bob.blog: Pentecost Sermon

Here's my Pentecost sermon from 2007- a bouillabaisse of Bob, Rob Bell and Tim Keller. Steal if helpful :)

Main passage, Acts 2
Reading- Psalm 50:1-15
Song-
All, right… let’s start off this morning by talking a little bit about the rules. How many of you had rules growing up? What were some of them? Some good rules, some bad rules… And yet, we as much as we recognize that some rules are always necessary, we also recognize that they change only one thing- our behavior- what happens outside. Rules rarely change the heart.
Today is Pentecost- and it’s an anniversary for the people of God. You may know it as the anniversary of what? What do we celebrate?
Yes, the day the Holy Spirit came, fulfilling God’s promise to send His Spirit to all people, fulfilling Jesus’ promise that if He went away He would send us the Holy Spirit as a Comforter, as a Teacher, as someone who would convict us of sin and lead us into truth. But it’s also the anniversary of something else…
If you have a Bible, keep your finger in Acts 2 where we’re going to be most of the morning, but take a look at Exodus 32.
The people of Israel had been in slavery for 400 years in Egypt, and when they finally called out to God, He set them free, sending plague after plague on those keeping them in slavery, each plague judging one of their gods and showing YHWH, God’s, power over everything. In spite of all the plagues, Pharoah refused to let the people go, and so God sent one last plague- the Passover. An angel went all through Egypt and killed every firstborn in the land, sparing only those households who had the blood of a lamb on the doorpost of their house. And so God led them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, drowning Pharoah and his army that pursued them, and He led them to Mt Sinai. It was fifty days after the Passover when Moses came down from Mt Sinai to give the people the law. He had gone up the mountain to meet with God and in his absence the people had decided to throw a huge party gorging themselves on food, getting drunk on the wine they had brought out of Egypt and worst of all, had made an idol out of gold and begun to worship it-
Moses comes down from the mountain and can hear the sound of their partying all the way down. He reaches the bottom and h is so furious with what he sees that he smashes the tablets on which God had written the Law, takes their idol and grinds it into powder, mixes it with their drinking water and makes them all drink it… and then calls the Levites- the tribe who would later serve in the Temple and says “All of you- take swords and go back and forth through the camp and kill people.” And so they do- and it says about 3,000 people died that day.
Pretty wild story, eh? *50 days after Passover, Moses comes down from the mountain with the Law. All the people are drunk. The result? 3,000 of them die that day.
Oh, and by the way, there is a rabbinical legend that as God spoke/wrote the ten commandments out for Moses, 70 tongues of flame shot out from His mouth and went all over the world. There’s another rabbinic legend that Moses himself had his tongue changed to flame by an angel.
Okay- Got all that? 50 days after Passover, Law, tongues of flame, drunk people, 3,000 dead. Yeah? Now- Acts chapter 2…
VS 2:1
Now, we think of Pentecost as the day the Holy Spirit came, but it says here they were all together on the day of Pentecost- a Jewish Holiday- called PENTEcost because it came 50 Days after Passover and it was when they remembered the giving of the Law, the rules- Moses bringing the 10 commandments to them, all the things we just talked about.
So, all the Christ followers are together in one place, it’s 50 days after Passover, 50 days after Jesus, the One John the Baptizer called ''The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” was crucified, the day when all around them in Jerusalem people are remembering the story we just walked through and…
VS 2-4
So, not just one person with a tongue of flame, but each and every one, men and women, filled with God’s Spirit.
VS 5-6
What was it that these people heard?
VS 7-11
These people were all hearing what God had done in Jesus- they were probably recounting all they had seen God do over the last few days in the crucifixion of Jesus, His resurrection and then His ascension… in their own languages.
VS 12
Yeah, no doubt- I’d probably be fairly freaked out to walk into that scene. And so-
VS 13
Okay- Got all that? 50 days after Passover, tongues of flame, people thinking they are drunk…
So Peter steps up and where as Moses gave them the Law, he gives them… the Gospel. He says
VS 14-18
God had made His people a promise: Someday, the Holy Spirit would come, not just in the temporary, limited way they were accustomed to, but to all people, Jew and Gentile alike, poured out, on men and women alike. And now God was keeping that promise.
Peter tells them what was happening right then and there, and then moves on to describe some things yet to happen from Joel
VS 19-20
And here’s the point of his sermon:
VS 21
Now, he’s speaking to Jewish audience, and when he says “Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will saved” there probably wasn’t a person in the crowd who would argue with him. He’s simply quoting directly from the Hebrew Scriptures.
And so Peter kind of unpacks for them what calling on the name of the Lord looks like- He says:
Vs 22
Peter said- you God fearing people need to know- God put His stamp of approval of Jesus through miracles and ultimately…
VS 23-24 And look down at VS 32-33
The resurrection proved that in Jesus, God was reconciling the world to Himself. Jesus wasn’t crazy, or mistaken or lying about His mission to seek and save what was lost, namely you and me. All His claims were proven true on Easter morning.
And now, 50 days after that weekend when they killed Jesus and when He rose again, on the day they remember the giving of the Law, Peter stands in front of them and gives them something very different- the Gospel. He says:
VS 36-37
The crowd recognizes that if what Peter is saying is true in any way, then there are implications- if God Himself has broken into human history in the person of Jesus Christ, and they crucified Him, and then God raised Him from the dead three days later- this probably means something specific, in terms of a response. And so Peter says:
VS 38-41
The Gospel is given and 3,000 people put their lives in the hands of Jesus and so come alive. Do you see how these two stories fit together and how one answers and completes the other?
This is absolute divine irony, that on the very day that Jews from around the world gather in Jerusalem to reaffirm their commitment to the Law of Moses, the Holy Spirit descends on them offering the Gospel, the promise of new life to all who will believe in Jesus.
See, it is not for no reason that the NT says that the law ends in death, but the Spirit brings life (2 Cor 3:5-6)
Here’s the difference between Law and the Gospel- The Law, all the rules, bring death because they show me just how bad I am. How selfish, how uncaring, how lustful, whatever. But it doesn’t help me be anything different. All it can do for me is tell me right from wrong. And because Law offers no help in actually doing what is right, Law-oriented, rule-oriented religion quickly degenerates down into a futile attempt at self-betterment. If I can just follow the rules and white-knuckle it, maybe I can be a better person than I am and God will be happy with me. Just tell me the bare minimum I have to do and not do to “get into heaven.” The problem is, it doesn’t work. Following the rules may make a difference in what people see, but it never changes what really matters- my heart.
Law brings only compliance. It’s outward.
And it lasts only until I think I can do something and not get caught.
But grace, the Gospel, starts with God loving you, calling you, ready to accept you on the basis of what Jesus has done for you, and brings repentance, a turning around… and that’s inward- real change that begins deep inside and moves outward. Jesus, the presence of God’s Spirit in our lives… now that makes a difference… Law is skin deep, but grace goes all the way down, to the core of my being. Law brings death, but the Gospel brings life.
But here’s the thing, too many of us settle. We settle for the outward, rules-religion of being good boys or girls rather than the kind of people who speak the Gospel with our words and our lives. We settle for the toilet water of a religion of self-betterment and white-knuckle trying harder to get God’s approval when He’s already offering us the good wine of the Gospel and inviting us to be rescued and renewed through the work of Jesus on our behalf- and calling us to take part in the rescue and renewal of the world… and doing what the Law could not- giving us a rightness we could never have on our own.
I need the Holy Spirit in my life- not just to help me know right from wrong, intellectually, or even simply to choose the right from wrong, but to help me actually experience the kind of internal change that makes me WANT the right over the wrong. To undo me, to remake me. And I need Him to do for me what He did for those first Christians on that Pentecost day 2000 years ago- fill me, consume me, put the words of the Gospel on my tongue in a way that’s understandable to those listening and send me out into a world that needs to hear about what God is doing- the way God is working in this world, the forgiveness He offers through Christ. To point me outward from myself towards Him and towards the world He loves.
See, the purpose of redemption is not to escape the world but to renew it, to change it. The gospel is not just about individual happiness and fulfillment, about making me a better person, but about seeing God’s will done on earth as it is in Heaven. It is about the coming of God's kingdom to renew all things, including the city of Portland.
And so, the gospel creates a people with an alternate way of living. The Gospel calls us to see our lives, our money, our ethics, our sexuality, the way we treat each other very differently. If your Gospel does not break down your prejudices, if it does not sow in you compassion and a passion for justice, if it doesn’t move you and change you, even slowly but surely, well… as we’ve been seeing in the Book of James, it might not be the Gospel that you’ve bought into.
Because when the Gospel begins to work on a people, when the Holy Spirit actually shows up…Well, look what happened for these people:
VS 42-47
Only the Holy Spirit can make that kind of community- one that takes care of each other, that cares for the poor sharing what they have with great joy and generosity… one that worships God.
There are people connected to this community who are at many different places spiritually- and that’s a good thing. And I know that for each of you, the journey is going to look a bit different, feel a bit different… But my dream for you is that you would hear the words of Peter and see the progression- turning from self to God, from sin to a new way of living, being forgiven, starting a new life in the way of Jesus.
And my dream for this community is that we would be shaped by that Gospel- that everything we do with and for one another would flow out of our understanding of God’s redemptive plan and that we would never be guilty of doing what so many do- playing at church, but rather that we would be set on fire with a passion for God that overflows in worship and a passion for the city of Portland that overflows with joyful generosity and giving to each other and to the poor.
We need the Holy Spirit, because we can be as hip as we want, as artsy as we want, as postmodern as we want… whatever, but I can tell you that we’ll never get where we need to be on our own power and initiative. We need the Holy Spirit to flow into this community like a wind, to rest on each of us, to fill us, to change us, and to make us the kind of community that begins to transform Portland from the inside out, even as we ourselves are changed. Let’s pray.