Pentecost

Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed. Acts 19:1-10

One of the most popular literary characters in many homes to-day, expecially where there are children, is Winnie the Pooh. You remember he is the hero of the A.A.Milne book of that name, an amusing teddy-bear with the soul of a poet. As you would imagine some of the poetry is queer and not always is the poet successful. Once when the going was heavy he explained the situation by saying “poems and hums are not things that you get they are things that get you”

That is a great truth put in a simple way, a truth with which all poets would agree – because they know that their greatest thoughts are given to them. Some outside force, some vision of the unseen glory controls their minds. Poems they will agree get you.

We sum up the idea in a word and call it “Inspiration”

The same is true of the higher ranges of music and art. Two famous artists of a bygone generation, Millais and Bunre-Jones, met in their old age and talking about the subjects of pictures, one said to the other “they just crowd in upon me” and the story reminds me of an elderly minister who was both a good preacher and a good teacher. I asked him once where he got all his ideas form that he put into his sermons and what he said I will never forget, “Well, I just read far and wide with my subject in mind and then I light my pipe, and sit down in my study with a stub of a pencil and they just come” All this you see is evidence of a power outside a man to aid and supplement his own. In the religious life this power that inspires and helps us is the Holy Spirit. And all noble thoughts and all lofty visions and the joyous sense of forgiveness are not things that you get they are they are things that get you.

Or as Jesus said to Nicodemus “The wind bloweth where it listeth you hear the sound thereof but canst not tell whende it cometh or wither it goeth, so is everyone that is born of the spirit.”

Or as one of the finest of our Whitsuntide hymns puts it

“And His that gentle voice we hear

Soft as the breath of even,

That checks each fault, that calms each fear

And speak of Heaven.

And every virtue we possess

And every victory won

And every thoughts of holiness

Are His alone.

This is an important truth that we often overlook. It does away with the theory, so often preached to-day, that a man can save himself by the power of his own choice and his own free will. True a man’s redemption has somewhat to do with himself but if it has also to do with the church and everything to do with the Gift of God, the Holy Spirit.

But this doctrine of the Holy Spirit means more than that. It is to this gift that Paul is referring when in the strange story of a dozen men he met in Ephesus, living an impoverished kind of Christian life, he ask “did you received the Holy Ghost when ye believed?”

I wonder of how many of us Paul might ask the same question, and what does he mean?

To-day our thoughts turn to the story of Pentecost, the most striking story that history can provide of the out pouting of the Holy Spirit into human lives.

And don’t let us imagine that the experience is unique to that one occasion. The holy spirit has come through personal lives many times since, and when Paul asks this question it seems to me that he expected to find Christians living in this experience of Pentecost. We often miss the point about Pentecost. The important thing is not the strange physical phenomena – the wind and the fire – but the inward change in the lives of those who had received the Holy Spirit, and the changed outlook, and the influence they had upon others.

Have you received the Holy Ghost? Asks Paul and he proceeds to answer the question for us. The gifts of the spirit he says are, “Love, Joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” If your life is enriched with these blessings there can be do doubt as to the answer.

There were a number of People in Paul’s day who placed a lot of emphasis on the miraculous, but the Apostle answers them “Now concerning spiritual gifts” and gives a list including the abnormal and the miraculous, but he goes on “I show you a more excellent way” Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love I am become a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal” For him love was the supreme, the most precious gift of the Spirit.

But finally, one thing more, this is not all “To whittle down this gift of the Holy Spirit to the acquisition of a kindly heart is disastrous” (Dr Micklem)

The promise with the Holy Ghost is power. Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.

One of the most glorious things about Pentecost was the courage that came with the gift of the Spirit to the weak and doubting disciples.

Power is still the mark of spirit filled men. I read a letter the other day written after a Coventry raid by a Christian there. He said that he had seen the flowering of nobility in the midst of destruction, and he spoke of the fellowship during the raid, as something quite new to him. They could take it he said that had the power to. I do not know my friend what we may yet have to endure but I do know that the Holy Ghost, the comforter, can give us power, and strength and courage in every circumstance. We think of the martyrs of the christian faith who faced evil and danger and persecution with a quiet dignity – with power, not of their own surely but from on high the gift of this same spirit.

So we may ask ourselves to-day “Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?” and the answer is In the assurance we haven in our own hearts of the gifts of Pentecost.

The promise is to you and your children so it come happen now.

Pentecost 13^th May 1951 Sydney Street Methodist Church