The P’s of Pentecost
🗣️ Speaker: Pastor Derrel Strickland
Pastor Strickland's sermon celebrates both Pentecost Sunday and graduates, highlighting Pentecost as the church's spiritual birthday. He reflects on the significance of Pentecost following Passover, emphasizing that the disciples needed to die to self to receive the Holy Spirit's power. Pastor Strickland stresses that the Holy Spirit empowers believers beyond their own abilities. He outlines four key points: the patience, power, passion, and person of the Holy Spirit, emphasizing the Holy Spirit's role in transforming lives. He draws parallels between the first Pentecost in Exodus, where Moses received the Ten Commandments, and the New Testament Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles. The sermon calls for embracing the person of the Holy Spirit and living out the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—while recognizing the Holy Spirit's continuous work within believers.
The core takeaway from Pastor Strickland's sermon is the importance of responding to life's unexpected challenges with faith and integrity, much like the rule of playing the golf ball where the monkey drops it. He emphasizes that, just as Joseph remained faithful and maintained his character through his adversities, we too should trust in God's plan and maintain our integrity, regardless of the disruptions we face in life.
Additional Info
The info below was generated by an AI from the audio recording of the sermon.
Celebrating Pentecost and Graduates
Congratulations to all graduates! Some of you have been part of this community since birth, and today we honor your achievements. Additionally, we celebrate Pentecost, the church's spiritual birthday, marking the beginning of the New Testament church.
The Significance of Pentecost
Pentecost Sunday commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, an event that occurred 50 days after Passover. This timing underscores the importance of Pentecost following the sacrifice of Passover, illustrating the transition from self-reliance to reliance on the Holy Spirit.
Dying to Self for Spiritual Empowerment
Before experiencing Pentecost, the disciples needed to die to self. This concept is crucial for believers today. True spiritual empowerment and transformation come not from our own efforts but through the Holy Spirit's work within us. The Holy Spirit provides the strength and ability to live out our faith fully.
The Holy Spirit: Patience, Power, Passion, and Person
Understanding the Holy Spirit involves recognizing four key aspects: patience, power, passion, and person. The Holy Spirit's patience is evident in God's timing and plan, which are always perfect. The power of the Holy Spirit enables believers to witness and live a godly life. The passion of the Holy Spirit reflects God's love for humanity, and the person of the Holy Spirit is as real and significant as God the Father and Jesus the Son.
The First Pentecost: A Historical Perspective
The first Pentecost is linked to the event in Exodus when Moses received the Ten Commandments. This moment is seen as God's marriage proposal to Israel, emphasizing a deep, covenantal relationship. Similarly, the New Testament Pentecost marks the beginning of the church, where the Holy Spirit's presence signifies a new era of divine relationship and empowerment.
Living Out the Fruits of the Spirit
The Holy Spirit empowers believers not only with spiritual gifts but also with the fruits of the Spirit, which include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These attributes are essential for a fulfilling Christian life and effective witness.
God's Perfect Timing
God's calendar is always precise, and significant spiritual events often align with Jewish holidays. This divine timing underscores God's sovereignty and patience. Believers are reminded to trust in God's timing and plan for their lives, knowing that He works all things for good.
Embracing the Fullness of God
To function fully in God, believers need all three aspects of the Godhead: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Embracing the person, power, and passion of the Holy Spirit is crucial for spiritual growth and effective ministry. The Holy Spirit's continuous work within us enables us to live out our faith with power and love.
Conclusion
Pentecost reminds us of the vital role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. By dying to self and allowing the Holy Spirit to work within us, we can experience true spiritual empowerment and live out the fruits of the Spirit. As we celebrate Pentecost and honor our graduates, let us embrace the fullness of the Holy Spirit, trusting in God's perfect timing and plan for our lives.
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Use the questions listed below as a launching point to discuss the sermon points together as a family. These are great for dinner table discussions and small groups.
Why do you think Pentecost is considered the birthday of the church? What changed with the coming of the Holy Spirit?
Pastor Strickland mentioned the necessity of a Passover before Pentecost. How does this concept of transitioning from death to rebirth apply to our personal spiritual journeys?
Discuss the four points highlighted by Pastor Strickland: the patience, power, passion, and person of the Holy Spirit. How can these aspects of the Holy Spirit influence your daily life?
The Holy Spirit helps us in our weaknesses and exceeds our personal limits. Can you share a personal experience where you felt the Holy Spirit’s guidance or strength in a challenging time?
How can we better cultivate a relationship with the Holy Spirit to experience more of its power, passion, and presence in our lives?
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Connecting our kids to what we as adults are learning and hearing on Sundays is vital to passing on our faith to the next generation. Use the summary below as a great way to talk about the message we heard with your kids.
Hey kids, today we're going to talk about a very special day called Pentecost, which is like the birthday of the church! A long time ago, after Jesus went back to heaven, his friends were waiting for a special gift. That gift was the Holy Spirit, which is kind of like a super helper.
Imagine if you had a super helper who was always with you, helping you to be brave, kind, and smart. Well, that’s what the Holy Spirit does for us! On Pentecost, this super helper came to Jesus’ friends and helped them do amazing things like talk about Jesus even though it was a bit scary.
Just like a birthday party where we get gifts, on Pentecost, Jesus’ friends got the best gift of all, the Holy Spirit, to help them share Jesus' love with everyone. And guess what? We can have the Holy Spirit to help us too! Isn’t that awesome?
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Passover marks the momentous event when God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, as described in Exodus 12. This event is foundational in Jewish and Christian theology as it symbolizes God's deliverance. Pentecost, occurring 50 days after Passover, celebrates the giving of the Torah (law) to Moses at Mt. Sinai. For Christians, it marks the day the Holy Spirit was given to the apostles after Jesus' resurrection, as detailed in Acts 2.
Understanding both these events within their historical context enriches our appreciation of God's consistent plan for salvation and transformation across the testaments. The journey from slavery under Pharaoh to the freedom given by the Holy Spirit highlights a pattern of redemption and empowerment that is central to both Jewish and Christian faiths.
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Congratulations, all of our graduates, some of those graduates I've known all their life, they were born here. Most of them have been here quite a while. But thank you. We honor you today. But also I tell you, the rest of you, happy birthday.
Because Pentecost is the birthday of the church. That's when the church started. Up until that time, that was the old Testament. But after Pentecost, the New Testament church was born. So today's our spiritual birthday, our birthday of the church being born.
And it's a joy to have you with us, those of you watching online. Thank you. Today's Pentecost Sunday. Now, if you were not here last Sunday, I would encourage you to go back and look at that story, because the story that was shared by our missionaries exemplified the working of the Holy Spirit. Nobody else could have put that together, I said, nobody else could have put it together but God.
What an awesome testimony. A missionary that Nelsa. I was speaking with Nelsa yesterday, and Amy grew up in the church or her children's ministry, and she said she'd been praying. They had been praying that she would find a husband, and she had to go all the way to Zambia, Africa, to find an Italian. But God does some awesome things.
Several weeks ago, the Lord laid upon my heart a thought to preach for Pentecost Sunday. And that thought was, before there's a Pentecost, there has to be a Passover.
There has to be a Passover because Pentecost literally means 50 days after Passover. But my thought that I originally thought was that the disciples needed to die to self. How many thinks that you and I sometimes need to die to self before we can really have a Pentecost? We have to die to salvage. And Paul said, I die what, daily?
But it seemed like God checked me in my spirit, and I'm glad he does that. And he said, that's a good thought, but Pentecost is more than what you can do on your own.
Pentecost is more than what you can do on your own.
And I began to meditate on that, because, see, if I'd have preached that message just by itself, somebody might have got the idea that if you discipline yourself enough, if you work hard enough, if you trust hard enough, you can do it. But it's bigger than we are, Gator. We can't do it by ourself. We need God because we can never be good enough. I know for me now you're probably a lot more disciplined than me, but I can never be disciplined enough.
I can never be good enough. And the truth is none of us can. None of us can do it alone. See, that's the reason and the purpose of the indwelling and the baptism of the holy spirit to give us strength, to give us power to be witnesses, not only to have the power of the gifts, but the power to bear fruit of the spirit. So instead of a one point message, I got 14 points.
No, I don't. I'm just teasing. I've got four points. The patience of the Spirit, the power of the Spirit, the passion of the Spirit and the person of the Spirit. When I'm talking about the person, I'm not talking about you and I'm talking about the person of the Holy Spirit.
Before we go any further, would you join with me in prayer? I know we've already prayed, but I want us to agree together that in this message and in this service that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit will be manifest today.
Heavenly Father, we thank you. That we serve a God that cares about us, a God that loves us, a Jesus that died to save us. A holy spirit that lies and within us. And so father, we ask you today to minister to us ever. How many people we have here in this building ever, how many we have watching online, every one of us that are different place on our journey.
I don't know where they are, but you do. And I ask you to meet every person at their level of understanding and at their point of need and clarify things for us. And we give you praise, give you honor, and give you glory in Jesus name. Amen. Now before I go any further, how many of you this morning did not grow up in a pentecostal church?
I think the most of us didn't. I did. I had to show you how to vote. I grew up in a pentecostal church, but if you notice, most of you didn't. I attended a Southern baptist church until I was six and I moved.
So we began to attend assembly of God church. So I attended the assembly of God ever since. Now the church I grew up in was fully pentecostal, but I never heard about what I'm about to tell. Part of what I'm about to tell you. But as we look at it, I want you to think about the patience of the Holy Spirit.
How many of you are glad that God doesn't zap you every time you get out of line? Amen. I'm going to tell you, if God had zapped us the first time we got out of line, Brother Brown, none of us would have been here this morning. And that's kind of the idea that some people had about God. He's a God that's looking down, wanting to zap you and get you out of the way.
I'm glad that he's a patient, loving God. I'm glad that he looks up at us and sees not just what we are, but he sees what we can be. He's a patient God. He's a patient God. Now, we have difficulty sometimes, or at least I do.
I know most of you are smarter than me, but I have problems sometimes following the jewish calendar. Because the jewish calendar uses a lunar calendar. That means it's based on the number. Every new moon is a different month. And we base the solar calendar based on one year that we go around the sun.
And so sometimes we have difficulty getting the exact days. And, you know, if I understand it correctly, then occasionally the jewish calendar, they'll just add a month because they need to fill in the time frame to make it up because it's a lunar calendar. So. But in Exodus chapter twelve, we find the institution of the Passover. My intention earlier was to emphasize this point that you cannot have a Pentecost until after the Passover.
The word pente is the word for 50 means after 50 days after the Sabbath. After Passover. Passover was celebrated for a whole week. The day of Passover, we consider it as Friday being the day of Passover. So Jesus died on good Friday, what we know as Passover day.
But the whole week was a Passover week. Now, seven weeks plus one day. We know that Jesus was in the grave on the Sabbath. But on the Sabbath day or the first day of the week, excuse me, he. The tomb was empty.
The tomb was empty. So beginning that count that time from the Sabbath, seven weeks plus one day. Give us the day of Pentecost. Now let's go to chapter 19 of the Book of Exodus. And I know some of you are going to say, well, Pastor, you spoke on some of this a year or so ago, and I did.
But I want you to hold on and listen to me because I think this is a great message of what God has to say to the church today. But in Exodus, chapter 19, verse one, on the third new moon, after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt on that day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai. Okay, so the third new moon, that doesn't mean it had been three months. It means it had been two more new moons. So it had been two lunar months of 28 days.
So we talk about it's getting close to 50 days, right? It was close to 50 days. 28 days. On the third new moon, after the people of Israel had gone out, they set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai. And they encountered in the wilderness there, Israel encamped before the mountain.
While Moses went up to God, the Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, thus, you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the people of Israel, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you out on eagles wings and brought you to myself. Brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possessions among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. Now remember, over in the New Testament, it says, you are, therefore you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
He was speaking that to us as a church then, but this time he's saying, the nation of Israel is going to be my people. Going to be my people. Now, I don't have time to delve in all that, but Moses went up to the mountain and received the Ten Commandments. The first Pentecost. The first Pentecost.
And I said, growing up, pentecostal church, I never heard that in my life. I always think the first Pentecost was on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell. But they celebrated Pentecost prior to the New Testament. What happened when Moses was on the mountain?
Fire came down. It says, it thundered. But if you look up, thunder. In the Hebrew, the word literally means tongues. Voices were heard.
So the first Pentecost is when Moses went up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments. Now, this is rich. This is so good, and I think we need to get a hold of it, that he said to jewish people today, not just then, jewish tradition will tell you that the day of Pentecost, that the Ten Commandments is God's marriage proposal to the nation of Israel. You shall have no other gods before me. Now, I never heard that.
But I do know that if you read that story you'll find that while he was up there, they started worshiping the golden calf. And when he came down that 3000 people.
But if you go to the New Testament story of the day of Pentecost when the tongues and the fire came down from heaven, there were 3000 added to the church that day. Don't have time to go into all that. But let's think of that. But again, a marriage proposal. Now what does God tell us?
What does he call the church? The bride of Christ. Now this may not do anything for you, but it does for me. I like the fact that the Ten Commandments are not a bunch of rules and regulations. It's a relationship that I have with God.
He says, I love you with an unconditional love. And that's all I ask you to do to me. Love me with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. Now let's go to the book of acts, acts, chapter two, verse one. Acts, chapter two, verse one.
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. Now King James version says when it's fully come and the scripture that we started there with in Exodus, it tells us on the day, on the specific day. Now he said, why are you making mention that? Because God's calendar is always right. And I can tell you God's a patient God.
And just because you want it to speed up, God says, no, I've got my time and my place. Didn't the disciples want Jesus to set up an earthly kingdom? That was their desire. They thought that Jesus was going to set up an earthly kingdom. Said, no, you missed it, boys.
I've got a better plan, but it's got to be under my timing. And when you begin to look at all the specifics that God says at that day, in that day, that specific timing. And a lot of people ask me say, pastor, what do you think about the future of the world? What do you think about end time prophecy? Well, I can tell you what.
The more I study the Bible, the more I'm convinced that it's going to be in line with God's calendar, at God's timing. And there's a good possibility it's going to be in line with the jewish calendar. Because every great event in history spiritually happened on a jewish holiday. We call one of them Christmas, call one of them Easter, we call one of them Pentecost. All of those things happened according to the jewish calendar.
And I'm glad that God's the one in charge of the calendar. I look at my calendar sometimes, and, man, how can I get all that stuff in? But compared to God's calendar, I don't have nothing. Cause he's got you on that calendar. He's got a plan for you.
High school graduates. He's got a plan for you. He knows his plan for you. So we see that. And so in acts, it says, when the day of Pentecost arrived, didn't get there early.
It was on 50 days. I can almost guarantee you that at least one of the disciples, I won't call one by name because I would hate to misjudge them, but I'm sure at least one of those disciples, when they were up there in that upper room, I wish Jesus would go ahead and send Pentecost. Now, I have to remind you, they really didn't know what they were waiting for. They didn't know, and they didn't have organ music playing. And contrary to what some of you speak, the Bible says, when the Holy Spirit came, they were sitting in the upper room.
I'm not telling you you can't stand, but I'm just telling you you don't have to stand. But God has a calendar. He's patient. I said, he's patient. And I'm glad that he is, because if he wasn't, none of us would be here.
God was patient. But it says, and it fully come. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind. And it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. Now, some people say, well, that was their salvation experience. I don't agree with that. After the resurrection, when Jesus appeared to the disciples in the upper room while he was walking with them, he told them to do what? Receive ye, the Holy Spirit.
They could not receive the Holy Spirit until after death, burial and resurrection. They cannot be, quote, saved, because in order to be saved, we must know, believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and that he died. And he rose again so nobody could be saved. And so after that, when he was asking them and he revealed them to him, said, receive ye, the Holy Spirit. I believe that was their salvation experience.
But he said, wait a minute. You stay here. Stay here until you receive the power.
And when 50 days had passed, when God's timetable clicked to zero, the Pentecost or the Holy Spirit came. God is always on time, and he is a patient God. I'm reminded of the words in the book of Galatians when it says, but when the fullness of time. What's he talking about? Talking about the birth of Christ.
Jesus had to come at the right time. Jesus had to die at the right time. He had to resurrect at the right time. God is always on time. And it says, there and forever, it says, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman born under the law, to redeem those who were under law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, father, so you're no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then we're heir through God.
So we can see just a glimmer of the patience of the Holy Spirit. Now, the next three points will be intertwined, because I don't think you can separate the person of the Holy Spirit from the passion of the Holy Spirit or the power of the Holy Spirit. The King James version uses the term Holy Ghost. And I know there's some of you that probably say, I wish we still used that. It really doesn't matter because the word means breath or air.
Pneuma. It means breath or air. At creation, guess what? God breathed. Same word.
He breathed the earth. The breath of God breathed upon the earth. His spirit moved. And when they got ready to create, man said, let us. Who's the US?
God the father, God the son, and God the Holy Spirit. One God, three attributes. But the Holy Spirit is not a ghost. I think maybe that scared some of us when we were little. The Holy Ghost, especially when you heard some of the preaching that we heard earlier, early on, Brother Brown.
Kind of scary, wasn't it? The Holy Ghost is going to get you. Okay. Scary. I'll never forget one of our speakers at youth camp years ago.
He said, and he was talking about, I never forget the day I was getting saved. Received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. And he said, and somebody said, you know, you're going to have to give up what you love the most. And he said the only thing he could think of is he can never have another peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Some of the things we hear. But I'm glad. I'm glad that the Holy Spirit is not a ghost, but is one of the godhead. He is a person. He's just as real as Jesus.
I say he's just as real as Jesus. He's just as real as God the Father.
He's not a thing, not an it. It's a person of the Holy Spirit. Now, the complexity of this is far beyond my comprehension. If any of you want to. Gator, I was just being telling him to ask you.
You don't know it either, but don't ask Gator. I asked Lou, but it's far beyond my comprehension to totally understand this concept of three in one. And I really used to struggle with it because I couldn't understand it. But then it dawned on me. The Bible says God said, let us make man in our image.
What's his image? Three in one. God the father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit. What are we made of? Body, soul, and spirit.
We're three in one because we're made after God's image. And you cannot separate your spirit from your flesh. At least I hope you can't.
We're three and one. God's three and one. But I'm so glad he never did tell me, well, that once you understand this, we're going to the next level. He says, we walk by faith. We walk by faith.
And we need the body, soul, and the spirit to be a functioning human being. Now, I'm just asking this, throwing it out for your thought. Could it be said that we need all three of the aspects of God to be functioning fully in God? God the father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit? And I know some of you that were taught differently.
Don't want to get into argument with you, but we need God the Father, we need God the Son, we need God the spirit. But the amazing thing is, most of us desire the power of the spirit, but are we willing to fully embrace the person of the spirit? I said the person of the spirit. Or what about the passion of the spirit? Because, see, if what I'm saying is true, if God is love, Jesus is love.
If Jesus is love, the Holy Spirit, love. Because they're three and one. In Galatians chapter five, we see all three of the Godhead mentioned. I won't take time to read the entire chapter, but let's look at verse five, verse one and chapter five. For freedom.
Now, it didn't say from freedom. It says, for freedom. See, when God sets us free, he frees us to live for him not to be in bondage. It says, for freedom. Christ has set us free.
Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Drop down to verse 13, for you were called to freedom. Brothers only. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. But through love, serve one another, for the whole law is fulfilled.
In one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another. But I say, walk in the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. In other words, the works of the flesh keep us from doing the works of the spirit that God wants us to do.
But if you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are what you see on tv. No, that's what it says. Now the works of the flesh are evident. You watch enough tv yourself.
Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, adultery, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these. I warned you, as I warned before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, but the fruit of the spirit is love. Now there's some commentators that tell you that you could put a semicolon there instead of a comma, because all the rest of them are really attributes of love.
If you love, you're going to have joy, you're going to have peace, you're going to have patience, going to have kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control against things such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh. We have died daily with its passions and desires. If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
Why? We need the love of God. We need the spirit of God. We need the peace of God. We need all those things.
Because when we have the person of the spirit, it gives us access to the power and to the passion of God. Yeah, we like. I like to see people healed. I thank God that God's a still healing God. I said, I thank God that God is still in the healing beings, us.
I'm glad that we can come broken and God minister to us. But we also need to understand that he does not only bring power, he gives compassion and passion. Read with me in Romans. Romans, chapter 15. Just read a couple of verses.
Romans, chapter 15, verse 19. Notice what it says. By the power of signs and wonders by the power of the spirit of God. So that from Jerusalem all the way around Elysium, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. So we have the power.
We have the power of God. Verse 30 says this, though I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the spirit to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf. So we need to understand that God wants us to have access to the gifts of the spirit as well as the fruit of the spirit. Now, growing up in the pentecostal church, there was a phrase that I heard many, many, many times, because church I grew up with, at least twice or three times a month, on Sunday night, you were going to have the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I heard the word often you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
And I think if I heard it once, I heard it a hundred times. The word power is the word that we get. Dunamis. It's the same word. We get dynamite.
And we live by that. And there's a lot of people that blew up in the spirit. For one time it was dynamite, but I found out later on that that same word, dunamis, it's the same root word for dynamo. Dynamo just keeps on going. It keeps on producing.
Dynamite is once and is gone. But dynamo keeps on keeping on. It produces power. Power for what? Power to be witnesses.
Now, you probably don't. You probably know this because you probably remember me saying it, but you know what the word for witness is there in acts chapter two is power to become witnesses. The word witnesses is the same word. We get martyr.
Now, that's when you die to self. I said that's when you really die to self. Now, I'm thankful that most of us are not going to have to face the life martyrdom, but there's that connotation that we need to learn to die to self. Die to self. Now, let's just check on the time frame again.
There's a little bit of leniency there, but we know that Jesus died on Friday, the day of Passover, and three days later, they have firstfruits, the resurrection from the dead. He was on the earth for how many days? 40. So roughly, we got 43 days there. And again, you can juggle your math a little bit, because I don't totally understand, but somewhere between seven and ten days, Jesus had already ascended into heaven, and he told his disciples to wait.
To wait. Now, this is my personal thought, and you certainly can disagree with me, but I think during that seven to ten days, the disciples did a lot of dying to self.
I said, I think they did a lot of dying to self because I do not believe that the Peter, the day he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit was the same peter that denied Jesus three times.
I don't think that the john that later on would write 1st, second and third John, the book of Revelations and the Gospel of John. We think of him as the disciple that Jesus loved. That's what he called himself. But we need to also remember that he was the disciple that when somebody did something out of line, he, he said, jesus, do you want us to call fire down from heaven? He was full of love, wasn't he?
What happened? I believe that there was a process of those people dying to self. I believe God waited on that and I think that's what the waiting was. I don't think it was necessarily them staying on their knees praying. I think they had to do a lot of meditating.
They didn't know what they were waiting on. I said, they didn't know what they were waiting on. They were just being obedient to God.
And then the Holy Spirit came and they spoke with other tongues. Yes. Gave them a holy bonus. Yes, but I think that they had already been working on that already. But again, that's the reason the Holy Spirit directed me to change this, to make sure you understand, we cannot do it on our own.
I said, we cannot do it on our own. We have to receive the power from God. And that's what happened on the day of Pentecost. John did a note this morning during the first service while we were doing worship, I remembered a story, it's a true, true story about a young preacher. Now some of you that have preached a little bit, you can relate to this.
First time he had preached and he was so excited. He knew that he was going to bring the house down. He was going to, he was going to shell the corn, you know, he was going to do it. And he got up there and he preached. And I know the feeling, it bombed.
And he left the platform kind of with his tail between his legs. And a wise old preacher said this, son, if you would have went up there the way you came down, you would have come down the way you went up.
Because see, we have to die to self. Self has to get out of the way. And I believe that the disciples did a lot about that. You say, why would you say that? Because, see, what was the big issue before Jesus crucifixion Hey, which one of us is going to be the number one in the kingdom?
That was their big argument. They argued about who was going to be top man. Now the top man had gone and they said, hey, we just want to survive. We just want to survive. They did a lot of dying to self.
I personally think that the Peter that spoke on the day of Pentecost, the one that couldn't stand up to one woman that had no authority. Yeah, she was slave girl. He couldn't stand up to one of them all of a sudden had the power to stand up to preach the thousands.
God did something, but we need to remember that God gave them power not only to speak, but he gave them the power to live. See, that's what the fruit of the spirit is. I said, that's what the fruit of the spirit is. What we produce in our lives that brings people to want what you have.
Colossians, chapter one. Worship team, come on up. Colossians, chapter one, verse 27. To them, God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery which is Christ in you the hope of glory. He revealed that to the church and says him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
And Paul said this, for this I toil, struggling with all my might. No, it didn't say that, did it? Struggling with everything within me.
Not on your own strength, it says, for I struggle with all his energy, the Dunamis, the dynamo that works within us. Struggling with all his energy, that he powerfully works within me. How many of you are thankful that God still works powerfully in us?
I want you to stand and let's worship him. I want us to worship God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, the person of the spirit. And as we're doing that, I want us to ask for his patience. I mean, you need some of his patience for his passion because we need to love one another a lot more, even love those people. That is so despicable.
I can tell you, I'm really concerned when I see all of the social media that's speaking against one another. Friends, as Christians, we don't have to agree with everyone, but we do have to love everyone. We need his patience, his passion and his power. Father, we ask you to help us today, as we worship you, we ask you to minister to us in a real and wonderful way. Help us to worship God the father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit.
Let us receive from you what you have for us to receive. God I realize that in this group, this crowd, that we're all at a different level spiritually. I don't know them. I don't know what their need is. But you do.
There's some that need healing. There's some that need the baptism and the Holy Spirit. There's some that need salvation. And Father, whatever the need is, we ask you to minister by your power and your might as we worship you today. God, we just give you praise, give you honor.
