Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
The second chapter of Acts describes what Rob Yule calls 'the most dynamic event in human history' - the coming of the Holy Spirit. In this third message in his series on the book of Acts, given on 23 March 2003, Rob describes the amazing phenomena that occurred when the Holy Spirit first came on the early Christian community in Jerusalem, and the impact these phenomena have when the Holy Spirit comes today.
The second chapter of Acts describes the most dynamic event in human history - the coming of the Holy Spirit. It tells what happens when the Holy Spirit comes.
We live in a very secular culture. New Zealand is one of the most secular societies in the world. Secularism closes reality off from God. The universe of secularism is a closed universe. Secularism is a world view limited to this saeculum - this 'world' or this 'age' only.
But the Holy Spirit brings revelation. The Spirit opens our minds and spirits to God's reality, puts us in touch with the realm of God. 'Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven' (Acts 2:2, NIV). The Spirit opens heaven to us, opens up the dimension of spiritual reality, the miraculous, the supernatural. 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him - but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.' (1 Corinthians 2:9, NIV).
The spiritual realm, the realm of the Holy Spirit, is not vague, intangible and ethereal. When the Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, there were audible, visible, tangible manifestations. They heard a noise from heaven like the sound of a great rush of wind. They saw what looked like tongues of flame that separated individually and came and settled on each person there (Acts 2:2-3).
When the Spirit came on Jesus the Spirit was fully concentrated in him (Colossians 2:9). When the Spirit comes upon Christians the Spirit is individually distributed on each one. That means we Christians need to act in unity for the world to see the fullness of Jesus displayed.
People are normally shy, reserved, and tongue-tied when it comes to speaking about God. Talking about God isn't good form in polite society. To mention God is a sherry party conversation stopper! We can hold forth fluently on a host of subjects we're enthusiastic about - whether it's football or flying, fashion or fishing, cars, curtains, computers, or cooking. But we suffer from lock jaw when it comes to talking about what is really important, the God and Creator of the universe, the one to whom we our very existence.
When the Spirit comes there is proclamation! 'All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.' (Acts 2:4, NIV). Open witnessing is a miracle of the Holy Spirit! The versicle and response in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer expresses this exactly:
'Lord, open my lips.'
R/ 'And my mouth will show forth your praise.'
So does David's psalm of confession (Psalm 51:11-13):
'Do not ... take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will turn back to you.'
The mouth is the outflow or overflow of the heart. What's inside is what comes out. Joy expresses itself in laughter, hurt in complaint, sorrow in sobs, foulness in bad language. Most people when they're bumped into spill out swearing and curses. A person filled with God's Spirit overflows with praises and pleasantries!
That is why the majority of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are vocal gifts: speaking in tongues (better 'languages': 'tongues' is just Elizabethan English for 'languages'), prophecy, words of knowledge or wisdom, prayer for healing, boldness in witnessing. There is a tremendous creative power in words, for encouraging people and building them up.
The key to good communication is not just speaking clearly: it's listening attentively. Too often misunderstanding results from not listening. True understanding consists in being heard.
During the nineties, following the fall of Communism, we saw a resurgence of nationalism and a host of ethnic tensions throughout the former Soviet Bloc. Ethnic minorities threw off the yoke of Communism and began to assert their national identity. Names of ethnic groups most of us had never heard of before were all over our television news: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Moldova, Nagorno Karabakh, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya.
When the Holy Spirit first came, a host of different ethnic groups were gathered in Jerusalem for the great Jewish festival of Pentecost, Shavuot. Each of these different ethnic groups 'heard' the Christian message in their own languages (Acts 2:5-12). This was technically a miracle of xenolalia, speaking in known languages, rather than glossolalia, speaking in an unknown language. Tongues is not babble or 'ecstatic utterance' - as the bookish translators of the New English Bible have it. Tongues has a discernible linguistic structure, like parsing verbs!
Canadian businessman and Messianic Jew Steve Lightle tells of speaking in tongues - in Yiddish! - in the great domed Jewish synagogue in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the former Soviet Union, when seeking access to the Jewish community there to tell of God's revelation of a coming exodus of Jews.
Effective cross-cultural communication is a miracle of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost was a reversal of Babel. At Babel, people tried to reach up to heaven, but their languages were confused and their cultures became divided. At Pentecost, God reaches down to earth, cross-cultural communication is restored and people become united.
Speaking in tongues, like all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, has a dual aspect, a divine and a human side. The human aspect is referred to: they 'began to speak in other tongues'. And the divine aspect is also mentioned: 'as the Spirit enabled them' (Acts 2:4).
You won't speak in tongues if you don't speak! It's not the Holy Spirit who speaks in tongues, it's people! It's the Holy Spirit who inspires, who removes your self-consciousness, who fills you with joy or praise, who prompts you with an impulse, a word or a message.
I compare this dual character of the gifts of the Spirit with power-steering in a car. The power is available. But it isn't activated till you move the wheel. The instant you move the wheel, the power engages to assist. That's exactly how it is in using the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
When the Spirit came, there was phenomenal joy and unity. There was an exaltation and degree of conviviality normally associated with drunkenness! (Acts 2:13-15). This must have become something of an in-joke in the early Christian community. 'Don't get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery', Paul later says. 'Instead, be filled with the Spirit' (Ephesians 5:18, NIV).
God created us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the only genuine stimulus for human life. Whether it's alcohol or amphetamines, dope or drugs, gin or glue - they all have one thing in common: medically they are depressants, not stimulants. They are pathetic substitutes for the Holy Spirit, the true stimulant God intends us to be filled with.
Here's a simple definition of revival: revival is when the pubs are empty and the churches are full! During the famous Welsh Revival of 1905, the police had so little to do they formed bands and went around playing in churches!
Five centuries earlier the prophet had Joel predicted there would be an outpouring of the Spirit in the latter days. He said it would be recognised by transformed social relationships, overcoming the barriers of sex, age and social class that so often divide human beings from one another.
When the Holy Spirit came there was such cooperation, such a change in the lives and relationships of the early Christians that Peter could say, 'This is that' (Acts 2:16, AV). 'This is the social transformation that Joel predicted the Holt Spirit would bring.' (Joel 2:28-29, Acts 2:17-18).
The Holy Spirit transforms relationships between men and women (the struggle of the sexes), between parents and children (the clash of generations), and between the powerful and the powerless (the so-called class war). Breaking down these barriers is a miracle of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit empowers women as well as men and gives women a ministry as well as men. The Spirit rejuvenates and humanises people, making differences of age irrelevant. The Spirit raises up the poor, giving them dignity and making them effective in Christian service.
Pentecostal historian Vinson Synan points out that the early Pentecostal store-front or tent meetings in the United States, before the First World War, were completely integrated - at the height of the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society - two generations before the Civil Rights movement of the nineteen sixties.
The Pentecostals raised up some notable women into positions of ministry and leadership - people like Maria Woodworth-Etter, Aimee Semple McPherson, Iverna Thomkins, Kathryn Kuhlman, Jean Stone, Agnes Sanford, Delores Winder. Some male leaders had problems with this. Evidently God didn't. The Holy Spirit brings a miracle of cooperation, across the most intransigent barriers that divide human beings: barriers of sex, age, and social class.
Rob Yule, 23 March 2003
© 2003, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
