Pentecost Introduction    This weekend is Pentecost – it is the time when we celebrate the birth of the church and outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that we can read about in Acts 2. When, with a sound like the blowing of a violent wind, tongues of fire came to rest on all the believers and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Filled with joy, filled with power to witness, to do miracles in Jesus’ name, to live and die courageously, turning the world upside down.

I was brought up in a Christian home – my father was an Anglican vicar.  Aged 12, I had a sudden realisation that I was fundamentally selfish – even the good things I did were to make me feel better about myself.  So I started looking for God. I thought that if I went to church, and read the bible and prayed every day then God would like me. Although these are good things, this was all in my own effort – a way of me trying to earn God’s favour – a bit like doing 50 sit-ups to get a flat tummy.

By the time I was 18, without understanding much of it, I had read the bible 3 times cover to cover.  But all these efforts had not quenched my thirst… I was quite self-righteous and thought I was a good person, but I was bored – and thought ‘if this is Christianity, there has got to be more to life’.  So, I started a quiet rebellion… I didn’t get very far – but it was far enough to show me that I wasn’t perfect.

May 1983 – 40 years ago – there was a compulsory concert at school with some girls from a school in Uganda. I didn’t want to go to this – but had no choice and sat initially with my arms folded!  However, within a few minutes, I was gripped by these girls – as they sang praise songs, their faces shone with a joy and peace greater than I had ever seen – whatever it was they had – I wanted!  

The following day they came to the school Christian group I was helping to lead and as they left, they asked ‘Do you have the Holy Spirit?’ We didn’t know what they were talking about, so they said they would pray for the Holy Spirit to come to us.

Two weeks later, on Pentecost Sunday (22^nd May 1983), a boy from the other school in town came to speak at our school Christian group. He had grown up an atheist but had recently become a Christian.  He spoke about Pentecost, how the Holy Spirit transformed Jesus’ disciples from a frightened group of men who fled when Jesus was arrested, into those who spoke boldly, performed miracles in Jesus’ name, and were not afraid to suffer and die for the sake of the Gospel. 

I was gripped by what I heard, but more than that, I saw that this boy had an authority, a peace and a joy about him like I’d seen in the Ugandan girls.  And it was deeply attractive.  So later that day, I went to find him and said – ‘whatever it is you have got, I want’. He answered: ‘Jane – you have got to face the fact that you are a sinner.’  I was really surprised to hear this as I thought I was quite a good person – but I so desperately wanted what he had, that I followed him in a prayer, asking Jesus to forgive me and come and be Lord of my life and fill me with his Holy Spirit. 

I didn’t feel anything particular at that time, but over the next few days, I became thirstier and thirstier and more and more desperate for God to meet me.  Then on the Thursday (26^th May 1983) – 40 years ago last night – I was on my own in the boy’s school chapel for Holy Communion – and suddenly I had a tangible sense of being washed completely clean. It was an amazing sensation – in that moment something changed in my heart: I knew that I was loved by God and that Jesus had died for ME.  Over the next days, something extraordinary happened in my bible reading. The book that I had found incomprehensible but had waded through 3 times suddenly came alive. It was so exciting – it felt like it had been written just for me.  I would be in the library, meant to be revising for my A Levels, but I had a copy of the New Testament on my lap and I couldn’t stop reading it. 

And it wasn’t just me – lots of girls and boys at our 2 schools became Christians.

That was 40 years ago – in the last few weeks I have been in touch with many of the boys and girls from that time – they are still walking with the Lord…

What have I learned in those last 40 years?

Many things! But there are 3 things that I want to talk about today…

God is the One who rescues; He is the One who truly satisfies and He doesn’t leave His people alone.

1. God is the One who rescues…

In the OT we read how God’s people the Israelites were slaves in Egypt… they knew that they needed rescue – so, in great distress they called out to God, and he sent them a deliverer – Moses – who went to Pharoah and delivered the message ‘God says Let my people go’. Pharaoh kept refusing, so God sent 10 plagues. 

Just before the 10^th plague, God told the Israelites to get ready to leave Egypt as He was going to ‘pass over’ the land and kill all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians – both men and animals. In order that they could be saved, God told the Israelites that each household should take a flawless lamb, kill it and put some of the blood on the door frames of their houses. And when God passed over the land and saw the blood, he would not allow any harm to come to them.

• So the Israelites escaped Egypt that night, saved by the blood of a lamb.   

And God looked after them for the 40 years that they wandered in the desert: he fed them with ‘manna’ which was a bread like substance which they found on the ground every morning except for on the sabbath; he gave them water from the rocks, and their feet didn’t swell nor did their clothes wear out. (Deut 8:2-5) … And He led and guided them with a pillar of cloud by day, which looked like fire at night – whenever the cloud moved, the people moved, when the cloud stayed, the people stayed, and so God guided his people.

• God is the God who rescues… We see this right through the Bible, He rescued the Israelites from bitter slavery; He rescued His people in times of war, famine and distress – down the ages His people have called out to him and testified to His rescue…

There will always be times of suffering in this life – sometimes it is clear to see that God has physically rescued – at other times, if we are honest, it doesn’t look that way… 

But even then, God is the God who rescues. Because the point is: God’s Rescue is a Rescue for Eternity.

Sometimes it’s obvious when we need to be rescued:  if you’ve been kidnapped, or your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, or you are caught in a natural disaster.

But sometimes it’s less obvious: we don’t actually realise we needed to be rescued until after it happens

A few years ago, when our children were small, we were hiking in the Swiss Alps.  Although it was summer – it was cold and misty. We’d had long walk up through snow, to a mountain hut at 2100m, and then a good cheese fondue. When it was time to go back, we realised that our younger children were too tired to walk. So, we decided that my husband and oldest son would run back down the mountain and get the car to fetch us. Because it was getting late, they decided to run straight down the mountain, rather than follow the winding road. All seemed to be going well, until suddenly an old woman with a rucksack appeared out of the mist and told them to stop – they were running towards a cliff edge – and she pointed them into a different direction.  They followed her directions and got to the car. 

We have no idea who the woman was, but the point was that had she not stopped them – they might have fallen over a cliff edge…   It was only after the rescue that they realised how lucky they had been.

That’s a bit like us – running through this life. We think everything is fine but don’t realise we are running towards a cliff edge.

We don’t realise we need to be rescue – but actually we all do…

Have you ever wondered why Jesus is called the Lamb of God?

• Partly it refers back to the Exodus (when the Israelites were rescued out of slavery) and to the lamb’s blood on the doorframes which gave the Israelites their life and freedom.
  • But more importantly it refers to Old Testament sacrificial system

After Moses led the people out of Egypt, God gave them the 10 commandments so they could try to live rightly.  

• Have you tried to keep the 10 commandments? For years I thought that was the way to God, and I tried really hard..  I still try hard – but the reality is, I can’t do it.  I can’t even keep the 1^st commandment – No matter how hard I try – I still tend to put myself first.  And then if I think about how Jesus spoke about the 10 commandments in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) saying that if we have an angry thought, that’s like murder, or look at someone lustfully, that’s like adultery…  Well there’s no way!

God is Holy – however hard we try, we cannot make ourselves holy…

This unholiness (which is what the Bible calls sin) is a barrier – it stops us getting close to the Holy God – and if something is not done about it – it leads to eternal death.

But God is the One who rescues – and so in the Old Testament, to enable unholy people to live, and have a relationship with the Holy God, God gave them the sacrificial system.

If you read the OT, you will notice that there are a lot of dead animals and a lot of blood… It was this blood that enabled the people to be in right relationship with God..

• In the OT God lived amongst his people in an inner area called the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies was separated from the Holy Place and the rest of the outer space by a large, 10-metre high, curtain, as thick as the span of a man’s hand and made from a single piece of fabric. This curtain was a barrier stopping people from accidentally going into God’s presence – because if they did, they would die (Lev 16:1).  Only once a year was anyone allowed into the Holy of Holies, and that was the High Priest on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16), after bathing, animal sacrifices and a lot of blood. On this day, atonement was made between the people and God for the coming year.    

The bible tells us that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness”.  (Hebrews 9:20) and yet it also tells us that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin” (Heb 10:4).

So why all this blood?

The animal blood was powerless in itself. The reason that it was effective was because it pointed towards the blood of Jesus, and Jesus’ once and for all, final sacrifice on the cross, for us and in our place.

The Bible tells us that when Jesus died, he didn’t enter a manmade Holy of Holies, like the Israelite High Priests had done, but he entered the eternal Holy of Holies, heaven itself, once and for all and by His own blood (Heb 9:11-12). Jesus himself appeared for us in God’s presence (Heb 9:24). Because of this “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.” (Heb 10:10).  

Jesus has done everything needed to rescue us – so that we can have a relationship with God and live eternally with him.

• If we are in any doubt of this – the Bible tells us how this was physically demonstrated at the moment of Jesus’ death. You remember that 10-metre high, hand-span wide curtain which separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the space?  Mark’s Gospel (Mark 15:37-38) tells us how, when Jesus died, this curtain “was torn in two from top to bottom.” It was ripped in half from the top downwards.

Do you need to be rescued?   Come to Jesus – He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Through Jesus perfect sacrifice for us on the Cross, we can have access to God at any time and be rescued us from darkness, death and destruction.

• God is the One who Truly Satisfies…

To be thirsty and to need water is part of what it means to be alive.  Whether a plant, an insect, a dog or a human, we all need water (H₂O) to survive. Without water crops fail, without water our bodies fail… – Whereas a person can survive a month without food, we cannot survive more than 3 days without water.   

Being thirsty is the way that our bodies tell us we need water.

We have a very energetic dog – when he is out and about, he runs and jumps everywhere, and so he gets thirsty.  As far as he is concerned, it doesn’t really matter what kind of water it is, if he is thirsty, he will drink it.  I mind a bit more – whilst I’m happy for him to drink from rainwater puddles or streams – I’m not very happy when he drinks from a green, smelly stagnant pond – or if we are at the sea, he tries to quench his thirst with salty seawater.  I want him stay physically well and so I want him to have good fresh water.

The Bible talks about a different kind of thirst and a different kind of water – it talks about a “Living Water”.

In John 4, Jesus is thirsty and at a well in Samaria. He asks a Samaritan woman to give him a drink.  And then says to her: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Then referring to the water from the well, he says: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  (John 4:10 &13-14)

The water that Jesus is talking of here, is not physical water (H₂O), that we need for Physical Life, but spiritual water, Living Water that satisfies us in our deep places and leads to Eternal Life.

And the thirst that Jesus is speaking of here is not the physical thirst for water, or Fanta or Sprite, but it’s the thirst for something deeper – something that fulfils and satisfies and completes us.

• And the woman at the well was not somebody who you would think would deserve this offer… She was a ‘loose woman’ – she had been married 5 times, and was now living with someone else, and probably the reason why she’d come out at the 6^th hour, in the heat of the midday sun, was to avoid all the people who didn’t like her…
• We all of us get thirsty, we long for fulfilment and satisfaction – and often we look to all sorts of things to try and satisfy this deep thirst – some of these things are good and some aren’t so good – but at the end of the day it is only God who truly and deeply satisfies. 

The woman had done nothing to deserve this Living Water – But Jesus offers it to her for free…  

A bit later, in John 7 we read how Jesus went to Jerusalem, halfway through the Feast of Tabernacles.

• The Feast of Tabernacles was a festival (Lev 23:42-43) when the people remembered God’s protection and provision when he brought them out of Egypt. And they thanked God for giving them water in the last year and prayed for water in the coming year.

• On the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, the High Priest led a procession to the Pool of Siloam (where Jesus had healed a man born blind) and filled a jug with water from the Pool. Then went back to the Temple and poured the water out from the door of the Temple down the steps.  And a passage from Ezekiel 47 was read out…

This is an amazing passage in which the prophet Ezekiel describes a vision of what happens when the Holy Spirit comes…  He describes a river flowing eastwards from the south side of the temple which gets deeper and deeper: first it’s ankle deep, then knee deep, then waist deep and then so deep that you have to just jump in and swim, and wherever it goes there is a proliferation of life … Where it flows into the Dead Sea, the heavy salt waters become fresh, and fish swim… and along the banks, fruit trees grow, bearing fruit every month, the fruit for food and the leaves for healing….

It was against this backdrop (of the water being poured out and Ezekiel’s vision being read), that John’s Gospel tells us (John 7:37-39), how Jesus stood and said in a loud voice:   ‘“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John adds ‘By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.’’

Jesus says that if we come to Him, He will give us this Living Water – He will give us His Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the One who satisfies deeply…  And when The Holy Spirit is poured out …  wherever He goes, things are restored and healed; what was dead comes to life, and there is abundance of life. 

Are you thirsty?     Come to Jesus and ask for His Holy Spirit – who will become like a spring of life-giving water welling up to eternal life…

• God doesn’t leave His people alone…

At some point in life, we will all have to face times of abandonment: either intentional, when someone we love and trusted walks out on us; or unintentional, when someone we love dies….

I heard a man speak a few weeks ago: he came from a fanatical Muslim family but became a Christian as a boy, when he saw someone who was so badly injured that he was thought to be dead, prayed for in the name of Jesus and be instantly healed.  When the boy told his parents that he had become a Christian they said they never wanted to see him again. They kicked him out of the house and held a funeral for him, leaving a grave with his name on. 

That’s quite hard to imagine – a young boy abandoned like that… The man said that for the next few months, when no-one was around, he used to go and stand by that grave – feeling so sad…  But then one day, he was standing alone next to the grave, when he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard the words – ‘The grave you are standing next to is empty – Jesus’ grave was also empty’.  In that moment he knew that although he had been abandoned by his earthly family, he would never be alone.       

God promises that He will never abandon us… He will never leave His people alone.  

On the night before Jesus was crucified, He had Supper with His friends and prepared them for what was coming up. By this time, the disciples had had the incarnate God living amongst them, in the person of Jesus, 24-7, for the last 3 years. They had travelled with him, eaten with him, seen his miracles and heard His teaching – they had left everything to follow Him. But now He was talking about dying and leaving them…  They must have been feeling confused and really distressed.  

• But Jesus spoke to them and told them that although He was going, they were not going to be abandoned. They would actually be better off – because the Holy Spirit: the Counsellor, Comforter, Helper, Giver of Life and Spirit of Truth, would come to them, and would live with them and in them for ever.  

Jesus said “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counsellor (Parakleton) to be with you forever – the Spirit (Pneuma) of truth … you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:16-18).   

In the OT, God had lived among His people in the Holy of Holies.  In the incarnation, the Holy God had lived among the people in the person of Jesus Christ (fully God and fully man). Now with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Holy God is going to come and live inside His people for ever.   The Holy Spirit is the one who brings us into relationship with God, who reminds us that we are loved and not orphans – who fills us with life, with joy, with power and with Healing.    This means that although we can be physically isolated, or spurned by loved ones, we need never to be alone.

This weekend is Pentecost. It is the time when we celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, when all the believers were gathered together praying, and suddenly there was a sound like the blowing of a violent wind and tongues of fire came to rest on them all. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Holy Spirit enabled them – in 15 different recognizable languages – declaring the wonders of God.   From this day, the believers, filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with joy, power to witness and do miracles in Jesus’ name, turned the world upside down. 

NOW

Because of what Jesus has done for us, we can come to him and pray with full assurance for forgiveness and to be rescued out of darkness into light, out of death into life.   And we can ask Him to fill us with His Holy Spirit… for the Holy Spirit of the Living God to live in us and make His home with us – and to keep filling us.         Jesus said:  “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”