Preached at Markham Baptist Church, May 19, 2002

While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. "This," he said, "is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:4-8) (NRSV)

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs--in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine." (Acts 2:1-13) (NRSV)

The story is told of a first-year seminary student who was worshipping in a church near the seminary. As he sat in the pew before the worship, he scanned the order of service. He noticed that the name of the man who was preaching that Sunday was one of his professors. And as he read it, he let out an audible groan and muttered, "Oh, no." The woman beside him asked, "What's wrong?"

"The man who is preaching today is one of my seminary professors - I've nicknamed him "Mr. Dry." I've had him three times this week and he is deadly dull. Mr. Dry."

The woman looked at him and said, "Do you know who I am?"

The student said, "No."

She said, "I'm Mrs. Dry - the wife of your professor."

The student said, "Do you know who I am?" And she said, "No".

And student let out a shout, "Praise the Lord!"

Sometimes it is good to be anonymous - it is better not to be known. But that can't be said of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a vital part of the Christian faith, a vital part of your living the Christian life, and vital for the church to carry out its mission in the world. No Holy Spirit, no Christ-like character; no Holy Spirit, no mission; no Holy Spirit and every thing in the church is dead. He is absolutely essential to the Christian life. So on this Sunday, called Pentecost Sunday on the Christian calendar, we celebrate His coming in fullness and power. An event that is recorded in Acts 2 - an event that happened once and never needs to happen again.

Now some may be asking "Who is the Holy Spirit?" Well, as we read Scripture we discover that God has expressed Himself in three ways. He has expressed Himself in creation- raising the mountains high and valleys low, He gave life and breath to every living being. He has expressed Himself in salvation through His Son Jesus Christ who has offered the perfect sacrifice on the cross. Now, through faith in Him we are forgiven our sins and can live life forever in His favour. God has also expressed Himself in the here and now, ever-present, all-knowing and living in each person who confesses Jesus Christ as Lord - and that expression is the Holy Spirit.

Three expressions of the one God. And the third expression is the Holy Spirit.

The Christian can use the words God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit interchangeably, and that is because they are one.

Now this is a great mystery. C.S. Lewis says that the truth about the trinity and the Holy Spirit is perhaps the greatest argument against people who say that Christianity is a human invention. He says that if Christianity wer something we were making up, of course we would make it easier. But it is not. We are dealing with fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he or she has not facts to bother about. The trinity - the three expressions of God - is a mysterious fact.

And so the Holy Spirit is a fact, a truth that is taught throughout Scripture. We read about Him a great deal in the writings of Luke. In his gospel and the book of Acts, Luke gives us metaphor after metaphor to help us understand who the Spirit is and what He does and why we should long for Him to fill our lives.

In the opening chapter of the book of Acts we see first that our Lord Jesus Christ in verse 4 calls the Holy Spirit the "promise of the Father." So the Holy Spirit is first a promise. When you became a Christian God fulfilled two promises in your life.

When you turned your back on the world and your face to God and said, "Lord, I'm sorry for the way I have lived, I want to live for you now," at that moment you received the fulfilled promise of a cleansed heart. Your guilt was taken away and you were declared to be a child of God.

But there is another promise God fulfilled, and that is the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit. He now lives within you.

He was promised to the people of God in Ezekiel, the promise from God to the people of God -

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will pour out my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." (Ezekiel 36:26,27) (NIV)

So the Holy Spirit is a promise from God that is fulfilled when you give your life to Him in faith and repentance.

Now you say, why do I need this gift? Because as a child of God you are called to grow in holiness - you are called on to grow in Christ-like character, and we cannot do that in our own strength. You cannot grow to be more Christ-like without the Spirit of Christ living in you.

It is something like you telling me to sit at the piano and play like Beethoven. I can't do it. Try as I might I will not be able to play like Beethoven. But, if you were to place Beethoven's mind in me, his attributes, his gifts, his temperament, his love and appreciation for music - if somehow I could have the life of Beethoven in me, I could play like him as I allowed those attributes to grow in me.

So with the Christian life. It's no good telling me I must live like Christ. I can't do it. But, if I had the Spirit of our Lord living in me, His character, His temperament, His appreciation for heavenly and divine things, then I could do that as I give myself to His influence and follow His lead.

So then it becomes our responsibility to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is what we read in Ephesians 5:18 – "be filled with the Holy Spirit, that is be controlled by the Holy Spirit."

It is true that you have all the of the Holy Spirit, but the question is does the Holy Spirit have all of you?

It is a command for every Christian that we be filled with the Holy Spirit. And you do that by purposefully saying to Him every day, "Lord be enthroned in my life. Show me the direction you want me to go and I will go. Show me who you want me to speak to today and I will speak to them. You be enthroned."

And our God is faithful as we pray that prayer in our hearts - the Holy Spirit will be given to us. This is the promise made to us in Luke 11:13: "Those who ask will be given the Holy Spirit by our Father who is in heaven."

If you remember nothing else about this sermon, remember that you cannot live the Christian life without the Holy Spirit and we need to purposefully invite Him to fill our lives daily.

What happens when we do this? Well this leads us to the next description of the Holy Spirit. We read in verse 8 that when the Holy Spirit comes, we will receive power. What will this power look like? What will be we be empowered to do? In other places of Scripture we learn that the Holy Spirit empowers us to be more like Christ, but here we learn that the Holy Spirit empowers God's people for mission. The rest of verse 8 reads, "And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." And this is exactly what happens to the disciples as the Holy Spirit comes upon them - they are empowered to speak about God's deeds of power to every nationality that had gathered in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost.

You see, something happens when the Holy Spirit fills a life and a church - our eyes are raised and we see the world that is lost and broken and in great need of the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It's not that we didn't see them before - they have always been there - it's that we never saw them before with the eyes of Christ, and it's whole new perception we have. Have you seen that movie "The Matrix"? It is filled with spiritual allusions, but there is the main character that Keanu Reeves plays who sees the reality that surrounds him but then his eyes are opened to another dimension that he never knew existed. And then he becomes a part of great battle between good and evil.

And so when the Holy Spirit fills the people of God our eyes are opened to a dimension that we never knew existed, our eyes are opened to those around us who are hurting, that are living in darkness, that are broken by lives battles who are lost in sin. And with the Spirit of Christ filling us and directing us, our hearts goes out to them, with what we have, and what we have experienced to be true - that Jesus Christ has come to bind the broken, heal the sick, and release those who are in bondage to sin and to Satan and to self.

I know no one who is doing well in this world without Christ. Some years ago a book was on the market that helped a lot of people, it was on the best sellers list for months at a time - it was entitled, "I'm OK, You're OK." I think a second book should be published entitled, "If I'm OK and You're OK then who in the world is causing all the trouble."

Oh, that we would be filled with the Holy Spirit and that we would be given a vision of a world that desperately needs Christ.

But, you say, we are not powerful enough - the world and is too large and the darkness we face to deep, the depth of human sin is too great. And this brings us to the next two pictures of the Holy Spirit and they are wind and fire.

"And when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them." (Acts 2:1-3) (NIV)

Now understand that what the disciples are experiencing here is very mysterious and they are using word pictures to help us understand the mystery of God. And when the Holy Spirit comes there is a sound like a rush of a violent wind.

This speaks of the uncontrollable power of the Holy Spirit. Just as you cannot bottle the wind, or harness it or direct its path, so you cannot control or store up or even predict the working of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has sovereign liberty. And just when people are about to pronounce the church as knocked out and down for the count, the Holy Spirit comes and revives His people.

We have seen it in our own generation as one communist regime after another pronounced the church dead as a dodo. But they never counted on the Spirit of God blowing across their land moving through the people of God so that in the late 80's we saw one communist regime after another being brought to its knees by people who were armed with nothing but some candles and the Holy Spirit of God. I wish I had time to tell you of Rev. Topesh and his people in Romania, of the church in Estonia who were forbidden to have Sunday School but they could have choirs because they were culturally appropriate - so they had a lot of choirs. They couldn't have house meetings but they could have birthday parties so they had a lot of birthday parties.

And the governments thought they had defeated the church of God, but the Holy Spirit blew across their land and nothing can stand in the way of the Sovereign Spirit of God.

The Holy Spirit is like the wind - this is what Jesus said in John 3 - you cannot contain Him or control Him. He is the Sovereign Spirit working through His people.

But the Holy Spirit is also like fire. And all through Scripture God is associated with fire. God speaks to Moses through a bush that is afire but is not consumed. The Israelites are lead across the trackless dessert by a pillar of fire by night. And then there is the story of Elijah who competes with the prophets of Baal to see which God will send down what? Fire from heaven. It is a competition and the God who is able to send down fire from heaven is the God who is alive and real and has the Almighty One involved in the lives of His people.

And that is one of the prime meanings of this fire that came down from heaven - it is the filling of the people of God with power. The disciples are transformed people - they are changed from a group of cowering, timid fishermen to a group of bold proclaimers of the gospel of Christ.

Don't misunderstand - the power the Holy Spirit gives us is not the power to dominate over others, or to coerce others to believe. It is rather the power to serve; it is the power to hold on to God in the midst of difficult circumstances; it is the power to proclaim the love of God and the saving power of Christ when the world tells you to stop. It is the power to say we must obey God, we can do no other.

Oh, that the spirit of God would come upon us like mighty fire, as we seek to put our whole lives on the line for Him. Oh, that we would allow Him to be sovereign and blow into our lives empowering us to see a world that is lost; that the fire would fall as we seek to put our whole church on the line for Him.

He doesn't want us to be satisfied with a mere whisper of his presence in our lives, in our homes, in our church. He wants to be a raging fire within us, alive and vibrant for His glory and for the benefit of those around us.

He wants the whole of us, all of us, to pray, "O Lord, Holy Spirit, fill me, control me, set me ablaze with Your love and grace that I may see a world that is lost without Christ and that through me, through our church the world may truly know that You are the living God."