Pentecost vs.4 continuing

[HKHaugan]

There are three dimensions to spiritual risk, personal, interpersonal and physical. 

 

First, the personal.

 

Personal is the willingness to step outside yourself and allow the Lord to show you your weaknesses.

 

Second, the interpersonal.

 

The interpersonal is the willingness to share with spiritually gifted brothers and sisters some of the weaknesses in the heart and letting the Holy Spirit heal them.  This is where what the Bible calls strongholds are really our ‘weak’holds, the ideas and conclusions we have made apart from God about life and others that we use to survive in the world.

 

Third, the physical.

 

The physical body’s health depends on risking that a balanced healthy regimen will keep the body and the mind in relatively good shape and be the base for our mind and spirit to function as they were intended.  Risking disciplined healthy thinking and behavior keeps us centered and usable by the Spirit. 

 

Now back to the disciples.  Now we can talk about their filling by the Holy Spirit.  How we see this event determines how we see ourselves in relationship to the Spirit.

 

First, they were internally filled, inspirited, spiritualized.  It was a personal internal spiritual revolution.  Consider how they thought, how they felt, how they responded before the Spirit came and then think about how they were after the Spirit came. 

 

There are three observations Scripture gives us about this event. 

 

First, Jesus was an external experience.  Yes, they called Him Messiah, Lord, Teacher and miracle worker but those were based on what they saw and heard externally.  At this point in their lives Jesus was risen but the Resurrection was an external phenomenon.

 

Second, they were still the same people internally.  Even after the Resurrection appearances they went fishing which kind of points to the fact that they were impressed with Jesus, remembered Him and honored Him but He was still out there, outside, apart from them.  Sure, He could do all He did because He was special and God anointed.  What He had they didn’t.

 

Third, the world hadn’t changed.  It was still the same.  They still had to figure out how to survive economically, socially and especially in terms of what they anticipate to be the hostility of the political and religious leadership. The one verse that sums up their entire internal pre–Pentecost experience is Jn.20:19 which says they were together, “…with doors locked for fear of the Jews.” 

 

This verse reveals more than we can imagine.  What they had seen really wouldn’t make any difference when it came to facing what was in their hearts and what could only await them ahead.  Each of them was consumed with an inner fear.  They were, each of them, alone, locked within and from each other and the world by the chains of fear.  Their unity was not Jesus but their fear.  He was still outside, external, not within.  Their world was figuring out how to survive every next moment based on fear of what might happen, not what did happen.  Fear pretty well sums up how all humanity lives in this world. 

 

With the gift of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost they no longer lived in fear of their aloneness nor were they afraid of others.  The spiritual emptiness within was filled.  The Spirit of God that had been outside because of sin since Adam’s fall was now available to return within because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross that made it possible.