On Being Spirit-Filled (Pentecost Sunday)
Acts 2:1-21
Pastor Bob Hiller
6/8/2014
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/_R-NTe4Cezw
John 15:26 When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.
1. It is dangerous to equate the work of the Holy Spirit with the ____________.
2. It is dangerous to equate the work of the Holy Spirit with the ____________.
3. The Holy Spirit is found in the ____________ of ____________ ____________.
Scripture Readings
Numbers 11:24-30
Acts 2:1-21
John 7:37-39
Take It With You!
Here we will offer thoughts and meditations on the message to help us as we contemplate and discuss and wrestle with what we are hearing.
In these matters, which concern the spoken, external Word, it must be firmly maintained that God gives no one his Spirit or grace apart from the external Word which goes before. We say this to protect ourselves from the enthusiasts, that is, the "spirits," who boast that they have the Spirit apart from and before contact with the Word.
In short: enthusiasm clings to Adam and his children from the beginning to the end of the world--fed and spread among them as poison by the old dragon. It is the source, power, and might of all the heresies, even that of the papacy and Mohammed. Therefore we should and must insist that God does not want to deal with us human beings, except by means of his external Word and sacrament. Everything that boasts of being from the Spirit apart from such a Word and sacrament is of the devil. For God even desired to appear to Moses first in the burning bush and by means of the spoken word; no prophet--not even Elijah or Elisha--received the Spirit outside of or without the Ten Commandments; John the Baptist was not conceived without Gabriel's preceding Word, nor did he leap in his mother's womb without Mary's voice; and St. Peter says: the prophets did not prophesy "by human will" but by "the Holy Spirit," indeed, as "holy people of God." However, without the external Word, they were not holy-much less would the Holy Spirit have moved them to speak while they were still unholy. Peter says they were holy because the Holy Spirit speaks through them.
The Smalcald Articles: Concerning Confession [3.8]
