As a child my wife and her sister would often accompany their grandmother on outings to cemeteries since their grandmother did a lot of research in the area of genealogy. They would take a picnic lunch and pick out a cemetery to go and walk through and spend hours there. I can think of many places where I would rather have a picnic and have always thought that this fascination with cemeteries was a bit odd, that is until recently.
Early Friday morning I decided to take a walk. The air was a bit chilly but the sun was beginning to peek through the clouds and the birds were singing joyfully as I drank in the beauty of the morning. For some reason I was drawn to the cemetery. I entered the gate and started walking down the road when I was suddenly overwhelmed with the awesomeness of the place. There surrounding me were the graves of thousands of people many of whom who have no other indication that they ever lived than the stone that marks their grave.
As I wandered off the road and started walking through the stones I was struck by something. Most of the stones were very similar in size and appearance and even in what they say of the person whose grave they mark. Most of the stones only tell the person’s name, birth date and date of death. There were very few indications of a person’s abilities or accomplishments. The stones didn’t tell of the person’s education or income or worldly successes. Death has a way of leveling us all.
As I continued to walk I was saddened by the realization that every new grave is only a generation or two away from never being visited again. For once everyone who knew the person dies the grave is a place that is seldom if ever visited or remembered.
There was one stone in particular which caused me to stop and think. It’s a monument of a tree that looks as if it died at the top and is now only the remainder of what would have once been a majestic piece of nature. And then it hit me: like that tree, at death, the lives of many are cut off never to grow again.
I left the cemetery that morning feeling rather small. I’m only one of billions of people alive today, not to mention the great multitudes of those who have gone on before me. What will my life mean? What difference will I make? Will my life be like that tree that died and never again produced fruit, or will my life be the beginning of something bigger than myself?
As I continued to walk I got to wondering: what causes people to be remembered? What gives a person the ability to stand out? What causes everyday men and women to rise above the mundane and become heroes?
For the past five weeks our church has been in the midst of a series entitled “Insights from the Life of David.” We’ve been looking at this man who even though he was guilty of murder and adultery was said to be “a man after God’s own heart.” Over the last five weeks we’ve discovered some incredible things about him and learned some important lessons from his story. This morning I want to look at The Power Behind the Man David because there was something different about David that caused him to rise above the ordinary and touch history in a profound way. There was something about this shepherd boy from Bethlehem that gave him the ability to kill a giant, to survive the murderous plots of his King and to be remembered as the greatest King of Israel.
There was a secret to David’s success. There was a power at work in the life of David that has been given to each and everyone of us and yet which most of us never tap into. Did you hear what I said? The same power that was at work in the life of David when he killed the giant and throughout his life has been given to you as a child of God! The same power that caused David to become a “man after God’s own heart” is available to you and I today to transform us into the men and women God wants us to be.
A lady went to a jeweler to have her watch fixed. He disappeared to the back and soon returned with it running perfectly.
Surprised, she asked how he could fix it so soon. He told her it only needed a new battery.
A battery? No body said anything about a battery. I’ve been winding it every morning!
Most Christians do not realize the inner power that they have been given to handle life and instead go through life struggling to live good lives but never really standing out as men and women that are radically different from others. Most Christians have no idea that they have as a resource a power that is greater than anything they have ever experienced and rather than tapping into that source continue to live their lives in the same way as those around them. Most Christians, as a result, die having left no more of a mark on this world than their unbelieving neighbor.
By now you’re asking “what’s the secret?” What was it that made David so different? And what is it that I’m missing? If you’ve got your scripture passage in front of you look at I Samuel 16:13a: “Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him [David] in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.” The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David. It was the Spirit that made a difference! In the Old Testament we’re told that the Spirit was given to those whom God chose to give the Spirit to. Not everyone had the Spirit. Earlier on in our series we discovered that Saul had been given the Spirit when he was anointed as King, but now we’re told in this verse and the next verse that the Spirit left King Saul and came upon David. David had been chosen for a special task and given special power in the form of the Spirit of God in his life to accomplish that task.
Ladies and Gentlemen: you and I have a privilege that those who lived in David’s day and age did not have. That same power that was available to David is available to each and every one of us. We don’t have to be chosen for a special task or anointed by a prophet like David was. The Spirit of the Lord has been given to each and everyone of us.
That’s what we’re celebrating today. We celebrate the birth of Jesus & all the world pauses to celebrate Christmas with us. We celebrate His resurrection, & most of the world recognizes Easter as a very special day on the calendar. But today is Pentecost and hardly anyone even realizes it. Today is the day on which the church was born. Today is the day on which the Father sent the Holy Spirit to us to empower us to be disciples that can bring transformation to this world. Today is the day on which we celebrate the power that allows us to make a difference and like David, to succeed in accomplishing great things for God. Church, today is one of the most joyous days in the Christian year! Today is a day of celebration!
But today ought also to be a wake up call for us. One of the things that frustrates me the most about the church is that we’ve lost touch of what the power of the Holy Spirit can do and wants to do in our midst and through us in this world. Why do you think that the church in the United States has in most cases ceased to be a catalyst of change and revival? Why do you think that so many churches are dying around us? It’s because many Christians don’t understand that when they receive Christ there is a power that can work within and through them to make them different people and can accomplish in and through them great things for the Kingdom of God.
John Wimber was a product of the Jesus movement in the 60’s. He met Christ in a dramatic way, and began reading the New Testament, beginning with the Gospels and then on to the book of Acts. He was excited about what he was reading, but when he went to a church he was disillusioned. The polite and tidy service was over exactly on time.
Wimber looked at some of the people around him and said: “When are you gonna do the stuff?”
“What stuff?” they wanted to know.
He said, “You know. . . the stuff!”
He had been reading about the conversions, healings, deliverance and other miracles that took place in the early church recorded in the book of Acts. But instead of signs and wonders, he saw no sign of anything that would make him wonder, except the deadness of the ritual he had just sat through.
Signs and wonders were not the exception in the early church, they were the norm. Healings and supernatural happenings were expected and occurred regularly.
One New Year’s Day, in the Tournament of Roses parade, a beautiful float suddenly sputtered and quit. It was out of gas. The whole parade was held up until someone could get a can of gas. The amusing thing was this float represented the Standard Oil Company. With its vast oil resources, its truck was out of gas.
Sounds a bit like the church today, doesn’t it? According to Luke 24:49 you and I have been “clothed with power” and yet we find ourselves out of gas.
The church today needs to discover once again the power of Pentecost. We need to become a Pentecostal church — and I am not talking about a denomination — I’m talking about an Acts 2 church. A church that is filled with the Spirit. We need to be operating in the gifts of the Spirit. We need to see people’s lives turned around. We need to see people healed physically, emotionally, relationally, socially and spiritually. We need to experience the unity of the Spirit as the early church did. We need to be living in genuine love for each other, and when we fail at that then we need to seek reconciliation. We need to have the fire fall and the people of God rise up.
As I’ve been studying the life of David I came across a very interesting passage. You heard it read this morning. It’s found in I Samuel 19. After Jonathan had pleaded for David’s life and Saul had relented and accepted David back into his presence again, Saul once again tried to kill him and this time David escaped with the help of his wife, Saul’s daughter, and went and stayed with the prophet Samuel.
Saul found out where David was staying and sent some of his people to get David. Understand this was not a friendly escort, Saul wanted David dead. And he sent his soldiers after him. We’re told that as they drew close to the place where David was staying, the spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul and they fell into a frenzy. In other words they were overcome with the Spirit. Saul was told and he sent another group of messengers. But the same thing happened to them. And he sent a third group of messengers. They too were overcome by the Spirit. Finally Saul himself went, and event he was overcome by that Spirit.
I got to wondering earlier this week: what would happen if our churches became places where the Spirit of God was at work so mightily that even those who came near were caught up in that Spirit? What would happen if the Spirit was working in our midst so powerfully that it couldn’t help but spread? What would happen if our Christianity became contagious? Can you imagine the impact we would have on our community?
If our churches were to get in touch with the same Spirit that was at work in the life of David to empower him to be “a man after God’s own heart,” with the same Spirit that came at Pentecost and transformed a group of screwed up fishermen and tax collectors into a force that would change the world, with the same spirit that once swept across Europe and North America in the form of revival, we could easily become a force that would at the very least transform this county. Just look at the twelve disciples. They were a group of men who were cowards and hypocrites. When Jesus was crucified they hid out of fear. But something happened to this group of men that transformed them into an unstoppable force. Something happened to Peter who had denied Christ three times that changed him into the powerful preacher that we see in our passage today. That something was the Holy Spirit!
You see: when we open ourselves to receive the Spirit of God you and I can be used in ways that will blow our minds! You and I can be used to accomplish things that we never thought were possible. Because the power behind the man David, the power behind the disciples, the power behind the early church, and the power behind those who today are making a difference for Christ is the same person: the Holy Spirit!
There are denominations and movements within the church that believe that you receive the Holy Spirit on a separate occasion than when you become a Christian and that occasion is what they call “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” As I studied the word “baptize” in Greek this week I discovered that one of its original uses was to describe the process that a ship goes through when it sinks. Water floods every compartment. There’s not a place that isn’t overcome or filled with water. The ship is “baptized”, it’s immersed in the sea.
There are a lot of Christians walking around today and filling our pews who believe in Christ but have never allowed the Holy Spirit to fill their lives as water fills a sinking ship. When we reserve one compartment or another for ourselves we prevent the Holy Spirit from working through us as God desires.
If we want to be the kind of people that touch the lives of others; if we want to be men and women whose time on this earth is significant; if we want to be used like David was used then we’ve got to get in touch with the power that was behind the man. The power of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit.
Will you bow your heads with me…
