Sermon Summary, Champaign Seventh-day Adventist Church, May 9, 2009

God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.

From our distance of nearly 2,000 years, we may find the story of Pentecost merely interesting and exotic.  Or we may tame Pentecost even more by assuming that it is entirely contained in a fundamental belief that is printed in a book.  But for the early church, Pentecost was like a turn of history.

Reaching the day of Pentecost is always a matter of following the instructions in Leviticus 23, one of the great chapters that outlines the yearly cycle of Jewish festivals.  And so, as The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary mentions, “in the year of the crucifixion, Nisan 16 fell on a Sunday…Pentecost, coming 50 days, inclusive, later…would also fall on a Sunday that year.” On this Sunday, the disciples were gathered in prayer and in waiting.  Acts chapter 1 records one of the last things Jesus said to them:  “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.  For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”  According to Acts chapter 2, the believers were meeting every day.  Before the resurrection, the disciples were caught off guard, and they scattered.  Before Pentecost, they were expecting something, and they came together.  Something came alright, or, to be more precise, Someone came.

The gift came as the building shook as in an earthquake, the wind blew, and tongues of fire appeared over each believer in the house.  The commotion apparently did not last very long—just long enough to attract a crowd.  As it turned out, they had no more chances to see what they were looking for.  By the time the crowd arrived, the Holy Spirit was working in the medium that He would continue to use even into our time.  His power was flowing through what people said.  That Sunday, the new speech fit the international gathering.  No translators were necessary.  The miracle after the earthquake, wind and fire was that everyone heard the word of God in his or her native tongue.

Pentecost was—and is—like that.  Acts chapter 2 verse 4 does not tell us exactly what the believers said that was translated for their listeners or how long the miracle continued.  Neither the exact words nor the language matter. What matters about our words is up to the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit can do without our words completely and make use of the wind, the earth, or the flame.  The Spirit can start with our words and transform them into another language.  And the Spirit showed on Pentecost that He can do something that is possibly even more miraculous:  He can use a sermon. To our ears, there is nothing extraordinary about the Peter's sermon.  But something must have fired the words.  After all, the day ended with three thousand baptisms.  And those were just the first fruits of a much larger harvest that is still in progress. 

I hope no one feels that sermons from the pulpit are more useful to the Holy Spirit than the sermons that grow out of our routine conversations—as if God were somehow dependent on the abilities of preachers.  Most people will never deliver a sermon in church.  Everyone, though, can be a voice for the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is still able to add his fire to whatever our words may be:  a foreign language, an address to a group, a quiet conversation between just two people, the halting talk around a hospital bed.  But the Spirit needs people who care at least enough to wait for Him and to say “This is it!” when they see His power.  So, to quote a pointed question from Ellen White:  “Since this is the means by which we are to receive power, why do we not hunger and thirst for the gift of the Spirit?  Why do we not talk more of it, pray for it, and preach concerning it?”

God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.