in Heaven. The Holy Spirit will enable you to naturally and easily call God Father (In the letter to the Romans Paul says, He has sent his Spirit into our hearts crying, Abba, Father ) Have you ever gone into your private place of prayer and said to God, Father, please just talk to me. One man said the first time I did that, it shook me rigid. I heard God saying to me that He was pleased with me. No-one had ever said that to him before. All the years of his life, no-one had ever told him before that he d done well, that they were pleased with him. The Holy Spirit will enable you to read the scripture and enjoy it. The Holy Spirit will empower you to really put your trust in God. Paul exhorted the Christians at Corinth to earnestly seek the higher gifts. Brothers and sisters, let us earnestly seek the Holy Spirit. In Luke s gospel, Jesus says what father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a
5 scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those that ask him! (PLUG IN LAMP SWITCH ON) It works better when it s connected to the power supply because that s the way it was made to work In the book of Jeremiah God says to His people what I believe I hear him saying to his people here today: You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart. Amen.