“Pentecost – God’s Gift to His People”.

The Topic of the Service of 19^th May 2013, at St. Margaret's UCZ Church was entitled: “Pentecost – God’s Gift to His People”.

Preacher:  Mr Boniface Chirambo

Scripture Reading:   Genesis 1: 1 – 9

                                     Acts 1: 1 – 21

                                     John 14: 8 – 17

SERMON SUMMARY

As parents we often do promise our children gifts after coming from visiting some places.

 Today is Pentecost day, the day that when the gift of the Holy Spirit that the Lord had promised to give his disciples came upon them. It was exactly 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ when the gift of the Holy Spirit was given.  Pentecost is the birth of the Christian Church, which coincided with the time when there were celebrations by the Jews to mark their first harvest.

God sent the gift of the Holy Spirit, as promised, to his people.

In Genesis 1: 1 – 9 we read about the creation of earth and we see the Holy Spirit playing a big role in the creation of the world. “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”  ~ Genesis 1: 2

Jesus was part of the creation as written in John 1: 1. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The three divine persons of God were involved as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

In John 14: 16 – 17 Jesus is promising the gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples when he says “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.

We are seeing the gift of the Holy Spirit being fulfilled in Acts 2: 1 – 21. The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost brought a lot of confusion amongst the Jews. “When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: "Aren't all these who are speaking Galileans?’” Acts 2: 6 – 7

The coming of the Holy Spirit amongst the disciples completely transformed their lives. Peter who had denied Jesus three times at the time of his persecution leading to his crucifixion went out to preach the Good News boldly.

The Holy Spirit changes the situation in your life and mine.

The gifts that we get from God are not for our own self- grander but for the use of spreading his Kingdom. In Acts 1: 8 Jesus says “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria  and to the ends of the world.” You and I are called the witnesses of God. The gifts that we get from God are for the exaltation of God himself.

In Joel 2:28 the Lord says “"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.” (See Acts 2: 17 as well)

All of us have received the Holy Spirit for the anointment of our lives. We should therefore come together and be united to complement each other so that we excel in our individual gifts, only then will the Church of God grow. Where there is misunderstanding we should retreat and ask God to help us.

God desires that after we receive the Holy Spirit we should be his ambassadors in the world. It is not enough just to come to church and worship. We should spread the Gospel to others. We should ask God to help us with our weaknesses so that we can effectively spread the gospel. Let us be examples to our families and not to be questioned about our behaviour. Let us first look at ourselves before we go out to evangelise.  Are we relevant to our community?  Christianity is more than being a member of St. Margaret’s Church.

On this Pentecost day as we go out into the community it is very important to remind each other what purpose we are called for? Let us seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit as we do the work for the Lord. Let us be careful not to look very much to our preachers as examples of our behaviour. Our focus should be on the Holy Spirit.

Let us therefore thank God for all the gifts he has given us. Without the Holy Spirit we shall not be successful evangelists.

May the Lord, through his mercy and love, bless us all.

AMEN!

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: (From the Church's Weekly Bulletin)

The Day of Pentecost

The coming of the Spirit was accompanied by supernatural signs – a sound, a sight and strange speech. First, there came from heaven a sound like the blowing of violent wind', and it (i e, the noise) filled the whole house where they were sitting (Acts 2:2). Secondly, there appeared to them visibly ‘what seemed to be tongues of fire' which separated and came to rest on each of them (v.3), becoming for each an individual possession. Thirdly, ‘all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues' (i.e. languages of some kind) ‘as the Spirit enabled led them.(v.4)

These three experiences seemed like natural phenomena (wind, fire and speech); yet they were supernatural, both in origin and in character. The noise was not wind, but sounded like it; the sight was not fire but resembled it; the speech was in languages which were not ordinary but in some way ‘other ‘’. Again, three of their higher senses were affected, in that they heard the wind-like sound, saw the fire-like apparition and spoke the ‘other' languages. Yet what they experienced was more than sensory; it was significant. So they sought no understand it. “What does this mean? “, the people later asked (v. 12)

If we allow other parts of Scripture to guide our interpretation, it seems that these three signs at least represented a new era of the Spirit which had begun (John the Baptist had bracketed wind and fire Luke 3:16) and the work which he had come to do. If so, the noise-like wind may symbolise power (such as Jesus promised them for witness - Luke 24:4-9; Acts 1:8), the sight like fire  symbolised purity (like the live coal which cleansed Isaiah 6:6-7) and the speech in other languages

symbolised the universality of the Christian church. In what follows in Acts 2, Luke does not mention wind and fire, he concentrates on the third phenomena languages. His emphasis is on the international, multilingual nature of the crowd that was gathered round the 120 believers at Pentecost.

Nothing could have demonstrated more clearly than this the multi-racial, multinational, multilingual nature of the Kingdom of Christ. Pentecost is a dramatic reversal of the curse of Babel. At Babel, human languages were confused and nations were scattered. At Pentecost, the language barrier was supernaturally, over come as a sign that ethnicities, nations and races would now be gathered together in Christ!

AMEN!