A Welcoming God: A Sermon for Pentecost
This is a sermon that I'll be preaching this Sunday in Rwanda. I hope you enjoy it! (Read Acts 2:1-21) Our text this morning gives us a glimpse into the reason for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The people of God before this time, of course, had moments of receiving, relatively, short experiences with the Holy Spirit, like what we see in King David’s life, but never was the Holy Spirit “poured out”, as Joel prophesied, in such a way until the Day of Pentecost . However, we need to recognize that, at that point, the disciples knew very little about what the Holy Spirit was capable of and what would happen when it arrived. We know from the Gospel accounts that Jesus taught about the Holy Spirit while with the disciples, made a promise about its coming and was baptized in the Holy Spirit in Luke 3. Before the Day of Pentecost Jesus was the only person to be constantly filled with Holy Spirit. But, Jesus’ explanations of the Holy Spirit’s power seem more pastoral than specific