Pentecost

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 104:24-35; Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

When we talk to people in the community at large, we often run into people who will say, “I believe in God”, but do not mention Jesus Christ. There are many people in our country who “believe in God”, but don’t have any real understanding of how Jesus Christ fits into the picture. For them, they often understand that Jesus was a boy born in a manger at Christmas, a man who taught some good ideas about not judging anyone, about treating the poor well, and He ended up dying upon a cross. Perhaps they even understand that Jesus loves you and He was resurrected. But they do not tie Jesus Christ and God together, except to note that they both have to do with “religion”.

I say we often run into people who have a very weak understanding of Who Jesus Christ is. In fact, polls show that about three to four times as many people in America “believe in God” as accept that Jesus was God walking upon this earth, which is the answer that the leaders of the Christian Churches have given for 2000 years.

And still less understand this mysterious third Person of the Trinity that we call the Holy Spirit. Many people in our modern society are completely unaware of the Spirit’s presence – and most of those who are vaguely aware of the Spirit make one of two opposite mistakes: They either become overly focused upon the Spirit’s doings, declaring that only those people who have shown the overt possession of the Spirit through speaking in tongues, being “slain by the Spirit”, or who have received or given miraculous healing can possibly be saved Christians – or they avoid learning about the Holy Spirit, equating talk of the Spirit as Pentecostal belief only, and essentially declaring knowledge of the Holy Spirit to be a devilish heresy, a dangerous thing akin to magic, demonic possession, or consulting with fortune tellers.

The Holy Spirit is the third personality in the Holy Trinity, the complex person that includes God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The truth of the matter is that the Holy Spirit has been the recognized third leg of standard Christian belief by all regular Christians since the days of the Apostles – and is even mentioned in the Old Testament.

Saul, the first king of Israel, is filled with the Holy Spirit and begins to prophesy with a group of prophets even before he becomes king of Israel. The Holy Spirit spoke through King David. The Holy Spirit comes upon various prophets and leaders of Israel throughout the ages, even as early as the time of Moses, when two men received the Spirit and began speaking about God. Moses wished at that time that all the people of Israel would receive the Spirit.

And we have the valley of dry bones from our first reading.

To understand this fully, we need to understand one key fact about the ancient Hebrew and Greek words that are translated into modern English as “spirit”. The very same words that we translate as “spirit” in the ancient languages had three meanings: First, it meant spirit. Second, it meant breath. Third, it means wind.

Thus, when we talk about the Holy Spirit, we are talking about the breath of God, the holy wind that flows from God and wraps around us, the very presence of God that whips around us. After fashioning Adam from the clay, God breathed into the nostrils of Adam and Adam came alive. God sent His Spirit into Adam and gave life to Adam.

You may remember that during one of the visits to the eleven disciples on Easter evening, Jesus breathed upon them and they received the Holy Spirit. Of course they did! They had received the Holy Breath of God from God Himself, Jesus Christ!

So let’s go back to Ezekiel’s prophecy of the dry bones. I’ve included this on a sheet with your bulletin today so you can follow along. The Reading begins:

37 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.

Notice that the Lord brings Ezekiel to a vision by the Spirit.

2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

The valley is filled with bones, very old, dry bones that have lain here in the desert for a long, long time. God speaks to Ezekiel and asks him if the bones can live. At least that is what it appears at first glance. But Jesus, during His ministry on earth, repeatedly refers to Himself as “the Son of man”. Perhaps Ezekiel, through the Holy Spirit, is witnessing a conversation between God the Father and God the Son – Jesus Christ – the One who is also the Son of man? But who are the bones? Most theologians think that these dry bones represent people who have either walked away from God totally – or who have become so focused upon the regular rituals of religion that they have lost their passion for God – and the purposes of God.

4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

God tells Ezekiel – or Jesus – that He should speak to these old, dry bones and tell them that God will “make breath enter” them – God will send His Spirit into these bones and they will come to life. God will send His Spirit to people and give them a beautiful, joy-filled life!

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

Life is given by the breath of God.

Did you notice how the Psalm writer also mentions how God’s breath and Spirit are tied to life?

when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
30 When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.

We live only due to the life given to us by God’s breath. And when we give God permission to pour out God’s Spirit upon us, and ask for that Spirit to come into us, When we breath deeply of the Spirit-breath of God, wonderful things happen.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus made a promise. It was during His last talk with the disciples at their Passover Supper that evening, a couple of hours before His arrest, that Jesus began to talk about the Holy Spirit – the Advocate who would lead the disciples into all truth. The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, would lead us into all truth.

But when would this Holy Spirit arrive?

Look at our third reading.

Jesus has ascended to Heaven. It has been about ten days since He returned to Heaven outside of Jerusalem, leaving them alone. But the disciples did not give up. For the next ten days, they assembled together daily to study scripture and to pray. And then, on the day of Pentecost, Shavuot, the festival of Weeks, the festival of First Fruits, the day when tradition said that God made his rainbow covenant with Noah after he came forth from the ark, the day Moses brought down the Ten Commandments from Mt Sinai, the night Boaz chose Ruth, King David’s birthday and the day of his death, the day when everyone brought to Jerusalem the first part of their harvest to give to God at the great Temple – on that morning, something wild and amazing happened.

They were gathered together in a room probably about the size of the Quiet Dell fellowship hall. There were about a hundred and twenty believers gathered together that morning, men and women, teenagers and children. You can hear the faint hum of men talking and reading scripture, the sound and smell of breakfast being made downstairs, the laughter of children from time to time. And then, suddenly, it happened.

There was a mighty sound like a rush of wind and it filled the entire room. God’s breath had hit the room! Then tongues of fire came into the room, split up, and settled upon each person. And then, then, the Holy Spirit took possession of each person there and they began to praise God. They praised God – Halleluyah! They praised God – Praise God! They praised God – Gloria Deus! They praised God in different languages! Gloria Deus Patri! Glory to God the Father! They praised God in Hebrew – Hallelujah! They praised God in Latin – Gloria Deus Patri! – They praised God in Greek - doxázoun ton Theó ! They praised God in Egyptian and Persian and Aramaic and many other languages that don’t even exist today!

And a bunch of people came running to see what was happening.

Someone yelled, “What’s happening?” and some smart aleck replied: “They’re drunk – they’ve drank too much wine!”

And then, Peter stood up.

Peter, the big fisherman who had captained a boat on the lake in Galilee. Peter, the brash young man who was always ready to speak up and take action, even when it was dangerous or would get him into trouble. Peter, the man who just seven weeks earlier had hid and snuck around and denied that he even knew Jesus three times on that horrible night when Jesus had been arrested. Peter, the man who had seen the risen Christ and been restored by Christ’s forgiveness. Peter, the man who was always quick to understand. Peter, the man who had had enough! Peter stood up with his fishing captain’s voice and said, “

“Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

17 “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy…
21 And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
And Peter continued onward to speak, standing in front of the other Eleven witnesses, the chosen men who had been with Jesus from the beginning in Galilee, who had followed Him for three years and heard and seen all that Jesus had done, these men who had seen Him arrested, seen Him die, and then seen and talked and ate with Jesus after Jesus came back to life and who had been taught by Jesus for forty days and who had seen Jesus go back to Heaven. Peter spoke in front of the Eleven witnesses, for under Jewish law, the testimony of two or three was needed to establish a fact in a court of law, but here were twelve men standing tall that morning, speaking to the crowd when Peter finished his sermon, and people believed.

Over three thousand people were baptized and joined the newborn church on that day. Imagine how God’s breath magnified Peter’s voice so he could be heard in that busy city by over three thousand people! God’s Spirit, God’s breath, God’s wind…

About twenty years later, the Apostle Paul wrote more about the Spirit in the 8th chapter of Romans:

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Paul tells us that Christian believers “have the firstfruits of the Spirit”. This turn of phrase is important, because to have the firstfruits meant that you had the best of the harvest, but only a small portion of the harvest. The implication is that there are even more aspects of the Holy Spirit to come to believers than what we have already seen.

Do you remember the dial-up modems that your Internet used before high-speed Internet was available? I had to use a dial-up modem 19 years ago when I first put our company’s website on the Internet – It was painfully slow, we lost connections a lot of times, and the data was sometimes garbled. It could take a minute for a single photo to download on a website! But now we have high-speed cable Internet, which is much, much better and faster, and allows us to even watch movies over the Internet.

My friends, the Holy Spirit we have today may be like the dial-up modems. One day, we shall be upgraded and then we will be completely amazed at how the Spirit can connect us to God.

But even today, the Holy Spirit guides us in ways you may not understand, for the working of the Spirit depends upon how much attention you pay the Spirit.

In early 1945, my friend Jim Webb was a young Marine who had just landed on a Japanese-held island in the Pacific. Jim was a very god-focused young man, who had been raised in a godly family – he later became a pastor, and had served churches for 55 years when I met him about 15 years ago. The island Jim had landed on was called Iwo Jima – you may have heard of it.

About 8 o’clock that evening, there was some rifle fire and Jim was hit in the leg by a bullet.

At that very moment, it was still the breakfast hour in Jim’s parents’ home in Kentucky. Jim’s mother was serving breakfast to Jim’s father. Suddenly, she stopped, and turned pale. “Jim’s been hurt”, she said, as the Holy Spirit gave her the news.

Jim later mostly recovered, and he still had a bit of a limp in his 80’s when I knew him. But Jim was filled with the Spirit and wisdom, with more and more stories of the Spirit’s work.

The Spirit communicates with God – and can help us communicate with each other when the Spirit deems it to be important. In fact, the Spirit also helps us in times of trouble, praying FOR us when we cannot. As Paul wrote:

26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

As we travel through life, we often feel that we are in a valley of despair. Things go wrong, bad things happen, people are mean and nasty to us. We may feel terrible and desperate. Our friends and neighbors and family often feel even worse, for they may not have the Rock that we call Jesus Christ to stand upon. We may feel like we are dead people walking, that we have been in the desert for years, or that our bodies have been roasted in a fire. We – or your friends – may have lost all hope. Do you feel like your bones are dry?

At times like these, it does us well to remember the last paragraph of our reading from Ezekiel:

11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”

Are you filled with the Spirit? Do you have the Holy Spirit within you? Most baptized Christians do, but perhaps you have doubts. If you have doubts, visit a local pastor, ask him to lay hands on you that you may receive the Holy Spirit. And be filled with the Spirit!