PENnED

The title of this message seems appropriate in this place where alcohol is freely flowing—Vegas baby! Please don’t get me wrong: my purpose is not to take the message of Pentecost lightly. On other hand, if you feel that the title makes you thirst for something you have already given up, or thought you have already given up, read my lips: that is not my intention! But if you see that the title tends to radicalize the message of Pentecost, then, hey, let’s drink to it!

In some churches today, Pentecost Sunday is a great opportunity for “P-type believers” (Pentecostals) to go dancing and praising God, perhaps more than they usually do on a regular Sunday. If your church service is ritualistic, bland, and boring, please don’t invite these P-type believers—they’d rather be in the Dancing with the Stars show than in your church! (Just kidding and I do not intended to offend my Pentecostal sisters and brothers in the Lord.)

I wonder how many of you who, because of your boring church, have considered giving a try the “full of Spirit,” jolly and fast-growing church down the road. Yeah, why not? Over there, the “anointed preaching” of the tongue-speaking preacher could make his people literally shake, rattle and roll… perhaps in a way that would make Elvis Presley look like an amateur!

But before you say goodbye to your boring church, please understand what it really means to be Pentecostal in the biblical sense. The way to do that is to read the Scripture, Acts 2:1-21, which may be the favorite passage of our Pentecostal sisters and brothers, and to really understand it.

[Read Scripture]

Filled with the Holy Spirit

Believers agree that we all need the same filling-with-the-Holy-Spirit experience. It is in how they know that they actually have such an experience that they differ. Most, if not all, Pentecostals say that the only way to know that is if you speak in tongues, and so making the tongue the evidence for being filled with the Holy Spirit.

But I think that misses the point. Why did the Holy Spirit enable the disciples to speak in tongues? The answer is to enable them to proclaim the good news of salvation in Christ clearly and effectively!

The tongue was not the end; rather, it was a means to an end. The reason for speaking in tongues was not just so that the disciples might have wonderful ecstatic experience as a result of the Spirit of God coming to them; the goal was so that people understood the good news of salvation. Indeed as they spoke in other tongues “each one heard their own language being spoken.” In other words, the goal was more for the sake of the hearers rather than the speakers.

I’m sure it was a great and wonderful experience to be filled with the Holy Spirit as it is still today, but let’s not forget that speaking in tongues was not the end but a means to an end. So if today the same end can be had without speaking in tongues or unknown languages why then should one insist that you and I have to speak in tongues?

If we should be looking for evidence for being filled with the Holy Spirit, then I would say that the evidence is found not necessarily in speaking in tongues but in a powerful and effective way of communicating the good news of salvation: so that those that need to hear it, hear it in a clear and understandable way!

They had too much wine

Having said that, let me say loud and clear that while we do not make speaking in tongues a requirement, being filled with the Spirit of God is. We should not undermine the power of making a scene in a world whose attention is hard to get. And how can we do that without being filled with the Spirit of God?

If today God would enable us to speak foreign languages to the millions that visit Las Vegas each month, then we should not resist it. I’d be glad to speak in tongues if that is what God wants. But is that the only way how God works? Of course not!

Perhaps the reason why God may not enable us to speak in tongues today is because the people who come to Las Vegas already understand English! However, it seems to me that the key is not just the language but the manifestation of the Spirit of God as we prophesy which, in the context of our Scripture passage, does not mean to foretell or predict the future but to forth-tell or to simply proclaim the good news!

How will the Spirit of God manifest his presence as we proclaim? I don’t know. God may just surprise as one who is always doing a new thing.

How about the wonders and signs? Well, God said, “I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below” (v. 19) So don’t worry about wonders and signs because they are God’s works, not ours! All we need to do is to pray that God would help us do our part, and that is to proclaim the good news so that those that hear may call on the name of the Lord and be saved (v. 21).

But here’s what I believe: if we are filled with the Spirit of God, then God will manifest his presence in a way that those that witness our proclamation of good news will notice something different…something out of ordinary…something divine.

But if there are still those whose eyes do not see the presence of God despite the Spirit’s manifestation through us and make fun of us saying we are crazy, or weird, or, yes, even drunk, then we should give thanks! Why? Because such comment may be an indication that indeed we are drunk… but not with wine but with the Holy Spirit!