June 3, 2001,
Vicar Rick Marrs
Pentecost Sunday,

Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our Acts lesson read earlier.

I have a problem. My drill is not working. I really like my drill. It is a very useful tool to me. I can drill and cut holes, screw in screws, bolt together small bolts, grind and sand. Maybe one of you could help me to know why my drill has stopped working. Perhaps one of you trustees would know. You have gifts with tools like this.

Trustee Jerry Smith: "Here, you need this, the battery power pack. Without it the drill has no power. Use this and your drill will work." Thank you, Jerry. Now, obviously we set this up before hand. I knew I needed the battery and Jerry knew that I was going to call on him. Jerry doesn't normally bring power packs with him to church.

But I do this for a reason, to emphasize that God uses tools to accomplish HIS purposes, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the world. In today's lesson, the chief tool He used on Pentecost were the words of Peter. In today's world the chief tools he continues to use are words, but Peter is no longer physically here. Today His chief tools are words and lives, yours and mine.

Now, remember back to this story of Pentecost, the verses preceding our text. The disciples, about 120 of them, were together in a home. A wind swept through the home, and tongues of fire, the Holy Spirit alighted on their heads. They exited the home to the streets were the Jewish festival of Pentecost was being celebrated. Thousands of local Jews and Jewish visitors to Jerusalem were in those streets, visitors from 100's of miles away, areas of modern day Rome, Turkey, Egypt, and Iraq. Many of these visitors had probably heard about this man Jesus who had been crucified 7 weeks earlier from the locals. This mix of people began hearing these 120 disciples of Jesus speaking in their local tongues, telling them the story about Jesus. God had reversed his actions from the Tower of Babel, when mankind had become too self-centered, too focused on what humans could accomplish apart from God.

Now he miraculously empowers his disciples to proclaim the message about Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior. They could not accomplish this on their own. Only by being connected to God's power through the person of the Holy Spirit could they accomplish this proclamation. Peter becomes the spokesperson for the group, telling the crowd of the signs and wonders Jesus had done, especially his crucifixion and his resurrection from the dead. He, empowered by the Holy Spirit, skillfully used the Old Testament as evidence that this man Jesus was the one foretold from long ago, the Christ who was to come. He ends his sermon with this powerful statement of Law: "Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."

The Law of God is His tool. It is a tool that cuts and drills to the heart (point the drill at my chest and at the chest of others). Hebrews 4: 12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

We don't like having our hearts drilled and cut. No one elects to have heart surgery just for grins. Everyone here to whom I get close with the drill feels just a little nervous. When the Law of God penetrates our souls, it convicts us of our sinfulness. It shows us our hopelessness on our own. We dare not forget or neglect God's Law. Only through it do we recognize our need for His Good News in Jesus. Only when we share God's Law, not our own personal opinions, with people will they recognize their need for a savior. When the people at the first Pentecost heard these words and what had happened to the Christ God had sent, and what they the nation of Israel had done to him they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"

Repent, and be baptized! was Peter's response. Turn to this Jesus and trust in the one and only one God has sent for your forgiveness. Jesus himself had said nearly the same thing when He started His ministry (Mark 1: 15) "The time has come,"… "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" God's first tool is His Law, but his second tool, his tool for reconstruction is His Good News about Jesus, the Son of God, God himself, dying and rising for us. Baptism is part of that Good News about Jesus. When we remember our Baptisms we remember our need for repentance, to daily turn to him and trust him. When Jesus said "Repent and believe the good news, His words in the Greek language of the New Testament meant "Repent and keep on repenting, believe the Good News and keep on trusting in that Good News that I have come so your sins can be forgiven." Many thousands of people came to hear Jesus' words when he was alive, but never did 3000 convert and trust in Him on one single day. Jesus had told his disciples that they would do (John 14:12ff) even greater things that He did because He was going away to be with the Father and sending the Holy Spirit to them. That day had arrived. They received the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Tower of Babel was reversed. God's power to heal and forgive was received by 1000's.

That power went out to our spiritual ancestors. That power is still going out today. People in new languages are learning about Jesus. God's Law and their own realization of their helplessness is leading them to ask modern Christians, "Brothers what shall we do to be saved?" This is happening most remarkably in Africa. Thousands of new believers are coming to faith in Jesus Christ through the work of missionaries like our Guinea Partnership. Our missionaries that the Kansas District provides support, the Heine's, first went to Northwest Africa in 1983. The visible evidence of their work was limited at first. They made slow initial progress in spreading the Gospel in Africa. But then the Holy Spirit used the seed this one Lutheran Christian missionary was planting and in the 1990's new converts began to grow, to the point that more than 100,000 new believers are in Ghana that had previously been pagan. 100,000 and growing! Because of the Holy Spirit, using tools like the Heine's supported by tools like us, there are now more Lutheran Christians in Ghana than are in Kansas. In less than two decades. Now this missionary and his family had to leave this fertile field of Ghana because Satan brought war to the region, but the locals are still there, worshiping our same Christ, spreading the Good News of repentance and Baptism, of eternal salvation in Jesus. An even larger number of new Christians came to faith in the same decade in Liberia, a neighboring country also now beset with war. We pray that the Holy Spirit will work the same or greater power now in Guinea.

That power is still going on among us today. New Age Paganism, ancestor worship, cults and secular materialism are growing in America. They are spiritual roads that lead people away from Jesus Christ, away from salvation, to hell. But the Holy Spirit is still at work among us and he is more powerful than those evils. He is fulfilling his mission among us. We are planting seeds in our community and waiting for him to water and grow those seeds. We can share our earthly gifts with those who are planting and watering and growing seeds in other places, like the Guinea Partnership.

It's the Holy Spirit's mission really, not ours. He is the battery pack to this tool. We are the tools he uses, but when we try to operate apart from Him and his will, His tools are powerless. By his power, we can continually devote ourselves to the apostles' teaching (the Bible) and to fellowship here among us, to the breaking of bread (the Lord's Supper) and to prayer. When our community sees us praising God with gladness and sincerity of heart, we gain favor with all the people, and opportunities to tell them about our gladness in Jesus.

So think of yourself as a tool, a tool connected to the power of Holy Spirit. Through you the Holy Spirit can spread the seed of His Word, the Good News about salvation in Jesus Christ.

The grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the power of his Holy Spirit be with us always. Amen.