HOW IMPORTANT WAS PENTECOST?

HOW IMPORTANT WAS PENTECOST?

                And when the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.  And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves and they 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 was giving them utterance. “Acts 2:1-4

                Today I am going to ask the title question. HOW IMPORTANT WAS PENTECOST?

                Well, I am going to answer this question with a question. How important was it that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary?

                If Joseph had come upon Mary, then Jesus would have been just another kid on the block right?

                But the Scriptures let us know clearly that this was no kind of a regular conception for the angel said to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.” Luke 1:35

                Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and then again as He entered into His 3 1/2 year ministry, it says: “…And the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came out of heaven, “Thou art My beloved Son in Thee I am well pleased.” Luke 3:22.

                In Jesus’ life then a pattern was established. When we receive Jesus as our Savior and Lord, a new spirit is conceived in us by the Holy Spirit. We become new creatures. But then when we have come to maturity as born again believers, we then receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit to equip us for service so that the works that Jesus did, we might do also.

                And may I venture to say here that if the Holy Spirit had not come upon the church, then we also would have been just another religion on the block.

                So, the baptism of the Holy Spirit begins with the tongue,  but  why? It is because,  as James tells us:

                “So also the tongue is a small part of the body and yet it boasts of great things. Behold how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire. And the tongue is a fire,  the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body and sets on fire the course of our life and is set on fire by hell… but no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison… But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.” James 3:5-6, 8, 17.

                We literally have heaven or hell in our mouths for our tongues steer the course of our lives either for good or for evil. So the first thing they Holy Spirit has to do is to change our speech. He transforms our speech by the Holy Spirit and by the Word of God implanted in our hearts.. We begin to speak faith instead of doubt, love instead of hatred and light instead of darkness. As His sons and daughters then, we begin to speak in agreement with our Father in heaven.

                The tongue is a little rudder that can steer a big ship and so, the Holy Spirit first of all tames our tongue for if the power of the Most High God is to come upon us and to overshadow us, they our words are going to begin to pack supernatural power either for evil or for good.

                This is why the Bible says that we will be held accountable for every idle word. In fact it was Jesus Himself that said to us: “And I say to you that every careless (idle) word that men shall speak, they shall render account for it in the Day of Judgment. For by your words you shall be justified and by your words you shall be condemned.” Mt. 12:36, 37.

                Wow! Our words are important, leading to life or to judgment and the way I see it, we who are called by His name, should crave above all things that His Holy Spirit will have control over our hearts and our tongues.

                When Christians go about carelessly spreading gossip, or speaking doubt, or negativity, they will face those words again in the judgment. There is huge power in the tongue, for Jesus said:

                “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be taken up and cast into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that WHAT HE SAYS is going to happen, it shall be granted him.” Mark 11:23. We speak what we believe and if it is God’s Word, it will not return unto Him void but will accomplish the thing that it was set out to do. Isa. 55:11. So it is also when we speak God’s word after Him.

                Is it possible that Christians are largely weak today because of our words? We are carrying a loaded weapon and when your weapon is loaded, you can’t just go around shooting into the crowd. With our words we can cause murder and mayhem… or we can bring peace and healing.

                This is so important that Jesus said: ‘If therefore you are presenting your offering at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go your way, first be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering.” Mt. 5: 23. 24.

                In other words until you have made things right with your fellow Christian, either by apologizing or by forgiving, don’t even bother to pray or to offer sacrifices of praise to God. He won’t hear you and He won’t forgive you, or reconcile you to the Father until you have forgiven and been reconciled to your brother. This is serious business… and if Jesus could forgive those who were driving nails through Is hands, what excuse do we have for not forgiving?

                With His tongue, Jesus stilled a raging storm at sea and with our tongues we can either still the storm or cause a storm and we will be held accountable for our words on judgment day. Who knows how many people we have destroyed along the way with our careless tongues?

                Okay, so back to Pentecost. The first thing that the Holy Spirit must do as He empowers us to do the works of Christ is to gain control of our tongue. And on the day of Pentecost they all began to speak with other tongues, thus indicating that the Holy Spirit had indeed gained control of their tongues and from now on, these “loaded weapons “ would be used for holy purposes and not for careless and empty speech.

                Most of Christianity considers Pentecost to be ancient history and irrelevant to our day. And perhaps this is one of the key reasons why the church lacks the power to do the works of Christ. Church has now become big business and run like a corporation rather than like the supernatural Holy Spirit entity that it was intended to be.

                What happened on the Day of Pentecost? Well, it corresponds to the first Day of Pentecost when the Law was given on Mt. Sinai. The children of Israel had been celebrating Pentecost for hundreds of years. On that day they celebrated the giving of the Law.

                So when the Day of Pentecost came to the church, God wrote His Law in our hearts. He established His government in us and made us into living temples of the Holy Spirit, and thus having planted His Law, His truth in our hearts, He then tames our tongue because, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Luke 6:45

                Are you getting the connection here? The heart and the tongue must be Holy Spirit controlled if we are to do the works of Christ in the world. So if we are to do the works of Christ to bring in the final harvest, we desperately need both our hearts and our tongues to be empowered, controlled and guided by the Holy Spirit and the Word.

                The Holy Spirit cannot pour out upon us the very power of Christ until we can be trusted with it and that means we need maturity. This is exactly why Jesus, even though conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, when He reached the age of maturity (30 years) the Father then anointed Him with the Holy Spirit for ministry. The Father equipped Him for ministry by the Holy Spirit.

                So Jesus didn’t go through His childhood working little miracles as some legends say. I once read one of these legends where as a small child Jesus was making little sparrows out of mud by the creek and when his mother called Him in for dinner, He clapped His little hands and all of the little sparrows flew away. Well that is fanciful and cute, but not true, because the Bible tells us that His first miracle was at the wedding at Cana… Mature and loaded for ministry.

                As Christians we have much to pray about. We lack power largely because our tongues and our hearts are not fully surrendered to and empowered by the Holy Spirit. We live largely like the world. We have a largely secular world view rather than a biblical world view. Our hearts are often tentatively surrendered to God and we stand stretched between two points of view. We have one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat and the boat is pulling out. We are being stretched to the limit simply because we can’t seem to commit to either the boat or the dock.

                This is why there is going to be a great falling away. And I am not going to argue today about how the gift of tongues is manifested. 1 Cor. 14, Acts 19 and many other Scriptures give us all the information we need on the subject. But this much I will say as backed by the authority of the Word and the Holy Spirit. We need our hearts and our tongues controlled by the Holy Spirit before Jesus can trust us with the power we need to bring in the final harvest. And if Jesus’ Words are ever to come true when He says that “the works He did and even greater works will we do because He has gone to the Father”, (John 14:12) then He is going to need vessels that are fully surrendered to Him and mature in our walk so that He can entrust us with the power we need to directly face the enemy and to harvest souls for the kingdom.

                This is the Gospel of the kingdom that we must be preach before Jesus can return, for it came with a demonstration of God’s power, His Holiness and His miracles.

                When we are conceived by the Holy Spirit, we become members of the Royal family, brothers and sisters of Jesus and joint heirs of the throne. Now we are being called to maturity.