So I’m sitting alone in the bar section of a local restaurant having lunch and enjoying watching my beloved White Sox pound the Tigers on the flat screen TV. I am also studying the Background Notes for the upcoming Sermon Series, using my yellow highlighter to remember certain points. My solitude is broken when a guy comes in and begins playing a video poker game near where I’m sitting. A few minutes later, his friend joins him and they begin to play and drink and talk and compete.

My text of study was Acts 2 – the Day of Pentecost Holy Spirit-infilling story, where the disciples are so filled with the Holy Spirit they spill out into the holiday-jammed streets of Jerusalem where people are in town from all over the known world and these guys from one little region of one country with one dialect began preaching the gospel in languages they had neither learned nor understood – and those people from all those different places heard the truth of the Gospel in their own language – wow.

But, as the notes told me, it wasn’t just their own language – it was in their own dialects – street language – daily conversation words. THIS was the miracle! Not just their own language – but deeply spiritual truth which was normally reserved in their world to high and lofty language they really couldn’t grasp was suddenly being spoken in real words they actually used and could fully comprehend! Wow! Double Wow!

About this time the guys tired of the poker game and moved to the video golf game, even closer to me. They were into it now, having had a few beers, and got real animated. They were acting out their swings, and talking their putts into the hole on the screen, and when their drive missed the fairway or putt rolled by the cup they would curse repeatedly. They kept bumping into my table and backing into my chair and one guy even said “sorry to interrupt your homework!” – and I realized it was probably time to depart and return to my insulated, sanctified office in the holy environs of the church.

I got into my car, and drove away – when it hit me. God had just given me an incredible object lesson!

He empowers His people through the infilling of His Holy Spirit to speak the Gospel in the language of the people – the going-to-work and going-to-school and hanging-out and having-fun and going-to-ball-games street talk- so that those who are “near” and those who are “far away” from Him (Ephesians 2:13) can hear and understand high and holy truth in low and simple terms. And just maybe, believe, and just maybe, be saved, and just maybe, be transformed. Wow. Triple Wow.

Imagine that. A God who desires to so fill His people with His Holy Spirit that they take His truth and be it, live it, and share it – in a vulgar and sinful society.

The Holy. In the midst of the Profane. What a concept!