Pentecost. The Coming Down Of The Holy Spirit.

   As the time of compassion drew near when God wanted to fulfill his promise and have mercy on the lost human race, he sent his Word, who was in and with God in the beginning. By means of his messenger Gabriel, he sent Word to a virgin whom he had previously chosen. As soon as she believed, she was sealed with the Holy Spirit. Then she was told, “Power from on high will overshadow you, and the Holy Spirit will come down from above into you. Therefore, the Holy One who is to be born of you shall be called the Son of God. (Excerpt from Peter Riedemann’s Hutterite Confession of Faith)

 We can imagine how blessed Mary felt to have born Jesus, the Son of the Living God! How amazing that must have been to carry the maker of the universe inside her!

 But 33 years later mankind brutally beat, and ridiculed her beloved son Jesus, murdering him with the most agonizing and cruel death they could devise by nailing Him to a cross and mocking him till he breathed his last. But Jesus defeated death, leaving his mankind in the carved out, rocky tomb, and arising victorious. Before he left earth for his heavenly home he made a promise: He promised to send  down his Holy Spirit from above into us, to dwell in us. If we but receive his gift we can have the Spirit of God living inside us, guiding us and providing comfort and wisdom. Unbelievable passion to want to be part of the very creatures he created! 

 But unlike the Virgin Mary, whom after a short while bore the fruit of the Holy Spirit in a stable in Bethlehem with the baby Jesus, we get to house the presence of the Holy Spirit in the temple of our bodies. Imagine, our earthly body a living temple to the Creator God! We are never more alone or afraid, for in us radiates the power, love, and comfort of a mighty God who spoke the whole universe into existence with merely a word! Who loves us so thoroughly and personally that he sent his Son down to us, to inhabit human form and live according to our human conditions, knowing full well that he would be rejected and killed, but knowing also that it was the only way to reconcile man to God.

 So how grand we build that temple, or not, to his Holy Presence is up to us. The natural outworkings of our human condition are fleshly and manifest themselves as described in Galatians Chapter 5: Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. 

 I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.