As we await Pentecost, lets not buy into the thought that we prepare ourselves for God's work, but rather lets use this moment to know that God is primary and builds in us all we need.
Order of Service: Rise and Shine: Heritage Kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSxd9JVE3r4
Come Let us Worship and Bow Down: Maranatha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntfx_zg0FvY
Ancient of Days: Jamie Harvill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWTolA8gMrA
The House Plant Song: Audio Adrenaline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbC8dlgHBIw
Sermon: Acts 1:1-12: Let the Spirit build in You https://www.buzzsprout.com/55743/3890324-acts-1-1-11-let-the-spirit-build-in-you
At the Cross (Love Ran Red): Chris Tomlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoxkCQnksZk
So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy. [1 Peter 1:13-16]
As we await Pentecost, lets not buy into the thought that we prepare ourselves for God's work, but rather lets use this moment to know that God is primary and builds in us all we need.
Order of Service: Rise and Shine: Heritage Kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSxd9JVE3r4
Come Let us Worship and Bow Down: Maranatha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntfx_zg0FvY
Ancient of Days: Jamie Harvill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWTolA8gMrA
The House Plant Song: Audio Adrenaline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbC8dlgHBIw
Sermon: Acts 1:1-12: Let the Spirit build in You https://www.buzzsprout.com/55743/3890324-acts-1-1-11-let-the-spirit-build-in-you
At the Cross (Love Ran Red): Chris Tomlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoxkCQnksZk
So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy. [1 Peter 1:13-16]
Speaker 1:
Good morning church. I am so glad you're here with me this morning on the podcast. I'm in the church this morning and I see little, um, paper plates with faces drawn on them in the places where you normally set. It is so cute. I'm so thankful for those that have done that. And for Roxanne for organizing it. I see you there. It's a chance for me to preach in the room with, with you. I'm listening, but we're waiting for Pentecost. We're just like the early church. It's so long ago. We're waiting only we don't even know if we're the apostles, what Pentecost is. So let me start the sermon this morning. A few weeks ago, a few weeks ago I, I heard a sermon and say that we're in sort of this forced pause before Pentecost and that the apostles use that time to prepare. So Pentecost, I, I need to tell you that we have a pause too. You often feel like when you get paused, you need to know why you're paused. I know the church really often thinks about that, that people in the church think that if something happens, there has to be a specific reason and I'll understand it the whole time or afterwards. Anyway, right now we're paused. One of the things I don't want to do is I don't want us to think that we're on this pause that God said we had to be on to learn a lesson or to prepare and I especially don't want it, wants you to think that if what you think is that the church ought to be learning and preparing for something that's coming because of the pause, the church ought to be preparing and learning for what's coming, whether we're paused or not. I need to make sure that we hear that, but we aren't on a forced pause like them. The via parcels them way back when before Pentecost happened, preparing for Pentecost. That's anachronistic. Anachronistic is a term that means I'm outside or out of the time sequence. Let me explain. You can't prepare for something you've never heard of. Don't knows coming, don't know anything about, they weren't preparing that way. Here's an example of an acronystic sort of topic people use in the church all the time. I've heard this, this, um, use specifically to argue against the use of prophecy and the church. Are you ready? Here it is. This is from first Corinthians 13 verses nine and 10. This is what people say for we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. And then I've heard denomination saying that because of this verse prophecy and the gifts of the spirit coming and working in our body are gone because the perfect is come. And what they say is that Pentecost or even specifically more specifically the spirit or in G N Jesus came and were on earth and that's the perfect timing. And so now we don't use prophecy anymore. I want you to be very careful church and understand this. First Corinthians was written after Jesus was on earth and it was written after Pentecost, the first Pentecost. And so you can't say we prophesied in part now, but when the perfect comes, that will pass away. And since the perfect is common, Jesus, this is gone. That's not how that works. That's anachronistic. It's out of the timeframe of that happened. The perfect that comes is that when we are fully redeemed and when Jesus returns in his fullness and we are living in the presence and the presence is fully living in us and we are in heaven and heaven is here and all this stuff, that's when the perfect comes. And I need you to know church that at that point in time it even says that knowledge will pass away. Everything will pass away except for faith, hope and love. And so now we need wisdom and knowledge and understanding and we need prophecy and we need the other gifts of the spirit. They haven't passed away because we're like those early apostles waiting for the perfect to come. Now what they didn't know in uh, in acts of one, this is the verse that I'm talking about today. This is acts one verses two through 11. Well, the first one in my first book, I told you good the off Phyllis about everything Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after given his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy spirit during the 40 days after he suffered and died, that's Easter. Okay? He appeared to the apostles from time to time and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive and he talked to them about the kingdom of God once when he was eating with them, he commanded them. Does not leave Jerusalem until the father sends you the gift he promised. And I told you before John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy spirit. That's Pentecost coming. But they don't know the word that way. That, okay, don't get lost. Don't get this out of sequence. Yeah. So when the apostles heard this, they kept asking him, Lord has the time come for you to free Israel and restore your kingdom. You reply the father alone as the authority to set those times and dates and they are not for you to know, well, you will receive power when the Holy spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses telling people about me everywhere in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. And after saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching and they could no longer see him. And as they strained to see him rising into heaven, to white robed men, probably not man, I wouldn't say white men. I would say the two white road angels from the[inaudible] or something like that had happened. We're standing there staring the men of Galilee. Why are you standing? You're staring into happen. Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go. In other words, when the perfect comes back to the story of using the time of between, um, Easter and Pentecost to prepare for Pentecost, let's not get anachronistic about this. Let's not get this out of order. We're on a pause and we don't always know why we're on a pause. There may not be a reason that we ever know why we're on this pause. Now. We might say later, we're on a because this party did that or that party did this, but we may never actually know. We might think we know and all this stuff, but what we don't know as why, I hate to say at church, but at some point in time we really have to get used to not knowing everything. It isn't just the way that everything always makes sense to us, but here's what happens. The the message that I heard the other day said that the parcels were using this time to prepare for Ben accost. Well, they did some things later on. It says that they, they replaced Judas with Mathias and, and that's, that's great, but that's not preparing for Pentecost. What is Pentecost? Pentecost, which will be serving to serving up next week is the birthday of the church. The literally the birthday of the church. The church was formed. It stopped being a mix of people that didn't know anything at work capable of doing anything and turned into a people that were on a mission for God, that they became witnesses and they had power and they were ready and they were bold and they had the words to say and they understood how to do it, but they weren't reading their books and going, boy, I hope we get a chance to say this, man. I think we'll go out and do some witnessing this next week, maybe on a Sunday and we'll go out and we'll do that. And, and, and we're, we just hope we're ready when it calls. No. What happened was literally the Holy spirit broken on them and they who were hiding and not ready and couldn't find the full words to say and weren't bold. The spirit came on them and fill them and made them able, it made them bold. It gave them the words to say it wasn't a matter of human preparation. It was a gift of the spirit in them for the life of the church. Are we alive church right now? We're spending our time waiting for the chance to be the church and meet together and do all those things. But, but waiting and, and meeting together isn't what makes us the church. What makes us the church is the reliance of the Holy spirit that we have, that the Holy spirit comes on us in our belief and fills us and makes us able. And so this time flow, we're waiting for Pentecostal thumb this year. I want to take the time to remind you, church, it's not me that makes me able, it's not me studying that makes me able, it's Jesus that gave me the gift that made me able. Now what did he make me able to do? He made me able to study and retain and put words together in a certain way and all this stuff. And I think I've told some of you this story, but when I first came to faith, I became hungry for the word of God in a way that I had never been on angry. It was not in me. I didn't care. But I came to faith and suddenly I couldn't get enough of it. And I was reading the Bible about 15 times a year, so the first number of years. So when you think that pastor Dave has all this knowledge and all that stuff, it wasn't that I prepared myself, it's that I couldn't get enough. It just kept coming and kept coming and I was hungry and thirsty and I'm still hungry and thirsty. And that hunger and thirst is what made me put together my understanding of the Bible, made me able and capable because the spirit filled me with a hunger to get no more. It wasn't in my ability to do that on my own. Well, it was something that God made in me, which is another gift from him. This is not something that we do on our own that we can't sit back here and say, well, in the next 40 days, let's learn a new language and then that'll be God's gift for us to use in other places. No. If you learn a language during this time and the next 40 days between Easter and Pentecost or between now and some other time for using the thing, it's because God put a hunger in you to do it and then you follow through with the gift of the hunger to understand and know. And so as we wait right now, church, as we wait for Pentecost, as we begin to understand what it meant to be an early disciple and just not be ordinary people, this is, we were just ordinary people. The apostles were, they were, they were not even rabbis. He chose them and said, come and follow me to people that had already been told by everybody else. No, you're not able. And he said, I make you Abel. No amount of crap on your side makes you able. And now church, as we, as we are in this forced pause, help us understand what it means to submit to the word of God, to submit to the spirit, to, to fully understand what it means to be centered on our relationship with God. That that then becomes a hunger and a thirst to do the things and actions of God that he puts inside us. So if we're just sitting there doing nothing, what are you hungry and thirsty to do? What hunger and thirst has God put in your heart for you to understand? Why do you wait, look watching for him to come when the very Jesus who is here will come in the way that he was taken away. But in the meantime, the spirit will come and fill you with power and make you bold and give you the words to say, may we church be that church that moves when the spirit says so when you pray with me, Lord Jesus, this this evening as I stand in the church, as I stand in the church with the little face plates of the drawings of so many of us, I just thank you Lord for each and everyone. Not just the face plates on the plates in the sanctuary, but those who are listening or part of our church who are your people. You mean the Hey, become hungry to do righteousness
Speaker 2:
as you lead them. Amen.
Speaker 1:
And now church, as you leave this place and close out this worship and begin to listen to the songs, maybe you've listened to the song I put on in the house plant song is my fun song today. I just want you to know church that, that the point of the song isn't that we read this book and we put her houseplants to the desk. It's that we get to know our neighbors and serve and the friendships that we do are in him and there for him. As you go today, you be at peace.