Spirit of Confident Witness

John 14:8-17; Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:12-17

Central Baptist Church, Lowesville, VA

27 May 2007

This Pentecost weekend we commemorate Memorial Day, remembering those who gave their lives in military service to their nation. We recall their dedication, their service, and the freedoms they died to secure and extend. Somehow it seems easier to understand the need for dedicated military service than dedication to the cause of Christ. Why is it so much easier to celebrate dedication to military objectives than bearing confident witness in service to the aims and work of God’s Spirit in our lives?

As the disciples gathered in Jerusalem some days after Jesus’ ascension, they were taken by surprise as God poured his breath upon them. This band of some 120 was gathered on Pentecost, perhaps in the temple square to observe with all of Jerusalem the spring First Fruits Festival. Instead of focusing on agricultural blessings of God’s provision, however, they experienced the fulfillment of God’s promise to breathe his very presence into their lives. As God breathed his presence over and into the disciples, they began to speak God’s praise in languages they had never learned.

While the disciples were not exactly expecting this bestowal of God’s presence, the surrounding crowds were much more confused. These crowds had come in pilgrimage from all over the known world. They were Jews living throughout the Roman Empire, speaking languages other than Aramaic and Greek. From unschooled Galileans, they were hearing God’s praise spoken in their own languages and did not know what to make of it.

Peter arose to clarify. Unlike the Peter of the gospels who seems to speak before thinking, almost always missing the point of Jesus’ teaching, we find a man transformed by this indwelling breath of God. No more than a week or so after Jesus having ascended into heaven, with the empowering of God’s Spirit Peter is transformed into an effective witness for the gospel of Christ Jesus. He shares with the people that the spectacle before them is not about these individuals, but the power and presence of God flowing through them as promised ages before.

Though Luke’s words here are not intended as a word-for-word transcription of Peter’s message, they record of the import and impact of God speaking through Peter. More important than the words in understanding the transformation in Peter, however, is the effect of Peter’s testimony among the listening crowds. Some three thousand responded with faith in Christ Jesus on hearing God’s word through Peter. Peter allowed and trusted God to work through him. He allowed the Spirit to transform his limitations into God’s potential. Do we likewise credit God with empowering us for service as at Pentecost?

We reflect this weekend on our war veterans who fell in military service. They gave their lives as instruments for something higher than their own self-interests. We honor their dedication. We honor their discipline to follow orders amid danger. We honor the ideals they strove to uphold, extending and preserving liberty for their families, their nation, and others around the world. We remember with thanks their sacrifice on our behalf. We are also called to question the limits on our own dedication. Do our lives uphold the same sense of faithfulness? Are we consciously aware of God’s Spirit in our lives, empowering us to serve the gospel as selflessly as these we hold as fallen heroes?

Philip’s request to see the Father seemed legitimate. It spoke to the disciples’ yearning to see God and commune with God directly. They did not grasp that this seeing could not be with the eyes alone, but was already available to the eyes of faith. In Jesus, the disciples already beheld God’s very physical presence. They could not grasp that reality to its fullest. They were still struggling to keep up with Jesus’ teaching and understanding that he truly was the full embodiment of God. It was difficult for them to take their knowledge of God as Spirit and translate that into Jesus’ physical presence.

They were still learning to see and recognize God’s character and presence in Jesus. They were learning to grasp God’s will and direction for their lives. They were beginning to understand that they were being prepared to serve as vehicles of God’s presence and action, continuing Jesus’ task of making God’s love presence and visible to the world. Jesus promised that as he departed physically from them he would send another expression of God’s presence. This Spirit of Truth would continue in their midst, yet would empower them from the inside to accomplish God’s objectives. God would work through them as the Father had worked through Jesus. Would they be ready to allow this Spirit to flow through their lives, accomplishing God’s purposes? Are we ready to allow God’s presence to enable us to serve God in the full confidence of faith?

When a group of disciples returned to Jesus from the mission of the seventy, they were ecstatic about how God had used them. It is likewise often the experience of volunteers sent on mission trips that they return with a zeal and excitement for the experience of having been used by God in unexpected ways. Often as not, they are tasked with responsibilities they have never accepted and find that God can enable them to accomplish what they would never have believed possible. On returning to the “real world,” however, we so often forget God’s transforming presence at work within our lives as believers. Do we act as though God were limited in enabling our Christian service?

Writing to the Roman believers of the wonder of God’s grace, Paul reminds them that we are not slaves of God. In Christ Jesus we are so much more than that. There is no need to live in anxious fear, for God had called us to become children of God’s own household. We are invited and classed as heirs along with Jesus Christ of God’s future glory and blessings.

While children and heirs, however, we are also tasked with the responsibilities of members of God’s household. We are to live no longer according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. We are to fulfill the mission and calling of God to become in character like Christ Jesus. We are brought into God’s presence in order that we might live the full reality of God’s presence. It is a call to true living, free from bondage to sin, fear, and anxiety. It is adoption into a wholly new existence—the full and free experience of unmeasured grace.

We have been given God’s very Spirit in order that we might be led by that Spirit to accomplish the things of God’s Spirit. Paul’s caveat to this refreshing news is that this Spirit-led living includes that we put to death the things of the flesh, dying to self and accepting Jesus’ sacrifice and suffering as model for our living sacrifice. It is in this freedom to lay down our lives that we begin to understand life’s greatest reality and blessing. Only through sacrificial obedience and submission to God’s Spirit can we truly understand and fully participate in Jesus’ revelation of God’s full character, love, and grace.

Will we allow ourselves to be led daily by God’s Spirit? Do our lives bear confident witness to God’s presence and power? If we do not allow the Spirit to change our lives, what difference does being God’s children make? Without that Spirit confidence, we witness fear rather than God’s love and grace.

—©2007 Christopher B. Harbin

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