Under the Influence

SERMON: 2009-03-29--ac0917--under-the-influence-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:53:17.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins immediately with theological exposition regarding the Pentecost event and continues through detailed textual analysis of Acts chapter two. No non-sermon material is present at either edge. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:44:56.160-00:45:07.760, 00:45:08.180-00:48:00.760, 00:48:05.760-00:48:20.000, 00:48:20.820-00:53:11.540 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that first Pentecost Sunday was of course by any standard of measurement a pretty dramatic experience. There was first of all the sound, like the blowing of a violent wind, there were the tongues of fire that separated and landed on each head of the early church about a hundred and twenty in number. And then there was that sudden burst of glossolalia. That spontaneous outbreak of speaking in tongues or in other languages and apparently all of these phenomena rolled together caused quite a ruckus because we go on to read in scripture 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?" As I explained last time when we were talking about this particular passage, the gift of tongues in Acts chapter two is really the gift of cross-cultural communication. It's the ability to speak the mighty Acts of God in ways that people can hear and understand so that they can come to faith in the Lord Jesus. Well having stated that earlier on in the passage, Luke who is the author of the book of Acts now again expands on the crowd's reaction in verses twelve and thirteen when the Bible says "Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?" Some however made fun of them and said, "They've had too much wine." As we look at those two verses in the time that we have together this morning there are three things I want to try to point out to you as quickly and as effectively as I can. The first is this, the crowd is clearly shocked. Verse twelve again, "Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?" Earlier on it says, "They were bewildered and they were perplexed." Why were they perplexed? Because they couldn't figure out what was going on. Why were they amazed? Because they had never experienced anything like this before. It was beyond the scope of their previous experience, they had never heard the sound of a mighty wind that wasn't actually blowing. They had never seen tongues of fire that looked like real fire but didn't burn down the whole house. And they for sure had never heard this many people babbling as loudly as they were babbling and yet clearly being able to understand what the message was. They were amazed and perplexed and so what do they do? They do the natural thing, they ask themselves the question, "What does this mean?" And there's a very important principle here that we need to understand. And that is this, God has different ways of communicating to His people. And sometimes when He communicates to His people, He speaks to His people, that's all through scripture, that's all part of the prophetic utterance, that's even part of the story here. But other times God acts before He speaks and it's our job to try to understand what it is that God is doing in what He is doing. Let me give you an example. Sunday night after the communion service one of the men in our congregation came to me and he said, "I've got a question for you." He said, "Why is it that of late when I'm in a service there are certain songs that just make me cry and weep?" And he said, "Last Sunday morning it was the song 'Take Us to the River' Sunday night in the communion service it was the song 'Just As I Am'." And he says, "I just break out in tears." And I said to him, "Well what's happening there I believe is that God is at work in your heart and there's something about certain songs like the two that you mentioned that resonate with longings and dreams of your heart and that causes you to weep." He said, "Well what do I do with that?" And I said, "Let it happen. Let it happen. Allow the tears to come because it's God's way of releasing the pain and it's God's way of moving you forward into His wholeness and His life." See sometimes God speaks and tells you do this or do that. Other times it's not in the speaking that it happens. God just does it and then you have to try to figure out what it is that He's doing. Often if you will look at the ministry of Jesus you will see that both those things are true. Sometimes Jesus teaches and He expects us to obey what He is teaching but other times before He teaches He does things. He does His miracles and then uses the miracles as the basis for His teaching. And so when Luke starts writing the book of Acts in Acts chapter 1, how does he begin? He says in my former book, Theophilus, that refers to Luke's gospel of course, I wrote about all that Jesus began to what? To do and to teach before He was taken up into heaven. He began to do and He began to teach. And so when God does things in our lives individually, collectively, or in the world, one of the attitudes that we always need to have is an attitude that says, "Lord, what is it that you're trying to tell me?" You know we often say you cannot build theology in your experience and that's absolutely true. But there's an awful lot of bad theology that gets straightened out real quick by an experience of God. You can intellectualize all you want about who God is and how God works but when God meets you, whether in joy or in pain, you discover things about God in a way that no words can teach you. So the crowd is perplexed, they are amazed and they ask the question, "What does this mean?" And that of course sets the stage a little bit later on for Peter to explain to them what is the theological significance of this outpouring of the Holy Spirit which they have now just experienced. So that's the first thing I want us to notice, they were perplexed and they were amazed. Second thing I want us to notice in this particular passage is that some mocked the disciples. Verse 13, "Some however made fun of them and said they've had too much wine." Now think this through with me a little bit. Here is the most outstanding outpouring of the Holy Spirit that history has ever seen up until that point. It is the fulfillment in a significant way of many of the dreams, many of the longings, many of the prophecies of the Old Testament. God said, "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh," already back in the book of Joel. So here they are in the midst of an incredible outpouring of God's Holy Spirit, and what do they do? They make fun of it. The Bible says they mock the disciples. Now why would they do that? I can think of at least three reasons. The first is they simply don't get it. Spiritual truth, the Bible says, is spiritually discerned. You cannot think, you cannot reason your way into an encounter with God and understanding God. You need to come in the humility of a child because God's gifts are given by grace through faith. The Lord Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew's gospel, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your good pleasure, unless you become," says Jesus, "like a child, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." They don't get it. And number two, they might well be scared. Scared because, you see, their presuppositions are being challenged. All of us living in a world that is unstable develop a world and life view that helps us make sense out of living life. That world and life view is shaped by many different factors. It's shaped by the family that we grow up in. It is shaped by the experiences that we have. It is shaped by the schools we go to, the churches that we are part of, the friends that we hang around with, and in all of these situations, we develop a way of looking at life that helps us make sense of life. And if you're a Christian, then you have a certain view of who God is and how sovereign God is and how he uses good and bad to bring us to where he wants us to be. And on and on and on it goes. And so the average person, by the time he or she becomes a teenager, late teens, maybe early 20s, you have a world and life view that is pretty well fixed. You've got life figured out, you think. And from that point on, everything that you experience or encounter gets filtered through that world and life view. You interpret everything in the light of how you have figured out life works. Now most people don't articulate their world and life view, but everybody's got one. And it determines what your values are, it determines what you embrace, and it determines what you reject. Now every so often what happens in life, something comes at us that significantly and seriously challenges our world and life view. A kid raised in a Christian home goes to a secular university, and his faith is challenged to its core. A major catastrophe overcomes us, and we wonder, "God, where are you?" Karen shared some of that challenge earlier. I mean she and Jim are relatively new in faith, and here they live with the loss of a grandchild that has been the subject of so many prayers. And then you say, "God, where are you in the middle of this?" So things happen that don't fit in with our world and life view, and then we have to make the choice, are we going to open up our world and life view, learn from what is happening, and redefine reality? Or are we just going to close our minds off and say, "I don't want to go there because I don't want to consider another reality than what I'm already living in." And so once we do that and stuff comes at us that doesn't fit our framework of thinking, then one of the ways that we respond to that is we make fun of the things that threaten us and we mock the things that we're scared of. And for that reason, when you see somebody that's making fun of you or making fun of your faith or making fun of your way of life, then the question always to ask is, "Why are you making fun of this?" And you'll find that one of the reasons is very often, "Well, I'm scared. I'm scared of what I don't understand, and what I don't understand I want to write off." Does that make sense? We all have that to one degree or another. There is nothing more threatening to any of us than to have to think beyond the framework with which we have been comfortable. And nowhere is that more clearly true than our concepts of who God is, what the church is like, and how God works in our lives. We discover that God works in other ways, can be incredibly terrifying because it means we have no control and we've got to trust God to be big enough to look after us there. So they don't get it, they are scared possibly, and then thirdly, of course, they may well be offended by what's happening. I think lastly, Dave mentioned in passing how King David's wife, Michael, was offended by his dancing before the Ark of the Covenant. David responds by saying, "I don't care how offensive this is in your sight, I'm doing this for the Lord." And Michael was offended because he was dancing around in his underwear, so to speak, and thought he wasn't being sufficiently dignified as a king. Saul and his family had some pride issues. And what you will find in Scripture and what you will find in history is that there are times God takes on our sense of propriety. When David was among the prophets in the Old Testament and he was dancing and prophesying with the Old Testament prophets, that wasn't very dignified. When Jesus cast out demons in the synagogue with loud shrieks and noises, most of us would have more than a little freak out. And when here in the book of Acts, you've got 120 people all carrying on in multiple languages all at the same time. You know, when I read a story like that and I say to myself, "Lord, if you're going to do public relations with all these unbelieving people, then you could probably do a better job than what you're doing." Why offend people's sense of propriety? I mean, haven't you wondered that sometimes? Why does God do crazy things? Or why are there crazy things that get done in His name? Now let's be very clear. Not every crazy thing is from God. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But there's a principle that is involved here. It's not that God is a God of disorder. It's not that God is a God of impropriety. But you know, God knows how to put His finger on areas of pride in your life and in my life. Have you ever noticed how there will be times in your life you're looking for more of God? You want answers to prayer. You want a larger manifestation of the Spirit in your own life. But there are huge hurdles of pride that you have to overcome. I mean, how many times haven't you been in a worship service like this and you have felt that you should raise your hands in worship, because even the trees are smart enough to point up to God, just for the record. And you stand there and your arms are like lead. And why are your arms like lead? Because going through your mind is the question, "What is so-and-so going to think?" And they're going to say, "I have joined the Holy Rollers." You can't live with that kind of judgment. Some of you, you've heard the story of when I first learned to raise my hands in worship, it was at a Roman Catholic Charismatic meeting in Grand Rapids when I was going to Calvin Seminary. And that was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that had particularly affected the Roman Catholic community. And they had a couple hundred people that met at St. Anne's, I believe, every week. One of the most beautiful and God-filled senses of worship that I have ever experienced to this day. And I'm not a Roman Catholic at heart, so please understand that. But it was so clear that God was present. And it was so clear that God delighted in the praises of His people. And the first time I went, I went with two of my friends, and I was standing between them. Oh, what a terrible place to be. And I felt the Lord saying to me, "Listen, it's biblical to raise your hands in worship, not because it makes you any more holy or less holy. That's not the issue." And I remember struggling with myself. What are these guys going to think? They're going to think, "Viscer is flipped out." And most of us, we will have found ourselves in that place at one point or another, haven't we, where we are more worried about what the people around us think than we are worried about what God thinks. Guess what? Whatever that place of pride is, in your heart or in my heart, God's going to find it. And then He's going to come to you and He's going to say to you, "If you want to get what I have for you, you need to humble yourselves because you cannot both keep an eye on people's pleasure and my pleasure." Scripture puts it this way, "God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble." And I love the story that is told about one of the early revival movements. It was a group of people on a ship, as I recall the story, and there was an evangelist on board and he was preaching the gospel and people were experiencing some amazing conversions and some amazing outpourings of the Holy Spirit. And one of the strange phenomena of that particular episode was, and this sounds really crazy, a couple of people had gotten to standing on chairs shouting at the top of their voice. This is, you know, early Methodist, pre-Pentecostal days, and they were just carrying on but receiving amazing release and power in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And there was a man present there who felt God stirring in his heart, and he really wanted more of God, but he was a proper person, like you and I, and he went up to the evangelist and he explained his need to him and he said how he was longing for more of the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in his life, but he said, "I don't have to get up in one of those chairs and do what these people are doing, do I?" Now listen carefully. The evangelist was a perceptive man, because here's what he said, "In your case, I think the answer is yes." Do you understand that? Whatever is the obstacle to our pride is precisely what we need to step into, because as we humble ourselves before God, then God gives grace to His children. And so no, it doesn't make you holier if you raise your hands or you hold them by your side. It doesn't make you holier whether you come up for prayer, yes or no. It doesn't make you holier if you do this thing or the other thing, but if God is putting His finger on the obstacle in your life as He did with the rich young ruler, then that becomes the decisive point about whether you're God in your life or you are not or God is. And that will determine whether you move forward in God or not. You cannot have what God is wanting to give you and dictate to Him the terms of your surrender. And that's not to argue for crazy things. That's not to say that God is not a God of order. That is to say God will find the places in your life where something, where somebody other than God is God, and He will say, "Will you give it up so that I can be God and God alone?" Does that make sense? Very important to understand because you can talk to anybody who comes into a new experience of God's Holy Spirit, and it always happens when you get over being offended by God and you meet God on God's terms. There's a lot more that I want to say about that. I'm going to move on to my next point though, and that is this. Not only is the crowd astonished, not only are some mockers, but in their mocking they have an alternate explanation. Listen how it goes, "Some however made fun of them and said they've had too much wine." They have an alternate explanation, "Some made fun of them and said they've had too much wine." In other words, we know exactly where this is coming from, they are drunk. Now there's two things quickly I want us to think about in that connection. The first is this. If you cannot accept what God is doing, then you have to find an alternate explanation. If you cannot accept what God is doing, then you must find an alternate explanation. That is to say, you can't live with a mental vacuum. You can't live with a world and life view that is being challenged. You can't live with a tension of inconsistency. It has to fit into your world and life view somehow or another. And so what happens is this. You find an alternate explanation. You see that, for example, in the ministry of Jesus. The Pharisees cannot deny that there are some amazing miracles that are taking place in the ministry of Jesus. I mean, the blind see, as we often say, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and all of that sort of thing. They cannot deny that the miracles are happening. But to agree that the miracles are happening because they're coming from God would mean that they have to accept Jesus for who He is and that they cannot do because there are a lot of things that Jesus is doing that doesn't fit their religious notions of what the Messiah would do. So what do they do? Well, they have an alternate explanation. When the Pharisees heard this, that is, the miracles that Jesus was doing, Matthew chapter 12, what do they say? Well, it is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons. So yes, we know that he's doing miracles, but we know that it can possibly be God who is doing it, so it's got to be the devil. And so they attribute to the devil the work of God, which Jesus says in the New Testament, interestingly enough, is the sin against the Holy Spirit, which is the one sin that cannot be forgiven. And that's a difficult passage to interpret, but I take it to mean that if you continue to reject the workings of the Holy Spirit, then God has no way, so to speak, to bring you to repentance because you've already closed off the avenue that he uses most commonly. Now, again, you find the same thing happening just very quickly in John chapter 12. That is the passage where Jesus cries out to the Father in prayer. He says, "Father, glorify your name," and the Scripture goes on to say, "Then a voice came from heaven, and I have glorified it and will glorify it again." And the Scripture goes on to say, "Then the crowd that was there and heard it," what do they say? "It thundered, but some said an angel spoke to him." So here's God speaking to Jesus, and most of the crowd that heard it did not hear God speaking to Jesus. They said, "It thundered." See, whenever something doesn't fit your world and life view, you have to find an alternate explanation. That's what these people do here. And the second thing in that context, then, is that because they don't understand what is going on, what they do is they default into what they already know. They've had too much wine to drink. Well, why blame it on the wine? Because that's what they know. I suspect they've been to enough drunken parties to know that when you come under the influence of alcohol, funny things happen. You begin to see fireworks. Isn't that an amazing pyrotechnics? You begin to hear things that aren't there and see things that aren't there. And besides that, your mouth gets loosed and you have an incredible wisdom that you want to share with all the world. That's their world and life view. They know all about parties. And so when they see the carryings on of these 120 disciples who are all just speaking away in foreign languages, their immediate conclusion is that these people have had too much wine to drink. You see, you default into what you know. Now what's really intriguing about that to me is that there are, in fact, in scripture parallels between being drunk and being filled with the Holy Spirit. Did you know that? Not the kind of stuff that we're very happy with, but the reason for that is that in both cases you're under the influence. If you're drunk, you're under the influence of alcohol. If you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you are under the influence of the Holy Spirit. And it's for that reason, I believe, at least in two places in the New Testament there is a clear distinction drawn between being filled with the Spirit and being filled with wine. One passage is Ephesians chapter 5 where Paul says, "Do not get drunk on wine," which leads to debauchery, this sort of loose living and carrying on. "Do not get drunk with wine," which leads to debauchery. "Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." And so just as a drunken person gets carried away with his drunken sailor songs, God's people are to get carried away in worship. And Paul says, "Don't confuse getting drunk with being filled with the Holy Spirit because the long-term effects, while superficially the same, in fact will be very different." One more scripture and then we'll close this morning, the angel Gabriel coming to Zachariah announcing the coming birth of John the Baptist. What does he say? "He," that is, John the Baptist, "will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth." There you've got that linkage again. John the Baptist, one of the rare individuals who's going to be filled with the Holy Spirit for the moment that he's born, that'd be an interesting kid to have in your house, wouldn't it? "Filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. Don't ever let him drink booze." Why? "I don't ever want anybody to confuse the effects of alcohol with the effects of the Holy Spirit, because while they look the same superficially, they will be different long-term." Now that's where we're going to quit this morning. Lord willing when we come back to this, we're going to talk in more detail then about what does it look like when you are under the influence of the Holy Spirit. How can you distinguish between the person who is filled with the Spirit, even when some of their behavior doesn't fit into your world and life view or fit into your experience? How do you distinguish that then from somebody who's had too much to drink? Making that distinction is critical because all through scripture, God's people face a two-fold danger. One is to accept uncritically things that are not of God that will lead you astray. The other is to reject critically things which are of God, which will also lead you astray. And God in scripture and in the context of history of the Christian church has given us the provision as to how we can distinguish between the one and the other. Spirit of God, dwell thou within my heart, Weed it from earth through all its falsest truth; Stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art, And make me love thee as I art to love. Is thou not with us, lovely God and King, All that I know, so hard and strength and might? I see the cross, and teach my heart to think, O let me seek the end, O let me die. Teach me to feel that thou art always mine. Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear, To check the rising out the rebel star. Teach me the patience of one else again. Teach me to love thee as my angels love, O let me seek the end, O let me die. I see the cross, and teach my heart to think, O let me die. Teach me to feel the rising out the rebel star. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:44:56.160; remove through 00:53:17.000] [MUSIC FADES OUT] [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:53:17.000; resume after this marked segment]