The Pentecostal Church

I have preached many sermons on Pentecost over the years. Here are some notes that went with my May 27, 2007 sermon:

A few notes on Acts 2, with Pentecost coming up this Sunday:

V. 46 says that they ate together with glad and generous hearts. There is an overwhelming note of joy.

Earlier in the chapter the disciples were accused of being drunk. Of course they weren’t. But in another sense, they were. They were drunk with the new wine of the Spirit (cf. Eph. 5:18ff). The Spirit filled them with gladness and sincerity.

This joy in community and daily life was attractive – thus, they found favor in the eyes of outsiders (v. 47). The Pentecostal church is shot through with joy – a shared, infectious, contagious joy. It was the joy of knowing Christ and one another. It was the joy that comes from the Spirit (cf. the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5).

When all the ingredients in v. 42 are in the mix of the local church, there is a vibrant joy that wins the favor even of unbelievers. In Acts 2, the public face of the church is smiling. We need to keep that in mind – the world has seen too many grumpy Christians and too many dour church communities.

1/3

At the end of Acts 2, Luke says “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” Those who received the word…..did not got their own way! They were joined to the community.

Obviously, then, the church is the place of salvation. To be saved is to be incorporated into the people of God. To be saved is to be added to the body of Christ.

Note: The Lord adds to the church. The church is not a merely human organization or club. It is God’s new humanity. This is why salvation and church membership are so closely aligned. The church does not grow herself. The Lord grows her.

That is not to say that church membership guarantees salvation. You are grafted in by faith, and you can be broken out of you don’t persevere (cf. Rom. 11). But ordinarily, the plan of salvation includes being plugged into the covenant community. Thus: To be committed to Christ is to be committed to his church.

The Spirit-filled church is is a growing church. It is not stagnant; it is a community on the move. Obviously, church growth is in God’s hands. But ordinarily a healthy church will be growing at some kind of pace.

The church at the end of Acts 2 does not yet have a full sense of her mission. That will come as the story of Acts unfolds. But already, we can say that the church has developed an outward facing ministry. The church mixed with the surrounding culture (e.g., still going to the temple, even though she is the new temple). This interface provided opportunities to show and tell outsiders the good news of Jesus’ lordship. It might look from v. 42 that this was community totally turned inward, turned in on itself. But that was not the case. From the day of Pentecost onward, the church had a deep awareness of her mission, even though it would need to grow and deepen. So now we can say: A commitment to Christ is not only a commitment to his church, but a commitment to the mission of Christ through the church.

This follows the pattern we see in the gospels: Jesus’ baptism launched his public mission; the baptism of the church at Pentecost launches her on her mission. To be a Christian is to be a part of this community, and to be a part of this community is to share in this mission.

Further, Acts 2 gives us some hints as to how the outward facing ministry of the church meshes with its inward facing ministry. (This is like asking: How does evangelism relate to discipleship?) The church’s mission flows out of her common life together. That’s why a passage that describes the interior life of the church closes with an account of her remarkable growth. *The best external witness is the quality of our interior community.* If we live together in the way v. 42-47 describe, devoting ourselves to the apostolic body of teaching, devoting ourselves to one (including our poor, so that every need is met), breaking the bread together faithfully so that eucharistic worship flows out into hospitality, and praying together regularly, we will find favor in the eyes of outsiders (We’ll get persecuted as well, as Acts shows – but that does not negate the point!)

The way the church reaches the culture is by being a distinctively biblical culture in her own community. The only way the church can be relevant is by being different, for only then does she have something to say that the world can’t find elsewhere. That’s exactly the opposite of what you hear today in many “seeker friendly” evangelical circles. People say that for the church to grow, she needs to find out what people want/like and give it to them. She needs to market herself. She needs to accommodate herself.

That strategy may make the church popular, but it will never make her powerful! No—what the church needs more than anything, now as always, is to live as a Spirit indwelt people, as God’s new temple, new humanity, new community.

2/3

The OT background to the Feast of Pentecost should not be missed. Leviticus 23 indicates that Pentecost celebrated God’s gifts in the ongoing harvest. Pentecost is a harvest festival, falling between the beginning of the harvest (Firstfruits, during Passover) and the end of the harvest (the Feast of Tabernacles). [It should be noted, though, that Pentecost was also considered a kind of firstfruits festival in some passages.]

Pentecost comes “in between,” which makes sense. We live in between the first and final comings of Jesus, the beginning and end of the harvest of the nations. Thus, Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Spirit, who is given to fill the gap between the two comings of Jesus. The Spirit enables the church to fulfill her mission in the time of Christ’s absence. The Spirit is both the firstfruits of the harvest and the guarantee of the full harvest (cf. Paul’s terminology for the Spirit). Pentecost also included offering God leavened bread, as a sign of the growth and maturation of the kingdom and the labors of the people. God accepts the waved offering as a sign that he accepts the fruits of our work. The leaven of the kingdom will work its way into everything, transforming all of life.

Pentecost also included the poor. The instructions regarding the feast in Lev. 23 include commands to care for the needy in Israel (e.g., gleaning). Pentecost is harvest time, a time when everyone is to feast together and no one is to go hungry. Of course, this gets worked out at the end of Acts 2, where everyone is sharing their possessions with those in need. Pentecost is a time for fellowship and generosity.

3/3

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Pentecost communion mediatation:

At the beginning of Acts 2, we see God work in an extraordinary way. There are amazing phenomena accompanying the Spirit’s work. But at the end of Acts s, we see God work in a very ordinary way. There doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about what’s happening.

At the beginning of the chapter, there’s a rushing wind, tongues of fire, and a speech miracle — all very spectacular. At the end of the chapter, there’s teaching, feasting, and sharing within the new community.

We need to understand the Spirit is not only at work in the spectacular, he’s at work in the ordinary and in the mundane. At the beginning of the chapter, the Spirit’s work is dramatic. At the end of the chapter, the Spirit’s work is more low-key, less dramatic — and yet every bit as real and powerful.

Early in the chapter, the disciples were accused of being drunk. Of course, they weren’t filled with wine, they were filled with the Spirit. At the end of the chapter, they are celebrating the Lord’s Supper together, eating bread and no doubt drinking wine with one another. The Spirit works through the extraordinary, but now he will settle down and work through the ordinary.

This seems like a very ordinary table. This looks like ordinary bread and ordinary wine. But the Spirit is at work here, and this bread and wine will be to us Spiritual food and Spiritual drink. What happens at this table is every bit as amazing and miraculous as what happened with the wind, fire, and tongues.

In the old covenant sacrificial system, two kinds of bread were used: unleavened and leavened. Unleavened bread was used at Passover. They had to get the old leaven out and make a fresh start. They had to break with Egypt.

But at Pentecost, they used leavened bread because leaven symbolized the growth of the kingdom. The leaven transforms the whole batch of dough and causes it to grow. Likewise, God has promised the kingdom will grow and transform all of life by the work of his Spirit. The Spirit is working the leaven of the kingdom into all things right now.

We often think of the Lord’s Supper as a new covenant Passover feast, which it is, but it’s also a new covenant Pentecost feast, and so like those disciples at the first Pentecost, let us eat together with gladness and simplicity of heart.