Unchanged Lives

 

Read Acts 2

OK, it’s Pentecost Sunday. We have read the words that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. That’s Peter proclaiming words from the prophet Joel.

Those are words of assurance, but you know all too well that Tom is going to find the message for those who already believe and have taken the yoke of our Master and are seeking to learn from him.

So, take comfort in the assurance of your salvation but don’t unbuckle your seatbelt as we continue down the road of discipleship. I will invade some comfort zones.

Last year we began working our way through Psalm 25 as our memory verses.  We took one verse per month. The fourth verse set the tone for much of the rest of the psalm

Show me your ways, Lord,

    teach me your paths.

These words should be in our daily prayers. They are in mine, but how do we learn his ways and walk his paths?

Obviously, prayer and study and the counsel of other believers help. Is there anything else?

How many times have you heard me use the phrase, put his words into practice? How do we manifest that?  Obedience, discipline—a word that is close to discipleship, ritual and mantra?  How do the words of the Lord manifest themselves into action in our lives?

Some of you have probably had your fill of me saying, take his yoke and learn from him.

Is that more study and discipline? What’s the trick that gets us to do things God’s way instead of our own.

Do you remember Nicodemus coming to see Jesus at night?  It was the first episode of Nick at Night. Jesus told him that he had to be born again—born anew.

Nicodemus was Israel’s teacher—a Pharisee on the ruling council—but his response was so pedestrian that he could have been mistaken for a pagan.

How can anyone do that? You think that I can climb back into my mother’s womb? I’m kind of sticking my neck out here coming to see you. You teach some interesting stuff, but this talk is crazy.

That a bit of a paraphrase, but how did Jesus address Nicodemus’s ignorance?

Consider the wind. You can’t see it but you know it’s there. It’s the same way with God and his Spirit. If you want to please God, you must be born of his Spirit.

How does that work? You must believe in Jesus. He is the Son of God and once he has made the atoning sacrifice for our sins and goes to the Father in heaven, the Spirit of God will come to those who believe. We can say all of that in the past tense. It happened just that way.

Do you remember the encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well in John 4? She does not want to talk about her life, but she knows that Jesus must be a prophet or someone holy, so she decides to talk about religious things. That might get him off his game and examining my life.

Where do we worship? I heard the Messiah is coming. Let’s talk about anything but me and my standing with God almighty.

Again a paraphrase, but how did Jesus answer her?

God is Spirit.

A time is coming, in fact, the time is already here, when true believers who want genuine worship will worship in spirit and in truth.

How do we learn the ways of the Lord and walk in his path?

How do we take his yoke and learn from him?

How do we put his words into practice?

How do we live out what we say frequently in our worship warmups?

I am crucified with Christ. Christ lives in me.

How?

By the Spirit that lives within us.

Consider the apostles who were staying close to Jerusalem as they were instructed by the Lord after his resurrection and before his ascension.

He commission them to go into the world with the gospel but knew they were not sufficiently equipped yet.

But they would be. The Day of Pentecost is not a New Testament thing. Pentecost occurred 50 days after the celebration of the Passover. But on this day, the Spirit of God—the Holy Spirit—was manifest upon and within these believers who were gathered.

The gospel author Luke described this as tongues of fire coming upon those gathered. We don’t have any accounts of burnt or roasting flesh, but the Spirit that came was noticeable in a unique way.

The Spirit of God that came upon them empowered them. These men who huddled together, often in fear of the Jewish leaders hunting them down, were given power from above.

They emerged from the building and began talking in languages not native to them but in the language of those around them who had come from near and far to celebrate Pentecost.

The natural explanation was these guys are drunk. It’s only 9 in the morning, but it’s 5 O’clock somewhere, right?

Let’s follow the science. In college, my German class was 5 days a week. I worked 6 days a week, often out of town and missed quite a few classes. I had a test one Friday morning and hadn’t studied, so I went out for a few beers, thinking that was the best I could do in the time allotted.

My science experiment failed miserably. Alcohol consumption does not equate to foreign language fluency. Who’d a thunk it?

These apostles were not drunk. That presumption didn’t make any sense. They were filled with the Spirit of God. His Holy Spirit took up residence in each of them.

Peter, bold but suffering from recurring Foot-in Mouth Disease, launched into the most cogent discourse of his life.

The Spirit had come and had taken up residence in the Apostles.

Don’t you wish that God’s Spirit lived in you?

Some of you are thinking, but he does, right?

Then where is our boldness? Where are our incredible acts? Where is the evidence that the Spirit lives within us?

Not quite a century ago there was a man named Clarence Crane from Cleveland, Ohio.  He made chocolates for a living.  A century ago, that was something of a seasonal line.  Refrigeration wasn’t quite what it is today.  Melted chocolates didn’t sell. 

So, Crane decided to sell a line of mints to keep his business afloat during the warmer months.  He didn’t want to re-tool his factory so he contracted this line of mints out to a pill maker.  The first batch arrived but they were defective.  The candies had a hole in the middle.  The pill maker was very apologetic but Crane decided to give these defective candies a try. They looked like little life savers.

Enter onto the scene a man named John Noble from New York City.  He sold ad space on trolley cars.  One day he tried one of these mints and knew that he had to sell Crane some ads so he headed to Cleveland.  Crane wasn’t the least bit interested in advertising, but he offered to sell the rights to the candy for a few thousand dollars.  He said that he would even throw in the defective pill machine for free.

Noble negotiated a price of $2,900.  He only had $3,800 to invest from his savings, so now he was left with $900 to produce a run of this new candy and market it.  And he did just that.  He made a batch of Life Savers and put them in every candy store in his area.

But the candy didn’t sell.  In fact, it grew stale on the shelves because it was sold in a cardboard roll.  The candy store owners were not happy with Noble.

Noble solved the problem of keeping the candies fresh by means of a foil wrapper, replenished the stocks of store owners at his own expense, but the candy still did not sell.  And so, a few years after the invention of the Life Saver, it died a slow death and was never heard of again.

Or at least that’s the way the story should have ended.  Noble had spent all of his money.  Everything that he made in advertising was now going into his Life Saver Company but the little candies did not sell.

He decided to give it one more try, but not in the candy stores.  He went to restaurants, bars, barbershops, and other establishments.  He met with owners and they agreed to place the candy next to the register and always make change that included a nickel.  The price of the candy was a nickel and there was a box set in front of each display.

People would get their change from the cashier or bartender or barber and impulsively throw a nickel into the box and take a roll of candy.

Whether you like Life Savers or you don’t, most of us probably don’t have much love for John Noble.  He was the father of impulse buying and selling.  Take a look at the checkout lines at the grocery store or Walmart or Target or the counter at the convenience store that sells you gasoline.  All of this comes from the story of the Lifesaver.

The story that I want you to remember is that John Noble saw value in these tiny mints and he kept trying. He succeeded. I don’t know how many billion Lifesavers have been sold over the past century, but it’s a bunch. The number was 55 billion before the turn of the century.

Now, know this. The Spirit of God came to live inside of you when you believed in Jesus and professed him as Lord.

The Spirit is within you. Now, stop throwing in the towel every time something does seem to work.

Know the Spirit of God is within you. Know that the Spirit gives you power in this world. Know that you will do greater things that Jesus did. That’s what he said.

But, I don’t see any results yet.  I’m frustrated.

John Noble could have thrown in the towel as well, but he didn’t and he became very successful selling little candies with a hole in the middle.

But, I don’t see any results yet.  I’m frustrated.

The Lifesaver story is not a story of the Holy Spirit. It’s just a story of trying one more time.

But, I’m not seeing it. I think God skipped me with his Spirit. Does he expect me to keep trying even when I can’t see the results?

That’s insanity, right?

Let’s try this definition instead.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

When you believed, God’s Spirit came to live inside you.  Will you trust him?

Or do we trust the Spirit of the world?  Do we rely so much on our own understanding?

God’s Spirit is living in you. Trust God. Seek that quiet voice within you that is of God and will lead you to great things and step out in faith.

Do you think that Peter had been spending all of his time preparing what was a masterful sermon? Had the other apostles been sequestered in an immersive language study program?

The Spirit prompted them and they acted.

Grow deaf to the spirit of fear and doubt.

Ignore the voices that say, stay in the boat.

That’s some good figurative language there, Tom, but how about something more tangible.

My Dad or my Mom always did it that way.

It just runs in the family.

Me and Hank Jr. are going to sing Family Tradition here in a moment. Yes, I know it should be Hank and I, except in country music.

I’ll just wait until I have some more information.

Let’s not jump into anything.

Have I talked about inertia before?  I know I have, and you might be tired of hearing that a body at rest tends to remain at rest.

God loves me just the way I am.

There are plenty of people in this world to do God’s work. It doesn’t have to be me.

While both statements may be true; they both serve to make us deaf to the voice of the Spirit that lives within us.

Our own understanding and our desire to hold on to it over the voice of God’s Spirit makes us ineffective. It is a drug that numbs us to the Spirit that lives within us.

Reject all that doubts the word of God.

The Spirt of God lives within you, and you will do the great things that God has called you to do.

Some of you might say that I know that God’s Spirit is within me because I can have peace in a tumultuous world.

That’s good but not sufficient. That’s being a consumer of the benefits of God’s blessings but hardly ventures into discipleship. God’s Spirit is within you so that you may do the things God has called you to do and bring glory to his name.

Imagine those Apostles having received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost saying, “At last, I can have peace.”  Then just going about their lives business as usual.

The curse of modern Christianity is to acknowledge God, acknowledge Jesus died for our sins, and acknowledge that the Spirit lives within us and then live unchanged lives because we hold our own understanding in such high esteem.

God’s Spirit lives within you. Stop selling the Spirit short.

Do the work of an evangelist!

Put the words of our Master into practice.

Be known by your love!

Bring glory to God!

Know that God’s Spirit lives within you!

The book of the Bible from which we get this account of the coming of the Spirit is titled, Musings of the Apostles. It’s about their thoughts, meditations, and things they considered doing.

Right?

Actually, mine is titled, The Acts of the Apostles, for once the Spirit came, these men who followed Jesus for three years suddenly stepped into action.

We have attached some words to our little body here. They are God’s Love in Action. Is there any fidelity between that motto and who we really are?

Does the Spirit prompt you to action?

Don’t remain a body at rest. Take action based upon the leading of the Spirit that lives within you.

Give eviction notices to the spirits of fear, doubt, and inaction that are living rent free in your hearts and minds.

The Spirit of God that lives within you prompts you to action. We are called to continue the acts of the apostles.  We are to do even greater things!

 

Amen.