May 26, 2026
Message

On the Church calendar, today is Pentecost Sunday and our Scripture for the day, recorded in the Book of Acts, describes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’ disciples, an event that many theologians consider the “birthday of the Church”.  It takes place in Jerusalem, where about one-hundred-and-twenty followers of Jesus had gathered following His ascension ten days earlier.  Right before He returned to heaven, Jesus directed His disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the Promise of the Father [Acts 1:4] or the coming of the Holy Spirit.  Because Pentecost was one of the three required Jewish pilgrimage feasts, devout Jews from all over the Roman Empire filled Jerusalem that day, providing a diverse audience for the subsequent miracle of tongues.  The inclusion of diverse languages signaled that God intended the Gospel to be for all nations, not just for the Jewish people.  The primary purpose of this event was for the Holy Spirit to equip followers of Jesus with power to become witnesses for the risen Christ “‘. . . in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’” [Acts 1:8, NKJV]

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I want us to focus on the reality that the Holy Spirit is an active, uncontainable power that, for followers of Jesus, transforms both fear into courage and division into unity.  Recognizing this truth can help us move from a tame, timid faith to a daring, Spirit-led life.  Many people view the Holy Spirit as they do a domestic housecat—aloof, but always somewhere nearby.  Yet, on the first post-resurrection Day of Pentecost, the Spirit did not come gently rubbing up against the disciples’ legs.  Instead, He suddenly arrived as “. . . a mighty rushing wind, . . .” [Acts 2:2, NKJV]  Many of us live our spiritual lives as if we are in a rowboat; we work hard, we strain our muscles from time-to-time, and we determine the direction by our own strength, but living with the Wild Breath of God within us is like being in a sailboat.  We do not provide the power; we simply hoist the sail.  In other words, we do not control the Wind, we respond to it.  Sometimes it takes us where we did not plan to go, but it always takes us much further than our own strength ever could.  Pentecost is not just a historical event to for us to celebrate annually; it is a divine enablement for today.

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Imagine the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem that day.  They were waiting, per Jesus’ instruction, but they did not know exactly for what or whom they were waiting.  The parents of my best friend in high school had a minor bird.  That bird constantly whistled and shouted, interrupting every conversation that took place in that house.  Many people view the Holy Spirit as a docile dove—quiet, hidden, and predictable—but Pentecost shows us a Spirit more like a loud, disruptive minor bird.  When the Wild Breath of God blew through that upper room, the first thing He did was break down walls as the disciples began to speak in languages they had neither learned nor spoken before, allowing people from every nation to hear about the mighty works of God in their own tongue.  They did not speak in some undecipherable, secret prayer language, as mentioned in the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian Church, but in various languages known by the people-groups throughout the Roman Empire.  In other words, the Holy Spirit made it possible for everyone to hear the Gospel.

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Up until the eleventh chapter of the Book of Genesis, all the people of the earth shared a common language, but at Babel, humanity tried to build a tower to reach God, which resulted in the Lord confusing or dividing their language and scattering the people around the world.  Pentecost was the undoing of Babel.  God did not erase our distinct languages, cultures, and skin tones with the coming of the Holy Spirit, opting instead to speak through our differences to unite us.  Think of a symphony orchestra tuning up.  It is chaos, clashing notes, screeching violins, and honking horns.  That is our world, a cacophony of division, but when the Conductor raises His baton, a single melody emerges from the many instruments.  The Holy Spirit is that Conductor.  He does not make us all play the same instrument, and not necessarily the same note, but He makes us play the same song: the mighty works of God.  At Pentecost, God reached down to humanity and, suddenly, people who were “others” became brothers and sisters in Christ.

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In addition to the supernatural ability to speak in languages they did not know, our text from the Book of Acts says that with the coming of the Holy Spirit something like divided tongues of fire rested on Jesus’ followers.  Fire can be dangerous because it consumes that which it burns, but fire also purifies.  The Wild Breath of God burns away the “chaff” in a believer’s life; things like our egos, our prejudices, our secret fears, and leaves behind what is good, life producing, and eternal.  Forest rangers often conduct “controlled burns” to get rid of dead underbrush.  They do this because if the dead wood and the untamed thicket stay there, they hinder and can even prevent new seeds from reaching the soil, where they can germinate and properly replenish the forest with new life.  Sometimes, the fire of the Holy Spirit “burns” through our lives—maybe through a difficult season or a sudden change—not to destroy us, but to clear away the “dead wood” of our past so that new, green life can finally sprout.  I said earlier that that many theologians consider the first post-resurrection Pentecost to be the “birthday of the Church”; I prefer to think to think of it as “bloom day”, the day the underbrush of Jewish legalism was burned way and the seed of God’s redeeming grace blossomed into full bloom.

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Later in the second chapter of the Book of Acts [Acts 2:12-21], the Apostle Peter—once fearful enough to deny Jesus, not once, but three times in one evening—stood boldly before a befuddled crowd in Jerusalem, not far from where his disowning of the Lord took place.  With all the commotion stirred up by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the crowd mockingly accused the followers of Jesus of public intoxication, of being drunk on new wine [Acts 2:13].  Into this uproar, the newly empowered apostle quoted the Prophet Joel: “‘. . . it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams.’” [Acts 2:17, NKJV]  The first post-resurrection Pentecost was the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise that the Holy Spirit would no longer be reserved for a few elite individuals—prophets, priests, and kings as under the Old Covenant but is poured out on “all flesh”, regardless of gender, age, or social status.  This promises a foundational truth of the Christian faith: all believers, and that includes you and I, are empowered by the Holy Spirit to be active witnesses for Christ in the world today.

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The Holy Spirit does not just give us “goosebumps when we sense His presence; more importantly, He testifies to the truth of Christ in a world in desperate need of hope and salvation.  Most, if not all, of us, at one time or another, have ordered from Domino’s Pizza or some other company that delivers to pizza to your location, be it home, work, school or church.  Every time Joanna and I have done so, the pizza arrived in a box.  A pizza box is an inexpensive vessel; the pizza inside it gives it value.  You and I are like pizza boxes, in that our ultimate value is the result of the Spirit of Christ living in us.  As “boxes”, we are to be clean and empty so that Christ, through the Holy Spirit, can fill us with evangelistic purpose, empowering us to share the Gospel with our family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, classmates, even complete strangers.  As a “box”, we both carry and keep the Gospel pure.  In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul warned against preaching any other gospel [Galatians 1:8-9].  Any other gospel includes preaching things such as salvation comes by Jesus and water baptism, or by Jesus and speaking in tongues, and so on.  Any other gospel also including proclaiming salvation without repentance, as so many in the modern American church are doing.

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In our Scripture for today, I included a passage from the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus: “‘The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. . . .’” [John 3:8, NKJV]  Try as we might, we cannot schedule a move of God.  Our heartfelt desires and sincerity does not control the Holy Spirit.  Moreover, the Wild Breath of God is not in a sealed case that we open only on Sunday mornings or only when an emergency arises.  Instead, He forever works for God’s glory and our good.  I love to sit in our back yard watching the wind move the clouds through the sky.  Sometimes I can feel the breeze and other times I cannot because it is moving far above my head, which means that sometimes I can feel the wind and other times I merely witness its effects.  Our experience with the Holy Spirit is similar, but whether we recognize it right this moment or not, the Wild Breath of God is blowing right now in our lives, preparing us to bear witness to the redeeming grace of God.

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Stop trying to row the boat; stop trying to control the outcome; instead, pray the simplest, most dangerous prayer a believer can pray: “Lord, hoist my sail and take me where Your Wind blows.”  As you leave this sanctuary, go out as ambassadors of Christ, knowing that the same Wind that filled the Upper Room on that very first post-resurrection Pentecost is the Wild Breath of God that will sustain you on your mission.​