「聖霊という神からのプレゼント」 ペンテコステ礼拝 宣教 2025年6月8日
使徒言行録 Acts 2章1〜12節 牧師 河野信一郎
Good morning. I am grateful to be able to celebrate the Day of Pentecost with you this morning. Now, I know that some of you may not be familiar with the meaning of “Pentecost,” so I would like to explain it first.
Christianity has three major festivals: Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Christ; Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Christ; and Pentecost, which celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit in place of Christ who was lifted up to heaven; and Judaism has three major festivals: Passover, the Feast of the Seven Weeks, and the Feast of the Sukkot.
Passover is a festival to remember God’s deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, when God passed over the homes of the Jewish people who had marked their gates with the blood of sheep, as God had commanded. The Feast of Sukkot is a festival to commemorate the forty years the people spent living in tents in the wilderness after their escape from Egypt, and to pass it on to their descendants.
The festival celebrated on the 50th day counting from the day after the Passover is called “Pentecost” or “Seventh Week,” also known as the “Festival of Reaping”. It is a festival of thanksgiving for the harvest in early summer, when the first ears of the wheat harvest are offered to God. Such a big event was also unfolding in Jerusalem, but this festival called Pentecost has great significance for the Christian church as well.
After Jesus’ resurrection on the third day after His atoning death on the cross, He spent 40 days with His disciples and was then taken up to heaven, where He promised that the Holy Spirit would be given in His place. On the fiftieth day after Jesus’ resurrection, the promised Holy Spirit descended on the disciples, and Jesus’ promise was fulfilled with the birth of the primitive church. Therefore, Pentecost is a day to rejoice and celebrate the founding of the Christian Church and the beginning of its mission.
In Japan, most people know that Christmas is the birthday of Jesus Christ, but most do not know what the Day of Pentecost/Pentecost is. Therefore, they do not celebrate this day. Because the gospel of Christ has not yet been fully shared throughout Japan, and because many people only see Christianity as part of their culture, they are unable to believe in Jesus or receive the Holy Spirit. Unless you believe that Jesus is the God-given Savior, you cannot believe in and receive the Helper, the Holy Spirit, who is God’s gift in Jesus’ place. The Holy Spirit is a blessed gift from God that can only be received by those who believe in Jesus as their Savior and who are seeking salvation.
This morning’s Scripture passage, Acts 2, clearly states that the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus’ disciples and that each one of them was filled with the Holy Spirit and transformed anew. First, in verses 1 and 2, we read, “And when the day of Pentecost had come and they were all gathered together as one, suddenly there came a sound from heaven like the blowing of a violent wind, and it echoed throughout the house where they were sitting”. The “all” are Jesus’ disciples. They were people of all ages, both men and women, who believed in the resurrected Jesus as their Savior, believed in His words of promise, prayed and hoped, and were waiting for the Holy Spirit to be given to them now or never.
When these people are waiting with one heart for the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise, “suddenly” the Holy Spirit will fall. Some of you may be saying, “Don’t be so sudden, it’s bad for my heart! Give us more time and advanced notice!” But that is for our own convenience. The word “suddenly” can be translated as “in the fullness of God’s time. What we need to do is to adjust ourselves to God’s convenience. It does not mean that we make God conform to our convenience. We must always be ready to take immediate action when God’s time is full.
Verse 3 says, “And a fiery tongue appeared in the forked places, and stayed upon each one of them.” God sent “fiery tongues” and they stayed on each one of the Christians. The “fiery winds” and “flames” of verse 2 represent the presence and power of God. It may sound occult and scary, but this is clearly a manifestation of God’s work and God’s power.
Two points are important here. First, the Holy Spirit “stayed on each one” who believes in Jesus. In other words, God’s Spirit is poured out equally on each person, and each is filled with the Holy Spirit. Each one is blessed. Therefore, there is no need to think, “That person is great, but I am inferior. That makes no sense at all. It is rather the work of the evil spirit to separate us from God’s love. Another important thing for us here is to know God’s will: “For what purpose has the Holy Spirit been given to us, those who believe in Jesus as Savior, to come upon us?”
First, the Holy Spirit is sent to give us the assurance that God is always with those who believe in Jesus. The Holy Spirit is given to keep believers connected to Jesus and to keep giving God’s love in them.
If we are not connected to the Lord Jesus, we will again be separated from God, fall back into darkness, and wander around in agony and anguish. Without being connected to Jesus, we try to live by our own wisdom, efforts, and beliefs. Without being connected to the Lord Jesus, we cannot know the meaning and purpose of life. If this is the case, we will not be given the power to live, joy, peace, and hope. The Holy Spirit was given to those who believe in Jesus so that they may always feel God’s love through Him and live in His will with joy and gratitude.
Verse 4 says that the disciples “began to speak in the languages of other nations, as the ‘Spirit’ caused them to speak.” “As the Spirit caused them to speak” means that God took the initiative in speaking under His encouragement and guidance. The disciples did not speak based on their own ideas, knowledge, or experience. God Himself spoke. The disciples simply assumed the role of speakers. Therefore, we who are alive in God’s love need not to live in our own strength, but to live while entrusting everything to God. The blessing is with God. It is not with us. If we want to live a blessed life, we need to surrender everything to God, the source of blessings, and live according to His love.
What, then, is God’s will and desire for us, the disciples who believe in Jesus as Savior? It is to speak boldly and unhesitatingly of God’s love and His work in His encouragement. If we want the gospel to advance and spread, we must go out and boldly speak and share God’s love, or the church will not grow. The Christian church in Japan is tapering off because we are not going out and meeting people who need God’s love. It is because we are hiding our Christian spirits from the public.
The disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, share God’s work, Jesus risen victorious in the death and dying of the cross of Jesus Christ, as the Spirit causes them to speak. They were Jews from Galilee, but they speak of Jesus in the languages of other nations. No, God speaks. The people who saw and heard this series of events were taken aback. We read in verses 7 and 8, “And the people were astonished, saying, ‘Are not these men who are speaking all of Galilee? Why do we hear the words of our native land?”.
Not only in Hebrew and Aramaic, but also in the languages of Parthia, Media, Elam, and Mesopotamia to the east of Israel; in the languages of Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia to the northwest; and in the languages of Egypt and Libya to the southwest, where God spoke to his disciples in a language all people could understand God spoke through them. It is said, “Some came from Rome and were in sojourn, some were Jews, some were converts to Judaism, some came from Crete, some from Arabia.” There is nothing that God cannot do. When we trust in this God, He works in us.
The disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit and speak the gospel of Jesus Christ. They boldly proclaimed that Jesus gave up His life on the cross to save us from the darkness of sin and death and to make us alive in the light, that He paid the full price for our sins, and that God raised Him up and invited Him to eternal life to make us alive to eternal life. What is this but a work of God’s power? The Holy Spirit is still being poured out on us to share this love and salvation with all people. All we need to do is surrender our weaknesses to God and pray and ask to live according to His will, according to the words of Jesus, and according to the leading of the Holy Spirit.