Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Sermon June 3-4, 2017 Pentecost

Title: The Spirit of truth has been poured into your hearts!
Text: Acts 2:1-21

17 “‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;

The Day of Pentecost begins the work of the church. In a dramatic way the Spirit comes.

2 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

The work of the church begins with the Spirit; the rushing wind, the fire, speaking in foreign tongues, hearing in one’s own language, quite a dramatic scene. The Festival of Weeks – grain harvest – those Jews gathered together in Jerusalem – and the Spirit comes just as Jesus had said 50 days after Easter and 10 days after he ascended.
There were quite a variety of people too:

9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

The church has a language too. For some it’s German, others English or Spanish, for some Hebrew or Arabic, Japanese or Indonesian. But also the language of the church has one important element and that is it … begins with and is understood through the Spirit.

28 “And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions. Joel 2:28

The Spirit has now been revealed as the one sent to glorify Christ. We have a greater measure of His manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s work in our day than the believers of the Old Testament had.

"At the time when Jesus preached, He promised the Holy Spirit, and therefore the Holy Spirit was not yet there - not that He was not in existence in His person, but that He was not fully manifested – or made known - in His revelation and in His work.

For that is the special work of the Holy Spirit - that He reveal and glorify Christ, that He preach and give testimony concerning Him. That this office of the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ the Lord in the preaching of the forgiveness of sins, and how one may be delivered from the power of sin, death, and the devil, and have comfort and joy in Christ.

All this was at the time of Christ, unheard of and not mentioned; that deliverance, salvation, righteousness, joy, and life should be given us through that man, Christ, whom people did not yet know."

Popular Commentary of the Bible P.E. Kretzmann NT Vol. 1 Pg 452

I made a home visit after Memorial Day on Tuesday and the lady had a page from her Portals of Prayer marked with a fold. For some reason she didn’t like it or understand it and wanted my help.

The text was John 21:17

17[Jesus] said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” … “Feed my sheep.
The basic devotion began by asking the question, why do we love our church? It then went on to list some reason. Maybe we belong to a small group, or have strong friendships; maybe its youth activities or things for the kids; It might be a friendly church or a nice pastor or maybe we’ve been there for years and can’t imagine going anywhere else.

It continues that often there are social reasons that we come – personal relationships, friends, social activities or things we do … that in our mind no one else could do or at least do as well as we can.

But it continued that why we come is for the reasons that Jesus sent the Spirit. So that we might be taught, and fed on God’s word, which brings to our ears forgiveness when we repent and points out our sin when we are blissfully ignorant and happy to just keep on sinning.

The pastor, whether we like him and his personality, or think the church would be better served with someone else - is whom God has placed through the call of the church to be the under shepherd here, to proclaim God words through the working of God’s Holy Spirit. – to bind up we who are brokenhearted.

Portals of Prayer May 7, 2017 Dcs. Rachael D. Thompson (summarized)

Ill.

My old neighbor Don had an interesting story. I must have been talking to him about changing churches from Heart of the Hills in Rochester to St. John Lutheran.

So Don said, “I’ve changed churches too … but I’m in the same building!”

I didn’t quite understand what he was saying so he explained that his church which was Baptist had grown too big for the building and moved. When the building was sold to another church a Methodist one Don stayed there and started worshiping with them. Later the Methodist church grew too big for the building and moved and it was a Pentecostal that moved in … and Don stayed. But for Pentecostal’s they don’t see the manifestation of the Spirit and his work in the same way as we do. They see the Spirit’s activity as the important work and rather than pointing to the work of Christ on our behalf, desire to see the Spirit work in a miraculous way like on the Day of Pentecost. The speaking in tongues for the Pentecostal is a normal working of God through the Spirit and unless you demonstrate that gift and speak in tongues – which to them are heavenly and indiscernible languages … at times, interpreted by others … who might also speak in indiscernible languages. So - after awhile … as Don said – “of the mumbo jumbo” – he left.

In a sense Don had it right and wrong. Wrong, because the building is not the church. It may be the place for a time where the church gathers and meets, and even other members of the body of Christ might meet and gather in that same place. But the true church is where the word of God, both Law and Gospel, is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered and by the working of the Holy Spirit Christ is made known.

Even those Christians who wrongly understand the work of the Holy Spirit and expect the miraculous working of God as on the Day of Pentecost as a normative sign of the Spirit’s work and faith in our day still have the word of God and God can and does work and teach through that word too.

Maybe that is why Don finally left.

Pentecost has come … and before the Lord returns to judge the world he tells us through the words of Peter’s sermon:

19 And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
20 the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.

But we are all left with this great comfort because the Spirit of truth has been poured into your hearts!

21 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen

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