Acts 2:1-11 2023/06/04 Osaka Church
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit
At the table with his disciples before his ascension to heaven, Jesus commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which you have heard from me for a long time. John baptized with water, but you will soon be baptized by the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:4-5).
Jesus also dined with his disciples on the night of the impending Passion of the Cross. The Lord preached a long sermon there, carefully choosing His words and repeating with great intensity that He would soon be “raised up,” that this would benefit the disciples, and that they should not “follow” Him now. But the disciples did not understand what the Lord was saying. ”The Lord said, “I will be raised up,” but what did He mean?
The Lord looked at them, who were looking at each other in confusion, and finally had no choice but to say, “I have much more to say to you, but you cannot bear it now. But when the Comforter whom I am about to send to you from the Father, the God of truth from the Father, comes down, he will testify about me” (John 16:12; 15:26).
The “promise of the Father, which you have heard from me for a long time” is this promise to send the Spiritof truth. It is “baptism by the Holy Spirit. Wait for it.” This was the last call of the Lord Jesus to the world.
Wait for it. The Lord called, taught, did works, ate with people, was captured, interrogated, judged, whipped, suffered, died, was buried, and rose again. Then He appeared to the disciples for another 40 days. The disciples witnessed all of this. Not only did they see, but their hearts were deeply moved by each one. But they did not understand. Even when they thought they understood, it was a terrible misunderstanding.
Finally, the Lord said, “Wait for it,” and left the world.
The promise was fulfilled and the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples who were praying. They came to know the Lord Jesus as the true God, the Son of God sent for our salvation, and that His crucifixion and resurrection were our salvation, and they began their activities as apostles to announce this gospel to the world. It is today, the Feast of the Pentecost of the Holy Spirit, that we remember this.
After waiting and finally receiving the Holy Spirit, the flock of disciples was transformed into a community, the Church, led by the apostles. In the celebration of this important turning point in the history of God’s salvation, I would like you to notice something.
“Act and Get” This is a lifestyle that began when Adam and Eve, placed in Paradise, seduced by the serpent to reach out their hands to the fruit of God’s forbidden tree, pluck it, and eat it. We believe that this is “the way man should be. On the contrary, to simply “wait” is passive laziness and a waste of the talents God has given us. It is precisely because of this that we must be aware of it. At the end of His earthly life, the Lord commanded us to “wait,” as if He were summing up everything that had happened so far. This is what He meant. He did not say, “Act and seize it.” He did not say, “Act and seize it,” but rather, “Wait,” as the basic tone and tone of our “life.
”We must first wait. And let us remember. Let us remember that the disciples, waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit, “were all together in prayer” (Acts 1:14 Acts).
Waiting” was, in other words, praying. If we make prayer a rhythm of our life, if we make it a habit of our life to pray every Lord’s Day, to pray morning and evening, to keep prayer constantly in our hearts no matter what we are doing, if we make it a habit of our hearts to pray first when we have a problem that needs to be solved, then the grace of the Holy Spirit will surely be given to us who “wait”.
It is not a matter of “acting and seizing,” but of “praying, waiting, and receiving.”
