Pentecost 2022 Living the Spirit Empowered Life
Acts 2
Pastor Carl Toti
June 4-5, 2022
Acts 2:1–4 (ESV)
1 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2
And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind,
and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues
as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they
were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as
the Spirit gave them utterance.
—200 years before Christ, coal mining started in China.
—800 years after Christ, the first windmill was built in Iran.
—1700 A.D., the Maori people of New Zealand began to use geothermal
power for cooking and heating.
—1868, the first modern solar power plant was built in (al-jeerz) Algiers.
—1859, the first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania.
—1908, the Blackhawk Generating Station was constructed in southern
Wisconsin.

God breathes into us, into the church
so we can breathe life into others.

Acts 2:12-13
“were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this
mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine’”
Acts 2:14-15
“Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and
listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose”

Acts 2:21
“everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”
Acts 2:17
“Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,” he said, “and your young
men shall see visions”
In the millennia since Christ walked with us on this Earth, we’ve often tried
to box up the “wind” [of the Spirit] in manageable doctrines. We’ve
exchanged the fire of the Spirit for the ice of religious pride. We’ve turned the
wine back into water, and then let the water go stagnant and lukewarm.
We’ve traded the gentle dove of peace for the predatory hawk or eagle of
empire. When we have done so, we have ended up with just another
religious system, as problematic as any other: too often petty, argumentative,
judgmental, cold, hostile, bureaucratic, self-seeking, an enemy of aliveness.
In a world full of big challenges, in a time like ours, we can’t settle for a heavy
and fixed religion. We can’t try to contain the Spirit in a box. We need to
experience the mighty rushing wind of Pentecost. We need our hearts to be
made incandescent by the Spirit’s fire. —Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation,
Reorientation, and Activation (Jericho Books, 2014), 205.

O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour
out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and
stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle
shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation
must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of
the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be
proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals
to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to
which he is the constant victim. —Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (1852), in The Life and Writings of
Frederick Douglass, Volume II, Pre-Civil War Decade 1850-1860, ed. Philip S. Foner (International
Publishers Co., 1950) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html