Shane Hughes 8-17-25

I think that might be like one of the hardest texts in the New Testament to read because it has so many different names. And you did fantastic. Great job, bud. I'm grateful for you and the word you shared before. I also want to thanks Tara and Randy.

I have my own list of names to read. Tara and Randy, John, Heather, Ian and Mike. This church was so blessed by your service. Thank you so much for allowing me the space to kind of step back out of the normal rhythm of life and to engage ministry in this church in a different way. Study break is like a.

It's a chance to switch pace. What feels like a run. Most of the time in my job, it turns into a jog. And maybe with a little times during the last month there was a walk and that was what I needed. And I'm grateful of the wisdom of the elders that allows.

Allows me to do that.

I read some books. I spent some time in prayer. I worked on the future. Highland is nearing 100 years as a congregation and I am grateful that this congregation is not only looking forward to that hundred year anniversary, but also we're looking past that horizon to the next hundred years. I'm very excited for this fall.

My family had a chance to go to travel. We went to California and saw the redwoods. And then we went to a dear friend's wedding in Nashville, which is nowhere near California, by the way. And while we were in Tennessee, we went ahead and climbed around in the Great Smoky Mountains. And that was what I needed.

It was a breath to win outside. I got to feel the rain on my skin. We're going to be in Axe for about the next three or four weeks and I want to spend a very brief time looking at a few of the stories that Luke chooses to tell. And there's kind of three things I want you to remember about the Book of Acts. As you read the Book of Acts, there's basically three things that organize the whole book.

If you're ever confused about why did Luke choose this story instead of that story, why is this one in there? It's because Luke is concerned about three things. He's concerned about geography, he's concerned about witness, and he's concerned about the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, actually, I said those backwards because the thing that he is concerned about most is the power of the Holy Spirit. It drives the church, it fuels the gospel.

Whenever there's a barrier that we're going to see that the apostles and the disciples encounter, it's the Spirit that breaks through that. Whenever there's a question about what should we do? Where should we go? What's next for us? It's the Spirit that blows through those places.

Places. And the Spirit takes the disciples. It takes the apostles to Judea and to Samaria, next door to the ends of the earth. The gospel is going to go to Ethiopia. The Gospel is going to go to Asia Minor.

The Gospel is going to go to Athens. The Gospel is going to go to the center of the known world at the time it ends in Rome. And every step of the way, what you encounter are all these spirits, speeches. Everybody's always given a speech in Acts. It's these gospel sermons.

We're going to hear one today that Peter. We're going to reference one today that Peter gives at the end of this text that we just read that the witness is our experience of saying what we saw, testifying to what is true. Well, this story begins at Pentecost. Now, Pentecost happened a few weeks ago, and we're a little bit late to the party. But Pentecost is as a festival of.

Of grain. It's a harvest festival, and it's a celebratory feast. And the tradition is during this feast, during this celebration where people are bringing the food in and there's abundance is that they read the Book of Ruth, which is like kind of a romantic comedy in the Old Testament. It's this lovely love story. And everybody loves the story of the Book of Ruth.

And the disciples, they're in Jerusalem, which we know is the city of David. And the tradition also states that David was born and he died on Pentecost. But this isn't a story about David. In fact, it's not even a story about Jerusalem. It's barely a story about Israel.

Because the story begins with the spirit showing up and with the sound of blowing wind and tongues of fire and. And. And made manifest. And the disciples are the ability to speak in all of the languages of the people who are present. Not Greek or Aramaic or Hebrew, although that might have been the heart language of some of the people there.

He spoke in all of these other languages, the language that they learned from their mothers and their fathers in the bassinets and the living rooms in the fields before they had to learn something else to survive. Why do you learn another language? I mean, you might have to do it because it's required for school. You got to take Spanish, French or German. Take your pick.

You got to do one of them, right? But why would you willingly learn another language? Maybe it's for love. Maybe. Maybe it's because you meet somebody and you really want to be able to talk to them.

Or maybe it's because you fall in love with a person's culture and the ideas and the stories. I would learn another language just because I love their food and I want to visit an order in their language, right? There's. There's power in speaking someone else's native tongue to them. There's power in that.

I had a friend who learned Spanish for the purpose of going to Tijuana. Our church was sending people down every year to build a house in Tijuana for somebody that desperately needed it. And he loved to go there. He loved to work on the house. But he felt frustrated because there was this moment where the organization would give the house to this family.

And he wanted to tell them something. But they didn't know English and he didn't know Spanish. And for years, he sat on Duolingo and he learned Spanish and learned Spanish. And then January came. It was time to go down.

And. And he went down. And this family, this people they were giving it to, had a family. They had two sons. And so he gets down on one knee and he begins to speak Spanish to this little boy.

Now, he understands way more Spanish than he can say, which is pretty common. Usually comprehend more than you say. And he's speaking to this little boy, and the boy says to his mother, this guy has no idea what he's saying.

He knew that much, but he couldn't respond right. It was not enough. Another friend I know who wanted to marry a guy who was South Korean. His parents were from Korea. His parents didn't know English.

And so she studied and studied and studied so that on her wedding day, she could speak to them in their language. You probably. I know at least a handful, a half dozen grandparents whose children moved away and learned another language, and they learned that language so that they could speak to their grandchildren. It's a way to honor someone, to know someone, to know a culture. But what you quickly realize is that learning language is work.

It's hard. It's effort. It takes time.

And I think what's notable is that the spirit in this moment doesn't speak in the languages of power. Probably everybody in that space had a. Had an understanding of Greek because that was kind of the common language at the time. Or Latin, because that was the language of the empires. If.

If not that, then they would have used Hebrew or Aramaic. But that's not how the spirit chooses to speak. It speaks in a way that everyone can understand. Not in their mind, not translating as they go, but in their heart. I've read you're not fluent in a language until you can dream in that language.

But this moment is the death of one dream and it's the rebirth of another. It's the death of a dream. Because just before this in Acts chapter one, the disciples asked the question, hey Jesus, now that you are resurrected, is this the time that you are going to restore Israel? They still don't understand. They still don't get what the purpose of the gospel is.

They don't understand God's kingdom is, but fully what they want to know in their hearts is, is this the time when we get into be into power? Is this the time when we get to seize control? Are you going to make us, our people, our culture, our nation, powerful? And Jesus response is striking. In Acts chapter one, he says, I will not make you powerful.

I will not make you a nation. I will not make you empire. He says, I will make you witnesses to Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. And then he goes up into heaven.

The disciples asked the question, are you going to gather us and make us a people? Are you going to make us influential? Are people going to want to learn Aramaic and Hebrew? Because it's worthwhile in their time to do so? Because that's how they're going to make money, that's how they're going to gather influence.

Is that what you're going to do, Jesus? And Jesus says, I am going to send you to tell my story to the ends of the earth. And then he goes up into heaven. You know, if he had stayed, I wonder if the disciples malformed vision would have won. Because Jesus could have only been in one place at one time.

But when he ascends. We always think about the gospel in terms of time. But I think Jesus in this moment is thinking of the gospel in terms of place. He cannot be in any one place. If he's in one place, then that's where the center of it all was going to be located.

And so he goes up and then angels appear, just like at the tomb. And they ask a question just like at the tomb. And basically the question that they ask is why are you doing the exact opposite of, of what Jesus just told you to do? Because they're standing around and they're staring at the sky and they're trying to figure out, well, what do we do next? And in my mind I know exactly what I think the disciples would do next.

They would build a monument, they'd make A temple. They would make some way to mark that place as one of those thin spaces. It's the exact opposite of what Jesus says. Why are you looking up when Jesus told you to go out?

I don't blame Israel or the disciples for thinking, is this the time where Israel becomes great? Nations will always try to define themselves. They'll define themselves as we speak this language, we eat this food, we tell these stories about ourselves and we are governed in that way. Nationalism says it's fine if you speak a different language and eat different foods and tell different stories, but it does mean that you are not like us. And that promotes racial and cultural segregation.

And you look at Israel or any other nationalist country in history and what you'll find is that it's not only about our food and our story, but it's about our God.

And their God becomes the mascot of national identity. And this is idolatry. It places a God bound to our nation over the God of all nations. The God bound to us is nationalism. Whether we articulate it as a monarchy or democracy, an oligarchy or socialism, we always, it always seeks to turn our imaginations toward this form of desire that is border controlled and boundaried and distinct in its objects of affections, like a flag or a founding document or historical figure or a current leader.

This kind of nationalism makes your imagination too small.

And the angel wants to ask you the question, why are you staring up at the sky when God told you to go out?

The simple argument of a nation is that the mutual loyalty that holds us together must be greater than the distrust or the disdain where it falls apart. Willie Jennings writes that the nationalist vision is weakness and fear masquerading as strength and courage because it beckons the world's people to postures of protectionism and leans towards xenophobia. But when the spirit blows, it is not only power, it is uncontrollable. You don't get to tell the wind where it goes, it just moves where it pleases. And the text says that some of the people were amazed, but others were perplexed.

And they said, these guys have had too much wine. And I don't know what, I don't know why that's in the Bible. I wrestle with that text because that text makes no sense to me. How is becoming too much wine? Have too much wine this early in the morning make you other able to speak a language that you've never spoken before?

That just that seems like such a reductive statement. They cannot explain it. And there are always going to be people who choose to doubt the power of God even when they see a miracle.

But I also think it's a little bit deeper than that. And I might be wrong about this. I think there's a deeper comment here. It's not about miracles and the ability to speak in other languages. I think the disciples see.

I think the crowd sees what the disciples are doing. I think that the crowd sees what God is doing. It's not that they think the disciples are drunk. They think that the idea is impossible.

Humanity will always be divided by flag, by language, by memory of insult or grievance or offense. And when they see this happening, you would have to be drunk to believe it's possible. I think that's what they mean. And then Peter gets up to speak. And this is not the Peter in the gospel who's always putting his foot in his mouth.

This is the new Peter. This is the Peter that's been transformed by the power of the resurrection. Old Peter might have said, it's only nine in the morning, these men are not drunk yet and torpedo the whole thing. He might have ruined it, but instead he pulls out his Bible and he gives a sermon. He's begins in Joel, chapter two.

And he speaks about the day of the Lord. And the day of the Lord is going to be positive because you're going to hear from God again. Your sons and your daughters, the rich and the poor. Everyone is going to prophesy. You're going to hear the word of God all over the place.

But the day of the Lord is also going to be terrifying because it means that everything's going to change. And for the first time in Israel's history, for the first time, those that are hearing this word are on the wrong side of the coin. Because every time they've heard that sermon before, it's that you're on the bottom, but God's going to put us on the top. But Jesus already said, it's not my job to put you on the top. It is your job to be a witness.

And so there's this little sense of unease that ripples through the crowd when they hear for the first time this day of the Lord. It may not be great for me, but the whole scene and everything that's happening, it's this unwinding of this, of the story of the fall, the cycle of Genesis 3 to 11. And you remember that story, Adam and Eve, they. They sin and they're kicked out of the garden. Two angels guard the garden.

You can't get past them. And then Cain kills Abel, his brother. It's this kind of fratricide that was hard to say. Fratricide. And then Noah, the time of Noah.

There's evil that's happening in every direction. And every time, God is trying to offer grace to fix it, and grace to fix it, and grace to fix it. But then there's this organized rebellion where the people come together and say, we're going to make a name for ourselves. We're going to locate everything right here. Everybody's going to know our story, our culture, our food.

And they begin to build a tower, a monument.

And the grace in that story, the way that God responds, is a confusion of languages.

What happened at Babel, God is undoing at Pentecost what happens in Babel. God is unraveling. At Pentecost, when the spirit blows through the disciples, it's not the angel speak or the. The stuff that happens in 1 Corinthians 13. It is real language.

It is unwinding the curse of Babel. And this time it's going to. Nothing is going to be impossible for them.

Now, this is where it might get uncomfortable for you. Because in Peter's sermon, people realize for the first time maybe I'm not on the right side of that coin. That's your warning.

We here at Highland believe with our full voice that every person is welcomed by God into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Everyone can be transformed by Jesus love. We here at Highland believe that God does not care about your race or your color or your culture or the language you speak. Amen. God does not care about the balance of your checking account or the car in your garage or even if you have a garage at all. Amen.

God does not care about your gender or about the mistakes in your past. God does not care about which side of the border you were born on, if your status is legal or not. And neither do we. All are welcome here. And the reason that we believe that is because of Acts chapter 2.

Because God speaks in their heart language. It's the language they dream at night. This is no different than God sending Jesus, God and flesh, to all of humanity. Pentecost travels past the tower and toward the garden. In Acts Chapter two, God is doing something very new, and God is restoring something very old.

If you want proof of the power of this, then just read the end of chapter two. Look how the chapter ends. Everyone is not just looking to their own needs, but the interest of others. They're selling property, they're selling assets, and they're sharing what they have not worried about if they're going to have enough. And that is the glimpse of the garden relationships made.

Right.

I firmly believe with all of my heart, and I think that you have to get here, too. I think you really do have to get here, too, or you might be living very close to idolatry. I fully believe in all of my heart that God loves the world, that God loves humanity, that God sent Jesus not for me or my place or my time or my ethnicity or any of those things, my nation, but God sent Jesus for us all.

If that's true, if it's true that that's what the Spirit is doing at the inauguration of the church, I think that has to change some things about how we see ourselves and how we see one another. I don't think you can live in Pentecost and be the same. I think you have to be transformed. And I want to invite you into that transformation. I want to invite you into that.

I want to. I want to go with you into that place and see what happens when we see the world the way God sees.

Might just transform who you think your brother or your sister is. It might transform, as Dave said, that person that you see that doesn't have anything, it might just transform the world. And I'm really curious to see what happens when Highland fully embraces that idea. Would you please stand for our benediction?

May the Father of all nations, may the Lord of Heaven bless you this week, and may you be transformed. May you have the eyes to see every person in this world and the potential of their human nature. Go with God's spirit and go in peace.