Pentecost Sunday: Behold

In this Pentecost message, we’re invited back to the heart of worship: beholding Jesus. Exploring the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gentleness and power of God, and the call to become a people marked by love, patience, kindness, and self-control, this message challenges us to reorient our lives around the beauty of Christ.

From Sinai to Pentecost, from spiritual gifts to everyday prayer, this is a call to receive the Spirit again and become the kind of church that reflects Jesus to the world.

Transcript

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Killed everybody. How are ya? Well, dropping things. It's so lovely to be back hanging out with you guys. It's such a pleasure to be invited to come and participate in what God's doing here. That felt really sweet, hey, that worship thing. Did anyone else feel God really meaningfully there? Anyone? Yeah. It was like really gentle. And it's funny for me. I was like, maybe it's just me because I used to sing. I sang for most of my life. And in 2020 I started getting this thing called muscle tension dysphonia. I don't know if anyone knows what that is, but basically means that it's quite hard to talk and I lost my singing voice. So I haven't sung in really in like five years, six years. Which is very hard for me because it is singing is like my it's sort of who I am, really. Um and I haven't sung that song since I lost my voice. So for me, it was when the music fades and all is swept away. I just started to weep because I realized how um how how practically necessary Jesus has become in my life in that part of who I am. I don't know if you've ever, you know, I suspect that if you've lived longer than a minute, you may have something that is your song that has been, you know, when all is swept away, that becomes quite hard to say I you're worth more than that, Jesus. Um I've had many music is one of the biggest in my life, but I wonder if that's maybe why it's so sweet in those moments. Um, but I was also thinking because it's Pentecost Sunday, um the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and here's one for y'all self-control. Millennials love those words, as do Gen Z, I know. Um when the Holy Spirit moves, most true to who God is, He is gentle and kind and peaceful and restful. If I had one grand out the gate prophetic word for the church in this season, it would be that's the Pentecost we're awaiting right now. And I am completely convinced it is true, I am actually a closet Pentecostal, 100%. Like I have been speaking in tongues most of the day, today. I don't know why, I just felt like it. Um, one might say I was inspired. Um, this week I I pray for the power of God regularly to fill my speech and to fill my action. I don't believe it is possible to live a minute of a Christian life without the power of the Holy Spirit. Just true story. I don't know if you've tried. Just try not sinning for a day and see how you go. Just start there, let alone praying for someone who is in real need and desiring to offer them more than some quip, you know, which is easy to do. Like God loves you, it's okay. But to really see God moving in that person. Um, however, I am also convinced that the sort of um cultural views of power, we'll put it that way, that have uh sort of been ingrained in much of my experience at Pentecostalism, are ready for a transformation in the gentleness and the peace and the belovedness of God. And I'm probably classically what more what you would call in the tradition of Christian mysticism, which is not weird and freaky. Um, I regret saying that word already. It's it's more like if you think of Christian mysticism as a extremely high value on the virtues. So, virtues being humility, love, patience, gentleness, kindness, high, high, high. Like 100% we are running for becoming the most patient, kind, gentle people in the world, and a really high value on the personal experience of Jesus for every individual believer. So, my if I had like a Pentecost word, it would be that I I believe this high virtue, high expectation of Christ's presence for every believer is the moment Jesus is inviting us into. And for some people, that will be like this will be the problem. It will be power of God stuff, being there or being environments like that. I don't know how I feel about even the language of power, whatever, that'll be the challenge. For others, it'll be like, what extreme gentleness? Like, that's not the way the spirit moves. You know what I mean? So I feel like God comes to challenge all of us. But the whole point of Pentecost, the reason, okay, so think of Jesus' ministry. Jesus dies and in dying overcomes sin and death. This means that all our junk, our inability to be loving, our sin, our brokenness, our ego, whatever you want to call it, Jesus has overcome its power. Okay, he hasn't removed sin, maybe from you, but not from the person sitting next to you. But he's removed its power, meaning it is no longer creating distance between you and God as long as you're approaching God through Jesus and his cross. Jesus, forgive me. Jesus, I need your grace. Okay, so he overcomes death. Great news. I hold the keys of Hades, he says in Revelation. To the disciples, he says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Now go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of Jesus. Okay, says Jesus, I've overcome death, he's resurrected. Then what does he do? He ascends to heaven. Okay, he goes up in the clouds, um, the disciples see him, and as we understand in the New Testament, he goes and sits at the right hand of the Father, where he rules over creation. Every power and authority, these are the the names for the spiritual realities of our world, principalities and powers. Okay, these are the spiritual realities behind greed and domination and war and violence, these are under the reign of Christ. Every sickness, everything on earth is under the reign of Christ. Okay, how does that work? Well, because 40 days later, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit upon the church in Pentecost. Pentecost is the same day, by the way, this very day is the same day that Moses ascended the mountain in Sinai, and the cloud came down over the mountain, and the law was given to Israel. Moses was one prophet who went up a mountain alone while everyone else stayed back out of fear and brought a law on tablets that Israel was to obey. Fast forward hundreds of years, the day of Pentecost, the church doesn't go up a mountain. The disciples are gathered where? In the midst of the city, in the midst of their lives. The Holy Spirit descends from heaven, not on a single person, but on the entire body of the church. Do you know in the Hebrew words in the language of Sinai it said there were thunders, thunderings, and lightnings? I don't know if you've ever read that in the Old Testament in that moment. Thunderings and lightnings, the plural. That's the literal translation of the Hebrew. The Hebrews believed that out of the cloud were coming voices. And in the extra-biblical Hebrew tradition, it was 70,000 voices. And they believed those 70,000 voices went out to every nation on earth. And you know what? This is their tradition, Hebrew tradition. Asking God was asking a question, Will you marry me? Because the Hebrews understood the covenant that God was offering as a sort of a king marriage covenant, which is what the law was. So voice goes out in many tongues from Mount Sinai. Flames of fire. So the lightnings is actually better translated, flames of fire coming out from the same cloud. And in the Hebrew tradition, those flames went out from the mountain and touched every Hebrew on the head. This is not, I'm not making this up. This is this is in their writings, every Hebrew on the head and returned. It was God's way of marking people. So this is in the Hebrew tradition. This is what they understood happened at Sinai. On that exact same day, what happens in Pentecost at the birth of the church? Many tongues were spoken in all the languages of all the Hebrews from all over the world, and tongues of fire came down from the mountain. But what's interesting is that the tongues came out of the church, out of the people, and the flames rested on the people. Now the law is written in our hearts. Now the the speech, the the word of God is coming out of us, not out of a mountain or an angel. And now the Spirit of God resides upon us. And this two things are happening in this moment. One, Jesus is marrying, God is marrying humanity. What do I mean by that? God is saying, I am now married to flesh. This is Jesus. Okay. Very difficult to wrap your head around theology lesson. Jesus is 100% God, totally God, and 100% human, totally human. Not 50-50, 100-100. I know the maths doesn't math. My children tell me that all the time. What happened in the incarnation of Jesus was that God, specifically, the eternal word of God, the Son of God, became flesh. He married himself to flesh. Forever. Jesus is always a human man and God. Pretty big sacrifice. If you really, it's an amazing thing to sit with. So he married humanity so that we may be brought into God, so that we may marry God. We may, in a way, forgive the language, it's clunky, and don't take it too far, but that we may marry God's divinity, if that makes sense. The early church writers said, God has become man so that man may become God. And by that they didn't mean we actually by nature become God. They're describing this marriage. So two things happen at Pentecost. One, God says to you, I will fill you with all of myself. And from now on, you have an unbroken connection to my love. Unbroken connection to love, peace, patience, joy, kindness, gentleness, self-control. That's pretty radical. Prayer is just the word we give to this inner relating to God. It's us choosing to receive and accept and live from this reality. But the second thing that happened in Acts 2 when the Spirit came was that we received power. We received power. Why? Because Jesus rule and reign on earth comes through the church. Jesus, I mean, he's doing God is always doing stuff in creation, so. But the way that Jesus Jesus Jesus? I mean, Jesus are great, but the way that Jesus establishes his presence and his reign in creation is through the church. Paul writes it this way the manifold wisdom of God is being displayed to the powers and principalities through the church. And so at Pentecost, two things happen. In that second degree, in terms of power. So one, we're united with God. Who knows how, what that means, we're figuring it out, but it's beautiful. Number two, we receive power for two reasons. One, Jesus establishes prophets, apostles, teachers, pastors, and evangelists. Fivefold ministry is commonly called. These are the spiritual infrastructure of this new kingdom. And their job is to raise the church up through their gift to grow in intimacy with God and maturity. That's the first thing. The second thing is that he gives spiritual gifts to everybody. Everybody gets a spiritual gift of some kind. These spiritual gifts are listed in both Romans and in 1 Corinthians. One of them is administration, which, if you're me, you know that's a spiritual gift. It's a charism. Prophecy, healing, leadership, faith, servanthood, compassion, wisdom, all of this stuff. So how is Jesus on Pentecost? This is a great song. What is the purpose of Pentecost? The purpose of Pentecost is not just intimacy and abiding in Jesus. It is so Jesus physically in heaven can reign on earth through the church by establishing leadership infrastructure and pouring out gifts on every single person so we can, through the manifold wisdom of God, display Jesus' reign to creation. How amazing is that? Isn't that incredible? But what's important about that is that we don't go on pretending to live our lives like we have that power or like we can live without it. Do you know what Paul writes in Corinthians? He says, pursue, sorry, yeah, pursue the way of love. Remember the first mission of Pentecost? The mystical marriage of us with God? Love. And eagerly desire the spiritual gifts. Did you know that's a command in scripture? To eagerly desire the spiritual gifts. Why? Because the spiritual gifts are the means through which we help deliver love to one another in the world. They're not an ego trip. They're not for me to look special or to look like a real Christian. They are the servants towel of Jesus Christ in establishing this community local. And without those gifts, we cannot establish this community the way Jesus longs to. Reality. Eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. Why prophecy? Because prophecy is the one gift that describes and reveals Jesus Christ the clearest. You can be healed. That is a theological statement in many ways to be healed, but when a prophet or a prophetic person prophesies, they are revealing who Jesus is. Okay. Why all that? Because we're in an interesting time in the church global. I don't know if you've noticed. I'm pretty sure I banged the same drum last time I was here. But whenever I pray for you guys, and whenever I come down here, I have the strongest sense in my heart that God is growing something really, really beautiful in your midst that is going to look so different and so needed. And Jesus is rebuilding the church. It's been a rough few years over the last 10-15 years. God has been sifting us. You know, that story about the songwriter was so great. It's such a great story because he writes the song and it's so pure. And when you sing it, you know it. But you know what? It kicked off an entire commercial career for that worship artist. In fact, it kicked off an entire movement of music that became highly commercial. Now, I I'm not cynical about that, and I'm not judging him at all. But what I do want to say is that we go in these cycles, don't we? We go purity and then we get it mixed in with the world. Purity mixed in with the world. And we've been in a bit of a long mixed in with the world season in the church. And I'm guilty as charged. Okay, I'm not I'm not on my aisles about this whatsoever. But we have come to a place of purity, and do you know how you come to a place of purity? Through refining. Okay, the refiner's fire hurts like hell. Literal hell. You know, it sucks. But you have to my I my my grand, my we got a gold business in the family, pretty, pretty great. One of the largest, actually, in the country. We make the news regularly. Um just trying to flex. Um and I grew up looking at gold refinery factories because I used to granulate films, a long story, whatever, it hurts. Um the heat that you have to increase a um urn to to to remove the impurities from gold is intense. Crazy intense. It's not pleasant. And we've been through that. But now that we're coming to pure hearts, even though we may feel at times like, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what this is, I don't know what I'm looking for, I don't know how to rebuild, I don't know what the church is meant to be, I don't know where Jesus is taking us, I don't know how to get rid of the cynicism, I don't know, I don't know. In the midst of all of that, Jesus is saying, I want a new Pentecost for my people. And this Pentecost needs to look and sound like me. My fruit and my way. And I really believe we're in that moment. And I would encourage you guys to seek him in it. There's a um a passage in uh the Bible. There's actually quite a few. You know that in in the New Testament, Jesus says John the Baptist is the greatest prophet. John the Baptist. As far as I can tell, there's not even really a prophecy that comes out of John the Baptist. He tells everyone to repent, and when Jesus is baptized, he says that's Messiah. That is his only prophecy that we know of. Not saying he didn't do other stuff. And yet everyone in his day called him Elijah, one of the prophets. They thought he's one of the prophets, maybe even he's Messiah. And Jesus called him the greatest prophet. We have a few passages about who John was, but the one time that we see him really prophesy is in John 1, 29, where he says this. The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the reason we exist. This is the whole game that we to behold Jesus. To behold you notice that behold, it's a funny word, look. It's all through scripture. Look at Jesus. Look at him. Was the one prophecy that he gave. He did not call fire down from heaven. He did not depart the Red Sea. He did not multiply bread. He did not He wasn't. I mean, Moses had some very gangster prophecies and some incredible signs and wonders. But this guy baptized people and said that one thing. And that one thing is what we are still called to today. And if Jesus is rebuilding the church on this Pentecost, he's rebuilding it on the songs we sung this morning, this afternoon, and on this. If you're looking for a way through, if you wonder what this is about, the priority, the gospel is that every day you would wake up and see the beauty and the love and the gentleness, compassion, forgiveness, wonder, and power of Jesus in your heart, mind, and soul. When it's all said and done, that's all we will have for eternity. Eternity is just the unbroken gaze of love between our soul and God in perfect ecstatic joy unceasingly. Everything else is just the between stuff we do, getting there and sharing that. Paul uses, writes this scripture in 2 Corinthians 3.18. He said, We all who with unfailed faces contemplate the Lord's glory are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory. And what he means is that we are called to see Jesus, and as we see Jesus, we will be transformed into him. What does it look like to see Jesus? It means reading Scripture and seeing how he lived and seeing what he said. It means sitting in Scripture. You know one of the best ways to see Jesus in my experience? I practice this all the time. Take a story from Scripture, like The Transfiguration or the Crucifixion, and take 10 or 15 minutes and just imagine it. Sit down and place yourself there. Smell the smells, hear the sounds, look at Jesus and make sure that everything you gaze at, like when I'm looking at Jesus on the cross, I'm looking at his burning hearts of his eyes of love. And he's looking at me and he's saying, Strawn, I love you and I'm doing this for you. And I sit under that image as long as I can, 10 minutes, and I let my soul receive it. That's what it means to behold Jesus. To behold Jesus is to stand in creation and not to see it as the end and of itself, but as the ultimate expression, ultimate poetry and art of God, and to go, wow, Jesus, this is from your mind. This is from your heart. This is relational prayer. This is what Jesus died for. This is communion. And it sounds so wasteful. Whenever I teach prayer because I'm always like just sit and gaze upon the Lord and your soul as best as you can. Most of the time it's really hard and it's distracting and it's a mess and it's dry and my kids are screaming, and I'm just like, I wish I was more spiritual than I am, Lord. Um, can't you do the zing thing? But sometimes it's not. And people just feels like a waste of time. But that's only because we haven't yet had a revelation of the beauty of Jesus. I believe that we are being called as a community back to the heart of worship, where it is all about Jesus. And I'm telling you, if you don't gaze upon him, if you don't look to him, if you don't seek him, the songs won't get you anywhere. They become meaningless. Do you ever feel that when you're singing a song and there's a part of you that's just like, this ain't me. But what if it could become us? What if we could become a church not known for our music or our buildings or our cleverness sermons or whatever, but are known because we are just constantly like Jesus is the beauty of the cosmos. Come and see him with us. There's a um a little bit of science. Should we science for a moment? Okay, great. A little break from Strong's intensity, and we'll have some science. Um in the brains, we have these things called mirror neurons. And these mirror neurons reflect back into our being what we see. And they're actually how we grow in compassion. The only way to grow in compassion is to sit with someone who's suffering and to listen. It literally rewires your brain. In fact, they say this is the only way to change your enemy to your friend. They've studied this. If you treat your enemy like a friend, you rewire their brains and their mirror neurons with your love. So, what these mirror neurons mean is that what we look at, what we give attention to, we become. At a scientific, neurological level. This is why listening to Radiohead is not a great idea. Hate is gonna hate on that one. It's why being around angry people makes us more angry, and being in the loving, gentle presence of God makes us more loving and gentle. We are hardwired to gaze upon God's love. And if you wonder why there is no power in your life, why there's no change, why you're not why you keep singing the songs and nothing's moving on the inside, it's because you're spending more time mirroring Netflix and music and politics and reels and Instagram than you are mirroring Jesus. So maybe a little hard word to close. If I told you, this is a fantasy, this is not real, that I wanted to get ripped. And I told you today, and I told you tomorrow, and I told you the next day and year on and year out, I sang songs about getting ripped, wrote books about getting ripped, I told everyone it's a good idea to get ripped, but I just keep eating McDonald's and I never go to the gym. Am I ever gonna get ripped? No, I'm not. How do I change who I am to be that way? I have to change my life. I have to recenter my diet and my exercise and my time and my routine around the thing that I value deeply. If I don't, I'm just kidding myself. If I do, I receive the thing I say I vitally want. If we are to behold Jesus and to receive the Holy Spirit, those two things, that's my word for you this afternoon. In this Pentecost, I believe the call, the prophetic call of the church is to relearn how to behold Jesus and the beauty of the cosmos, and to to receive the power of the Holy Spirit. If we're to do that, we have to change our lives. I'm sorry, guys. And I'm not just talking about all the funky sin, which is sin's not funky. Well, it depends how you take funky, depends if you take it in the disco mode or the millennial to early 2000s mode, which is mine. Um we have to orient our life. And the scriptures they call this mikvah. It's it's through the New Testament, a purifying yourself. And all I want to say this afternoon for us is what how do we rebalance our lives to be more focused on Jesus practically than the world? How do I spend more of my time gazing upon Jesus than I do reels, the news, what my mates are thinking, what the politics are doing, or the busyness of my life? It's not an easy question to answer, and I can't answer it for you because we're all different. I've got three bustling, loud young boys that are constantly causing one another to bleed. Life is crazy for me right now, but I still sit with this invitation from Jesus. Are you looking for me? Are you looking for me? And it is practical, it really is. You may sit and open scripture and feel dry, real dry for months, but it will change. And you may in your heart say, I don't desire you, Jesus. Help me to desire you. And it may take months or even years, but he will answer that prayer. If we come weak and humble and say, Jesus, the music, I need the music to fade and everything be swept away. I want to come back to the heart of worship, but I cannot. I need the outpouring of your spirit so that I can, he will answer you. But if you know that the deepest desire in your heart is to even desire God, then we have to change. We have to orient ourselves around beholding, reading scripture, meditating on scripture, sitting in silence with him, singing the songs, speaking to one another about him. And I believe in this mix of beholding and in receiving the power of the Spirit, we God is going to rebuild the church around Jesus, not our next best idea, which is a sucky idea. I'm sorry. Every time we have an idea, it generally doesn't go great. So I wonder if we just take two minutes just to hold the gentleness and the love of Jesus that's already been here. And maybe we ask one or two questions. Maybe if you feel like you actually don't desire Jesus, which by the way is just so much our common condition. There's nothing to be judgmental about unless we hide it. I my most common prayer is Jesus, I don't, I love you, help me love you. I know I don't love you the way I want to love you. Then let's take a moment to ask him. And then secondly, let's ask for the power of the Holy Spirit to move gently if he desires, however he desires, upon this part of our life for callings to vocations, the gifts of the Spirit, and the power to love him. Let's just take a minute, a minute or two to do that. Sent from God to show us the love of God, to pull us into God. You reign in heaven with all authority and power, and you reign gently and with compassion. Jesus, I ask that you would fill everyone in this room with the power of the Holy Spirit, as you promised, that you would call them and fill them for the works of their life, that you would sow in the deepest affection for Jesus. Would you help us to set our gaze upon you and not upon all the other storms of the world? That we may fiercely love you and fiercely serve you and enjoy the beauty and the fruit of the life of the Spirit you've promised. None are left out in that room. Every person was touched. And I know, Jesus, right now you are touching every person, regardless of what we feel, sowing heaven and your life in us. We honor you, we glorify you, may you draw us into you forever in your beautiful magnitudinal love. Amen.