This week we not only celebrate the anniversary of Clarence Road Baptist Church, we also celebrate the birthday of the church. Today is Pentecost Sunday. We remember how almost two thousand years ago the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus’ disciples there in Jerusalem and the church was born.

We are told that it was the day of Pentecost. That was one of the special Jewish feast days when people from across the ancient world would come to Jerusalem to worship. The day of Pentecost celebrated God giving the law to Moses on mount Sinai. The disciples had stayed in Jerusalem since they had seen Jesus ascend into heaven; Jesus had told them to. There must have been a degree of anticipation among them. Jesus had promised that soon the Holy Spirit would come upon them.

They had probably stayed out of the public eye after Jesus’ ascension. Luke tells us of them returning to an upstairs room where they were staying after the ascension. On the day of Pentecost Luke tells us they were all in one place, one hundred and twenty of them he has just told us in chapter one. He doesn’t tell us exactly where. It could just be that they had all come together in the temple for the feast of Pentecost.

Whether they were in the temple or the upper room, Luke tells us there came the sound of a violent wind that filled the place. They saw what appeared to be tongues of fire that rested upon each of them. The promised Holy Spirit had come; all of them were filled with the Spirit and began to speak in other tongues.

This caused a real stir in the city. Crowds rushed to see what all the noise was about. The crowd included people from all over the world who had come to Jerusalem to worship. They were amazed. The disciples were praising and worshipping God in a dozen different languages. People from across the world could hear God’s praises in their own language.

Some were overawed, others were cynical and just said the disciples were drunk; but the situation called for an explanation. A massive crowd has assembled, now was the time for the apostles to bear witness to the truth. Peter stands with the other eleven apostles and testifies. (Notice that the message, the testimony is not given in tongues but either Aramaic or Greek, one of the languages that most would be able to understand.)

Peter explains that what the people have seen and heard is what the prophet Joel had prophesied. The last days have come, and God has poured out his Holy Spirit. Not just upon special people like prophets or kings, but upon all believers, young and old, male and female.

But the reason why this prophecy has been fulfilled, Peter makes very clear. It is because of Jesus. Jesus is God’s promised messiah. He is a descendant of David, but he is someone who surpasses David in a unique way. Jesus is God come in human form. Everyone knew that Jesus was very special. They all knew that he did miracles in a way that had never been seen in all of history. They knew that he taught with divine authority. The tragic thing was, that the religious authorities had had him crucified.

What had been perhaps a matter of rumour and speculation was what had happened after that. Peter makes the truth quite clear. God had raised Jesus from the dead. In fact, in some mysterious way God had known all along the way that Jesus would be treated. It was all part of God’s plan that Jesus would die on the cross, but through his death he would defeat the powers of sin and death.

God had raised Jesus, from the dead, something that was prophesied by David himself. God has bestowed on Jesus not an earthly kingdom like the one David ruled, but exalted at God’s right hand Jesus reigns in heaven. From heaven he has poured out the Holy Spirit, to indwell, help and inspire all believers. The crowd have seen the evidence of the Holy Spirit; they have heard the explanation.

In fact many in that crowd would seen Jesus led out to be crucified. Some of them would have been among the crowd who had called out for Pilate to crucify Jesus. There would have been a lot of them who would have felt real pangs of conscience about what had happened on that Good Friday.

Now as Peter faces the people of Jerusalem with the truth, the Holy Spirit touches people’s hearts with a corporate sense of guilt. Luke tells us they were cut to the heart. They ask the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Peter gives a simple straightforward answer; ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Luke doesn’t tell us everything that Peter had to say to the crowd, but he makes it quite clear that Peter was in deadly earnest. He warns the people, he pleads with them to save themselves from their corrupt generation. The response was amazing. 3,000 people accept his message and are baptized that day.

That’s the story of Pentecost. That’s how the church began. Lets just briefly look at some lessons from that story for us today.

The first lesson is that in the story of Pentecost, we see something of a wise master plan. In fact we are witnessing God’s great master plan of salvation. Jesus has come into the world according to God’s plan. Even his crucifixion is in some mysterious way part of that plan. God raises Jesus from the dead; Jesus ascends to God’s right hand. Now on the very day of Pentecost in the very place where devout believers are gathered from all over the world, God pours out his Spirit for all to see. New believers will take the good news as they return home to different parts of the world.

What divine wisdom and insight. In the ways we seek to serve God it is so important that we are aware that what we do must be part of God’s plan. As we go through the book of Acts we will see how the Holy Spirit who has come upon the church now leads and guides the believers. As they pray, as they think and plan the Spirit enables them to effective spread the good news, first in Jerusalem but then into Samaria and then across the world. God has a plan, and by the Holy Spirit he will guide us to be part of that plan.

Secondly the gospel is for every one. Peter makes sure that the message is quite clear. He tells the people, ‘repent and be baptized every one of you’. Everybody needs God’s grace. All we like sheep have gone astray. We all share in the guilt of the human pride and sin that nailed Jesus to the cross. Just as Peter urged people in Jerusalem to save themselves from a corrupt generation, that message is relevant to our generation.

Our generation is a guilty generation with our materialism, our greed, our cynicism, and our immorality. Twenty first century people need to repent every bit as much as first century people. We need the reality of God’s forgiveness; we need the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise of these things is available to all. Above all else, as the Church of Christ we are called to make that known.

Thirdly, we also need to understand that in some respects, the experience of those first one hundred and twenty believers was unique, and in some respects different from our own. They experienced something that was a once for all experience, the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the church, as promised by Jesus. They heard the sound of rushing wind, they saw the tongues of fire, and they all spoke in tongues. They were already believers. The had most probably already been baptized in water as a mark of repentance, possibly by John the Baptist, possibly under Jesus ministry, because we know Jesus’ followers did baptize. I am grateful to Alan for pointing out to me that the experience of those 120 was the experience of the church being baptized in the Holy Spirit.

If we want to learn from this passage what experience of the Holy Spirit believers should normally expect to have, we can perhaps learn most from what Peter says to the crowd. The message is quite clear, “repent and be baptized, and you will receive the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is given to believers as they respond to Christ in repentance and baptism.

We know from elsewhere in scripture, in particular 1 Corinthians that when the believer receives the Holy Spirit, they will receive gifts of the Spirit, different people receive different gifts according to God’s wisdom. Some receive the gift of tongues, others gifts of teaching or encouragement. Above all, the most precious gift of the spirit is love.
One problem that has caused confusion for many people is that when people have been converted and baptized, they have had little or no teaching about the Holy Spirit. The Spirit has often been the neglected person of the trinity.

Our passage this morning however is quite clear, repent, be baptized and you will receive the Holy Spirit. A real, tangible experience of God’s Spirit coming into the life of the believer, to give the help and grace to follow Jesus. That is the testimony of Christian believers down the ages.

That is the story; those are some of the lessons of the day of Pentecost, the birthday of the church. May we remember it thankfully, may we also continue to experience the reality of the gift poured out on that day on all believers. And may the Spirit guide us in all we do as God’s people here at Clarence Road.
 

Amen.

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