Signs

Acts 2: 1-24, 32-36

For years, Tony Campolo, renowned preacher, college professor and author, would speak at a Christian festival in central Pennsylvania. Thousands of young people would attend the festival which had a definite Pentecostal flavor to it. The festival always reached a crescendo on Saturday night. Tony was often the featured speaker on Saturday. One year when he spoke on Saturday night word got around, he was scheduled to preach Sunday morning at a Lutheran church nearby.  Hundreds of charged-up young people from the festival came to the church that next morning. Instead of the usual hundred attendees that morning at least a thousand squeezed into the sanctuary and balcony. It was a “high church” congregation with all the trappings of a liturgical service, paraments and the pastor wearing his stole and robe. Tony and the pastor walked onto the platform. He whispered to Tony he’d put an ad in the newspaper, so he wasn’t surprised at the crowd. Little did he know what was about to happen. The pastor stood behind the lectern and spoke in a somber and solemn tone, “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Let us enter into his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.” At that point, some Pentecostal kid in the balcony yelled at the top of his lungs, “All right!” Young people all over the sanctuary started to clap and cheer. Campolo wrote, “It was more than humorous to watch the pastor’s reaction. His knees actually buckled. He didn’t know what to do. The last thing in the world he expected when he called upon the congregation to make a joyful noise unto the Lord was that anybody would.”

It was a multi-sensory experience on Pentecost. A violent wind, fire resting on each in the upper room, the loud declaring of God’s deeds of power in over a hundred languages (Acts 2: 6). This must be what was promised. Luke wrote, “He ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This,’ (Jesus) said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now (Acts 1: 4b-5).” Jesus never said it was to be multi-sensory, but Peter quoted the prophet Joel. In the last days, God’s Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh and there will be prophecies, dreams, visions, signs in the heavens and on the earth that will signify the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Peter is one of the signs in the earth that day when the Holy Spirit was poured out. The same one who denied he knew or followed Jesus three times the night before he was crucified is the one who gives the inaugural sermon on the day the Church, the ekklesia, the gathering or assembly was born. PETER WAS A SIGN. The preacher, revivalist and author Vance Havner put it this way, “God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.” With boldness, bravery and power from on high, Peter declared what was happening was the work of God in pouring out his Spirit as was prophesied by Joel, and he bore witness of the resurrection of Jesus and his coronation as Lord and Messiah though the religious crucified him.

The first sign of the work of God through the Holy Spirit was what was mentioned earlier, the set of multi-sensory expressions – a violent wind, fire upon each of them, all of them speaking in other languages declaring God’s deeds of power. It’s wild and wonderful to see the contrast between the coming of Jesus through birth to an unassuming couple in a manger in Bethlehem and the coming of the Holy Spirit through a sound and light show in Jerusalem that got everyone’s attention. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN A HUMBLE BIRTH AND A STORM OF FIRE, WIND, AND SHOUTS OF TESTIMONY. One is Jesus’ birth, and the other is the new birth available for all.

Peter was a second sign. I’ll now reference a third sign. The crowd responded to Peter’s message, “Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do? (2:37)'” John the Baptist preached a message of repentance in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. In Luke 3: 10, the crowd asked , “‘What should we do then?’ the crowd asked. John answered, ‘The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.'” Peter’s answer to the question on Pentecost was, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (2: 38)” After Peter’s sermon, Luke wrote in Acts 2, “Those who welcomed his message were baptized and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers. Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. (2: 41-43)” The outcome of the outpouring was new life through faith in Jesus and signs and wonders which linked the spiritual with the physical (like we talked about last week).

Were they sure they knew what it meant to live in the Holy Spirit? I don’t know. The closest they’d ever experienced anything like this was when they were in the company of Jesus. Words and deeds, signs and wonders abounded.  They only knew one who lived in the Spirit.

“When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.” – Luke 3: 21-22a

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert.” – Luke 4: 1

“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.” – Luke 4: 14

The same Holy Spirit that came upon and filled and empowered Jesus was what came upon the apostles and fellow believers that day. Peter preached for the residences of Jerusalem to repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The cat was out of the bag. We can have what Jesus had. With repentance and baptism in Jesus’s name, we are awakened to the Holy Spirit, the presence that is upon us, fills us and empower us, will enable us to share the good news of Jesus in word and deed as Jesus and the early church did.

The church is not merely a human enterprise. It is a work of God in the world meant to display God’s love to all in word and deed, in signs and wonders, in truth and love, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

(Preached at St Mark United Methodist Church in Anniston, AL, 5-19-24)