5/24/23

Happy birthday! 

It’s not your birthday, you say? Well, it is . . . sort of. Sunday is Pentecost, which is often called the “birthday of the church.” It was on Pentecost that God breathed his Spirit into the church, making it the living, dynamic, many-membered Body of Christ on earth.

Just 10 days earlier, Jesus ascended into heaven where he was enthroned as King, sitting at God’s right hand (Acts 2:23), where, Paul tells us in I Corinthians 15, “he must reign until he has put every enemy under his feet.” If there’s any question, remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 28:  “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” ALL authority. In heaven and on earth.  Jesus reigns now! Christ is King! 

Issues of both authority and power are key for both the ascension and Pentecost.  Paul writes in Ephesians 1:

“God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”

For Paul, God raising Jesus from the dead was the greatest display of power the world has ever seen. Right off, the resurrection destroyed  the power of the rulers – King Herod, Governor Pilate, High Priest Caiphas – who put Jesus on the cross.  That display of power is far superior to any other display of power ever seen in this world before or since. 

In Ephesians 1, Paul is writing that Jesus is now enthroned on the basis of this power, and Paul will go on to pray that the Ephesians will come to realize this same power is available to them for their daily use.

A power made possible by Pentecost! Before Jesus ascended, Jesus told his disciples, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The Greek word for power is dunamis, from which we get the word, dynamite!  

Just a few weeks before Pentecost, you would have had to have looked hard for power, for the dunamis of the Spirit, in the disciples.  Judas betrayed Jesus; Peter (who seemed to always be saying the wrong thing anyway) denied Jesus three times, and all the disciples abandoned Jesus in the garden, then hid behind locked doors.

But then, some 50 days later, came Pentecost, and the disciples, filled with the dunamis of the Holy Spirit, spoke boldly before thousands and testified fearlessly before the very rulers who crucified Jesus. In the words of their opponents in Acts 17:6, these empowered people “turned the world upside down.”

What is the power for? Levitation? Conjuring? Controlling people?  Making believers look “super-spiritual”? Big TV ministries? Religious theme-parks? Mega-churches?

No, not at all.  

Most of the work of the Spirit is not for anything remotely spectacular. Sure, the idea of a “Spiritual Gift” might sound spectacular (especially if you watch some TV evangelists), but if you look at the lists of the Spiritual gifts, most of them are pretty mundane: leadership, administration, teaching, giving, hospitality, etc. 

But “spectacular” is not the point of the gifts, anyway. Paul writes that God gives these gifts “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4:12-13).

So the power of the Holy Spirit that’s available to us on a daily basis, is not for anything that draws attention to us. Instead, the power of the Holy Spirit accomplishes many things inside us, in our hearts: the Spirit gives us power to be witnesses (Acts 1);  gives us the gifts to do whatever God needs done in the work of the Kingdom; helps us to pray when words fail us (Romans 8); works within us to transform us into the people God wants us to be – and that’s just a start!

The power of Pentecost is the power to make us into the agents God needs to accomplish his work. We are the hands and feet of King Jesus in this present world. We are Jesus’ body,  “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23).   

If only we could realize this and act accordingly!

So, on this Pentecost Sunday, especially since it’s your birthday, think about and pray about the gifts God has given you! And pray that God will unleash the power that raised Jesus from the dead in your heart and in our congregation.

Blessings,
Pastor Terry