Pentecost Sunday —May 11, 2008 Worship Report
Acts 2:1-21
It's Pouring.
(Pastor Daniel A. Olson)
Happy Pentecost! I’m guessing if you go somewhere today and say that to someone you won’t get much of a response. I would expect that you would probably get a blank stare at best. I doubt very much that anyone outside of church would have any idea what Pentecost was, and I suspect that you wouldn’t have to try very hard to find people within the church who wouldn’t have the slightest idea what Pentecost was all about either. I suppose that there is a downside to Pentecost not having the secular commercial counterpart that Christmas and even Easter enjoy. The downside is that it just doesn’t get the attention that Easter and Christmas get, and I don’t just mean by those who are not members of the church. But yet, Pentecost is one of the three high festivals of the church year. It is up there in importance with Christmas and Easter. After all, Pentecost deals with the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed. You recall that the Apostle’s Creed is Trinitarian. That is each of its three articles deals with one of the persons of the Trinity.
Pentecost is not a strictly New Testament holiday like Christmas and Easter. Pentecost was a major Old Testament festival. It was celebrated fifty days after the Passover, thus the name Pentecost. Wheat in Palestine is harvested in the spring and Pentecost was the gathering of the first fruits. In other words, the people were expected to take some of the first fruits of the harvest and they were to offer them to God. It was one of the three great festivals in the Old Testament. It was also one of the festivals when all of God’s people were expected to gather in Jerusalem to celebrate it. That’s important for our text. We see in our text how people had come to celebrate the harvest of wheat, but a greater harvest would be celebrated. The day of Pentecost would mark the harvest of souls for the kingdom of God. It would mark the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost is often times called the birthday of the Christian Church, but it is not. We see from chapter one of the book of Acts that the church already existed. There’s certainly nothing wrong with having birthday cake and celebrating. I really can’t think of any occasion when I would be opposed to having cake. This day does certainly mark the beginning of something very exciting for the Christian Church, but it does not mark the beginning of the church. I suppose we could say that it marks the beginning of the mission department in the church. It is also at times mistakenly believed that Pentecost marks the first time that the Holy Spirit makes His appearance. It does not. The Holy Spirit was already present at the creation itself. Today marks the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
"When it rains it pours.” When’s the last time that you said that? I suppose that the farmers in our area might have been saying that in a literal sense this past spring. I remember watching a news clip talking about all of the rain in the area and showing a farmer standing under the overhang of a building overlooking his fields. As he stood, looking anxious to get into the fields, you could see the rain pouring down. He just stood there unable to do anything about the situation. That farmer who stood there anxious about his livelihood understood exactly what that phrase means.
I have heard those words spoken many times while standing next to a hospital bed. A person will go in for some sort of routine elective surgery and then find out that there are far more problems than they could have imagined. All of the routine test will show that they are facing serious problems with their health. When people are ticking off all of the issues they will often times say, “When it rains it pours.” They’re talking about the fact that they were only anticipating a few minor problems but now everything is pouring in on them.
I remember hearing a person talk about having all kinds of problems with their car and having to replace it. No sooner had they signed the papers for the car loan and thought they could handle the payments and the wash machine went out. I think that all ended up being combined with a roof on the house or some other appliance going out as well. After listing off all of the setbacks, the person simply said, “When it rains it pours.” People will say that when it comes to relationships and problems within their families as well. People will talk about how one kid is having some sort of trouble that they think they can handle when some other much more serious problem surfaces with someone else in the family.
"When it rains it pours.” We understand those words. We know exactly what they mean. There are plenty of times when we feel like the cartoon character who walks around with a cloud over his head always following him. There are certainly those people in this world who always walk around with a cloud over them. However, there is also plenty of rain in this world. There are plenty of times in our lives when it not only rains, but it pours. There is no shortage of those times in our lives when we are indeed poured on. There are those times when life comes crashing in on us all at once.
But there is also another kind of pouring that we are familiar with. You have all seen professional football games when a team will win a championship game. They will show the winning coach standing on the sidelines and some of the members of the team will sneak up behind him with the huge cooler full of ice water. They will pour the whole thing out on the coach, which is an interesting thing to watch if it’s in Wisconsin at the end of the season. You will see this coach getting ice water poured out on him when the temperature is probably only twenty degrees at best.
But that’s the kind of pouring that people look forward to in life. People love to have blessings poured out on them. Indeed, that’s what Pentecost was all about in the Old Testament. It served to remind the people of the many blessings that God had poured out on them. They would bring a portion of the harvest that God had given them right off the top. It was not seen as being something that they were forced to do, and it was not something that was done grudgingly. Instead, it served to remind them of all the blessings that God had poured out on them.
It’s the same way for us. God pours out His blessings upon us every single day of our lives. Yes, life might pour down its problems on us in our lives, but the simple fact of the matter is that God pours out His blessings upon us in even greater measure. We need to be reminded of that pouring out of God’s blessings that takes place in our lives. That’s one of the things that happens when we bring our offerings to God. Like the people in the Old Testament, our offerings to the church are not something that we feel we are forced to do and we do not bring them grudgingly. They are a response to the fact that God has poured out His blessings upon us. It reminds us of all the many blessings that God has poured out upon us in our lives.
Indeed, God has poured out His blessings upon us. The greatest gift that He has poured out on us is Jesus Christ. It is through Jesus Christ that God has poured out upon us His greatest and most important blessings. It is on Pentecost that we focus on the work of the Holy Spirit, but we are reminded that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to point us to Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit points us to Jesus Christ where we see Jesus pouring out His blood for us that our sins might be paid for. The Holy Spirit points us to Jesus Christ so that we can see the gifts that are poured out on us because of His resurrection from the dead.
It is on this day that we see how the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church on that very first Pentecost. It was an incredible scene. We are told that tongues of fire appeared on the disciple’s heads, but the most amazing thing is that they start speaking in foreign languages that they didn’t know. Remember, there were people in Jerusalem that day from all over the world. This was a prime mission opportunity. Suddenly, all of these people were hearing the Gospel in their own language. They were hearing the good news that Jesus had died for their sins on the cross and risen and overcome death itself for them. They were hearing the good news that through faith in Jesus they could have the assurance of heaven itself. God was pouring out His gifts upon them and also upon the church. We are told that about three thousand people were baptized that day.
We see that the Holy Spirit worked through some very ordinary means that day. We see that the Holy Spirit worked through the Word and Baptism that day. It was through Word and Sacrament that the Holy Spirit poured out His gifts upon those people. What this event shows us is that it is God’s will that all people should hear the Gospel message, and it also showed that the Gospel would go into all the world.
The Holy Spirit is still poured out on the church today. How do we know that the Holy Spirit is still being poured out on the church today? Because you’re here! Do you see all of these people around you? They wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the Holy Spirit working in their hearts. None of us could bring ourselves to faith in Jesus on our own. None of us could save ourselves. If the Holy Spirit wasn’t being poured out, the church would languish. It would cease to exist. You see the message of the cross, the message that you are saved purely by God’s grace, goes against human reason. That’s not even mentioning the assaults of the devil and the world that the church suffers every single day. If it weren’t for the Holy Spirit being poured out on the church, the church would cease to exist.
The Holy Spirit continues to be poured out on the church today through those very simple means of grace: the Word and the Sacraments. Some weeks back we had two baptisms here in church. Some of you may recall that I couldn’t find the special baptismal shell that I use to pour water when I baptize people. It was misplaced, which I’m still convinced was done on purpose. Fortunately, I had a backup that I have never used because it’s so large. It looks more like a bucket than a shell.
Afterward, someone commented to me that they could really hear the water during the Baptisms. They commented that I was pouring water on the people. I suppose that’s appropriate because it is in Baptism that the Holy Spirit is poured out on us. It is there that God pours out His blessings on you. He gives you the forgiveness of your sins and marks you as being His own dear child. He comes to us in the Sacrament of Holy Communion and pours out His blessings upon us. He comes to us here today in His Word and pours out His blessings upon us just as He did on that very first Pentecost. Yes, when it rains it pours. God is always pouring His blessings out upon you. In your life as God’s people it’s always pouring.
Amen!!!