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Pentecost Sunday at HT Cambridge
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Today we celebrate Pentecost—the day we remember and celebrate the Holy Spirit being poured out, the church being born, and erupting into life with 3,000 being added to their number on day one. Today, I want to talk about the Holy Spirit and what it means to be a spirit-filled church and a spirit-filled people.
Why? Because when we see the work of the Holy Spirit, we see that the Spirit comes to bring life.
We see this right from the beginning in Genesis, in the creation narrative. God forms Adam out of the dust—he is lifeless—but God breathes his life into Adam. The Hebrew word is ruach, which means both breath and spirit. The Spirit comes to bring life. Something that is dead comes to bring it alive.
Throughout all of scripture, we see the Holy Spirit associated with bringing life:
When the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, this wasn't a surprise. The promised Holy Spirit was foretold. Jesus spoke extensively about the Spirit that was going to come—the hope, the advocate. In Acts 1:4, Jesus tells his disciples: "Wait for the gift" and instructs them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the promised Holy Spirit.
I grew up hearing about Pentecost every year in Sunday school, knowing it was the birth of the church. But what I didn't know was that Pentecost wasn't just a random day—it was already a significant Jewish festival.
Pentecost means "50" in Greek. It's 50 days from Passover to Pentecost. This festival was also known as Shavuot, meaning "weeks." It was an ancient Israelite harvest festival celebrated early in the summer, where people gave thanks for the first fruits and the Torah. It was one of the three main festivals where Jewish people made pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Thousands upon thousands gathered in Jerusalem for this celebration. This was a strategic day for the Holy Spirit to be poured out. Imagine a national celebration where everyone gathers in London, and then the Holy Spirit is poured out there—hence the diversity and the reality that everyone could understand in their own language. This was no accident.
In Acts 2, we read: "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 that separated and came to rest on each of them."
Throughout scripture, God's presence is represented in fire:
But in Acts 2, where does the fire rest? The fire rests on the people. God reveals his grand plan for reaching the world, and that plan is ordinary you and me.
No longer do we have to go to a geographical location to meet with God. He dwells in us. At Christmas, we celebrate God with us, Emmanuel. At Pentecost, we celebrate that God is in us. He's made us His dwelling place. We are His temple. Wherever we go, the Holy Spirit goes with us.
How precious must God see his church, his people, that he makes them his dwelling place? That he says, "I'm going to be with you. I'm going to deposit myself. I'm going to be with you. You're my temple now."
I grew up in the church, and if I'm honest, I often found myself frustrated with it—disillusioned, finding it dead, boring, and irrelevant. I thought, "Really? This is God's grand plan? Ordinary old us?" But God loves his church. God loves his church. He put his spirit in his church.
Let me share a story about Bob—a quality guy. He's successful, wealthy, kind, generous, and very good-looking. Bob is someone you'd want to be friends with.
One day, Bob buys a house—his first house—and invites all his friends to view it. His friends look around and report back: "Bob, we're less than impressed. Structurally, we're not sure it's sound. There's damp. Based on house prices in the area, there's a 75% chance this building will fall down without major work. Bob, you've made a big mistake."
Bob shrugs and says, "I know it's a fixer-upper, but I see the potential."
A few weeks later, Bob gets engaged. His friends haven't met his fiancée. At the engagement party, they meet her for the first time and are less than impressed. "Bob, really? You could go out with anyone, and you've chosen this person. She's not even that committed. She's playing you hot and cold. Statistics show a 50% chance of divorce in the first year. You've made a big mistake."
A few weeks later, it's Bob's birthday. As soon as his friends walk through the door, they say, "Bob, what has happened to you? You used to be good-looking. Have you been overeating? Have you been in a fight? Your face looks mangled. Don't touch the birthday cake. Get a gym membership. Maybe see a plastic surgeon. Actually, Bob, just get a whole new body!"
At this point, Bob snaps. He says: "You've spoken badly about my house. I love that house. I know it's a fixer-upper, a project, but I see the potential. You've spoken badly about my bride. I know she's not perfect, but I love her. And now you've spoken badly about my body. This is my body. I can't get a new body."
In the New Testament, there are multiple pictures of God's church:
He loves his church. He loves his house. He loves his bride. And he loves his body.
I've come to realize I'm one of Bob's friends. Sometimes I can take God by the hand and show him everything wrong with his house, with his bride, with his body. But he loves his church. And I don't want to spend the time I get on this planet Earth mocking God's church or standing on the sidelines throwing rocks at it.
I want to get stuck in, pull up my sleeves, and love his house, love his bride, love his body, because he loves it. We get permission to stop loving his church the moment when God stops loving his church. And the last time I checked, he's not even close to stopping. He loves his church. He gave his life for his church.
If you've grown up in the church, you may have been hurt by it. You may be disillusioned. There are certainly things we could list that are wrong with the church—even at the basic level, the orange squash is never right, the good biscuits are always taken, there's always quiche. But God loves his church, ordinary older us. He pours his spirit on his church, his people.
Right now, God is doing a new thing. His spirit is doing a new thing right now. We're hearing stories on the ground across the UK of God at work—new people arriving at church, people having dreams and visions, desire to come to church, Bible sales going up.
God's church is his salvation plan for the world.
Let me share some data:
God is doing a new thing. He's building his church. His spirit is at work. That makes me hungry and thirsty. Lord, I want to see more. I want to see more.
I used to think being spirit-filled meant obtaining all the spiritual gifts—like adding ammunition to my belt, gathering power at my disposal. What I've come to discover is that being filled with the spirit is not about me getting more of the Spirit. It's about the Spirit getting more of me. It's about me giving myself over to the Spirit.
In Galatians 5:25, it says: > "Since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit."
What does that look like? We've attached ourselves to the Holy Spirit and said, "Okay, Holy Spirit, will you lead me? Will you guide me? Will you live in me?" But then the week goes and someone annoys us, and we want to respond. The Spirit says, "No, I don't want you to respond like that." We want to go somewhere, and the Holy Spirit says, "No, no, I do not want you to go there." It's awkward, isn't it?
Maybe an email lands in your inbox that annoys you. There's a strong response ready, but the Spirit says, "No, I don't want you to send that." But we live by the spirit. Let us keep in step with the spirit. It might feel clumsy at first, but then we start living in step with the Spirit. And who's leading? The Spirit is leading this dance. It might feel awkward, but we're learning to live by the Spirit.
There might be a temptation that when we come on Sunday, we say, "Okay, Holy Spirit, will you fill me? Will you equip me? Will you send me?" We attach ourselves to the Holy Spirit, but then when we walk out, we're tempted to unattach ourselves because we don't want the Holy Spirit to intervene with our Monday mornings.
The Spirit taught me something about this a year ago. It was a Thursday morning on a warm summer's day. I was walking into church for our team Bible study, listening to a podcast about prayer. I saw a gentleman walking towards me—he appeared to be homeless, with a sleeping bag draped around his shoulders. He didn't ask me for anything; we just made eye contact and smiled.
My eyes were drawn to his feet. He was wearing trainers that were falling apart. They didn't match—they were both right feet trainers. They looked odd.
As I walked past, I felt the Holy Spirit say to me: "Andy, I want you to give your trainers to that man."
I said, "What, Lord?" I was wrestling with God. I thought: "Lord, he didn't ask me for anything. How would I do that and keep dignity for this gentleman? Also, the trainers are quite new. And if I do this, I'm going to be late for the Bible study, and you wouldn't want me to be late for the Bible study, would you, Lord?"
I was wrestling with this, and then after a minute or two, I got to a stage where I could not step another foot forward because I felt I was being disobedient to the Lord. I said, "Okay, Lord, I'll do it."
I went back, but a couple of minutes had passed. There were three possible routes he could have gone. I couldn't see where he went. I ran down the main road thinking maybe he'd gone that way. I couldn't find him. I circled back and went down another way. Still couldn't find him. I tried the third way. By this point, I was getting hot and bothered, and I was going to be so late for the Bible study. But I kept looking.
The story is, I didn't find him. I couldn't find him. And then I walked back to the Bible study late, and I hadn't even been obedient to the Lord.
But I felt the Holy Spirit's conviction about walking in step with the Spirit. The Lord said to me: "Andy, if you want to be obedient to me, when you hear my voice, I want you to do it straight away. Straight away, not wasting two or three minutes where I've missed the opportunity."
Walking in step with the Spirit.
There's a cool story about D.L. Moody, an evangelist in the 19th century. He's accredited with preaching to more people than anyone else in that century—millions of people. Estimates suggest that about 1 million people came to know Jesus through his ministry.
Moody was based in Chicago, and in 1871, a great fire devastated the city. Thousands of buildings were destroyed, thousands made homeless. Moody traveled to New York to raise funds to rebuild his church and help those who'd lost homes.
While walking in New York, he had a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit. In his journal, he writes:
"My heart was not in the work of begging. I could not appeal. I was crying all the time that God would fill me with his spirit. Well, one day in the city of New York, oh what a day. I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it. It is almost too sacred an experience to name. I can only say that God revealed himself to me and I had such an experience of his love that I had to ask him to stay his hand."
What happened was he was walking down Wall Street, and he had this powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit. He had to go to a friend's house and just sit in a room by himself for 6 hours because he was so overwhelmed by God's love and his presence.
He goes on to say:
"I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different. I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me the whole world."
The Spirit comes to bring life. The Spirit comes to bring freedom. The Spirit comes to bring power.
C.S. Lewis speaks in The Chronicles of Narnia of the White Witch, who goes around Narnia turning people into statues. She has a courtyard full of her statues. Then Aslan comes in, breathes in, and breathes life back into these stone statues.
C.S. Lewis describes it like a match taking to a piece of paper—a tiny gold streak spreads across the paper.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes:
"Imagine this. This world is a great sculptor's shop, where the statues within the statues there is a rumor that around the shop that some of the statues are coming to life."
God breathes his life, his Spirit on us, his church.
In John 7, Jesus says:
"Anyone who is thirsty, come to me and drink, and the rivers of living water will well up."
So as I finish, the question is this: What is the requirement for being filled by the Spirit?
It's to be thirsty. It's to be thirsty.
Are you thirsty?
