18 Jan

5/20/18  “LET’S GET EXCITED FOR JESUS!”

Let’s take quick look at some of the powerful things we have in the world today.  Electricity is so powerful that it can kill you in a second.  We have tractors that can plant more in a day than we used to in a week.  We have rockets that can take us to the moon.  We have bombs that can flatten a city.  These are just man made things.  We have hurricanes that destroy huge areas.  Right now we have an earthquake and volcano in Hawaii that are quite dangerous.  They say that California could drop off the map at any time and Yellowstone is prime for a volcano that could wipe out all life.  But you want to know a little something.  If you combined all these forces and more, their power would pale: absolutely pale in comparison to the power of God.  He is the real power.  Today we are going to look at how God uses this power through the Holy Spirit to give us a better life.  Let’s see if we can put our lives under the most powerful being in the universe.

Marc Axelrod tells of a minister who wanted to impact South Korea for Jesus Christ.  He started a church in his living room, you know, a house church.  One of his early parishioners was paralyzed.  One Sunday, he went over to her, laid his hands on her and prayed fervently.  She was healed.  The word got out in the community and people got excited.  They started to flock to the church and soon they couldn’t meet in the living room anymore.  They had to put up a tent in the front yard.  Then this overflowed and they had to build a church.  By the mid 60’s there were 3000 people coming to church.

One Sunday as the pastor was baptizing several hundred people; he collapsed and was diagnosed with exhaustion.  He had other problems and had to have major surgery.  As he recovered in the hospital, he read the Bible and came across a verse in Exodus 18:18.  Isn’t it wonderful how we can read the Bible over and over and still find things we had never seen before?  Praise the Lord for that.  Anyway this verse read, “The work is too heavy for you.  You cannot handle it alone.  You will only wear yourself out.”

The next day the pastor called the elders and deacons or the church leaders.  He put each person in charge of a certain number of people.  After the pastor did this the church exploded with growth!  Thousands gave their lives to Jesus.  By 1972 there were 10,000 members.  By 1979 there were 100,000 members.  By 1984, there were 400,000.  Now there are almost 800,000 members of the Yoido Full Gospel Church.  It is the largest church on the planet.  They support 85 missionaries all over the world.  They have planted churches in 39 countries.  Their growth has been amazing.  This is what happens when you start a church for the right reasons.

This is the same type of thing that happened 2000 years ago on the day of Pentecost.  A small group gathered and prayed.  The power of the Holy Spirit was present.  The men praised the Lord.  Peter preached the word and thousands got saved.  Christianity was born.  The Holy Spirit started a new church for the right reasons. These types of things are exciting.

Before I begin looking at this morning’s scripture, I would like to show you something interesting about the celebration of Pentecost.  It began as the Feast of Harvest or the Feast of Weeks back when Moses came off the mountain with the Law.  It was considered one of the three major feasts of the year.  Do you remember that story from Exodus?  Moses came down from the mountain and the people had built a golden calf.  It almost seemed that he had barely gotten out of their sight and they were sinning against God.  If you want to refresh your memory you will find the story in Exodus 32.  In the end 3000 people died on the first Pentecost.  This is one of many entries telling us that God will not tolerate those who divide His church and people.

Now let’s fast forward ahead about 1400 years to the scene we read today.  There are probably about a million people in Jerusalem for this feast.  It was required that the men come to the feast of harvests.  So the place is jam packed.  And in God’s eyes the world had seen the last of the old Jewish Pentecost holiday because the old law was taken away and it was replaced with the new law of Jesus Christ.  And as we read in Acts 2:41, 3000 people were saved on that first day of the new Pentecost, the new Feast of Harvests.  The new harvest had begun.  I’m not real sure of the significance of the losing of 3000 people centuries before and then the gaining of 3000 people but it might be interesting for someone to research it.

Enough of my trivia.  Let’s move on.  The disciples were together in a place that was probably open because others heard the sounds.  Suddenly, the sound of wind came and then there were tongues like fire that touched each of them.  Can you imagine this?  Here you are sitting today and suddenly you have wind where ever you are.  You would be scared.  And then you see all of these flames dancing over our heads and they are actually touching us but we don’t get burned.  I’m not sure what we would do.  But it would probably be the most moving experience of our lives.

And this does happen today.  When the Holy Spirit wants you to know something, He has ways of getting your attention and He uses different signs for all of us.  One of the most common ways that I know of is when I get goose bumps or the hair on my arm stands up.  When this happens I have learned to pay close attention.  When Jesus Christ wants our attention, we have to learn the signs so that we can pay attention.  Jesus does this because He is important-not us.

Suddenly the disciples are speaking in tongues.  Remember now that the city is packed with people and they are from many different areas and speak many different languages.  But they all hear the disciple’s message in their own language.  These disciples were poor and not well educated for the most part and yet the Holy Spirit transforms them into the leaders of this new group.  And everyone understands what they are saying in their own language.  Wow!

So we have three miracles happening; bang, bang, bang.  They hear the wind from nowhere, they see the fire that does not burn, and now these men are all speaking in languages they previously didn’t know.  Does it get any more exciting than this?  The Holy Spirit is here.  Things are happening.  I love it.

But wait.  They had naysayers just as we do today and just like today they are in the hierarchy of the church.  The people are starting to say that the disciples have had too much wine.  They seem to think that the apostles are drunk and talking gibberish.  Maybe God had closed the ears of the hard hearts and the miracle was just for those who were receptive.  That is just my thought on this.  Another little sidebar, this seems to show us as it does in other places in the Bible that alcoholism was a major problem then also.

Anyway even today we can see that when people get too excited for Jesus, then society has to come up with some reason why this person is not acting so-called normally.  I met a man several years ago who called himself Donnie G.  I would guess that now he is between 80 to 85 years of age.  He is on fire for the Lord.  He will talk to anyone at any place about Jesus.  He has had so much of the fire of the Holy Spirit in him that he has actually been put into an institution for the mentally ill.  He had a terrible time getting out again.  And all he did was preach the gospel to everyone.  All he did was what God had told him to do.

Incidentally, Donnie lives in Arizona now.  I still talk to him once in a while and he is still on fire and spreading the Word of Jesus Christ.  One time several years ago, he told me that I would be a preacher south of West Fargo.  This was before I had any idea of being a pastor.  He was thinking in the new areas in south Fargo and West Fargo.  I now believe that God had spoken to him as I then spent 10 years pastoring in Kindred which is about 15 miles south of Fargo. Somehow Donnie G. knew.  God knew and God told him.

As we continue on with this passage I want you to notice what has happened here.  Peter is about to go and quote the prophet Joel in the last section of today’s scripture.  He is authenticating what is happening here.  These people know their Bible and Peter is quoting Scripture to prove that they are not indeed drunk.  Even in those days people didn’t drink at nine in the morning.  But this is the work of God through the Holy Spirit.  God is about to unfold a whole new chapter.

And Peter is their spokesperson.  Peter is the one who pretty much messed everything up that Jesus put before him.  We have talked of this before.  He took his eyes off of Jesus and sank in the water.  He misunderstood the transfiguration and wanted to build everyone tents.  He denied Jesus three times.  He did countless other things to show that he just didn’t understand Jesus and that he was human just like the rest of us.

Now suddenly he is an eloquent speaker.  The Holy Spirit has taken him over and he is now a new man.  He not only quotes from Joel, but he goes into a long speech where 3000 become converted followers.  This was quite a feat because in those days as Peter had no microphone.  He would have had to shout his speech.  But I have no doubt that he was very loud if he was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Now let’s look at how the Holy Spirit is poured out on us today.  We saw in the opening story how this worked in South Korea.  I look at the church that Rick Warren started in his living room in California, almost 40 years ago.  Now Saddleback Church is one of the largest in the country.  And they do it by focusing on God.  And that is the key to any church or any life.

I have been to several of the big churches in Fargo.  I would have to say that some of them are focused on God and some are not.  Some stress the saving grace of Jesus Christ and others try to integrate this holy message with other things including the production of the service.  The focus often becomes on the production and not on Jesus.  I think that we can see that if God wants a production, then God will give us a production that will be equaled by none as we see in today’s Scripture.

About 14 years ago, we planted a new church in West Fargo.  It was a lot of work but it was a good kind of work.  That happens when you are working for God.  And that was the emphasis of this new satellite of Triumph Church of Moorhead.  We had no frills.  We had no show.  We only had the message of God.  Within two months of starting this new church, we were at maximum capacity of the facility we rented of 200 people.  We had been praying for 75.  When the Holy Spirit is working we can only stand back and let him go.  It was great and very exciting.

I know of another church in the area that began about 40 years ago because a group of people wanted to have a church close by in their community.  They are still operating today as they have for the last 40 years.  They are struggling.  And allow me to make a prediction here.  They will continue to struggle until they get their focus on Jesus Christ.  As noble as their reasons were for starting a church, they forgot that Jesus is the principle reason for church.  As long as you focus on ‘me, myself, and I,’ you will fail.  Jesus must be the focal point.  I feel that you should throw out social principles until you have your eyes firmly on Jesus.  Then He makes everything else work.

We have been talking about Pentecost today.  I have a confession to make about an error I make.  Often times I will make the mistake of saying that being saved and being filled with the Holy Spirit are the same.  They are not.  You see that here today.  You can be saved and not filled with the Holy Spirit.  As we read about these disciples today, they had already been saved by grace.  And now they are filled with the Holy Spirit.  These are two separate actions.

In my excitement I would like them both to be the same.  I would like everyone listening to be saved and excited to the max.  I would like you to be excited as only the Holy Spirit can get you going.  This celebration of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit to us on earth, is just as big as Christmas or Easter.  This is the presence of Jesus in us.  This is when life gets exciting.

I would like to close with this story from Marilyn Murphree about a Sunday school class.  The teacher had taught the class to recite the Apostles Creed by giving each child one phrase to learn.  Then came the day when they presented it to the larger group.  It began perfectly.

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” said Sara.

“I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,” continued Rachael.

Everything went perfect one after the other and then there was a long pause.  Finally a little girl spoke up and said, “Uh, the little boy who believes in the Holy Spirit is absent today!”

Whoa!  Don’t let this happen in your life, in your church.  Make sure the Holy Spirit is present in your life, not absent.  God loves you so much that He sent His only Son to die on the cross.  He loves you so much that He raised Him on the third day so that your sins would be forgiven.  He loves you so much that He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in you.  It just doesn’t get any better than a life with and in Jesus Christ.  Praise the Lord.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.