Faith as a Miracle

Transcript

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[0:00] So, let's go on to our sermon, and our sermon reading is from Acts chapter 2, 1-13 and 37-42. A few words of introduction. This is Sermon 5 on our miracles, and it had been called the miracles of Jesus, and Jesus doesn't feature very prominently in this story, so we're going to amend it to just the miracles. You know, but Jesus is with them. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. But this is about the miracle of the coming of the Holy Spirit and the miracle of faith, which is, I think, one of the biggest miracles.

[0:36] Again, as Pastor Victoria said, we're celebrating Pentecost early. What does Pentecost mean? It means the 50th. It's the 50th day, more or less, after Passover. And it's also called Shavuot in Hebrew. It's the Feast of the Firstfruits, or the Feast of the Harvest. And you can look in the Old Testament in Exodus 23. Or Exodus 34. Or Leviticus 23. And it describes this feast, that people were to come to the Lord with the firstfruits of their produce. So if it was wheat, they would bring the first cuttings of their wheat. If it was lambs, if it was livestock, they would bring the youngest lambs that had just been born. And this always took place in the spring, and so the earth was full and it was growing. And so this was a time where you brought to the Lord the abundance of what you had.

[1:27] But it's also, in our tradition, it's the coming of the Spirit. The Spirit came at Pentecost. Jesus spoke of his arrival after he left. And what we should do here, because of this, is to think of the Spirit as almost like a seed that Jesus planted with his disciples in anticipation. That was under the ground, and 50 days later, after Jesus was raised from the dead, sprung forth into new life. And came out. And so the Spirit is like the firstfruits. In fact, in Romans 8, chapter 8, verse 23, Paul writes this. He says, Not only so, but we ourselves who have the firstfruits of the Spirit. Isn't that interesting? The firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption. The redemption of our bodies. And so, this year. This year, or this time, instead of talking so much about all the different countries where the people at Pentecost are from, I want us to look at Pentecost this year through the lens of the miraculous. And I want you to listen for how many miracles there are in this reading. Listen for how many miracles there are, and we'll try to count them up afterwards. So that's the introduction to our reading. This is the story of Pentecost. Let's begin in Acts 2. When the day of Pentecost...

[2:56] When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues as a fire appeared among them, and the tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. Now, there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven. They were all living in Jerusalem.

[3:28] And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? But others sneered and said, They are filled with new wine. The part we're skipping now is Peter giving, a sermon about the resurrection. We'll just skip that part. We're going now to verse 37. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and to the other apostles, Brothers, what should we do? Peter said to them, Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.

[5:01] And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, Save yourselves from this corrupt generation. So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace. We ask that you would do your word, and we ask that you would add your blessing to it, in Jesus' name. Amen.

[5:32] So first off, let's go back to verse 1, and I'll ask Caleb to bring up verse 1 again. It looks like the number 2, but it's really the number 1. That's the chapter number. Verse 1, when the day of Pentecost had come, and that phrase, had come, needs a little more detail from us. Again, sometimes I'm talking about how the translation kind of falls apart on us. It doesn't fall apart. It just, it doesn't do everything it needs to do. There's a, there's, this is more, this phrase is more than just another day on the calendar that we eventually arrive at, right? The meaning has more of a sense of fulfillment. So you could almost read it as, when the day of Pentecost had been fulfilled, foretold in advance with all sorts of consequences for us, when that time was fulfilled so that at this moment in history, everything could come to fruition, the first truth. You kind of get that sense there, that that day of, that day had come was really kind of loaded with power. Like Pentecost had come. Something great was going to happen that the world had been waiting for forever, which is true.

[6:40] So I want us to look for the miracles. Remember I said all the miracles. And there's at least three, oh shoot, I was going to ask you how many miracles there were. How many miracles did you detect? Well, just think to yourself. Because this one's a long one. You know, I'm going to try to shorten it up, but we're not going to take comments. But sometimes we do. There's at least two or three miracles in here. Now the first one, and they're related, okay? The first, clearly, is the Spirit giving the apostles the ability to speak languages that they didn't know. That is clearly a miracle. It's sort of a, now we've talked about all the other different miracles, like creating matter and healing people and raising the dead and power of the demonic. This is of a totally different nature. This is like a mental miracle, right? Giving somebody a brain ability that they didn't have. Like language is hard. It's hard to speak fluently in another language that you've learned. It's hard, but here they are. They're able to have a mental miracle to speak in other human languages, right? Now sometimes people consider that this is the reversing of the curse of Babel, right? At Babel, all these, there was a common language.

[7:48] It got kind of divided into many languages that were unintelligible to each other. And humanity kind of got divided that way. But that's really not what's happening here, right? Because all the languages at this moment are not erased or collapsed into one common language like Esperanto. Did anyone, we'll take a look. Did anyone study Esperanto ever? That's kind of, that's what I thought. Oh, George. I've used it to translate things. Oh good, yes. So George has used Esperanto. Google Translate will translate anything you want into Esperanto.

[8:22] For those of you who don't know, Esperanto is an attempt to make a world language that everybody can learn. The problem with that is that you have to learn one more language. And you have to get everybody else to learn that language. So you might as well just get them all to learn some language that they could actually use. So it's been tried. It's been tried to undo this thing from Babel. And that's not what's happening here though. That is not what is happening here. All these languages retain their distinctiveness. All of the cultures retain their beauty and their distinctive values. It's just that the gospel is able to be expressed in all of them at the same time with perfect fluency. So that's not an undoing of Babel. That's a living into the reality that we're in and preaching the gospel in multiple languages, right?

[9:12] Now, we should notice the reaction of the Bible. The reaction of the listeners in verse 7. And you don't have to put it up, Caleb. It says, Amazed and astonished they ask, and a bit... I'm going to add a sneering sound to their voice. Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? Right? Kind of get that little bit of a crank there, right? So one miracle was their ability to speak. But hidden here is actually another miracle underneath. And that's that class distinctions are starting to get demolished, right? How? How is this happening? Well, you need to think about the listeners. These are the people who have come to Jerusalem to live for 50 days. These are very cosmopolitan Jews. They live in the Greek speaking world. This diaspora we call it. The diaspora of Jewish people who had traveled all around the Roman world.

[10:04] And later actually there is conflict between what we call Hellenize Jews. Jews who have taken on Greek language and customs. and non-Hellenized Jews, there was a conflict in Acts about the widows who were not getting as much attention. The Hellenized Jews were getting more attention than the native Jews.

[10:28] And so there were class distinctions and cultural distinctions even among Jews in Jerusalem. And this was more front and center on the day of Pentecost than maybe we understand. Now why is that? I don't know here who has enough money to go travel somewhere for 50 days and live in a hotel and eat in a restaurant every single day. I don't have that kind of money.

[10:55] And I wouldn't spend my money that way either. I mean it's great to take a vacation, but 50 days? That's a long time. But that's what happened. These are people back then who were Greek-speaking Jews or other languages because they're from all around the world. They had enough money to travel from where they were to Jerusalem for the Passover, which was 50 days before this. They stayed all this time until Pentecost, until this festival. So these are people with a little bit of money in their pockets. Not only that, they're from sort of the larger Greek-speaking Greek-Roman world, and so they're sort of cosmopolitan people. They're sort of high-class people. They have money. They have leisure. They have different languages. They have different cultures. Yes. They're Jewish, but they're coming to Jerusalem as tourists. And part of the reason for that is because Jerusalem holds one of the wonders of the Roman world at that time, which we don't really always remember. Herod the Great had cultivated the emperor of Rome as a patron. In other words, he kind of sent him some money, but then a lot of money came back in. And he convinced the emperor to send money to Jerusalem, to Israel, so that Herod could rebuild the temple.

[12:12] And if you go to Israel now, there's just a little bit of it left, what we call the Western Wall. As in terms of an architectural wonder, it was almost without parallel in the old world. Like these, there's giant stones in this wall. They're as big as a city bus, and they don't even know how they moved them there. Like these, some miracles of Roman engineering moved these pieces around. A whole lot of money went into this splendid sort of temple complex. So people came. And it took 60 years for it to be built. In fact, at the time of Jesus, it had been started under Herod the Great, who was the king when Jesus was a baby, but he died eventually. And even in Jesus's time, the temple wasn't even done yet. The construction was ongoing. It's kind of like these medieval cathedrals that you hear about that take 150 years to build. You know, and even then they're probably not quite done. This was a long-term construction project. And people came from around the world to see it. It was one of the wonders of the Roman world. What am I getting at? Here are some high-class, cosmopolitan people with a lot of money, and they're listening to Galileans talk. And they can tell by how they're talking, even though the language is correct,

[13:27] the pronunciation is off. We understand that Galileans were unable... Now, I think Ryan is listening, and you have to give a thumbs up in the chat, Ryan. Okay. That Galileans were not as able to produce some linguistic sounds called laryngeals and aspirates. Does anyone have a background in this? Ryan does, my brother-in-law. He's a linguist. Laryngeals and aspirates. So an aspirate, for example, is a sudden puff of air after a consonant. So in English, you have a small aspirate after the letter T in a word like distend. But you'd have a bigger one after a word like distend. Like distaste. Did you hear that? Distaste. That's that strong aspirate right at the end of that consonant, right? So the people from Galilee didn't have the linguistic ability to pronounce these words very well. And so it gave them away instantly as low-class, uneducated people. You know, if you've seen the play, the musical, whatever you want to call it, they turn it into a movie, My Fair Lady. Remember My Fair Lady? How do you turn a low-class person into a high-class person? You change how they talk. Right? So they're trying to train this woman to talk like a fancy lady. It doesn't always work, and of course they fall in love, and that's all great.

[14:56] But that's the point. So here are these people, high-class people, saying, Look at these Galileans. It's almost like a dog stood up and started talking to us. This is amazing! But that's the miracle. That in this moment of the Holy Spirit coming, that it had to be the lowly that gave the gospel to the high and mighty. And that class distinctions, not cultural distinctions, those are preserved, but class distinctions are obliterated at least in that moment on that day. So I call that a minor miracle. It's hidden there underneath. So that's miracle number two. Okay. So, but here's the big miracle, alright?

[15:40] The big miracle is the power of the Spirit is not just to speak through others, but it's to bring faith. Okay? That's the third miracle. The miracle of faith. How does faith come apart? Now, like I said, the part we didn't read is where Peter preaches about the death and resurrection of Jesus. And then we pick up at verse 41, and it says, So those who heard him and welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers.

[16:19] So, is this a miracle? I mean, that's the question, right? We know it's a miracle that they were able to speak in other languages. We think it's a miracle that these class distinctions, these verbal distinctions, were destroyed in this moment because they were still persuaded, right?

[16:38] Was it just that these people were impressed that they heard a language that they didn't think somebody else could speak? Or were they impressed that Peter made a good case for the gospel and they were converted by his message? Or was it also that the creation of faith, and I'm going to ask this again, was it possible that the creation of faith is a miracle of the Holy Spirit? And this touches on us, too, so I'm going to ask that again in maybe a slightly different way. To put it more specifically to us, do we come to faith because we're persuaded by the gospel, right?

[17:17] Or do we come to faith as a miracle of the Holy Spirit? Does the Holy Spirit miraculously give us faith on our own? Now, I'm going to tell you that this is sort of what we call an evangelical church. We're an evangelical covenant church. Our tradition is way back into the Pietist movement. And that movement really, it values individual decision and commitment to Jesus, right? And many people here in this room would speak this way, and I would even speak this way. We have testimonies about the day we made a personal decision to follow Jesus. Am I right? I mean, this is a lot of us have said, yeah, we, there's a day on which I decided to follow Jesus. But I want us to be open to some challenge on that. Right? Because in many ways, that way of talking about how we came to faith is an individualistic way of talking about our faith. But the scripture is communal in a lot of ways, too. We saw a story in our first reading about this jailer in Philippi, right? And he was, not just he was baptized that day, but his whole household. His whole household didn't witness this miracle, did they? No, he did. But his whole household didn't witness this miracle. His whole household was a whole community. And when the head of the household became a Christian, the whole household became a Christian.

[18:39] This is common in other parts of the world, and this is common in the world of Jesus' time. And so I want us to be careful too much saying it was my decision to start following Jesus, okay? Put it this way. People do make decisions. People pray. People open themselves up to God, and God answers. So there's our action. But you know what? There's a miracle. If I look back at my life, I didn't come to faith in a vacuum.

[19:09] I didn't just never hear the gospel and then go, oh, I think I believe all this. I had to be told it, right? I had people who spoke into my life, like parents who prayed for me or camp counselors, right, who told me the gospels. Adults who challenged me. And the question is, wasn't the Spirit active in their lives, moving them to do these things at the right time, in the fulfillment of their lives? Or were they just for some for some for some for for for some for for for for some for some for some for some for for The Lutherans have it. I'm going to say the Lutherans have a treasure hidden in a field, and we should do well to find it. And it's Luther's small catechism, and it's his explanation of the third article of the Apostles' Creed, right? Now, the third article of the Apostles' Creed says, I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, right? Hopefully we know this, right? That's the third article of the Apostles' Creed. But then Luther, in his catechism, asked this question, but what does this mean? What does it mean? And his answer is this. He says, I believe that I cannot, by my own reason or strength, believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord.

[20:49] I'm going to read that part again, because this is pretty bold. This kind of flies in the face of pietism and individual decision thinking. I believe that I cannot, by my own reason, or strength, believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But, he says, the Holy Ghost has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith, even as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. So, I'm not going to read the rest of it, but that was Luther's thinking. Was, yes, it's not only, it's not your own decision, but the Spirit gives you the gift of faith. That is the miracle of the Spirit.

[21:40] So, make of that what you will. I think that's something that we can hold on to. I think we can start to see our faith, not just as an individualistic thing, but as a communal thing. I think there's some power in that for us, okay? So, like I said, we have two, maybe three miracles at Pentecost, right? One, a miraculous ability to speak in other human languages without even knowing it. Erasing distinct languages and cultures. A miraculous, what I would call, erasure, or abolition, for a moment, of class divisions, as rich people are actually able to listen to poor people and what they say. I mean, that's rare. And the biggest miracle, I think, the miracle that reliably happens to this day, is that faith comes by the power of the Holy Spirit when the gospel is preached and lived. So, those are the three miracles of Pentecost. Now, we've spent five weeks on miracles, sometimes asking ourselves which is the greatest, and that's hard to do. But this one is the one that everyone in this room has experienced or is yet to experience. We're not going to get all these other miracles of Jesus. We're not going to get fed like the 5,000. Some of us may or may not experience the demonic and be delivered from it.

[22:52] I've been in places where I've been part of somebody being delivered from the demonic. I can tell you it's real. Miracles of healing, many of us have had or have witnessed. Miracle of resurrection, I'm not so sure we've seen any of those, but maybe we have. Praise God.

[23:10] But here, the miracle of faith. This is a reliable one. This happens when the Spirit moves us to teach other people, to build into their lives. Next week, we're going to have our confirmands up here. These are people that we've poured into for the last two years, teaching them the gospel. And the gift of faith is going to be on display next week. Next week, the miracle of faith. So we thank God for this miracle of faith. And we remember that the miracle needs to keep going. If you have it, you need to keep giving it. It's up to us to meet other people, learn their language. Now, maybe not in actual language, but you need to learn their culture. You need to learn their worldview so that you can speak the gospel to them in words that touch their hearts, in their mother language, their mother tongue. And we need to put the gospel in a way that they can understand. And then we let the Spirit perform this most reliable and amazing miracle to bring forth in the fulfilled time the faith that we plant in them with the Spirit's help. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for the gift of the Spirit and the miracles of the Spirit. Thank you for Pentecost. Father, bring Pentecost to us today.

[24:27] Put in our hearts and minds those people that we need to bring the gospel to through the power of the Holy Spirit.