Good morning, y'all. Don't worry, I'm not as animus as that music. That music was kind of scary. I'm not a scary dude, I promise.
Uh, it's a pleasure to be with you. You know, it's a great joy to be here. This is my first time in Colorado. I'm still getting used to my lips being chapped every morning. I woke up in the morning and was like, "Did someone punch me in the lip?" I was like, "Why is my lip busted?" So I'm still getting acclimated, but it's a pleasure to be here and to get the chance to fill in for my good friend Phil.
I told everyone yesterday that I've known Phil just about as long as my marriage, but he actually corrected me, all the way from afar, not here, and said, "Remember, you actually asked me for advice on how to win your bride over." So my bad, Phil.
I've actually been married for 11 years, so you can see a picture of my wife and my beautiful kids, Ryan and Sophia. Sophia is four, and Ryan, my six-year-old, is going on 16. It has been a super, super fun time in Seattle, just growing with my kids.
It's even great to see one of your staff members that I actually preached to when he was in the youth ministry. I didn't ruin him; he still worships Jesus, he's got kids, and just finished seminary. I'm like, "Dang, I am old." So I'm feeling that now.
If you would, I want you to put your hearts in a place, in a position, as we consider God's word. The translation, just so you know, when I was younger, I was a little immature. I'm not saying that you are, but when I was younger, I would judge churches based on the translations that they used.
Today, I chose not to use the ESV or the CSB or the HCSB. Y'all know we got a lot of acronyms. I chose to use the TLV, which is the Tree of Life Version, a Messianic translation. If you don't know what Messianic means, it means a Jewish person who believes that Jesus, or Yeshua—that's his government name—Jesus is his English name, but he'll still answer prayers in that name because he has caller ID.
Okay, so he will still answer to that, but I want us to understand the reality of the Jewishness of God's faithfulness and why it would make sense when we read today's text.
I'll say this, and it might be weird to say, but contrary to belief, the church did not start 2,000 years ago. The church started way before that, and we will actually see through even this translation, through the scriptures, that God has always been up to something. It's just that we didn't find out or get the instant notification on our iPhone until later on within the story.
So if you do have your Bibles, open up your Bibles and meet me in the book of Acts. We're going to be in Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 13. This is what the word of the Lord says.
And if you're wondering why I'm not kneeling when I'm praying, I'm not flexible like Phil, so I will pray for the gift of flexibility.
Okay, when the day of Shavuot came, which is also the day of Pentecost, suddenly there came a sound from heaven like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
And tongues of fire were spreading out and appeared to them, settling on each of them. And they were all filled with the Ruach, the Spirit of God, and they began to speak in other tongues as the Ruach, the Spirit, enabled them to speak.
Now, Jewish people were staying in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound came, the crowd gathered, and they were bewildered because each was hearing them speak in his own language.
And they were amazed and astonished, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we each hear our own birth language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and those living in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, parts of Libya toward Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring in our own tongues the mighty deeds of God."
And they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to each other, "What does this mean?" Others, poking fun, said, "They are all full of sweet wine." Roughly translated, he said, "Those guys are roasted. They're drunk."
Now, the series is called "Ghost Stories." One of the things that we understand about our culture and the understandings of ghosts, unfortunately, has kind of shaped in a negative way how we view death, life, and the afterlife.
In 1995, a movie came out, and it was called "Casper the Friendly Ghost." In this movie, starring Christina Ricci, a young boy dies and then wants to come back to life so he can go to a dance with Christina Ricci.
Now, obviously, theologically, we don't believe in ghosts in this way. You know, the Bible speaks very clearly about what life after death is, but I think there are some similarities that we can draw here from understanding the story of God in this particular text.
If we know anything about the culture of ghosts, we know that they cannot pass from this world to the next without doing what? Completing their unfinished business. We know that's not what we believe, but the reality is that the Spirit of God—and I came from the chocolate church, if you don't know what that is, that's the Black church—we call them the Holy Ghost.
Also, just so you know too, if you speak back to me, I know you're tracking with me, and that makes me preach, you know, less. But if I don't hear nothing back, that means you're asleep, and I need to wake you up in Jesus' name.
I hear you, brother. Let's go. The reality is that God's work is not finished, and in this text, we will see how God, the Holy Spirit, will be continuing to do and start what he has done.
In our text today, we'll see how God and the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter 2 continues and empowers us as followers to participate with him, with God, in his work of redeeming all of creation and partnering with him in his unfinished business.
Well, what is that unfinished business? Well, I have something to tell you: God, the Holy Spirit, is not like a ghoul or goblin who wants to come back from the dead to go to a high school dance. God, the Holy Spirit, is also not like the dude's character Patrick Swayze in the movie "Ghost," who comes back to have a pottery session with you. That is not who God is.
And God, the Holy Spirit—and the spoiler alert is this—that the unfinished business of God, the Holy Spirit, is that the Earth would one day be filled with his glory and that all things would be reconciled to Christ. All creation would be reconciled, and Jesus would rule this Kingdom as the good King and the Christ.
You see, this is what we call the good news. The good news, the gospel, contrary to belief, the good news of Jesus Christ is not about you saying a prayer so that you can get raptured or taken off Earth because everybody else is sinful except you and you need to escape this Earth. That's not what the Bible teaches.
In fact, the Bible actually teaches that heaven will one day come down and all of creation will be remade new. The good news of Jesus Christ is one that N.T. Wright, the theologian and New Testament scholar, would say is that God puts us right to put the world right.
That's through the power of God, the Holy Spirit, both in our proclamation and also in our demonstration. Could you imagine if Jesus came to Earth, he went through all that trouble, and then said, "Hey y'all, I'm here. Here's the gospel," and then dipped out and then didn't die on the cross to atone for our sins?
You see, our proclamation of the gospel is always coupled with our demonstration of the gospel, or as James, the brother of Jesus, would say, "Faith without works is dead." It's a cross-shaped gospel, as Pastor Brian Laritz would call it.
When we look and remember the fire on the mountain, we remember and see that God has a promise in the pattern—a promise in the pattern. But we have to remember the fire on the mountain.
And what do I mean by that? In verse 1, it says, "When the day of Shavuot came, they were all together in one place." If you do a historical rewind to 1,500 years before this date in Acts chapter 2, you remember it's called Pentecost.
In some of your translations, that's Pentecost; it's actually in Greek, but the Hebrew is called Shavuot. Sometimes we read Acts chapter 2 and we think Pentecost is this brand new thing because we've never seen it in the Bible, but it's actually in Exodus chapter 19.
What happens is that God, in leading with Moses, sets free the nation of Israel, and from the day of the Passover, the killing of the firstborn in Egypt, until they got to Sinai was, guess what? Fifty days. Before they got to Sinai, Moses got the tablets from God, the instructions, the Torah from God.
Fast forward 1,500 years later, Acts chapter 2 is one of the days of the festivals that the Jewish people are actually celebrating and remembering what God did 1,500 years earlier. The Jews were asked and commanded to go to Jerusalem for three holidays throughout the Jewish calendar: those were Passover, which we're talking about now, and Pentecost.
So when Jesus says, "Stay here, don't leave, because when I pour out my Spirit, you will be my witnesses" in Acts 1:8, that you shall receive power—they were already in Jerusalem because they were celebrating and being expectant of what God would do again, as he said he would do.
You see, when we remember the fire on the mountain, we remember that there is a promise in his pattern. We can't say that we want the God of Jacob to save us and then think that all of a sudden the church just starts with us. That is the great comfort because God has been faithful to his people, and then he grafts us in.
Again, even painting a deeper picture, Jesus appeared post-resurrection for how many days? Forty. And then ascends into heaven, and then ten days later sends his Spirit.
Acts chapter 2 is a mirrored pattern of Exodus chapter 19, verses 16 through 19. When God gave his people the Torah, we call it the law; it's probably better yet translated as instructions or the teachings, like a loving father to their children, that this is how you will relate to me, that I will be your God and you will be my people.
It says this: "That in the morning of the third day there was thundering, lightning, and a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of exceedingly loud shofar." What is that? It's like a trumpet or a ram's horn, or you could think about DJ Khaled—God's the best.
And it says that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the lowest part of the mountain. Now the entire Mount Sinai was in smoke because Adonai had just descended upon it in fire.
The smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace; the whole mountain quaked greatly. And then the sound of the shofar, there you go again, the air horn, grew louder and louder and louder. Then Moses spoke, and God answered him with a thunderous sound.
You see, the same elements that are here in Mount Sinai are the same elements here on the same day, 1,500 years later, celebrating God's deliverance and the giving of the Torah.
You see, here, all the elements are there in Acts chapter 2 off the start of the calendar of the high holidays. When the Passover leads to Pentecost, or Shavuot, it's supposed to be a holiday of celebration of what's called a harvest.
But we see here in Acts chapter 2 there is an ultimate harvest that happened spiritually. You know what that was? Peter gets up and gives a sermon, and 3,000 people trust and profess faith in Jesus for the first time as their Messiah.
But I want you to know that these people were not Gentiles—Gentiles meaning non-Jews. These were Jewish people. What God is doing in Acts chapter 2 is not God doing a new thing, starting the church; rather, it is God fulfilling his promises and showing that he had a plan all along to include Gentiles into his covenant forever family.
That he was promising and fulfilling what he told Abram, that his descendants would be innumerable and that one day the whole Earth would be filled with his glory.
And that's the prophet Joel, who Peter later on in Acts chapter 2 quotes, Exodus 19, referring to remember what happened on Mount Sinai when God gave the tablets of the instruction to his people and his promise.
You see, but then in Acts chapter 2, he writes his instructions on their hearts. This is a Sinai event, and they are remembering what is happening. Not only does God change hearts, he reveals his plan that it was always to add us, you and I, into his covenant family.
It actually was not until Acts chapter 10 that the first Gentiles started actually being recorded as professing faith in Jesus unless they were actually a proselyte early on.
You see, when we read our Bibles, we think, "Okay, Acts chapter 2, skip one chapter," and we think the time—there's not enough time. There's no page. I wish they would put in the Bibles, like, "This chapter that you're reading happened like 70 years since the last chapter of the last verse that you wrote." Wouldn't that be helpful?
Because Acts chapter 2 to get to Acts chapter 10 is actually 10 years. It's 10 years. So this was a Jewish event that these people were at.
So 10 years later, Gentiles start getting ghosted. See what I did there? They start getting ghosted, coming to faith in Jesus. And Peter, when he speaks to Cornelius, the Gentile, which causes this huge problem within the church in Acts chapter 15, all the Jewish leaders and the apostles had to have a meeting.
They were like, "Hey, yo, how are these Gentiles believing in our God? What's happening? What should we hold them to? Should we have them keep kosher? Should we have them, you know, be circumcised? Like, what should we do?" They were freaking out when all in reality God the whole time said that he would do this.
And that's why Paul would say in Colossians that the mystery of God had been revealed. What was hidden had been revealed, and it's revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.
God, the Holy Spirit coming, does not reject his people and then all of a sudden switch to do a new thing. There is power in his presence.
We see here that the disciples in verses 5 through 12 were in the right place at the right time. The event in Acts chapter 2 is actually an undoing of what God did at Babel. You know when, like, someone you don't understand, and they're talking, you say, "Stop! What, Babylon?"
Well, what happens is that all the people of the earth back in the Old Testament, they decided, "You know what? Let's try to punk God." If you don't know what that means, that means, "Let's try to say, 'I want to talk to your manager.'" And God says, "Oh, okay, guess what? I'm the manager."
And they were like, "Well, let's overtake it. Let's put our throne in our empire higher than God's." And God says, "Okay, how about I confuse your languages so that they only were able to talk and communicate with those who spoke their language?" And then they were scattered across the Earth.
Acts chapter 2 is an undoing of what God does in Acts chapter 2. The thing that's crazy about the Holy Spirit coming here in the scriptures, they're talking about different types of tongues. One type of tongue, which you can find in First Corinthians, is talking about the language of angels, but this is not that.
This is all of a sudden the Jewish Galileans can speak in other languages, showing that Babel is undone and that God's grace and God's mercy of his message, of his gospel, of good news is going to go forth into all the nations, and it's not even bound by language.
Friends, some of y'all are wondering right now, "How will I actually preach, and how will I actually speak and communicate with my friends and my family? I don't have the words to say." You don't need them. God, the Holy Spirit, will give you the words.
There is no person that is too far off from the grace of God. You know why? We can't say, "Look what God did to Paul." And by the way, Paul did not get his name changed, or he didn't change from Saul to Paul. Okay? Paul, if "Paulos" is Greek, and then "Saul" is Hebrew, so he didn't get a name change.
Okay, I just want you to know the same God that he worshiped, the same God gave him the power to proclaim the gospel transcends cultures. The gospel transcends language barriers. It's not contingent upon our performance but the Spirit of God.
But we must be willing to go and to do the things that God would ask us to do. The purpose, and one of the main things that God highlights in this text, is that the Holy Spirit comes so that when we receive God, the Holy Spirit, not only does he change our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, he actually empowers us to be about his mission.
It's not for our own kingdom; it's not for our own agenda. Remember, they were at the right place at the right time because God told them to.
So I ask you this question: Are you in the right place? And I don't just mean geographically; I mean, are you with Jesus? Better yet, do you know him? Or even deeper, does he know you?
Friends, the Christian walk is not about saying, "Hey, guess what? I come to Eastern Hills. I'm good. I give to Candy Palooza," which you should do to help everybody get their candy and their sugar on and make the parents mad later.
If God, the Holy Spirit, ain't allowing you to have joy, you definitely need Jesus.
In the Spirit of God, this work that God, the Holy Spirit does, we need to ask the question: Do I know God, or does God know me? At the end, people will say, "Lord, Lord, I cast out demons in your name. I went to Eastern Hills in your name. I gave candy in your name. I've fed people in your name."
But Jesus would say, "Depart from me, for I never knew you." Your Christian life is not about performance; it's a journey of intimacy and knowledge of knowing Jesus.
Jesus told his disciples to wait with expectation for God to show up. For some of us, we think that we said the prayer and we're good now, and that we're just waiting to get to heaven. We're just waiting for Jesus to come back, or we're just waiting for our church to do all this stuff so then we can just have more stuff to do.
That's not the goal of the Christian life. That's not the goal of the discipleship journey as people who trust in him. That's not our aim.
When Jesus tells the disciples to wait, I want you to remember this: They were waiting, they were praying, they were together and expecting. Brian Laritz has this quote that says that patience is not passive resignation, but it's actually actively waiting.
How are you actively waiting and being in the right place at the right time, expecting that God will show up? God buries his workers but never his work. God's not dead; therefore, he will continue to preach and continue to show people who he is because he has unfinished business until all of creation, all of the universe, in the cosmos is reconciled to Jesus.
We all have work to do. God, the Holy Spirit, in the power of his presence is for you and I to be his witnesses.
The issues with being witnesses or heralds of the good news or putting humankind right in the world is that oftentimes we're enamored with building our own kingdoms. We're enamored with using our own power, our own strength.
But friends, you and I do not exist for the things of this world, but we exist to tell the world that Jesus is the King and his kingdom has come. That is our role.
God does not give you or I the power of his presence to make people be conformed into our individual ideologies, but to be conformed into the image of God.
The disciples completed their mission. How do we know that they completed their mission? Well, last time I checked, we're in Colorado, and this is written in the Middle East.
If you look through the book of Acts and throughout the rest of the scriptures, you will see in Acts chapter 1 through 6 it talks about being in Jerusalem, Acts chapters 6 through 8 Judea and Samaria, and then Acts chapter 10 to the end of the book of Paul, who is in Rome and beyond.
You see, there is a pattern of God's faithfulness and his promise. The pattern was from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the Earth.
Friends, I know we live in America and we think we're dope, but we are the ends of the Earth. If you look at a map, you know what I'm saying? Y'all went to geography class, right? We are the ends of the Earth.
And until God comes and makes all things right and reconciled in him, we have work to do. And God, the Holy Spirit, empowers and indwells his believers so that they may preach the gospel of the good news of the kingdom.
There is power in his presence, and there is a pattern, and there's a purpose in his plan.
In verse 13, I just love—I don't know why verse 13 always makes me laugh and chuckle. Just so you know, God has a sense of humor. You guys didn't know that, right?
One of the things I love is that reading this verse is that all of a sudden, people from every nation are sitting there, and then they hear people start speaking their language. They're like, "Hold up, he's speaking my language!"
Their rationale now, in conclusion, is that they are drunk. The last time I checked, being drunk does not give you the supernatural ability to speak another language coherently.
I mean, we've all seen videos like, "Did they have Duolingo? Did they have Rosetta Stone?" Like, no, that wasn't the conclusion that they studied; it was, "They're drunk."
Friends, oftentimes it's going to seem weird somehow to your friends that you're actually able to engage them, or you're going to be able to be in spaces. It's gonna seem a little bit weird when you are filled with the Spirit and God is allowing you to move into different spaces.
And remember, I didn't say weird, but under control. I would call this sober intoxication. Sober intoxication. They were in their right mind, but they were filled with the Spirit.
They weren't filled with new sweet wine or a good Merlot or a Cabernet Sauvignon; they were filled with the Spirit of God.
God, the Holy Spirit, indwelling them. Like the disciples, we are called to be filled with the Spirit and then proclaim the deeds of God. This is our role; this is our job.
But we know what it looks like when we see a person who's drunk. They're staggering, they're slurring, blacking out, can't remember things. It's evident, right? It's evident when someone's drunk. You can smell it.
But I would ask the question, or this to you: Is it evident that you're soberly intoxicated with God, the Holy Spirit? Is it actually noticeable that you are actually filled with the Holy Spirit?
Do your friends sense something different about you? That the walk is different, the speech is different, the things you care about are different? What is different about that?
Do people see your sober intoxication? You see, we are called to proclaim and demonstrate the good deeds of Jesus and the good news of the kingdom. This is our call.
The fire has been lit in generations past, and remember, 1,500 years after God set his people free from Egypt, this happens in Acts chapter 2.
See, but unfortunately, sometimes we like to be like a campfire Christian who is actually a fire that's out of control and unchecked, and because it's focused on its agenda and empire of self, we actually end up harming and destroying people as opposed to serving people and loving people.
I see outside and on the walls, and some people have shirts that say, "Jesus makes life better." But does the Jesus that people see in your life actually make their life better?
Friends, it's not often that they're saying, "You know what? I reject God because he's so gracious and so loving." Lots of times, it's because we, as followers, act incongruently to what we profess with our mouth.
Does this mean that we are perfect people? No, but it means that we're repentant people. Repentance is not his punishment; repentance is a gift.
But is there something different about us? Are we being a campfire destroying people? Because if you remember this, a campfire, a zeal of Christianity that's branded as your political ideology or your theological infatuations, your possessions, your retirement, your career, your family—all of it will not only destroy you; it will destroy others and the witness of Jesus that the Holy Spirit filled you to complete.
What kind of campfire will you be? Can you truly say that Jesus makes life better? That people actually want the Jesus that you claim, that I claim to preach?
Just because I got a microphone on my big head does not mean that I'm perfect and right. We all need Jesus. We all need the grace of God.
Are you being a campfire that destroys, or are you being a campfire that is lighting the way of warmth for those who need it, physically and spiritually?
If that's you today, I want you to remember this: We are to be witnesses proclaiming the good news of Jesus and his kingdom.
As the band comes and as we close, I want you to think on these things. We are all invited by Jesus to turn from our sins and confess them to our Father.
If you can honestly say that you've been using your fire to destroy others or it's not been helpful for others, then this is an opportunity for you to turn and change by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Friends, you and I have always failed, and we do fail, but failure doesn't hinder us from being used by God. Failure is actually the pathway for our understanding that God will use you and love us in spite of our failures.
That's our God. The good news of the gospel means that God's faithfulness, coupled with our inability, means that he can work with something.
If your hands are full of yourself, and if you're drunk on your own grapes like Noah, how will you be filled with the Spirit? How can God give you himself and new things if you're holding on to your own kingdom?
You're treating God as if he's the manager and not the God of the universe. Friends, our active waiting—our active waiting—remembers for us to do the work that God has called us to do, both proclaiming the gospel with our mouth and both by demonstrating the gospel with our hands and our feet.
We are not sitting in a lawn chair waiting for Jesus to come back. It's not about us going to heaven, friends. Remember, it's about heaven coming down.
And because heaven will come down, we can actually have the prayer that his kingdom come, his will be done in Aurora as it is in heaven.
Friends, whose kingdom are you building? Every kingdom of this world has come and it is gone, but the kingdom of God has remained forever.
Friends, we are empowered by God, the Holy Spirit, to be his witnesses—for his kingdom, for his gospel, for his good news.
Friends, may people see our lives as ones who are soberly intoxicated, who smell like the Spirit of God, who love like the Spirit of God, who give like the Spirit of God, who care.
The world will be different; your city can be different; you and I can be different when we remember why we're here and that our lawn chair is put away and we're rolling up our sleeves and we're preaching the gospel.
Friends, let's pray.
God of all grace, we thank you for the opportunity to preach your word in season and out of season. We are thankful that you have seen fit to fill us with your Spirit and that oftentimes PR firms or companies, when they have a person signed to them and they do something wrong, their contract is ended, and they're no longer with the brand.
God, thank you that you are so holy and so righteous and so loving that we can't mess up enough, so much to be a PR disaster that you won't still accept us to be part of your family.
God, you never throw us away; you keep us. And I pray that we'd be empowered by your Spirit, by your grace, for your kingdom come, for your will be done in Aurora as it is in heaven. Amen.
on Dec 07, 2023
