Day 167 - Have You Got The Spirit?

A Sermon delivered at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN May 26, 2013

texts: Deut.6:4-9,12, Acts2:29-42

This is Trinity Sunday, the day we acknowledge the three-fold nature of God. I’m not going to talk about the Trinity because Peter gets to the core of it for all of Jerusalem in this passage from Acts.

This is Shavuot, one of the more important Jewish religious celebrations, and the first Pentecost is here. It is late morning and the Holy Spirit has just descended on the entire congregation of believers, about 120 mostly Galileans.

And now we have this rowdy bunch of Galileans with tongues of fire dancing around their heads creating quite a stir and drawing a crowd.

Jews from countries all over the Mediterranean are here for this Jewish holy day. They are confused and puzzled because every one understood what the believers were saying as if they were speaking in their own native tongue. Some listeners were amazed and perplexed by the spirituality of the words, but you remember the proud urban folks in Jerusalem looked down their noses at Galileans as uneducated country people. The cynics in the crowd said this is just drunken rambling of a bunch of good old boys from Sand Mountain.

Peter did not take this comment very well. He stood up and in a loud voice that everyone could understand began preaching, “These people are not drunk! I ask you didn’t the prophet Joel say, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams…in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.’  Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” No one here is drunk, they are filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Peter was preaching to more than just these outsiders - the cynical Jerusalem Jews. He was preaching also to the 120 Jewish believers who perhaps harbor doubt about Jesus now that He has gone.

Peter very carefully and methodically explained to them exactly what has happened in the last fifty days. (2:22-24, my words) “All of you who are Israelites listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth was a man attested to you by God. God did deeds of power, wonders, and signs through Jesus while he was with you and you know it yourselves, you saw them. What you (the "Jerusalem Jews") do not know is that God also knew and planned from the beginning to hand Jesus over to you so you could crucify and kill him using the hands of Gentiles who are outside the Law (so you could try to avoid guilt).  But God raised Jesus up from death because it is impossible to hold God in the power of death. I command you to let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that the One God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah.”

Peter’s has just said that Jesus with this gift of the Holy Spirit is the one Lord, not God. (v36) These are fighting words that ought to challenge this crowd as heresy. His claim is particularly pointed on this particular holiday because a devout, penitent Jew has the Shema on the tip of the tongue. The Shema is Moses’ declaration of God’s covenant with Israel delivered with the Law to Israel. The Shema reveals the nature of God, his steadfast love, and his commands. (Deut 6:4-9,12)

“Hear O Israel, The Lord is One. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  Teach your children well that they remember them; talk about them everywhere you go and when you lie down and when you rise. Tie them to your hand as a sign of my promise, write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates lest you forget that I AM the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

The Shema is the deepest connection of Israel to the steadfast Love of God. This is the distilled essence of the covenant of Judaism because it confesses the true nature of the One God with the command Jesus said is his greatest: (1) You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. The Shema concludes, “Let these words of the Law guide your life.” Even the cynics among the penitent Jews know this.

Peter didn’t finished preaching until he told them that these deeds of Easter were done as part of God’s eternal plan foretold by David. They crucified the prophet who is the Son of God, the one who God had made as Lord and Messiah. He is telling the Jews of Jerusalem that they have crucified their God about whom they proclaimed with greatest honor and respect, “Hear O Israel, The Lord is One.”

They ought to be as outraged by Peter’s proclamation as the chief priest, Caiaphas was by Jesus’ answer when he asked Jesus if he was the Son of God… “You say I am.”

If you imagine yourself a Jew in Jerusalem hearing this outrageous allegation of guilt of sin against God, guilt caused not by willing desire but by God, why is your reaction not to shout “Crucify him!” like they shouted when the Jesus acknowledged the truth of the allegation of Caiaphas?

But something has gone wrong. We don’t hear “Crucify him!” What happened? 

What has happened is that many of those Jews in Jerusalem were cut to the heart by Peter’s words because they came to understand fully the magnitude of the tragedy of their actions.  God used them for his own purpose, blinding them to the sin of their action so that when their eyes and ears were opened to understanding the gravity of their sin against God, it heaped despair upon them like a massive millstone around their neck. As a doctor would say, their pain was exquisite. All is lost. They have committed the worst imaginable act that a penitent Jew can do.  Is there any more heretical action than to do violence against God? They have no recourse, no place to hide. There is no exit from this deed. They are cornered by their guilt and can only repent by asking Peter “What must we do to be saved?”

If you are listening carefully you may see the fulfillment of the prophesies of Jesus. Everything is coming to pass like the falling of rows of dominos. Do you remember Jesus quoting the commission to Isaiah by God? (Is 6:9-12): 

 “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ I will make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.” Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate;  until the LORD sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.

All the people of Jerusalem have to do to understand their cities are in waste and the Promised Land is desolate is feel the chafing under the heel of Roman power, observe all the Jews coming from other lands, and  look around their city and temple and see the Roman soldiers everywhere.

If Peter is preaching the Good News to them, it is not very comforting. He says, “Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified. God has blinded you and made you kill Jesus, the Messiah, Emanuel (God is with us).” How can the despair go deeper?

Friends, we are seeing God and the Holy Spirit at work here. The Holy Spirit brought these Jerusalem Jews to Peter. The Holy Spirit inspired these 120 believers to speak. The Holy Spirit allowed everyone to understand their testimony. The Holy Spirit inspired Peter to proclaim the Good News, Peter the man who was afraid of persecution and denied Jesus three times, one of the fellows who ran off and left Jesus to die alone on the Cross. Can there be any doubt the Holy Spirit is at work here?

Isaiah’s prophecy comes true. The Holy Spirit opened the eyes of the Jews of Jerusalem to the depths of their despair. They have crucified their God.

But the depth of this tragedy does run divinely deeper. Even Jesus is cut to the heart by their actions because he understands and knows the deed of their hands was ordained. Do you remember his words spoken on the cross before he died, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they do.” Divine compassion arising from human despair.

Peter understands. Peter answered the question “what must we do to be saved?” with “Repent, acknowledge your sins that they may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” Christ has bound together forgiveness and repentance - compassion and despair, fulfilling his prophetic promise. Forgiveness comes from only asking the question, “What must we do to be saved?” The Lord said through Isaiah (42:16) “I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, I will guide them by paths they have not known.  I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them.” There is a home.

These words, “…the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” ring like the Shema but do not. The promise of the Shema is to Israel; that if it obeys the Law God will protect you. The threat is, if you do not obey it and God will punish you. The promise of the Holy Spirit is to everyone: repent by acknowledging your guilt and receive forgiveness.  There is no threat.

Luke makes it clear that none of this understanding, repentance and forgiveness is an act of choice or free will. This was all God’s plan from the beginning.  Peter may proclaim the Good News but the power of the Holy Spirit guided him. The Holy Spirit operated on those who listened. It awakened understanding. Paul says faith comes to us from hearing the preaching of the Word of Jesus. It came so powerfully to the people of Jerusalem that they could only ask, “What must we do to be saved?”

At the end of the day, 3,000 more people heard and understood with the Holy Spirit’s help and joined the congregation of believers. Luke says they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers, growing in faith to carry on proclaiming of the good News.

I ask you, who are the ministers of the congregation of believers?... Each person in the congregation of faithful believers is its minister. The Holy Spirit dwells in them and empowers us. Only one question remains. The Lord used the Holy Spirit to cause Peter and Luke to send this question to us from across the ages. I hope it is a rhetorical question for all of us, that is, I hope the answer is self-evident and answers itself: “Have you got the Spirit?  AMEN.