Pentecost: Receiving God's Power Acts 2:1-47

Not only was wind part of the picture. Also tongues of fire were part of the picture. The text says, "They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them" (Acts 2:2). The fire of the Holy Spirit purges, burns away the chaff, all that debilitates and prevents you and me from becoming what God created you and me to become. Not only is the chaff burned away. The Holy Spirit refines us, as does the melting process that burns off the dross bringing out the pure metal. The Bible talks about the "refiner's fire" that purges us and enables us to live with the warmth of God's Spirit emanating from our lives. This fire of the Holy Spirit helps us to love others, being a people who are more giving, more consistent in our Christian lives, more forgiving of others.

There is a third picture here. It is that of speaking in tongues. Some would distinguish between tongues being the kind of ecstatic utterance that is not really an intelligible language except wherein it is interpreted by someone who has the gift of understanding that otherwise unintelligible language. A second understanding of tongues is literally the capacity to communicate with people in ways that go beyond human understanding. Gathered in Jerusalem were men and women from many different nations, speaking many different languages. Here were these Galileans, not very sophisticated people, who were conveying the Gospel of Jesus Christ in ways intelligible, understandable to others.

How can I get across this picture of Pentecost? How does the wind, fire, tongues apply to us today?

The best way I can summarize it is in trying to paint a picture of those times in life when a person outdoes himself. Take the young football player who in the last two minutes of the game, with the score against his team, runs faster than his legs have ever carried him before, farther than he ever dreamed of running and scores the winning touchdown. When he comes out of the game, the coach says to him, "I didn't know you had it in you." If he is honest, his reply would be, "I didn't. I was picked up and carried by something outside of myself." That's the picture of what happens to you and me when we are open to the fullness, the power of the Holy Spirit, allowing His wind to propel us, His fire to purify us and His endowment of communication capabilities to help us convey the objectivity of His truth and our experience of our relationship with Him to others.

The danger of organized Christianity today is that it can become powerless! There is nothing more boring than empty theological words. There is nothing more enervating, life-sapping, than dry institutional religion that simply becomes a head trip and a business. Jesus did not come to found a new religion called Christianity. Jesus said, '"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full"' (John 10:10).