The Winds of Change
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Recap
With the year slipping away as it is, this might be the last message in our theme for the year, “Unhindered.”
We started back in January with our verse for the year.
And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.”
This series is all about people being set free
The church first - To know God, Worship him and walk in his ways.
Walking in his ways makes us salt and light in the places where we live life so that others could come to experience that same freedom in their lives as well.
We said for this to happen, we need to begin a spiritual progression in our lives.
There are spiritual attitudes of spiritual progression that need to take place in our lives.
First a recognition of who we are without him.
that we are spiritually impoverished - poor in spirit
That we are sorrowful, because we are sinful
But praise God when we recognize these things within us, we can know his forgiveness. And with that comes full and abundant living.
We then experience the love of our Heavenly Father like none other for us
And that brings a spirit of meekness. A spirit that is open to anything that he leads us to and commands us to
This helps us develop a strong heart. One that hungers for more of What God has for us. A heart that seeks to glorify God
A heart that is regenerated by the power of God’s Holy Spirit (Going to talk about that today)
A heart that is at peace with God. And thereby a heart that seeks to be at peace with all of those around us.
A heart that causes us to begin to take on the character and personality of our Heavenly FAther. And we become known as His Children
And when this happens, it puts us on the enemies hit list - because he hates anything that looks like or leads people to this loving God.
And at this point, though we may be persecuted, we are very much free and unhindered.
Then two weeks ago we began to look at the New Testament Church in Acts. A church that became unhindered and changed their world.
A church like that which we should be today.
We saw in that the church is called to be unhindered as witnesses for Jesus Christ.
That Jesus made sure we were set free to be those witnesses
That He called us, He chose us
That He comissioned us or sent us
That we were qualified as such
And that we were empowered.
And today in from Acts chapter 2, we see what that empowerment was all about.
When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?”
Others mocking said, “They are full of new wine.”
You see there is a problem in the nature of fallen man - We have a need to promote or exalt ourselves.
Because of sin - pride has come in
Because of pride - we like to toot our own horns.
But as we learned two weeks ago in the message - we are called to toot Jesus’ Horn.
What we do today, in this place, should not do anything else, but glorify Jesus
If you are visiting with us, we want you to know that we are here to sing about, pray to, and speak about Jesus Christ, our Lord and our savior.
That’s IT!
The empowerment of the Holy Spirit in the church gives us the ability to unhindered from our self exaltation to lift up and praise the name of Jesus - No matter where we are.
We have three signs here:
3 Signs of Holy Spirit Empowerment 1. Sound of Wind
3 Signs of Holy Spirit Empowerment 1. Sound of Wind
I want you to see here that nobodies hair got messed up. There was no wind whipping through the building.
The sound was there to let them know that the Holy Spirit showed up.
The Holy Spirit is typified in three powerful ways in the scriptures:
The wind
The Fire
And the Water
They knew that something was happening.
The wind speaks of the movement of the Holy Spirit upon their lives.
The spirit of the church could not be moved to do the work of the Kingdom of God (a spiritual Kingdom) until the Holy Spirit moved the church to do it.
Leaves being blown by the wind
the wind speaks of the power of the Holy Spirit - much like the power of the wind that we have seen in these last few storms of the century.
A wind that turns things upside down. Only with the Holy Spirit it’s for good.
The church in America needs to be turned upside down again.
We need our roots to be torn up out of the soil of worldly compromise and the worldly propaganda that we have come to believe.
It also speaks of the easy or for a lack of a better term, fluid movement of the Holy Spirit.
The movements of the church should be just as fluid, but we are made up of people.
Imperfect people affected by sin and the world around them
It’s the spirit that gives us that freedom of movement in our communities, in our world and especially in the Spirit realm.
Next we see the tongues of fire that sat upon each one’s head
3 Signs of Holy Spirit Empowerment 2. Tongues of Fire
3 Signs of Holy Spirit Empowerment 2. Tongues of Fire
2. Tongues of Fire
2. Tongues of Fire
Fire in the Bible always speaks of purifying. The church was empowered to live lives of purity in an impure world.
The church was empowered to speak God’s pure word through impure lips
- Isaiah has a vision. He has unclean lips.
The fire of the Holy Spirit has taken every excuse away from us not to be involved in the work of the Kingdom
Remember the disciples felt this way too.
What has been your excuse my brother?
What is holding you back my sister?
Because no matter what your sin has been or is today, the sacrifice of Jesus has made your clean
Your sins have been forgiven
Forgotten as if dropped in the deepest part of the sea
And you are clean as snow as if you’ve never sinned.
And now through the day of Pentecost - the power of Heaven coming upon the people of earth - you have been purified by the fire of God’s Holy Spirit.
3 Signs of Holy Spirit Empowerment 3. They Spoke in Other Tongues
3 Signs of Holy Spirit Empowerment 3. They Spoke in Other Tongues
This is the ability to speak and be understood.
This is God fixing our hearts from the situation thousands of years before at a place called Babel
Why was it called Babel? Because that’s what the people did was babel.
The people all came together to make a name for themselves. To show what mankind could do. To make a tower into the heavens (sort of what satan tried to do - raise himself higher than God)
So God sees their sin and says, we cannot let this happen. We cannot let this rebellion and sin succeed.
And so he confuses their language and thank God he does. Do you know what he is doing? restraining our sin. Containing our brokenness and our arrogance. maintaining that which was going to wipe us out and kill us.
Even today, God does that.
Us using only 10% of our brains
Pentecost reverses that. God brings us back together
And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?”
Acts 2:
Today in this place we have a picture of what is happening here, right here at 849 Rt. 54 in Buena Vista Township
We have hispanic, german, portugese, filopino and who knows who else in one building worshipping God together.
When we sing our songs in Spanish, I don’t know what we are saying in that language, but I know the song, so I know what the words mean
I chop it up severely, but I try to sing. Why? Porque quiero cantar y adorar a Dios en tu idioma con mis hermanos y hermanas.
Through the speaking in tongues, God reverses the effects of the Tower of babel.
Once your language seemed like babeling to me, but now it’s such a beautiful sound.
Listen, it’s all for a purpose:
That we would commonly praise God
That we don’t exalt ourselves anymore, but that we all exalt God
That we would have the ability to explain God’s mighty works. - To give us the words to share our spiritual experiences
Think about this, today I get to share with you God’s Word.
The Holy Scriptures, which God says of them that they are God Breathed. God inspired and God ordained
I am speaking mysteries of life to you each Sunday and we are getting it. How? Because of the power of the Holy Spirit of God who reveals the mysteries of God into the Spirit of man.
Come on, let’s be honest. Some of you sat in churches where they didn’t preach the Holy Spirit like this
You have sat in churches where they did not allow the Holy Spirit to move as he wants
And the Word was dead, it was babel, it made no sense and you went home no different than how you came
That is not what is going to happen today. And it’s not because of me or because you are sitting in a Foursquare Church
It’s because I believe that the Holy Spirit wants to speak to us today and I give him the room in my life and my sermon preparation to make that happen.
In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit came upon people to enable them to do certain tasks
We read that the ones who build the tabernacle were given the spirit of God to have the talents to do so
The Holy Spirit came upon David to enable him to kill the giant, to be the king over Israel and to be the warrior that he was
But in the New Testament, He comes to live in us to give us the ability to live in what Jesus came to give to us until the day that Jesus returns.
So through the Day of Pentecost experience:
We are not only the church of Christ, but we are the church that exalts the Christ.
We are the church that is empowered to bring in the harvest
We are the church that is free to us our giftings and personalities to get his message out.
We are the church that can move in full unity of the body - nations and tongues worshipping together
We can preach the mighty works of God and have Spiritual understanding.
And praise God we are a church that can expect a response to that Word.
Don’t you want to live unhindered in the Holy Spirit today church?
PRAY