"God is... Spirit"

12-Jun-2011

“God Is…Spirit”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196 corinthtoday.org

The Holy Spirit is wild, free, and hidden from sight.

Acts 2:1-21
June 12, 2011

Anticipating revival

I am quite convinced it is no accident, speaking either from a human or a divine perspective, that on the week before Pentecost Sunday I attended the “National Conversation on Revival” in Chicago, Illinois.

The conference convened at Moody Church in Chicago, named for a Nineteenth Century urban revivalist who was never ordained as a minister. Dwight L. Moody was a businessman, a shoe salesman to be precise, who conducted evangelistic crusades in Chicago, New York, and other cities in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. He was passionate about education for underprivileged children in Chicago as well as Christian leaders. He founded the Bible Institute that took his name following his death.

This event wasn’t about Dwight L. Moody, however. It was a gathering of evangelists, pastors, campus ministers, authors, and leaders of national and international prayer ministries. The theme of “revival” centered the program on the study of past revivals, including two great “awakenings” in American history, and on prayer for God to move once more to turn the church, even the whole nation, to himself. Only the Holy Spirit can produce that kind of transformation.

As I confessed Thursday on my blog (corinthpastorbob.com), it was ironic for me to attend this gathering, since I am neither a student nor a proponent of revivals. Revivalism is not emphasized in the Reformed church, although the founders of this church would have been an exception. The North Carolina Classis broke from the German Reformed Church during the same era as Moody lived because men like Jeremiah Ingold said they cherished their revivals, prayer meetings, and Sunday schools.

My interest this morning is not to debate revivalism. My interest is God. I don’t mean that as a one-up on the meeting in Chicago or anyone who was there. What impressed me, in fact, was the ardent God-focus of the participants that shamed me in many ways. The National Conversation on Revival was all about humility before God, seeking God, depending on God, and knowing God.

Knowing God is our theme this summer at Corinth. Last week we began by saying that God is knowable. He created us in his image – with enough of his likeness to be aware of him and relate to him – to love and be loved by him.

So let’s join this journey of knowing God more intimately this summer. Fortunately we don’t have to create the knowledge of God in a vacuum. He has revealed himself in Scripture. For the next three weeks we will ponder how God has revealed himself as three persons, what Christians call the mystery of the Trinity. I’ll come back to that theme at the end of the sermon.

We begin on this Pentecost Sunday with the Holy Spirit, and turn to a familiar story to understand what it means that God is Spirit.

God’s Spirit is unpredictable

The day of Pentecost is first described in Acts 2 as a windstorm. The disciples were “all together in one place” (1) ten days after Jesus’ ascension when “suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting” (2).

Wind is a metaphor for what they heard, not what they saw. What they saw were “tongues of fire” (3) resting on each head. This was a sign that the Holy Spirit had filled the disciples, and they were enabled to speak in other languages (4).

This is absolutely, as far as I know, a unique event in recorded human history. I don’t even know of a claim by a Pentecostal or charismatic group, where “speaking in tongues” is considered evidence of the Holy Spirit, that is like what happened on the Day of Pentecost. Acts 2 is not about “unknown tongues” or “heavenly languages.” We’re talking about real, human languages – comparable to a gathering of the United Nations where every representative without the use of human interpreters, would hear an English speaker’s words in their native language – French, Spanish, German, Russian, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Thai, Swahili, and whatever other language you can name.

What happened in Jerusalem that day was not only unrepeatable, it was unpredictable. The disciples had prayed for ten days in Jerusalem because Jesus had told them to wait there to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5). But there is no way they could have known what that would look like.

When Jesus with Nicodemus, he had also used the play on words about the word “spirit.” “Spirit” and “wind” are the same word. Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

No one living in the United States of America in the spring of 2011 needs to be instructed about the unpredictability or force of wind. From Tuscaloosa, AL, to Joplin, MO, to eastern North Carolina, we know that wind, though invisible, can change everything without warning.

If you are longing for the Holy Spirit to work in your life, in your family, in your church or in your denomination, in Hickory, in the United States, or in the world, I’m not sure it’s particularly productive to study how he’s done it before – what conditions have to be met or what it will look like when the Spirit has blown through. The disciples knew to do two things: pray and wait. What happened when the wind blew was completely unpredictable.

God’s Spirit is cosmopolitan

That God is Spirit means nobody owns him. You don’t domesticate a spirit. You can’t tribalize him.

Verses 5-13 describe how God-fearing Jews who had come to Jerusalem from throughout the Diaspora were drawn into the event first by curiosity (6) and then by amazement (7). A sampling of their nations and languages is included in verses 9-11. They ask each other, “What does this mean?” (12) while cynics dismiss the apostles as drunk (13).

Pentecost is an enduring reminder that God is not a Jew. Nor is God an American. Believers in every time and place have been tempted to presume that Jesus looks like us, that God thinks like us, and that the Holy Spirit speaks in our language.

The implications of Pentecost would need more time to unfold in the book of Acts, but the early apostles got the message early. This crowd of Aramaic-speaking, Jewish men born and raised in Galilee and Judea, would not define the boundaries of the Spirit’s kingdom work. Soon Jews from other nations would expand the circle, then women would prophesy, then Samaritans and God-fearing Gentiles would be included, and finally the uncircumcised would be welcomed. This gospel would be for the whole world.

Two thousand years later, is your heart on the whole world as God’s is? His heart today, I’m sure, is on the people of southern Sudan who have endured so much pain and death during the long struggle leading up to their independence. Right now, as we speak in the comfort and security of our sanctuary, Christians in the Nuba Mountains are facing ethnic cleansing for no other reason than their race and faith. (Click here for more.) Will you pray for them today?

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t even know until this week in Chicago that today is “The Global Day of Prayer.” This is an international movement that is timed for Pentecost Sunday, praying for God’s glory and Christ’s love to fill the whole earth. As a prayer of response to the sermon this morning, we will pray together “A Prayer for the World” that is being prayed around the globe this Pentecost Sunday. (The prayer is included at the end of this sermon manuscript.)

God’s Spirit is expectant

There is something about the unpredictable, cosmopolitan Spirit that gives hope. Watch how the Apostle Peter uses the Bible not only to ground the Pentecost experience in Scripture but to extend its promise.

In verse 14, Peter addresses the crowd. He assures them nobody’s been drinking at nine in the morning (15). Then he begins his Pentecost sermon with a quotation from the Old Testament prophet Joel.

A couple of years ago, I preached on the minor prophets, twelve short books at the end of the Old Testament that Christians generally ignore. And honestly, if it weren’t for these few verses Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost, Joel would be an easy book to ignore. Nobody knows who Joel was or when he wrote. He spoke about a disastrous infestation of locusts, but we’re not sure whether that was literal or figurative.

But Joel crafted one of the Bible’s most memorable one-liners, borrowed by Peter and Paul: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (21, cp. Romans 10:13). It’s all in the context of the Second Coming, or “the consummation.” According to David Bryant, every revival, those in the past and those we long for, is “an approximation of the consummation.” Prayers for revival are really variations of the prayer Jesus taught us to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” If that’s what we are praying for, count me in!

It’s all about God’s Spirit being poured out (17). It’s about God speaking to us with fresh messages from fresh voices (17-18). It’s about visible signs of God’s power and presence (19-20). It’s about “the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord” (20).

Pentecost was Consummation: Act 1, Peter declares, the down payment on the day when every knee will bow and every wrong will be made right. The Final Act is still ahead of us, but we Christians are stubborn about our hope that it will come. And yes, we all long in our own way to see glimpses of what’s to come, whether you want to call those glimpses revival, renewal, awakening, reformation, or something else.

Those glimpses can happen in you and me individually. They can happen in our families and churches. They can be localized or short-lived. Joel is telling us those glimpses, or at least the hopes of them, are most meaningful in times of disaster. Peter is saying that every time someone calls on the name of the Lord or there is an unusual display of the Spirit who will not be domesticated or tribalized, that gives us hope for the coming of Christ to restore all things!

Mystery of the Trinity

God is Father, God is Son, and God is Holy Spirit. For two thousand years the church has been trying to understand and explain the mystery of the Trinity. We probably just need to admit that we cannot.

Perhaps it helps most of all just to say that God is too wonderful and complex to reveal himself to us as one Person. If we limited our thinking about God to see him only as Father, or Son, or Spirit, our perception of him would be even more inadequate than it is. So in his self-revelation, God gives us both the plural and the singular – and further confounds our reason in the process. If you don’t understand, that’s the point.

As for God the Spirit, one of my favorite depictions is in Paul Young’s The Shack. The Holy Spirit in this book is an Asian woman named Sarayu. Mack, the central character in the book, finds that as he follows her, “To walk behind such a being was like tracking a sunbeam. Light seemed to radiate through her and then reflect her presence in multiple places at once. Her nature was rather ethereal, full of dynamic shades and hues of color and motion” (130).

Sarayu is a gardener, and Mack is surprised that her garden, though stunningly beautiful and dazzlingly colorful, appears random, and chaotic. But Sarayu insists it is actually a fractal – an infinitely complex set of patterns that looks messy up close, but viewed from a distance is a finely crafted pattern.

By the end of the chapter, Sarayu says to Mack, burdened with grief and confused by his internal logic, “This garden is your soul. This mess is you! Together, you and I, we have been working with a purpose in your heart. And it is wild and beautiful and perfectly in process. To you it seems like a mess, but I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive – a living fractal” (140).

I don’t know what’s percolating in your heart today – what hurts, what joys, what fears, what triumphs, what confusions, what hopes for revival, what doubts things will ever change. I do know Who wants to live there. He is God the Holy Spirit, and he is wild, free, and invisible. You cannot predict what he will do, or when. You cannot claim him as your own to the exclusion of all others. You are usually unaware that he is there. But you can trust him to display a beautiful garden of grace out of the chaos that is you.

Amen.

“A Prayer for the World”

Almighty God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

Together with believers all over the world,

We gather today to glorify Your Name.

You are the Creator of heaven and earth.

There is no one like You, holy and righteous in all Your ways.

We submit to Your authority as the King of the universe.

We pray with one voice to enthrone You in our hearts

and to honour You before the world.

Lord God, You alone are worthy of our praise and adoration.

Our Father in heaven,

Thank You for loving the world so greatly.

You gave Your only Son, Jesus Christ,

to die on the cross for our sins

so that we could be reconciled to You.

We are grateful to call You Father and to be called Your children.

Nothing can separate us from Your love.

Thank You Father, for adopting us into Your family
because of Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Lord Jesus Christ,

You alone are worthy to open the scrolls of history,

for You were slain and have redeemed us to the Father by Your blood.

We confess that You are Head of the Church

and Lord of all heaven and earth.

May people from every tribe and language become Your followers

so that Your blessing brings transformation among all peoples.

Let Your kingdom be established in every nation of the world

so that governments will rule with righteousness and justice.

And may Your Name be great, from the rising of the sun to its setting.

Jesus Christ, You are the Saviour of the world and the Lord of all.

Father of mercy and grace,

We acknowledge that we have sinned

and that our world is gripped by the power of sin.

Our hearts are grieved by injustice, hatred and violence.

We are shamed by oppression, racism and bloodshed in our land.

We mourn all loss of life in murder, war and terrorism.

Our homes are broken and our churches are divided by rebellion and pride.

Our lives are polluted by selfishness, greed, idolatry and sexual sin.

We have grieved Your heart and brought shame to Your Name.

Have mercy on us as we repent with all our hearts.

God of mercy, forgive our sins.
Pour out Your grace and heal our land.

Spirit of the living God,

Apart from You, we can do nothing.

Transform Your Church into the image of Jesus Christ.

Release Your power to bring healing to the sick,

freedom to the oppressed and comfort to those who mourn.

Pour Your love into our hearts and fill us with compassion

to answer the call of the homeless and the hungry

and to enfold orphans, widows and the elderly in Your care.

Give us wisdom and insight for the complex problems we face today.

Help us to use the resources of the earth for the well-being of all.

Holy Spirit, we need Your comfort
and guidance. Transform our hearts.

Lord Jesus Christ,

Because You were dead, but are now risen,

and the Father has given You a Name above all names,

You will defeat all powers of evil.

Tear down strongholds and ideologies that resist the knowledge of God.

Remove the veil of darkness that covers the peoples.

Restrain the evil that promotes violence and death.

Bring deliverance from demonic oppression.

Break the hold of slavery, tyranny and disease.

Fill us with courage to preach Your word fearlessly,

and to intercede for the lost faithfully.

Almighty God, deliver us from evil.

King of Glory,

Come and finish Your work in our cities, our peoples and our nations.

We lift our voices in unison with believers from Africa and Asia,

from the Middle East and Europe, from North and South America,

and from Australia and the Pacific Islands—together we cry:

Lift up your heads, O you gates!
Be lifted up ancient doors
so that the King of glory may come in!

As Your deeds increase throughout the earth,

and as Your blessings abound to all the nations,

they will seek You, asking, “Who is this King of glory?”

Together we will answer:

He is the Lord Almighty!
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!

Come fill the earth with Your glory as the waters cover the sea.

The Spirit and the Bride say: