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Acts 2:1-21

Over the course of human civilization fire has played a significant role. Often it is a profoundly significant role. Without heat we wouldn’t be able to consume a large number of foods that sustain us. Without light that fire produces, our ancestors would have been in the dark for most of their lives. Without the fire produced by the sun, which lets off both heat and light, life would not be possible on earth. Through tongues of fire and the sound of a violent wind, the Christian church was born.

If you search for all the occurrences of “fire” in the bible, you will find around 400 entries. Now if you search for wind, breath, or spirit; as they are often the same word used in the Hebrew and Greek, you get around 830 entries. I think it would be safe to say that fire and wind, or spirit, or breath, play a significant role in the story of God’s interactions with humanity. The Feast of Pentecost, which the disciples were gathered remembering, was a day that celebrated the harvest as well as the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Exodus 19:18 says, “Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently.”

Fire is used throughout the Bible. It is used figuratively of Yahweh's glory (Dan 7:9), of His holiness (Isa. 33:14), of His protection of His people (2 Kings 6:17; Zec. 2:5), of His jealousy for His sole worship (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29; Ps. 79:5), of His wrath (Deut. 9:3; Ps. 18:8; Ps. 89:46; Isa. 5:24), of His Word in power (Jer. 5:14; Jer. 23:29), of Divine truth (Ps. 39:3; Jer. 20:9; Lk. 12:49), of that which guides men (Isa. 50:10-11), of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:3), of Christ in His glory (Rev 1:14), of the power of love to overcome evil (Rom. 12:20), of trial and suffering (Ps. 66:12; Isa 43:2; 1 Peter 1:7; 1 Peter 4:12), of evil (Prov. 6:27; Isa 9:18; Isa. 65:5), of lust or desire (Hos. 7:6; 1 Cor. 7:9), of greed (Prov. 30:16), of the evil tongue (James 3:5-6), of heaven and its purity and glory (Rev. 15:2; Rev 21:22-23), and of Divine testing for divinity (Rev. 20). Fire is even used in the Old and New Testaments to talk about the trials that believers go through throughout their lifetime. In one of my favorite books, Malachi, the Lord is compared to a refiner’s fire. It says, “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”

• Three ladies had a bible study and were talking about being refined by the fire. They did not understand about being refined in the fire like silver. One volunteered to go to the silversmith and see what that meant. When she went she did not tell the silversmith why she was really there. He proceeded to tell her about being sure the silver was put in to the hottest part of the fire. He explained that was so all the impurities would be burned away. He also said that he had to watch it all the time to make sure it was not in there too long. If it were there too long, it would be ruined. The lady asked, “How do you know when it is done”? His answer was, “That’s easy: when I see my reflection”.

Starting at verse fourteen in our passage we find Peter, newly empowered by the Spirit, standing up and delivering a speech to those who are witnessing this miracle. Peter uses the Old Testament prophecy from Joel to help convince those around him that what is happening is not only from God, but was predicted hundreds of years before. Peter was transformed. He is the poster child for transformation by the Spirit. 50 days before this, he had denied that he was a disciple of Jesus. Three times, just as Jesus predicted, he denied even knowing Jesus. I think Peter was partly right. Did he really know Jesus before the Spirit descended? Can we know Jesus before the Spirit fills us?

Peter’s turnaround illustrates the effect the Spirit of Truth can have on us. I am sure you have heard the phrase, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Well folks, the Holy Spirit is perhaps the most mysterious of those ways. The Holy Spirit never points to himself. The third person of the Holy Trinity is always pointing to the Father and the Son. Jesus says that the Spirit’s movements are like the wind, unpredictable because the wind, and the Spirit, moves where they want to. You can’t see the wind, but you can see where it has been and where it is currently moving.

When I was in Seminary I had to take a class called Spiritual Formation Group. In this class we were to open up about who we are and depend upon each other for support and encouragement. One of the days some of my classmates began talking about how they felt called into the ministry. I have to admit that I was slightly discouraged because by the end of it, I realized that my story of how I felt called wasn’t nearly as revelatory as all of theirs seemed. For a long time that has bugged me. I wanted to know if maybe I had read the signs wrong. Maybe I was wrong about the Spirit’s movement within me.

As you know it has been two years now since I graduated. It has been two years of searching. I have questioned over and over again as to why I never had a Moses on the mountain moment. While doing research for this sermon actually, I was comforted by a sermon I found online. I am telling you this because I know without a doubt that there are some of you out there like me, questioning the work of the Spirit within your own life. None of us here have had a moment like the disciples, and that is okay. Rev. Rowland Croucher, the director of John Mark Ministries, wrote this; “Are you supposed to ‘feel’ anything when the Spirit comes into your life? Yes and no. Some do, some don’t. Some have a ‘peak experience’ – for a few it’s quite powerful. For others it’s quite a matter-of-fact transaction. The Spirit operates uniquely in each of us. Remember, he’s like the wind – sometimes a hurricane, sometimes a gentle breeze.”

The Spirit moves within each of us differently. Each one of us is in a different place in our lives. Our relationship to Christ is slightly different for each of us; we all have our own histories, our own emotional lives. And the amazing thing is that God comes to each of us. He calls us by name. Jesus tells the disciples in Luke 12:7, “Indeed, the very hairs of your head are numbered.” How amazing is that. God loves us so much, each and every one of us, every one that calls on His name, that He knows the very number of hairs on our head.

God comes to each of us, as we are because He loves us. But God also comes to each of us because of who we are meant to be. We, like Peter and the other disciples, are called to spread the news of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. We are all called to be brothers and sisters in Christ. We are called to be light to the world that is in darkness. The Holy Spirit is the fire within us. The fire inside us can be like the refiner’s fire, pure heat that is burning our sin away; pure light that is making known every dark corner of our hearts. The fire of the Holy Spirit makes us see who we really are. Yes we are sinners, but we are more importantly called by name by the God who sent His only Son to die on the cross in order to bring us back into a right relationship with him.

Pentecost is so much more than the birthday of the church. It is our re-birth. It is the giving of the new law that God promised in Jeremiah 31; “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” It is the reversal of the confusion that happened at the Tower of Babel, where our language was confused because of our sin. It is God acting in power within us. It is God making us Christ’s presence in the world with the ability to speak boldly for Christ, to love boldly, to live as a people transformed by the power and love of God. It is God calling each of us by name, to new life, to eternal life. Pentecost is the story of every believer. Pentecost is the sound of a hurricane, or a gentle breeze helping us along our way home to God.

Before the coming of the Spirit into each one of our lives, we were like a ship lost at sea with no breeze. We were subject to the torrent of a life with no direction. But when the Spirit came into each one of us, we became like a ship with full sails, new energy, finally on course for home. Just like the wind moves a ship through filling its sails, so are we filled with the Holy Spirit able to be guided into a relationship with the God that calls us to spread His love through loving our neighbors as ourselves. It is only by saying yes to the guidance of the Holy Spirit that we can live that out. We on our own are incapable of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, but if we let the Spirit of God rest in our hearts we will be empowered to show that love to the world through our thoughts, our words, and our deeds.