Where were you on the 7^th July when the bombs exploded around London? My daughter Becky rang me to saying she had just got the XLP people to ring their parents so she thought she had better ring me.

 

 In John 20:24 we have the story of how Thomas missed out on the first resurrection appearance of Jesus. But Luke records “they were all together in one place” . That was presumably all the apostles  and other disciples. But just imagine what is would have felt like to find out afterwards that the Holy Spirit fell in a meeting you were not at! I suspect you would be a doubter like Thomas.

They have been meeting since getting back from the ascension which was in Bethany.

 They were all together in one place. The whole church in one place. That is what has led to today’s worldwide event. The strange thought that God might specially want to bless his church when they all meet together. So today the church has been meeting together right across the globe and you can be part of that by coming with us to Millwall this afternoon. The real underlying vision is simply to be together in one place in prayer that God might pour out his spirit on his church worldwide.

 Pentecost is to do with barley harvest, in the Mediterranean the early harvest or Spring  Harvest.. It was a time of celebration. The book of Ruth was read. And the church  met all together in one place. Where? Probably the Temple. Maybe in a house but that does not fit the fact that the crowd joined them on the sound of the rushing wind.

What is a fact is they were not in a church building. In fact there is no mention of church building in the Bible at all. The young vibrant church was busy building the kingdom of God not grand edifices. That was for a later generation. The church was using what space it could find and the church in the early part of Acts met in the Temple. If that is so it was not in the temple itself as only the priests were allowed there. Nor was it in the courtyard because only the men were allowed there. Nor was it the court of the women because the non-Jews were not allowed there. This probably happened in the court of the gentiles. The church was ending the structure of the day.  The Holy Spirit was poured out on all the people. And he was for everyone, men, women, Jew, gentile, priest, king or slave. The church was out in the community where it should be. The people could hear and see what was happening. It was not hiding away in the upper Room.

 

 What happened? First the sound of wind. Now note Luke is quite clear that is was the sound of wind not the wind itself. Fire appeared to break out  and rested on all of them. Wind and fire are not the symbols of chemistry, they are the symbols of the Holy Spirit. Wind, our gospel tells us you can see its effect but not know where it is coming or going. Burma has seen the power of the wind in destructive mode.  The Holy Spirit is like the wind. He has power. The Holy Spirit is like fire. Fire consumes but it also purifies. It is scientifically the release of energy but it is also heat that sterilises. The Holy Spirit is pure and holy and comes to purify from wrong thinking and wrong doing.

 

 The “altogether in one place” are now the “all of them filled with the Holy Spirit”. This is remarkable in that until now the Holy Spirit only ever filled individuals for specific purposes. But now he fills everyone. Men, women, slaves and free.  This is given a posh name by theologians :”The democratisation of the Holy Spirit” which sounds to us like we get a vote on the matter. We must understand that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus and like Jesus is obedient only to God the Father. He is poured out on all who believe.  If you have believed, you have the Holy Spirit. If you have believed you may have a special experience of the Holy Spirit, commonly called ‘being filled’; ‘charismatic gift’; baptism of the Holy Spirit and so on. You can ask for God to pour out his Spirit in a special way on you or for others. We express this ourselves most of all at communion when any believer is free to share in the worship and, if led by the Spirit, officiate at the table. But we need to understand it goes further than that. There is no inner group that has a monopoly of the Spirit. So, although we have elders and a leadership team, God may choose any one of us to give prophetic word, open us to a vision, reveal the relevance of the Scriptures to our lives. We believe in every-member ministry, and we are trying to work that out in practice.

 

I want to move on to Peter’s explanation of what was happening.

First, It is clear that what they observed was unusual. He defends them as not being drunk because the Holy Spirit had clearly brought some sort of euphoria about them. Too often we are afraid of emotion being expressed in case it gets out of control.

 But he goes on to quote the Prophecy in Joel 2.

²⁸'And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.

²⁹Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

³⁰I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke.

³¹The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.

³²And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved;

 

Now we have already noted that the Holy Spirit was poured out on all the fellowship of believers. But hang on a minute, in Joel  there is no sound of wind; no fire and no speaking in foreign languages. Instead Joel speaks of visions and dreams. And when he does write about fire it blood, fire, smoke and a dreadful day of the Lord. It may seem a little hard to connect the two.

 

So often we long for the Holy Spirit to be evident among us but frequently we look for past expressions of the Holy Spirit rather than present expressions. But Joel lived in a day when the Holy Spirit revealed himself in dreams and visions.  His understanding of the arrival of God among his people was the fire and smoke of Sinai. And here he looks forward and describes Pentecost in those terms. Peter rightly sees that Joel is speaking of that day. God had arrived in the same way as he did at Sinai. To speak to his people. It is of particular note that at Sinai God spoke to the whole nation at once. Once again God was speaking to all. God who spoke through the prophets in dreams and visions now speaks through the whole fellowship in a variety of languages.

 

When the Holy Spirit is poured out on the church today, we cannot assume it will be in tongues of fire, sound of wind or the ability of speaking in foreign languages or even visions and dreams.

So what is your expectation for today? Just another Sunday? Nice day to go out? Back to a normal service for a change? Or are you asking God to pour out his Spirit in a new way that the world may see and hear and turn and be converted? It is noticeable that South Ruislip has a growing number of languages being spoken. And it great that this is reflected in the church. I reckon 4 already and this afternoon we can add Korean!

But I digress. To me the challenge for today is how to respond to this event.

There are dangers we must avoid and truths we must embrace.

 

1.     We cannot engineer Pentecost. We cannot conjure up the Holy Spirit by reproducing the same magical circumstances, or using the same incantations. John’s Gospel - Our Gospel specifically says the Holy Spirit blows where it wills. That applies to all works of the Holy Spirit.

2.     . We can set our selves to seek the Lord. For example the Bible says “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13) and again in Proverbs 8:17: “I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.”  Psalm 27 is a good place to start in this. This brings a challenge to us today where we are very casual about church. I want to ask what the alternatives are to a Sunday evening communion?  Was it Raiders of the lost Ark? World Snooker? Flood, Grand designs live or the Bridges of Madison County?  And what of Thursday’s Church Meeting? Is it Eastenders or Holby Blue or living the dream revisited or the Bill, Come dine with me or what?  And that is just the choice on TV. We have so many excuses but the fact remains that the best place to get encouragement to seek the Lord is with other Christians. We ever seek to make church a relaxed, enjoyable place to be but in the end you have to want God to want to be among God’s people.

3.      Seeking to reproduce the ‘good old days’ is not what God is looking to do. It has been uncomfortable in the last few weeks exploring doing rather than listening.  But those who had the vision to establish this church had the get up and go from the Holy Spirit to break out of the conventions of the day. They used modern technology to do it and poured their time and energy into many activities. The building was just one of those activities not the end in itself. Sunday School, door to door work, village work, tracting and so on. But we are called to the 21^st Century with its challenges. To meet people where they are and engage with them to make disciples of all. In 1966 I attended every night of the Billy Graham campaign as a counsellor but I do not think that is God’s way for today. Today the way that God seems to bless is Alpha or Christianity explored and the like where people can meet and discuss and hear the gospel and its implications. Historically mission has always begun with one to one friendship. 

4.     People who gossip the gospel. That has never changed. But we seem to be silent and tongue-tied. So as we pray for the Holy Spirit we are seeking to be able to speak out the good news just as they did on the day of Pentecost. So must be ready and serving, out in the community, expressing the love of God and praying for the Holy Spirit to be poured out in us so that we speak out the words of God.

 And that is where we must stop this morning. The pouring out of the Holy Spirit enabled the church to turn from waiting for something to happen to an explosion of evangelism, telling the Good News.

 And it was not a one day wonder. The Holy Spirit is still poured out into the church all over the world and people hear the Good News and turn to Jesus in repentance and faith. And there are signs and wonder accompanying.  The challenge is to leave behind the distractions of today’s culture and set out to seek the Lord and call upon him to pour out his Spirit today.  We need to be ready for God to work in new ways but most of all we must recognise the he poured out his Spirit on young and old alike, man and woman, English, Indian, Korean, African alike. Managers, directors and workers alike.

 

 But it begins in Joel’s word “afterwards”. After Jesus had be born as a human being, lived among us and died for our sins. After he had risen from the dead. After Jesus had ascended into heaven. It is out of this momentous event and through the actions of the Son of God we have life and God sends his Holy Spirit to be with us.. We now celebrate that, remind ourselves once again how our salvation was obtained.