“Utterly amazed, they asked: 'Aren’t [all these //who are speaking ]
Galileans?
Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native
language?'" (Acts 2:7-8 NIV)
When teaching on prayer, Jesus declared, “If you then, though you are
evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will
[your Father in heaven] give the Holy Spirit /to those who ask
him!” (Luke 11:13, emphasis added). You would think that promise would
create a huge desire to know more about this promised Helper—who he is
and what he does. And it would be even better if we were to experience
him /as a living reality /the way () the early believers did.
We know that Jesus the Son is seated at the right hand of the Father
(Luke 22:69; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1).
So that means the Holy
Spirit is God’s only agent on earth. He is the only experience () we can
have of God Almighty, the only way () we can have the work of Jesus Christ
applied to our lives, and the only way () we can understand God’s Word.
Without the Holy Spirit, we are like the disciples before
Pentecost—sincere but struggling with confusion and defeat.
More than a hundred years ago, Samuel Chadwick, a great Methodist
preacher and leader in England, summed it up concisely:
“The Christian
religion is hopeless without the Holy Ghost.”
The early church provides the perfect illustration of that
hopelessness. It was made up /of simple men and women. The leaders were
former fishermen and tax collectors //who fled in fear /when Jesus was
arrested and needed them most. They weren’t courageous and faithful. In
fact, they lacked faith and courage. They were the least likely to be put in charge of any Christian enterprise.
* Made up of" is used in the sense composed of several things.
Yet after the events in Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit is poured out,
those same nobodies were suddenly transformed. With courage and faith,
they turned their community, and eventually the world, upside down.
That wasn’t due to their seminary training; they didn’t have any
training. They couldn’t hand out copies of the New Testament, because
it hadn’t been written yet. It wasn’t because they were wealthy and had
the greatest sound system and light show at their church. They were
poor people without a church building. In fact, the Christian church
didn’t get its first public building /for about three hundred years. To
the existing Jewish religious establishment, those early Christians were
mocked as unlearned and ignorant people with few resources. To the
Roman Empire they seemed fanatical and strange.
But [one thing () they did possess] was the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told them to rely on the Spirit for everything, including
impromptu speech. To paraphrase, he said, “Don’t even prepare what
you’ll say /when you’re in high-pressure situations, because when you
open your mouth, it will be given to you. The Father will give it to
you /through the Holy Spirit. You’ll just know what to say” (Mark
13:11). The early believers knew all too well that Christianity was
hopeless without the Holy Spirit.
* impromptu : done or said without earlier planning or preparation:
Read Acts 2:1-21.