Psalm 103:24–34, 35б; Acts 2:1-21, 38-39; Galatians 5:16-25

Pentecost, 2012

"The fruit of the spirit is the gift of God, not a result of the discipline”

One man had owned a wood-processing plant.  He loved to create new machines and was always glad to explain his son how it all works.  And for the son it was always a very exciting experience: huge steel cutters and wheels, the conveyor belt and big automated pincers, and frightening blades.  The father was trying to explain how the lasers and computer "read” the wood and automatically know how to process it.  Blinking lights and ton’s of switches fascinated the boy. But in his head there was one main question "ok…but what does this machine do? How does it work?” But before he could ask, his father pushed a big green knob that said "start” and all of a sudden this amazing machine activated and although not everything became clear, the boy could see for himself what this full of electronics and steel machine does.

We live in a world where people tend to measure the value of everything according to what it can produce. And this demand for "productivity/usefulness” we also apply to human life.  What is the most common question people ask when they meet new people? "What do you do? What's your job?” Our world is crazy about "usefulness” and "productivity”. We value and try to stick close to those «who can be useful” and ignore those "who are no use to us”. Whatever we encounter in life we ask – "what use is that to me?”

I assume that a similar question resonated in the hearts of a 120 believers in Acts 2.  Imagine these 120 followers of Jesus who gathered in someone's house in the days preceding Pentecost, praying and expecting something from God. Many of them staked their lives upon Jesus and His teaching. They believed that He was the Messiah but 50 days ago their hopes were shattered because Jesus was crucified. But unexpected by all He rose from the dead and appeared to them for 40 days until He ascended to the Father.  Already then they were amazed by what was happening and their shattered hope were being rebuilt again and as He was departing Jesus said: "I am going now but you stay in Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Father and You will receive the power of the Holy Spirit”. Having said that He was taken from their sight in the cloud. The hope that God will finally change everything in their lives and in this world was once again filling their hearts.  May be now it will all be different.  And the followers did what Jesus said. They went back into the city, gathered in someone's house and waited. They waited and prayed for 10 days, talked and waited more.

We can only imagine what they were thinking about in those hours: they were reminiscing about Jesus' teaching, remembering his miracles and his arguments with the Pharisees. How fascinating all of that must have been but I bet they all had a question that was unresolved: "What now? We are sitting here and waiting for something. What will it do for us? I've staked a lot when I believed in Jesus. What will this expectation do? Will this faith pay off? When I push this big green knob will anything change?”

And so these 120 disciples waited for some miracle. And the miracle did happen in the day Pentecost. When disciples were praying and waiting together, suddenly a loud sound like from a wind filled the room and they saw something like the tongues of fire that came down upon each one of them and they began speaking different languages that they didn't know before, and began telling all the nations gathered in Jerusalem about Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection. What an amazing moment it must have been, perhaps even a frightening moment for all that was happening could only mean that the presence of God Himself was there with them. In Scriptures the wind was always a sign of power and fire – of purification.  On that day, the day of Pentecost, the day that they will never forget the presence of the Living God overcame them and did what God always wanted to do.  God always wanted that our relationships with Him would not just be a following rituals or going through the motions.  God always desired to be in us, to live in our hearts and to bring us back to what He created us to be.

Prophet Jeremiah spoke about that preaching the word of God, "Thus says the Lord: I will put my law within them and will write it upon their hearts and I will be their God and they will be My people” (Jer. 31:33). And that’s what prophet Joel spoke about: "And it will be that I will pour out from My Spirit upon every flesh” (Joel 2:28). God the Holy Spirit desires to abide in me, to live through me, to fill me and to empower me. But what for? So that I can live the life of Jesus in this world. That is the point of Pentecost. God never wanted to have a distant impersonal relationship with Him, never wanted to just be an acquaintance, or for our faith to just be a loyalty to some religious statements.  God desires to have an intimate relationship with Him, desires to bring us back to a life of freedom, love, peace and joy.

Sometimes we think that the Holy Spirit came and began His work at Pentecost to give birth to the church. But Spirit’s work goes much deeper. God the Spirit was working from the beginning of times, from the time of creation. The first mention of the Spirit we find already in the second verse of the Bible where it says that the Spirit was hovering over creation – it’s an image of a bird hovering over it’s chicks, caring and protecting. And through the whole human history the Lord tried to show us His love and care, tried to take care of His creation, so that it would prosper but time and again His love was rejected by people who preferred to live according to their desires, to walk in their own ways which destroyed and keep destroying their lives.

In Galatians 5 Paul says that such a life results in "the works of flesh” – it’s a life that ignores God and His Spirit that wants to free us for life eternal. Paul stresses four main areas of life where people tend to live in sin when they don’t surrender their lives to God. It’s a sexual side of life: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery. God gave humans specific guidance about intimate relationships that He intended for a marriage only but people ignore those commandment for they desire "physical pleasure” without which they fell they can’t live and they no longer care what God or anybody else thinks about it. Paul continues: "a life that is not submitted to God leads to religious sins: such as idolatry and witchcraft – that is when material things take God’s place in our lives (when money, for example, define the life we live or when we say that we trust God but for healing we go to that "healer lady” with her arsenal of herbs and icons). And life that is not surrendered to God also destroys relationships with people: it leads to a hateful attitude towards others, to a discord that leads to fighting, jealousy – a desire to have what someone else has, to fits of rage and selfish ambitions when we do something (even good) but for our own benefit in mind, dissentions and factions when our God given differences we turn into separations and mutual hatred, and envy when the happiness and success of others bothers us. The life that is not surrendered to God is often given to a sin of drinking or other addictions to intoxicating substances whether it be just individual drinking or corporate parties that lead to other vices as well. And Paul just like Jesus earlier warns us: those who live in such a way will be enter the Kingdom of God. One cannot belong to God and keep on living in that way – it’s a self-deception. It’s not a life that is filled with God’s Spirit. For the Spirit of God if given freedom to reign, cleanses our hearts for grace to rule, cleanses our hearts from any trust in the flesh, produces absolute trust to God and enables us to live according to God’s will.  

When Peter preached on the day of Pentecost about Christ who was crucified for the sin of each one of them, people were pierced through the heart and were asking: "What do we do, then?” And Peter said: "Repent! And let each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And you will receive God’s gift of His Holy Spirit and you will be saved from this corrupt generation”. Many of us heard about Christ many times but we never experienced His transforming love.  But only those can understand God’s love that see it in the cross. And to understand God’s love truly is to come under its influence is to open one’s heart to the work of the Holy Spirit. To repent is to "turn” from any self-sufficiency in any life questions, to admit one’s true state before God’s high standards, to be aware of all sin that separates us from God and to surrender our life to Him.  And Pentecost is God’s answer to our absolute repentant surrender to Jesus Christ. And it such surrendered life God brings what Paul called "the fruit of the Spirit”.

And what is this "fruit of the Spirit” our brothers and sisters will tell us in the next few minutes. (As different people up to the stage with a colored flag they each say corresponding words representing different aspects of the fruit of the Spirit Paul talks about.

Love – it trusts and hopes!


Love covers us with prayer


Love is the Great Holy Spirit


The unquenchable flame of Christ

I rejoice in life, I am the Body of Christ


The Lord gave me power to do His will,
 

Washed with His blood, cleansed every sin,


And ignited in me joy divine!

Our God is the God of peace,

Stay close to Him in Your life and He will always be there for you.

Let Him help, be obedient to Him and He will keep you

That no one will be able to steal the peace of you heart. 
 

The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of forbearance

The spirit of hope, the spirit of faith.

This Spirit is our consolation

That heals our every hurt.

How full of light and beautiful is kindness

Like the blooming gardens

Send us, o Lord, your joyful kindness

Your children are waiting at your feet.

The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of goodness

The spirit of humble words,

The spirit of mutual forgiveness,

The Spirit of Love that shares the gifts.

Works are faith and faith is works

Two sides of one whole

Works without faith won’t save you,

Faith without works is worthless.

The Spirit of Christ is always meek


The Spirit of intersession for others,


The spirit that speaks of the things to come.

Self- control is the sign of a holy life,

Modest desire of a simple life.

Christ’s witnesses need to know self-control

Of a grateful, sensitive and dignified heart.

Way too often though we make a mistake reading Galatians 5 and talk about the fruits of the Spirit thinking that somehow through faith in Christ we can become the people who live out love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  We try to exhibit all that but time and again we fail. We again burst out against someone in rage, instead of joy we fall into depression and realize that we are so far from self-control. And that’s because we think that what Paul calls us to bring all these things like a fruit. But what Paul describes in reality is a life of a person that surrendered itself to the lordship of the Spirit of God. That’s what Paul is saying: "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:24-25). Life that Paul describes is not lived by the power of one’s will. No one wakes up in the morning and convinces him or herself that these things are right, gathers all his or her will and begins living in that direction. This can never be a result of a discipline, only a result of a miracle that only God can do in our lives! Christian life is a life of a constant surrender to the Spirit of God – this is what that "big green knob” in our life is – repentance that opens up our life to the Holy Spirit, so that the life of Christ Himself will be in us.

To live under the lordship of the Spirit is to hear and to submit to the voice of the Spirit that speaks to our conscience, to our heart, to hear the truth of Christ that living according to the flesh is to forever miss the life of the Kingdom of God. Only the life submitted to God in repentance can have faith that takes God for His word, can have hope that sees beyond the darkness of the dawn, can have love that sees in each person a brother or a sister for whom Christ died. Only a life surrendered to the Spirit of God makes us citizens of the Kingdom of God.

The Spirit of God is given to us, it has been sent out to rest on every follower of Jesus. But in order to experience Pentecost we need to stop our attempts to just change this and that area of our lives and instead to accept the God’s gift of the Holy Spirit who alone can transform us fully. "Repent,” says Peter "and receive the God’s gift – His Holy Spirit”. But it’s impossible to receive the Spirit if we are full of ourselves. To repent is to let go of one’s desires, personal convictions we cherish, so that God can fill us with His desires and convictions.  We cannot expect the fruit of the Spirit in us if we are not willing to let the Holy Spirit free us from the things Paul called the "works of flesh”. For something new to come into our life, the old must go. One famous ichthyologist knew thousands of fish names.  But a moment came in his life when he realized that every time he leaned a new student’s name, he forgot one of the old fish’s names. And only if we are ready and willing for our old "works of the flesh” to be replaced in our life by the Holy Spirit, then and only then the Lord can do a miracle in us and fill our lives with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, meekness and self-control. This is the life of the Kingdom available to us today just like it was on that first Pentecost day. But will we push that big green knob of repentance, surrendering our life’s control to Jesus Christ who died for our sins to give us a new life, life in His Spirit. We will never change on our own but it’s up whether we will surrender our life to the Spirit of God. Life in the Spirit is as beautiful as this colorful mass of flags. These flags are a symbol of all those beautiful transformations that God can bring about in our lives by His Spirit.  But do you hunger for that transformation so much that you will be willing to let go of your dear habits and desires and will give the Holy Spirit full control of your heart, will and mind?