Title: Pentecostal Power
Text: Acts 2:1-4
The Church was born at Pentecost
And Pentecost has become a Sacred Holiday on the church calendar.
Of course, Pentecost has always been a holiday
A celebration of the harvest
For Israel, it was a harvest of grain
For the Church, Pentecost is a great harvest of the Spirit.
Because of Pentecost we reap a harvest
Power to be a witness
Ability to be renewed and transformed
Life in his presence
Because of Pentecost, His power is abundantly available to us that believe.
We are a Pentecostal Church
Meaning we identify and seek after the fullness of the Spirit just as they did at Pentecost
I believe that we need a harvest of the Spirit of God in our lives once again.
As witnesses we cannot afford to stop seeking to be filled with His power
As The church we cannot afford to remain the same, we need to be transformed
As His Children We cannot afford to ignore His immediate presence
We as a church need that Pentecostal power once again.
Prayer…
I. WE NEED THE HOLY SPIRIT BECAUSE WE NEED POWER to witness
Acts 1:4
On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.
Acts 1:8
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
Illustration:
-- 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.
--Battery? Battery? No body said anything about a battery. I’ve been winding it every morning!"
--A lot of Christians do not realize the inner power of the Holy Spirit to handle things they think they must take into their own hands.
A. His power is available to US TO COMPLETE THE TASK BEFORE US IN THE HARVEST and he wants us to complete the task in his power and not by our ingenuity
1. You can see from our text that God did not dare ask His people to do His work without giving them the ability to do it.
This is why they were asked to wait in Jerusalem until power from on high descended upon them.
The message of Acts 1:8 is simple Apart from the Holy Spirit no-one can preach the Gospel as God wants them to do.
with the Holy Spirit we can make a difference
1 Cor. 2:4-5
My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, [5] so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
Without the Power of the Holy Spirit the message of the Gospel rest in man’s wisdom
the Bible tells us in 2 Tim 3:5 that in the Last days the Church will have a "form of Godliness, but deny the power thereof"
That is a way of saying that we the Church will be putting more emphasis on externals [show] rather than on internals [empowerment by the Holy Spirit]
God forbid
3. We need to be like The New Testament Church that saw the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the NORMAL experience for empowering believers to preach the Gospel
They knew as we should understand that without Him we Won’t make much of a difference in this world.
ILLUS:
The human body is a most remarkable machine. It can maintain a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees no matter what the weather is outside. Whether a man is at the Arctic Circle or the equator, his body temperature is about the same.
There is an inner mechanism that makes the difference.
For the Christian the Holy Spirit is that inner Mechanism
To help us make a difference in this world
II. WE NEED THE HOLY SPIRIT BECAUSE WE as a church we NEED TO BE TRANSFORMED
Acts 2:1-4
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. [2] Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. [3] They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. [4] All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
1. Why WAS THERE A the symbol of fire when the believers received the Holy Spirit?
a. Fire is the symbol of transformation!
b. Fire changes whatever it touches.
2. Lets look at some ways the Holy Spirit works to Transform us
3. The Holy Spirit took a group of fisherman, former prostitutes, ex-religious leaders, tax collectors, and various family members of Jesus and the other disciples
And formed them into a united group…we call the church
Before Pentecost.
The disciples were scarred
They lacked faith
They did not fully understand God’s plan
After Pentecostal fire fell however,
They were united as never before.
Nothing earlier had welded them into one united force,
It took the fire of God’s Spirit to do this
ILLUS:
There once was a blacksmith who had two pieces of iron which he wished to weld into one. He took them just as they were, all cold and hard, and put them on the anvil, and began to hammer with all this might, but they were still two pieces, and they would not unite. At last he remembered what he should never have forgotten. He thrust both of them into the fire, took them out red-hot, laid one on the other, and by one or two blows of the hammer they soon became one.
What makes the church work in our day?
God’s Spirit
There has never been a program that has dramatically transformed people’s lives
Brought them from all walks of life
And turned them into a united group that can actually accomplish something
It takes God’s Spirit to do that
the Church was birthed in the power of the Holy Spirit,
Society won’t be transformed until the Church is transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
III. As His Children We cannot afford to ignore His immediate presence
Matthew 3:11
"I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
Acts 2:3
They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
1. The fire that appeared on the heads of each believer in the upper room has a connection to the Old Testament:
When Moses was dedicating the tabernacle,
Leviticus 9:24
Fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown.
And Solomon was Dedicating the temple
2 Chron. 7:1
When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.
supernatural fire from the presence of God fell on the sacrifices.
b. This indicated to the people that God had accepted the tabernacle and the Temple as His dwelling place
The proof of his acceptance was the supernatural fire that fell from heaven.
The Apostle Paul uses the term temple to indicate that under the New Covenant our bodies are the Temple" of the Holy Spirit
1 Cor. 6:19
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
2. At Pentecost, the individual believers had tongues of fire over them,
Supernatural fire from heaven …
Once again God sent His own fire to demonstrate that from now on He would accept the "temple" – the individual as His dwelling place,
So that the believer is a "temple" of the Holy Spirit.
The Church - would now become the dwelling place of God’s Holy Spirit.
As the temple of the Holy Spirit 1 Cor. 6:19 tells us that we are not our own any longer
In fact what it is telling us is that we are not alone any longer either
John 14:17
the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
I thank God for the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life
I thank god for that relationship
I also know that unless I build and maintain my relationship I can easily have that relationship come to a halt
ILLUS:
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.
Often, Christians neglect their spiritual maintenance,
and though they are "clothed with power" (Luke 24:49)
They find themselves out of gas.
In Leviticus 6:12
, instructions were given that the fire that fell from God should never be permitted to go out,
it was to be attended constantly around the clock so it would never go out.
c. So should the fire of the Spirit of God in our lives,
it should never be allowed to go out!
The Bible says 1 Thes. 5:19
Do not put out the Spirit’s fire;
The people of God that are walking in the Spirit
Flowing in His gifts
Cherishing his presence
And stirring up the fire he has placed within us
Are going to make a difference in this world in these last days.
