15/5/05 Acts 2 United Service

On the first Pentecost Sunday there were two groups of people featured in our reading.

There were the disciples and the crowd.

The disciples had been following Jesus for three years. They had an intimate knowledge of him, but failed to realise who he really was and what his mission was about until after the resurrection. In the forty days after the resurrection Jesus had appeared to them and taught them about how his life, death and resurrection fulfilled the plan of God to save the world that was contained in the Jewish Scriptures.

Jesus had told them to wait in Jerusalem for the gift promised by God the Father, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit , 1:4f.

There they were, waiting. Probably very uncertain about what was to happen, especially as they had not seen the risen Jesus for ten days.

Then there was the crowd. Jews from all over the Mediterranean world who had converged on Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival. It was one of three important, pilgrim festivals in the Jewish religion. It was called the Feast of Weeks because it came after a period of seven weeks of harvesting that began with the offering of the first barley sheaf during the Passover celebration and ended with the wheat harvest. By the time of the first Christian century, however, it was considered the anniversary of the giving of the law at Mount Sinai.

These Jews would have revered the Old Testament law and lived their life according to a strict moral code. They would have been very religious, not only travelling to Jerusalem for important festivals but praying daily, giving a proportion of their income to God, and going to the local synagogue. They would have come from religious families, most of them would have been able to trace their family history back to Abraham, the founder of their religion.

Each group had a problem.

The disciples had the good news of Jesus to share but they could not do it in their own strength. They wanted to follow Jesus' moral teaching but didn't have the ability to adhere to them. They needed power, fruit and gifts to do this. They needed God to prepare the hearts of people to receive their message.

The crowd held the law in high regard. But they didn't have the ability to keep all of it. Some of them were religious because their parents and grandparents had been. It was the done thing. It was part of what it meant to be a Jew.

They needed the power to follow God's ways. They needed the fruit in their lives to make them more like Jesus. They needed God to break through the safety of their religion and open their hearts, minds and wills to see that they were not good enough for God. That Jesus was the only person ever to have met God's perfect standard and that he had died in their place on the cross. receiving the punishment they deserved for their sins. A once and for all human sacrifice that replaced their religion of the repeated sacrifices of unblemished animals.

God had freely decided to save their ancestors from physical slavery in Egypt and had expected them to respond by keeping His law.

Now God was making the free and undeserved offer of freedom from slavery to sin and death. He expected those who responded to follow His ways, motivated from within, by His Spirit.

Where are you today?

Are you like the disciples? You know about Jesus. You have decided to follow Him, perhaps some time ago. Yet you feel drained, powerless, joyless, disillusioned, like you are going through the motions. You feel like the dried up old bones in Ezekiel 37. You may never have fully experienced the power of God's Spirit in your life. Or you may need a "topping up" with the Holy Spirit.

As believers we have the Holy Spirit living within us. But we need topping up, filling again and again. Like a car that needs filling up again and again with fuel. The only difference being that the government hasn't found a way of charging tax for the Holy Spirit!

Maybe you are like the crowd. Religious, coming to church. Ethical, living your life according to a moral code. Perhaps your parents passed on their religious beliefs to you. But something is missing. You've never really "got it". Give up trying to be religious, good or traditional. Turn to Jesus. Enter into a relationship with Him today. he is alive and wants to live in you by His Spirit. Follow His way and He will give you His power, His fruit, His gifts, so you can live for Him, be more like Him, and minister for Him.

His Spirit also unites all believers, irrespective of denomination, race, colour, sex, age, intelligence and wealth. His Spirit sets Knebworth Family of Churches apart from the Bowls, Tennis, Badminton, Football, and Cricket Clubs, KATs, Knebworth Players and all the other commendable activities that go on in this busy village.

We all need God's Spirit to bring us to trust in Jesus and to enable us to go on on following and serving Him.

Let us have a moment of quiet in which we can prepare ourselves to receive God's Spirit. This could be for the first time accompanied by penitence and faith in Jesus. Or it could be that you need God's Spirit to fill you afresh, whether this is for the first time or the thousand and first time.

After this period of quiet I will say a prayer and we will see how God's Spirit wants to minister to and through us.