"Can you believe it?" | Ashley Higgins preaching | 05.24.26

"Can you believe it?" | Ashley Higgins preaching | 05.24.26

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Our second reading this morning comes from the book of Numbers, chapter eleven, verses twenty-four through thirty. Hear the word of God. So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered seventy of the elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him, and put it on the seventy elders, and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again. Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them. They were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. And Joshua, son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, My Lord, Moses, stop them. But Moses said to him, Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them. And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp. The word of the Lord. Jesus has ascended into heaven after telling the apostles to wait where they are until they have been, quote, clothed with power from on high, that is the sending of the Holy Spirit. We follow in the footsteps of that tradition. We are ancestors of a long line of faithful followers who have sought faithfully to embody God's spirit. Can you believe it? What a gift. Maybe. Today's particular passage takes us back before Pentecost, way before, to a different time that God's spirit rested on the people. Here Moses has taken 70 elders out of the camp of the Israelites. The Lord puts some of the spirit that was on Moses on the elders, and they prophesy once. Meanwhile, two men back in the camp begin prophesying too, to which a very concerned member of the community responds by running outside the camp to let Moses know. And then even more concerned Joshua says to Moses, Stop then. To which Moses replies, Good grief, if only more of you would be God's prophets. And then they return to camp. What a peculiar story. That I think if we are honest, we relate to more than we realize. There are a few things going on in this passage. Number one, outside of the camp, the Holy Spirit, apparently that of which was taken from Moses and sprinkled around, rests upon the seventy elders and they prophesy. But as verse 25 says, they did not do so again. Why is that little nugget here? It's as if the priestly writers are concerned. Maybe that Moses was losing his monopoly on the Holy Spirit. Perhaps they didn't like the idea of elders taking too much of it. We don't know. Second, inside the camp are two men, Eldad and Me Dad, who apparently also began prophesying, which is a fancy way of saying, naming what is true about God and God's people in the community in which they are a part. Prophesying is speaking truth. And they weren't even with the others. And Joshua cannot handle it. It's as if Joshua does not want anyone getting any ideas, like, okay, God, you can't let this get too out of hand, right? We can't have outsiders walking around speaking for God. And then you have Moses, who, when this all goes down, replies to the concerns of seemingly multiple people with a bit of a rebuke. If only more of you would help carry the weight around here. Interestingly, the only ones we don't hear from in this story are those upon whom the Holy Spirit rested. And I wonder why. Would it have been so compelling that we would want to hear more? Which the priestly writers or Joshua may not have liked. We don't know. And what we don't read in this passage is what happens elsewhere in chapter 11. We begin midway through, but chapter 11 begins with the people of God complaining as they are prone to do. God's anger is kindled and God burns parts of the camp. The people then cry out to Moses, who then goes to God and basically says, If this is how it's going to be, quote, put me to death at once. But then this really lovely thing happens. God says to Moses, Take 70 of the elders whom you trust, meet me in the tent of beating, and I'll take some of the spirit on you and put it on them so that you don't have to bear the burden of leading these people all by yourself. It's beautiful. God is not afraid of spreading the spirit among other people. Why were the people afraid? And are we? Are we afraid of God spreading God's spirit among people like us? Among people not at all like you and me? What is it about the Holy Spirit that makes us a little squirmy? We don't own it. We cannot contain it. We cannot prove it. What do we do with that? So every year we celebrate Pentecost, but we need to ask ourselves: do we really believe it? That God's spirit has been set loose in this world? Are we actually celebrating it or does it make us nervous? Nervous because that would mean that God's spirit is well on the loose. And we don't want to trust God's spirit in the wrong hands, as if we control it. Nervous because is there really enough to go around? Or does more out there mean less here? Or does the idea that we aren't even quite sure what the spirit of God looks like cause us when we feel like we have experienced it to hold so tightly to it that we can't share it with anyone? There's this stuff that my girls made one time called oblek. Have you ever heard of this stuff? Have any of the kids in here ever heard of that? I bet you have. Unless you cup it in your hand and squeeze it, and then it acts like a solid. You can hold on to it, but only if you're squeezing it really hard. So as long as you hold it tightly, you can hold it. But if you really want to see what it's like, you have to open your hand, and then it runs right through. The Holy Spirit does not belong to any of us, and it is not scarce. And God doesn't ask anyone to try to wrangle it so tightly that they can't even see what it's like, that others can't see what it's like. In numbers, we don't know what it looked like for those 70 elders, plus El Dad and me dad, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. But Acts 2, that Guy read earlier, paints such a detailed picture of people filled with the Holy Spirit, and it is not hypothetical, it is not abstract. From Acts 2, when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them are filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. And the people say, How is it that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phresia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. Here, perhaps more than anywhere in Scripture, we hear that the good news of the gospel is for every nation and tribe, and that God's spirit is on offer to everyone. Everyone. Everyone. We do not own God. This is Pentecost. Peter then preaches the whole gospel to the crowd, to which the people respond, What should we do? And Peter says to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promises for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls. Repentance for many of these folks, for many of us, looks a bit like a reckoning. A permanent moratorium on life as we know it, a call to a complete 180. When we say yes to God's yes to us, God's spirit will not leave us unchanged. This is Pentecost. And what does that look like? We pick back up at the end. So those who welcomed his message were baptized. And that day about 3,000 persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common. They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the good will of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. It's perhaps hard for us to understand the magnitude of the Holy Spirit because we live in such an individualistic society, which is not the norm around the world. You see, the Holy Spirit changes entire communities. It changes how we see one another. Perhaps it opens our eyes to others in the first place. It changes how we care for one another. It changes how we understand our obligation to those who have need. It changes our understanding of how we have need. And that change is tangible. It's in the everyday, it's in the nitty-gritty. It touches everything that we are right here and right now. In her book, Inspired, Rachel Held Evans writes, Jesus didn't just come to die. Jesus came to live. To announce the start of a brand new kingdom, to show us what that kingdom is like, to show us what God is like. Jesus did not just come to die. Jesus came to live. So shouldn't that change the way we live? Not just make us feel good about what will happen when we die? So the question remains, can you believe it that we are living in a Pentecost world where God's spirit has come down and blow us where it wishes without abandon? If so, how has it changed you in the everyday, in the nitty-gritty of life? How has the spirit of God changed you? And how has it changed us? How has it changed this community? How is it inviting us to be in this world? And do not think that the spirit moves only in mighty ways, you know, Saul to Paul kind of ways. There was a mom of a toddler pregnant with her second child in Bible study last fall, who said, I'm just trying to hold on, and it is so hard. I know that what I can do right now is choose wisely the books I'm reading to my babies. Books that represent who God is in us, books that represent people that don't look just like me, books that name how we are called to love others. That's what I can do right now. Pentecost. A woman two weeks ago said, All of this talk sounds so big, but it makes me think that what I can do is when I'm at the ball field and the parent next to me says something untrue about another person, about their own child, I think I can speak up and challenge those words. Pentecost. What does the Holy Spirit look like in your life in this season? What might the Holy Spirit want to look like in your and our lives this season? Is it hard conversations about technology, social media, AI in your home, and the willingness to change some habits of your family? Is it sitting in prayer for five minutes a day before you do anything else when you wake up? Is it taking a hard look at the ways we have allowed politics to shape our faith rather than faith shaping our politics? The ways, if we are honest, people would describe us by political party before describing us as followers of Jesus. Serving someone lunch, handing a $5 bill out your window without assuming judgment, that you know the situation of the hand on the other end? Are you living in a season so grateful for the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, the life of your family, that you need to tell someone about it? Someone who needs to hear you bear witness to what God is up to in your life, in this world, and for you to share with no reservation. If the Spirit of God is on the loose, what does that mean? Can you believe it? If yes, what does that look like this week? Next week, the week after? May we be brave enough to pray like the psalmist, Lord, renew a right spirit and me, and us, this community, this city, this country, this world. And would we say yes to embodying it and to naming it wherever we see it at work? God's spirit changes everything, and it is on the loose. Can you believe it?