MAY 30 2004

John W. Fowler

Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

Form the second chapter of the book of Acts, I would like to share with you about the birth of the Christian Church and the gift and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Next Sunday will be the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day. In an article in Time Magazine, “The Greatest Day,” by Nancy Gibbs, she writes this about that very special day:

She shares the story of how General Eisenhower, on the night before D-Day, went down to see the 101st Air Borne Division as they were loading the C-47s for the flight to Normandy. He told the men not to worry; they had the best leaders and the best equipment, and they listened patiently, and then one of the men said, “General, we’re not worried. It’s Hitler’s turn to worry.”

That day some very courageous men went forth. They had a great courage and they had a great commitment to their cause for freedom.

I want to share with you another example of some people who had some great courage and a great commitment to a cause. Come with me to an upper room where some 120 men and women are joined together in prayer, waiting for the coming of a Holy Spirit. Jesus had told them to wait for the Holy Spirit. They weren’t sure what he was talking about but they were waiting. The Risen Christ had appeared to them and they were waiting.

Today the Church of Jesus Christ needs the Spirit to visit once again. When we talk of churches that are declining in membership, that are declining in power, and especially declining in influence in their communities, we need once again the gift of a counsel of the Holy Spirit. On this Pentecostal Day I want you to think a few moments about who is the Holy Spirit.

Well, first of all, it is not an “It”. It is the third person of the Trinity and Jesus promised in John, chapter 14. He had this to say on the night before He went to His death:

In verse 25 of Chapter 14 He said:

So part of the Spirit’s mission is a counselor. He is a teacher. He helps us to understand God’s Word. He helps us to put God’s truth into practice. And especially the work of the Holy Spirit is detailed in John, chapter 16 when Jesus said:

So, one of the works of our Lord through the Holy Spirit is especially to convict us of sin, to cleanse us of sin, and to help Christ’s life to live in us.

Jesus made a promise to them before he ascended. Those assembled wanted to know about the kingdom of Israel. In Acts He says:

Jesus had told them to wait for Him in the city “until you are clothed with power from on High.”

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. How do you explain that? It is a mystery. I am John Fowler; I am a father and a son and a husband at the same time, but still John Fowler, and depending on whether I am with Mom or my wife or my children, I relate a little bit differently, but still I am John Fowler. But it is still a mystery.

But the third person of the Trinity also equips the Church. In Corinthians 1, chapter 12, the Bible talks about us being a body of Christ and we are given gifts to serve Him, and how each manifestation of the spirit is given for the common good and it speaks of the gift of teaching, of preaching, of healing, of administration, of service — all kinds of gifts. You are gifted, if you know Christ, for service.

But also the Body of Christ is designed in such a way that we all need each other. There are no big shots. Everyone gifted by God is valuable and needed in the Body of Christ.

But especially the Spirit equips us for holy living. When Paul wrote to the Galatians, in the fifth chapter, he described that if someone’s life is yielded to the Spirit, these characteristics will come forth: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control. Would you like some of that? I know, sometimes I wish I had more of that. How about that self-control? He equips us for service. He gives us power for holy living.

It’s a big day for car racing. They have already started their engines in Indianapolis. They’ll do it in Lowe’s Motor Speedway tonight. I remember going to a race years ago, Cub Scout Saturday. They went three hundred miles. It was real entertaining — lot of people there. I had been a basketball fan, a baseball fan — I had never seen so many people in my life. I mean, they really turn out for this and this wasn’t even the main event. It was hot. Someone gave me some earplugs. I wasn’t sure why I would need those, but once I got there I found out why. It is loud. I was impressed with the cars. Boy, they’re fast, with powerful, powerful engines. But especially what I liked was the pit crews. I just loved them. Whenever they pulled in, I was just amazed. They would jump on that car, fill it up with gas, and the way they changed tires —I can change a tire, but it takes me about thirty of forty-five minutes. I open it up, hoping the tire is in there, hoping the jack’s in there. When I jack the car up I want to be sure it’s not going to fall off — I’ve had that happen. But, I am just amazed at how they can do that. But you know, you tend not to see the pit crew names in the paper. I know the driver is incredibly gifted to be able to drive like that, but they know it’s a team. They know that they have to work together, and who ever comes across the finish line, it’s more than the driver.

When the Spirit is at work in the Church, that’s the way it is. People are using their gifts and this power is being put to good use.

James Robinson was a very gifted televangelist back in the 1980s. I heard him preach and I tell you, he was one of those who — you may not have sinned — but after you heard him preach, you would be thinking of some sins and you would confess them. He was just a real fiery prophet of God. A powerful preacher and he became very influential on television. By his own admission though, he was really an angry young man. More and more his gospel became more political; he really wasn’t that accountable to anyone. Sins in his life began to dominate him and he says that he became very depressed, suicidal. He felt like it was a claw in his brain. And then, as he says, a carpet cleaner, a man in his ministry, eighth grade education who knew Jesus, prayed for him, just put his hands on him and prayed that God would release this claw in his brain. He prayed for the power of the Spirit to come upon him and he was set free.

And what happened to him? He changed. He began to realize that, yes, God does have a wrathful side and He is a judge, no doubt about it, but there is another side to God. There is a loving side to God. There is a forgiving side to God. There is a compassionate side to God. So he changed. First of all, he took his name off his ministry and called it Life for Today. And then he had a television program and he wanted his wife to be on there. They didn’t want his wife to be on there because she wasn’t a speaker; she was real shy, a more introverted type of person, but he said, “No, I want her on there.” So when people come on there, what do they hear about? Encouragement. The love of Christ, how God can help you in everyday living, and especially about how God wants to help feed the hungry throughout the world. When the spirit came into his life, it changed him and made him more loving.

Who is the Holy Spirit? He is the third person of the Trinity who comes to empower us to live the Christian life. But what exactly did happen on the day of Pentecost? Well, they had been waiting; they had been waiting in prayer. They had been praying. That is the real key for the Sprit to work in your life: you wait in prayer. And no doubt there was some talking going on, because we know that they were of one accord, and we know that before this, they were not of one accord. So no doubt, there was some forgiveness going on. There was some housecleaning. There were some egos that had to be dealt with. But they were with one accord, and then when the Spirit came upon them, it’s like a rush of a mighty wind.

I remember a lady in a neighborhood that I lived in. She talked about a tornado that had come through there at the turn of the century and said it sounded like a train coming but they knew that there was something up because there were no train tracks nearby.

There was a rush of a mighty wind that came that day of Pentecost. Pentecost was a great agricultural feast where they would celebrate the harvest, but also celebrate the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai. So it was a great crowd that was there. It was fifty days after the Resurrection, after the Passover, and the Spirit came upon them. And they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

What happens here is different from the prayer language the you hear Paul speak about later in the New Testament. This is more like if you went to the UN and began to speak and there were no interpreters needed. All the different nations, all the different languages would be able to understand you — Southern, English, whatever. They would understand exactly what you are saying. That is miraculous. I have heard missionaries speak about this sometimes. You can’t explain it, but people can understand your language. But what is more than that, though — what are they saying? They are declaring the wonderful works of God. When the Spirit of God comes upon us, we can’t help but declare what God has done in our lives. No more are we so timid about it. No more are we worried so much about whether we are going to offend somebody. No, we are willing in a natural way to share how Christ has changed us, what He has done in our life, what He has done in our marriage, what He has done in our families, the difference that He makes.

Peter began to preach. They couldn’t believe that anyone could be this happy about God, so they (tape change). . .

. . lives were changed. Her name was Phoebe Palmer, under the influence of Holiness Methodists. They were known as Enthusiasts. Methodists are not always known as Enthusiasts, but back in the 1850s they were known as Enthusiasts. She had a great desire to preach Christ, but also her heart was open, and she believed in John Wesley’s message of Entire Sanctification, which is essentially loving God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. She really sought to put it into practice, as did the Holiness movement. But it is far more than just excited worship. It opened her heart to the poor. God led her heart to the Five Points neighborhood in New York to serve, to preach Christ, and to help the poorest of the poor in that troubled part of the city.

Or I think about William Booth of the Salvation Army, in an article entitled “Men Slept on the Bridges.” He had a crusade in London. He was staying with his son. He had had to drive across the town late at night. It was very, very cold and he noticed that there were a lot of men sleeping on the bridges.

And then that morning, as he was getting dressed, he said to his son, “Do you realize that there are men in London sleeping on the bridges?”

He said, “Well, yes sir. I know that.”

“Well, why is that? Why is the Church not doing anything?”

His son went on to explain the reasons why it was hard to do anything about that.

“Well, you should be ashamed. The Church should be doing something about that.” And he felt sort of funny about that. He said, “You need to get a building, heated, but you must do something.”

As I was reading that I realized that William Booth wasn’t so much looking for people who had real estate or looking for organizational skills. He was looking for Christians whose hearts it bothered, that men were sleeping on the bridges.

That’s what the Spirit will do. He will open your heart to people in need. It will bother you that there are people in the world who are hungry. It will bother you that there are people who don’t have a place to sleep. It will bother you that people don’t know Christ.

That’s what happens when Pentecost comes. How do we receive Him today? How can Pentecost come again? How can we truly celebrate the birth of the Christian Church? Primarily we ask for this wonderful gift. And as it says in Luke, Chapter 11:

Jesus said, Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.

And our Lord says that if a child asks his father for a fish, is he going to give him a snake; or he asks for a egg, is he going to give him a scorpion? Well, of course not. And He says,

Oswald Chambers is the author of the spiritual classic, My Utmost for His Highest. He died in his early forties. His wife put his old sermons together and here comes a spiritual classic, and if you read those, you know this is a man who knew Christ very deeply. But by his own admission, as a younger man, he was very genuinely Christian, but he felt that he was also genuinely a very boring, dull person. He lacked joy. Oftentimes he was discouraged, depressed and he knew that what the scripture said about Christ and abundant living and the Sprit, but somehow it just hadn’t connected until a man named F. B. Meyer came to the school where he was teaching. He began to preach from Luke 11:13 about the gift of the spirit, and so he prayed. He describe it this way:

For Oswald Chambers, he was disappointed, for there was no emotion. He couldn’t tell there was any difference. But then, changes began to occur. In fact, so much so, that five years later he wrote, “If the previous four years of my life had been nothing but Hell on Earth, the last five have been Heaven on Earth. Every aching abyss of my heart has been filled with the overflowing love of God. Love is the beginning, the middle, and the end.”

Truly a sign of the Spirit coming into our heart as God gives us a new love for Him and a love for other people. And especially the Sprit, when it comes, will give us a desire to serve Him.

Years ago, as I was struggling about whether to preach of not, I was a vacuum cleaner salesman, going around eastern North Carolina, I read Billy Graham’s book on the Holy Spirit. And I remember trusting Billy Graham, having great respect for him, as I still do. His book was Biblical, very solid about the Spirit. But I remember a fear that if I really asked the Helper to come into my life in a full way, that there was just no telling what He might do. He might make me strange, or real emotional, or crazy, or the Methodist Church might not want me, but I remember just being afraid what He would do. Well, I went ahead and asked anyway, and prayed. And so much of it is a surrender. It is a more than a one time experience, but I can tell you what happened after that. It was not what I expected, but I began to have this real hunger and desire to study the Bible. I began a love affair with the Christian Book Store and really had a hunger to study and learn, because I didn’t realize the call to preach was a call to study. I mean you need to do your homework if you are going to get up and preach the Gospel. And I got in the habit, before I would get on the road, I would get up and read for a couple of hours, and then while I was driving around Eastern North Carolina I would practice my sermons. That’s a pretty good indication that God probably wants you to preach if that’s what you do: You get up and you preach on the road. People probably were looking at me but I didn’t really care because I wanted to practice, and that’s still the way I do it today. But I had to get past a fear of what would happen.

The Wind of the Spirit. Pentecost can still happen today when we allow Him to come into our lives. And one of the greatest ways that God, the Holy Spirit, works in our lives is He helps us through very difficult times.

Let me close with this story. Bill and Gloria Gaither, I am sure you have heard their Homecoming Concerts, videos. A lot of people love just good old Southern Gospel music. Back years ago, about 1970 they were going through a very difficult time. They had a four-year old, a three-month old and one on the way. Bill had been sick and had mononucleosis. His sister had just gone through a divorce. They were beginning to get criticized that the only reason they wanted to do Christian music was to make a buck, so it was just a real difficult time for them. Then they described it this way:

After a simple prayer by one of Bill’s close friends, a prayer that commanded the Devil to back off, both Bill and Gloria recalled that the strength of the Holy Sprit seemed to come to their aid. Christ’s Resurrection in all its power was reaffirmed in their hearts. They were assured that the future, left in God’s hands, would be just fine. So when their little baby boy Benjamin was born in July of 1970, in gratitude for that, they wrote “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone. For I know He holds the future and life is worth the living just because He lives.”

Let us pray.

Our Father, We confess at times that we are weary and tired and lack courage. Lord, we pray today for the gift of the Sprit to come into our lives, to have the power to live the Christian life, Lord, to have the desire to see other lives changed by this good news. Lord, we welcome You, and once again on this Pentecostal Sunday, we invite the Helper to come, as we wait. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.