BURNING BUT NOT CONSUMED

Introduction and Scripture Reading

Today is Pentecost Sunday. In Hebrew tradition Pentecost was celebrated fifty days after the final celebration of Passover, the offering of the first-fruits. For us as Christians, Easter Sunday is the day when the first-fruits of a new humanity, Jesus Christ, overcame and rose again from the tomb, having been found an acceptable sacrifice before God. Pentecost Sunday occurred only ten days after the Ascension of Jesus Christ, the date when the disciples were told to wait in Jerusalem and pray for the Holy Spirit to come. Pentecost marks the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples with the sound of rushing wind and the appearance of tongues of fire. It is the birthday of the Christian church, a day in which Peter preached the first Christian sermon and three-thousand souls were saved.

When we view God as Trinity, as a kind of family of persons so connected by love with one another that they live in perfect fellowship and cooperation with each other, then we see that each one is supreme in one respect. The Father is supreme in creation, and remains sovereign over all things. We worship him by recognizing that all goodness comes from his provision, and that we were created in His image to glorify Him (that is, to reflect His glory in our words and thoughts and deeds) and enjoy His fellowship forever. Both the Son and the Spirit support the Father in creation, the Son being the agency or Word through which God spoke creation into being, and the Spirit hovering or brooding over the deep, acting in concert with the Word to bring God's purpose to fulfillment.

The Son is supreme in redemption. He is the Word become flesh who dwelt among us, the event in history through which God's person and redemption became known. Without the record of who Jesus was we could not know the Person of the Father, but Jesus testified, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” In Jesus we see what God looks like as a human person, and we see that He is filled with compassion and mercy. On the other hand, we also behold in Jesus holy wrath in his uncompromising hatred toward sin, his cleansing of the Temple, his woes levied against various religious leaders, and his harsh statements about God's judgments. When Christ goes to the Cross, we see the wrath of God unleashed against sin that is borne by His own Son, who though himself sinless becomes a sin offering. When Jesus rises from the , we know that his offering was accepted by God as payment in full. The Father and the Spirit both support Jesus in His redemptive role – the Father sending his Son into the world, giving him his approval in baptism, and ultimately raising Him from the grave. The Spirit overshadows Mary in her conception of Jesus, descends upon Jesus in his baptism, and also raises Jesus from the tomb. In fact, in the resurrection, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all acted in unison.

So now that we come to the Spirit who is equally God with the Son and the Father, so what is the Spirit's role. Though Jesus lived among us for a short thirty-three years some twenty centuries ago, the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost to dwell in us forever. The Spirit is the Person of God as he works in millions of seekers and believers over the face of the globe doing the multiple tasks of convicting, regenerating, teaching, leading, nurturing, sanctifying, equipping, growing up, empowering, making the church into a bride suitable for the bridegroom Jesus Christ when he comes for it again. All that the Father and Son have done for our redemption the Holy Spirit applies for our ultimate salvation. The Spirit continually glorifies the Son who glorifies the Father. The Father and Son support the work of the Spirit by sending the Spirit and by having laid the foundation for the Spirit's work. We can say that God is love because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live together in love and act in perfect cooperation with one other.

With all this in mind, let us prepare for the reading of God's Word by asking for His illumination of it. O God, Our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, we praise you for doing all things well. Now come into our hearts by Your Holy Spirit and take possession of our souls so that we are wholly Yours, and form Christ in us, in Jesus' Name, Amen.

Hear God's Word from Acts 2:1-13: >

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean? Some, however, made fun of them and said, "They have had too much wine."

I have also chosen a text for today's lesson from Exodus 3:2, which reads as follows: “There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.” From this single verse, I have derived my sermon title, “Burning But Not Consumed.” The bush provides us a metaphor for the presence of God as it rests on human beings – for by the Spirit we become enflamed with passion, but we do not burn up. This concludes the reading of Holy Scripture. May God add His blessing to the Word.

The Work of the Holy Spirit

When we think about God as Trinity, I believe that the work of the Holy Spirit in general is least understood. The function of God as Father and Creator and as Sovereign over all things is easily understood. The function of Jesus as Savior and Messiah is a bit more difficult, for we have to understand our original sin, our need of a Savior – but his story is part of history, and in him we encounter the Person of God the Father in human form, and we see the redeeming love of God upon the Cross.

However, the Person and work of the Holy Spirit is not so easily pictured. To begin with the Spirit is invisible – like the wind, we are told we may experience it in our present, but we do not know where it comes from or where it is going. It is difficult for us to imagine a Person who is everywhere at once, but the Spirit is the supreme multitasker. When I said on Mother’s Day that the Spirit, while a part of a God-man relationship in which God is the masculine and man, regardless of his gender, is always feminine, I tried to personalize the Spirit as the Mother in relationship to the Father and Son of the Trinity, that the Trinity is expressed in man as family. I did this partly so we could understand the Holy Spirit more clearly as a Person in his or her own right.

I believe that the Pentecostal and charismatic renewals of the past century were a needed supplement to an undeveloped theology of the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless it is perhaps regrettable that the residue in the mind of many is that the Spirit does miracles and enables ecstatic speech. I do not contest either of these assertions, but those gifts, as it were, are certainly not the core of what the Holy Spirit does. Essentially, even as Jesus was once with us, the Holy Spirit is God in us and inhabiting our present. Everything that the Father and Son have done for us is applied and sustained by the Spirit. Without the Spirit, God the Father would remain a distant and unknowable Sovereign in our experience, Jesus would seem to us a peculiar and distant historical figure who died tragically, and regeneration, which is the application of Christ’s redemption would be an impossibility.

The Text

The Holy Spirit is not absent from the Old Testament; it has always been present since the foundation of the earth – brooding over the deep. But because of human sin, its manifestation appears to be somewhat limited. The Holy Spirit is particularly active in the life of Christ, present at his conception, his baptism, his miracles, and his resurrection. It drives him into the wilderness to test his metal, that is, to be tempted by the . But not until Pentecost is the Holy Spirit generally dispensed, first upon the apostles, and then, upon all those who believe. It is because Jesus died and rose again, that God by his Holy Spirit can once again fellowship with sinful humanity as God once did with Adam in the Garden of Eden.

The effect of the descent of the Spirit on that first Pentecost is more than the appearance of tongues and the sound of wind, it is a miracle of articulation that crosses ethnic and national boundaries. When in Babylon man sought to build a tower that would reach to heaven, God confused their speech, so they could no longer understand one another, hence, the beginning of nations. But now a kind of reverse Tower of l occurs. The apostles believe they are speaking in their native tongue, but people from various parts of the known world are hearing them, they perceive, in their own language. What may have happened is that for a moment the curse of l was lifted, and they were all speaking and hearing in the original language of their pre-Babel ancestors.

When Jesus ascended into heaven, he told his apostles to stay together and pray and wait for the Spirit to be given to them. That is what they did, and they were found together praying when ten days later the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost. The wind and fire of the Spirit sent them out into the streets, where Jews from many nations had gathered for the Jewish feast of Pentecost, fifty days following the offering of first fruit, as the crop began to come in and be harvested.

It is this togetherness that I want to discuss today. According to I Corinthians 12:13, we were baptized by one Spirit into one body. Now many people believe this refers to regeneration, whereby we are born again. After all, when the preacher baptizes with water, the water is a sacrament or symbol of the Holy Spirit, for the actual baptizing is through the Holy Spirit. Certainly regeneration is the work of the Spirit as it happens to individuals, but what Paul is clearly talking about here is that the Spirit unites a believer with the believing body of Christ and anoints them with a spiritual calling and purpose relative to that body. I know this because in this passage he speaks of the members of the body being different even as the organs of a body are different.

Some functions in the body may seem more important or glamorous than others, but the foot is not more important than the hand, nor the eye more important than the ear. We need both to walk with our feet and to work with our hands – we are seriously handicapped when deprived of either. We might add to Paul’s argument, the heart may seem more important than the stomach, because without the heart the body dies immediately, but we may add without the stomach you will die, it will simply take an hour or two and be considerably more painful. Paul’s point is that each person in the body of Christ is vital to the functioning of the body. That is why they are put in the body.

On Mother’s Day, I spoke about how the image of the Trinitarian God is made manifest in the family of man. That is the image of God is not complete in the individual, but in the family. That is because God is relational – his identity is not singularly Father, or singularly Son, or singularly Holy Spirit, even though each is divine – his identity is Trinity. Hence the image of God in man is not individual but social. It is not Jack alone, but Jack and Jonna and Jody and Mitch and Jon. Even as parents die, as children move on to form their own nuclear families, the image of a social identity, though always changing, remains true.

But a major problem in our ure is that we tend to think of ourselves as individuals with competing or individual interests. How this works out in many mainline churches is that you have people who come on Sunday and passively worship, listen to a sermon, and then go out to live their individual lives, hopefully incorporating the sermon into their lives. It is the staff who is perceived as the paid ministers, and the laity are treated like clients who come to get their needs met. That is far, far from the Biblical reality. The Biblical reality is that the church functioned as a body in their witness and mission and ministry as well as in their worship. Worship was their corporate tie to God, which made them a body, but since ministry and mission and witness were a body activity, every part of the body was needed somewhere. Not everyone could speak equally well, but everyone had a testimony. Not everyone had equal gifts of hospitality or encouragement or compassion, but as the Spirit put people together, they came know what each person could do best, and depend upon them to do it.

One of the best examples of how this process should work that I have seen is through the Cursillo movement. This group, led by laity with clergy advisors puts on retreats that last three and a half days. The role of the clergy is to give a few theology talks during the retreat, but far more talks are given by laymen or laywomen. The lay talks include testimony, and the small discussion groups are led by laity. People pray for the candidates and offer them palanca (notes and small gifts that are full of prayers and good wishes). Other laymen provide hospitality and wait on the candidates' needs. Music and skits are provided by laymen. This shows a church in which the laity play the major part, with small advice and counsel from clergy who serve as coaches.

The Spirit baptizing us into one body does not happen in some instantaneous magical way. It happens only as we get to know one another, as we come to trust one another, so that we become “open books” to each other, and we learn each others strengths and weaknesses, but the peculiar mix of the gifts of the body, which determine the particular ministry and mission of the church cannot be known without the body of Christ being together enough so that these gifts can be realized and a form of teamwork established.

The mainline church with often large staff of paid clergy and church workers, its programs for every conceivable age group, and its passive congregation is a pale reflection of the church as it is empowered in Acts by the Holy Spirit. I think it was good for us the other night at our house to get out of our routine and come together in a home, but I think it is also necessary for us to find ways of fellowship in ministry and mission as well as in worship and Bible Study, so that we can truly say that we have been baptized by the Spirit into one body with each person performing one or more of the functions of the body. One more thing, when you find your gifting and you feel the pleasure of the Holy Spirit in doing it and doing well to the glory of God, put energy and effort into perfecting that – I am not speaking here of a single act – such as bringing cookies on a Sunday or cleaning the sanctuary, but find out your gift, be it a gift of faith, of hospitality, of administration, of healing, of helps, and put time every week into the development and performance of that gift without spreading yourself think by doing many things. Jim McCracken has said that if each member of our church – each member – would put not the 30-40 hours that the pastor usually puts in, but just three or four hours a week into something God has gifted them to do, then very quickly we would see a God-anointed and healthier church.

I want to close by coming back to the image of the burning bush – that is, the bush that burns but is not consumed. I believe that the fire that burns but does not consume is the Holy Spirit – it gives us the passion to be the believing church of Jesus Christ. This is a passion that corresponds with the Gospel of Holy Scripture. It fulfills itself by putting its energy into glorifying God, into following and obeying Christ, into sharing the Gospel by word and by deed, into showing the compassion for the needy, into stewarding the gifts God has given us into holy and fruitful living, into acts of grace and forgiveness, into perseverance to the end.

Now listen, the faith that is saving faith is not possible without the Spirit which yields this fire that burns but does not consume, because it is this passion for God and Christ that allows us to overcome the desires and passions of the flesh. Without Holy Spirit passion, how do we not become conformed to the world, with its and greed and desire for security and riches. Our old fallen nature by definition has these kinds of passions, and we need the passion of the Holy Spirit to live a life that can overcome and put to what Christ crucified in his body on the Cross.

This Sermon was published on 06/8/2009 and filed in