Continuing Pentecost

[HKHaugan]

Vs.2 “Suddenly a sound came from heaven. It was like a strong wind blowing. It filled the whole house where they were sitting.”

First, the operative word here is ‘like.’ The sound from Heaven was ‘like’ a strong wind blowing. What happened was spiritual being physically experienced. When Scripture says ‘Heaven’ it immediately directs our gaze above. Jesus in His Ascension after the Resurrection was seen going up. What was like a wind was coming from above. God could be felt, sensed, experienced and that was the point. The invisible could move at will within and without. This is the-always-present God identified spiritually and moving in the context of our world.

Second, the Apostle’s first experience was the Spirit filling the house in which they were meeting. Jesus words were established, “Wherever two or three are gathered together in my Name I am there with them (Mt.18:20).” When we come together as believers, regardless of the number, He is there. The Holy Spirit gathers us, gets us to look up at Jesus then at each other, changing how we view one another, inspiring us to love because of Him. This is a unity not in how we look but in the Spirit of Jesus who gives us a new life, identity and motivation.

Third, look for the three’s in Scripture. In this verse, as in all of Scripture, we see three ideas encased in three sentences, sound, wind and place. There are three parts to a sentence, the idea, the mover of the idea and the power that moves it, in grammar, subject, object and verb. If we think about language, it is Trinitarian because God is Trinity, we are created in the image of the Trinity, mind, heart and spirit, so our language fits what we are. So there is the motivation, the one motivated and the motivator, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Pentecost shows that the Trinity embraces all human thinking. One only has to look at any unit of society. Whether it is a family, a business, a club, a school, an army, an expedition, any grouping, there will be a Trinitarian structure to get their tasks done. There is the board, which has a chairman, a manager or CEO and a working labor force. In schools you have principals, deans and teachers. In an army you have a general, his subordinate officers and the non-coms. In each of these a vision with a mission is decided upon and there is a managing figure who directs a working force. In every individual there is mind, heart and spirit, the thinking, the managing of the thought and the power to act it out.

The universe runs on a Trinitarian principle. The interesting thing about the physical universe is that the forces that sustain it cannot be seen. The idea of Creation in the Father, the Son managing the idea and directing it and the Holy Spirit whose power is directed to create it.

In each of us, through each of us and by the power in each of us everything we do has a trinitarian flavor. Why? We are made in the image of God. If any one part of that trinity in us is avoided, left out or denied then nothing works. When we operate in the consciousness of our spiritual being and yield to God’s living structure, life works. All that passes for religious thinking can be weighed on the thinking scales of the Trinity. Where heresy becomes heresy is when God is limited to a one or two-dimensional being. To deny the equal and divine three –person nature of God is to deny His Oneness and to deny His Oneness is to deny His threeness. To deny the divinity of any one of the Trinity you develop a mistaken view of God. More can be said about this but for now we throw it out as a catalyst for thinking.

What God has done is to bring us back to a spiritual focus that puts the universe, the world and each of us in the context of His eternal mind, heart and spirit. The wind of the Spirit is blowing through His Creation and lifts us into His mind to believe in a new way, to trust in a new way and to have faith in a new way, His way. If we survey the issues of the world, the issues of social life, of political and economic balance, it is turning the Trinitarian image in God and in each of us to coincide it with God then the problems in each of these areas will be solved. But it takes yielding to the wind of the Spirit who brings us to the Cross of Jesus that reconciles the world to God. The Holy Spirit not only fills the house, He fills the mind to think like God, He fills the heart to let Jesus be Lord and He fills our spirits with His power to witness and change the world.

The Spirit takes us for a new tour into the spiritual dimension of the mind, heart and spirit. Climb on. This train ‘is a bound’ for glory.