Alas, no Triple Crown winner again this year. California Chrome wasn’t up to the Belmont’s mile and a half, coming in fourth. I haven’t seen the footage but I can imagine what it was like: the horses brought into their positions, a tense pause as they wait for the bell, it rings as the gates fly open, and off they go.
Pentecost is a little like that! All that was necessary for the salvation for sinners had been accomplished; Jesus’ disciples watched him ascend; they waited as he had instructed; and like the bell that rings at the Belmont, the Holy Sprit comes down upon the church and they are off and running with the gospel. Luke captures the moment as he recounts the first and, thus, paradigmatic sermon of the church age. It’s succinct and convicting, and offers, as James Boice suggests, “the principles that . . . must govern the informal witness of the people of God in other circumstances.”
When we take the time to study Peter’s sermon, Boice proposes that we will find it biblically coherent, centered on Christ, courageous, and “eminently reasonable.” It’s that last point that’s perhaps the most misunderstood. The apostle doesn't appeal to emotions. He doesn't rely on colored lights, persuasive music and smoke machines to bring people to conviction. To the contrary, he calls them to face the facts: consider that Jesus was attested to by God through his “works, wonders, and signs . . . as you yourselves know”; his resurrection is a reality to which “we are all witnesses”; and the phenomenon of the Holy Spirit, “that you yourselves are seeing and hearing,” is obviously the result of his having been “exalted at the right hand of God.” Peter concludes, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know [not feel] for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Ironically, Peter’s appeal to reason produced a strong emotional response, “. . . when they heard this they were cut to the heart.”
Endued with the Spirit’s power the church should pursue it’s own Belmont: true pentecostal preaching. Who knows, by the grace of God, we might even be asked, “Brothers, what shall we do?” We can then answer as did Peter, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
