The Extra
The Extra is a podcast hosted by Crosspoint Christian Church in Conyers, Georgia. Senior Minister, Curtis Zehner, and his friend, Ken Pierce, talk through each week's sermon unpacking the extra material that didn't make the cut for the weekend message. Curtis' and Ken's conversational and relaxed style lend itself to listeners of all ages and spiritual maturities.
The Extra
Easter pt. 4
What if the most important moment in Christianity isn't Easter but Pentecost? While we rightly celebrate Jesus' resurrection, there's a compelling case that the arrival of the Holy Spirit represents the true culmination of God's plan for humanity.
Check out more at www.CrosspointConyers.com
Welcome back to the Extra Podcast, curtis, ken and Curtis with us today. That's right, curt Zahner, let's go, gentlemen. Hi, welcome back, kurt Zahner.
Speaker 3:Ken is a Curtis sandwich today, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that's great for you.
Speaker 2:It's great.
Speaker 1:Ken, I will say you had your first ever in the wild. Like I'm next to a famous guy right now. Yes, you remember that. Shout out to Bob Shout out to Bob yesterday. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, we were standing there and Bob goes hey, are you that guy on the podcast with?
Speaker 2:Curtis yeah, I know that golden voice. Who's that?
Speaker 1:I don't know your face, but I know your voice. Yeah, I was like, oh, it's always nice to meet a fan I didn't know, and then you signed an autograph. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a whole thing. You gave him your shirt off your back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, whole big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He said wait, are you the two that do the podcast? And I said yes, I am one that does the podcast.
Speaker 1:This is your preacher that you hear.
Speaker 2:It's good times, man. You guys have been doing great, by the way.
Speaker 3:Thank you Every week and it's, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2:We feel like it gets better and looser each time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, it's, definitely, it's more fun every time. Yeah, in the beginning we couldn't catch our breath, you remember that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I was like. It was like giving a presentation in high school, oh gosh.
Speaker 3:Well, you guys have formed, I think, a really good rhythm with each other. I don't know if you've noticed that or not, because normally it doesn't happen, except for time.
Speaker 2:It takes care of it, but you guys have got a very good rhythm together. I think so.
Speaker 3:If you had told me that it would take a year to do that I'd be like I don't know about this, but it happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, organically, without, without having to figure it out, I guess, yeah, yeah, I would have thought it would have happened maybe a little bit quicker, like maybe right off the bat. Yeah, you just don't know what you don't know until you start doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or hear yourself Like there's there's stuff that I play on Sunday on the drums and I killed that. That was amazing, and then I'll hear it. I'm like that was flat, I didn't like that. Not going to do that again. So now you're famous for two things the voice on the podcast and the drummer and the cage that no one can see All over the place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, speaking of famous people.
Speaker 2:And golden voices.
Speaker 1:And golden voices, Mr Radio himself. Well, thanks guys.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate that. Hey, that was good. We had an interesting Palm Sunday this past weekend, yeah yeah, maybe not the most traditional Palm Sunday type of message, but personally I like that. I did too. It was a divergent from, maybe, the donkey and coming in Hosanna, hosanna. Although Marcos did that three weeks ago, he talked about the triumphant entry and the cleansing of the temple. So why don't you give us a quick snapshot of where you came from, a recap? And then, ken, you got some great questions. Let's jump in. How do you mean where I came from? Just like, what was the premise? Okay, good, good.
Speaker 3:I'm glad you asked it that way. When we talked about it a little over a month ago, we wanted to do the Holy Week and I knew Marcos was going to handle the triumphant entry and I had the outline of what you were going to do, and so I think it left it wide open for me to touch whatever I wanted. Well, it just so happens that in my head I really have been going backwards from the day of Pentecost, and I think I have for a very long time been doing that. But something has really just kind of opened up spiritually in me that gives it a new appreciation. And the day of Pentecost, of course, famous for so many reasons. But the church began, and the church began because the Holy Spirit was introduced into the picture on that day.
Speaker 3:So, working backwards, I started thinking okay, jesus is talking about that in the Last Supper, last Supper, and then they're reclining at the table or however you want to imagine he was speaking to them. He takes chapters 14 and 15 and transitioning to the Garden of Gethsemane, 16 and into 17 and the prayer he had for them, and he, over and over again, says I have to leave you. I have to leave you, but I'm leaving you with a helper, and so, as scared as they were they must have been they were getting a word of encouragement from Jesus. I have to leave you, but the Holy Spirit is coming. And then, when you put all the pieces together of what that really means, the depth of what the Holy Spirit coming means, it was just incredible. And so I saw an opportunity to say, okay, I'm going to make that part of Palm Sunday and I think it fit. I hope it fit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it definitely fit. It's part of a bigger theme, like you just said, that you've been working on for a long time, and we kind of started that discussion before we hit record today about, kind of, what has he been working on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, how about say a few words about why that period of time, that 50 days is so either, underrepresented, misunderstood? Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm not positive that it is Okay, but in my mind it is, or at least in my own spiritual formation it is that I've always saw, have seen Easter as the pinnacle of the Christian faith.
Speaker 2:Right For good reason, and that's what we've talked about. That a few weeks ago. What is the most important event in the Bible?
Speaker 3:Well, let me back up and say it this way. Then I used to teach and when I teach our introductory class, our membership class that we call starting point, I'll have an illustration. I'll pick up my Bible in front of the class and I'll say listen, I don't want to assume anything about my audience. And so I lift up the Bible and I open it up and I hold the entire Old Testament in my hands while the New Testament is kind of dangling to the side. I said, you see this, everything in here says Jesus is coming, jesus is coming, jesus is coming. That's what it means. I might break it down sometimes. You know the history books and the poetry books and the minor prophets, but basically Jesus is coming, that's what it says. And then boom, it happens.
Speaker 3:The 400 year silence, and then the gospels Matthew, Mark, luke and John, and then Luke's gospel gets part two and we get into the book of Acts, and so I explain it that way all the way up to. You know Jesus is coming back, and so the themes of all of this. And so I came to a thought recently that if Jesus was going to teach that, he might teach it this way He'd hold it up and say Jesus is coming, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming. Silence I'm born, I is coming, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming. Silence I'm born, I live, I do my ministry in those three years and then the Holy Spirit is coming. The Holy Spirit is coming, the Holy Spirit is coming.
Speaker 3:You know I think that's what he'd say, and I don't know that I've ever seen it that way before that Jesus was taking time out in these, in this final time, to speak with them, knowing that the cross was just hours away, to tell them the Holy Spirit's coming. All this is going to have to happen. My part is going to be there and I'm going to do it. I'm going to go all the way to the end. I'll be on the cross and I'll say it is finished and my part will have been finished. But there's still something to come.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting way to frame it that the Bible is split into two sections. There's the first announcement and then the second announcement right that Jesus is the one, he's the Messiah who's going to be here. And then Jesus says well, I'm here now, but guess who's coming after me? That's interesting. I don't think I've ever framed it that way either. It's two separate announcement sections.
Speaker 3:I wonder if and I worry about saying it this way because I don't want to go too far out on a limb, but I wonder if Jesus were here with us today, which of course he is, but speaking just in practical terms if he was here with us, that he might say listen, I appreciate that you're celebrating the resurrection.
Speaker 3:It's appropriate to do so, but celebrate the fact that I connected you back again with God, that I gave you myself in the form of the Holy Spirit to live with you, that, as I talked about Sunday, I believe from the first sin, when we were cast out of the garden, mankind was that God has been longing for that day of Pentecost when we would be reunited. Until that day we're not reunited, we are still absent. The fellowship, but on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came, it was reconciled the fellowship, the commitment to each other. Then I use the wrong word, but just that fellowship together again would happen. And I think that's what the creation was yearning for for God to be reconciled back to mankind again in that fellowship way.
Speaker 2:It seems like it's another one of those. You're not thinking about it in the right way. Like you're celebrating the sacrifice, we're celebrating the sacrifice and the resurrection of Jesus, but it's actually this impending presence of the Holy Spirit that should be celebrated.
Speaker 3:I think so. Okay, I really do. I think if I had to go back on 20 or so years of preaching and teaching and helping others, I think I would stress this more. Okay, now that I've come to know it.
Speaker 2:That's something interesting to think about If you had to do over again your preaching career yeah, what would you?
Speaker 3:stress more, it would be the holy spirit I think it would be the reconciliation of man to god. Again. That's what happened in pentecost. I mean the forgiveness of sins.
Speaker 3:It couldn't have happened without the resurrection what an unbelievable thing to have happen, that jesus stepped into, out of eternity, eternity or onto earth and then did all he did and suffered the way he did. He had to do it and he did it, and it is finished, but there was still more to come. There was still more to come, and so we celebrate resurrection for good reason and good purpose. It's a great thing, yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's biblical basis for celebrating these things. You know, our culture is a little bit different. We don't. Our calendar isn't based on celebrations, religious celebrations, the way that the Jewish calendar was, and so things like the resurrection actually lined up I mean the crucifixion and resurrection lined up with the Passover right.
Speaker 1:And so that would be a time of the year where the Christians would remember this is Passover time, but we're not celebrating the Passover anymore. As followers of Jesus, we're celebrating the resurrection. He is the lamb who was slain, not the Egyptian lamb who was slain. I talked about that in the sermon on covenant versus contract a couple weeks ago. And then there's how many days later it was the Feast of is it Tabernacles?
Speaker 1:that comes next the Feast of Harvest in the fall. Yeah, that's the day the Feast of is it Tabernacles that comes next Feast of Harvest in the fall. Yeah, that's the day of Pentecost that all the people were in Jerusalem again, and so there was a large amount of people from out of town who would be able to hear the message that Peter preached and that's when he sent the Holy Spirit. And so another marker on the calendar for all these newly converted. I mean, they're still Israelites, they're still Jewish people, but they're followers of Jesus. Now to remember their calendar by. We don't live by those dates on the calendar. We live by Christmas, which the Bible doesn't give really any instruction to remember, and Easter, which the Bible does give instruction to remember, at least on a weekly basis. Remember his death on the cross, and you can't remember the death without his resurrection. But we don't have a day to commemorate what you're talking about, the coming, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us, which is the day of Pentecost.
Speaker 3:Well, we do. There are some churches who probably celebrate that as much as they do Easter.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, from a perspective of cross point, celebrate that as much as they do Easter Okay?
Speaker 3:Well, from a perspective of cross point, yes, most mainline.
Speaker 3:Protestant churches don't recognize Pentecost for what it is. They know it's on the calendar and that's what scares me. I mean, I have other theological things that I go off on that scare me because I don't hear other theologians speaking of these things, but I think that we neglect the day of Pentecost. Obviously, there's no mistake. It wasn't by accident that Jesus went to the cross at Passover and that the day of Pentecost is when the Holy Spirit came. I mean, there's no doubt about it. The day of Pentecost celebrates Moses coming down from Sinai with the law and so, all of a sudden, with the introduction of the Holy Spirit in us, the law is taken care of, and that's the chapter in Ezekiel that you referenced this past weekend.
Speaker 1:Ezekiel prophesies the Lord says I'll put a new law written on your hearts. Nehemiah says the same thing, Jeremiah, excuse me.
Speaker 1:Jeremiah prophesies the same thing, speaks on behalf of the Lord, that he's going to write the law on our hearts. It won't be on stone anymore, just like the stone that Moses brought down from Sinai. Now he's turned what used to be hard as rock our hearts into the malleable law written, whatever you want to call it. So yeah, there's no coincidence that those things line up on the calendar. Why don't we focus more on it? What do you think is the reason for that?
Speaker 3:I don't know. I don't know. I don't have a good answer for that. I know that, like I just said, if I had the opportunity to do it again, I think I would focus more on it.
Speaker 3:I think I've preached on Pentecost before and tried to bring up the highlights of it, but it was before I became passionate about what Jesus was trying to say, when I went back and extrapolated all the comforters coming, the counselors coming, the advocate is coming. All those times he said it to them over and over and over again. He wanted them to put their eyes 50 days forward. He wanted them to know that this cataclysmic event, the thing that's going to change everything, is still about to happen. Okay, and so he goes to the cross and he dies, he's buried, he's raised again, he sits with them, even acts I brought it up in sunday, acts 1, 4. He told them don't leave jerusalem until you get the gift my father promised, the one you heard me speak about. He says do you remember all those things I just said? I mean, we sat and we talked about it. I said the Spirit's coming, spirit's coming, spirit's coming. Don't leave Jerusalem until it happens. That's the gift. If they'd have left before the Spirit got there, where would we be when?
Speaker 1:would we be?
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't know what God would have done. I mean, god could have made it happen any way he wanted to, right, but the instruction from Jesus was the Spirit is coming. The Spirit is coming. The Spirit is coming, over and over again. And then our core verse but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. They didn't have any power, and if they didn't wait for it, they never would have had any power, and everything that Jesus did would have been virtually for nothing, because the day was coming Right. And so that's what fires me up about it.
Speaker 2:Is it too cynical to say that it doesn't get attention because it hasn't been commercialized like Easter?
Speaker 1:and Christmas. It's not cynical. I think that's a reality. We live in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, those things have definitely been over commercialized.
Speaker 1:In fact, we were talking recently about some of the you know where our Easter celebration maybe has its roots like the idea of the eggs and the bunnies, and you know I don't want to get into all that, but that's not necessarily a Christian idea. Right, it's just what our culture and a more broader culture not just Americans but across the world has adopted, that this is the time of year we do Easter, and the bunny comes and leaves stuff and we do the baskets in our house and it's great.
Speaker 2:Well, have you ever seen that movie big with Tom Hanks?
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:You know where. Um his boss at the toy company says you can't see this on a marketing report. And he's like what's a marketing report? It's the same thing. Like you can't, you can't see Pentecost on a marketing report but you can see Christmas and.
Speaker 3:Easter. Easter is tangible. You know, we've got a risen savior. I mean, you can see him, you can even imagine him. But imagining the Holy Spirit is a very difficult thing to do, or is?
Speaker 2:it, yeah. So the birth Christmas tangible, yeah, Easter tangible. I wonder if it's because, like you said, it's intangible and it's a little darker than Easter and Christmas.
Speaker 1:How so.
Speaker 2:It's as far as like it has to do with. The spiritual realm it has to do with the spiritual realm. It has to do with death not resurrection. It has to do with something that you can't understand right away.
Speaker 3:Okay, Maybe something like that Well, back it up then to Jesus in the garden with Nicodemus, and saying that you have to be born again, born of the water and the Spirit. And so he was prophesying the day Peter stood up and said repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. So water and the Spirit were connected, even by Jesus in John, chapter 3 and the story with Nicodemus. And so he was speaking of the Spirit all the way through, from the very beginning of his ministry to the very end of it, to his last moments on earth and even his last moments in his resurrection body and being with his disciples.
Speaker 2:He's speaking of the Spirit coming the Spirit, coming the Spirit coming, yeah, and it seems like, no matter how much—you do a great job at explaining it Okay, curtis does a great job at explaining it and the Trinity and how they fit together, but, like you said, the spiritual realm is just a little too. It takes a little too much to grasp it, rather than this is Jesus and this is his father, and then there's something that goes in between.
Speaker 1:I want to ask a question to go deeper on that. Why is and I'm addressing it to you because you're breaking it up why is the spiritual realm harder to grasp than things like the resurrection or Christmas?
Speaker 2:Something purely physical to me is always easier to grasp. You have a lot of people that say that they're believers in God, believers in Christ and Jesus and the teachings of Christianity, and then they stop just short of believing in the spiritual realm. I think that happens because it's very difficult, because you have to commit to it and in some ways you have to commit your thoughts to it, and I think a lot of people have trouble with that because they can't put it in between their two hands and go yeah, this is what it is.
Speaker 1:That might be why the resurrection isn't as accepted as the crucifixion part of Easter. Yeah, I mean, because it requires an acceptance and a belief of faith. Like that's just the word. It requires faith that something beyond what we can see happened in that tomb. Yeah, and you know, there's lots of physical proof and historical proof that Jesus was crucified on the cross by a person named Pontius Pilate, who was the Roman governor in that place.
Speaker 2:I listened to the case for Christ.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's all really like okay.
Speaker 1:So there's lots of physical and historical evidence, and that's wonderful, it's great to have the tangible things, but God is always going to stop just short enough to require people to have faith yeah. If you don't have faith, then I'm not sure the relationship's worth having. Right or the relationship's not possible to have unless you can have faith in the thing that you can't see.
Speaker 2:A nonbeliever would ask why doesn't he just reveal himself to me right now? If he is real, well, he stops short because faith is required. Like I've said before on here, christianity is extremely coherent. It is perfectly coherent, and that coherence breaks down if faith is not part of the equation. So how do we do that? Well, we maintain the need for it. There you go. It has to be set up so that faith is required. And if, like you said, the relationship would not be really worth having if there was just all this general and special revelation going around, like, okay, you can either see it or not see it, but belief is different and faith is different and it's good that it's needed.
Speaker 1:It's accessing that part. If we want to continue the unseen part of spirituality, that faith is almost like that unseen part of who you are. It's the part of you that, just that, that can believe in what's unseen. Yeah, where does that come from? From within us? Is that, uh, is it a conscious decision? Is it a spiritual decision? It's probably all of the above. Yeah, and forgive me if I'm going too far off track here.
Speaker 2:No, I've heard that there's belief in higher powers pretty much around the world throughout history and whatever form it takes is up to the culture within, where it takes place or where it just is created, I guess. Where it just is created, I guess, but there has to be an explanation outside. The fact, like the fact of reality, is a set thing and then you have to have an explanation for it that takes place outside that Right An intelligent designer beyond what has been designed.
Speaker 1:Is that what you're getting at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this table didn't yeah, yeah, nothing can. This table didn't design itself Right, and you can trace that all the way back to the very beginning.
Speaker 1:I have a. It might even be in here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that thing. Right there you see that stack of turtles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that little figurine over on the shelf, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so. It's a reference to the phrase turtles all the way down you ever heard of that?
Speaker 1:okay, so what? We're looking at is it's literally, it's a little wooden figurine.
Speaker 2:It's got three turtles stacked on top of each other, a big one, medium one, than a small one. So turtles all the way down. Is this this guy? It's called a trilemma. So the not a dilemma, it's even worse than a dilemma, it's a trilemma. Oh gosh, that's how I remember it. So this guy asked an old lady who created the world, or what's holding the world up? Oh, the world floats on the back of a turtle. Okay, well, what's holding that turtle up? And he's like Turtles all the way down. Stop asking, it's turtles all the way down. That's it. Okay, well, all the way down. Where, right, where's the bottom of down? You know, you just have to say there is a physical reality that may be shaped like a ball or a disc, and then it's outside. Yeah, so turtles all the way down is a reference to an infinite past that you can't, that you can't explain unless you go outside.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:That's funny, so I had a picture in my office.
Speaker 3:for years I had a, an illustration that I used, and it was a picture of a turtle on top of a fence. Post. Okay, and the question was how did it get there?
Speaker 2:You know, we all know that somebody put that turtle there, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And so some little girl drew a picture of a fence post with a turtle on it and gave it to me and I had it in my office for years.
Speaker 2:It might be something you know that's saying the same thing. It is. Yeah, that's funny, it is.
Speaker 1:I need a turtle.
Speaker 2:I guess the question is why turtles?
Speaker 1:Why turtles?
Speaker 2:But I think it's a great way to get that point across.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a very good illustration.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're talking about the spiritual realm. We're all in agreement that there is something beyond the physical that we can see. Yes, Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the realm where God exists. But the crazy part about God's existence try and bring this full circle here is that he has allowed for his realm to come and dwell within us. I mean it's from the beginning, like you said in Genesis, from before the fall, God and humanity existed, coexisted in a similar place. It was almost like a place where heaven overlapped with earth and earth kind of was injected in heaven. I don't know, it's just God was there with the people at certain times of day and he could come and go as he pleased.
Speaker 1:Now, because of sin, after that, all in between, when they're saying Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming. God is separate from all the people. He can dwell within the temple because it's a holy place and he can. God's presence can still be in the earth in some way in the temple, but not with the people. They're still separated from God. There's a physical barrier between them. But now that Jesus has ripped the curtain, literally in the Holy of Holies because of his death and allowed for his blood to be the cleansing covenant blood, his sacrifice, cleanses us from all sin, meaning we can now be in the presence of God. Now I haven't moved where I'm at I'm still on the earth. That means being in the presence of God. Is that God has come to be where I am, literally with me, inside of me?
Speaker 3:That's the Holy Spirit? Yeah, it is. It's amazing, I have to think, that from the moment of the first sin and separating themselves in fellowship, that God had to be groaning for that day that we would be reconciled. And he had the plan already. He knew what it was going to be. And it took all those thousands of years, millennia, and finally it came. But it came on the day of Pentecost. It didn't necessarily come on Easter Resurrection Sunday. It came on the day of Pentecost when that separation finally became new again, or the separation was canceled, and I just think he had to be so anxious to get.
Speaker 2:Of course, I'm portraying my feelings and emotions on God, which is not a good thing, but I have to think it's a natural thing I just wish you know I can see Jesus just saying let's get to that day.
Speaker 3:Let's get to that day, let's get to that day, and so I explain that to people when we take the starting point class.
Speaker 3:It's been named a number of things Class 101, believe Class and the introduction to who we are and, I really think, just explaining it in full, the fact that we were separated, which I always include in full, the fact that we were separated, which I always include, the fact that somebody had to go to God on our behalf in the form of a priest and we couldn't get close to him, the fact that you know, jesus had to come and do all that he did and go to the cross and then finally, the day came and when people see it, they hear it and they get it, and I think of the fact that I don't know, we're closing in, hopefully, on maybe 600 baptisms in the last 20-something years.
Speaker 3:The vast majority of them came after like two Sundays ago, when I had three people in the class. All three of them were fairly new to learning anything about Christianity. All three of them not only wanted to join the church but they wanted to be baptized into Christ and it was because of the story and the reconciliation and all that it was attached to and the history of it and knowing it, and it was a spiritual kind of moment for them and it just excites me to be able to share that with people and I think, like I say, the vast majority of the people I know who've been baptized over the years have done so because they heard that story.
Speaker 1:So let's take the canoe a little bit further down the river here. Okay, Okay, we're talking about. The Holy Spirit lives inside of us and it's this moment, this is what Jesus was telling us was going to happen, Now, tangibly. What does that mean for us? How does the Spirit actually do anything for us? What's the advantage of having God dwell within us? So, just to set it up, the Bible would portray the Holy Spirit as just this. This is going to sound very mystical again, and I don't mean it to but an energizing force, you know, not like Star Wars the force but, he's just this.
Speaker 1:it's like the wind you don't know where it comes from or where it's going. You can't see it, but you can harness it, you can use it to your advantage. It's just this energy that God gives us. It's his life inside of us. And so what does that mean? What does it mean to have the ruach that's the Hebrew word for the spirit that God describes. What does it mean to have his energizing presence within you? No-transcript.
Speaker 3:Gosh, how much time do we have?
Speaker 1:Over the curd.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's throw it over. Yeah, I did talk about.
Speaker 3:I highlighted four of them. There's others, but I highlighted four of them in the message on Sunday that, yes, we receive a kind of power, we receive guidance. That's what Jesus talked about that he would guide us in all things, give us the things to say when we were confused about what to say. Luke was saying that there'll be a time when the Spirit will lead you in what to say. But I think, most important, that I left, one of the points I made on Sunday was it is the seal. We've been sealed in Him, that when the day of judgment comes, we'll be recognized by the seal that we have the Holy Spirit. Now I don't understand that. I don't pretend to understand it. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know how God's going to see it on one person and not on another. I have no idea, but the Bible says that it's the guarantee, it's the seal, and so I think that's the most important part of it.
Speaker 3:I know a lot of people who were baptized and I believe, for all the right reasons, and they have the Holy Spirit. But it still is up to us to exercise the Holy Spirit, to pursue the Holy Spirit, the gifts that come with that and being able to live in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Those are things we have to practice. I don't always practice them. I think anybody who tells you they're, you know completely in tune with the Holy Spirit and they know exactly what he's saying all the time. I don't know, I always raise one eyebrow when I hear that. But you know, I think it's up to us to pursue that, and if we're not pursuing it, then I think we make a mistake. We don't tap into some of the power that God has otherwise given us. Yeah, the pursuit is important the pursuit is all important.
Speaker 2:Your comparison to the wind is interesting because so wind goes from high pressure to low pressure and it's sort of like you can think about wind going where it's needed and the Holy Spirit sort of can go where it's needed. That picture just literally popped into my head when you said wind. I was like wind goes somewhere for a reason and the Holy Spirit can be called upon and it can go where it's needed. I like thinking about it like that.
Speaker 1:He follows the direction of what the Father tells him to do, just like Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're all.
Speaker 1:It's one person now and they're not separate entities. They're one person that exists in three different forms. Yeah, okay, and the Son doesn't do anything that the Father hasn't told him or instructed him to do? Jesus said that plenty of times, yeah, especially in the book of John. And the Holy Spirit then is sent by the Father. Jesus says the Father's going to send, or actually he says I'll send to you. Is that what he says? I'll send you the helper. So Jesus says I'm sending you the help, okay, so the idea of the wind is that it does, it goes where we can't know where it's coming from or where it's going to end up. However, the father knows exactly where it comes from and where it's going to end up, and so it's our job, then to be ready to, if you want to. We do this often in the podcast.
Speaker 1:It's time. I need to like make a soundbite for this portion. It's time for let's kill the metaphor. Let's kill the metaphor. We're in a boat, we're in a sailboat. You got to be ready. People who are on the sail, sailors, have to be ready when the wind picks up. Because we don't have a motor on this thing. We can't make the boat go on our own. We are dependent on the energizing power of the Lord, and when that wind blows through man, it's all hands on deck and we got to raise the sails and get it going. And so we as a people, as a church, have to be ready for when that wind blows through our congregation of people, our metaphorical boat.
Speaker 2:The story you told about the kid that wanted to be the lion tamer and he's like.
Speaker 3:Well, of course my mom will be with me. That's a great picture.
Speaker 2:It makes total sense. Well, it sounds foolish to say I'm going to do this, but I have the Holy Spirit, so it doesn't sound foolish to me. A kid being a line tamer is a tall order, but my mom will be there, so you guys don't worry about me, my mom is going to be there.
Speaker 3:It's fine, I think it's part of having the faith of a child.
Speaker 2:Jesus spoke about it often.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and part of that I used to use an illustration that was another little boy trying to mow the grass. And he's sitting there pushing his great big mower by raising his hands above and having his father's in the back and guiding everything, but he's mowing the grass the kid.
Speaker 3:And so I think that's the way we are. I think that's a picture of the spirit as well. We don't usually think of the spirit as being larger than we are, but the truth is, while he lives in here, he's larger than we are at the same time, and so an odd kind of juxtaposition there.
Speaker 1:I was. I'll share one more story, since we're on this, talking about kids doing fun things. Okay so when we drive to go see Emily's parents in in Birmingham it's a three hour drive and when we get to their neighborhood there's a Lake at the bottom of the Hill. So we pull in the neighborhood and we let the girls unbuckle from their seats and Jovi usually comes, sits on my lap and she gets to, you know, drive the car.
Speaker 1:Air quotes the one block to uh uh Mamie and Papa's house and she really thinks she's driving until the moment when she realizes she's about to crash into a mailbox, I let her go and her attention gets pointed off in some far off direction and she's proud of herself and it's like Jovi.
Speaker 1:Jovi. Jovi and I grabbed the wheel and yank us back. We make it a big deal right, but I've never left control of the car and I think that's the Holy Spirit for us. In some ways, the Holy Spirit, he helps, guide us toward the Father. He is our counselor, you said it already. He is our guide in this life. But also we have to practice these things to stay in tune with him and we're going to get better at mowing the lawn and fighting the lion and driving the car as we go. But it's because of our dependence on the Holy Spirit and he takes away the presence of that spirit. And last thing that I was reminded of is he takes away a spirit of fear that I think dominates so often in us.
Speaker 1:I think that what the devil wants is for Christians to have a spirit of passivity and to just kind of let things go. It's not a big deal that we watch this, it's not a big deal that we use certain language, my kids can dress a certain way or have unrestricted access to whatever screens. Spirit of being passive, I think, is us neglecting the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us and we have to step up and be strong against these things, right, and have a courageous attitude. And that is scary. That's scary to be the parent who comes home and says I think we need to lock down the iPads, right, and it'd be easier to not have those hard conversations with our spouse. It'd be easier to go to work and not worry about whatever initiatives have been popping up that don't match up with our faith. But we're just trying to make our paycheck and get home. It would be easier to just do that stuff.
Speaker 1:But we have the spirit of God living inside of us and Peter says 1. Peter says is it 1? Peter? Excuse me that Satan is like a lion who is on the prowl. Right, he's like a lion, he's not the lion. We serve the true lion, the true lion of Judah, that's Jesus and his Holy Spirit who is living inside of us. And so he removes. Remembering that you have that comforter and that counselor, that energizing spirit within you removes the fear that might exist and the motivation to remain passive about things that are happening around us. So maybe that's where we should maybe call it a day on this.
Speaker 1:But any other last.
Speaker 3:Well, I just go back to the fact that I think Jesus would tell us today pay more attention to the Spirit. I left him with you. I mean there are three in one regardless, and so when we speak of one we speak of all three. But I think he would remind us pay attention to the Spirit Moving forward. And it's my newest passion as far as study theological, going deeper in my theological studies is to pay more attention to the Spirit going forward. I think we neglect it. We neglect it in our Christian churches, at least I think I have, to the extent that Jesus would want us to celebrate the Holy Spirit and emphasize and concentrate on the Holy Spirit. I think I would do it differently if I had another chance.
Speaker 1:Well, it was a great conversation today. We have to end it somewhere, and so we're just going to end it there.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's good.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks for joining us today. It was a great time. Great sermon on Sunday. If you didn't get to listen to it, go back and you can find it on our YouTube channel or through the website crosspointconyerscom. It's Easter week. Sign up for the Easter experience and be here for Good Friday as well as Easter Sunday, where we anticipate no empty seat. We're going to pack the place out. It's going to be great. Happy Easter everybody. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:See ya.