The Holy Spirit (Pentecost Sunday)

Raul Garcia III

Sunday,May 20, 2018
John 15: 26-27; 16: 4-15

Pentecost Sunday

Let us pray:

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.

What is happening with the disciples right now? A few weeks earlier the disciples were hiding behind a locked door scared and afraid for their lives. Over a week ago the disciples were with Jesus on the mount seeing him ascend into heaven. The disciples are understanding a little that this earthly kingdom was something Jesus wasn’t about. So now the disciples are ready to tell the world about Jesus’ kingdom and they don't know how. They are stuck.

So, Jesus tells the disciples how important the Holy Spirit will play both in the Christian Community and in the world.

Jesus leaves so that the disciples can know what to do without Jesus being there. Kind of like a parent leaving their child to see if they can get the job done. These disciples followed Jesus and saw Jesus first hand perform all these miracles and do ministry. And they still had no clue.

It was like the first time I received a call to work in a church and I get all moved in, pictures hung, books in the appropriate place and I sit at my desk and now what. I was so clueless. I had been trained by school and by seminary but there is that moment, I had no idea what to do.

But the Holy Spirit comes to us to help equip us like the disciples and myself to do Jesus’ work. Sometimes we don’t understand what we need to do that is when the Holy Spirit intercedes and helps us.

Today, is the day of Pentecost in which we turn our thoughts to the Holy Spirit and we’re going to learn that the Holy Spirit is our faithful assistant.

When thinking of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are equal in power and majesty they do have distinct jobs. For example, it was the Second Person of the Trinity, God’s Son, who took on human flesh when he was born of the Virgin Mary. And it was he, not God the Father or God the Holy Spirit who died on the cross for our sins. So what is the job of the Holy Spirit? Jesus tells us: “the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father…will testify about me” (John 15:26b).

My goal on any given Sunday should not be for you to walk out of here marveling at how awesome my sermon was or the color of my toe nails. Worship for us is for to see our sinful nature and know we are forgiven and to know we can look to Jesus for comfort. That we come to celebrate communion and we are given a new life. A do over. That is how the Holy Spirit is our holy helper. The Holy Spirit like a good pair of contact lenses. If contacts fit comfortably and do their thing, you will hardly notice them. In fact clear contact lenses are not to be noticed, they’re to help you notice. They are not to be seen, but to be seen through (adapted from R. Maurice Boyd).

Without the Holy Spirit as my holy helper I would never see my own sin. It’s hard to admit that we are sinners. God wants everything we do in our life to testify: “Glory to God in the highest!”

I mean, the reason we try hard to be good parents, for example, is not so much because we’re concerned about our children, we are a little, but it’s because we’re concerned about what others will say about us. If your child’s teacher calls you in to report that your child has been disruptive, you’re not sorry that your child caused others distress, you’re sorry, no you’re mad that your child caused you embarrassment. Or when we do chores at home it isn’t to say thank you as much as it is to receive thanks and praise. The worst part of all this is that we don’t believe it’s so bad to think this way. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit. As our holy helper, he opens our eyes to the fact that such self-centeredness is sin and we need to recognize it and ask for forgiveness.

The Holy Spirit, however, doesn’t just help me see my sin, he helps me see and causes me to believe what Jesus has done to forgive those sins and give me eternal life.

Perhaps we could describe this aspect of our holy helper’s work like this (the sermon continues with a bag of unpopped popcorn - adapted from James Kalthoff). I have a bag of popcorn unpopped seeds, some butter, and salt here all in this bag. That’s all I need to make popcorn, right? Let’s just open up this bag and have some popcorn. Would you like to try some? Of course not! What’s missing? Heat! We need to add heat first so that these kernels turn into soft tasty morsels that soak up the butter and salt. Without the heat these kernels would remain hard and destructive to the teeth. In the same way, unless the Holy Spirit works through the Word, our hearts will remain closed and hard like unpopped popcorn. We would care less about the fact that God sent Jesus to pay for the sins our hard hearts produce. Thankfully when the good news about Jesus is proclaimed, the Holy Spirit goes to work on our hardened hearts and turns them into little sponges that soak up all the goodness of forgiveness and eternal life that God wants us to enjoy in Christ.(excerpt from Sermon by Daniel Habben, May 29, 2007)

The Holy Spirit is the real deal. He is our holy helper sent by the Father and the Son. So, listen when God the Holy Spirit speaks to you through the Bible or through fellow Christians who point out sin so that they can point you to your Saviour, Jesus. Listen because the Holy Spirit, our holy helper, speaks nothing but the truth so that we will forever enjoy nothing but God’s grace and love in Christ! Amen.